Chapter Text
“Hey, Kacchan,” Kaminari says in the dorm kitchen one day because he has a death wish. “Can I ask you a question about omegas?”
Katsuki is focusing on dinner and Sero and Ashido, the only useful members of his little friend group when it comes to cooking, are assisting by chopping vegetables, fetching ingredients as he asks for them, setting the table, keeping an eye on the pans of food that need less babysitting (he doesn’t trust them with the difficult ones), and generally trying not to get in his way. Katsuki doesn’t mind the idea of taking turns making dinner for the whole class once a week, but they only moved into the dorms a month and a half ago and so far any time one of his group is up for their turn, Katsuki ends up getting roped in to help since he’s the best cook out of the whole class. Sero and Ashido should be doing this by themselves, but then Katsuki’s just consigning himself (and everyone else) to a mediocre meal.
“If you fucking have to,” Katsuki grunts, trying not to let himself be distracted by the fact that Iida just walked into the kitchen. Unfortunately, due to their respective biologies, Katsuki and Iida are always very aware of each other’s presence. If you blindfolded both of them, they could probably still pinpoint the other’s location anywhere in the building.
On the other hand, the big alpha is at least polite enough to stay out of the way and only seems to have come into the kitchen to get a drink out of the fridge.
“I don’t wanna come off as rude or anything. I was just thinking about some of the stuff I’ve read -”
“You read?” Katsuki mutters, earning a snort from Sero.
“- and I was just wondering if like… ugh, I guess I’ll just say it. Do you think you’re a bad omega?”
Iida chokes on his orange juice hard enough that half of it ends up on the floor.
Katsuki freezes in place, then slowly turns his head to look Kaminari dead in the eye. “Excuse me?”
Kaminari wilts. “I just meant like - I wasn’t trying to say you’re a bad person because you’re definitely not! You just always read about omegas being soft and demure and caring and all that and you’re great but you’re not any of those things?”
“Bitch, I’m making food for you when it ain’t even my turn to fucking cook and you’re sitting here accusing me of being a bad omega?” Katsuki asks incredulously.
“It wasn’t an accusation!”
Iida is still wheezing - orange juice in the lungs will do that to a guy - but he’s already moving to get a dish towel from the sink and clean up the mess he made. “Kaminari, that’s… that’s incredibly inappropriate to say.”
“He said I could ask!” Kaminari argues. “I could ask you instead, I guess? Do you think Bakugo’s a bad omega?”
It’s quite possibly the only way Kaminari could have made the situation worse. Iida’s eyes go wide in the way they always do any time he gets singled out as the lone alpha in the class. And Katsuki knows there’s no good answer here. He’d never be rude enough to call Katsuki a bad omega even if he was one (and he’s definitely not), but he also can’t enumerate Katsuki’s good qualities without bringing down even more teasing than the two of them already get.
“You need to stop watching so much goddamn fetish porn,” Katsuki snaps.
“You really do,” Iida agrees vehemently.
Ashido giggles nervously and Katsuki makes a face at the realization that Kaminari is not the only one in his friend group watching alpha/omega porn.
“I hate both of you,” Katsuki says flatly.
“Not me though, right?” Sero clarifies.
“Do you watch weird fetish porn about non-betas?”
“No, I watch totally normal fetish porn about bondage like anybody else with tape coming out of their arms.”
“Okay,” Iida says loudly from where he’s cleaning up the orange juice spill. “Can we stop talking about porn?”
Kaminari sulks. “Only if somebody answers my question.”
Iida groans and rises to his feet. He’s going to need to go back over that again with water or it’s just going to get sticky but he probably already knows that so Katsuki lets it go.
“No, Bakugo is not a bad omega,” Iida says, rinsing out the dish towel. “The… media you watch is giving you a very skewed idea of what alphas are looking for in an omega. The frequency with which Bakugo cooks for others alone demonstrates that he’s a good provider and caretaker, nevermind his other traits.”
“I think it’s the other traits that Kami’s talking about though,” Ashido points out. “I’m not saying he’s right or anything, just that that’s what he means. The hyper-aggressive tendencies and the fact that you’re loud and also totally jacked.”
Katsuki and Iida exchange bewildered looks. “Which part of that qualifies me as a bad omega?”
“The… part where alphas want soft and sweet omegas that are going to be good moms?”
“Okay, well first of all, I’m never going to be a fucking mom because I am a dude, whether I give birth or not. When you’re talking about alphas and omegas, the technical terms are sire and dam.”
“Second of all,” Iida says, picking up seamlessly where Katsuki left off (this is why they get teased so much, he thinks), “alphas do not generally want ‘soft and sweet’ omegas. That’s… not really what alphas are looking for in a potential mate. Again, the media you’re watching is giving you a skewed perspective based on stereotypes about betas that are equally outdated. Beta males are not inherently attracted to soft and sweet beta females either.”
