Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“This is embarrassing, Deku,” Katsuki said, kneeling to give his best disappointed look to the villain collapsed at his feet. “I mean it. It’s embarrassing for me and it’s embarrassing for you. But mostly you.”

Deku’s hands were cuffed, so Katsuki pulled out a tissue himself and applied pressure to the sides of his bloody nose, barely resisting the urge to slap him upside his head.

“Nob my fauld,” said Deku petulantly, “You dib this to me.” He tried to gesture at Katsuki’s shirtless, glistening upper body with his chin, but couldn’t quite manage to move his head.

“We were in the middle of a fight, then I took my shirt off and you walked into a wall. Fucking hell, Deku, you did this to yourself.”

Deku curled in on himself in shame. The torn fabric of his trousers shifted, revealing a cut on his upper thigh and the fabric right above it. He was wearing Ground Zero underwear. Katsuki stared for a long, incredulous moment, cursing every single choice he’d ever made that had led to this moment, starting with the horrible mistake of being born.

“Unbelievable. Really, Deku? This is why you’re not my fucking nemesis.”

Three weeks ago

By his own estimation, Katsuki Bakugou, top hero at Jeanist’s agency, valedictorian of his class at U.A. and all-around awesome guy, had only two real faults: hubris and schadenfreude.

The hubris he had mostly handled. Discovering on the first day of high school that he was not actually a perfect, godly being had been a reality check, but he’d learned from it. Got more training, hung out with brats at provisional license classes, went to a couple school-mandated anger management sessions. Now, as a much wiser twentysomething, he could acknowledge that he was in fact imperfect, though still pretty godly.

The schadenfreude? That was his downfall.

Katsuki was a good Hero. Sure, maybe he suffered a little in the popularity polls, and he didn’t have a famous mentor like Half’n’half or Lemillion, but he was on the fast track to number one. He was living his dreams. Everything would’ve been fine if Katsuki hadn’t decided that it would be funny to sit next to the sorry suckers on the Gentle Criminal case at work.

Around the office, everyone kind of knew that Gentle Criminal was a joke. Most of the sidekicks at Jeanist got to handle real work, like drug trafficking and underground Quirk fights and bank robberies. Katsuki himself was a goddamn action hero, rocketing out of the sky to slam villains onto the ground.

The guys who worked the Gentle case were essentially chained to their desks watching footage of that mustachioed fuck making speeches into the camera, but that wasn’t even the worst part. No, the reason that everyone at Jeanist dreaded that tacky pinstriped suit was the clues.

See, instead of just stealing shit and fencing it like a normal goddamn person, Gentle Criminal would leave a clue at the scene of every crime. That clue, once solved, would lead to another, and then another still, like the world’s shittiest scavenger hunt, until the Heroes who solved the puzzle found whatever rich-guy art piece Gentle Criminal stole in a completely different location, safe and sound.

Usually, it was all supposed to add up to make a point about society or whatever, but Katsuki always tuned out that part. The real fun was watching the poor fuckers working Gentle trying to figure out the riddles, aided and abetted by anyone with an internet connection and an urge to call the civilian tip line. Nothing made for a better meal break than watching Twinklefuck legitimately consider a 2ch theory that the latest Gentle clues were all a reference to some anime waifu’s birthday.

The day it all fell apart, Katsuki had been eating his bento while basking in the glow of his cheese-loving former classmate’s slow mental breakdown. Aoyama sparkled less and less with each new day he spent working on the Gentle Criminal case, and now he had dark bags under his eyes, muttering under his breath while staring at something Katsuki could only call a conspiracy board.

“The only date with the all-time great… Could it be? Non, non!”

Smirking to himself, Katsuki savored his spicy eggplant as Aoyama started crossing things out with glitter gel pen, misery in every line of his body. God, that guy was stupid. How the hell was he taking so long to solve one riddle?

That was when Katsuki made his fatal mistake.

“Cafe Ajisai, moron,” he said, his sudden interjection making Aoyama accidentally cross out half the page. “All-time great means All Might. When he was just starting out, he got assigned to a mission that had him faking a date with a city council candidate, the only time All Might was romantically linked to someone in public. It’s obvious.”

“Excuse you,” spat Aoyama, turning up his nose. “I’ve spent weeks poring over the details of Gentle Criminal’s messages. If the answer is so obvious, as you say, I would have already solved it. These puzzles require subtlety and thought! Not that you would know anything about that, you horrible brute.”

Katsuki had grown and changed over the years, which is why he didn’t explode Paris Syndrome where he stood. Instead, he picked him up by the scruff of his gaudy cape and started hauling him out of Jeanist’s office, mouth stretching outwards in a nasty grin.

“You fuckin’ doubting me, shithead? Well, let’s go on a little trip, hah? We’ll see who’s right then. I’ll show you subtlety, you pretentious, Brie-huffing, sonova...”

Sure enough, when Katsuki lined up the photos and crouched to look under the table where All Might had really sat all those years before, there was another clue taped to the wood. Aoyama had to eat his words, and Katsuki sat back with the satisfaction of proving his superiority yet again.

That was when he should’ve let it go and sauntered back to Jeanist’s office to lord his victory over Aoyama in all his following weeks of misery. Except… whatever was on that clue, Aoyama looked like he was about to cry, and Katsuki wanted to see him sob.

Aoyama stared mournfully at the pointillist drawing of a turtle in his hands, and turned it upside down like that was going to do anything. He looked over to Katsuki, batting his eyes like he thought he was someone who was actually attractive.

“Bakugou, my classmate, old friend— no, mon frère! Do you think you could…”

“Hell no.”

“Ahh,” sighed Aoyama, a single tear traveling down his cheek. “I suppose I should not have gotten my hopes up. Gentle Criminal has stumped ups both again. Of course, your earlier success must have been a fluke—”

“Give me the damn paper.”

The turtle drawing led them to the mosaic at Kijimi West Courthouse, which took them to the Hero character cafe that used to do Miruko carrot cakes, after which Katsuki spent a very frustrated half-hour at a nearby conbini, glaring at a deliberately unsolvable theorem. Finally, the trail ended with a set of coordinates for a storage unit on the outskirts of town, though Katsuki had the sinking feeling that all they’d find when they got there would be yet another stupid clue.

When they got to the storage unit, there was a villain there trying to fit a piano through the door.

“You,” said Aoyama. He stepped into the light, his costume glinting under the fluorescent glare.

“You’re not supposed to be here yet! Those riddles should’ve taken you weeks!” the villain said, a frantic, boyish strain to his voice. The lower half of his face was covered by a black bandana, but something about the glint in those wide, nervous eyes sent neurons firing at the back of Katsuki’s brain.

“Perhaps we are more intelligent than you thought,” said Aoyama, which really was rich coming from a guy who’d made Katsuki do the problem-solving all day. “But it matters not how we found you. What matters is that your reign of terror and confusion ends today, Deku!”

“Deku?” Katsuki said.

Though he couldn’t see the villain’s mouth, something about the way that bandana stretched gave the suggestion of a wide, wobbly smile.

“So that’s how you got here so quickly,” Deku said. His curls, darker than Katsuki remembered them, bobbed as he gently set down the piano. “Kacchan really is amazing after all.”

“Deku!”

Katsuki leapt forward, an explosion closing the gap between him and his erstwhile childhood acquaintance in less than a second. Deku ducked under his swinging fist, sliding past him somehow. A great cacophony of notes and twangs sounded as Katsuki collided with the piano.

“You really haven’t changed, Kacchan! You still always lead with a big right hook!”

“What the fuck, Deku! This is what you’re doing with your life now? What happened to— get a damn job, for fuck’s sake!”

Deku leapt on top of the piano and struck a pose, or at least he tried before Katsuki took the chance to almost grab his ankle. He scrambled away, slamming something down that exploded into colored smoke. Fortunately, Katsuki was used to working in low visibility. He dove for the murky figure at the edge of his vision, only just missing the trailing ends of Deku’s stupid tuxedo jacket.

“Surprised to see me here?” taunted Deku. His voice came from above. How the hell had he gotten up to the roof so quickly? Katsuki blasted his way after him.

“No,” Katsuki said. “I should’ve known. Only you’d be dorky enough to ruin a straightforward theft with stupid fucking puzzles.”

“Hey! The puzzles are important!” Deku dodged behind a chimney, narrowly escaping Katsuki’s AP shot. “There’s a point! Not everyone has a strong Quirk or physical strength, but if they solve our clues and help your investigation, then they can all be Heroes!”

Katsuki used another explosion to vault over Deku entirely, landing on the other side of the roof and blocking his path. Deku skidded to a stop and looked around, but Katsuki had blocked off the only exit: there was nowhere else to go but back towards Aoyama.

“That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard,” Katsuki growled. “If your shitty fans want to be everyday Heroes, they can fuckin’ sign up for community service instead’a wasting their lives watching your crappy videos!”

Deku dove back down to ground level, and Katsuki followed. This was too easy. The second they got him hemmed in, Katsuki would unleash a flashbang and cuff the nerd before he could move. The case that Jeanist had been agonizing over for the past year was coming to an end. All he had to do was—

“Iiiiiiii can’t stop twinkling!”

Sparklefuck’s eye-searing laser beam made Katsuki blind and reeling, forcing him to freeze and shield his eyes before he walked off the edge of the roof. He couldn’t land safely without his eyesight, couldn’t gauge the distance between rooftop and ground.

“Are you fucking kidding me!” he yelled into the void. It took far too many furious seconds spent hunched over and useless until his vision cleared. When he finally opened his eyes, alleyway was empty except for Aoyama, grooves carved into the walls around him from his laser. Katsuki landed down in front of Twinkleteeth with an extra explosion for emphasis, grabbing him by the collar.

“Tell me you got Deku,” he snarled. “Tell me that you cuffed him around the corner, or he’s tied up in the car, or, fuck, you hid him in your fucking poofy sleeves—”

“Ahahaha…” Aoyama said weakly, avoiding eye contact.

Deku was gone.

“I fuckin’ had him,” Katsuki said, pacing back and forth in Jeanist’s office with restless energy. “I woulda cuffed him in two minutes, I had that bastard cornered, until this dipshit—”

He threw a contemptuous glance on Aoyama, sitting in the elegant Scandinavian chair next to him. The Edward Cullen wannabe pouted and hung his head in shame. Katsuki was gonna kill that guy the next chance he got.

