Chapter Text
First law of thermodynamics: Increase in the internal energy of a system in a process is given by the sum of the heat that flows into the system and the work done on the system in this process.
If I go crazy, then will you still call me Superman?
If I’m alive and well, will you be there and holding my hand?
I’ll keep you by my side with my superhuman might
Kryptonite
3 Doors Down – Kryptonite
Good.
Katsuki inhaled slowly and exhaled just as slowly, like he was about to bench press. He arched his back. Lowered himself. The cock slid into him all the way, so deep it made his stomach lurch... At the same time, his dumb body was absolutely convinced this was the only correct course of action, and that he was doing everything right. Midoriya also looked at him with approval. Very few things infuriated Katsuki as much as that I-will-always-support-you mug, especially when its owner was currently dick drilling Katsuki’s butt hole. Midoriya could take that support and shove it up his own ass... though somehow it was always Katsuki’s ass that ended up getting shoved up.
Katsuki shut his eyes to avoid getting distracted. He lifted himself up, his legs vibrating with tension – they clearly hated the soft mattress they had to push against – and lowered himself back down. There it was. That familiar spark. He hadn’t prepared himself properly and hadn’t let Midoriya do it either. Everything felt too tight. Too raw. Too fucking aware.
Katsuki swallowed hard, fingers biting into the upholstered headboard. Catching the moment when Katsuki’s elbows lifted, Midoriya grabbed his sides like he was about to reenact some explicit hentai panel and spear him clean through. It probably looked hot as hell. In reality, it was ticklish as fuck. Katsuki squirmed, hissed, tore one hand free, and fisted Midoriya’s hair hard enough to get the message across. Midoriya guessed Katsuki didn’t appreciate his initiative, and moved his palms to Katsuki’s hips.
Communication! And some would say Katsuki was incapable of it. Bullshit! He was just efficient. And conserving oxygen. Earlier that day, when he'd shown up, their entire conversation with Midoriya had been reduced to two sentences: “Shut up. Pants off”. Midoriya had shut up and had taken his pants off. After that, there had been no time for discussion, which made the whole information exchange a massive fucking success.
Just like that. Good.
Katsuki just wanted to get fucked and postpone any analysis until later, but Midoriya had a pathological need to complicate things. His hands kept roaming – over Katsuki’s ass, his lower back, anywhere he could reach – before pulling him closer. The second Katsuki leaned forward even a little, Midoriya grabbed his chin and kissed him. Their kissing would always turn into some chaotic mess of teeth, shoving, and breathless wrestling, so for a while they just knocked foreheads and tried to breathe, failing miserably and attempting to devour each other alive instead. Katsuki had explicitly told Midoriya – multiple times – not to kiss him. Not because of the biting, but because of the idea of kissing itself (of course, he explained it all in different words). Needless to say, the nerd ignored that completely: “But I like kissing you”.
What a fucking idiot.
Midoriya slid down the headboard he’d been leaning against until his face ended up under Katsuki’s chest. Naturally, Midoriya went straight for Katsuki’s nipples, licking them with determined enthusiasm. To be fair, they weren’t particularly sensitive, but Katsuki still very much enjoyed the sight of Midoriya trying so hard. And then, like the overachiever he was, Midoriya tried even harder, resting his feet on the bed and starting to work his hips, driving upward fast and forceful to match Katsuki’s movements. Now with each friction the cock inside him slammed his prostate. Katsuki went rigid with it – sharp, overwhelming pleasure locking him in place. He slumped forward, breathing rough and uneven, clenching helplessly around what Midoriya was giving him and taking all of it without argument. One hand stayed death-gripped on the headboard. His sloppy, uncontrolled movements made the bed bounce, legs scraping against the laminate. The frame creaked, begging for mercy. Midoriya, apparently, couldn’t care less that he would soon have nothing to sleep on. He just stared up at Katsuki – unblinking, intent, borderline unsettling.
Katsuki’s muscles spasmed, sweet and painful all at once. Sweat slid down his neck. Blood thundered in his ears like some overdramatic movie sound effect, drowning out everything else. Someone let out a low, wrecked groan – probably him. Hard to say. He didn’t understand what he was doing, what was happening to him, and he felt stunned. His cock, trapped between their bodies, was rubbing against Midoriya’s stomach – good, but not quite enough. He was so close now. He only needed a few more solid thrusts to finally...
That was when Midoriya decided to stop.
“Am I hurting you?” he whispered right into Katsuki’s ear. The roar of blood reluctantly let the words through its veil; it took Katsuki a whole second to process them.
He bounced frantically, urging Midoriya: come on, it’s time for fucking, not for talking. His ass throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Oh, for fuck’s sake! It wouldn’t even take him long to...
Midoriya had never, in his life, been good at taking a hint. Instead, he groped Katsuki’s forearms with his huge hands, like this was some kind of supportive gesture:
“I thought I was hurting you.”
