Chapter Text
“I can’t believe he knows!”
“Ei, how many times has Denks heard about you eating shit on the job?” Katsuki’s costume is caked with mud from yet another elemental quirk user who couldn’t control themself, but he rushed to the hospital to meet Eijirou’s ass immediately afterwards and he’s still more exhausted from this conversation than he is from the rest of the day.
Eijirou’s wanted Denki (for some stupid reason) since forever, he’s a clumsy yet semi-loveable doofus (only semi– Katsuki can appreciate all his classmates after a war against humanity, but the guy is still overly cheery and in your face about it or outrageously emo), and Denki’s told Katsuki several unwanted times over the past year that he’d go out with Eijirou in a heartbeat but that he’s clearly not interested because he won’t make the first move. Eijirou’s just convinced he needs to prove himself and be “manly” in some way before he deserves him. They’re really pushing how much he should have to listen to their “suffering,” even for people he begrudgingly acknowledges as two of his best friends.
And sometimes, when you’re a pro-hero, you fuck up. It’s not a big deal. He still got a villain off the streets.
He just needs to spend the night in the hospital for his 32nd concussion.
So he’s humiliated. Katsuki used to feel the same way when he lost against another team during an exam or didn’t capture a villain. Or was taken hostage. Or was being absorbed by the sludge villain in front of every hero he’d ever given a shit about. You want to feel proud about what you do, especially when you’re a hero, toil away training your quirk and spending the last moments you might be alive doing your job almost every day, and have lives on the line as well as your sense of purpose. Heroes are supposed to be these immaculate beings who never hide in the face of danger, let alone their own shame. But when you fail and other people see it, you don’t trust yourself to make it better for your public approval ratings, your clout (even if it’s with people you don’t really give a shit about), or…Denki, in this case, because you don’t think you can do anything right anymore.
But again, this isn’t that big of a deal. Even if Katsuki ever feels like that now, he–
“I mean, I can’t ask him to Mido’s thing now!”
Right. The one person who makes everything exponentially more difficult for him is having a party thrown for breaking into the top 10 before anyone else since their class graduated from UA.
He doesn’t know how the fuck he’s going to get through this. And he refuses to glean any empathy from Eijirou for that feeling.
“Yes, you can. You’ll be cleared to leave tomorrow, Denks is going no matter what–so you can be gross and shit there even if you don’t have the balls to say something now–and he’s coming to meet you right now, anyway, so you can just rip the bandaid off if waiting sucks more.”
“WHAT?!”
The only thing worse than dealing with Eijirou normally is dealing with Eijirou with a concussion. Recovery Girl could take care of stuff like this in five seconds and tell you to take a nap, but the best hospital in Tokyo can only give him healing every couple of hours, so he’s way dumber and more emotional for four times as long. Katsuki sighs and rubs his face. “Look: he’s coming to see you in your 32nd time of need or whatever, you’re out of it, and people like that, don’t they? The whole defenseless, ‘look at him, he needs me’ thing?” He’s almost sincerely asking. He doesn’t get what most people like and he’s only 50% sure he’s ever given something remotely close to someone else.
“DUDE, THAT’S NOT MANLY AT ALL!”
Katsuki gets up and makes sure the idiot’s phone is on silent. He doesn’t need any more sound in the room than his own weird fucking thoughts. “All you gotta do is ask him.” Eijirou starts rubbing his temples. “See?! You’re giving yourself a fucking headache. Just be,” he moves his hands around vaguely in front of the guy seemingly intent on becoming as dumb as the bag of rocks he is on the job, “you.” Before Eijirou can talk himself into more anxious circles, he’s slipped out of the room and speed-walked down the hospital corridor.
Again, it’s not that he doesn’t care about the guy. He just can’t deal with how gross Eijirou and Denki are when they’re in the same room, and Denki is probably five minutes away.
…And he’d forgotten about Izuku’s fucking party.
He breaks agency protocol and goes home to shower and switch out of his uniform. And doesn’t. He closes his blinds in his mid-size apartment, sits in his disgusting, muddied costume that may or may not be causing a couple of rashes to bloom, puts in his headphones and listens to the most disgusting thing he can find quickly enough.
