Chapter Text
Katsuki slouches in the armchair, his arms crossed tight over his chest and his knee bobbing. His jaw is clenched hard enough to make his teeth ache, and his usual sneer isn’t working to dissuade the school-issued therapist—the plaque on her door reads Komuro Anda — who is sitting on the couch across from his seat. She leans back against the corner of her stupid fucking couch, one of her legs crossed over the other and her expression relaxed and analytical, as if she knows everything about Katsuki just from his silence.
He doesn’t believe that, not for a damn second. She’s a fraud, but both Aizawa and the rat told him that he had to take at least three mandated sessions before they’d let him come back to training, just like after the war, and there’s no way in hell he’s going to fall behind more than he already has. So, here he is, glaring at the window and sneaking peeks at his therapist out of the corner of his eye; this is his third (and final, if he has anything to say about it) session, and he hasn’t said much more than I’m only here so they’ll let me go back to class and narrowly biting back insults while she pokes and prods at him with her soft voice.
The inside of his cheek is bitten raw from the effort, and he thinks he ought to be given some credit for keeping his head on for so long.
“You know,” Komuro starts, breaking their stretching, peaceful silence that had thus far gone on since he slouched into his usual chair, the one on the left, closer to the door, “part of these mandated sessions, Katsuki, is actually talking about the issues that put you in here.” She tilts her head back as he turns away from the window; the world outside is bright, only a few clouds marring the sky, and he knows on a day like this, there’s no way his class isn’t out at one of the gyms on campus doing hero training. The muscle in Katsuki’s jaw twitches, and pain shoots through his molars, but he only glares at her in response. She uncrosses her legs and leans forward, setting her clipboard down on the cushion next to her, revealing a blank page of lined paper with only his name and the date written on the top line.
The last two sessions have been the exact same. He opens her office door without knocking, he sits down in his chair, and he watches the hour pass by in the movement of the shadows outside her window. From this bland, cramped office, there isn’t much of a view other than a few of the trees on the front lawn of the school. You’d think a therapist for one of the most traumatized—sorry, one of the best —hero schools in the country would have a better office, but in Katsuki’s opinion, Komuro’s office is really fucking lame . She has knick-knacks on her shelves, framed degrees on her wall, and a digital clock that she makes sure to angle away from him during their sessions. She doesn’t even have blinds that work—the first fifteen minutes of his first session he spent watching Komuro wrestle with them and lose.
“I could put in a request to delay your return to classes if I don’t think you’re ready for it,” Komuro continues, her eyes fixed on his face. She’s a plain woman, completely unremarkable except for her big ears which stick out too far from her head and the way she never seems to blink. “To be frank, I’m not completely sure that you are ready to go back to classes—you haven’t exactly given me much to work with at all here, and you’ve been through more traumatic experiences in the past year than most people will ever go through in their lifetime. I’m concerned with how you’re handling these events, or, rather, not handling them, it seems.”
“Tch. I’m fucking dealing with them,” Katsuki bites, but Komuro smirks like she’s won the lottery, and it’s creepy as hell. Katsuki presses himself back into the chair, shifting his weight and resolutely avoiding her gaze.
“Are you? Because, Katsuki, we’ve sat in this office in silence for almost three hours this week. You’d rather glare at me and just get these sessions over with instead of learning tools to help all of this not feel so…terrible.” She seems to flounder for the right word, and she picks wrong because Katsuki can’t imagine how any of this—everything that’s happened since his enrollment in U.A. but most of all the shit with Deku and the war—could ever stop plaguing him like a chronic case of the worst flu on Earth.
“And what of it? I can spend my time here however I want—you told me that in my first session.” He lets himself smirk at this, thinking he’s won, that Komuro will let him go back to spending the next forty-five minutes stewing in the quiet. Komuro narrows her eyes at him, pressing her lips together, and he smirks harder.
You’d think he wouldn’t be so naive as to underestimate the therapist who deals with the most traumatized school in the country.
“That’s true, you’ve got me there, but do you want to know what I think?” She only pauses for a split second, probably because she knows he doesn’t give two shits about what she thinks, but she barrels on. “I think you’re scared. You’re avoiding even thinking about everything that’s happened to you, let alone talking about it, because you’re afraid of the feelings it’ll bring up.”
“I ain’t scared,” Katsuki growls, his fingers tightening in the grip he has on the sleeve of his t-shirt, his brow furrowed toward the bridge of his nose. “I’m not some kind of—I’m not a pussy.”
“I never said you were. Dealing with traumatic events is difficult, and I know you think these sessions are a punishment, but everyone here at U.A. wants to help you heal. Talking is the first step.” She reaches again for her clipboard and resumes her position leaning back, relaxed, against the armrest of her shitty, blue couch with its ugly floral pillows.
“I don’t need help. I’m gonna be the best, and I can do that on my own.”