Katsuki wasn’t fucking hurt at all! And even if he were, then who the fuck cared, he wanted to cum so bad – preferably without a goddamn emotional check-in. He completely forgot that he was a prodigy of communication, an incredible savant, capable of conveying his will with a single turn of his eyeball. Words vanished. His head went blank, primal, blissfully free of concepts. At that particular moment Katsuki didn’t know how to explain to Midoriya what he really wanted. Growling in pure frustration, Katsuki slapped his hand over Midoriya’s mouth and nose and started riding his dick like he was chasing a qualifying standard. This was exactly why the gym was his religion. Katsuki could go this hard and still walk tomorrow.
Soon it was over: Katsuki curled in on himself, clinging to Midoriya, sank his teeth into Midoriya’s unscarred shoulder to keep from screaming, and came. That was it – all his strength just left him. He loosened his grip on Midoriya’s face, finally letting him breathe again. Katsuki unclenched his jaw and and limply rested his chin on the bite mark, right where he had drooled all over. He should have gotten off Midoriya and vamoosed immidiately. That was the normal protocol. Instead, Katsuki was still sitting on top, heavy and boneless, while Midoriya wrapped both arms around him, and the bittersweet feelings it awoke in Katsuki locked him in place like some kind of cursed spell. But eventually, all magic would end, and the evil magic of Midoriya’s embrace would too. Katsuki peeled himself off, collapsed onto the bed, rolled to the edge, and buried his face in the pillow.
“Just one sec,” he muttered.
This meant Katsuki was well aware that hosts were only happy to see their guests twice, and he was almost ready to grant Midoriya the second one – of Katsuki leaving.
There were wet, disgusting sounds behind him: Midoriya pulled the condom off and tied it in a knot. Katsuki grimaced into the suffocating pillow. That shit had been inside his ass, and now Midoriya was touching it with his bare hands. Fucking pervert. He could’ve just wrapped it in a tissue and tossed it. No one gave a damn about his jizz.
Katsuki let out a loud breath.
He wouldn’t normally come on Mondays. Wednesdays were his day. That was their agreement and it made a lot of fucking sense. They didn’t meet on weekends because they weren’t a gross lovey-dovey couple. Fridays were off the table too. Friday nights were for family dinners, for playing 'Rumble Nation' with friends, for beers with coworkers, and other tedious bullshit Katsuki refused to participate in. All he needed was to get laid once a week to maintain his mental balance, and Wednesdays were perfect for that: Wednesdays were the halfway point of the week, Katsuki’s brain would start being permanently on fire, and he would lose the ability to ignore minor irritants and start berserking random people. Some asshole might argue he was always berserking people, but Katsuki knew better. His self-control was objectively stronger on Mondays than on Wednesdays. Well, usually.
So yeah, Katsuki had shown up at Midoriya’s place on a day that was very much not his. And he’d had a damn good reason for it. To be more exact, one huge, unavoidable reason that was impossible to ignore. It was broadcasted on every fucking iron. Guaranteed front-page material the next morning. The impossible had happened: for the first time in the history of Musutafu Police Department, they'd intercepted a shipment containing one hundred and fifty kilos of TNT.
The worst part was that Katsuki had nothing to do with it.
His Monday had started out routine. He’d arrived at the station, had his coffee, sat through the morning briefing, filled out reports he’d tried to shift on Kaminari, who hadn’t made much progress on them. Then the two of them had gone to interview potential witnesses in the 'missing dumbfuck' case.
Katsuki came up with this name because most of the reports about people went missing usually concerned kids, teens and old farts. With teens and old farts everything was clear: the former would run away from home towards a brave new world, the latter sank into dotage, set off to find someone from their past who were long dead, and went astray. When it came to children everything was more complicated: they were kidnapped by psychopaths, pedophiles, assholes demanding ransom, or their own folks deprived of parental rights during a divorce process, although most often kids would simply go to their friends without informing their parents, who would immediately begin to sound an alarm.
The 'missing dumbfuck' Ogava Higuchi differed from all of the above categories in one thing: he was thirty-two years old. His girlfriend contacted the police the day before, by that time he had been missing for three days. The dumbfuck’s parents lived in Nagoya and didn’t know shit about it. His colleagues thought nothing of his absence: from a short conversation with his boss over the phone Katsuki learned that the dumbfuck suffered from alcoholism and would often forget to come to work during his heavy drinking bouts. No one missed him.
The first thing Katsuki did was check all the local hospitals and morgues. No, the dumbfuck hadn’t been admitted to any of those. And apparently, he hadn’t left the town: his car was still parked in the parking lot near his house. Unless he’d got a hold of someone else’s car, but that wasn’t exactly a piece of cake...
Next, it was time to talk with neighbors. The 'missing dumbfuck' lived near the docks. Musutafu, just like any other coastal town, was built around the harbor, which naturally became a historic center. A rustic-looking street led to it, separating the tourist areas with cafes and izakayas from the poor residential areas where dockworkers had long settled. Time flew by, but prosperity never reached this part of Musutafu. The area near the docks did not have enough space for a forest of prefab flat blocks danchi, so the great construction of the sixties had never touched it. The buildings there had long since fallen into disrepair, including the house of the 'missing dumbfuck' – a typical three-story wreck. Nothing even close to reinforced concrete or earthquake-resistant technology.
“You take the ground floor,” Katsuki commanded. “I’ll take the rest. And get your ass moving, not like last time.”
