Chapter Text
If we're still alive, my regrets are few. If my life is mine, what shouldn't I do? I get wherever I'm going; I get whatever I need. While my blood's still flowing, and my heart's still beating like a hammer...
-
This is a story of two boys. One is the protagonist and the other is distorted from what he should’ve been. They orbited each other their entire lives until one day, they didn’t.
Not everything is as it seems, and some truths are better left six feet under. I will now say their names—the names of rising stars trapped in human skins—together once, and once only: this is my story of Deku and Kacchan. It is not a happy story, but I hope that it is an honest one.
-
Katsuki blinks open his eyes and can’t see a fucking thing. There’s light shining through his lids, so it’s daytime. He discovers he’s naked, which is not the best way to start the morning, or whatever time it is. He usually sleeps with boxers, for shame, and it’s the start of spring so there’s no reason to sleep completely in the nude.
His mouth tastes like shit, though, tangy with iron and rust. He wonders if he has blood on his teeth. The sheets are soft around him, if dirty, which is lowkey gross as hell but also another indicator that they aren’t his. Katsuki changes his sheets religiously and—
It’s not sheets around him. He chokes and sits up abruptly, or at least tries to. There’s resistance, like a weighted blanket. Katsuki can’t breathe, so he struggles a little more urgently, but whatever is covering him is heavy but soft, and his fingers clear the air and then his head. There’s something in his eyes and in his nose and he snorts and coughs it out, wiping his eyes and hacking out clumps of whatever it is. He gathers what little spit there is in his dry mouth and turns to the side and hacks. He still can’t see, so he pats around and feels crumbles of—stuff.
“Ugh,” he says. He finally blinks his eyes open. They burn, and he immediately wants to close them. There’s a tree that obscuring the sun, which he’s grateful for. It looks like there’s something hanging from the tree—a rope for a swing, maybe, but he can’t tell because there’s someone in front of him blocking the view.
“Deku,” Katsuki says thickly, and spits out as much as he can. Izuku looks like a deer in headlights. It’d be hilarious if Izuku wasn’t literally looking down on him and looking like all of the blood drained from his face. Izuku looks like a ghost. He stares at Katsuki like he is one. “What exactly are you doing?”
“Uh,” Izuku says, so very still. He’s holding a shovel, and it’s covered in dirt. There’s grass all over the knees of his pants. There’s a smear across his forehead, like he wiped the sweat off with his forearm. He seems farther away like he should be, taller… or maybe it’s that he’s literally looking down at Katsuki. “I’m doing yard work.”
Izuku wouldn’t know yard work if it bit him on the ass.
“Gardening,” Izuku adds slowly. “Yes, I’m now a… gardener. Nature. Green. Orange. Um.” He stares at Katsuki some more, really ogles him quite thoroughly, from Katsuki’s hair to his bare feet. Katsuki follows his gaze. From the waist down, Katsuki is completely below ground. A minute ago he was lying horizontally, which explains all the crap in his mouth and why sitting up was so difficult.
“Um.” Izuku’s gaze travels from the pile of dirt to Katsuki and back to the dirt, drops the shovel, falls to his knees and buries his head in his hands and drags them down, leaving vertical lines behind. Katsuki can see him looking up to the heavens. “Kacchan,” he says. He’s crying. His shoulders heave and he’s repeating that one word over and over, rocking back and forth. “Kacchan, Kacchan, Kacchan…”
Katsuki wants to ask what’s going on, but he breathes the wrong way and now he’s coughing again. His mouth is dry. His eyes are crusted over. His neck hurts.
“This is impossible,” Izuku says, and now he’s scratching at himself frantically, creating paths in the clumps of mud on his legs and arms. “You can’t, you can’t be here, you’re—I saw you, this doesn’t make any sense, I—I’m so happy you’re—you’re—but you’re here and you’re breathing and I just don’t understand, I saw him—I saw you—”
Katsuki pulls his legs out of the ground. The dirt that he climbed from resolves itself into a shallow hole, roughly the shape of his body. There’s a pile of dirt next to it, not as much as in the pit. About half. “I’m only gonna ask this once,” Katsuki rasps out. “What the fuck is going on?”
In a high voice, Deku says, “You need a shower. I need a shower. I’m done here, anyway. Can we talk inside?”
Katsuki follows him indoors. Izuku shoves him into his shower and leaves Katsuki to fend for himself. He has a surprising plethora of hair products. Katsuki searches for the specific bottle that temporarily diluted his own sweat (for sleeping purposes) that inhabited their shared shower back home—wherever “home” even is—and comes up empty.
“Yo,” Katsuki says, trying for normalcy. He’s numb, so he talks normally because that’s what he’s used to doing. He feels like a puppet and someone else is moving his lips. “Where the hell is my body wash?”
“Why would your body wash be here?”
“We…” Katsuki pinches the arch of his nose. “Don’t you live together?”
Izuku sounds genuinely confused. “With who?”
“Me. You live with me, dumbfuck.”
“Oh no,” Izuku whispers, barely audible. “It’s not you. It couldn’t be him. Of course it’s not.”
Katsuki decides to use a random body wash. He’s not covered in his quirk-induced sweat so it doesn’t really matter. “You thought I was your Kacchan?”
“Yeah. Now I know you’re obviously not.” Izuku whispers a small fuck. “I found him about half an hour ago”—that’s probably how long it took Izuku to dig the grave—“and I thought maybe it just took him a really long time to… wake up? I mean, the neck wasn’t broken and there are no bruises on your neck so… But there—there was no heartbeat! Why would I possibly think he was alive!?”
Katsuki rinses off his face. “So let me get this straight. You walk in on me dead, and the first thing you do is try to bury me. Great forward thinking.”
“I—” Izuku squawks. “I’m in shock and stuff! I’m mourning!”
“Well, it’s your lucky day,” Katsuki tells him. “I’m alive. Congratulations.”
“But how!” Izuku bursts out.