“Plenty of pro heroes go to therapy. In fact, most of them do—a hero who knows how to keep himself from burning out is going to go a lot farther and a lot longer than one who doesn’t.” Komuro watches him like he’s the subject of some boring-ass nature documentary, and he shifts in his seat with a scoff without deeming her worthy of a response. “Why did you attack your classmate, Katsuki?”
The shift in topic takes him by such surprise that his mouth falls open, and all Katsuki can do is blink once, twice, before steeling himself again. He shakes his head and crosses his arms over himself again. He looks away, this time turning away from the window.
Komuro lets the question settle in the air between them, observing his side profile. Minutes tick by, but the silence is oppressive, now, and Katsuki swallows hard.
“I think I will put in that recommendation for another delay and more—”
“It wasn’t Deku,” Katsuki interrupts, curling his hands into his biceps hard enough that his nails dig into his muscle in stinging crescent moons. “It wasn’t Deku who I attacked.”
“And Deku is—”
“Midoriya Izuku. You already know that, I know you know who I attacked,” he sneers. “Aizawa told you everything about the two of us; don’t think I don’t know what’s in my own fucking file. I don’t want to be treated like a clueless fucking kid—I’ll only talk if you knock that shit off.” Komuro holds up her hands in a mock surrender and nods.
“Okay, okay. I’ll cut the therapist-bullshit.” Katsuki glances away from her face and nods slowly before swallowing again. His hands shake where he has them tucked into himself, and the hour drags by slower than either of the other sessions. “So, you attacked Midoriya—Deku, you called him.”
“It wasn’t him, I already said that. Maybe I’d talk more if you actually fucking listened to me.” He’s being unfair, and he knows it, but Katsuki won’t apologize, not when he already wants to scream and rip out his hair and explode the stupid fucking clock that Komuro turned away from him when he threw open the door.
“I’m just trying to understand. You’re not making a lot of sense.” Her pen is poised over the piece of paper that only has his name on it and the date.
“You can’t, like, tell anyone about anything I say in here, can you? Or I can sue your ass, right?” Katsuki eyes her, wary. Talking about Deku without revealing too much would be like navigating a minefield, except the entire earth would be made out of one big-ass mine in that scenario. He’s navigated a minefield before, and Deku used him as a springboard, so the analogy fits like a pair of pants that are a size too small. A little too well, if you asked Katsuki.
Komuro nods, quirks a brow. “Everything you say to me in this room stays between us. Unless you’re a danger to yourself or others, in which case I will need to notify someone, but I would refrain from giving out details even if that were the case. You can trust me.”
When Katsuki says nothing, letting the silence stretch as he tries to delay it another moment, Komuro makes a vague gesture that tells him to get a move on. He drags in a deep, aching breath.
“Deku isn’t…his Quirk, there are people that live in his head. He calls them the vestiges, and they’re like ghosts, kind of. Not kind of—they’re dead, but their souls or whatever the fuck are attached to Deku’s Quirk, and usually, it’s okay. They talk to him, give him advice or some shit, but he’s still him, but then we got—they took us from the shitty park, while we were cleaning, and it was such a, it was such a nice day.” Katsuki shifts his weight where he sits and blows out a breath. There are goosebumps breaking out over his arms, but he isn’t cold. “When I woke up, he was already roughed up because he’s a fucking idiot, and I hated him for it, but I—he thinks he’s such a terrible hero, but—and then that girl came in and she told us about her Quirk.” Katsuki trails off, chest burning and head bowed toward his lap.
“What was her Quirk, Katsuki?”
“She called it Fracture. Deku was screaming, I’ve never heard a sound like that. He was fucking screaming , and then he was Nana.”
“That’s one of the…ghosts?” Komuro asks, and she hasn’t written any of this shit down because apparently she’s just as fucking useless as Katsuki thought. He nods at his lap and licks his lips. “Is that who you attacked in class?”
“No. That was Daigoro. He—he wasn’t fucking paying attention in class. He told me—he told me how he would just take the test for Deku, but that test is…Deku has to be back by then, he has to be, and I just got so fucking—I tackled him out of his desk, and I looked down, and it was Deku’s face, but I didn’t even care because it wasn’t him . I-I still wanted to hit him, even after everything because it was in his eyes, that it wasn’t him.” He sees the image of it in the backs of his eyelids, but time and guilt has warped it; Deku’s eyes are full of fear, and Katsuki is burning him up, devouring Deku in his own rage.
To avoid seeing the scene play out all over again, this time more fucked up than the last, Katsuki keeps his eyes open until they burn, and his vision blurs. He knuckles at where his eyes meet the side of his nose and sniffs hard, but he’s not fucking crying.
“Have you had issues with this Daigoro before?”
