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Katsuki couldn't recall an instance in his life quite like this.
Sure, growing up as he did- being as he was- an entourage could always be found trailing his back. They never had faces, to what he could remember, just cardboard cutouts attached by strings to his forearms; they would do what he said, when he said, as he said, repeating every word he would spit on yet another faceless cutout. They knew their place, where they stood.
He thought, though, that this particular instance was bolder.
Kirishima rested nearly his entire weight on Katsuki's shoulder, shaking him as he laughed at whatever Denki had said on his right. Sero snickered from behind, nudging the blonde playfully in his spine, and he couldn't help but ask himself when he had poised himself so to refrain from lighting them all up where they stood.
What was more offensive; however, was the fact that he discovered himself to be laughing, too.
Friendship is one hell of a drug, he concluded.
They had been out later than predicted; what had started as a simple CVS round trip had evolved into an entire gallivant around urbane Japan doing absolutely everything and nothing. His arms slung relaxed in his hoodie as they hit up strip malls and game stores and thrift shops, unbound by the strings he still expected to be there.
"...And then he FELL over like what a LOSER-" Denki's grainy voice teased as he broke the silence of 1-A's Common Room, yelping when Kirishima's hardened hand jabbed his rib.
"Hardy-Har, you idiot, I'm right HERE," the redhead hissed, laughing as they wrestled about the carpet. Bakugo had half a mind to film his friends being point-blank stupid before Momo's shrill voice broke up the bunch.
"Absolutely Not!", She scolded, "Tonight this is a study reservation. We banish all idiocracy from this sacred place."
"Oh?" Kirishima sniggered, "What kind of sacellum is this? That you would reject such kindred souls-?"
"Well...", Jiro drawled as she flipped through her textbook, a smirk creeping up her face, "Never actually heard of a temple that opens their doors to dogs."
A book blazed past Sero's head as he hollered obnoxiously on the floor.
"SHUT UP! SACRED PLACE!"
The buffoonery of the Commons room could still be heard two hallways down, even as Bakugo snuck away in the chaos to claim his shower in solitude. Most nights he missed his opportunity, even after sending a rather explicit warning in the class group chat advising against taking the shower two stalls from the last urinal (of which he found himself extremely fit to claim). Despite his many bath battles, this time he was fond of claiming his victory in peace.
Scrubbing his face rather harshly, he groaned theactrically as he drawled over his untouched physics thesis due that week. He'd always been decent in STEM, but enrolling in a class full of the most grating 1-B brats he could ever dread to know in his life... probably wasn't the best decision he could have made. Granted he really could have dropped it, switched it out for computer science or something, but being in the Hero Program meant he would've had to take it in his later years anyway, and that would have been more agitating than he could have handled; so he stayed.
The first week hadn't been so bad, dare he say tolerable... until he showed up.
Finding out Deku had placed in the upper 25th quartile, a test average he had defended aggressively for the entirety of his junior high school career atop a lonely pillar, had wrenched yet another bullet through his ego. Yet another testament to his worth shredded by his lesser, except now he wasn't, not anymore, and it grated him.
Tracking water prints to his dorm, he wrung his towel painfully in his hands, his collar soaked from his dripping mane.
The fact that he had refused to even look at him as he took the adjoining seat- like he knew something that Katsuki would be damned to admit- revolted him. Deku, the boy who had epitomized everything he would excel at by default, was climbing higher and higher up the ladder Bakugo had constructed by his own achievements, spitting on him from above.
The towel reeked of nitroglycerin as he strung it thin, biting his lip through as he worked himself up.
He set the rules.
He moved the marker.
If it's not by him, it meant nothing.
And Deku's very existence was set on stripping that reality raw.
Finally releasing the blackened, spaghettified cloth from his charged hands, he breathed into the empty room, regaining himself.
'Everything would be alright,' he told himself as he made a move for the door. As long as he kept moving, as long as he stayed ahead of the pack, he'd make it.
He'd be as great as he'd always believed himself to be.
A familiar howl ripped its way through the hallways followed by a hard thud that jarred the floor he was standing on.
These nights were always so bitter-annoying. The weekends rendered greater leverage for idiocy to have its way what with the weekday teachers relieved of campus duty. Their homeroom teacher, Mr. Aizawa, only patrolled for a few hours in the evening before being sent home to nurse his injuries.
So pretty much it was a buffoon-for-all.
Katsuki rounded the corner sharply, grumbling softly under his breath, "Kirishima, I swear if you so much as breathed near my food I'll cut-"
"...What about Bakugo..."