“So you’re saying you’re not personally into the demure type?” Kaminari asks.
“No,” Iida sighs in exasperation. “I mean, I’m not but that doesn’t make me any different from most alphas. Especially because omegas tend not to be the… demure type.”
“Alphas want an omega who is strong enough to produce healthy pups and aggressive enough to defend those pups when necessary,” Katsuki says bluntly. “It’s pretty much the same thing an omega wants out of an alpha. Everything else is just details. It’s real caveman shit but that’s what happens when you’re a genetic throwback to a time when humans lived in fucking pack structures.”
“... Oh. So what you’re saying is you two are perfect for each other.”
Iida turns crimson and Katsuki lunges for Kaminari with a roar.
***
It starts like this -
When Bakugo Katsuki walks into UA for the first day of class, he’s fully confident of two things. The first is that he’s going to be the first student to show up and the second is that he’s going to be the only non-beta in the class.
Both of these things, to Katsuki’s mind, are very safe assumptions. He’s even immediately proven right on one of them, finding the classroom for 1-A empty when he walks in. This is ideal because it means Katsuki gets his seat of choice without having to fight someone for it. Farthest row from the door, second seat from the front. No distracting noises from idiots in the hallway during class, close enough to the front to see clearly, but not in the exact front where it’s impossible to get away with shit.
Katsuki plants himself at his desk of choice, drops his backpack under his chair, and kicks his feet up to wait. He has to admit, he’s pretty excited to see who’s in his class and if any of them are worth a damn. He saw a handful of stand outs during the entrance exam but he was too busy focusing on his own score to pay them much mind. He only got a few quick glimpses. A guy who could hulk out like a werewolf and was smashing robots left and right, an electric boy who seemed custom built to kill robots by frying them, a green haired kid (he’d had to do a double take on that one but he was way too tall and also obviously had a quirk) with blades coming out of his arms that were sharp enough to cleave through metal, and some girl with a frog quirk that Katsuki would have written off except he watched her pick a robot up with her tongue and fling it at another robot, taking both of them out.
UA is already way better than Aldera and class hasn’t even started yet. The most notable quirk at Aldera, aside from Katsuki himself, had been Tsubasa. Before he’d - well. But after Tsubasa had died, it was just Katsuki for powerful quirks. Unless you thought being able to stretch your eyeballs out of their sockets (to no real benefit, it didn’t improve his sight any) was powerful.
Nobody at UA is going to have a shit quirk like that. At least not in the hero course.
The first person who walks through the door is a girl with long black hair tied back into a tight ponytail. She looks momentarily taken aback to see Katsuki lounging around, but she pulls herself together quickly and walks past the teacher’s desk to see if there’s a seating chart. When she realizes there isn’t, she glances around for a second before moving all the way to the back of the room to sit in the last seat in Katsuki’s row.
Odd. She doesn’t look much like a troublemaker, which is usually the type to prefer the back. But who knows, maybe even the troublemakers are different at UA. She does offer a quick “Good morning,” to Katsuki as she passes by him but doesn’t stop to introduce herself and that’s just fine with him. She doesn’t seem bothered by Katsuki’s disinterested grunt in return either.
Then, a minute or two later, the next person walks in and Katsuki has to steel himself not to react because holy shit that guy looks exactly like a younger version of Ingenium. They have to be related, right? Katsuki’s pretty sure Ingenium isn’t old enough to have a teenage kid but a sibling is always possible. Katsuki used to have such a crush on that guy.
Not-Ingenium starts to head for the teacher’s desk to check for a seating chart but then he catches sight of Katsuki and, hilariously, he puffs up like an angry cat.
“You can’t put your feet on the desk!” he says, outraged. “Who do you think you are? This is a prestigious institution and -”
He keeps rambling on about decorum and respect but Katsuki tunes him out. It’s disappointing that Not-Ingenium has such a stick up his ass but maybe he can make up for it by being fun to fight, assuming he’s even half as decent as his look-alike. He kind of wants to turn around to see what Ponytail makes of this but he doesn’t really care.
Not-Ingenium moves closer as he realizes Katsuki isn’t paying him a lick of attention and as he gets right up next to Katsuki’s desk, Katsuki becomes abruptly aware of two things. The first is that this guy is huge. Like only 15 or 16 and already pushing six feet tall huge, with broad shoulders and big hands that he’s throwing around furiously. The second is that now that he’s close enough to scent, he’s definitely an alpha.
Katsuki’s never met an alpha the same age as him in his entire life. Hell, Katsuki’s never met an alpha even kind of close to his age. The only one he’s ever known at all was a female alpha in her 60s that taught math at his old elementary school. He knows of other alphas - Endeavor’s the most notable alpha hero, but there’s a few others like Hound Dog and supposedly Mt. Lady, if the rumors are true anyway. But he’s never had to be around another alpha and smell the pheromones coming off of them and, even through both of them being on suppressants, feel his omega side sit up and take notice in a ‘hey, I like that’ kind of way.