“Tch. Yeah, he’s a fuckin’ asshole. The little pissant hates me, but that’s fine by me because he can fuck off and die— again for all I care.” Katsuki rolls his eyes and sneers at a spot on the carpet, his palms popping uncontrollably. “He talks too much shit.”
“What sort of…shit would that be, then?” Komuro gives him an open, probing look, and Katsuki wants to tell her to fuck off, to butt out, to leave him alone, but her threat echoes in the back of his mind. He won’t get held back.
And he’s not scared—he’s not scared of anything.
“He told me I don’t know how to protect Deku, but the vestiges—he told me all this bullshit about how they know how to protect him, but they’re the ones fucking him up, and they’re ruining him. But,” Katsuki cuts himself off, blinking furiously and chewing on the inside of his cheek.
This is fucking stupid. He doesn’t feel healed at all.
“But?” Komuro prompts.
“But—if Daigoro’s right,” Katsuki starts, talking so slow that it’s painful, he has to force the words out and it aches like a rotting tooth that someone is poking with a fucking hammer, “if he’s right, and they can protect him better than I can, and they’re so terrible at it, then— then fucking what ? Why couldn’t I protect him?” Katsuki growls and staggers up off his seat, tugging at his hair. The inside of his mouth tastes like iron. He paces in front of Komuro for a minute before stopping in his tracks and letting out a wordless yell. “I hate—I fucking want Deku back!”
“It’s only natural to miss a friend in a situation like this,” Komuro tells him in that terrible, soft voice of hers, and it only pisses Katsuki off more.
“Deku and I aren’t friends ,” he spits because the word doesn’t sit right with him. It’s too—it’s not enough, for everything they’ve been through. Katsuki shakes his head and huffs, his chest heaving.
“You were right, you know. I do have your file, and I’ve reviewed everything in it. I think it would be helpful for you to consider how much of that file revolves around Midoriya, truly. And I’m sure if he were in that seat, and if I read his file, I’d see that just as much of him and his story revolves around you. That sounds like friends to me, Katsuki.”
She doesn’t fucking get it. Of course she doesn’t—she’s useless, and Katsuki hates her, and he wants to blow up her stupid face and her lame ass office, but he clenches his fists and keeps himself from doing anything stupid.
“I’m fucking done talking now. Clear me to go back.”
Komuro stares at him a moment longer before glancing at the clock, and she signs off on his clearance without another word, and he lets the door slam closed behind him on his way out. She doesn’t say anything about the thirteen minutes left in the session.
* * * *
Katsuki thrusts the slip clearing him for training into Aizawa’s line of sight, all but daring him to dispute it. He did his fucking three hours (almost) of mandated therapy, and he even spilled his guts like a little bitch while he was there, which was more than he ever wanted to do, but here he is.
Aizawa gingerly takes the slip of paper, offering Katsuki a strange look. “Did you…run here?” Katsuki is sweating under the arms, and his chest heaves even as he places his hands on his knees to catch his breath—god, is everyone at this school fucking stupid?
“Let me in on this training, sensei,” he says, and he means for it to sound like a demand, but it borders on begging instead. One therapy session spent actually talking and suddenly he’s begging for stuff. Ugh.
Aizawa levels him with a flat look, glancing between Katsuki’s reddened face and the crumpled slip of paper.
“Komuro’s office is across campus, Bakugou. And I know you wouldn’t risk unsupervised, unsanctioned Quirk usage so soon after a suspension.” They narrow their eyes at each other.
“Yeah, I fucking ran here—is that what you want to hear, old man, or are your observational skills failing you? Just let me train with the class, god .” He shakes off the exertion from—yes, from running the entire way across campus, from Komuro’s lame ass office to the observation deck over Ground Gamma, where he knew he’d find Aizawa. He’d scared more than one first-year on his way here, all but pushing them out of the way, but they need the adversity. God knows the first-years this year have had it too easy, and if he can lay them out on their asses by running near them, they’ll never last in the hero course.
He did everyone a fucking favor by running here, if anything.
Aizawa stuffs the slip into one of his pockets and tucks his face away in the top of his scarf, turning his eyes toward the big windows that look out over the training grounds. Katsuki sees moving shadows, barely more than colorful blobs against the bleak training ground at this distance. It’s his class, more than likely doing a battle and rescue simulation, and Katsuki grits his teeth, his jaw twinging in irritation. Something under his skin itches with the need to get in there, to burn off the energy that’s been building since he tackled Daigoro to the ground in the middle of class, to get caught up again. Realistically, there’s only so much progress the extras can make over the span of a week, but Katsuki isn’t going to let Icy Hot of all people overtake him in the ranks after graduation all because of a measly week. Katsuki won’t accept any reason to not be number one.
