hero's shadow // mha

42) recipe for survival

For how much time Ms. Kayama and Yamada have spent showing him how to do makeup, Izuku just can't seem to get it right.

To be fair, they've only shown him about two hundred times now how to do the perfect wing to go with his eye shape, so Izuku can't be too harsh on himself, but still.

He has his face pressed up almost completely against the mirror while he drags the liquid eyeliner across his waterline. Which is probably not the best idea, using liquid eyeliner. Ms. Kayama recommended trying pencil eyeliners first so he can learn how to properly do things, but Izuku has never been one to go for the easy route.

Not that Izuku had any luck with the pencil eyeliners either. He keeps ending up looking like The Winter Soldier after a hard day's work of assassinating politicians.

Izuku rarely gives up, though, so here he is in the boy's locker room at school, thirty minutes before homeroom is supposed to start.

He's playing around, in all honesty. He just got out of the shower and has his hair wrapped up in a towel—something that he's never really done before. He usually just lets it air dry and prays that his hair will magically untangle itself.

(Izuku has lost too many expensive brushes to his hair. It's tragic, really.)

Ms. Kayama said that he has beautiful long lashes, so mascara would look just perfect on him. She even gave him a bottle of her own supply for him to try. While he's not sure how to apply it to his bottom lashes without getting it on his cheek, he thinks that he actually might like it!

It brings more attention to his eyes rather than to the other imperfections on his skin and body.

And as for those imperfections...

Izuku stares at the tube of concealer in his hand, brows furrowing. He used to wear foundation a lot when he was younger to hide the bruising on his face before going outside, but he stopped doing that sometime before being accepted into UA. As Rabbit, he got better at fighting and only rarely got hit in the face, so he stopped needing it.

But now he has something more permanent on his face that he might want to cover up.

He glares at the thin white scar on his jaw, contemplating. He got it because of the fire, and his friends have most definitely noticed it sometime during the past two days already, but still. He's grateful none of them have said anything about it, as surprising as that was, but he just doesn't like the way they stare at it. They don't mean to do it, he's sure—it just happens sometimes in the middle of conversations, but what if they do decide to ask eventually? What then?

It might be better to cover it up, both for them and his own conscience. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

But just as he's twisting off the cap to the concealer, the door to the locker room opens quietly, followed by the sound of familiar footsteps—and shit, Izuku has never dropped something so fast in his goddamn life.

He has to swallow back a panicked yelp when he recognizes the quirk of the person approaching, and he shoves the makeup back into the small bag Yamada gifted him, slipping as he tries to get out of sight.

There are stalls he can hide in instead of just standing right by the mirror next to his locker—

He slips in the water puddling by his own feet, because of course he does. That's just his luck. He forgot he got out of the shower just a few minutes prior to this, which is weird since he's half naked with nothing but an All Might towel wrapped around his waist.

The cold draft up his towel should have reminded him.

Hitting the ground hard, Izuku puts a hand on his hair to make sure the towel didn't loosen and grabs the one on his waist for the same reason—but now the problem presents itself.