“It’s not my fault!” Kaminari whined. “Anyway, it’s not fair! Why do I always get the ground floors? Only illfucked creeps live there... Last time I got bitten, and it was a human! I had to get a tetanus shot...”
“Wanna do the second and third?” Katsuki frowned.
There was always something happening to Kaminari. He attracted stupid situations like a synthetic T-shirt attracted dog hair.
“No. Fine. I don’t care. Really, couldn’t care less. May I be bitten again or even chewed to death.” Kaminari knocked theatrically on the first door he came across.
Katsuki left him alone and went up the stairs to the second floor. The apartment of the 'missing dumbfuck' was on the third. The layout of the floors was a no-brainer: three apartments on each – one on the right, one on the left, and one in the middle. Katsuki started with the right apartment on the second floor. Since he liked to go to work prepared, he had requested a list of people registered in this building from the land registry in advance, and found out that a young multi-child family named Akamine lived in this apartment. There definitely were children behind the door – loud crying filled the air, and the old wooden walls amplified it, creating acoustics like inside a drum.
Katsuki ringed the bell. The door opened.
“Praise the gods!” a middle-aged woman with a child in her arms exclaimed as soon as she saw Katsuki, and immediately handed him a screaming baby and a disgustingly jingling rattle. “Look after Izumi!”
Katsuki’s mouth gaped, but he didn’t say anything – at least not at that moment. The woman rushed into the back rooms, from where a cheerful tune was playing and the smell of burnt hair was wafting. Another snotty brat was melancholically drawing on the wall with a felt-tip pen, not paying any attention to Katsuki. A girl’s squeal broke out from somewhere in the depth of the apartment.
Katsuki grimaced. The baby in his arms, all red from the effort, looked like a small, chubby demon. Katsuki had trouble with crybabies whose names began with 'I', so he prudently moved the baby a bit away from his shirt and rocked the rattle. The sound it made was reminiscent of bones grinding against each other. Izumi’s toothless mouth opened and he burst into tears with a vengeance.
“Looks like your baby hates this crap,” Katsuki remarked and put the rattle away.
This round could have been one of the five most crazy ones in his career, but it still wasn’t claiming the title of the permanent leader of the last seven years. At that time Katsuki had just started working at the police station, and hadn’t yet had enough opportunities to get an eyeful of all kinds of shit. He'd gone to make rounds of witnesses, rang the doorbell, seen the door opening, shot out the usual cliche: “Musutafu Police Department. Officer Bakugou…” and gone a little blind. The owner of the apartment had made her living by creating content for OnlyFans. She'd met him completely naked. While Katsuki had been moving his gaze from her platinum hair to her fucking ginormous silicone tits and down to her thoroughly waxed pubis, the realization had finally formed in him: he was not into girls. That said, at all. With the same set of emotions he could have contemplated a package of tofu on a shelf in a supermarket.
But the girl had become very agitated at the sight of him and cooed, slightly closing her eyes with lush eyelashes:
“Would you like to come in, officer Bakugou?..”
Katsuki'd checked out the pinkish neon light in her living room, as well as the array of incredible alien dicks showing up colourfully in the background, and gad summed it up with a sigh:
“Not really, let’s talk here. Just maybe throw something on first, there are children walking around.”
Kirishima had been going nuts over this story.
“And then what?” he'd asked eagerly, listening to it for the first time. “Did you fuck that chick?”
“Yep,” Katsuki had chuckled. “Right in the doorway. And then I came back and fucked her again.”
He really thought that a sarcasm more obvious than that simply had not existed... He was always overestimating everyone.
“My man!” Kirishima had howled, overwhelmed with downright indecent enthusiasm, and hit Katsuki hard between the shoulder blades as a sign of male solidarity.
Well, to this day the idiot believed that Katsuki had fucked some random OnlyFans girl while on duty. Katsuki still couldn’t figure out how to disabuse him of that belief.
Without the horrid sound of the rattle the baby began to quiet down. Katsuki, however, did not relax. What if he quieted down plotting some dirty trick? He could be getting ready to burp. Or to dump a load the size of himself. Children were capable of even worse.
When the smell of burnt hair began to fade away, the woman rushed back:
“Thank you for looking after Izumi! He’s so calm with you...” Then the thought finally occurred to her that there was a complete stranger in her hallway, to whom she for some reason had entrusted her child. This thought, as expected, caused her deep discomfort, and she took her baby back, at the same time going on the offensive: “Who are you, by the way?”
Katsuki showed the badge.
“Musutafu Police Department. Sergeant Bakugou.” Well, now a sergeant. At least some positive change since the days of the OnlyFans girl. “And you’re Akamine Yuriko, right? Will you have some time to answer a few questions?”
“Yes, of course,” the woman said absentmindedly, rocking the baby in her arms. He had a runny snot and was now furiously smearing it all over his round, red face. “Did something happen?”
The diabolic child’s brother looked up from his drawing on the wall for a second and glanced curiously at the people gathered in the hallway.
Katsuki pulled out a photo of the 'missing dumbfuck.'
“Do you know this person?”
Yuriko took the photograph by the free edge, moving it closer to her face. The gesture betrayed a slight myopia. Following his mother, the baby also extended a sticky little hand towards the picture.