“I think it would be better if we just watched, Bakugou,” Aizawa murmurs, and Katsuki growls under his breath, rolling his eyes. There’s no use arguing, even with how much he wants to, how much he needs to, but if anyone will hear out his case, it’s definitely not Aizawa, so Katsuki steps forward, closer to the big windows without another word. To the side, there are countless TV monitors, all of them offering a closer, clearer view of the training ground.
Katsuki focuses first on the monitors rather than the viewing window. Ears is crouched in one of the pixelated pictures, her eyes closed and her head bowed as she presses her jack into a wall. Ponytail flits past another camera without sparing it a second glance, her stomach glowing as she creates god-knows-what out of nothing, and Shitty Hair follows almost immediately behind her, obviously on the offense if the determined smile Katsuki catches on his face is any indication.
Moron.
But Katsuki can’t help but watch raptly as his classmates fight and duel and defend, and some of the monitors show training dummies left for someone to rescue. He twitches with every attempted blow, his breathing going short with anticipation and his heart pounding against his ribs as if he’s right there in the fray with them.
He wants to be in there, fuck.
“If you’re not letting me join because they’ve already started, then that’s fucking—”
“That’s not why, Bakugou,” Aizawa interrupts, and his eyes never leave the window. Katsuki sees strings of tape fly out over the southwest quadrant of the training grounds out of the corner of his eye. “I figured it would do you better to watch after being out for so long, that’s all.” Aizawa shrugs, and Katsuki squints at him.
“Says the guy who threw us into competition with each other the day we started here.” Aizawa heaves a sigh and finally, finally deems Katsuki worthy of his full attention, dragging his eyes away from the observation deck windows. The bottom half of his face is still hidden from view, tucked away in the folds of his scarf. “I call bullshit, sensei.”
“Language, Bakugou,” Aizawa sighs, but they both know it’s more of a pretense than anything. Aizawa blows out another breath, this time more resigned. Tired.
Katsuki’s only been back for all of two minutes—what the hell does he have to be tired about?
“I could only hold Principal Nezu off for so long,” Aizawa admits after a long stretch of Katsuki holding his ground, his arms crossed over his chest and his expression expectant. No way in hell Aizawa would hold him back from training without some sort of motive, and he’ll be the judge of whether that motive is good enough or if it’s shit. “He’s twisting my arm, and…he threatened to take Midoriya’s training into his own hands if I didn’t include him in today’s exercise, and that is—trust me. Training under Nezu is the worst case scenario.”
“So…Deku’s here?” Katsuki asks, the insides of his mouth going dry and cottony. It feels like such a stupid question; Deku’s rarely anywhere lately, and they both know it. It aches like a rotting tooth, and he’s pressing his tongue into it until he tastes blood.
Except he’s never actually had a cavity—he’s above that, too good for something as trivial as bad brushing habits—so he’s not actually sure that’s a good or proper analogy.
“Yes.” Aizawa eyes him for another long moment, and his expression is unreadable, or Katsuki is too distracted by the knowledge that somewhere out in the bleak cityscape, Deku (or whoever’s decided to make an appearance today) is jumping around and fighting and probably wearing that stupid, gritted-teeth smile the nerd insists on making his brand. Katsuki’s heart jumps at the thought. “He’s been doing okay lately. Have some faith in him.”
“It’s not him I don’t trust,” Katsuki grumbles, glancing back through the windows. One of the buildings below him lights up with golden sparks of electricity, and Katsuki presses his lips into a thin line.
“Have some faith in your classmates, then,” Aizawa amends.
“It’s not them either,” he scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Deku could take any one of them with an arm tied behind his back—no, both arms tied behind his back, and both of us fuckin’ know it.”
“The vestiges.”
“Obviously,” Katsuki bites, but it lacks his usual fire. Aizawa hums in vague agreement.
“He’ll be okay, Bakugou. You just—”
“I’ve done enough therapy for today, thanks though,” Katsuki snarks. He turns back to the TV monitors, this time searching for something, someone. He’s grown enough in the past few weeks to admit to himself that he’s looking for Deku now that he knows he’s here, that he might catch a glimpse of him in action or a glimpse of him at all. Anything will do at this point.
He searches and searches, but he comes up empty. No green lightning, green hair, or stupid freckles on any of the screens. Damn it. He skims through the flickering, pixelated pictures again for good measure.
“You gonna let me train now or what? Huh?” Katsuki adds without looking away from the screens. From the corner of his eye, he watches Aizawa glance at his watch.
“All Might and Recovery Girl are on the way by now. Just wait for them to get here before you go, all right?” Katsuki rolls his eyes, but he notably doesn’t complain; he’s itching to get a look at Deku on one of the monitors before he jumps into the exercise. If the strange look Aizawa sends him is any indication, Katsuki’s silence is more telling than he thought.