“You think I know?” Katsuki shrugs, and turns around so the water hopefully rinses the dirt off his back. He could call Izuku inside to help him, but he’s pretty sure the dude would have a heart attack. Oh, interesting. Katsuki wonders how he died. A heart attack wouldn’t cause a broken neck. Maybe he fell? Everything seems like he’s viewing it from the wrong end of the telescope.
“Yeah.” Izuku laughs a bit hysterically. “You’re the one that woke up. Is this some—some sci-fi shit? Like a quirk?”
“Deku liked sci-fi,” Katsuki says. He cleans off his feet, and watches the dirt spiral down the drain. “Honestly, I’m not that fucking surprised. He always said the answer to virtually any unsolvable problem was some kind of quirk that you hadn’t thought of before. Do you have a towel?”
“What? Oh, yeah.” Izuku gets a clean one out of the closet. Katsuki slides open the shower door and takes it from him. As he towels off, Izuku takes a detour into the shower, leaving Katsuki to sit on the closed toilet lid like a complete loser.
“What about you.” Katsuki doesn’t really care one way or another, but he might as well ask. “What are you up to over here.”
Izuku tells him that he and “his Kacchan” run a hero agency together called Deku and Zero. Katsuki zones out almost immediately, staring at the way the droplets precipitate on the shower door. It’s somewhat telling that Deku is the name that got chosen to be put first out of the two of them. It makes Katsuki grind his teeth. He doesn’t like the name Ground Zero much. Not that Lord Explosion Murder is much better, but the short version of Ground Zero is simply Zero, and Katsuki isn’t a fan of that. He mentions the name Ground Zero to Izuku, who merely blinks at him in confusion.
Izuku blabbers on, and Katsuki ignores him.
Why would Kacchan’s hero name be something he abhors? Bakugou Katsuki is everything but a zero. Everything he hopes to achieve goes above and beyond a zero. Zero means nothing; Katsuki isn’t nothing. He isn’t useless. He’s number one. If anyone is a zero, it’s Deku. That's what it means, after all. Their agency’s name is literally Useless and Nothing.
And Katsuki—Katsuki feels embarrassed, of all things. That this wimpy version of him is associated with Deku. Katsuki doesn’t want to think about it, but Izuku tells him to look at his phone by the sink. Katsuki unlocks it (the password is Inko’s birthday), and the home screen is right there in front of him. The building is both orange and green and by all means should look disgusting, but it looks less like it was cobbled together and instead… symbiotic. The green starts at the ground and feeds into the outside bricks, and the two twist and intertwine until it bursts into color and there is orange, and it resembles both a sunrise and a sunset but all Katsuki can think of is a flower bursting into bloom, and it takes his breath away.
“You’re not my Kacchan,” Izuku is saying, “he can’t be. It’s kinda hard for me to process, but I guess we can talk it through together, right?”
Katsuki grunts in response, sets down the phone, and rips up squares of toilet paper. Izuku’s version of “together” is a monologue. He’s more than happy to let him talk himself out.
In his universe (universe? Is it even a universe? He’ll call it a universe because he’s obviously somewhere where he’s not supposed to be, as opposed to Izuku, who seemed right at home albeit rattled), Katsuki was the number one hero. He was number three for most of his career. He rose up to number two after Endeavor retired. Of course, he wasn’t too happy about the new number one. When the ranking came out, the new number one hero burst into tears, which wasn’t fitting for the new “pinnacle of society” or whatever. Better him than me, Katsuki thought to himself. Society can crush him. He can burden himself like Atlas and crumple under the weight. I don’t care.
He did care. Not about the new number one hero, but himself. Deku had been in front of Katsuki—not at the very beginning when they began as sidekicks, but as soon as they began to establish their own agencies, that was Deku’s time to shine. And Katsuki got—for the first time in his life, Katsuki got left behind. At twenty years old, Deku was in the top ten. Katsuki hadn’t even broken the top twenty.
He remembered standing and facing the television in his kitchen. He was preparing dinner when the rankings came out. He saw his own name go by as they announced the lower tiers first, and that was okay, that was fine, he had his whole life to show the world who was best. Then the announcer reached the top ten and started announcing names. The first few went by, and Katsuki realized what was bothering him: Deku’s name hadn’t been brought up yet.
The announcer in the stupid suit and bow tie continued his introductions. They were lengthy and stupid, and none of them fit Deku’s description. That is, until he said in his stupid overdramatic voice, “The youngest hero to ever break the top ten, beating the record set by Hawks, at the age of nineteen, folks, you know him, you love him—can we have the lights go green, thank you—” No, Katsuki thought, no, it can’t be. “—this year, I’m proud to announce number eight, holy cow, this young hero entered the heroics agency just a few years ago and his progress has been simply astounding. This boy, no, this man, is non-stop! Everyone, please welcome to the stage: Midoriya Izuku!”
The camera panned around to the audience, who jumped up to their feet as a collective. They all threw their hands up in the air, and screams of “Deku, Deku!” rebounded around the room and got picked up by the camera speakers, which filtered through and out of the television and into Katsuki’s ears. He dropped the bowl he was holding, barely hearing it shatter on the tiles, and an uncontrollable rage filled his body. He couldn't hear his breathing in his ears, just felt the heavy sound of heartbeat screaming that he was alive, pounding along to the screams of Deku, Deku, Deku.
-
“So, Deku,” Katsuki says, still sitting on the toilet lid with one leg over the other. The steam from the shower and the frosted glass door obscures Izuku’s naked body.
“Don’t call me that.”
“What, Deku?” Telescope vision is a funny thing. Everything is not quite where it’s supposed to be. “But that’s your fucking name.”
A sigh echoes from the shower. “My name is Midoriya Izuku. My hero name is Deku. No one’s ever called me Deku unless I’m on the clock or they want to make fun of me.”
Katsuki bites back a laugh. “Sure didn’t stop me from moaning it.”