Friday’s going to suck.
“Deku!” Ochako claps in his face and he comes out of a daydream in a haze. “We’re doing this for you!” She scoots closer to his seat at their booth and sighs. “What’s going on?”
He scratches the back of his head. “Nothing,” he mumbles. Because trust him, she can’t handle it.
“Midoriya, it’s important to discuss your feelings before a gesture like this if you want it to be a success!” Tenya almost chops one hand down on the end of the table before he catches himself and makes it into a fist, sweeping it off the table as Ochako leans back to kiss his cheek, the touch tinting it pink. Izuku actually smiles for the first time since they got to the cafe. Tenya’s come so far since they were at UA.
“I know, I know. It all sounds nice, though. I honestly don’t have anything to add.” He glances over Ochako’s iPad at the colour scheme and activities planned out for the party one more time and holds back a sigh. It’s a big honour to break into the top 10 in your second year on the scene as a pro (even if most of the competition wasn’t fated to try to save the world and trained accordingly). He knows that. He just…doesn’t feel like a hero.
He hasn’t ever since–
“We can call it off if you want to, kero.” Tsu’s an angel, because she has the perfect house on the coast in Kosai that she’s offering up for their whole class to celebrate in, and he didn’t even ask for it. All his friends wanted this party, even though it’s celebrating him being ahead of them in the ranks now.
And the ranks recently got reformed when the Hero Public Safety Commission came back into existence six months ago, using new, questionable public approval criteria and measurement of one’s “contribution to society” over performance on the job.
And most of the roads in the northern- and southernmost prefectures in the country are still impassable, and all the buildings have cracks in them from the final fight wit–
“Are you ok?” Ochako whispers.
Damnit. Neon green is crackling over his body and he’s holding his tea cup so tight that he’s about to break it.
He quickly puts it down and lets her put her hand in his, eternally grateful this doesn’t have the same effect on him that it used to in high school. “Just a little nervous about having a whole party over i–”
“Lying does you no favours, Midoriya.” Shouto’s working on his laptop and doesn’t need to look at him for his judgment to bore into his soul.
He shudders before speaking up. “It’s weird, though, isn’t it? To celebrate it before everyone else gets there, too?” He squeaks out. He might be a little taller and more muscular than he used to be (ok, way more muscular–his mom went shopping with him recently and was worried he might need a sponsor just to find him properly-fitting clothes, because no one is apparently shorter than Shouto and this bulky), but he’s legitimately scared of how sharp Shouto can be.
He glances over, and Shouto’s glare is worse than just feeling the judgment. “We won’t all be in the top 10 one day. That’s a logical absurdity.” He squints at Izuku and he braces himself. “It’s something else, Uraraka. But you should throw the party anyway, so that he learns his lesson about whatever he’s trying to hide.” Ice cold and no frost anywhere to be seen. Ever since Endeavour retired, he’s been able to be whoever he wanted, and it turns out that’s an unfairly sharp boss of their agency (and intense asshole at times) who knows Izuku far too well to be trusted.
He loves him, but still.
Ochako scoots back. “Hmph.” He can’t look up, because everyone knows he’s hiding something now, so he focuses intently on his fingernails. “You know you can always talk to us, so it must be something deep.”
“Do you think something bad is going to happen, kero?”
DAMNIT. His eyes fly up, searching the table for anyone who’ll believe him. “N-no! Why would I be worrie–”
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! THIS IS BECAUSE OF BAKUGOU?” Shouto can be loud, too.
“No!” He waves his hands in front of his face. “I love Kacchan!”
“Midoriya.” Tenya takes off his glasses, so Izuku knows ahead of time that he’s getting a tension headache and feels even more guilty than he already does. “Have you spoken to him since graduation?”
To be fair, they all spend 75% of their time at their agencies and the other 25% in warp missions across the country to help rebuild the parts of Japan that were the most impacted by the final battle with AFO or patrol areas for short stints with the fewest heroes. So he was lucky enough (hah) to be based in an agency with Shouto, Tenya, Ochako and Denki (who’s turned out to be a very chill but solid addition to his core group of friends), but no one else’s time off syncs up that often. It took two weeks to make this little cafe meet-up work with Tsu’s schedule alone. They’ve all just been scrambling to fix everything that fell apart and breathing whenever they get the chance.