"...Bakugo...?"
The muttered discussion of his name was faint but distinct enough to stop its owner in his place.
Still, he didn't move, almost doubting hearing at all-
"...I just... what about him...?"
There it was again.
Slowly, his brow overcame his face and his fists balled till it had crossed the threshold of pain. He stalked toward the source of the slander: a cracked door four dorms down from his own.
He knew that people talked about him, a sludgy blend of praises and underhands, that was no surprise. What was? The fact that these people would be so bold about it, so unmoved by his prowess that they would openly gossip in the very hallway where he slept, unfazed by the probability that he could walk past their open door at any time. Had he been so severely stripped of his glory that people could so openly probe his image as they pleased? He would see first hand just how big and bad these punks thought they were when he crashed their own funeral-
"...Izuku? You don't have to answer that one I apologize."
His stride gridlocked abruptly at the trigger, mere inches away from the pale doorframe. Gelignite secreted quickly out his palms as he filed the name.
Deku.
He should've known that loser would be in the middle of it. Who else would be so bold as to sabotage his name directly?
'Course he would,' Katsuki thought, shaking in his awkward stance, 'Of course he'd-... he'd think so little of me... pity me-"
He crept closer, hugging the concrete wall beside him, peering in as his eyes adjusted to the blackness.
Confirming his earlier assumption, he found Deku huddled against the tall Yuuei twin, drowning in the UA hoodie they had all received at orientation. Though most of him sit turned away, his ever-fidgeting fingers danced in plain view.
Adjacent from him identified the second voice: Tokoyami- the kid with the shadow quirk. Bakugo didn't remember as much about him, only that, like Deku, he handled his quirk recklessly often despite the consequences. They had faced off in the sports festival, but that match had been a bit too underwhelming to catalog itself front in Katsuki's memory. The light from the open window bounced off his beak as he trained his focus on the other boy, the anticipation of a question radiating off his body in droves.
For a while, neither spoke, Deku's twitching hands nearly breaking Bakugo's cover. The stark white of the moon beamed down upon them like the whole scene was some Hollywood interrogation.
Eventually, the silence became too much for even Tokoyami.
"I know that-" he shifted, voice tight, becoming outwardly flustered as he tried to comprise his thoughts, "-I understand that this isn't any of my business and my boundaries have been entirely overstepped..."
There was a pause as he presumably waited for Deku to interject, expanding on his point when he didn't.
"...But just-... doesn't it bother you? The way he talks about you? Isn't it a bit weird?" Silence, "I mean, even the way he talks to you doesn't sit right with me, with anyone, Izuku."
Crouching for stability, Bakugo absently wondered when anyone had become so familiar with his rival to refer to a first name basis.
"And you know I'm not just pulling this out of thin air; Iida brought it up on the call, so did Ochako, and Jiro, Mina-"
Deku finally interrupted with a weak groan, voice barely above a murmur, "I know, and I told you guys it's already handled-"
"But it's not, Izuku!" Fumikage exclaimed, apologetically flinching as he took note of his volume, "You- okay. The other day in class, remember that?"
The other boy let out a pained sound as if this conversation had been raised too many times to count.
"You weren't even talking to him, Midoriya, you weren't even referring to his existence at all, and the second you started talking about how people used to tease you for keeping a journal in Junior High he blew up-"
"-Junior High was a particularly tough time for the both of us-"
"So that gives him the okay to humiliate you in front of the entire class?!"
The avian's tone caused the boy outside to flinch. Tight and accusatory, Bakugo wondered why such a voice hadn't imprinted on him earlier. Feet planted and ready; the blonde had an itch to march in there and defend himself from the conversation he wasn't even supposed to be listening to.
He remembered the incident distinctly, his outburst earning him a ticket for lunch duty.
'That idiot' he thought bitterly. No one ever saw Deku's true intentions. When it came to him, suddenly all wrongs were right in the eyes of his peers; he became some wonder boy that could never knowingly do anyone backhanded, but Bakugo knew. He'd heard the venom dripping from his words, saw down the barrel of the gun as he'd shot at him from up the ladder. He'd understood the disguised connotation, and why he had even volunteered to bloody speak in the first place. He'd heard his real message underneath his "tragedy":
"I, like this stupid journal, am better than those who used yank it from my hands and into the trash can where it belonged."
His calves shook from supporting his upper body, trembling in agitation. He'd make enemies out of the entire school before he'd fall victim under that damn nerd's deceitful spell.