Something clatters to the floor, and a hand smacks against the glass. “Come again?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“No, I mean, Kacchan—Katsuki, Katsuki, dang it! Listen, you woke up and you’re obviously not you and now you’re being all aloof and different and weird and stuff, so! Stop it!”
“Fine,” Katsuki says, and rolls his eyes. “Not like you to be so prudish.” He knows he’s being cruel. It’s hard to feel anything right now, and he kinda enjoys it. “But why don’t you live with Kacchan?” he asks instead. “If you run an agency together and shit, why isn’t he here?”
“We already went over this.” From the sounds of it, he’s lathering his hair in shampoo. “Just because Kacchan and I run—ran one together doesn’t mean that he has to live in the same house as me.”
“No, I, uh,” says Katsuki, momentarily lost for words. He probably should’ve listened. Of course, some things would have to be different. Speaking of which. “This isn’t my home.”
Izuku forces a laugh and scrubs somewhere in the vicinity of his thighs. It’s hard to tell. “No, Kacchan. Obviously not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!”
“Jeez, so explosive,” Izuku says after a pause.
“Okay, asshole,” Katsuki says, reaches over, and smacks the sink. “You’re acting odd and more squirmy than usual and dancing around the issue. We both know that I’m not supposed to be here, so why am I?”
“You’re being weird too!” snaps Izuku, which is annoying yet refreshing. “You’re the one who came over here, aren’t you supposed to know what the hell’s going on?”
“No clue,” Katsuki says, and swallows the sudden taste of blood in his mouth. A memory threatens to bubble up and he pops it before it surfaces. Later.
“Seriously. You got no fucking clue why my Kacchan is, is—and why you’re here.”
“Nope.”
There’s a soft thump. Katsuki assumes it’s Izuku thunking his head against the wall. “Fine,” Izuku says. “Be that way.”
“It’s my job to be difficult,” Katsuki says.
Izuku sighs. “Can I have my towel?” he asks, muffled from the shower. The water shuts off.
“Why?” Katsuki leers. He knows he’s switching from acerbic to confused to slutty in a hairpin manner, but who cares; it’s all an act anyway. “Don’t wanna come out naked? What are you, a virgin?”
“No!” Izuku squeaks, and then lowers his voice. “No, I’m not. Definitely, absolutely not.”
“You have to know that it makes you sound like you are.” He’s not even mentally here.
“I’m really not!” Izuku says, somewhat hysterically. “And you know what, even if I was—which I am not—it’d be a perfectly valid thing to be.”
Katsuki rolls his eyes. “Shit, Dek—Izuku. You’ve had your dick up my ass more times than I can count. Come on out. Don’t be shy.”
The shower doors crash open and Izuku unceremoniously stumbles out. “You—I—what?”
“Did you know that there are different theories for universes?” Katsuki says. “There’s the multiverse theory, the multi-worlds interpretation—”
“MWI,” Izuku says, standing naked in front of him as he forcefully jabs a finger into Katsuki’s sternum. Katsuki doesn’t know if this is an alternate universe or dimension or timelines or whatever the fuck the sci-fi garbage Deku liked to watch, just recognizes the trigger words and knows exactly where to push the buttons. “And you know it’s shit. Seriously, don’t even try quantum physics crap with me.”
“Aw,” Katsuki says, looking up at him with innocent eyes, “but you just love talking about it so much…” He trails off, then winks. “...Daddy.”
“I don’t have a daddy kink, no matter how much you want me to,” Izuku says distractedly, then realizes what he’s just said and goes bright red. “But Katsuki is saying that we’ve had sex before, which means that we’ve had sex before, which means that Kacchan loved me back, maybe, possibly; no, don’t jump to conclusions—”
“This isn’t a romance story,” Katsuki says flatly, humor suddenly gone. “Literally no one fucking cares about that bullshit. We have sex regularly and we hate and love each other. There’s not going to be any dancing around that fact. We’ve gone through the five stages of grief together and you fucked me into the mattress on a regular basis. We do a lot of weird things together and I never say no because I’m not a fucking pussy. Last time we fucked, you talked about how much you wanted to put a fist up my ass. So don’t give me any bullshit, Izuku. Make this about ‘romance’ and I’ll strangle you.”
“Okay,” Izuku says. “I guess that works.” Then, “Do you want to have sex?”
“Is this your first time?” Katsuki asks.
“No.”
“With me?”
Izuku looks down at the ground, very naked and suddenly very nervous.
“For god’s sake.” Katsuki rolls his eyes. It’s like reciting his lines. “If you bite through my shoulder one more time, I swear to god that I’ll kill you again.”
Katsuki throws Izuku the towel that hangs on the door rack and leads the way to Izuku’s apparently not-shared bedroom. Katsuki takes off the towel from around his waist, gets on his hands and knees on the bed, and lets Izuku do all the work of fingering him open. Katsuki moans like a whore just because he can, not because it’s any different than their original first time.
One finger.
Katsuki hates Deku—not Izuku that was previously covered in dirt, but the Deku that was before. He doesn’t know why anyone would think otherwise. It’s pretty obvious, in his opinion. It wasn’t even because of Deku’s lack of a quirk, although that certainly didn’t help. Katsuki always knew that Deku was useless. A part of him realizes that some quirks are stupid beyond belief, which leads him to the conclusion that if Deku had received some dumbass quirk like his toenails growing twice as fast or the ability to cover everything he touched with dead moss, Katsuki would have bullied him just the same.
Two fingers.
Yes, bullied. Katsuki’s not a pussy. He knows perfectly well what he did to Deku all of those years. He did it on purpose. He liked seeing the fear in Deku’s eyes, the bruises blooming on his arms when Katsuki gripped them hard. He enjoyed the feeling of his fingernails breaking Deku’s delicate skin. But most of all, Katsuki loved seeing the defiance and anger in Deku’s gaze—not existing—loved to be the one crushing it, to see the last glimmers of hope flicker out into despair.
Three fingers. Izuku rolls on the condom, props up the pillow under his hips and pushes in. They both groan. Izuku is louder.