But…he makes time for his mom, and he’s…ugh, he’s seen Auntie Mitsuki and Uncle Masaru, so he should’ve said something to him.
Ochako pinches his cheek hard, touches her hands together too quick for him to clock it and he starts floating (which is rude and illegal when they’re off-duty in public, by the way), stopping at the ceiling of the restaurant with an annoyed, exaggerated clasping of her hands on her lap, as if it’s so hard to not make him a public spectacle as he barely stops himself above the table and pouts, crawling back into his chair. “DEKU! YOU SEE ONE OF HIS BEST FRIENDS ALL THE TIME! HOW HAVE YOU NOT SAID ANYTHING TO HIM YET?!”
He does see Denki all the time. Denki was even invited to the whole party-organizing thing, but too absorbed with his phone (probably checking in on Eijirou, which is a whole thing, don’t get him started) and chocolate something with way too much caffeine in it to do more than nod until now, when he tuts at him. “They’re right, dude. It’s been weird.”
It has been weird! But…graduation wasn’t fun.
They hadn’t really had any classes second year because they’d been preparing for this final battle with AFO. Izuku was supposed to be with Katsuki in the end, but Toga snagged him through a warp hole and things got ugly. Really ugly. Ugly enough that Katsuki had to try to hold his own against a quasi-possessed version of Shigaraki and AFO combined for a long time before Izuku could dodge a lot of blood loss and confusing conversation, run across the ocean and be by his side, and by that point, he’d almost died.
Izuku went and saw Katsuki at the hospital every day for weeks until he woke up from his (second) coma over him, and when he did, he looked at him differently. Bad-differently. Like-he-was-the-reason-he-had-every-scar-on-his body-and-didn’t-want-to-be-around-him-anymore differently. They’d had an awkward conversation about how things had gone, and that’d been the end of their “first” year. It hadn’t been terrible, but everyone in class noticed that Katsuki never slipped up anymore and called him ‘Deku’ by mistake, and Izuku stopped complimenting his every move.
In their actual second year, their parents still stayed at the dorms while peoples’ houses got rebuilt. Class started again. And, outside of talking to their parents, they didn’t do anything together. All Might was the only one who could get them to talk anything through, and each time, it boiled down to the same issue: Katsuki failed before Izuku could get there. No matter how many times Izuku said he still made it and Katsuki was the reason they were able to hold out for so long, Katsuki would say he passed out from blood loss. He couldn’t stop fixating on how he’d done too little and Izuku had been too late.
In a cruel foretelling of fate, All Might died halfway through second year going up against Toga. She’d broken out of prison by impersonating a couple guards at Tartarus and drunk some of Shigaraki’s blood she’d hidden somewhere in the forest hours from Deika. Katsuki and Izuku watched Shigaraki, seemingly back from the dead, crumble him to dust in screams of pain and agony from too many points of contact. They were just a second too late to stop it.
And that’d been the second Nighteye predicted.
Katsuki wiped his face hard at his funeral and told Izuku he’d only say it once: he’d had seven quirks and the fate of humanity resting on his shoulders, so he couldn’t blame him for how things went with AFO; their hero was dead; and, “Wherever you go, I’ll hold myself personally responsible if you die on me. So let me practice not being there for you before I either die trying to save your ass or it hurts to watch you go.”
What do you say to that?
Exactly. You don’t say anything. You accept that your childhood friend-turned-rival-turned-friendly competition-turned-chilly family friend can’t deal with you right now.
Third year came and went with stiff hand-offs of worksheets and tense pair-ups for training sessions and exam exercises, Aizawa tried to talk to them three times about Toshinori Yagi’s death to no avail, and then, it was time for graduation. Tenya had taught himself to be relaxed enough to handle a little underage drinking on the roof of the dorms at the afterparty (especially after most of their parents had left the dorms), and Izuku built up the courage to tap on Katsuki’s shoulder with way too much force (the force of nine people, in fact), pull him aside and tell him how he felt.