“He’s right,” Sparklefuck said mournfully, “I was helpless against Deku.”

“You’ve been wasting your time for the past seventh months, is what you’ve been doing,” Katsuki spat. “How long have you been working on that All Might clue, three weeks? I solved that shit in three minutes. No wonder you were number eighteen in our class.”

“Correct again,” Aoyama said. “I would have been absolutely lost today without Bakugou. I may have struggled, but those riddles were no match for someone with such a superior and brilliant mind.”

“Damn right! That shit was easy for me,” said Katsuki. Okay, maybe Sparklefuck did deserve to live.

“Truly impressive,” Aoyama agreed, “I could not hope to compare. How did you do it?”

“You could say that again, pea-brain. What, you gonna get stumped by elementary-level shit? That second clue was literally just the Kijimi mosaic with a Photoshop filter. We both must’ve walked by that thing a billion times already. And the recipe for a Miruko carrot cake? Fuckin’ obvious, I didn’t even have to make it to know what that Gentle guy was talking about, that’s basic knowledge— ”

The shoulder of Katsuki’s tank top unraveled and slapped itself over his mouth, successfully stopping his words. Katsuki’s shitty joss (jean boss) stood from his minimalist reclaimed-wood desk, keeping the gag in place with an elegant twist of his hand.

“I’ve heard enough,” said Jeanist. “Aoyama, you’ve proven to be completely unqualified to deal with Gentle Criminal. I’m putting you on daily street patrol.”

“Hah,” Katsuki jeered, as much as he could through the fabric blocking his mouth. It came off as sort of a derisive grunt, which he supposed was good enough. Served that fuckface right. Street patrol was one of the worst details, the place Jeanist put you if all you were good for was being a warm body with a license.

“And Bakugou?”

“Hrrm?”

“You were third in your class at U.A., correct? You’re not a brainless thug like I once thought. You’re intelligent, a tactical fighter with a broad base of knowledge, and you’ve grown since I first took you on as an intern. We’ve been wasting you as a ground-level bruiser. You deserve to take point on your own operations.”

“Hrrrrm,” Katsuki said, pleased but wary. Sure, it was nice to hear shitty Jeanist finally acknowledge him like he deserved after many long years of unappreciated toil, but something didn’t feel quite right.

“It’s decided, then,” Jeanist said, sitting back down with a toss of his swooping hair. “Aoyama, you’re on Patrol Shift 3. Bakugou, you’re the new principal investigator on the Gentle Criminal case.”

“HRRRRRM!”

It was no use. Katsuki couldn’t get out a single word. Sparklefuck stood, bowed and left with his face pointed humbly towards the floor.

“I will endeavor to learn from my mistakes, sir,” he said, all meek and sugar-sweet. As he left, pretending not to notice Katsuki’s wrathful glare, Katsuki swore he could see the barest hint of Aoyama’s smile.

So, yeah. Okay. Maybe Katsuki didn’t have such a great handle on the hubris after all.

“You sure about this, bro?”

“I’m telling you, the plan’s fuckin’ flawless,” Katsuki said, shouldering past Kirishima onto the train. The extras around them tittered and whispered, probably because for some dumbass reason Kirishima had decided to come in costume and his stupid meaty pecs were on full display. Katsuki made sure the scowl on his face was extra intimidating to keep the brainless Red Riot fans away.

“We nab Deku, he gives up Gentle Criminal ‘cause he’s a little bitch, we arrest Gentle and then I get to go back to real Hero work,” he said, leaning moodily against the subway pole. “The easiest way to catch the ringleader is to get a subordinate to flip. If we’re lucky, his house’ll have enough information for us to find their hideout, and we won’t even have to talk to the nerd.”

“No, yeah, I get that part,” Kirishima said. “It’s just… Are you really sure this childhood fr— classmate of yours is Deku?”

“Wh— yeah!”

Startled, Katsuki almost slipped and fell, losing his balance with the rocking of the train. Kirishima caught him by the arm and Katsuki shrugged him off. Fuck, that was right in front of the extras, too. With the way his luck had turned these days, one of them had probably gotten it on camera.

“I recognized him,” Katsuki said. “Sure, I haven’t seem him since puberty, but the little shrimp hasn’t changed that much, anyway. Same hedge hair, same pitchy voice, same fuckin’ rambling… He used the nickname I gave him when we were five as his villain codename, that bastard. And he called me Kacchan! He always calls me Kacchan!”

“Yeah, but Deku’s just short for dekunobu, right? It’s a common word. Could’ve been another guy with a similar haircut. I mean… this Midoriya’s Quirkless, right? And I’ve watched those Gentle Criminal videos. Deku has a quirk.”

“In the videos. You can fake anything with the right kinda camera editing. Haven’t you ever seen an All Might movie?”

Kirishima sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot.

“Look, man, I don’t wanna be that guy, but. You said Deku went toe-to-toe with you and Aoyama. He survived a point-blank navel laser. You’re telling me a random Quirkless guy from your middle school managed to escape two trained Pros?”

“You don’t fuckin’ get it,” Katsuki hissed, grinding his teeth despite his dentist’s multiple warnings. “Deku’s a bug, but he’s a— he’s a fucking cockroach, is what I’m telling you.”

“Dude, what?”

“He’s always there,” Katsuki said, his compulsively curling fingers a poor substitute for actually getting to use his quirk. “Watching and waiting and learning shit about everything, all the damn time. He’s a snake—”

“—Bro, I thought he was a cockroach—”

“He’s both! Because he’ll take everything you throw at him, and then he’ll come back and he’ll take some more. You can’t drop your guard with Deku. If anyone could’ve figured out how to fake a Quirk and take on Pros, it’s him.”

The subway doors opened, and all of a sudden Katsuki realized that he had been pushing forward and practically frothing at the mouth, flecks of spittle invading the space between them, and Kirishima was leaning back and away.

“So, clearly you have some issues with the guy,” Kirishima said, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand. “And that might be coloring your take on the situation, maybe just a little bit? But, you know, I support you, bud!”

The Midoriya apartment was exactly the same as it had the last time Katsuki visited, at the age of eight. If he looked closely, Katsuki swore he could see the faded remains of a scorch mark on the door jamb. The living room still smelled like lemony cleaning fluid, simmering onions on the stove and the particular musty scent of nerd. Even Auntie Inko was the same: perhaps with a few more lines on her face than Katsuki remembered, but she had the same slightly shaky look Katsuki had seen on her his entire childhood, as if a single sudden noise could shock her into tears.

“Oh, no, my Izuku could never,” she said when they explained the situation. “You see, he’s…”

She lowered her voice, even though she was very clearly in her own apartment with no one but Katsuki and Shitty Hair around to overhear.

“Izuku is a hikikomori. He hasn’t left the house in a very long time. My poor baby, he’s always been such a sweet, sensitive child… especially after being bullied for years…”

At this she sent a dark, malevolent look at Katsuki, who couldn’t help but avert his eyes. A prickle of guilt wormed its way into his gut, but he tamped it down with the iron stomach of a man who had braved the back of Kaminari Denki’s fridge. Katsuki was here as a Hero. He couldn’t let personal feelings overtake his commitment to the job.

“Oh. He um... Oof. Really sorry to bother you, Midoriya-san, and for your son’s, um, difficulties,” said Kirishima, looking very much like he wanted to drag Katsuki out of the Midoriya family home by his ears.

“But we really do have to insist,” Katsuki interrupted. Kirishima visibly cringed, his hangdog look unsuited for a man who had been a Pro Hero for three years.

With another vicious glare, this time tinged with righteous disappointment, Auntie Inko led them deeper into the Midoriya apartment, stopping outside a door festooned with All Might decals. That also hadn’t changed since the third grade.

“Izuku?” Auntie called. “There are some… men here to see you. They have their Pro Hero licenses. Are you awake, honey?”

Katsuki edged past her and rammed his fist against the door.

“Of course he’s awake, it’s 2 PM! Oi, open up, nerd!”

A series of increasingly loud crashes sounded from behind the door, then a strangled squawk.

“K-kacchan? Heroes? No! They can’t come in!”

“It’s okay, Izuku,” Kirishima called. “Sorry about my partner, he’s a jerk. We’re not gonna hurt you, and you’re not in trouble. We just wanna ask a couple questions, okay? So if you could just open the door—”

“No!” yelled the voice behind the door, with a surprising amount of strength and volume. Then, quieter: “I mean, there’s no need! If you go and wait in the living room, I’ll come talk to you. Would you like some tea? Mom, we can get them some tea, right?”

Katsuki and Shitty Hair exchanged a look. Whatever his opinions were before, both of them were now on the same page. Getting into Deku’s bedroom had become priority number one. Katsuki’s blood sang in his veins. What was behind that door? Illegal weaponry? Stolen goods? If Deku still wrote everything down in his shitty little notebooks, they could have enough evidence to implicate both him and Gentle Criminal in a night.

“It won’t take that long,” Kirishima said, gentle and cajoling. “Is there a reason we can’t just talk here?”

“It’s… Not ready for guests? I mean, I haven’t cleaned up, and you two are Heroes, and—”

Katsuki blasted off the doorknob.

He barged inside, sparking hands at the ready in case Deku was waiting with a bludgeon, but what he saw inside made him stop in his tracks.

“Dude,” Kirishima said. His voice was faint and slightly horrified. Katsuki couldn’t help but agree.

Staring from posters and art prints all over Deku’s ceiling was Katsuki’s own face. The shitty nerd had every piece of merchandise he’d ever put out and then some, clearly fanmade knockoffs side by side with Ground Zero hand towels, a Ground Zero x Acer gamer chair, Ground Zero commemorative postcards from Katsuki’s first fansign… Lounging on the bed was a body pillow with a version of Katsuki’s costume that he could only describe as lewd, and what the hell was that expression on pillow-Katsuki’s face—

“So, uh. That’s a pretty good reason to not want us in here, yeah,” Kirishima said, trying to hustle Katsuki out of the apartment. “Sorry for the trouble, Midoriya-san and Midoriya-san, our agency will reimburse you for the lock on the door.”

Katsuki shook Kirishima’s hand off his shoulder, refusing to get dragged out of Deku’s bedroom. No. This wasn’t it, this couldn’t be, there had to be something more.