“Isn’t it the guy from the third floor? What was his name… Higuchi?”
She got it right with the name. Katsuki barely resisted the urge to nod.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Yuriko was deep in thought. Taking advantage of the pause, Katsuki put the photo back inside the cover of his police ID before it got messy with snot.
“Last week. And even then, I didn’t see him, I heard him… Why? Did he do something?”
Katsuki left her question unanswered. There were some things he needed to figure out:
“Heard?”
The woman laughed sadly:
“As you may have noticed, we can only dream of soundproofing here. Higuchi sometimes likes to listen to music in the middle of the night... when he’s boozed up. Or when that wench of his comes to him. I’ve asked Aoki, my husband, several times to go up to Higuchi and tell him to turn it down, but that guy only says that he hears our children screaming every day and he needs a break from them sometimes.”
“You didn’t call the police about his nighttime antics,” there was no need for Katsuki to ask, he already knew. The 'missing dumbfuck' Higuchi had zero criminal record. Given the new details, that was rather odd.
“No. We didn’t want to mess with him,” Yuriko looked away. “And it isn’t actually that often that he has his disgusting music blaring.”
“And how did the other neighbors feel about this?”
“Nohow. The apartment below Higuchi, the middle one on our floor, is owned by a salaryman, and he is never home. Spends the night at work.”
“Did Higuchi have conflicts with anyone else?”
“He did, and not only because of music.”
“What else?” Katsuki sensed a clue.
“I believe it was because of the garbage. With that boy… I always forget his name. It’s something about food. Togarashi? Or Shirataki...”
Katsuki would like to look in the eye of someone who seriously named their child after gluten-free noodles… Moreover, he didn’t remember anyone with a similar name on the list he received from the land registry, which meant that the apartment was registered to another person.
“And what was the nature of the conflict?”
“I am so sorry, but I don’t really know,” Yuriko admitted, genuinely upset. “You’d better ask Aunt Misaki about it, she knows everything about everyone.”
Excellent. Another old hag who loved to spy on her neighbors entered the game. This was common: the older generation, especially widowed women whose children had long since grown up and moved around the world, didn’t know how to entertain themselves.
“Where can I find her?” Katsuki clarified.
“She lives on the first floor.”
“So, my colleague is talking to her right now... And where does that other guy live, Shirataki-Togarashi?”
“On our floor, but on the other side, in the apartment on the left. But I rarely meet him...” Yuriko added and lowered her voice to a whisper, as if sharing a secret: “He’s… how can I put it… not well and doesn’t communicate with anyone."
“Not well?”
“Yeah. He has some kind of skin disease. You’ll recognize him right away: he looks strange and itches all the time.”
“I see. Thanks for the information,” Katsuki said. It seemed he had reached the bottom. There was nowhere else to dig. He gave Yuriko his card: “If you learn anything new about Higuchi or see him, report it to the police immediately.”
“Of course!” Yuriko took the card and nodded. The smell of burning came from the depths of the apartment again, and she rushed there: “Maiko, I said no!..”
Katsuki faintly shrugged his shoulders – what the heck – and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
Next up was the salaryman’s apartment. Katsuki hadn’t had high expectations, and rightly so. No one answered the door; office workers returned home after dark, if they returned at all.
The third apartment on the floor was occupied by Togarashi-Shirataki. Apparently, he rented it. Not the best option for Katsuki: you can’t check nor name, neither phone number... You can’t learn first-hand about the mess around the garbage. And again, no one opened the door for him. This was starting become annoying.
Katsuki frowned and walked up the stairs. According to the land registry, the apartment on the far right on the third floor was owned by the municipality. This normally happened when the previous owner of the apartment died without leaving any heirs. There was probably no one inside, unless someone had moved in without permission. Katsuki stood outside the door, listening. Nothing. Uninhabitable silence.
Higuchi lived in the apartment in the middle. Just in case, Katsuki tried his luck there too. Not a sound.
The apartment on the left was the last to check. Katsuki rang the bell decisively. A few seconds later, the patter of little feet and strained wheezing could be heard from behind the door – the child was clearly not tall enough to reach the peephole without standing on tiptoe.
“Who’s there?” he asked loudly and unexpectedly sternly.
“Police,” Katsuki replied, suppressing a grin.
The child wheezed even louder.
“I won’t open the door for you!”
“That’s right,” Katsuki approved mentally. “Means the parents aren’t there.”
“Hey, kid, what time do your mom and dad usually return home?”
Another round of intense wheezing: apparently, the child was looking very closely at Katsuki through the lens, his nose pressed to the door.
“They are… here.”
“So, you can call them?”
“No! Go away. I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.”
The baby steps began to quickly move away. Katsuki raised his eyebrows, admitting defeat. He had never been good at fooling someone with smooth talk.
At this point, Katsuki completed his part of the round and went down to the first floor. Kaminari still hadn’t finished, which was alarming. However, Katsuki didn’t have to worry too much: the building was so audible that it was easy to determine which door he was stuck behind.
Before his finger could press firmly on the bell, the door swung open.