Deku would make the most adorable face, the blank one. Katsuki could literally see his brain stutter and shut down. Deku’s mouth would stop moving, lips abnormally still. His hands would hang limp at his sides. He’d stare at Katsuki, blank, expressionless, and Katsuki would revel in the feeling that he, Bakugou Katsuki, was the one to make Deku feel this way—feel nothing at all. There was a certain satisfaction in stopping the inevitable, or at least pausing it. Deku rebooted himself and shuddered back to life and twitched away from Katsuki. He’d run away, tripping over his shoes, and go somewhere. Maybe he went home. Maybe he didn’t. Katsuki didn’t care.
“Oh, Katsuki,” Izuku says. “It’s so hot and tight and this isn’t how our first time should've gone but—” and Katsuki tunes him out. He’s not about to experience their first time again.
(It’d hurt too much. He can’t feel anything right now. He thinks of other things instead.)
A part of Katsuki rejoiced to see Deku suffer. It was similar to the feeling of holding a small mammal and being overcome with this overwhelming urge—the feeling to squish and punch and rip, flatten them or maybe cut them open and take them apart from inside out. Maybe take a knife and cut a single neat line down the center of the torso, care to cut through the fur and skin but nothing else, because the inside of the body that contained the blood and organs was covered in a thin inner membrane that didn’t break unless punctured.
Taxidermy was a practice that required skill, and maybe Katsuki wasn’t the best person to have practiced it on a dead mouse at his fucking nature camp when he was thirteen, but he’ll never forget the immense feeling of satisfaction of peeling off the skin, carefully, so carefully, and flipping it from the inside out and back again. He pinned each of the limbs to a block of wood covered in cardboard and threw the perfect blood bag in the trash—or maybe the counselor collected them to feed some other animal, damned if he knew.
“Katsuki, I—”
“Holy shit, just fuck me harder,” Katsuki intones. “Seriously, stop trying to make this romantic. Just pin me down and rail me.”
“Okay,” Izuku says, and his tone hardens and he grips Katsuki’s wrists hard. “Since you asked so nicely.” And he does. Izuku spreads him apart and Katsuki barely feels a thing.
Whenever Deku flinched away from Katsuki, skittish and fearful, Katsuki tilted his head slightly and wondered what it would be like to take Deku apart. Because Deku was both completely familiar and absolutely foreign: Katsuki could name his favorite pro heroes down to about number twenty-five on the list, but for the life of him could not figure out Deku’s deepest fear. He had a sinking feeling that, despite his best efforts, it was not Katsuki. He didn’t know if he was happy or sad about that.
Then he remembers, and he’s whisked away from the sex and Izuku and back in a coffee shop, with the disappointed face of All Might across from him and he says:
“So.”
“So,” Katsuki repeats.
All Might stares at him. There is no kindness there. He knows what Katsuki did. Everyone knows now. “Why did you call me here, young Katsuki?”
“He passed it on.” Katsuki hears All Might hiss a breath. “And don’t call me young.”
“When?”
“The afternoon before.” Before what is unspoken.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
All Might’s face is stony.
“I think he knew that he was going to die,” Katsuki blurts.
Because you were the one who killed him, All Might doesn’t say. He’s too… not kind. Too something for that.
“I—” Katsuki stops. His voice is rough. “He was—he was acting different, before—y’know. He seemed—” Katsuki hesitates, because he doesn’t want to seem like he actually cared about him. “Tired. He’d recently been making a lot of mistakes. Sloppy ones. They were small enough that he could quickly fix them, but you could see that he was distracted. And I guess the mistakes just got bigger and bigger until…”
“Until he couldn’t,” All Might says. “Tell me, young Katsuki—”
“Don’t call me young.”
“—Why didn’t you stop?”
Katsuki reels back in his chair. “Excuse me?”
“I watched it on the live news channel,” All Might says. “You could have easily stopped, but you didn’t.”
“Stop.” Katsuki sees the irony.
“You went against everything you’d been taught. At that moment, you made a decision, and it was the wrong one.”
“Stop talking,” Katsuki hisses.
“Tell me, young Katsuki—”
“Don’t call me young—”
“You’re familiar with the death of loved ones. Aren’t you aware that actions have consequences?”
“No—” All Might won’t say it. He won’t. Katsuki feels the blood pounding on his ears.
“Aren’t you the one who killed him?”
“Shut up!” Katsuki yells. He’s on his feet, the chair knocked over behind him. “It wasn’t me! You saw wrong! Shut the fuck up!”
“You know I’m right, young Katsuki,” All Might’s expression is sad on the surface, but Katsuki knows him, and what he sees in his eyes isn’t mourning. It’s anger, burning and bitter.
“You’re wrong!” Katsuki sees the patrons staring at the two of them, the pro hero in civvies and a tall, gaunt, merciless man. “I didn’t! I didn’t do it!” and he continues screaming, long hoarse ones that rip his throat into pieces, until the police come and they take him away in cars of blaring light. He’s detained for disturbing the peace of what fucking ever and released because he didn’t, it wasn’t his fault—
He blinks back to reality, tries to bolt upright in the bed but is held down, gasping and gasping and gasping. Izuku’s inside him and it suddenly hurts, it burns, and Katsuki is scorched into the present. The numbness dissipates like steam and all he can think is, God, fuck, was I—
“—not good enough?” Izuku says, and it sounds like he’s been talking for a while again. “Was that it? Was I not good enough to make him want to stay? If he loved me enough, then he wouldn’t have left me. He made me alone when I was a kid, and then he lied”—Izuku thrusts so hard that Katsuki gasps, all feeling rushing back like blood to a limb that fell asleep—“he lied to me and showed me that love was real and just when I thought when everything would be okay and just when I—when I thought that we would be happy together, then he was gone. Is it my fault?” Izuku pauses and pulls out while Katsuki tries to catch his breath. “Well? Is it?”