No one needed to know what they’d talked about to know it hadn’t gone well.
That was the last time he’d seen him. Or talked to him. Or texted him.
“It won’t be weird. I’ll get over it!”
Shouto snorted. “He’s just lying to himself, now.”
Little do they know, he’s not. He knows exactly how he feels about Katsuki.
The worst part is that Katsuki can’t blame it on being drunk. Tsu has no idea how to mix a chuhai cocktail, any of them could be called out Saturday for a warp mission (or regular old catastrophe near their agencies), and it took a lot of work to get seven agencies to give all of them the same night off, so nobody wanted a hungover hero at work the next day to make their bosses regret it. Hence the dry “party” they’re throwing for the one person he wants to see the least.
No, Katsuki can only blame it on his disgusting self that his hand is down his pants right now behind a tree in front of Tsu’s quaint little house. He knows it’s not exactly private, but he’s a little ways away, the house is tiny, the mix of jazz and pop Ashido keeps playing makes him want to vomit, Eijirou and Denki are being gross, and Izuku’s literally right there.
He gets a text from Hanta, but he saw that coming.
Bad Decision DO NOT TEXT: When are the subby texts gonna start?
Bad Decision DO NOT TEXT: Or are you just gonna hang out outside like a jackass all night?
Fuck him.
Katsuki: don’t talk to me
He didn’t mean to get into…whatever they’re doing. It just gets lonely being a virtually constant on-call hero, let alone with all the shit he has going on. The only thriving couple from their class is Ochako and Tenya, and they seem so vanilla that Katsuki’s actually happy two people that boring found each other.
So he turns his phone off because he’s weak, and the last four times he sexted Hanta (ugh), at least he was in the privacy of his own apartment. He’s already outside with his dick in his hand, so he’s clearly not going to be making any good decisions from this point on, and he’d rather die before they make a move on each other tonight and solidify how stupid they’re being. He’s also managed to avoid Izuku the whole party outside of handing him a nice bottle of sake from his old hag, and he plans to keep it that way by avoiding any and all “Where are you?（´＿｀）” texts.
He just needs a minute longer. He’ll cum like the gross pervert he is behind this just-large-enough pine tree, sit on the porch and pretend to be a normal person.
He pictures himself: he’s hiding, he’s outside, anyone ca–
“KACCHAN!”
FUCK. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “LEAVE!” Eloquent.
“Kacchan, we–” He sees the nerd do a double-take in his head and shakes it to try to get that warm feeling out of his system. He’s just embarrassed. It doesn’t mean anything! “Is Kacchan…behind a tree?”
Of course, he’s that easy to find. He thought he’d scouted the area a little better than that, you know, as a hero, but no, his dick did the scouting for him. “I DON’T WANNA TALK! I HAVEN’T WANTED TO TALK IN A YEAR, AND I WON’T WANNA TALK TOMORROW, SO GO BACK TO YOUR STUPID PART–”
Izuku’s all too familiar scarred hand is on his shoulder and he remembers far too late that one, Izuku’s really fast, and two, his dick is still in his hand. “Oh! Uh.” The nerd has him pinned against the tree and is staring down at one of the worst decisions he’s ever made. The training forest camp-turned-hostage situation was bearable compared to this.
He just has to tell him a little more than he did the last time they saw each other: to fuck the hell off, give him some space and never tell anybody what he saw.
But that’s part of his problem. He can’t.
His face is redder than Eijirou’s new dye job and Izuku’s…even closer. “Fuuuck.” He covers his face with one of his hands and holds himself tight at the base of his cock.
Izuku sputters. “Why aren’t you…m-moving?” He looks down as if that’ll give Katsuki the space he needs to launch himself into the sea, but his free hand comes up to rest right on top of the hand Katsuki can’t bring himself to move–maybe to help him in his mind?–and the slightest bit of cool air rushes against his cock in the aftermath. He gasps (as self-righteously as someone can who's in this situation), and Izuku freezes.