“Musutafu Poli…”
“Come in, come in,” a short, thin old lady in a tracksuit began to bow to him. Judging by her appearance, she was anywhere between sixty and a hundred years old. “Denki said you would come. He is helping me, such a good boy!”
“Helping with what?” Katsuki became alert.
The next second, the answer revealed itself. Kaminari was struggling, trying to move an antique tansu dresser by himself – one that should have graced a traditional collector’s home, not an antediluvian apartment in a building long destined for demolition. The money from selling one of those dressers could feed the old lady for months.
At the time when classic tansu dressers were created, composite materials had not yet been invented. This one, like the others, was cut from a solid block of Japanese cedar, richly decorated with forged details… It weighed more than a hundred kilograms. Kaminari spread his legs like a sumo wrestler, inhaled, exhaled, strained himself and moved the dresser for about ten centimeters.
“Yes, yes, just like that!” the old woman encouraged. “There’s just a little bit left, son!”
She was no longer fit to be Kaminari’s mother, except perhaps a grandmother. And she was mercilessly disingenuous. It would take another three-four pushes like that to bring the dresser to the designated wall. Katsuki in silent amazement watched his partner’s efforts, so intense, so meaningless.
As he sighed loudly, no longer able to cope with his bewilderment, Kaminari finally noticed him:
“Oh, Bakugou, you’re here!” he panted, sweating. “Want to help?”
“No,” Katsuki waved it off without thinking. “Are you Aunt Misaki? I was told you would know everything about everyone here.”
“I know a little, son,” the old woman smiled.
“Have you explained why we’re here?” Katsuki asked Kaminari.
“Of course I have!”
“We’re looking for your neighbor,” Katsuki clarified just in case. Because of the fuss around the dresser, the initial purpose of the visit could have been forgotten. “Ogava Higuchi.”
“I know him. Lives on the third floor, rude and boorish.”
There was no doubt left: if Katsuki had had the chance to live in the same house with this lady, he would have been awarded similar titles, if not worse.
“And do other people share your opinion?”
“Higuchi made life difficult for many. I was wondering why it was so quiet here this last week... And it turned out he’s disappeared.”
“And who are these 'many'?”
“Almost everyone who lives here.”
“But someone got it worse than others, right? What’s the story with the garbage?”
Kaminari sent Katsuki a joyfully shocked look: “Blimey!”
“Oh, you want to know Tomura’s story? Poor kid. His grandmother was developing a strategy to rid Hiroshima of radiation. She often went there, was exposed to radiation herself, and now her grandson has lupus.”
“Isn’t his name Shirataki?”
Kaminari snorted loudly and tried to disguise it as a cough. Aunt Misaki looked at Katsuki as if he was a naughty brat.
“His last name is Shigaraki, and his first name is Tomura.”
“I see. So, you knew his grandmother?”
“No. He said it himself: his grandmother used to save people, and he now suffers. No wonder he’s angry with her. He struggles so much, poor thing, and then there’s Higuchi and his garbage.”
“What exactly did he do?”
“On what days is your garbage pickup?” The old woman suddenly changed the subject. “Here, incinerable garbage is collected on Mondays and Thursdays, and all kinds of recycling, bottles – every other Wednesday... Ever since I bought a compactor, things have become completely different...”
Katsuki nodded, urging the old woman to continue. Pleased that her rationality had been appreciated, she returned to her story:
“We try to take the garbage to the trash bins right before the pickup day, otherwise the crows would drag everything away. But not Higuchi. He’s too lazy to follow the schedule. He missed the pickup several times, didn’t take out the trash duly, and when he got himself a whole mountain, he came up with a solution – started throwing it on Tomura’s balcony. You saw, we all have balconies on the same side... One day I got a nasty present from Higuchi too, but I boxed his ears properly. And Tomura, poor boy, couldn’t do anything about him, so he continued to take the garbage out instead of him. Higuchi probably thought that no one lived in that apartment, and his bags were taken out by the management company… What a parasite!”
“But Tomura didn’t go to the police.”
“He is quiet, tired-out... He would never go to the police.”
“You keep calling him a boy. How old is he?”
“Who knows!” Aunt Misaki threw up her hands. It turned out she wasn’t all that omniscient. “Twenty, thirty... So subtle, mere skin and bones!”
“So, he’s not a teenager,” Katsuki concluded.
“Not a teenager. But he never fledged. He lives all alone...”
“And their conflict with Higuchi hasn’t ended in anything? He threw garbage on the balcony, and Shira... Shigaraki kept it yieldingly and took it out on the right days?”
The old lady shrugged her shoulders:
“That’s all I know.”
“And no one else bothered to report the night music to the police?”
“Oh, I don’t even hear it! I put in earplugs and sleep peacefully!”
“I see. Please, contact the police if you learn any new details. Here’s my number,” Katsuki handed her his card. “Just in case.”
“Yes!” Kaminari finally pushed the dresser against the wall and hunched over, clinging to it like a drowning man.
“You’re such a good boy! I’ll bring you an adzuki bean bun.”
“He can do without a bun. We have to go. Thank you for your time.”
When Aunt Misaki's door closed behind them, a hurt expression appeared on Kaminari’s face:
“You are such an ass, Bakugou. I got nothing for all my suffering...”