That’s the part that gets his hackles up.
Katsuki bristles and bares his teeth, showing off the heavy, sharp canines that mark him as a non-beta (although with quirks, that’s not necessarily a guarantee). He’s not letting some fucking alpha push him around, no matter who he’s related to or how nice he smells.
“Back the fuck off,” Katsuki snaps, interrupting whatever ongoing rant Not-Ingenium was working his way through. “I’m not going to roll over for you just because you’re an alpha. Don’t think I couldn’t kick your ass any day of the week.”
Not-Ingenium freezes mid-chop and looks so genuinely confused that Katsuki is willing to believe he actually hadn’t noticed yet that Katsuki is an omega. Which really just makes him an idiot. The alpha goes ghost pale for a moment when he does catch Katsuki’s scent, then he comes back to himself with a sputter but can’t seem to find the words to defend himself so he just flushes red, mutters an apology, and hastily moves away, taking a desk on the exact opposite side of the room.
Triumph. Day one and Katsuki’s already intimidated the only other non-beta in the class. Not that he was expecting to even have a non-beta classmate to intimidate, but life is full of surprises. It’s fine. Katsuki can live with this, though he does find himself painfully aware of the alpha being in the room even as he goes back to watching the door for new arrivals. He’s always been the strongest person in the room at any given time and nothing is going to change that. Not UA and certainly not some alpha.
And then Deku walks into the classroom and through his volcanic rage, Katsuki doesn’t spare a single thought for Not-Ingenium for the rest of the day.
***
It might be more accurate to say it starts like this -
Almost 200 years before Katsuki and, as he later learns, Iida Tenya, were born, scientists started noticing a slow but steady decline in the number of alphas and omegas. A lot of the data from back then was lost due to the wars that sprang up at the dawn of the quirk era but they do still have some of the records. And then the quirk era did hit and the numbers went into freefall. Betas always outnumbered non-betas, but the ratio used to be something like 3:1. These days? Calling it 50:1 would be generous. There were more quirkless people than non-betas and in the race to see which would go extinct first, non-betas were a lot closer to the finish line.
There were arguments back then and there are still arguments now about why it was happening. A lot of scientists (beta ones, natch) argued that humanity was evolving past a need for alphas and omegas. They weren’t cavemen anymore, nor did they live in time periods where you might need to have a dozen kids in hopes of even a couple of them surviving to adulthood. And in the modern era, kids were expensive and overpopulation was a real problem. Betas were worse at reproduction than alphas and omegas, but they weren’t infertile.
When quirks hit the scene, arguments started that alphas and omegas were fundamentally incompatible with quirks and that was the reason for the decline. There isn’t a shred of evidence to back it up, of course. Quirkless people don’t have a higher rate of being non-betas than the quirked population. Still, it means that every couple of years, there’s laws floated through the government that never get passed about potentially banning alphas and omegas from the hero industry. Non-betas are prone to fits of rage, the lawmakers claim. They’re unstable, especially when unmated, which many of them are because there’s just too few of them.
Katsuki’s never really worried about those laws actually getting passed. Nobody’s going to ban non-betas from hero work while alphas like Endeavor and omegas like Edgeshot or Present Mic are out there saving lives and stopping crime every single day.
(And anyway, it’s a problem that’ll solve itself eventually. One day there won’t be any alphas or omegas to go into hero work, so what’s the point of banning them? You might as well pass a law banning people from hunting dodos. It’s way past too late for that.)
That’s not to say there aren’t any problems with being a non-beta. Suppressants are mandatory in school and most workplaces for non-betas because otherwise their scents are overpowering. That on its own would be fine and Katsuki would voluntarily take suppressants anyway just because heats are godawful and a truly miserable way to spend a week every three months or so. Ruts are probably just as bad, but Katsuki wouldn’t know. And the suppressants do work - they stop a non-beta from having a heat or a rut and they muffle scents enough that betas don’t notice them at all and Katsuki and Iida aren’t wildly distracted by just being in the same room as each other.
The problem with suppressants being mandatory is that every year, there’s less and less of a market for them. Only one pharmaceutical company in all of Japan still makes them and if you’re allergic to that brand or you get bad side effects from it then, well, fuck you. Guess you’re putting in an order for an overseas product that will hopefully work out better. Katsuki has to get his suppressants shipped in from Canada and that’s pricey as hell but it’s worth it for a pill that blocks his heats without giving him debilitating cramps that leaves him laid up for a week anyway.
(You’re not supposed to take suppressants indefinitely, of course. You have to stop taking them at least once a year and just ride out a heat or rut, but suppressants let you control when you’re going to do it and plan it out in advance. It still sucks, but Katsuki takes his health seriously and it’s not like he has anything better to do during winter breaks when the cold is keeping him indoors anyway.)