The silence grew again, this time somehow more charged than the first. A sharp breeze streamed in from the open window, bearing with it nature's debris.
The door groaned as the wind rustled around it on its journey into the hallway, mineralizing Bakugo where he stood. He waited, anticipating those soft footsteps that he was sure would inspect the noise. When none such inspection came, he settled back onto his heels, acute enough to hear Deku's labored sigh penetrate the silence.
The smaller boy sank further into his hoodie, removing his arms from the massive sleeves, "I'm... how have I been blessed with such wonderful friends? That you are getting upset on my behalf is real-"
"Midoriya." Tokoyami deadpanned, the formality catching the other off guard, "Stop. You divert like this every time. Childhood friends or not, the way he treats you would be considered animal abuse on a dog," Deku winced the simile's rigidity, "And of course I'd get upset over this, why wouldn't I? Izuku, whether you like it or not I care about you more than you'd like to admit. We care about you. A-and when someone so blatantly treats you like...like-"
"Fumikage-"
"NO, IZUKU!" he shouted, emotion clouding over his auditory index, "Do you know how close I was to putting my hands on him yesterday? For just looking at you wrong? Like somehow you existing- minding your business-"
From outside, the blonde's eyebrows shot sky high at the bold declaration, rivaled only by the practically nauseous expression dripping of the huddled teen's face.
"You were going to what-?"
"-And I don't know what make's me angrier. The fact that you allow Bakugo to disrespect you at will or that you reject any move we make to help you."
Though the room was dark, the light from the moon refracted off the tears that had welled in the feathered boy's eyes, ripe to spill over onto his cheeks.
Kastuki looked on in bewilderment, careful now more than ever not to produce a single sound.
Where had this passion come from? And for whom? Deku? Had he been manipulated so vilely by his challenger that he'd been forced to tears and reckless abandon?
Tokoyami's eyes fixed themselves on the floor, shoulders hunched and trembling as he struggled to hold himself together. Midoriya shifted, equally as disturbed as Bakugo, until he stopped breathing altogether- a realization dawning on him that escaped the grasp of Katsuki's understanding.
Raising himself up onto his knees, he reached out shakily to his friend, "Oh" he whispered, growing more frenetic as the situation revealed itself to him, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no-"
"Sorry," the other wiped at his eyes maddeningly, suddenly embarrassed by his display, "I just don't want what happened to... to me-"
"No, No, Tokoyami!" Midoriya quavered, arms flailing about inside his hoodie, "I didn't mean to-... I mean I forgot about-... I truly never intended to-!"
"It's not that, Izuku..."
Bakugo wondered how many inside curveballs this situation could throw around before he lost track of the plot altogether. "It's not that"? Then what was it? He found himself pitying the bird boy. How many times could he be wrapped around that bastard's finger before he realized he had corded himself right into his little game?
"Then...?" Deku echoed, leaning back onto his ankles.
"It just... hurts me to see how you try to limp it off like it's nothing...but I know you, man, I know it hurts you."
He took a long pause, looking directly at his friend through misty eyes, brows furrowed as if trying to understand what exactly was going on inside his head, "Doesn't it hurt you?"
The hallway seemed like some kind of vacuum that could suck Katsuki up at any moment; his grip on the door tightened tenfold as he watched Deku shift himself down onto the floor.
"It's fine," Deku croaked, the wretched rawness of his voice making everything that much more unpleasant, "I'm used to it after all."
The room suddenly became much brighter, and Bakugo had to peek through squinted eyes to see.
Midoriya's head thumped loudly against the bed frame, quivering as he swallowed hard.
"You know." He began after a minute, "I never really understood why people would say that to me? 'This and that happened to you-you poor child. You must be exhausted.' or tired, or something" he stared past the other boy, "And I just think, 'does it matter?' How I felt then? How I feel now?"
"I mean, I still did it, right? I still accomplished everything I was told I wouldn't... what does it matter how bad it'd hurt?" the moon shone more densely, "If I'm making my mom proud, my dad, All might, my friends'... what does it matter how bad it felt, you know?"
His eyes widened, "N-not to say that I'm not extremely grateful for your compassion and concern! I don't mean to downplay other ways to cope with being outcasted-!"
Tokoyami raised his hand in clearance, silently reassuring the boy that no wrongs had been done.
After a beat, Deku relaxed back into his awkward position against the battered wood, "It just" he finished, "It just never made any sense to me."