He sidestepped Kirishima’s attempt to get him into a headlock and towards the far corner of the bedroom, where Deku was trying to hide behind his wild mass of overgrown hair. It was his first proper look at Deku in years, and Katsuki’s heart beat faster with… adrenaline… as he took him in.

The eyes were the same. Even though Deku wouldn’t make eye contact, though he shrank from Katsuki’s gaze, there was no mistaking the shade of verdant green behind the nerd’s new coke-bottle glasses. No matter what Katsuki had done and no matter how much Deku tried to hide it, there was a spark in those eyes that wouldn’t be snuffed out. It had been there at the storage center, too.

Similar height as the Deku Katsuki had fought, too. Deku had grown apace with Katsuki, it seemed, though he was still just a few centimeters shy of Katsuki’s height, and even less when he slouched. His face flushed red as Katsuki observed him, but when Katsuki pushed his shoulders back they were surprisingly broad, and when Katsuki’s hands slid down towards his biceps he touched muscle—

“Kacchan! Haven’t you already seen enough?” Deku yelled, eyelashes wet with unshed tears. He darted behind the gamer chair, using it as a shield between them. “I get it! I’m a loser! Y-you don’t have to keep embarrassing me.”

Katsuki advanced forward. Deku looked away again, down and to the right. As he thought. Every time Deku avoided his gaze, his eyes darted in the same direction. Towards the same place.

“What’s in that drawer, Deeeeku?” Katsuki hissed. “What are you hiding from me?”

“Nothing!”

Deku dove in front of his dresser, but Katsuki was too quick for him. He yanked the drawer out entirely, spilling its contents all over the floor.

Paper fluttered onto the ground. Picking up the glossy printed pages, Katsuki was confronted with a 2D drawing of himself spreading his cheeks apart to reveal his puckered asshole. No. He dropped it in disgust and picked up the next, which was titled Ground Zero x Tentacles. No! Katsuki frantically searched through the scattered doujinshi, discarding each trashy hentai drawing of himself as soon as he saw the lingerie.

Where were the museum floor plans, the coded messages, the grappling gun blueprints? Where was the evidence that confirmed that Katsuki’s Deku was the Deku who had been aiding Gentle Criminal for years? Where the hell was his victory?

Katsuki stared unseeing at the cover of My Secret Night With Ground Zero And A Breeding Quirk, too lost to even register the big red R18 printed on the cover. Unfortunately, that frozen moment was all Kirishima needed to yank him up by the collar and drag him out the door, babbling even more apologies as he went.

“Bakugo, we’re leaving,” he said firmly, and Katsuki knew from long experience that nothing would budge Kirishima from his decision. “This was a wild goose chase. I told you, man, there’s nothing for us here.”

Eyes still fixed on the way Deku’s shadowed form stayed still and unmoving in the doorway as Katsuki was hauled away, the trembling that Katsuki remembered throughout his entire childhood smoothed over into a strange kind of poise, Katsuki couldn’t help but think that Kirishima was wrong.

Katsuki spent most of the next week going on a research deep dive into everything Gentle Criminal, though if he had to be perfectly honest, most of his waking and sleeping thoughts were occupied by Deku. It wasn’t his fault that the face of the operation was so boring and unphotogenic compared to Deku, but Bakugo Katsuki did not get where he was without discipline.

He slogged through video after video, starting from the first horrible, grainy attempts. They were poorly shot and Deku didn’t even appear, but Katsuki took notes anyway, trying to see if he could establish a pattern for Gentle Criminal’s behavior.

Around five years ago, what would have been Katsuki’s second year of high school, Gentle Criminal got a different cameraman. The videos prior to that were usually hasty affairs at awkward angles, a phone tilted against the wall or held out a meter away from Gentle Criminal’s face in selfie mode, but suddenly they expanded to full-body pans filmed with only a slightly shaky hand.

Around that time, his rants became more cohesive, too. While the first videos were full of disjointed ramblings as Gentle Criminal attacked a convenience store to protest the amount of air in potato chip bags or awkward attempts at recreating ancient memes, once the new cameraman (Shitty Deku , Katsuki thought, though to preserve some semblance of objectivity he wrote the name down as Suspect B) showed up, Gentle Criminal started talking about real issues.

Like mutant quirk accessibility for public spaces. Maternity leave policy that punishes working mothers. Discrimination against the Quirkless.

The targets Gentle chose post-Suspect B had meaning. He took a painting from the home of a politician known for espousing near-eugenicist views, a statue stolen from a Korean palace during the colonial era and never returned. Once, with cheeky flair, he stole the contents of a known sexual harasser’s underwear drawer and festooned it about a local shrine.

He started dropping little references to his Gentle assistant, who seemed to have done most of the actual research and work for their increasingly elaborate heists, and eventually, after way too many hours of footage, the moment Katsuki had been waiting for came: Deku’s onscreen.

The young man in the video, cheeky and confident, didn’t seem like Deku at all. Maybe a Deku clone who’d had his inhibitions surgically removed by the scientists who made him. He was the brains behind the operation. Katsuki could feel it in his bones. There was a laugh in his voice, a sparkle to his eyes, a tilt to his eyebrows that makes the audience feel like he was telling them the most amazing secret.

Deku minus stutter. Deku plus charm. Deku the goddamn criminal, in league with the very people he spent his whole childhood swearing to defeat. Behind those innocent eyes hid a dangerous mastermind, a virtuoso of trickery and deceit, and what the fuck did he do to his hair to make it look so bouncy—

“Bro, why is it so dark in here?”

Kirishima opened the door to what Katsuki called the Gentle Criminal Investigation Action Center and Jeanist called Storage Closet On The Second Floor, To Your Right. A cone of golden light shone in from the open doorway, illuminating Katsuki’s theory board. Kirishima stared at the corkboard, plastered with screenshots taken from video footage of Deku and Katsuki’s own scribbled thoughts, and slowly swung the door shut again.

“Uh, I guess you’re busy with… whatever that is,” he said, voice muffled by the wooden barrier between them. “But you should probably check Gentle Criminal’s social feeds? And maybe move out into the open office, where there are, like, windows and natural light? Just a thought.”

Katsuki did not. He curled up between two mops and a cardboard box full of last season’s black denim jorts trend and refreshed. A new video popped up with—

That was Katsuki’s fucking face in the thumbnail. All-caps letters below proclaimed: YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT GROUND ZERO SAID NEXT!!!

Cradling the laptop to his chest like a baby, Katsuki eased open the door. Kirishima, ever loyal, was waiting for him outside.

“Have you watched it yet?” Katsuki demanded. Kirishima shook his head. The spikes of his hair, rather alarmingly, stayed in place even as his face moved from side to side. They relocated to an empty conference room (cleared very quickly of some junior sidekicks after a quick bit of explosive intimidation), hooked Katsuki’s laptop up to the wall monitor, and pressed play.

It was strange seeing himself from a criminal’s perspective. Deku had somehow gotten hold of security camera footage from the cafe, which showed very clearly how Katsuki had dragged Aoyama over to the right table by the scruff. Gentle Criminal’s face hovered in a little box to the bottom left, making unwanted little interjections and weird reaction faces. Katsuki wanted to cover it up with his hand so he could further focus on the real star of the video, himself.

Katsuki had to admit, he did look kind of cool striding off to the courthouse, all decisive and shit like a genius detective. He puffed out his chest a little, admiring how those security cameras caught the way the sun glinted off his gauntlets.

Then came a montage of Katsuki trying to figure out that math equation in the convenience store. The cameras had recorded every moment of Katsuki screaming, tearing up his scratch paper, breaking a pencil in his mouth from biting on it too hard, calling up Ectoplasm to curse him out for not teaching high school math better, then stress-eating an entire bag of wasabi peas and exploding the packaging afterwards.

Next to him, Kirishima’s shoulders shook in not-so-silent laughter.

“D-dude, they really got your true self on camera,” Shitty Hair wheezed. Katsuki grabbed the back of his head and slammed it into the conference table, which of course did nothing because Kirishima Hardened his face on impact. Then Kirishima got an elbow into his gut, so Katsuki had to use his superior reflexes to kick out his knees, and the subsequent wrestling match distracted them from the video until Deku’s voice blared out from the speakers.

It was almost Pavlovian, the way Katsuki froze when he heard that shitty nerd’s boyish voice. He kept Kirishima in an absent half-Nelson, swiveling around to glare at Deku’s face blown up on the big screen.

“So!” chirped Deku. “While we were fighting, Kacchan actually made a really good point! If all our Gentle fans come together to help the community, we really can make a difference! And I have the perfect place… Dagobah Beach. It could be so beautiful if it wasn’t for all the garbage people have dumped on there over the years.”

The view onscreen changes to one of the many shitholes in Katsuki’s childhood neighborhood, the kind of garbage heap his parents used to tell him to avoid as a kid. ‘Course, that just meant he deliberately played there to make a point, but he stopped going the day he learned about tetanus.

Personally, Katsuki thought that even if that beach did get cleaned up, it had been so contaminated by decades of pollutants that he wouldn’t want to go there, anyway.

“That’s why we’re making more villainous demands,” Deku continued with a dark little chuckle. It was obviously fake, but something about the timbre sent a little shiver of trepidation down Katsuki’s spine. “The Gentle Criminals won’t release our next clue until all of Dagobah Beach is clear! Thanks so much to Ground Zero for the inspiration!”

That rat bastard.

It was a beautiful morning, a fresh salt breeze coming off the ocean. The volunteers started off shy, like the typical net-obsessed losers they were, but they got comfortable far too quickly for Katsuki’s tastes. They laughed among themselves, chatting and exchanging numbers. None of them knew anything about Gentle Criminal or Deku.

Someone fired up the grill for yakitori and Western-style burgers, and another enterprising young businesswoman had hauled out a shaved ice machine for kakigori. She started a conversation with one of the quieter volunteers, and soon they were bonding over how much they loved Gentle Criminal’s videos. Young love was blooming before Katsuki’s very eyes. He hated it.

Katsuki was miserable. It was too hot. He couldn’t explode anything because “There are civilians, Bakubro” and “It’s not safe, Bakubro,” so he had to move the trash away by picking it up and touching it. With his hands. When a boom box started up with a pop song from ten years ago, he could hear everyone else on the beach cheer and start to sing along. They were out of tune.