Katsuki didn’t answer. He didn’t want to talk, as if the decrepit wooden walls, old wiring, crappy lighting, and insane sound conductivity were sucking his strength out. Katsuki couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live in a house like that, without any sense of healthy solitude or safety. Or could he? He’d been in worse places, documented evidence of fucked up human nature. And his childhood home, while it had seemed well-off on the outside, was an equally dangerous shithole, with a constant presence of someone lurking behind the walls, whose company Katsuki always wanted to avoid.
It felt better outside, like an extra weight had been lifted from his shoulders. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping.
“It was hopeless,” Kaminari shared his thoughts, biting his lip. “I just wasted all my time with that damn dresser.”
“Not exactly,” Katsuki corrected him. “We found out that Higuchi, that piece of shit, is great at making enemies even among the most harmless, like a mother with many children or a sick dude. So, he could have pissed off someone dangerous. Someone you wouldn’t want to mess with.”
Kaminari nodded, though something about his expression suggested he was unconvinced. Well, Katsuki hadn’t managed to convince himself that they’d learned anything of value either.
“Why did you agree to help her?”
“I don’t know... I started asking her standard questions, and she kept complaining that she lived alone, was constantly sick, no one cared about her... No one would even move a dresser for her.”
“So, you fell for it like a pipsqueak.”
“Yep.”
When they got back, the forensics lab’s truck was parked in the station’s parking lot. The sight of its armored body, capable of withstanding the blast of a small explosive device without depressurization, made Katsuki curl his lip discontentedly. “I hope it’s not Midoriya,” he thought absentmindedly. But, as usually happens when you really don’t want something, while Katsuki was parking in his corner, Midoriya with his inimitable cowlicks, and Hatsume, that crazy ballistics expert, tumbled out of the station’s parking lot door. Katsuki didn’t have anything against her personally, but people with that kind of energy gave him the creeps. Also, Hatsume would get unhealthily excited when she was called in to do an evaluation, so Katsuki would always look for ways to involve someone else.
He naively hoped that Midoriya wouldn’t notice him, he hadn’t been hiding in the corner for nothing, but of course Midoriya did and waved to him before getting behind the wheel. Katsuki raised his hand in an awkward non-greeting. The forensics lab’s car pulled out of the parking lot. Kaminari turned around, watching it go:
“Was that Izuku?”
Since Hatsume didn’t yell her head off, no one paid any attention to her.
“Yes,” Katsuki said with a sour expression. “Shitnerd Midoriya.”
“Why do you dislike him so much?” Kaminari asked.
He didn’t guess on that one, but it was only to Katsuki’s advantage. He was doing everything possible to make sure no one would guess.
“Why should I like him?”
“Izuku is a good guy.” Yeah, right. Too much so. “Always explains everything in detail and does it on time. You went to law school together, right? Did he surpass you in something or what not, that you’re still mad about it?”
“No one fucking surpassed me. I was the best in my year,” Katsuki growled.
“Okay, okay, why are you getting so worked up?..”
Katsuki trudged to the station, not really understanding what he was feeling. On the one hand, the fact that Midoriya didn’t approach him to start a nice little conversation awakened a burning gratitude in Katsuki. He could never relax around Midoriya in front of strangers; it seemed like everything was written all over his forehead. On the other hand, the way Midoriya waved at him – casually, with a smile, like he was just another colleague – made something inside Katsuki boil. This something always wanted to see Katsuki as someone exquisite in the eyes of others... In the eyes of Midoriya. The way Katsuki blended seamlessly into the faceless mass of his coworkers caused real discomfort.
He didn’t know it then, but at the station he was in for a much greater discomfort, albeit of a different kind. Everyone was bustling about, excited. Some were running back and forth, some were discussing how they absolutely had to get together and have a drink that evening.
“The fuck is going on here?” Katsuki asked the first relatively adequate person he came across. It turned out to be Jirou.
“Todoroki seized a large load of TNT.”
“I see,” Katsuki said.
Then Aizawa called an unscheduled meeting, where they put Half’n’Half in front of everyone, like in school, and gave him a whole minute ovation. Katsuki specifically timed it. Of course, he thought it was better to seize a fucking-sized cargo of explosives than not to seize it, but he still wondered why the others were so happy. They wouldn’t get a bonus or extra vacation pay... Todoroki froze with an expression of unlimited unimpressedness. His gaze swam over the faces of his colleagues, not stopping at anyone. They were all particles of stardust in the endless cosmos of his grandeur. Even Katsuki with his top solve rate.
Aizawa stepped forward and gave a speech about how Todoroki had been conducting a secret investigation with the Organized Crime Unit for almost half a year. The Liberation Front, a group behind several terrorist attacks across the country, was suspected of being involved. Little information was available about it. The Front’s main activities were believed to be related to the illegal production and smuggling of weapons, although both were wrapped in an ideological candy cover, for some reason followed by the slogans about freedom and universal equality. The leads that Todoroki’s group received failed several times, but the policemen did not give up – and were now reaping the rewards of their professional tenacity and courage. The announcement of the cargo arrest had already been sent to all the media outlets in town. An official press conference had been scheduled for the following morning.