Katsuki bites his bottom lip to moan inside his mouth, but he knows Izuku hears it. He holds himself even tighter until it really hurts. “I can’t,” he tries to snarl, but it only comes out as a biting whisper.
The nerd looks back at him and back down at his…predicament, and genuinely seems to pity him. He shakily runs one of his thumbs across one of his cheeks, and Katsuki knows he’s sick, because he wants to hear his amazing analytical mind put it together. His other hand dips slowly from his shoulder to the divots above his collarbones, light but curious. Katsuki closes his eyes, so at first, he’s not sure if Izuku’s breath just got louder or he got closer, but then, his body heat warms him up beyond the flush quickly covering his entire body, the small breeze that was running past his dick from time to time disappearing because Izuku’s as built as a house now and just tall enough to be a little bit of shelter from the rest of the world.
He’s starting to piece it together.
Katsuki was only able to hide this shit from anyone who really knew him for four goddamn years.
“Am I…is this t-turning you on?” His voice is quieter as he stutters the tiny bit he only does now during the worst press conferences and in the two voicemails he’s left him over the past year and some change–one on Katsuki’s birthday, and the other on the anniversary of All Might’s death.
“Yeah.” He stares right into his comically large eyes that he imagines every time he sexts Hanta of all fucking people, because why lie when you’re literally caught with your pants down? “I’m just…I’m fucking horny, ok?” He hisses, trying to seem as venomous as he usually does.
Izuku shakes his head. “We just saw each other for the first time in over a year, and you’re telling me you happen to be casually jerking off in front of Tsu’s house?!” He whisper-shouts. “Are you serious?!”
“I don’t know what else to tell you, Izuku! Why are you still…why are you still here?” He’s losing it. He can’t keep the conversation up much longer before he loses the last of his composure and cums, probably harder than he ever has in his fucking life.
Izuku looks at him, and he sees it: the moment where he puts it all together. “I’m two spots ahead of you in the rankings.”
Fuck.
“You didn’t want to fail me again.”
Katsuki’s biggest dream and nightmare is coming true at the same time.
Izuku looks down at his dick again and licks his lip the slightest bit, that Katsuki would’ve missed if he wasn’t taking a break from seeing how fucking humiliating it might be to keep looking him in the eyes, before he looks back at him again, more certain, almost brazen. “You’re liking this right now.” Tears spring to the corners of his eyes, and Izuku shakes his head with…a snort? “You got that freaked out that you liked that your childhood punching bag got better than you?!”
He’s too close. This has to stop. “Izuku,” he chokes out, “why’re you still here?”
Izuku smirks, and Katsuki’s shocked at how evil that smirk looks on him. “I like seeing you like this.” He crowds his space so that the last few centimeters between them disappear and they’re chest to chest, Izuku’s forehead on his, Katsuki’s cock one of the only places left untouched, shielded by Izuku’s hand on his own. “I think you deserve it for making me look like the bad guy all this time.”
Katsuki just resigns himself to it. He loosens his grip on himself in every way. “Maybe I do, ok?!” He whines. He flat-out whines and just lets it hang there, panting, closing his eyes again. But Izuku’s mouth moves to the shell of his ear, and his lips run along it. “Fuck!” He digs the nails of his free hand into the bark behind him to stop himself from shivering. “I’m gonna jack off. You can stay for the fucking show, or you can leave me the hell alone.”
Izuku’s hand stops his, though. “Are we gonna talk about this afterwards?”
FUCK! “NO, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!”
Izuku tsks and holds his hand harder, almost crushing it, and Katsuki makes the most undignified moan he’s ever heard, in porn or reality. “Looks like you’re not cumming, then.”
SHIT!! He whisper-shouts as loudly as he can, “I will cum on your fucking hand.”
He feels Izuku smile against his temple. “Great. Then I’ll call Eijirou to get you to pick up your phone after this if you ignore me like you always do and act like I didn’t make you cum.”
“Like Ei’s my fucking keeper–wait, wha–”
The hand just below his neck moves higher. “Is this ok?” He lightly presses on the sides of his neck. “Are you into this, too?”