“This is the best day of my life!” Kirishima cheered as he ran to join an impromptu game of beach volleyball. After wiping his hands with a rag, Katsuki angrily chomped down on his free kakigori, recoiling at the immediate brain freeze. He was going to kill shitty Deku for putting him through this hell.

If Katsuki wanted to kill Deku, he would have to catch him first. Everyone who had worked the Gentle Criminal case before had been willing to sit back and react to Deku’s next diabolical move, but Katsuki knew better. You couldn’t catch someone like Deku by passively waiting for him to slip up. No, Deku was too smart for that, too prepared. Katsuki would just have to be smarter.

He had known that bastard throughout their entire childhood. Even when he hated him, Katsuki had always been hyperaware of Deku’s every movement, the non-stop muttering that he could never tune out providing a vivid look into Deku’s psyche. Deku had spent most of his life studying Katsuki, but guess what, dumbass? That connection ran both ways. Starting tonight, Katsuki was gonna return every bit of stalkery attention Deku had ever given to him tenfold!

“Now, what would I do if I was a weirdo loser nerd…” Katsuki said. He breathed deeply, centered himself and tried to channel the energy of Deku. “Mumble, mumble. Kacchan’s amazing. Blah, blah, justice, kindness, everyone deserves a chance! Wah, wah, wah, boo hoo. All Might, All Might, Kacchan wait up, All Might…”

His eyes snapped open again. The clues that he’d found so far (All Might’s date with the city council candidate who ran on criminal justice reform, the courthouse mural, the formula that would always remain unequal) flashed through his mind. Every single one of them pointed towards a ham-handed metaphor about the inequity of the court system. And if Deku was talking about criminal justice, there was one place he couldn’t resist.

Katsuki landed near-silently on the rooftop overlooking the Patanaki Steps, the site of one of All Might’s lesser-known speeches, this one on recidivism and mercy. He knew the words by heart: “Justice shouldn’t be a punishment, it should be a chance. A chance for the wronged to find peace, a chance for the ones who have wronged them to change, and a chance for all of us, as a community, to reckon with our own mistakes and come together to protect the most vulnerable among us…”

Every sentence of that speech was Deku-bait. There was no way he’d pass up the chance to plant a clue here. And when he finally scuttled in, well, Katsuki would be waiting with the patience of the apex predator he was.

...Fuck, waiting sucked. Stakeouts were the worst. Katsuki texted Kirishima to come and switch off with him, but the only reply he received was Sorry bro I’m on a date! Also you said you emotionally communed with Deku and that sounds like kind of a stretch?? No hate bud I’m all love but I gotta be manly and speak my truth. Which is that you sound kind of out there. You taking enough breaks? Get some sleep man and maybe do a guided meditation!!

What a traitor. Katsuki jammed a single earbud into his ear and smashed play on the meditation podcast Shitty Hair had sent him.

“You are in a quiet forest. The soft sounds of leaves rustle above you. Breathe in, and feel the dappled pattern of sun against your skin. Breathe out, and let the gentle wind caress your body. Think about the person you want to see most, and imagine what you would say to them.”

Katsuki imagined it. Deku in that dorky pinstriped suit, somehow wrinkled even though it had clearly been tailored to his surprisingly built form. What did he want to say to Deku?

Fuck you. You’re ruining my life. You always ruin everything, I thought I was free after eight years— where the hell did you go? What happened to you? What the hell changed, you used to want to be a Hero, I used to think you’d always be trailing behind me, what the FUCK, Deku? I raced ahead, but when the hell did you stop wanting to follo—

And then there he was, the person Katsuki wanted to see the most. Deku.

Katsuki slowly advanced out of his hiding spot, hands poised for a flashbang. He knew that a sneak attack was most likely the best option, but seeing Deku absently stare at the grooves etched into the staircase, the way he didn’t even notice Katsuki was there… His mouth opened before he could think.

“I knew you couldn’t resist this place, you predictable fanboy,” he sneered. Then he remembered who exactly Deku was a fan of, aside from All Might, and the sort of merchandise he’d had lying around his room, and he flushed an uncontrollable red.

“You sure I’m the predictable one, Kacchan?” Deku replied, arching a high eyebrow. He gave a little scoff and started sauntering over, towards Katsuki, like he wasn’t even concerned about getting a point-blank explosion to his face…

Katsuki’s teeth clenched with fury. He set off the flashbang and dove at Deku, the full weight of his body primed to tackle him to the ground.

He surged forward, the same meteoric jolt forward he felt every time he used his quirk to up his speed, but his shoulder met with no resistance. Katsuki crashed against the ground.

“See, Kacchan,” said the Deku standing above him. “You knew that I’d want to come here, but I knew that you’d come to catch me.”

Deku’s legs ended partway through Katsuki’s stomach, his image flickering the slightest amount now that Katsuki was close enough to notice. He’d been so focused on confronting Deku that he hadn’t realized the man he attacked was a hologram.

Faster than Katsuki could react, thick plastic rope sprung out from all around him, trapping him to the ground in an impermeable net. Katsuki flared his hands red hot, but the material around him felt a little like Aizawa’s capture weapon. It’d take hours to burn through.

Bundled up like a mummy, Katsuki could do nothing but let out muffled, furious noises as the real Deku appeared from around the corner. He could see the difference between the person and the hologram now. While the hologram had this hip-swinging, sultry gait, this Deku walked slowly, as if approaching a wild animal. He got his hands around Katsuki’s shoulders and tilted him up off the floor, propping him up against the stairs.

“Do you ever think about what All Might was talking about, here?” Deku asked over Katsuki’s increasingly loud yells of rage. “Most people think that a Hero’s job ends at stopping the bad guy. But there’s so much more to it than that, isn’t there? You have to find some way to fix the damage. Make sure the victim’s spirit recovers, saving their whole self instead of just their physical body. And I think… the best Hero tries to save everybody, not just the people who deserve it.”

Deku got his hands around Katsuki’s shoulders and pulled him upwards, propping him against the stair behind him. His hands rubbed their way down Katsuki’s bound arms, testing the give of the restraints.

“Circulation is okay,” he muttered. Katsuki let out an especially loud roar, and Deku stepped back, hands held up placatingly even though Katsuki was the one tied up. “You’re probably thinking that I should shut the fuck up already and stop spouting fake-deep justifications, right? You know…”

He lowered his voice to a raspy growl, imitating Katsuki’s rough, rusty timbre.

“If you think the laws are so bad, then stop wasting your time, become Prime Minister and change them yourself!” he snarled, then giggled. “You’re so unreasonable sometimes, Kacchan! But I can’t really call you a hypocrite, ‘cause you’re just telling us exactly what you’d do in the same situation. Even though I’m probably the only one who’d vote for you.”

Katsuki braced for leverage and swung himself at Deku, aiming to headbutt him hard enough to put him on the ground. Deku danced out of the way with a yelp.

“Okay, okay! I got the message, Kacchan, I’m going already,” he said. “But just ‘cause you were nice enough to make your way over here for us…”

Deku leaned down, so close that if the curls of his hair were just a little longer, they would’ve brushed Katsuki’s forehead. Still bound like he was and smarting from his failed attempt at an attack, there was nothing Katsuki could do except tilt his chin up and wait. He tried to glare at Deku, but the proximity just made him cross-eyed. As close as they were, Katsuki could see each individual eyelash framing Deku’s wide eyes and the barest outline of Deku’s every pore.

Something hit his forehead. A sticky note, and Katsuki didn’t need a mirror to know it was probably All Might-themed.

“Here’s your next clue, Kacchan,” Deku said, and all Katsuki could do was watch as he walked away.

Bakugo Katsuki did not give up. One failure was nothing. If Katsuki wasn’t good enough now, he’d make himself better. He was going to tackle the problem of Deku the same way he faced everything: giving it his all until he saw victory.

The second he was free of those damn ropes, he was on the phone with Shitty Hair, ignoring the whisper-shouts of “Dude, I’m literally at their apartment right now” to bark out instructions to meet him at Jeanist’s early the next morning. He did a full forensic sweep of the park, even though he knew that he wasn’t going to find a thing.

Then when he got back to the agency, he moved the Deku Action Center to the fourth-floor break room, the billboard covered in Deku’s scrunched-up nerd face staring out between the electric lint remover and the French press. Katsuki leaned against the table and glared into Deku’s eyes.

“You’re done, shitty nerd,” he hissed. Behind him, an intern walked into the Action Center, took one look at the photos of Deku tacked all over the room, and walked out again. He was going to catch Deku. He wouldn’t allow himself to do anything else. Running his finger along the Deku photo’s neck, Katsuki made a promise: he was going to get that bastard, whatever it took.

Katsuki hadn’t graduated third in the class at U.A. for nothing. He found the wholesaler for the specific kind of fabric that Deku and Gentle Criminal used to make their suits (not a lot of factories in Japan specialized in fireproof pinstripes) and set up a sting operation within the week, but Deku showed up with a smoke bomb that sprayed special fire-extinguishing foam, rendering his explosions useless.

Katsuki shook down underworld gadget engineers until he found the woman who’d made Deku his rope trap, but she convinced Jeanist to let her snitch on a weapons smuggling ring instead of flipping on Deku. He chased Deku through the skyline after staking out different rooftops around the city for 72 hours straight. He spent a week analyzing bathroom tile grout patterns until he narrowed down the location of Deku’s hideout, but all he found when he arrived was a video recording of Gentle Criminal and Deku telling him “nice try.”

Solving the trail of shitty clues that led to Judge Ogawa’s stolen gavel was so easy that Katsuki couldn’t even count it as a victory. The riddles and the stolen goods were on Deku’s terms, a game that Deku had rigged to allow him to win. Over and over, he tasted defeat. Somehow, the shitty nerd was always one step in front of him.

Throughout the humiliation (the jokes his friends made, weird looks whenever someone walked by the Deku Action Center, all the footage of him getting caught by Deku’s cheap tricks in those goddamn videos), Katsuki would not be deterred. He was a lion on the hunt— no, a lioness, because lions were weak, lazy bastards. He would adapt and persevere.

The next time Deku set off that infuriating smoke bomb, Katsuki was ready. He hid his hands under his shirt, shielding them from the anti-explosive spray, then when the smoke cleared he whipped his shirt off and threw it behind him. He charged at Deku, sparking palms at the ready, and—

Deku walked into a wall. Katsuki paused, wary. Could this be yet another trick to get him captured and let Deku escape? No, when he poked at Deku with a foot, the low groan that escaped was entirely too realistic.