Todoroki’s ass was being licked so vigorously that Katsuki couldn’t help but wonder if his father, the infamous Todoroki Enji, nicknamed Endeavor, had paid for this whole thing so that his son would somehow excel and be written about in the papers. It was a crazy thought, considering that Shouto and Endeavor didn’t get along. However, Katsuki wouldn’t know for sure. Maybe behind closed doors, the two were quite on the same page.
When the vanity fair ended, Katsuki took the opportunity to approach Aizawa.
“So, why don’t they give me joint investigations with the Organized Crime Unit?” he asked directly.
Aizawa gave him an indifferent look:
“How do you think, Bakugou? They don’t give you joint investigations with other departments because no one wants to work with you.”
It was... suddenly offensive. It wasn’t like Katsuki expected to be immediately handed a case where he could demonstrate his amazing collaboration skills, but... He didn’t expect such revelations either. And they probably weren’t entirely true. Kaminari hadn’t complained about being assigned to Katsuki. You could ask him how he was doing in general, but there was a certain desperation behind it. As if Katsuki cared about how people who were assigned to work with him felt about it. He honestly didn’t give a shit about people, but the cases...
Katsuki returned to his desk and tried to focus on the paperwork, but it proved to be an impossible task. The station was practically sparking. Usually, everyone was too tired to seriously follow the ganbaru philosophy, but Todoroki’s success encouraged them to try. And it encouraged them to talk nonstop, too.
Katsuki felt incredibly exhausted, even though it was only Monday. There was nothing exciting about the cases he had to work on, there were no new and worthwhile ones in sight, according to Aizawa, and Todoroki’s celebration threatened to drag on forever. Katsuki had once been sure that by the time he was thirty he would be a senior inspector, maybe even a superintendent. Now it felt like he had reached the pinnacle of his career, with only a slow decline ahead. Anyone else in his place would have wanted to buy a cholesterol bomb on the way home – a shrimp tempura or takoyaki with lots of mayonnaise on it – gobble it all at once, put on some stupid anime, and doze off on a couch wrapped in a blanket. Skip the gym, skip the shower. Skip everything. Skip the alarm, sleep through tomorrow’s shift. Get reprimanded, quit, move to the wilderness, become a lighthouse keeper. Katsuki was just a human, he also dreamed of various nonsense sometimes, but he could not completely surrender himself to it.
Instead, he went to the washroom, locked himself in the furthest stall, and quickly texted Midoriya before he could change his mind:
“gonna come tonight”
It looked pathetic, but not as pathetic as eating takoyaki alone while sitting on a couch wrapped in a blanket.
Midoriya wasn’t responding for a long time, which was unlike him. Then again, waving instead of greeting was also unlike him. Two hours later, Katsuki had almost no doubt that he had been given the brush-off. The message, however, remained there, unread. Katsuki was about to delete it, but instead, for some reason, he wrote: “ignoring me???”. Because why the fuck was he being ignored?! Midoriya thought Katsuki wouldn’t notice? He was a fucking detective, he noticed everything.
The curly-haired fucktard only deigned to get in touch when Katsuki was heading home. The call caught him in a traffic jam on Akutagawa. There was nothing to do anyway except look around and wait for the car in front to move another ten centimeters. Katsuki answered:
“Whaddya want?”
“I’m sorry, Kacchan!” Midoriya sounded out of breath. “I was at the evaluation. They’ve just let me go.”
“Fuck if I care,” Katsuki rolled his eyes.
Midoriya was silent for a moment. He sighed – it caused an audio feedback loop. Then he asked timidly:
“Do you still want to come?”
“No.”
“Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be home by eight. Bye, Kacchan.”
Because the bastard in front of him crawled a few more centimeters, Katsuki missed the moment, and Midoriya disconnected first. Katsuki grimaced – well, he lost at such a bullshit game as hanging up on each other – but realized that he had more pleasant plans for the evening than consuming fat and getting fat. Plans were waiting for him at eight.
And that’s how Katsuki ended up here, in Midoriya’s bed, with Midoriya himself by his side. Sometimes his nerdy nature was extremely useful. Midoriya was smart enough to put two and two together: him being called to the station, Todoroki’s incredible breakthrough, Katsuki’s visit... He understood everything, but kept quiet, and for that Katsuki was truly grateful.
As usual after a quickie, he was incredibly sleepy. The desire to pass out without any further reflection was outweighing even the dissatisfaction with himself that Katsuki felt every time he came here. Katsuki stopped pressing his face into the pillow – instead, he tucked it under his cheek and closed his eyes. It was dangerous to do that. He had to drag himself out of bed, squeeze himself into his clothes as is, without taking a shower, throw himself into the chrome body of the elevator and then into his Honda, after which somehow make it home on autopilot. Katsuki rented a compact, shoebox-like apartment near a subway line, right next to one of the ground stations. Someone else would go crazy there from the abundance of light and sounds, but for Katsuki with his chronic fatigue it was just right. He learned not to notice the trains.
Katsuki thought about them as he was falling asleep. About the rows of shining windows, humming through the darkness. Watch out, the doors are closing. Next stop: somewhere not here.
*** *** ***
“Kacchan, your alarm is ringing! Kacchan! Hmm, it's only four... How do I turn it off? Oh, okay, hold on... Kacchan?..”