Aizawa watches the extras fight it out through the window, his face tucked into his scarf and his hands clasped behind his back. He accepts Katsuki’s silence and says nothing more about Deku or the training or his suspension, and Katsuki is glad for it until the door to the observation deck bursts open. All Might stands on the other side, slouched over and coughing into his fist at his own dramatics, and Recovery Girl shakes her head by his side and thumps him on the back with the heel of her hand.
“Good morning, Aizawa,” she greets, hobbling past All Might’s decrepit figure and taking her place at Aizawa’s side in front of the windows.
“Bakugou, my boy,” All Might greets in a hoarse murmur as he wipes blood and spit from the corner of his mouth. He slaps Katsuki on the shoulder and nearly sends him sprawling with his unnatural, surprising strength, but he keeps his feet under him and only stumbles. “Thought you’d be eager to get back into training after getting cleared, but observation is not a bad choice, either!” All Might offers him a wide smile and jerks his head toward the window.
“Aizawa told me to wait for you to show your face,” Katsuki grunts. “Sure took your time, but now—”
Before Katsuki can continue, there is movement just outside the observation deck, a green blur flitting past closer to the deck than any of the other extras have come so far, and Katsuki’s jaw drops at the sight, his eyes tracking the blur like magnets. He couldn’t look away even if he wanted to. All Might’s hand tightens where it rests on his shoulder.
Deku seems to freeze mid-air, green lightning bouncing off his skin, and he turns to wave through the window. Cheeky shit. But he catches Katsuki’s eyes through the glass, and it must take him by surprise if the bug-eyed, gaping expression his smile drops into is anything to go by.
“Kacchan!” he mouths—or yells, maybe, but the glass is too thick to let any sound through. Katsuki goes all warm and embarrassingly fluttery inside at the sight of him because this is Deku, surely, and that’s all that matters.
But the fluttery-warm feeling crumbles to pieces, revealing horror as Deku’s eyes move to the figure behind Katsuki, and his expression shifts again. This time, instead of surprise, his face goes blank and pained in the same way it has so many times since their kidnapping. Katsuki all but watches the fight in Deku’s eyes, one of the vestiges clawing their way to the surface, shoving Deku out of the way like some schoolyard bully, but in the split second of flickering microexpressions, the green lightning flickers and dies out, and gravity takes hold of Deku’s body.
He plummets out of sight like a bag of boulders, all horrifyingly dead weight, falling through the nearly fifty-feet of open air between the observation windows and the ground below. All Might’s fingers curl into Katsuki’s shoulder like claws, hard enough to hurt, and he’ll more than likely have finger-shaped bruises carved into his skin later tonight, but his ears are ringing and between one blink and the next, Katsuki is blasting his way down the hall, the observation deck door slamming against the wall in his wake.
By the time Katsuki makes it to Deku’s side, the dust is already settling around him and the crater his body made.
“Oh god, oh my fucking god,” Katsuki mutters, falling to his knees and ghosting his hands over Deku’s prone, frail form. His hero costume is torn around scrapes, and one of his legs is bent out of shape in a way that has Katsuki swallowing back an acidic nausea. Dust covers the nerd’s skin, hiding his freckles and turning his hair a brackish shade of gray in a garish mockery of how he might look if he lives to see the age of forty.
Aizawa kneels on the other side of the crater, and Katsuki offers him a wide-eyed look, his lips parted and his knees aching where shattered rocks dig into his uniform pants.
“Bakugou—”
All Might reaches them in the same moment, out of breath and heaving and moving faster than Katsuki’s seen him move since the Kamino fight, and as he leans over Deku’s body, the nerd gasps and jerks, his eyes snapping open. Katsuki lets out a wordless yell and falls back on his ass as the nerd lets out a long breath and blinks the dust out of his eyes.
When Katsuki manages to sit up again, Deku is shifting amid the rubble around him without so much as a wince or a gasp despite the blood matting his hair to the side of his head and the clicking noise that may or may not be coming from the nerd’s bulging shoulder, not to mention his broken leg and whatever else is broken which Katsuki can’t see.
He’s wearing a small smile, glancing up at All Might, and Katsuki can’t help the vision of Deku, skinny as hell with a big-ass head, in his younger years, his knees scraped up but a smile on his face despite his red-rimmed eyes, muttering Kacchan, so cool!
Except this time, Deku mutters something that sounds like, “ Toshinori .”
Katsuki sees red.
“Nana,” he murmurs, deceptively calm. Deku’s eyes flit toward him, then back toward All Might. Katsuki draws in a long, whistling breath, his palms crackling. “I trusted you. What the fuck—I trusted you!” He explodes, then, but he is too angry to even lunge for Deku and instead lets off two big explosions and clutches at his own head, tugging at his hair. “I trusted you to keep him fucking safe because none of the others would, and you turn around and you almost get him killed becuase you want to fucking talk to All Might ? You can’t fucking take care of him—none of you can—you can’t keep him safe because you don’t care about him, not like I do! I hate you—I’ll kill you! ” His voice is hoarse and too loud in his own ears, and his face is wet. He only notices because the wind blows, and his cheeks are cold and damp, and his vision is blurry. “Just let him back into his body— please . Please, please, please. Fucking—”
Katsuki drops to his knees again, this time feet away from Deku’s body. He wraps his arms around himself, cradling himself and breathing hard. Deku, All Might, and Aizawa stare at him, and he feels so insane, and it only serves to piss him off more, but he’s too tired to be angry anymore.