As he clipped Deku’s hands behind his back, Katsuki couldn’t help but feel a little cheated. What the hell? That was barely a fight. Katsuki hadn’t even done anything, so why would Deku…

Katsuki looked down at himself, then at Deku, who had, despite the concussion, managed to roll himself over so he could ogle Katsuki’s pecs. He remembered the Ground Zero posters all over Deku’s walls, the nature of the doujinshi he’d found in Deku’s cabinet.

Typical Deku. Still so easily affected, even after all these years, huh? Katsuki felt a manic smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He’d just found Deku’s weakness.

NOW:

“Is he looking?”

“Dude, do we really have to do this every time?”

Katsuki fixed the over-gelled dumbass next to him with a withering glare, imbuing every bit of scorn he possessed in his soul into one single, devastating scoff. Kirishima shuffled his feet a little, hand reaching upwards to check the spikes of his hair.

“It’s just… You know, I was gonna say that this is getting kinda weird, but it’s been weird. For like, a long time. And I gotta be real with you, I don’t know why you’re always asking me to check if Deku’s looking when like, we’re standing right next to each other? You could glance over, too.”

It ruined the effect if Deku knew that Katsuki knew he was there, but he didn’t expect Kirishima to get the depths of Katsuki’s strategy. No, you had to speak to Shitty Hair in a language he understood. The language of men.

“Kirishima,” Katsuki said, his voice carrying the harsh certainty of a thousand missions, tutoring sessions and prank wars. “Are you the mission lead on this case?”

“No, but…”

“Who is the mission lead on this case?”

Kirishima’s shoulders, which had reflexively straightened when Katsuki used his actual name, slumped once more. He muttered at the floor, eyes sheepish and downcast.

“You are.”

“Exactly. And you know why I tapped you to join me?”

“Because misery loves company?”

“No, dumbass,” Katsuki said, sending a friendly explosion into Kirishima’s chest. “It’s ‘cause all those other fuckers at Jeanist underestimate Deku. You think I don’t hear ‘em talking about my “obsession?” We’re up against a man who’s managed to escape police custody every single time we’ve caught him, and nobody listens when I say we gotta take him seriously.

“I need someone I can trust. Someone who has my back. Someone who’ll follow me into the fires of hell, ‘cause that’s where we gotta go if we’re gonna catch Deku.”

When Katsuki met Kirishima’s gaze, he was satisfied to see that Shitty Hair’s eyes had already filled with manly tears, his posture as perky and excitable as a puppy dog who’d just heard the word “walk.” Got him.

“That’s me!” Kirishima said. “I can be that guy! Bro, I’ll follow you off a cliff if you need me!”

“Good,” Katsuki said. They fist-bumped. “Now go over there and tell me if Deku’s looking at m— us.”

Kirishima struck up some extremely unconvincing whistling and stretched his neck, coincidentally glancing at the treeline of the Cabinet member’s estate they were guarding.

“Yeah, he’s looking right at us,” he confirmed.

Katsuki fought a smirk. The effect of his next play worked better if he was bored and casual, like he didn’t give a shit about anything or anyone. That was how all the most famous models in his parents’ catalogues did it, anyway, and Katsuki always aimed to be the best.

Walking over to the pack they’d stashed in the grass, Katsuki picked up a water bottle and subtly angled himself to give Deku’s hiding spot the best view of his sculpted six-pack. Then, muscles flexing with feline grace, Katsuki poured the bottle slowly over his head. Water splashed against his bare collarbones, pebbling his nipples with the cold, running in rivulets down his V-lines. From somewhere in the vicinity of the trees, Katsuki heard a whimper.

Meanwhile, Katsuki’s very own pet rock edged around to flank Deku, surprisingly light on his feet for such a typically graceless man. Deku watched, mesmerized, as Katsuki arched his back, letting his sagging pants slip even lower down his hips, and in an instant Kirishima had tackled him to the ground, pinning his arms behind his back.

Katsuki couldn’t help but let out a bark of victorious laughter. It had been the work of multiple days to lull Deku into the horny complacency that had enabled this most glorious moment. Days of strutting around in next to nothing, doing yoga on the lawn and practicing his splits. They hadn’t even been able to figure out Deku’s hiding spot until Katsuki had the bright idea of showing up in the agency wardrobe’s skinniest jeans and doing squats until Deku came over to get a closer look.

“You miscalculated, Deku,” Katsuki said., “You thought you were invincible. Betcha thought you were smarter than me. Well, look at you now.”

Katsuki let Kirishima haul Deku into a sitting position and leaned over him so he could gloat properly. Katsuki was still wet, hair plastered down against his head, but that did nothing to dampen his joy. A drop of water beaded on the end of his nipple and splashed onto Deku’s cheekbone, like a tear. Deku let out a violent exhale, tensing against his bonds.

“Problem is, you didn’t count on one thing, Deku,” Katsuki taunted, wiping the water away with his thumb. Deku shivered, and Kirishima broke into a set of uncomfortable, hacking coughs. Katsuki ignored them both. “I’m a master hunter. Like a warrior of the ancient savannah, always aware of my prey—”

“Using your own naked body as bait,” Deku muttered resentfully.

“That’s right! Using my own naked body…”

Katsuki frowned. Somehow, capturing Deku didn’t sound as awesome of a feat as it was when phrased that way. He’d gone off-topic.

“Anyway, I’m trying to make a point!” he said, yanking down Deku’s mask in a single motion. “See, Shitty Hair! I’ve been saying it this whole time! This is Deku’s face!”

“Uh, didn’t we know that already?” Kirishima asked, his head tilted slightly to the side.

“No, I mean my— I mean, Midoriya Izuku! That’s his face! See?”

“Oh, buddy, no,” Kirishima said, sounding a little like he was talking to a pet dog who’d just thrown up on his shoes, i.e. patronizing yet slightly sympathetic. “Bro, we’ve talked about this. Midoriya Izuku wears glasses. Deku does not wear glasses. Midoriya has bangs. Deku’s hair is in, like, a way different style. Midoriya’s Quirkless, and Deku has a quirk.”

“He does not!” Katsuki snapped, indignant.

“I do!” Deku chimed in, completely uninvited. “I’d show you right now, actually, except…”

He wiggled his fingers a little. Katsuki scoffed, incensed.

“Bullshit! That’s such a fucking cop-out,” he said, little sparks popping all over his palms. “Oh, no, you conveniently can’t demonstrate the quirk that you deeefinitely have, all ‘cause we captured you. Think you’re off scot-free, Deku? Think we’re so scared of you we gotta keep you locked up? Well—”

Katsuki freed Deku from the handcuffs with quick, savage motions, letting them click open and fall to the floor.

“I’m calling your bluff, shitty Deku! Demonstrate your shitty quirk, right here, right now!”

Deku took a little while to stand up, rubbing at his wrists as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. Kirishima, too, had been stunned into silence. Katsuki braced himself with watchful patience as Deku reached into the front of his suit jacket, no doubt to pull out another one of his crappy gadgets and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had been, in fact, Katsuki’s quirkless Deku all along.

Except what came out of the inside breast pocket of the suit wasn’t a gun, or a bomb, or even a weapon at all. It was a deck of cards. Katsuki raised his gaze slowly, and was met with the full force of Deku’s trembling smile.

“Pick a card, any card…”

For one long, indescribable moment, Katsuki completely blacked out. His brain, faced with the sheer amount of stupidity before him, simply refused to process what was happening. This couldn’t be reality. Close-up magic? What the fuck? This was what Deku had been using as his counterfeit quirk for years? It was so obviously fake, so indescribably stupid, there was no way anyone could ever fall for something so absolutely ludicrous—

“Whoa, that’s such a manly quirk! I can’t believe you made my card disappear!”

“Kirishima, you absolute, rocks-for-brains idiot!”

The point-blank AP shot delivered right to Kirishima’s face garnered no reaction. Kirishittyface seemed completely unbothered, and Katsuki was beginning to regret choosing his best friend as a partner instead of a more easily intimidated intern.

“That’s stage magic, you fool,” Katsuki said, a vein beginning to throb in his forehead, “As in pretend. As in the card is up his fucking sleeve , any idiot with at least one thumb could pull that shit off! Hell— Deku, give me that!”

Katsuki snatched the deck of cards from Deku’s hands and shoved them into Shitty Hair’s face.

“Pick a goddamn card!”

“Only if you calm down, man,” Kirishima said, halfway to Unbreakable in preparation for one of Katsuki's attacks. Katsuki closed his eyes, counted to ten, named three things he could see or head (green grass, green trees, green eyes), then thrust the cards towards Kirishima again.

“Fuckin’ pick one.”

“Okay, okay!”

Broom Head taped the Jack of Hearts, and Katsuki started the magic trick. Piece of cake. Some shuffling, a little misdirection, then he’d slip the card up his sleeve… Except Katsuki had forgotten one thing: he was shirtless. Kirshima’s card slipped from his hand, drifting slowly to the ground between them.

“Dude…” Kirishima said.

“Shut the fuck up!” Katsuki said, his face flaming red. “It’s just— that usually works, okay? It’s an easy goddamn trick. Ask Deku!”

But when they both turned to look at their prisoner, Deku was gone.

When they returned to the Genius Agency office, Katsuki was silent with rage and humiliation. Kirishima gave him a wide berth, as he’d learned to do whenever Katsuki tipped over into quiet, seething anger, but the two dumbasses who’d come to bother them on their lunch breaks were nowhere near that wise.

“Blasty and Kiri!”

“Is that King Explosion Murder standing next to an actually good hero?”

Kaminari and Ashido were in the middle of the Deku Action Center/Genius Agency break room, sitting on the table and grinning like fools. They were loud. They were cheerful. And the worst thing of all, they were both wearing pinstriped, branded Gentle Criminal merchandise.

Katsuki was across the room, a fist full of Kaminari’s Deku-logo crop top gathered in his hand, before he even knew it.

“The fuck is this?”

“Hey, watch the goods! This is limited edition!”

“This,” Katsuki said, yanking Dunce Face forward by his shirt. “Is branded merchandise for a fuckin’ villain. A criminal, Pikachu! The enemy!”

“Deku and Gentle aren’t like, villain villains,” Kaminari protested. “They’re more like activists, right? You know, spreading awareness…”

Katsuki snarled in incoherent rage. Ashido slapped her hand over Kaminari’s mouth, insinuating herself between Dunce Face and Katsuki and thereby saving Kaminari’s miserable life.