The long and short of it is that it’s a real bitch and a half to be a non-beta and Katsuki wouldn’t have taken it if he’d had a choice in the matter. But Katsuki isn’t a wuss either so he’ll suck it up and deal with it. He’s not going to let something as dumb as his secondary gender dictate his life.
And he’s not going to let some stupid alpha dictate his life either.
***
So Katsuki doesn’t like Iida, but that isn’t saying much. Katsuki doesn’t like most people and Iida certainly isn’t special in that regard. He’s not outstandingly aggravating or anything - he’s fucking annoying with his uptight rules lawyer shtick but everyone in the class is annoying in some way or another. He’s not that shitty little grapestain that got expelled within the first week because he tried to sneak creep-shots of Katsuki in the locker room showers. The pervert was lucky to escape with his life when Katsuki and Iida both caught him.
And Katsuki does, grudgingly, appreciate the solidarity of having another person in the locker rooms that prefers using the stalls to change or waits until everyone else has left to use the showers. Since both of them choose to present as male for their primary genders, they’re in the boys’ locker room (Katsuki has no idea how many generations back you’d have to go for it to have been worth it for schools or gyms to have separate non-beta locker rooms) but they’re both very aware that their anatomy is not quite the same.
Everyone else is aware of it too since Midnight does a mandatory week of sex ed classes at the start of the year so they can get it over with and move on to the other important subject she teaches which is… fucking art history. Honestly, Katsuki couldn’t give less of a shit about art. It’s awful though, to sit there and have to deal with the stares every time Midnight diverts from talking about beta anatomy to non-beta anatomy. Worse to have to listen to her answer questions as Katsuki and Iida both slump miserably in their seats.
“So what’s the biological difference between alphas and omegas before they present?” There isn’t one. You’re born a beta but alphas and omegas are born fully intersex and are just considered ‘unpresented.’ You won’t know which one you are until well into puberty and there’s no detectable difference before you find out. And no, you can’t tell based on their teeth because your adult teeth come in before you present. Alpha and omega canines are both fully capable of ripping a chunk out of someone.
“So if alphas and omegas are both intersex, couldn’t an alpha get pregnant?” No, because when alphas present, their ovaries stop working and the eggs die. Just like when omegas present, they stop producing viable sperm.
“Then wouldn’t you just say that alphas are male and omegas are female?” No, jackass, don’t be so fucking beta-centric. Even betas don’t strictly adhere to gender binaries sometimes and alphas and omegas damn sure don’t.
Katsuki growls at Kaminari for that last question and Midnight has the audacity to say, “Bakugo, would you like to contribute something to the discussion?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Are you sure? Your insight might be very valuable to your classmates.”
“Why the fuck would it? Betas don’t need to know this shit. You might as well teach all the straight boys how lesbian sex works - it’s not their fucking business and it’s never going to come up for them.”
Katsuki knows Iida feels the same because for once, he doesn’t chide Katsuki for snapping at a teacher, not even after class is over. If Katsuki had to guess, Iida too has had to sit through this kind of sex ed class before and gotten all the looks and whispers and snickering from classmates. Katsuki definitely got this shit back in middle school and he doesn’t doubt that a poncy private academy like Someii would have been thorough about their students’ education, and you can’t stop kids from being little shitheads to anybody different from them, no matter how rich they are.
(On the very rare occasions where he’s feeling introspective, Katsuki thinks he probably bullied the shit out of Deku because it felt good to know there was at least one person at Aldera who was more of a freak than him. And Katsuki could teach everyone not to mess with him too by showing them how much stronger he was.)
By the time the Sports Festival rolls around, Katsuki’s not really thinking about Iida all that much anymore. They still immediately clock each other’s presence every time they’re in the same room, but they’re both busy with school and they’re just not that interested in each other. They’re both difficult personalities and they know it, so whatever. Just let it go. Not like it matters, anyway.
Except it kind of does matter, at least a little.
He fights Uraraka in a match that he thinks, personally, is pretty goddamn good. Great viewing too, he’d imagine. The tension of wondering if she could manage to touch him, how fast his reactions have to be to keep her away, the determination that keeps her coming back at him at new angles. Katsuki knows she’s up to something because he’s not fucking stupid and neither is she, but he has to be cautious while he tries to figure out what it is because while he can fly with his explosions, the arena is small and it’d be way too difficult to try to stay within the boundaries if she made him weightless.
And then the crowd starts fucking booing him.
Which, okay, that’s kinda shit. But fine. It’s not like Katsuki’s never gotten bad reactions before. He knows what he’s like. And anyway, he’s trying to focus here.