“I don’t fucking know,” Katsuki snaps, disoriented and pissed. “I wasn’t there. Deku was a piece of shit and I know you are too. Kacchan probably left just to”—he doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore, just that he’s tired and Deku hurt him and now Izuku is trying to get answers out of him that Katsuki doesn’t have—“to get away and never see your stupid face again.” Then, to rub salt in the wound: “There’s no way Kacchan would ever stay with you. You’re insane and greedy and you’re a fucking monster.”
“And you’re a masochist,” Izuku says, shaking with anger, and yet he’s right; Katsuki loves pain, he loves being put down, he hates how much he loves being degraded and the worst thing is that somehow Izuku knows it. “You’re so talented and amazing and all you want is to be told how awful you are. How worthless. How useless. There’s something wrong with you.”
“There’s isn’t,” Katsuki says, and his tongue is heavy in his mouth. His cock is still hard and lying flat against his stomach. “I’m not, I don’t, you’re lying. You don’t get to tell me about myself, asshole. You don’t know me. I’m not your goddamn Kacchan and you’re not my fucking Deku. You’re not allowed to say those things. You can’t. You haven’t—you haven’t earned it, okay?”
“The way you talk about him...” Izuku muses. “It’s cute. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, sorry,” Izuku says, and like, what? Sorry?
“Get off!” Katsuki yells, and tries to back away. Izuku holds him tight and doesn't budge.
“But Kacchan,” he says, and Katsuki’s sure that he has his sweet as apple pie pout plastered onto his cherub face, “I bet my Kacchan wouldn’t let me do this…” and he rocks his hips forward slowly, and Katsuki feels Deku’s cock slide further into his ass and groans.
“But he didn’t.”
“Oh, I know,” Izuku says, and Katsuki snarls. “But you can. C’mon,” he wheedles, and grinds. It pushes Katsuki’s hips against the mattress. “It’s mutually beneficial!”
“You’re a parasite,” Katsuki tells him. He gets his elbows under him, but quick as a snake, Izuku’s callused hands are pressing his shoulders down and Katsuki falls back down with a grunt.
“I’m your parasite,” Izuku coos. “You’re struggling, but if you didn’t really want this, you’d be struggling harder. It’s okay to tell me no. I’ll just take what I want anyway! I know best, Kacchan.”
“Fuck you!”
“No,” Izuku says, “fuck you,” and there’s a smirk in his voice. Even his quips are cheesy. He hikes up Katsuki’s hips, thrusts in hard, and bottoms out. It feels like Izuku is up in his guts, and it’s almost like a—a dildo or whatever, except dildos aren’t hot unless you heat them up in the microwave or something, and they definitely don’t have hands that clutch the shoulders and migrate back to the pecs.
Izuku’s crooked fingers squeeze hard and it kinda hurts but Katsuki would never tell him that. He pulls out and it’s a relief. When he thrusts back in, Katsuki can’t breathe again. The ache is kind of full, though, kinda fulfilling; Katsuki knows that if some past bitch-ass version of his was able to take it, then he could too.
Oh no, he didn’t. Bitch was too chicken to shut up and take it.
That damn motherfucker got killed off like some shitty side character, which meant he was uninteresting and unengaging and most important weak, and this is Katsuki’s story and not the—the other Katsuki’s—Kacchan’s—so he has to be stronger because what is the point of reading about a weak character?
They get beat up and cry but what’s really important is they don’t stand back up, and when Katsuki lay there in the bathroom he resigned himself to never getting up again.
He got a second chance except this can’t be it. This isn’t reincarnation or something—he has his memories, and he was thrust into an adult life, and reincarnation is not a do-over but maybe a third chance, trying again, fighting for everything you got in a new form, transcendental. This isn’t either, though, it can’t be—Katsuki is still himself but Izuku is not the Deku that he knows, because his Deku wouldn’t fucking pin him down and take what he wanted—
Would he?
He did.
What is different?
“So good,” Izuku moans, and woah there, maybe Katsuki isn’t as present as he thinks he is, because he definitely lost some time there, and Izuku thrusts a few more times—“Kacchan, so good, so good, gonna fuck you full”—and Katsuki thinks for the first time in his miserable existence, Should I not be letting him do this?
A second chance makes everything seem less important—he’s never had to retake a test because he’s brilliant in every way, but he assumes that the pressure is the highest in the first try. It’s new and real and you don’t know if you get a redo, but the wonderful thing about second chances is that there’s a crack in siding and you can wrench them open.
If you’ve caved and given a second chance, then why not a third and a fourth and why not take your number and raise it to the nth power just to see how big it gets. How much you can squeeze out of the fruit until the juice overflows from the cup and the pulp squishes in between your fingers; rind under your nails and all you can think is more, more, more, I have to get more, I have to get everything.
If this is true, then Katsuki can understand Izuku, who lost his first Kacchan. Maybe it was because he loved him too much and squeezed too hard and Kacchan was too soft and weak and maybe he deserved to die.
Katsuki tries to pull away again, but Izuku fists one of his hands in Katsuki’s hair and holds him in place. Katsuki chokes as Izuku leans over and ruts against him until he comes with a heavy sigh. Come splatters on his thigh.
“What the fuck?” Katsuki says with vehemence. “What the fuck, Izuku?”
“Sorry,” Izuku says, not looking sorry at all. He’s into it even though Katsuki isn’t. He reaches down and fists Katsuki’s cock. Katsuki’s honest to god astonished when he suddenly comes all over himself and Izuku right after.
-
“Why do you go by Deku?” Katsuki asks Izuku, who’s lying face-up right next to him on the bed, so sweaty that it defeats the point of the shower. The question is really why do you go by Deku as a hero but not with me? He’s genuinely curious.
If Katsuki didn’t spend years putting Izuku in his place, then there’s no reason for Izuku to have been called Deku.