He thinks of Komuro, and he hates her. He hates everyone, probably, even himself, not for the first time since all of this started.
“Maybe I am fucking selfish for wanting him back, but at least I’m not getting him fucking killed,” he spits, and Recovery Girl finally catches up to them, her cane thumping on the crumbled asphalt, and she pushes Aizawa and All Might to the side, muttering to herself and fumbling to get to the nerd’s side. All the while, Nana stares at Katsuki, her eyes wide and apologetic. Katsuki can’t stand the sight, so he turns away.
“Bakugou,” she starts, but Katsuki shakes his head.
“Fuck off,” he whispers, but there is no feeling in it. No bite, no fire, nothing.
“I need to heal Midoriya before we move his body,” Recovery Girl interrupts, “so you’ll need to give him control again. We will need to be quick with this, or he will be in more pain than I will be able to manage for him, okay?” Nana nods, her eyes downcast, and several of the old bitch’s med-bots roll to the edge of the crater, ready to cart Deku’s body away.
Katsuki doesn’t let himself watch, but his hands tighten on his biceps at the sound of Deku’s agonized groan. He squeezes his eyes closed and doesn’t open them again until Recovery Girl leaves with her bots and Deku on the stretcher between them.
* * * *
“Yo, Bakubro! We’re gonna go hit up the medbay to see how Midobro is doing.” Shitty Hair pounds his fist against Katsuki’s door again for good measure, as if Katsuki didn’t hear his loud, annoying ass voice the first time.
“Fuck off ,” Katsuki yells back, trailing it with a set of increasingly threatening explosions.
“Jeez, okay, man, we get it,” Shitty Hair grumbles, and Katsuki listens as his footsteps recede. Katsuki lays on his bed with an arm tucked under his head and blows out a breath.
None of this should’ve happened. If the nerd hadn’t been so damn selfless, letting Katsuki get off easy when they were both strung up like pigs in that little concrete box of a room—if this could even be considered getting off easy with the amount of heartache it’s caused him—everything would be fine.
He’s lying to himself; Deku’s not the one Katsuki’s mad at. It’s not his fault, and Katsuki knows it. Deku can’t help but be so self-sacrificing—he’s been like that since forever, or at least since Katsuki started pushing him and everyone else around himself down. So maybe this is Katsuki’s fault, in the end, it’s all just one, big fucked up domino effect. Katsuki made Deku the way that he is, and he threw himself in front of Robo Bitch and her cronies, and now here they are. Deku’s in the medbay for the billionth time, and Katsuki is glaring holes into his ceiling as the sun sets over this shitty ass day.
Tomorrow will be better. He tries to tell himself that, but he’s not sure if he even believes it.
Enough time passes (all of it spent stewing on Katsuki’s part) that Shitty Hair returns to his door, this time knocking instead of pounding and standing outside in silence for a long moment.
“Midoriya’s okay,” he says, finally. “They’re gonna keep him for a while longer to keep an eye on him, you know, but I thought you’d like to know. He’s okay—Recovery Girl said she got most of his injuries in that first kiss, so he’s all good now. Like I said, just thought you’d like to know.” Shitty Hair’s shadow lingers in the crack under Katsuki’s door for another minute before the idiot sighs and retreats into his own room.
Everyone else gives Katsuki’s door a wide, wide berth, so wide he can’t hear anyone else pass by, not by their footsteps or by their paused conversations. He feels like a haunted house, the sort of local legend that even the dumbest kids steer clear of.
Or a bomb. That might be the better comparison, considering everything.
The first set of footsteps he hears, hours after Shitty Hair’s door closed behind him, Katsuki would know anywhere. Soft, hesitant steps coming closer to his door from the direction of the elevator—Katsuki would give the person on the other side shit for using the elevator over the stairs if the image of Deku’s twisted, broken leg wasn’t burnt into the backs of his eyelids.
He heaves himself off his desolate nest of blankets stacked on his bed with a groan, and he opens the door before the other person can knock.
It’s Deku, or Deku’s body. Katsuki knew it before he opened the door because he knows Deku better than he knows himself, better than he knows his own Quirk. What’s that bullshit Komuro spewed at him? Their stories are intertwined, or whatever? Katsuki is starting to think that might be true, that might’ve been the only truthful thing Komuro said to him in all of their sessions together.