“Calm down, Bakugo! We’re not really supporting villains, jeez,” she said, rolling her eyes. Though he had the urge to get angrier out of sheer spite, Katsuki did feel a little less homicidal at her surprisingly reasonable words. That is, until she grinned, winked and followed that up with a “We’re just supporting you, ain’t that right, Kacchan?”

“Haaaaaah?”

“Oh, dope,” Kirishima said, pulling both idiots into a three-idiot group hug as Katsuki sputtered. “Thanks, guys!”

“Wh— how is that—”

“C’mon, you went up like twenty ranks now that you have a nemesis,” Ashido said. “Deku being popular means you’re popular! It’s a good thing.”

“It’s probably just ‘cause you always have your shirt off in those videos,” Electro said with a little smirk. He knew that Kirishima would protect him if Katsuki attacked, that conniving little shit.

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being a fanservice Hero!” Ashido snapped. “It’s Bakugo’s right to flaunt it if he’s got it, and you shouldn’t get judgy just ‘cause you don’t!”

“I’m not a fanservice Hero,” Katsuki said blankly. Ashido grimaced a little. Kaminari scoffed. Katsuki’s eyes sought out Kirishima, his best friend, his second, his only ally— only to see that Kirishima was averting his eyes as well. “I’m not! Tell them, Kirishima!”

“Well,” said Kirishima, with an awkward little leave me out of this shuffle out of blasting range. “You are always, uh. Taking your shirt off, and, you know, flexing, and showing off your, uh, everything…”

“But that’s not fanservice,” Katsuki protested, indignant. Those were mission-important strategic moves! How could he make them understand? “That was just for Deku!”

Too late, he realized how the dunce squad, love-obsessed as they were, would interpret his words.

“Oooh,” said Kaminari.

“Ooooooooh,” said Ashido. “That makes so much sense! The gentleman thief and his one sexy, sexy weakness... It’s like Lupin III and Fujiko Mine, isn’t it?”

“Shouldn’t it be Lupin and Zenigata?” asked Kirishima. “I mean, Bakubro’s not a fellow thief, he’s tryin’ to chase Deku down!”

“No, I got it!” was Kaminari’s shitty contribution. “Batman and Catwoman!”

“I’m not any of those things,” Katsuki said. “Stop your shitty imaginations! There’s nothing, I repeat, nothing, between me and Deku except for, for hatred, and justice—”

It was no use. The idiot squad was ignoring him completely.

“I’ve been texting Sero on the group chat, let me dial him in,” said Kaminari. Katsuki waited, hoping beyond hope for at least one voice of reason, one single member of his so-called friend group that didn’t immediately grande jeté his way over to the worst of conclusions. Kaminari’s phone beeped as Sero picked up. Then, a little bit staticky, came Tapeman’s familiar voice:

“Oooooooooooh.”

“Put me on the raid team for the weapons smuggling ring,” Katsuki demanded. “I’m the one who found the informant. And I’m fuckin’ wasted on the Gentle Criminal case, old man, you know that. I haven’t seen any real action in months.”

Worst Jeanist didn’t even look up from his laptop as Katsuki burst in to confront him, but at this he finally stopped typing, folding his hands together as elegantly as fancy restaurant towel swans as he met Katsuki’s glare with a quelling glance.

“Ah, yes, let’s talk about your performance on that particular mission, shall we? The one where you uncuffed a criminal in your custody so he could demonstrate his Quirk? And then that same criminal escaped, infiltrated the mansion you were supposed to be guarding, then stole a very important Cabinet minister’s address book while you… If I’m reading the mission report correctly, you were showing Red Riot a magic trick.”

Katsuki had no response to this. He couldn’t even meet the jasshole (jean asshole)’s eyes. It was like he was a first-year intern again, Jeanist’s comb in his hair, only then realizing how the most fundamental parts of his behavior would ruin him as a Hero and a person, and perhaps already had. Jeanist sighed, and used the fibers of Katsuki’s gloves to gently unclench his trembling fists.

“You’ve gotten closer to capturing Gentle Criminal and Deku than anyone else has,” he said. “I’m not unaware of that. If they hadn’t managed to escape police custody every time you’ve captured them, this case would’ve been over months ago. But I expect you to be better than the police, Bakugo. That’s why I chose you as mission lead, and why I’m giving you another chance.

“If— and that’s if— you manage to retrieve the Minister for the Environment’s address book before the Dreadnow Smuggers raid, I’ll let you join the offensive. Satisfied?”

“Fuckin’ ecstatic,” Katsuki said, a smile spreading across his face. He opened the door to Jeanist’s office and yelled, in a voice loud enough to carry all the way to the break room. “Oi! Red Roadkill! Quit playin’ around, we got some thieves to catch!”

“Don't disappoint me, Bakugo,” Jeanist said. Bakugo didn’t need to see the lower half of his face to know he was hiding a smirk.

“I don’t need to,” Katsuki replied, pausing in the doorway to toss one last parting shot over his shoulder. “Look at that shitty eyeliner, you tacky jastard. You’ve already disappointed yourself.”

Ohhh, yeah. Katsuki Bakugo was back. And this time? He was keeping his shirt on.

When Katsuki showed up at his hideout with his upper body fully clad, Deku first looked expectant, then disappointed, then finally shocked and betrayed.

Katsuki refused to feel guilty about it. It wasn’t like he’d promised to be half-naked. If Deku had formed the expectation of a striptease every time they fought, that was on him for being entitled.

Besides, Deku was fighting better now that he wasn’t distracted. Usually, he tended to dart around like a gnat, using one of his gadgets and then immediately running away, a highly annoying strategy that never failed to infuriate. Today, he faced Katsuki head-on, and that made Katsuki’s blood sing.

Deku was good. He’d clearly had some kinda martial arts training, and his stupid bag of tricks was enough to keep Katsuki from just blasting him down in one shot. Thing was, though, Katsuki was better. He had aerial maneuverability, more combat experience, a faster reaction speed. He was winning, and both of them knew it.

Then Deku dove into the path of Katsuki’s next grenade instead of away, and Katsuki’s whole world contracted. What kind of reckless piece of shit— He rocketed forward to shield Deku with his own body, pulling him out of harm’s way. Deku latched onto Katsuki’s arm, activated the taser built into his costume, then pivoted and twisted so he could slam Katsuki into the ground.

Another one of his fucking tricks, but how could Katsuki have possibly expected it? Where the fuck was that asshole’s sense of self-preservation? What kind of garbage battle plan relied on your opponent saving you from your own damn self?

So now Deku had him pinned, legs on either side of his hips. The smart move from there would be to neutralize his hands or use the chloroform handkerchiefs Katsuki knew Deku kept in one of the inner pockets of his suit. Deku did none of those things.

Instead, he slipped his fingertips under the hem of Katsuki’s tank top and dragged it upwards. Which made it incredibly easy for Katsuki to blast him off in a second and capture him just as quickly, but…

Deku’s hands were broad and hot even through his gloves, the buttery fabric whisper-soft against Katsuki’s skin. He looked like he was in a dazed trance, hyperfocused on each centimeter of Katsuki’s torso as it was revealed. Katsuki’s breath came in shallow pants, his eyes wide. He could see the way the muscles of his stomach tensed when Deku’s hands skimmed across his abdomen, the way Deku’s eyes darkened when his thumbs met the cleft between Katsuki’s pecs.

Katsuki lay there, just as mesmerized by Deku’s intense focus as Deku seemed to be by the very existence of his skin, any thought of escape completely gone from his mind. Then Deku lowered his hot mouth to Katsuki’s nipple, and Katsuki—

Katsuki made a noise .

The spell was gone. Bubble popped. For one frozen moment their eyes met, Deku’s mouth still latched onto Katsuki’s chest. They must have looked so stupid, staring at each other with both their mouths fixed into perfect Os.

Then Deku was scrambling backwards and babbling apologies, and Katsuki was sitting up and furiously tugging his shirt back down.

“Sorry,” said Deku. “Sorry sorry sorry oh my god, Kacchan I have no idea what came over me, I was j-just… I was… um. Sorry again. I should, um, leave?”

“Yeah,” Katsuki said with an awkward nod, his head still swimming. He barely even processed any of Deku’s words. It was only after Kirishima tramped back into view, reporting that his fight with Gentle Criminal hadn’t ended well either, that Katsuki realized that he had once again let Deku go.

Awareness had returned to Katsuki by the time he went to bed, and he wasn’t happy about it. He couldn’t fucking sleep, and it was already ten. Every time his head hit the pillow he was seized with a restless energy that had him getting up to go take a leak, or check his phone for updates on Deku. He’d spent so much time staring at his email that he even got to inbox zero.

The smugglers’ raid was the day after tomorrow, and Katsuki had nothing to show for himself. His entire confrontation with Deku had been derailed. The shitty nerd had made him lose his momentum, and even now he couldn’t stop thinking about— about—

Abandoning his latest attempt to go to sleep, Katsuki turned on the light and faced the floor-length mirror hanging against the bathroom door. He and Deku had unfinished business.

He grabbed his phone and typed in a number that he still knew by heart, even after all these years.

Bakugou K.

Oi.

Shitty nerd.

And then, his pulse pounding in his veins, Katsuki posed himself like he’d seen in the “thirst traps” Kaminari was always sending their groupchat (shirtless with his muscles flexed, hips tilted slightly towards the camera) and sent it to Deku.

He waited for a response. One second. Five seconds. Twenty seconds, fuck, why was it taking so long, he knew that shrub-haired bastard was glued to his phone!

Shitty Deku

omg

kacchan?

Bakugou K.

I’m sick of all this puzzle shit, so I got a deal for you. For every riddle you tell me the answer to, I’ll take another piece of clothing off.

Shitty Deku

oh god oh god oh god

is this the real kacchan

no way

it can’t be, right?? way too good to be true it has to be a catfish or something. haha very funny you thought i would fall for it. but im too smart for that.

okay fuck if it’s really kacchan then you have to prove it

Bakugou K.

WHO THE FUCK ELSE WOULD IT BE, YOU MORON? Take the deal or fuck off and quit wasting my time.

Shitty Deku

oh wow it is you

haha

hi kacchan

Bakugou K.