Izuku, still out of breath, says to the ceiling, “I was quirkless up until the beginning of high school. A lot of kids bullied me for it.” He scratches the back of his neck. “It was you, actually.” Katsuki is struck by confusion, until Izuku continues, “It was you who told me to turn the name into something else. To redefine it. Deku is just a play on Izuku, so you said that you could do the same with the meaning. You said that from now on, Deku can be the name of a hero. And then All Might came to me and he said—”
-
Back then… Katsuki can’t even remember when. Before. Before the before, a reporter cornered Deku. Katsuki could see even through the TV that Deku was haggard and tired.
“Hero Deku!” the reporter said, and Deku uncharacteristically ignored her. “Deku! Deku!” The camera shook as she sprinted after him. The lens focused on Deku’s back, obviously muscled through the hero suit. “Deku, tell us what it’s like to be the number one hero!”
Deku’s shoulders tensed.
“I’m so tired of people asking me that question,” Deku said slowly, not turning around.
The reporter stilled, probably sensing that something was wrong much too late.
“It’s not about ranks,” Deku said, voice ragged. “It’s about... fucking saving people. Saving lives isn’t supposed to be a popularity contest. Don’t people get it? This isn’t a fucking six-month program. Don’t you understand that you people have the power to control justice—control life and death? Brutality is unacceptable. Discrimination is unacceptable.”
“But the villains—”
“There are no such things as heroes and villains!” Deku said and suddenly he turned around and the camera jostled and his eyes flared snake-venom green. “Each one of us is capable of good and bad, not some fucking either/or! That’s how people like Endeavor got put into power—because no one believes that a hero can commit ‘villainous’ acts! Stop acting like morality is a dichotomy! It’s not!” He tore at his hair. “Good people can do bad things! Bad people can do good things! Now just fucking leave me alone!” and he jumped over a building and out of sight, and the camera fell to the floor and the feed fizzled out.
Katsuki swallowed.
Good people can do bad things, and vice versa.
It hadn’t happened yet, so he could have possibly thought this, but if he had, it would’ve been along the lines of not my fault, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not.
-
“All Might offered you One for All…” Katsuki whispers, horrified. “And you said no?”
“Yes,” Izuku says. “I mean, yes, I said no to All Might. I was honored, of course. But Kacchan helped me realize that I didn’t need a quirk to be a hero! A hero is defined by what they do, not by what quirk they have, if they have a quirk at all.”
“Explosions aren’t a villain’s quirk,” Katsuki mutters. He remembers the mess on his thigh and leans over for a tissue, and wipes it off as best as he can.
Izuku waves his hands, looking confused. Sweat is still beaded on his hairline. “Yes, yes, of course! In my opinion, there is no such thing as a villain’s quirk. A quirk is a tool, and tools can be used for both good and bad. Saying a quirk is evil is like saying a gun is evil. It’s not the tool that’s bad, it’s the person who wields it.”
“In my world,” Katsuki drawls, “there was a villain who could stop a person’s heart by touching their chest. She killed thirty-seven people before heroes apprehended her. Are you saying that person wasn’t evil?”
Izuku winces. He reaches over to grab some tissues for himself, prolonging his response. Katsuki watches as he dabs halfheartedly at himself. He crumples it up and shoots for the wastebasket. Clean shot. It lands in the pile already there. Same old Deku.
“I don’t like that dichotomy,” Izuku responds. “I try to avoid the words good and evil. I think it oversimplifies things. When things and people and issues are simplified too much, they lose their potency. They become like a picture in low resolution. It’s really easy to throw around words like good and evil if you can’t really see what’s going on.”
“Are you trying to defend her?” Katsuki says, baffled.
“No,” Izuku says heatedly. “But that makes her a criminal, not a bad person. Think of it this way, for example. In some medical procedures, the heart needs to temporarily be stopped and restarted. Think of how useful that woman’s quirk could have been when applied to medicine. She could have saved countless lives.”
“But she didn’t.”
“Yes. And that was her choice, and that’s why she was convicted. But I believe that what side you stand on the imaginary line society has drawn between heroism and villainy is circumstantial. I believe in second chances. I believe that people can be changed. I don’t believe there are good and bad people. I think there are people who do good and bad things.”
Hello.
“I believe that with the proper guidance and opportunities, every so-called ‘villain’ can be guided so they can do good things again.”
“You’re naive. You’re crazy.”
“Heroics isn’t just sending people to jail,” Izuku says, and reaches out for Katsuki, who scoots away. “In a lot of our justice systems, people are thrown in there to rot. It’s ridiculous. In that way, our system of heroics is just like the police with superpowers. That raises so many problems on its own—just look at America.”
“Then what do you think heroics are about, if they don’t exist to serve the purpose of institutionalizing villains?” Katsuki says impatiently.
Izuku meets his eyes, and he looks so sad. “Katsuki, didn’t you realize this before? Heroics is about saving people.”
“I think you’re full of bullshit.”
Izuku shrugs. He swings his legs over the bed and starts getting dressed. A pair of boxers hits Katsuki smack dab on the nose.
-
Izuku takes him out to eat at a restaurant because he claims that a full stomach helps you think better. They eat in silence over bowls of soup that are supposed to serve as their lunch until Izuku says, “What does Ground Zero mean?”
Katsuki looks up from slurping his noodles. “Huh? It’s like a joke or something. Y’know, explosions.”
“I don’t get it,” Izuku says flatly. “You’ve mentioned explosions a few times now. Why?”
“What do you mean why, fuckhead? Are you messing with me?”
Izuku sighs flatly, which is rude and unlike him. “No.”
“My,” Katsuki begins, and what the fuck, this is so surreal and his voice lifts up so it sounds like a question and he hates it. “My quirk is explosions?”
Izuku immediately jumps up from his chair. “What?!” he yelps. The other patrons gawk. “That’s—that’s amazing!”