“Would you all relax? He’s not a beta male, he’s an omega,” one of his classmates hollers and Katsuki doesn’t know which one of them it was but if he finds out who, he’s going to break their fucking face. Because to Katsuki’s absolute fury, that’s what makes the crowd stop booing. As though all the ‘unnecessary violence’ (which is very necessary because Uraraka isn’t fucking playing) is suddenly fine now that they know he’s not a beta male. Present Mic sure as hell didn’t bring up the fact that he was an omega when he was chiding Katsuki to just end the match over the loudspeakers.
Across the ring, even Uraraka grimaces. “This isn’t really how I wanted this to go, but thanks for kicking up all that debris.”
Oh. That’s her plan. Smart, but not smart enough not to fucking telling him about it.
A small scale meteor shower comes crashing towards Katsuki and he thinks bitterly that if he just let it hit him, she probably wouldn’t get chided for ‘unnecessary violence’ even if one of the concrete chunks cracked his skull. But Katsuki isn’t going to let it hit him just to prove a point because he’s never rolled over for anyone before and he’s not going to start now.
Nobody cheers for him when he wins and he’s perversely glad they don’t. It would have only made him angrier.
Katsuki doesn’t immediately go back to the 1A box because if he does, he’s going to kill somebody. He’d rather just wait down in the prep rooms. One of the ones with a TV, if he can swing it, so he isn’t walking into his next match blind. He heads for the only one he knows for sure has a TV and he knows before even opening the door that Iida is already in there. Katsuki goes in anyway.
“That was an excellent match, Bakugo,” Iida says as soon as he sees him. “Uraraka gave you quite the fight, but you held her off admirably.”
Katsuki grunts in agreement and flops into a chair, grateful he didn’t comment on all the booing. “She needs to work on her hand to hand and speed. If your whole fucking quirk relies on touching somebody, you better be ready to get in your enemy’s face.”
“Well, at least she’s in the perfect place to learn it if she chooses to.”
“She goddamn better or she’s gonna get herself killed in the field. Even rescue heroes get in fights sometimes.”
Iida makes a noncommittal noise. “We all have things we could work on. You might consider more precise shots, for example.”
Katsuki shoots him the kind of murderous glare that used to make kids back at Aldera run and hide, but tragically has no effect on any hero student other than Deku and Kaminari. “Drop dead.”
“I’m just saying. Uraraka isn’t the only person you’re ever going to fight that could use the debris you create against you.”
Katsuki’s not used to this yet - constructive criticism, that is. It rankles a little, but he also kind of likes it? He hated people fawning over him and telling him he was perfect and flawless back in middle school. People like Aizawa saying “You did good, but -” is new but not unwelcome. He wasn’t expecting it from Iida but it’s a valid point. Katsuki’s never put any thought into precision before because it’s not really what his quirk is designed to do. But most people would say his quirk isn’t designed for flight either and he figured that shit out, so he’ll maybe make a note to experiment with precision later.
“Yeah, well, you could stand to work on your fucking judgment. I saw the match you had against that support student. You got taken for a ride, idiot.”
Iida flushes red and glances away. “Yes, that - that’s certainly true. Not a way I’ve ever wanted to win a match.”
“You didn’t win,” Katsuki says bluntly. “She forfeited. It’s not the same.”
“... No, it isn’t,” he agrees and rubs the back of his head ruefully.
They lapse into silence as they watch Kirishima and his 1B clone have their stupid tiebreaker arm wrestling match. Katsuki’s a little annoyed to discover that he feels a lot better than he did five minutes ago. It’s a warm spring day and he and Iida have both been working hard all day so naturally, their scents are stronger than they usually are under suppressants. Iida’s scent of metal and weirdly citrus-y exhaust smoke fills the room just as much as Katsuki’s scent of burning sugar and he can’t help but think it’s a good combination.
Katsuki understands that it’s just a biological function for alphas and omegas to calm each other down, but it’s obnoxious to feel it happening to him. Even Iida’s usually stiff shoulders are getting more relaxed by the minute as they watch two idiots roar at each other and crack the concrete block they're wrestling on in pursuit of victory
It occurs to him that he doesn’t need to watch this. He can beat both of them since they have the same fucking quirk and he can beat both Tokoyami and Ashido too, no matter who wins their match. His side of the bracket up to the finals is clear.
“I’m going to take a walk,” he says, standing abruptly. He also realizes a split second later that there was no reason to announce that. It’s not like Iida cares or needs to know where he’s going, so he hastily adds, “Hope you’ve got a fucking plan for dealing with Freezerburn over there,” to try and salvage his pride.
Iida gives him an amused look. “I might not have to deal with him at all. Midoriya could beat him.”
“He won’t,” Katsuki says, not out of any cruelty but simply because it’s true. Deku’s a lying idiot with a quirk that breaks his own bones and Todoroki is arguably the single most powerful person in class, even if he’s also an idiot who refuses to live up to his potential.
Iida shrugs. “Either way, I just have to be faster than them. Ring outs are the easiest way for me to win in a tournament like this.”