Don’t “hi kacchan” me, you piece of shit.

Shitty Deku

that’s not a lot of clothes though is it. like you’d only get through maximum four clues, assuming youre wearing socks which you don’t usually so that’s just two clues for your pants and your um underclothes. you wouldn’t really get that far if you’re trying to find minister konjou’s address book. unless you only need 2 clues since you figured all the rest out! if that’s the case then kacchan’s even more amazing than i expected

Bakugou K.

The hell do you mean? I’m gonna put a fucking parka on if you keep bitching.

Shitty Deku

not complaining!! i’m just suggesting like. maybe instead of just clothes i could uh

ask you to do things? like fan requests? and of course you don’t have to and we can change the things i’m asking for if it makes you uncomfortable and i promise it’ll only be nice things!

if you say yes i mean. i’m not assuming that you will. in fact i’m probably assuming that you’re using this phone conversation to distract me while you rappel down the side of my building to explode me through my window

Katsuki considered the proposition. The probability of Deku asking him to do something weird and embarrassing was extremely high, and the amount of consideration Deku was showing him pissed Katsuki off. On the other hand, Katsuki was nowhere near close to solving the scavenger hunt for Minister Konjou’s little black book, and if he had a chance to get all the answers he needed in one night, shouldn’t he take it?

Fuck it. No risk, no reward.

Bakugou K.

You better not ask for something stupid like my bank account information.

Shitty Deku

hahahahahaha nothing like that! just you know um

maybe if you could

touch your chest

a little

and send me a video

i could die a happy man hahahahaha

Bakugou K.

Die, then.

Shit, okay, whatever. Katsuki frowned at his phone screen, the tiny recording of his reflection poking at the broad expanse of his pectoral muscle, then the weird spongy part of his nipple. Wow. A part of his body, coming into contact with another part of his body. Groundbreaking. What part of this was shitty Deku so into?

Bakugou K.

It didn’t feel like earlier.

Shitty Deku

do you want it to?

Bakugou K.

I want you to tell me the damn clue already.

Shitty Deku

first one is the firuode oil main office bc the minister worked there before he got appointed as minister for the environment which i find incredibly concerning

bc when the person meant to regulate the fossil fuel and oil industries has close ties to them? that’s going to influence his policy. we’re trying to highlight his multiple conflicts of interest and how they’ve already damaged the country with this video, which is why i stole the address book— cause all his shady corporate contacts are in them, you know?

wait sorry that was off-topic. maybe we should just count the answers we’ve traded and i’ll tell you all of it at the end?

anyway

you didn’t answer my question

Bakugou K.

Fucking whatever. Guess I wouldn’t mind.

Shitty Deku

ok um. get your fingers wet with your mouth?

Bakugou K.

Gross, with my spit? Can’t I just go to the sink or something?

Shitty Deku

i actually havent tested that

but for personal reasons i still kind of want you to suck your fingers? if that’s ok? i’ll count it as 2 requests

get them wet, and stroke your nipple for me. lightly, with just the tip of your fingers

Katsuki’s face was red as he put two fingers in his mouth and hollowed his mouth around it. He couldn’t even look at himself in the mirror he was using to film. If he looked and saw himself blushing in splotches all the way down to his collarbone, or if he was making a weird face like all the girls in the adult videos Kaminari liked watching, he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to continue. And he had to keep going, wanted to meet every challenge Deku posed for him. Bakugou Katsuki didn’t back down.

There was a string of saliva still connecting his fingers to his lips when Katsuki pulled them out. He felt another wave of embarrassed heat rushing through his body. It felt dirty, slightly sordid.

He brought his hand to his chest. What was it that Deku had told him? A feather-light touch, barely stroking the surface…

Katsuki dropped his phone.

Cursing, he scrambled to pick it up, then pressed send on the video before he could lose his nerve. Oh, fuck, that felt good . Nothing like Deku’s mouth, which had been overwhelming enough to blank out his entire mind, but Katsuki hadn’t realized his chest could even feel like that, a shivery breath of pleasure Katsuki had never encountered before.

Shitty Deku

oh wow kacchan

keep going? with your other hand, too? can you prop your phone on a pillow or something? i kinda

kinda wanna see

Fucking Deku could see himself into the grave. How the hell did he know all this shit, anyway? Loser probably spent all his time (the time not stealing things and learning stage magic, anyway) holed up in his childhood bedroom, jerking off. That stupid bedroom with Katsuki’s face plastered all over the walls… Oh, fuck, Deku jacked off to him, every night, imagining that it was the real Katsuki in his bed instead of just a pillow.

Deku was… Deku was probably touching himself to Katsuki’s videos, right now. A sharp gasp escaped Katsuki’s lips, and he tried to pretend it was because of the way his own hands moved down his chest instead of how he’d just imagined Deku doing the same thing, writhing on the bed because of how good it felt, whispering Kacchan, Kacchan into the mattress.

Shitty Deku

kacchan you’re so beautiful

wait crap did i say beautiful sorry that was a typo you probably don’t want me to say something like that

i meant badass! kacchan’s so badass and tough. and cool. you’ve always been really cool

could you take off your pants for me?

Bakugou K.

I don’t give a shit what you call me. Dumbass.

Katsuki kicked off his sweatpants, and when he took another photo in the mirror he was horrified to find that the wet spot in front of his underwear was obvious, that Deku could see the bulge tenting his briefs. He looked debauched, his lower lip red from the way Katsuki had bitten it to stifle his moans, his nipples red and peaked, a pink flush spread all the way down past his collarbone.

Bakugou K.

So am I going to get naked now or what?

Shitty Deku

not yet

rub yourself through your underwear, kacchan. and keep touching your chest

Bakugou K.

What the hell? How much longer do I have to waste my time on bullshit foreplay?

Shitty Deku

until i tell you to stop

That bastard. Getting a little arrogant, was he? Treating Katsuki like— like his own personal plaything, as if Katsuki was just going to roll over and do whatever he said! Angrily, Katsuki, palmed his crotch, and hissed at the sudden, harsh contact. He was rougher with his chest, too, giving his nipple a harsh pinch, and oh fuck , that was good, too.

Katsuki’s breath sounded too loud in his ears. He was practically panting, and the entire front of his underwear was damp, his trapped dick aching to be freed. He felt hot all over, like he was melting into the bed. If Deku didn’t text him soon, then fuck the bargain, Katsuki was going to get off by himself whether Deku let him or not.

Shitty Deku

you can take off your briefs now

but slowly

and show me

“Slowly” was torturous, the waistband of his underwear dragging against Katsuki’s flushd, angry cock. Katsuki groaned when it finally bobbed into open air, his hand closing around his dick and stroking just for the relief. Whatever. Deku could have that one for free.

Shitty Deku

i guess i don’t have to tell you to touch yourself

how does it feel, kacchan?

Bakugou K.

How do u think it feels i’m jacking off

we have the SAME equipment shithead

feels fuckin amazing

Maybe there was something to that edging bullshit after all, because every touch of Katsuki’s hand to his dripping cock sent pleasure shooting down his spine. Better than what he usually did, which was angrily fist his dick in a death grip until he got off and got it over with. The pace Deku had set for him had him melting into the mattress— or maybe that was because he knew he had Deku’s full attention now, that Deku was watching him, thinking about him, even surrounded by his merchandise.

It was a kind of triumph. Deku cared about him the most, even more than whatever shitty social commentary bullshit he was trying to pull about the government’s handling of environmental policy. Deku had befuddled Katsuki enough to let him go twice, but now Katsuki was the one on top.

Bakugou K.

tell me wher the book is

fuckface

Shitty Deku

kacchan come on! no way, that’s skipping right to the end

Bakugou K.

tell me and i’ll say your name when i cum

Shitty Deku

3-2 dagobah 2-chome

fuck kacchan please

Katsuki pointed his phone camera right at his cock. It shook a little with the force of his heaving breaths, especially when his thumb flicked over the head. He closed his eyes and thought about the shitty nerd, his quick smile, his hot mouth, the way he always looked at Katsuki, like nothing else existed in the world.

“Deku, fuck, Deku, Deku, Deku…”

He came, his head thrown back, shaking with the sudden onslaught of pleasure. It took a minute for him to come back to himself, panting with the aftershocks. Katsuki blearily dragged his phone to his face and, before he sent the video, he managed to shoot the camera a victorious smirk.

“Hope it was worth it, you weirdo pervert,” he said, and let the phone drop from his hand as he yawned and settled into bed. It buzzed on his pillow, and buzzed again, an endless stream of Deku-praise arriving right to his inbox. Katsuki didn’t have to read any of the texts to know he deserved every word.

“Ah-HA! Choke on this, you old jart!”

Contrary to Katsuki’s expectations, Jeanist did not fall upon himself to promote Katsuki into command of all agency missions, anywhere. He didn’t even give him a nod of begrudging respect. Instead, he let out a strangled yell, rearing back in his seat as his collar extended upwards to cover his eyes.

“Augh! What are you showing me , Bakugo?”

Katsuki glanced at his phone. Sure enough, his text conversation with Deku was open to the end, giving Jeanist a preview of the, uh, personal photos he’d sent the nerd last night.

“Scroll up, you prude,” he scoffed, though he put his phone back in his pocket rather than bless his direct superior with more time looking at his glorious, unclothed body, “I negotiated with Deku and he told me where he hid the address book. I need to take a team out there today.”

Jeanist sighed, the denim half-mask traveling even further upward until it cocooned his entire face. It was a reaction that Katsuki had only seen a few times, mostly during his adolescence.

“So, to recap, you contacted the subject of this investigation directly and bartered for mission-critical information using…”

“Using pictures of my penis, yeah,” Katsuki said, flushing a little. He hadn’t been embarrassed earlier, but now the barest trickle of shame was beginning to infiltrate his psyche. All Might probably never sent saucy selfies to a villain in order to clear a mission. But then again, All Might had never faced Deku.

“Well, I did tell my shareholders that you were an unorthodox problem-solver,” said Jeanist, rubbing at what Katsuki assumed was his forehead through the thick fabric, “Though I didn’t precisely predict how out-of-the-box your solutions would be. You’re going to have a hell of a time explaining this in your mission report. You know that, right?”

“I stand by my goddamn choices,” Katsuki said, though by now his blush had spread all the way to the tips of his ears. Fuckin’ whatever. He’d had a good idea, he’d gotten what he wanted, and it had felt fucking incredible. “So? Do I get to join the smugglers’ raid or what?”