“Does yours,” Katsuki says slowly, mind racing. “Did yours… not…”
It’s honestly weird, though, because Katsuki hasn’t bothered to activate his quirk before now. Usually his palms begin to itch and he lets off a few sparks reflexively, but that hasn’t happened and he begins to think he’s goddamn stupid for not realizing that things might be different here. And no, if it is what he thinks it is, no no no, oh god, please, anything but that—
Katsuki sets down his chopsticks and tries to activate his quirk, and nothing happens. Now that he actually examines his hands, they’re calloused the same—but. His quirk tears at his skin in a very specific way; his hands feel odd and unlike his own. There’s a buzzing that hums under his skin but it sure as hell isn’t his quirk. He thinks it’s hysteria.
“When we were kids,” Izuku tells him, still standing, “Kacchan and I were both quirkless.”
“Quirkless?” Katsuki repeats, struck completely dumb.
Suddenly, Kacchan going by Zero suddenly makes a lot more sense. Deku sure as salt sang Zero to Hero to him, too. He considered using the name Ground Zero in his universe for maybe two seconds before realizing that the one he has was better. That’s the one he stuck with.
But Zero means zero. Zero is nothing. In a way, it’s absolutely hysterical. Zero and Deku. Nothing and useless. Oh, that’s a red fucking riot.
He’s hyperventilating. He keeps clenching and unclenching his hands: his job, his livelihood, his defining characteristic. In a way, this may be some kind of karmic retribution. Bully Deku in his past life—is it a past life if it’s two?—for not having a quirk, only to not have one in the present.
He’s kinda… waiting for Izuku to reach out, like he always did, always does, but nothing comes. Izuku looks at him with sickly green eyes and watches as Katsuki trembles and struggles to pull himself together. But why should Izuku reach out for him? That was Deku, not—
Katsuki breathes in and out for four. His head becomes less fogged in panic and he’s thinking, Okay, what can I do, how can I fix this, all with the undercurrent of: karma’s a bitch, isn’t she? and through all of it, his hands hang dead and heavy and useless by his sides.
Izuku says, with no trace of defensiveness, “What? Is something wrong?”
Katsuki’s head is swirling. He thinks he’s going to throw up. “Bathroom,” he says hoarsely, and he stumbles out of the booth. He has to get away now. He has to get away from the person who is not Deku and the person who is not himself. Two people can be the same person.
“I’m—” Katsuki whispers, and somehow he’s on his knees facing the toilet, and he hopes the door is locked behind him and there’s no one there waiting to use this single-person bathroom, but he honestly can’t tell if he checked. “I’m fucking—” and he can’t do it. He can’t say the nine-lettered word. He’s said it all throughout middle school to Deku and others, spit it out just to watch them flinch. Now that it applied to him, it suddenly isn’t so funny. He mouths it, and it burns.
A small, detached part of himself wonders if that’s really true, if that word applies to him. Katsuki isn’t Katsuki—well, he is, but maybe quirklessness determined by nurture rather than nature—but he knows that it isn’t, and all those years he’s spent sneering at the quirkless people had been for a different reason entirely. Katsuki shudders at that and he really does puke into the toilet, heaves big hacking coughs after he finishes, because this was a part of himself that he couldn’t ever escape.
Oh god, he’s quirkless.
He feels too small for his body, too dizzy, because an infected arm could be sawed off. This was like some part of his body was wrong but he didn’t know where or what it was, and there was no way to remove it. He wanted to claw at his skin, because this couldn’t possibly be him. Katsuki had known himself for his entire life and never once thought of himself as—as that, but the worst thing was that now he was and there was nothing he could do about it.
Is this even his body? His hands are the same, there are no bruises on his neck. His scar is there on his shoulder, stark and darkly reassuring.
The buzzing under his skin has just grown worse, but it’s wrong and Katsuki realizes that on top of Deku, he’s mourning his quirk. He’ll never get to fly again. He has to get out of here; he has to fucking go, except he doesn’t know how he got here.
Everything is always easier to solve when you have all the details and know the whole story, and Katsuki is lost in the sauce. He needs to calm down and figure out what’s going on. The best way to plan for the future is to look at the past and use it to understand the present.
But still… his quirk...
Katsuki eventually comes back to himself to find tears streaming down his face. He feels both numb and about to explode—ha fucking ha—so he shoves the emotions down and puts them in a hole in his mind, slams the lid down and shuts it tight, locks it once then twice just to be sure. He stands up jerkily, feeling simultaneously like a marionette and the marionettist.
His legs shake but he forces himself to stand anyway, because this world has just shattered beneath him and now he needs to pick up the pieces. This isn’t the worst thing to happen to him, because Deku is—is—and he—but it’s probably up there. But he needs to go back, because Izuku is probably thinking that he’s just taken the biggest shit ever conceived by a human being, and while Katsuki is happy for him to think that he has intestinal problems instead of freaking out, he’d also rather... not.
He looks at himself in the mirror as he washes his hands with the lemon-scented soap from the dispenser. The foam is startlingly normal, and the water still obliges to the eternal question is water wet? and somehow the world continues to spin. Katsuki washes out his mouth and splashes some water from the faucet on his face, because his eyes are slightly redder than normal and Katsuki doesn’t cry.
He dries his face with some paper towels and throws it into the trash can. The crumpled paper bounces off the rim but makes it in, which is evidence of how rattled he is despite his best efforts. He sighs, turns around, and opens the door. The hallway is empty, and his quiet steps are a little too loud in the dark.
Stepping into the too-bright restaurant is jarring. He blinks until the afterimage fades away and makes his way over to the table. Expression carefully neutral, he sits down. Izuku’s bowl is empty and Katsuki’s has ceased to steam.
“You okay?” Izuku asks him. “You didn’t look too good back there.”
“Thanks for waiting,” Katsuki says dryly, thinking, Normal, act normal, and then Izuku ruins it all by saying:
“So you weren’t quirkless before,” and then he laughs.
“You’re one to fucking talk!”
“Um…” Izuku furrowed his eyebrows. “No? I was quirkless at first, but I got my quirk. I’m right now.”