“Good luck trying that shit on me,” he says and barely catches the corners of Iida’s mouth lifting into a smile before he turns to leave.
(In about two hours from now, he’ll be chained and muzzled on a podium and despite how apocalyptically angry he’ll be at the situation, he’ll still have the spare brain power to wonder where in the world Iida went and if he would have helped Katsuki or just stood there and allowed it like everyone else.)
***
Now obviously, being kidnapped sucks for a lot of reasons. For one thing, Katsuki is stuck in a dingy bar with a half a dozen villains loitering around with his hands locked in quirk suppressor cuffs and a muzzle over his mouth because he wouldn’t stop yelling. For another, the little blonde girl keeps talking about how much she wants to make him bleed and had to be removed from the room by the guy with the cheap magician outfit because it was even starting to irritate Handsy McFuckface.
For a third thing, it’s not like kidnappers make a habit of stealing a person’s medication when they take somebody. It’s been 48 hours and Katsuki hasn’t taken his suppressants since the morning of the day he was kidnapped. He’s already in the early stages of pre-heat because of course he is. That’s what happens when you suddenly stop taking your suppressants, even if it wasn’t by choice.
The lizard guy in Stain cosplay is the only one who seems at all uncomfortable with the situation and that only started when the burnt piece of goth trash wouldn’t leave Katsuki the fuck alone. And wouldn’t you know Katsuki’s luck - Blueberry Toast is a fucking alpha.
Katsuki hates him. The guy smells like blood and burning flesh instead of Iida’s crisp, clean scent and he keeps getting up in Katsuki’s personal space, trailing his fingers up Katsuki’s arms and flashing his teeth like he’s going to leave a claim mark on his throat right here, right now. Claim marks don’t really mean anything anymore - in the pre-quirk era, they were considered just as legally binding as a marriage - but they do leave a scar and the last thing Katsuki wants is to have this burnt marshmallow’s teeth permanently imprinted on his neck. And the shit he says, jesus. He’s barely 16 and this asshole is talking about putting a pup in him.
Handsy McFuckface at least seems sincere in his desire to recruit Katsuki to their cause so he’s not really inclined to let Charcoal get his crispy hands on Katsuki, but he’s not sure how long that’s going to last when Katsuki has no intention of joining them. If he refuses them, are they just going to hand him over to the alpha? If he lies and tries to play it off like he will join them while waiting for a chance to escape, will they expect him to sleep with the guy willingly?
Katsuki hasn’t slept for two days, hasn’t eaten anything, and the only thing he’s had to drink is a single water bottle Scaly Stain brought him while it was fully sealed and broke the seal right in front of him before he took the muzzle off to help him drink. The combination of hunger, sleep deprivation, and the edge of his pre-heat is making him extremely dizzy, so when Handsy takes the cuffs off to try and talk to him “as an equal,” Katsuki’s only instinct is to try and create space between himself and the rest of them, even if that’s maybe not the smartest response when he’s cornered by a bunch of very dangerous villains.
And then the heroes show up and somehow things go from bad to worse.
Katsuki goes from being stuck in a bar with a bunch of jackasses to vomiting up black sludge and somehow being teleported to a blasted battlefield, still surrounded by the same jackasses but now with one additional jackass who is…
Powerful. That’s the only word that really comes to mind. Power bleeds off this guy like the smell of bad cologne - overwhelming and absolutely disgusting. All Might is there in seconds but even that doesn’t feel like enough. Katsuki’s never wanted to run and hide before so badly, but there’s nowhere to run. He’s surrounded and everything in the ward around him is rubble.
And then.
And then.
And then there's Deku, Iida, and Kirishima. And Katsuki knows that if he doesn’t connect with them, if they don’t catch him, he is not going to be able to land properly. He can barely see straight and if he misses them, he’ll break his ankles at best trying to land and he may very well end up dead. But dead is better than here.
He flies and Kirishima catches him and for a second he wonders how the fuck the other three plan on landing except the answer is apparently that Kirishima is just going to tank it with Iida’s help since his legs are full of metal and can’t break any more than Kirishima can.
Once they’re on the ground, Deku calls Yaoyorozu and Todoroki so they can meet back up (why the fuck did all these people come to save him?) before they figure out where the closest police station is. Kirishima hasn’t let go of Katsuki’s hand and is checking him over, trying to determine if he has any injuries.
“We should probably get you to a hospital,” Kirishima says worriedly, despite the fact that Katsuki isn’t hurt.
“We need to go to the police station,” Deku corrects. “Besides, any hospital for miles around is about to be overwhelmed.”
Even with his senses hazy, Katsuki can see the exact moment Iida puts together the odd scent he’s smelling from the way he goes rigid and his eyes darken behind his glasses.
“He needs to go home. Right now.”