Katsuki had a hard time opening his eyes. He knew that if he didn’t do something immediately, not only the alarm would be wailing, but Midoriya as well. He was too energetic and joyful in the mornings, like those live coaches on the Internet who considered getting up with the sunrise to be the main secret of success. Katsuki himself got up early, but firstly, not at four in the morning, and secondly, he was not joyful about anything.
Since Katsuki still hadn’t moved, Midoriya leaned over him to reach his smartphone. The weight and warmth of his body were encouraging Katsuki to forget about the alarm and pass out for another two hours, letting Midoriya just lie on top of him.
Gross. The worst plan ever.
Katsuki began to wriggle aggressively, getting his legs stuck in the blanket:
“Get off me, you.”
“Oh, Kacchan, did I wake you up? Your alarm was ringing, so I... It seems like you want to stay in bed a little longer. No problem, I’ll get up first.”
He actually got up. The weight and warmth were gone, and Katsuki shifted unhappily, pulling the blanket up to his ears. He should have left yesterday. Why hadn’t he left?
He didn’t want to seriously look for answers. Katsuki had given up after staying here through the night for the fourth time. Then he stopped counting the times. It was easier that way.
The water turned on in the bathroom. Katsuki closed his eyes and immediately opened them again. He forced himself to sit up in bed. Ruffled his hair. He didn’t know ass from elbow. He wasn’t ready for the new day. It seemed like it should be Thursday – but no, Katsuki had confused himself with his messed up schedule and thoughtless actions.
He left the bed. The clothes they’d thrown around the night before were waiting for him on the nightstand in some semblance of order. Midoriya had done his best – although Katsuki had no idea when. The shirt was still wrinkled. But who cared. He used to keep a spare one at work, just in case, but so many 'just-in-cases' happened that he no longer remembered the fate of it.
He really needed to take a shower, huh. And brush his teeth, like, immidiately. He had disgracefully fallen asleep last night without doing his usual hygiene routine, and now the taste in his mouth was... yeah, gross.
Katsuki ran into Midoriya at the bathroom door. He was drying his hair with a towel and not looking where he was going. Well, the mystery of the crow’s nest on his head was solved.
“I left you a toothbrush on the sink,” Midoriya warned. Unnecessarily. Katsuki knew where he kept them anyway. “For some reason you keep throwing them away... But just so you know, this is the last one.”
From his touchingly pleading face, Katsuki guessed that the nerd would like him not to throw it away.
“Fine,” he answered slightly out of place.
Midoriya left him alone, switching to his usual morning stuff. He threw the damp towel over the back of one of the chairs by the kitchen island (Katsuki wanted to take it and hang it up properly, but restrained himself), prepared coffee and a filter, and began measuring out four spoons. Katsuki would have stared a little longer, but he forced himself to go to the bathroom.
After taking a shower, he felt a little better. His brain started to work again. Today was Tuesday. Todoroki was going to have his press conference. The reporters would ask stupid questions, but of course, beaming Todoroki would easily handle them. He wasn’t Katsuki, he knew how to behave. And everyone was just eager to work with him. Wasn’t it lovely?..
After dabbing himself dry with the second towel he had found in the bathroom – how thoughtful! – Katsuki began brushing his teeth. Any dentist would have told him he was overdoing it. That’s when he heard a dull, but very distinct pop.
Katsuki put the toothbrush away from his mouth and stuck his head out of the bathroom:
“Did something explode?”
Midoriya was hovering around the microwave with a guilty expression. It was too late to deny that he had been trying to blow up his own kitchen early in the morning.
“Sorry.” For Midoriya, apologizing was as natural as breathing. “I wanted to boil the eggs in the microwave, but I forgot to pierce the yolks... Don’t worry, I’ll make some new ones. I didn’t have time to go grocery shopping over the weekend, so I don’t have a choice anyway...”
Katsuki tried his best to ignore the sudden sting of wondering what Midoriya was so busy doing that he hadn’t had time to buy food for the week. Who even cared? Katsuki didn’t give a shit. Not the slightest.
“Remember how you were upset with me for calling you 'Deku'?” he said in a cheeky tone. He had to act preemptively, so that his stupid mouth wouldn’t have a chance to utter the treacherous “And what did you spend your whole weekend on?” “So yeah, you are Deku.”
“Never happened,” Midoriya balked. “I’ve never been upset with you. At least not for this,” he corrected himself after thinking for a moment.
“Yup. The sky is green, and Kirishima will receive the Nobel Prize tomorrow.”
“Oh, Eijirou... How is he doing?”
“Better than fucking everyone. By all means, let’s waste more of my life talking about that guy,” Katsuki grumbled, shoving the toothbrush into his mouth and heading back to the bathroom. If he had half an hour of peace before he plunged into the ocean of group psychosis, he’d rather spend it without talking about his colleagues.
Any colleagues.
Having finished brushing his teeth, Katsuki lost himself in thought and rinsed the toothbrush, but caught himself in time. The brush that was not thrown away symbolized his weakness. It practically screamed: “I’m going to come back here because I don’t want to leave.”
No way. Hasta la vista, plastic waste.