It takes a mouthful of soup and the subsequent choking until Katsuki realizes. “You’re a hypocrite,” Katsuki coughs. “You said that you didn’t accept One for All.”
“I didn’t.” Izuku waves his hands. “At least… not at first.”
-
“I don’t understand how you forgave me,” Katsuki once said to Deku. Deku had just shrugged and fed him some chips from where they sat together on Katsuki’s expensive couch, where crumbs decidedly do not go.
Does Katsuki deserve redemption? He honestly doesn’t know.
What makes him different from Endeavor? They both bullied people to make them feel small. They both burned with the same fiery hot rage and hurt the people closest to them. They were both bullies of the worst kind: unrepentant. Hell, Katsuki looked up to Endeavor most of his childhood. He didn’t know about the abusive aspect of Endeavor’s nature, but birds of a feather flock together. Abusive pieces of shit attract other pieces of shit.
Asking if Katsuki deserved redemption was like posing the same question about Endeavor.
(Atonement, not redemption. Things are different now. People’s stories change.)
Could Katsuki’s behavior be excused when he was a kid, solely because he was one? But that doesn’t acknowledge the point that redemption doesn’t depend on age.
Deep down, Katsuki doesn’t believe that he deserves redemption. He ruined Deku’s life, and Deku ruined his. An eye for an eye.
A more sentimental part of Katsuki asserted that he could heal. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to hurt. He wanted, in a perverse turn of events, to be the one to suffer at Deku’s hands for once, however indirectly.
-
Katsuki’s soup has gone cold. Izuku took it from him and slurped all of it up while recounting his life events. The way that it differs is while the events are different, the results were the same. Kacchan went to Yuuei and got into the hero course, because of course he did. Izuku got his quirk at the same time, and apparently Kacchan’s reaction to Izuku getting a quirk was just about the same as Katsuki’s.
Katsuki can only imagine the amount of, of, of betrayal that Kacchan experienced. Sure, Katsuki was reasonably slighted, but he had a quirk from the start. It turns out that you truly don’t need to quirk to be a pro hero. Izuku is extremely insistent on using that term instead of the shortened “hero.”
“Why?”
“We’re not actually heroes,” says Izuku. “It’s a job. Some are good people, and most of them aren’t.”
All naivety must be lost some time, and the lamb sent to the slaughter. Katsuki never had to lose that innocence, and frowns at the fact that Izuku did. “I think I’m a hero,” he still says.
“You aren’t,” Izuku says. “You’ve never saved the world.”
“Have too.” Katsuki leaves out that it was by Izuku’s side.
“Not.”
He throws up his hands. “How would you know?!”
“You forget that I know you,” Izuku says.
“I don’t think you do,” Katsuki answers.
“Whatever you say,” Izuku says, and signals the waiter for the bill.
-
The walk home takes two whole hours, because Katsuki wants to look at everything that’s different but doesn’t want to say it. Izuku picks up on it because he acts as a sort of tour guide. They wander around the city. Because Izuku is plain to begin with and Katsuki is out of whatever costume he uses here, they remain unrecognized. Katsuki doesn’t even know whether they’re famous or not, not that it even matters.
They visit Izuku and Kacchan’s agency. Izuku says that they can’t go inside. Katsuki grits his teeth at the sign anyway.
“Are you supposed to be working right now?” Katsuki doesn’t know what day it is, but he can hazard a guess that Izuku is just as busy as Deku, so it’s a good guess that Izuku should be working.
“I took a three day break that started yesterday.” Izuku kicks a pebble and it skitters away.
“Why?” Katsuki’s already thinking, but nothing substantial is coming up. The only reason why Midoriya Izuku would take a day off was if someone else needed his help, or something bad happened to someone he knew.
Izuku scratches the back of his neck. “Um, well, it’s kind of related to the reason you were half-buried in the backyard.”
“Which is…?”
“I don’t wanna say,” Izuku grits out.
“You’re gonna have to tell me.”
“I will!” Katsuki raises his eyebrows at him. It’s so easy to fall into normal patterns. Izuku holds up his hands. “But not just yet, okay?”
-
He wishes he didn’t love Deku. He really does. The annoying thing is that he didn’t use to; he hated Deku more than anything else, but the annoying thing is that love and hate aren’t opposites and rather two sides of the same coin—the opposite of love and hate is apathy, probably, or regret at how things didn’t turn out the way you wanted them to, and there’s probably a German word that expresses that perfectly.
Nah, Katsuki thinks that there isn’t an opposite to love and hate because it’s just impossible to exist; there are other powerful emotions like sadness and a deep anger that he’s so intimately familiar with, but he thinks that they can all boil down to those two emotions. Katsuki still hates Deku more than life itself but he can admit that he loves him, and moreover loves Izuku too.
He hates it.
This isn’t how he wanted his life to turn out, no, not in the least—desperately in love and desperately in lust—and he wishes things could go back to the way they once were, where they were in school living assignment to crisis to exam, fishing Deku out of trouble and having Deku do the same return. It was absolutely terrible, but he misses it more than anything; the simplicity of that time and the innocence of his youth, broken by the way the world truly was but untainted in matters of love. It didn’t matter then and it shouldn’t matter now, but it does and he doesn’t know what he can do about it.
He loves Deku and hates him. He doesn’t cry but thinking about it makes him angry and frustrated to the verge; he curses and kisses Deku in the same breath.
A lot of things make Katsuki angry, but he thinks what angers him the most is when things are out of control yet destined and predetermined: he hates the word inevitable but he thinks it’s the only word that truly applies to the two of them. They might not love each other in every iteration, but that doesn’t mean they’re not meant to be. They’re just with other people, feeling alone the entire time and wishing for something more and not knowing what they want; look at the other at the bar or on the television for a passing glance and continue onward with their lives, not knowing that every chance not taken is a chance wasted. God, how he hates it, he hates the inevitability of the two of them. Deku and Kacchan. Izuku and Katsuki. That’s how they’re meant to be.