“Who the fuck are you now?” Katsuki bites, keeping his voice low to keep all the other extras (Shitty Hair especially) off his ass. Deku gives him a surprised look, his hair wild but clean of dust and rubble, and he blinks twice before stuttering.
“I’m…Mid—Iz—I’m Deku,” he fumbles, waving his arms in the space between himself and Katsuki’s door and Katsuki. Deku’s wearing a pair of plain, nondescript pajamas, probably from the medbay. They’re not at all Deku’s style, but they’re leagues better than another hospital gown.
“Mhm,” Katsuki hums. “For how long?”
Deku’s brows draw together over the bridge of his nose. “Is that what this is about?”
“Fuck’s that supposed to mean, huh?” Katsuki glares at him, squaring his shoulders at the nerd’s vague response. It sounded almost like an insult, somehow.
“Just let me in, Kacchan.” Deku squares his shoulders right back, working his jaw in that mulishly stubborn way of his.
“For how long, Deku—answer the damn question.” Katsuki isn’t quite sure why it’s so important that Deku tells him, but there is a desperate edge to his voice, and Deku must recognize it because his eyes soften without caving from his headstrong posture.
“For now . Isn’t that enough?” And Katsuki doesn’t have anything good enough to argue against that, so he opens his door a little wider, and Deku slips in, brushing against Katsuki’s body on his way past. He is warm and solid, and he smells like antiseptic and scentless shampoo and Recovery Girl’s perfume.
Katsuki closes the door softly behind him, trapping him and Deku in the confines of his room. Deku, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind. He observes Katsuki’s room like it’s his first time seeing it, even though he’s been in here countless times, but Katsuki doesn’t interrupt, even as Deku runs his fingers over the indentation of Katsuki’s body in his mess of sheets and blankets.
The nerd sits on the edge of the bed gingerly, fiddling with his own fingers and looking up at Katsuki through his bangs.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he accuses, but there’s no animosity in it. Deku says it like it’s fact, and it might as well be. “Or, you’re not yourself around me. You haven’t been, not since…”
“Can you fuckin’ blame me?” Katsuki huffs. “How can I be the same around you when you aren’t you ?”
“All I ever wanted when I was here was you, Kacchan,” Deku hisses. There’s a spark in his eye, but he doesn’t get up off of Katsuki’s bed. He stays on the lower ground, slouching into himself, and it pisses Katsuki off. “I just wanted to see you, make sure you were okay. I barely remember anything after that girl started touching me, and suddenly I open my eyes, and you’re gone, and days have passed. Everyone tells me what happened, and they say you’re okay, but I need to see it with my own eyes, but you won’t see me. Even when I see you, it’s like you just look right through me!” Finally, Deku throws his hands up, exasperated.
“I couldn’t, Deku.” Katsuki clenches his jaw and glances away.
“Why not ? I needed you.”
“No, you didn’t,” he insists, and he wishes Deku would understand, would let it go. For the first time, he wishes one of the vestiges would take over so Katsuki could go back to brooding instead of having this conversation.
“Why couldn’t you see me? Why couldn’t you be around me?” There’s a desperate, teary edge to Deku’s voice that hollows out part of Katsuki’s chest.
“Because I couldn’t watch you…I couldn’t see you like that anymore, all right? You weren’t you, and it fucking hurt like hell because—because,” Katsuki trails off, unwilling to finish the thought.
The fight drains out of Deku’s shoulders like sand through his fingers. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t fucking apologize, dumbass.”
“Well I am. I’m sorry. I know it was…hard.” Katsuki lets out a humorless laugh.
“You can fucking say that again, nerd. It was—one minute, you’d be here, but then you’d go all slack, and you’d jerk, and your eyes…you’d be someone else, and I was the only one who noticed. I hated it. I wanted you back, but the vestiges—god, they—”
“I could hear them. And you. While I was in there,” Deku interrupts, his voice soft. “They were wrong, Kacchan.” Deku stands, finally, and he crosses the room to stand in front of Katsuki. “Daigoro has a lot of pent up energy, and it wasn’t fair for him to say those things to you. He was wrong, and I don’t blame you for punching him—actually, thanks for punching him. He deserved that.”
“You didn’t,” Katsuki says, miserable.
“That doesn’t matter. He deserved it because he was wrong about you. You are the only person who has ever made me feel safe, Kacchan.” Deku says it with all the sincerity in the world, but it makes no sense. Katsuki shakes his head, numb, and Deku grabs him by the sides of his face to keep him still. “Why do you think Hikage always sought you out? Danger Sense is only ever quiet when I’m with you.” Deku smiles, and it’s blinding, but it falls after a second. “I ran away to protect you because I couldn’t lose you. It was dumb—I wasn’t thinking.”
“Fucking obviously,” Katsuki tells him with an eye roll. “I could’ve told you that, dumbass.”