"But isn't it like quirks, though? If you think about it..."
The green-eyed boy raised his head in question.
"... I mean, quirks have limits too right? There's a certain threshold you have to maintain before you begin to deal damage to yourself."
Katsuki's brows snapped together as he heard his own words thrown back at him. Had that bird boy been listening to him at the Sports Festival? Filtered that information away all this time?
"I reckon that emotions are similar in that aspect, too. You can only suppress so much before you begin to hurt yourself. You're still mortal, Izuku."
"I know," his friend strained, "I know I am, but I just can't afford to-"
"So then why do you place every else's expectations above your own state, Izuku? You front like you're okay and satisfied with everything and everyone until you cause yourself to... to get sick on the edge of the sidewalk-."
"Please, Fumikage" the boy in question pleaded, eyes squeezed shut as he wrung his hands together at the opening of his collar.
The room's gravity was so crushing Bakugo felt as if he would suffocate from where he was standing.
To get sick....
Is that what the commotion was about that day? Katsuki had just exited the dorms when Kirishima caught up with him talking about how some kid had just threw up on the connecting street a few blocks ahead...
"Gross, what?"
"There weren't that many people around, but those who did see said everything was fine until the person just doubled over and let it out,"
Kirishima panted, winded from sprinting back to U.A., "I ran back to get a wet towel after Ochako told me they had sat the kid down on the lawn."
"Well, did she say who it was?" came the question.
"Nah, she was really vague about it."
He patted Bakugo's shoulder, his other hand jabbing in the direction of the main building, "Hey, go get Recovery Girl 'n tell her what happened, I don't think that kid's gonna make it home by himself."
"Yea, okay" was the last thing he had said before the redhead released his shoulder, ducking through the door.
A wet sniffle dispelled the memory, the blonde squinting back into the room in alarm.
"I'm just-" the pitiful mewl that shook through the intruding voice caught all the boys off guard, Bakugo absentmindedly bringing the door into himself to prevent the whimpers from escaping the room, "I'm just terrified because-"
"-because it used t-to make me feel like... like such an idiot because everywhere I went I knew I was a problem." Deku fingers clutched at his collarbone, "And it would cause my mom so many issues."
"L-like she wouldn't get second interviews or callbacks because as soon as they found out that her only s-son was quirkless, they would figure that 'oh h-he'll be such a handful for her c-cause he can't defend himself, ' or something stupid."
A sob ripped its way right through his words, "And how she'd a-always have to call-... to call off because of me because I got into trouble or something."
He couldn't keep still, shifting and writhing as he tried to wrap his voice around scorching memories, "A-and she would always have to come up t-to the school because someone would push m-me to hard into the w-water fountain or flick the back of my neck raw."
His palms jabbed into his sockets, desperate to calm the flood of tears, "But I don't understand why she tries to hide it from me- everything I've done. Like I don't know w-why my dad took an assignment 5,336 miles away for the SAME exact pay with the SAME exact hours." A groan ripped through his throat as he writhed in frustration, "Like I can't just LOOK on Facebook and see that h-he has a whole other kid with an INCREDIBLE quirk."
The air grew colder by the second, Deku's arms curling into himself to take shelter from the chill, "It's just-... I just can't stand the way she used to l-look at me... h-how I'd come home and not l-look the way I did when I'd left," his arms muffled his broken gasps as he fought to contain himself, "She would watch me as I'd sleep, scared that if she'd left me alone, when she'd come to wake me up the next morning I wouldn't be there-"
He couldn't catch up with his breathing; it ran laps around him, racing even faster as he made mad grabs for it, "Even after I told her I would never try again-"
"Izuku."
It felt like they had latched onto a 10-ton weight sinking fast to the bottom of the ocean, the pressure crushing any air they had stored in their lungs.
Bakugo hadn't realized when he'd stop squatting, sliding down right onto his backside with his knees spread to his chest. He thought about what a weird explanation he'd have to give anyone who saw him like this, opting to put such a compromising scenario in his back pocket for now.
He felt out of breath like he'd just ran a 15-kilo marathon without stopping for air, support, or water.
This silence was the longest yet. Katsuki could vaguely hear the muffled voices echoing from the Common Room (a trek that suddenly seemed more like a hike than a few strides down the hallway).
An eternity had passed before either boy made a sound, eyes pinned to the other, afraid looking away for even a second would create a rip in space-time. One thing was for sure, came the mutual understanding, their friendship had entered the event horizon, a point of no return.
"Did... did Bakugo-?"