Kirishima and Deku both do a double take.
“Uh, what?” Kirishima asks. “Look, I’m willing to bypass a hospital but we’ve at least got to check in with the adults so they know we’ve got him.”
Iida shakes his head. “No. Call Aizawa and tell him, but he needs to go home. Bakugo in a police station is a bad idea.”
“It’s not like they’re going to arrest Kacchan,” Deku protests. “We’re the only ones who broke the law.”
“I’m in pre-heat, idiot,” Katsuki rasps, finally weighing in on the conversation. “I just spent the past 2 days trapped with a bunch of villains without eating or sleeping at any point and I damn sure didn’t have my suppressants. You stop taking suppressants, you go into a heat. Or a rut. Whatever.”
“That fast?” Kirishima balks.
“This isn’t that fast,” Iida says testily. “He’s still in the leadup to a real heat. But police work is a job that appeals to a lot of adult alphas that didn’t make the cut to be heroes so it’s not a great place to take him right now.”
“We’re in fucking Kamino,” Kirishima hisses. “There’s no way we can get him all the way back to Musutafu by ourselves unless you’re gonna run him home yourself.”
Deku steps in between Iida and Kirishima. “Let’s just… meet up with Todoroki and Yaoyorozu, then call Aizawa. We’re all dead meat anyway, might as well tell him over the phone and maybe he can get someone here to pick us up in a car or something.”
They start moving and Katsuki gets about halfway down the alley they’re in before he stumbles and Kirishima has to yank his arm to keep him upright.
“Dudes, I don’t know how far we’re going to get like this.”
Iida clenches his jaw and takes a hesitant step forward, then a few bolder ones until he stops right in front of Katsuki. “If you tell me to back off, I will,” he promises. “And if I don’t, Kirishima and Midoriya are more than welcome to punch me until I do.”
There are noises of confusion from both of the other boys, but Katsuki can tell what Iida’s going to do and he meets his gaze. He doesn’t say no.
(Iida smells so fucking good, especially compared to that scarred up asshole and every part of Katsuki’s body is screaming that he wants an alpha to hold him. Under any other circumstances, he’d suck it up and tell himself to just deal with it, but Katsuki’s at his body’s limit and he just can’t.)
Iida keeps staring at him and Katsuki realizes he’s waiting for explicit consent, not just a lack of denial. He gives Iida one sharp nod because he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to say but thankfully, Iida seems willing to accept that.
“So what are we -?” Deku starts to say before Iida scoops Katsuki up in his big arms.
Katsuki wraps his legs around Iida’s waist and clings to him like it’s a life or death situation, which to be honest, it might be. He buries his face in the side of Iida’s neck and oh god, that’s exactly what he needed. He squeezes his thighs and Iida grunts but doesn’t protest.
“I’m not kidding,” he hears Iida mutter to the other two. “If he asks and I don’t let go of him - or even if he doesn’t ask but we’re somewhere safe - you two need to make me.”
Katsuki shudders and tries to focus on not doing anything that would be extra humiliating. Being carried is already embarrassing but he was kidnapped and held against his will for two days so most people would forgive that. Popping a boner against Iida’s stomach is not quite as understandable. Iida is a safe port in the storm that Katsuki’s body is brewing up but that doesn’t mean the ship is coming into harbor, so to speak. Although a safe port is useless if the ship doesn’t - alright, his grasp on metaphors is maybe a little tenuous at the moment. The point is that Iida isn’t going to fuck him. And Katsuki isn’t sure that under any other circumstances, he would even want Iida to fuck him. It’s just that right now, his body is really goddamn excited that there’s a big, strong alpha around that he doesn’t hate with a burning passion and that’s basically all the criteria it needs for an ideal mate.
Stupid fucking caveman biology and its low standards.
Breathing in a shitload of alpha pheromones probably isn't doing anything to slow down his approaching heat but it's at least making him feel a little less sick, especially after Yaoyorozu shows up and hands over one of the high calorie protein bars she always has on her.
"Don't eat it too fast," she warns him. "You'll just throw it back up."
"I know," he tries to say around a mouthful of food. "M'not stupid."
"She wasn't saying you were," Iida says. If he's bothered by Katsuki shoving food into his mouth right by his ear, he doesn't say anything. But then at this point, he's probably just trying not to grope Katsuki by accident (or by instinct).
Deku is standing a short distance away on his phone and based on the look on his face, is getting chewed out by Aizawa. Although it could also be his mom. Auntie Inko can be scary when she wants to be. After a couple minutes of them standing around and trying not to watch the news as it talks about the devastation and cringing at All Might's weakened form, Deku approaches them and thrusts the phone in Iida and Katsuki's direction.
"Aizawa wants to talk to you, Kacchan."
Katsuki accepts the phone and jams it between his ear and his shoulder so he can keep his grip on Iida. "What?"