“You would’ve protected me just fine during the war, Kacchan. You’re amazing like that—I would’ve been safe. But I knew I couldn’t protect you . I was too weak. That’s what I was worried about.”
Katsuki gapes at him for a long moment, long enough that Deku turns red and averts his eyes.
Then, Katsuki smacks him up the back of his head with a growl.
“Ow! Kacchan!” Deku shouts, indignant and rubbing where he got hit.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Katsuki answers.
“Mean!” Deku takes him by the arms and shakes him like that’ll drive his point home. “We were having a moment! I’m trying to convince you that you’re good at keeping me safe, and you hit me!”
“Whiny bitch.” Katsuki rolls his eyes, but he catches sight of Deku’s face afterwards, and it makes something in his chest twinge painfully. “Are they going to come back? The vestiges?”
Deku offers him a look that verges on pitying, but he shakes his head. “Nana agreed to keep them all in check, and they returned to their plane.”
“Fucking— good, ” Katsuki huffs.
“It probably gets boring being stuck in my head, Kacchan.” Deku pauses. “Nana wanted me to tell you that the job of protecting me and keeping me safe goes back to you. I have to agree with her.” Katsuki isn’t quite sure he agrees, not yet, not after weeks of beating himself up. But he’ll get there, the more he hears it coming from Deku’s mouth with Deku and only Deku behind the eyes.
“She’s looking down on you, Deku—you can take care of yourself.”
“The vestiges will be there to save me if I ever need it, then,” Deku acquiesces with a sage nod.
“Tch. That’s my job. They can fuck right off.” Deku giggles and shakes his head, and he looks so pretty in the dim light of Katsuki’s bedroom. “My therapist called us friends, and it pissed me off,” he blurts out, and his face goes hot with his blush. Deku’s brows draw together over the bridge of his nose again, and his hands tighten on Katsuki’s biceps. Katsuki can’t look him in the eye.
“Do you—are we not?” His voice is underlined with hurt, but the shitty nerd is obviously trying to cover it. “Hold on, you have a therapist?”
“That’s not—” Katsuki shakes his head and presses his lips together into a thin line. “It pissed me off because she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand us—she spouted all this bullshit about how my file, so much of it revolves around you. And our stories, whatever the fuck, they’re, like, intertwined, I guess.” His face is on fire, like if he ignited his hands in the biggest AP shots he possibly could. That’s what his skin feels like, all the way up to the tips of his ears and down the back of his neck.
“Kacchan…” Deku trails off, but he sounds like he knows. Of course he knows what Katsuki is trying to say—it’s Deku.
“I think she was right, but it pissed me off that she said we were friends.” Katsuki squeezes his eyes closed; admitting this is too much, but admitting it to Deku’s face…Katsuki might just die on the spot. “And I think—I think—”
Deku cuts him off, brushing his hands up Katsuki’s biceps to his shoulders to his neck to the sides of his face again, cupping his cheeks, and Katsuki leans into the touch, hot even against his own hot skin. His fingers tighten around Deku’s t-shirt, twitching and nervous.
“You think?”
“I think—”
But Deku cuts him off again, that asshole, this time by pulling Katsuki closer and brushing his lips over Katsuki’s. It barely classifies as a touch, let alone a kiss, but it’s perfect. Katsuki throws caution to the wind and kisses Deku, really kisses him, none of that bitch ass lip-brushing bullshit. Deku’s lips are chapped, and his shirt wrinkles under Katsuki’s hands, but Deku only presses closer, his fingers brushing the edge of Katsuki’s hairline in front of his ears.
Deku smiles against him, and it’s a good feeling. If Katsuki were dorkier, he might call it wonderful or amazing or any other synonym, but he’s not a dork, not even for this dork who he’s sharing air (and spit) with and who’s looking at him through half-lidded eyes and blushing like a fucking school girl.
“You think…” Deku prompts again, and Katsuki’s brain is fried because he just kissed the only person who’s ever mattered to him, even when he thought he hated him, and this is the only place he’s ever needed to be.
“I think I want you to kiss me again,” he murmurs without thinking, and shit, maybe he is a fucking dork because what the hell was that? Even Deku laughs at him, his eyes bright and teasing, and Katsuki growls and tries to squirm out of his hold.
“No, no, Kacchan,” Deku begs, still giggling but keeping his hold on Katsuki even as he scowls. “I’ll kiss you again, c’mere!”
“No. I don’t want a kiss from you anymore, asshole. Quit fucking laughing at me.”
“It was cute! I liked kissing Kacchan, too—let me do it again! Please, Kacchan, please!” Katsuki levels him with an unimpressed look to match Deku’s blinding smile, and he stops struggling.
Deku kisses him again, and it’s perfect—it’s perfect, and it’s Deku. Only Deku.