Katsuki doesn’t miss how he rephrases what he says, takes the shaming and nods. He’s wanted every single thing the nerd has done ever since he found him tonight, but he isn’t going to embarrass himself even more than he already has by saying it out loud. He already has enough material from this to get off on for years without making Izuku respect him even less.
His hand gets a little tighter around his neck, just enough to make his breath stutter, and his other hand loosens its grip around his dick and guides his to the tip, rubbing over the precum about to drip onto the ground. “You like how I found you? Out here, like a dog?” He giggles a little, and Katsuki jerks off as slowly as possible to savour something straight out of his fantasies. Izuku looks down at his cock. “You’re at a party. My party! And you jack off outside over my rank?” Katsuki starts to whimper. Izuku leans his head back and nudges his face up, and Katsuki dares to open his eyes again. He’s looking right at him, choking him with all the finesse of a hero who knows not to push right down on someone’s windpipe and moving his hand so that he strokes himself faster. “You’re smaller than me in every way,” he punctuates with a slightly tighter hold on his dick. “You even need me to show you how to get off! You can’t man up enough to pick up the phone, and here you are, the biggest pervert I’ve ever seen, getting off on the idea of how much better I turned out than you.”
Katsuki wheezes, colours get duller, and he feels himself start to tense up in that glorious way he’s known for so long, but the feeling just keeps on building. “Fuck, Izuku, I’m gonna, I’m–”
Izuku stops choking him to slap him clear across the face. “You’re just some small, pathetic kid I used to know, hiding from me like a little bitch, you humiliating fuck.”
Katsuki cums so hard that he forgets where the hell he is and moans loudly, finding his forehead on Izuku’s shoulder when he starts to breathe again, jerking into his hand, twice, three times and stilling. He catches his breath while he takes in how Izuku smells now, mandarins light on his dry skin around the neck of his “party shirt” t-shirt. He wonders if he switched to Muse soap for the extra scars he’s gathered since their debut, a hodgepodge of knicks and lines the length of his fingernails littered across his freckled skin.
“Hey,” Izuku whispers, shaking him way too gently for the piece of shit Katsuki’s going to continue to be to him after this is done. “You gotta clean up, Kacchan.”
Katsuki blinks before snapping out of whatever trance he’d fallen into and pushing him away. “Are you fucking serious?!”
Izuku lifts up his hand covered with cum. “Uh, yeah.”
“Why aren’t you pissed off right now?!!”
“Kacchan,” he says a little sternly, “you’re getting loud.”
That Izuku doesn’t want to kill him (yet) for wasting their sensei’s last year of his life on shame over his weird fucking kink is the only thing that almost calms him down. “Fucking hell.” He takes his phone out of his back pocket with his clean hand and turns it back on. “I deleted your number. Put it back in so I know when you call.”
Izuku snatches his phone from him and finally looks like he’s absolutely seething as he enters the number every other classmate of theirs has, tossing it up in the air for him to scramble and barely catch when he’s done. And before Katsuki can close his hand and feel his cum squish on top of his callouses, he yanks him forward by the collar and he stumbles into his chest. “I am pissed off. But I need to hear you explain yourself. So talk to me tomorrow or I skip the train and fly to Tokyo.” Katsuki swallows back all of the empty diatribe he’s had ready and waiting since the last time they saw each other. “Wait.” He lets go of Katsuki’s filthy hand and reveals speckles of his cum on his own. He raises it to his lips. “Clean me off. Now.” There’s not a hint of sarcasm in his voice (like there ever was), so he hesitantly leans forward and touches his tongue to his dirty palm, his eyes closing of their own accord as he holds back a groan and savours a revolting mixture of dirt and himself, sliding between his fingers to chase the flavour before that hand pushes forward and smears his spit across his face. His dick hurts as it weakly comes to semi-attention too soon after its incredibly recent bad decision. “Just like a dog.”
Katsuki bites his lip so hard that he tastes blood when Izuku puts his hand on the small of his back and pushes him from behind the tree toward the house.
He hopes no one sees them. And he hopes they all see.
He fucking hates himself.