"Yes."
Zero context provided; zero context needed. The question was an answer in and of itself, Midoriya only needing to echo the implication for his friend to understand, but to the boy slumped outside the mere mention of his name in this climate was enough to make him forget how to swallow. The initial fury the gossip had brought upon him had festered into something much more complicated, something more potent than the nitroglycerin leaking out his palms and puddling onto the floor.
That "Yes"... how could something so simple, out of someone so despicable, make him feel so sick? The pit in his stomach grew more profound as he found himself hanging onto the empty promise of an anecdote, nearly shooting its way up his throat when none such came.
What had happened all of a sudden? When had the atmosphere become so toxic- so accusatory? Closing his eyes, he could have fooled himself into believing he was sitting cross-legged beside the bird boy, staring at Deku with the same intense bewilderment the episode had gifted to them. That room suddenly felt much bigger than the four walls provided, engulfing the hallway, the very plane of reality they lived on.
"Why-, what conviction enables you to protect him? Why not tell someone?"
"Protect"... the word shot an already bloodied arrow straight through his pride. He didn't need to be protected, not by Deku, not by anyone. Whatever Midoriya decided to throw at him he'd catch, plant it right at the crest of Mount Fuji for everyone to see. Bakugo Katsuki was no coward, and he'd be damned if Deku thought otherwise.
"Conviction," Deku echoed incredulously like the entire question had been asked in a foreign language, "I'm not trying to safeguard him from his wrongs. Junior High, U.A., my training with Gran Torino, all led me to this one reality: that I'm not obligated to anyone, at all, whatsoever, for any reason."
Izuku emerged from his makeshift cocoon, hands erupting from his collar like he'd discovered Einstein's 4th law of relativity. A light exclusive to the hero exploded behind plates of green, a supernova of ideas and emotions that shifted the present climate across the 24th dimension. If Tokoyami hadn't known any better, he'd have thought his quirk had been patho- ergokinesis all along.
"I didn't always understand what Kacchan's problem with me had been... I guess I just assumed it to be personal," Midoriya's eyes bore into his friend, "But then I started thinking... who asked me if I wanted to be the center of his emotional megaplex, you know?"
He laughed, a sound much too grating in the hushed room, "It's a bit funny to me now. It's like- what an intimate dilemma to be a part of. It was almost like being forced to go a party you were never invited to, and for me, I never really understood that I could walk through the door and leave whenever I felt like it, and I did."
A smile etched its way onto his face as he found himself disturbingly amused at his anecdote, "And I feel like when I did recuse myself from his insecurities, suddenly the party stopped, and everything became too unbearable when I decided to host a one-man party of my own" A pause, "On my own terms, with my own abilities, and that's the moment the blessings started to fall into my lap"
Tokoyami's broken laugh tore through the erudite atmosphere, "Midoriya, I-freaking-love you, man." To which the boy in question came to a stuttering halt, purple as an eggplant in the cool-toned room.
"W-what!? I-I'm s-s-s-sorry! I try not to go off on a tangent or anything these days, but sometimes I just kinda lose it, and my train of thought derails itself, and I start mumbling and ranting, and it's really embarrassing! A-anyway, what are you even s-saying-?"
Tokoyami laughed even harder, the cackling jubilance unshackling his feet from the strenuous climate as he fell over in a drunken haze. Midoriya followed suit, one hand routing into his hair, gripping in disbelief as hideous snorts streamed their way out of his nasal cavity. The two boys shared a mirth among themselves, their commotion gradually growing louder and more animated as the oxygen returned to their cells. The crushing weight of the evening fled from their shoulders, replaced with the feathery tonic of relief, purging the collective fractures from their persons until nothing remained but the panting, exhausted bodies of two teenagers reeling in a dark dorm room.
Yup, came the combined consensus, whatever happened in that minuscule dormitory had launched the two into Friendship: Chapter 27: Level 43: The Best Friend Files.
"Hey," Midoriya asked the ceiling.
"Yeah,"
"Do you think Todoroki will be mad when he comes back and sees that I've completely torn his comforter off his slip."
Fumikage turned to inspect his roommate's bed, to discover that Midoriya had indeed ripped the neatly tucked sheets off the now rumpled twin frame.
"Nah," he decided, "He likes you, you're good."
The air was cold and pungent as Bakugo trekked his way down the long hallway, his food long forgotten. The voices bouncing from the Common Room faded into muggy discord, the sound of his own breathing deafening in the stagnant air.