"Midoriya gave me a summary but I need to hear it from you - you aren't injured? Nobody from the League touched you?"
"Just Toasty," he mumbles. "The blue fire guy? I'm not hurt, just tired and kinda fucked up."
"Dabi touched you? Beyond the initial kidnapping?"
"He's an alpha. Once my suppressants started wearing off, he started getting fucking creepy."
He feels Iida tense up under him and the other four aren't reacting much better, suddenly paying rapt attention to his conversation.
"He didn't do much more than run his fingers up and down my arms and bare his teeth at me like he was gonna bite me, but he never did," Katsuki clarifies before Aizawa has a stroke or something. "Talked some shit about what he'd like to do to me. After a while, the lizard guy with the stupid sword got creeped out too and started keeping him away from me."
When Aizawa speaks next, it sounds like he's talking through gritted teeth. "What did he say to you exactly? As best as you can remember."
Katsuki wracks his brain for the specifics but they're hard to hold onto. He'd been so fucking tired by that point. "Uhhhhh, the gist of it was just how much he wanted to fuck me and that I was a pretty omega and I'd look even prettier carrying his pups."
Deku makes a strangled noise and Kirishima puts his fist through the side of a dumpster. Iida is audibly growling and his grip tightens hard enough to bruise, then releases abruptly as he realizes he's doing it. Katsuki can’t see Todoroki and Yaoyorozu but it’s suddenly very cold behind him, like some idiot candy cane is losing control of his quirk.
"You said Spinner, the villain with the lizard quirk, kept him away from you?" Aizawa asks.
"Spinner's a stupid name," Katsuki mutters, more to himself than Aizawa. "Yeah, he did. He was alright for a Stain fanboy. I think him and the guy with the hands were the only ones that actually thought I might join up with them? Budget Houdini seemed to be there just for a paycheck, Magnets didn't seem like she cared either way, the split personality guy didn't make any sense at all, Smoky was the same as he was at USJ, and the blonde bitch with the knives just wanted to stab me but at least that was less sexual than Toasty's shit."
"Did you ever speak to their leader? The one All Might fought?"
"No. Didn't even know about him until I got fucking teleported right in front of him."
"Okay," Aizawa says and takes a deep breath to steady himself. "Present Mic is on his way to you to get you home before your heat sets in properly. Are you doing alright on that front right now?"
"M'fine. Iida smells really good."
There's a pause, then Aizawa says, "Can you pass the phone to Iida for me?"
Katsuki lifts his head slightly and taps Iida's back. "Take this?"
Iida shifts Katsuki's weight so he can free up one hand and takes the phone. "Sensei?"
As close as they are, it's really not hard for Katsuki to hear what Aizawa is saying.
"How bad is he really?"
"I think the sleep deprivation is contributing more to his current behavior than anything else," Iida says stiffly. "He does need to go home as soon as possible but I don't think he's in danger of going into a full blown heat before we can get him there."
"Are you alright with being near him?"
"I'm fine, but I also already told Midoriya and Kirishima to separate us if they feel it's necessary."
"Mic is coming to get Bakugo and take both him and Midoriya back to Musutafu since they live in the same area. I contacted Tensei and he's sending a few people from Idaten to get the rest of you home."
"Tokyo is closer than UA is. If they get here first -"
"Then they'll wait with you," Aizawa says firmly. "And if Mic gets there first, he'll wait too. Trust me, none of you brats are escaping adult supervision."
Aizawa isn't kidding as it turns out. Present Mic must have already been on his way to Kamino before he got the call because he’s the one that arrives first. Katsuki's never been Present Mic's biggest fan or anything but he's an older omega and he looks at Katsuki with a total lack of judgment at finding him in Iida's arms.
"Here, lay him down in the backseat. I hear you haven't slept in awhile, lil' listener."
"We all woke up around the same time on the day he got kidnapped so he’s going on 60 hours without sleep by my count," Yaoyorozu says grimly.
"Oof, even Aizawa doesn't pull those kinds of all-nighters, kid," he says, folding down the passenger seat so Iida can set Katsuki down.
There's a split second where Katsuki really doesn't want to let go of Iida and another where Iida doesn't seem to want to let go of him either. But after a beat of tension, Iida loosens his grip and pulls himself away. He lifts the front seat back into place, then forces himself to walk a few paces away from the car. Deku flops into the passenger seat tiredly, leaving the door open while they wait for the group from Idaten.
Present Mic's car mostly smells like leather and hair gel but there's an underlying scent that makes him feel warm and safe. Not in the way Iida did, the kind of warmth and safety that made him think of a mate, but more like when he was a little kid coming home after getting into a fight and his dad lifted him onto the bathroom counter to clean him up and put hero-themed bandaids on his wounds. It’s parental, in a way he hasn’t felt in years.
Katsuki lays down, shoves his nose into the leather seats, and is asleep in seconds.