97.6 FM
Ao3: jamjars
ALL THREE CHAPTERS
Asshole
Chapter Notes
Song: Asshole by hooligan chase
"Annnnd that's all for tonight, dickbags. Check back in with me tomorrow night at 5 for your weekly dose of superior music. Try not to cry yourself to sleep after I'm gone. Although, I'm sure that's inevitable after Shitty Hair takes over snooze central. WHAT? Don't fucking look at me like that. It's not my fault you have the personality of a glass of water- Fuck! Whatever, later losers. Tune into 97.6. Ground Zero out."
He had no business sounding that hot spewing profanities left and right and at this point, Izuku was tired of it. Day in and day out he sprints out of work early to his beat-up old honda just to sit in it for two and a half hours so he can hear this man with a deep, velvety voice bully his audience.
He stays to listen to Ground Zero rant about his life. The music is something that he had to grow into. Izuku has always been the early 2000s starships are meant to fly type of guy, and he honestly assumes that's why people always call him plain, but after a year of tuning into this station he thinks he got a full emo resurgence. Everyone, please hide your Hot Topics.
Growing up he felt awkward and uncomfortable in his body. Never really caring to have a style, more in search of comfort to quell his growing anxiety. He had always been small and weak and once he got into college that shit didn't fly anymore. He was still small, but definitely not weak (if the award for thickest thighs and fattest ass he got last month at the gym counts for anything). Izuku thanks God every day for being a yoga instructor. It totally turned his self-image around for the better, but he always knew there was something missing.
After accidentally spilling an entire water bottle on his phone one night at the gym, he was kinda screwed for music. And every other convenient thing that came along with having a fully functioning phone. His foot managed to crush his puny little apple headphones while in the struggle, and honestly, why the fuck did apple change the phone jack again? He was officially down a pair of nice headphones, not AirPods fuck you those are expensive, and a way to scream DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love at the top of his lungs on the ride home.
That was actually the first time he had ever heard Ground Zero's voice through the car radio. Izuku had managed to catch the last half hour of his show and, holy shit is this what the kids are listening to these days? It was only after he heard the host curse loudly after a set and word vomit about how much he wants to strangle the band members for splitting up this year that he realized the music kinda slaps. Maybe. Or the boy with the attitude sounds ridiculously hot and he's convincing himself it does.
"And now that my ever-growing desire to strangle half of my coworkers is quenched with some old Bring Me The Horizon, let's hit another throwback for our middle school sleeves with something less 'let's scream our lungs out' and more 'let's scream our lungs out only softer'. Shut up! It doesn't have to make sense! I'm hot."
It wasn't softer. Izuku was kind of, well definitely, intimidated at first by the music, but refused to change the station in hopes he could absorb some of this guy's confidence. Izuku was definitely lacking in that department and will probably never reach that level of God Complex, but he refuses to consider that the alternative is that he's just a masochist and likes the aggressiveness. It probably has something to do with the repressed childhood bullying, but sue him. Therapy is expensive.
And now that it's been a year of foregoing his Spotify subscription most nights from 5:00 to 7:30, he can officially consider listening to 97.6 as a part of his daily routine. It's such a routine for him that he feels almost like he knows the guy in a weird one sided friendship type of way. Izuku likes to save the idolization for his comic book hero obsession. It's kind of hard to not practically adore the guy after so long though. He feels like he knows so much, yet so little about him.
Ground Zero is now 22, the same age as Izuku. He's definitely in college, for what, he hasn't mentioned. Apparently, he's a blonde, and he likes the color orange and prefers when food is so spicy he can't feel the roof of his mouth. Trivial things, but precious to Izuku nonetheless.
It's also the small, unspoken things that make Izuku feel like he knows him. The music he played was particular to his mood. On the days he seemed somewhat calm he played older, more nostalgic music. It felt like he was taking a peek into his childhood watching an angry blonde haired kid belt his lungs out to hardcore metal completely angry at the world. Izuku didn't know what it was, but on these days he felt like he was benefiting the most. If he could see his child self once he would give himself one of Ground Zero's emo playlist as an outlet. Actually, maybe it was a good idea Izuku didn't have access to music that made him think too hard or the color black.
It's because of these songs Izuku theorized Ground Zero probably plays an instrument. His guess is drums or bass because he normally likes a heavy beat.
Ground Zero doesn't really have sad days. It's more like angry and angrier, and the music he plays reflects that. It's typically when Izuku is glad he doesn't have a heavy bass on his car or else the poor thing would surely collapse in on itself from the pressure.
His favorite days are, and he dubs them, Ground Zero's horny hype session days. According to him, this is the music he likes to play at the gym. They're the most frequent ones and it's some weird mix between emo rap and alternative rock or whatever the hell Chase Atlantic is. He's new to this, give him a break. Izuku prays no one tells his mom he listens to emo rap, but it makes him feel like he's kind of a bad bitch. To be more specific, it makes him think of Ground Zero as a bad bitch, and also like he's incredibly horny at the gym. It's just a fact that he'll have to take to the grave.
He thinks it's cool that Ground Zero's normal, his mundane, sounds like that. It's convinced him that's where he gets his confidence.
'Sorry I only own basketball shorts and shitty graphic t-shirts' Izuku Midoriya finds himself to be a new man at this point. He walks with his head held high now that he's compiled all of his favorite songs in a playlist and actually saved up to buy AirPods so he can keep one in his ear at all times to help with his false confidence. He quite literally faked it till he made it.
His friends were absolutely ecstatic to see him visibly happier, and even more ecstatic to see him get out of his comfort zone style wise. To be fair there was absolutely no sense of style in the first place, but now that he had finally taken an interest in his appearance, things had changed dramatically. To Izuku's relief, none of them knew this change had happened entirely because of some radio host with no filter and an anger management track record longer than his chem final. He's not even majoring in chem.
Izuku feels almost embarrassed that he used to exclusively wear basketball shorts and shirts that scream I got bullied in my adolescence. Not because he used to wear them because he liked them, but instead because he was indifferent about them. He has settled for more than one pair of red shoes, and he also decided he would never stop listening to Mike Poser's Cooler Than Me, but otherwise, he's proud of his appearance and completely embraced the new him.
He's not entirely the Doc Martin, black eyeliner type of guy, so he settled for never buying bootleg pants again and actually putting in the effort to live out his hot, edgy, dark academia librarian fantasy. Sprinkle in some chains to make it spicy and freak your friends out with a tongue piercing and the occasional kinda crop top (who knew right? definitely not Izuku) and you have a mumbling mess. Now he's just a hot mumbling mess. Who now wears orange to bed subconsciously as opposed to his old superhero pajamas because he's chronically gay and pining.