“Yes, Bakugou,” Jeanist sighed, “I suppose you do.”

See? No matter what Deku threw at him (riddles, merchandise, the distracting way he’d moved his tongue), Katsuki still always won.

Chapter Text

Katsuki’s life was fucking amazing.

Jeanist was letting him join in on short-term missions and patrols whenever he wasn’t dealing with the Gentle Criminal case. His ranking had never been higher, between getting to kick ass on the regular and his appearances in Gentle Criminal’s increasingly popular videos. And, best of all, every time Katsuki saw Deku he was reminded that Deku would give an entire operation away just to see him come. The rush of heat and power that gave him never got old.

Deku had been doing well, too. One of his videos, on labor discrimination against mutant-types in the workplace, had actually led to a new bill getting introduced in the National Diet’s House of Representatives, though whether it would pass remained to be seen. His new success came with a sudden influx of cash, making the process of solving those goddamn riddles even more complicated than before.

“Fuckin’ puzzles,” Katsuki growled, pulling a lever that raised the water level that did whatever the fuck to the floating platforms in the room, “Wasn’t enough to stick us with stupid brain-teasers, now we gotta waste our time in a goddamn escape room…”

“Hey, I’m having a good time,” Kirishima said. He took a selfie of both of them reflected in the cool water, then splashed over to the next lever, making sure to kick a plume of water in Katsuki’s direction.

“That’s ‘cause you ain’t done shit all day!” Katsuki yelled, “You’ve just been fucking around, makin’ stupid jokes while I solve all the actual puzzles!”

“I mean, that’s what makes us so popular, though,” Kirishima said, “Our dynamic! You solve the mysteries, I bring the charm. Like Holmes and Watson!”

Katsuki paused halfway across the room and shuffled back over, grimacing at the way the water soaked up to his calves. He clasped Kirishima’s shoulder, looking him right in the eye with utter sincerity.

“Oi, Kirishima,” he said, “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re not just my sidekick, okay? You’re a goo… You’re a mostly non-shitty Hero in your own right.”

“Bro, that’s so manly of you to say! It’s like you really believe in me, man. Best friends for life!” Kirishima said, returning Katsuki’s dignified shoulder pat with an entirely too-mushy hug, “But, uh, it’s not that deep. I’m Watson because Watson fucks.”

The unwanted hug made for the perfect leverage to suplex Hair-For-Brains into the water.

“Oh, yeah? Well, you can go fuck yourself!” 

Katsuki seethed, shoving down the next lever with a bit too much force.

“You think I don’t fuck? I fuck,” he insisted, “Definitely. I fuck all the time.”

“Sure you do, buddy.”

Katsuki refused to speak to or look at Shitty Hair, whose spikes still stood straight up despite having been doused in water, for the rest of the puzzle. How dare he insult Katsuki’s virility? Just because Katsuki didn’t go on dates, or socialize, or voluntarily touch other human beings for purposes other than violence… It wasn’t like he hadn’t done anything with anyone. After all, there was Deku. Deku’s mouth, Deku’s praise, Deku’s eyes wide and half-worshipful.

Katsuki punched in the code that would lead them to the next room in this shitty dungeon, and as soon as the doors slid open, there he was, as if thinking about him had summoned him from the ether: Deku.

“Kacchan,” he said. The lower half of his face was still hidden by his mask, but Katsuki would bet the GDP of the entire country that he was smiling. His eyes dipped low, tracing Katsuki’s body from the V of his shirt collar to the wet pants clinging to his calves, as if he could see through the fabric to what lay below. But he didn’t have to, did he? Deku had already seen everything.

Whatever. Deku may have known what it sounded like when Katsuki chanted his name as he came, but that was only because Katsuki had let him. He was the one distracting Deku from his dastardly, villainous goals, and therefore he was in control. All he had to do was say something to make sure Deku knew it.

Katsuki coughed and propped himself against the doorway with an elbow, using his superior height to perfect his cool, uncaring lean.

“Hey,” he said. Nailed it.

“Hi, Kacchan,” Deku said, eyelashes dark against his cheeks as he blinked up at him. His voice was silk. Would he sound the same way if he said the things he’d sent Katsuki that night? You’re beautiful and touch yourself for me, wrapped up in that low, smooth velvet. “How are you doing?”

“Uh,” said Katsuki, “Yeah.”

Behind him, Kirishima shoved at his shoulder. Katsuki did not budge.

“Dude, come on, aren’t we supposed to fight this guy?”

Ah, shit, right. Katsuki lunged forward, but Deku danced out of the way.

“Not today, Kacchan!” he said, pivoting away from Katsuki’s explosion-enhanced punch, “Not unless you want the only copy of PlastiCo’s Quarterly Earnings Report to get crushed.” There was a USB dangling from his hand, probably for show. Deku wouldn’t risk bringing his one bargaining chip out into the open.

“Fuck, of course it’d take you this long to realize you could just take your stolen goods hostage to avoid a fight,” Katsuki said, stumbling to a stop, “You’re so fuckin’ bad at this, Deku. Hell, you copied that entire crappy dungeon we just went through right from The Legend of Zelda.”

“I’d like to see you try building twelve custom plastic waste-themed environmental puzzles in two weeks,” Deku huffed.

“We have twelve more of these to get through? Are they all ripped off from video games?”

“Nnnnot all of them,” Deku said, unable to meet Katsuki’s eyes, “There are a few at the end that are original, but it’s not like I had a ton of time to design these, okay?”

“Auuugh, fuck my life,” Katsuki groaned, rubbing at his forehead in a vain attempt to stave off his oncoming headache, “All this bullshit, low-effort… Can’t we just skip to the end?”

“No way, Kacchan! I’m not just gonna let you—”

Deku slammed his mouth shut again, but it was too late. Katsuki had sensed a challenge. He stalked over, slowly enough that it didn’t look like he was on the attack but with enough predatory grace that Deku could really feel the danger. Katsuki could see Deku swallow as he sauntered over, probably cursing his own big, fat mouth.

“Not gonna let me, you say,” Katsuki said, eyes trained right on that smart mouth with its soft, pink lips, “You think you can say no to me, Deku?”

“I think I just did.”

Despite his bravado, Deku stood stock-still as Katsuki approached, like a frozen rabbit with nowhere to run. To be completely honest, Katsuki wasn’t sure what he was doing here. He’d gotten better at distraction, since that was mostly just doing a bunch of weird poses with his clothes off, but seduction was an entirely different beast. He crowded Deku, moving forward until their shoes touched, completely in each other’s space. Deku shivered.

Huh. So all he had to do was get closer? Ha. He knew Deku was fuckin’ easy.

“Deku,” Katsuki murmured, softly so Deku had to lean in and strain to hear him. Their eyes met, and Katsuki swallowed— Deku’s pupils were so wide, his lips slightly parted, just enough that Katsuki could see the very tip of his tongue.

“Whaaaaat is happening,” Kirishima said, somewhere in the background. Katsuki tried to ignore him, but it was too late. The atmosphere was gone, the slow, intent energy that had fueled him dissipated into a nervous jitteriness. When his next words came out, they weren’t a seductive whisper but a harsh bark, yelled right into Deku’s ear.

“Deku! If you let us skip the boring parts of the dungeon, I’ll let you suck my dick!”

Deku winced, rubbing at his ear, and Katsuki slowly died a little inside. He could feel fresh sweat break out along his palms and his pits. Usually, that was a good thing, because it meant more firepower. Right now, it just made him clammy and slightly gross.

A hand grabbed the scruff of his costume and hauled him back.

“Dude, you can’t just say stuff like that!” Kirishima yelped, his voice high-pitched with the strain, “Is this ‘cause I said you don’t fuck? Because, like, if that’s how you ask someone out, I don’t gotta wonder why! I’m sorry, Mr. Deku, Ground Zero was just totally unprofessional, and, uh, even though you’re a villain, like…”

“Deal.”

Katsuki sneaked a glance over. He and Deku both were staring at the ground like chastened children, Kirishima stood between them, staring first at Deku, then at Katsuki, then at Deku again like a cartoon dog torn between chasing two different cats.

“No way,” Kirishima said, “This isn’t happening. It cannot be happening. How the hell did that work? ”

Katsuki gave him his best arrogant, shit-eating grin, which, let it be said, was pretty damn good. Deku shuffled his feet and rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed.

“You heard the man, Shitty Hair,” he said. 

Kirishima threw up his hands and clamped them over his own ears, stomping off back towards the water dungeon.

“Nope,” he said, “No way, no how, too weird for me, I’m out. You two can just… do whatever, and I'm gonna be over there, three rooms away, and Bakugou, do not shout if you need me because I'm gonna be doing my best to not hear anything from either of you at all."

When the door slammed closed, then it was just Katsuki and Deku, each trying to sneak peeks at the other's expression without revealing their own.

"So, uh," Katsuki said, pitching his voice a little lower so he didn't sound too eager, "We doing this or what?"

Deku nodded, a little too quickly. All of Katsuki's blood went south as soon as Deku dropped to his knees. His reason was gone. So was his confidence. As Deku shuffled over, it was Katsuki's turn to be frozen to the ground, unsure whether he should, should take his pants off, or where he ought to put his hands—

Deku nosed at Katsuki's palm, guiding his hand to sink into those lush, soft curls. It should have been awkward and slightly sordid. This was weird, wasn't it, objectively? Katsuki was about to do a sex act with a villain, and, what's more, he was about to do it with Deku. He'd spent the past few months showing off his abs and sending dirty videos to Deku .

He hadn't thought about it, at the time. Not about the implications, or what it all meant, and all those questions came crashing down on him right now. Somewhere along the line, he had lost all his rationality, spurred by the strange impulsive pull, the base-level lizard-brain instinct, that always seized him around Deku. Why the hell was it always Deku?

Nimble hands unzipped his trousers, a soft cheek pressed against his leg hip with a sigh. Katsuki looked down at freckled skin, gloved hands, the same green eyes he'd tried to escape throughout his entire childhood. Maybe could only have been Deku. Would always have to be Deku.

"It's okay, Kacchan," said the villain kneeling at his feet, "I'll take care of you."

Katsuki closed his eyes, and let him.

"We gotta talk about this, man," said Kirishima.

"No, we don't," said Katsuki, kicking Baby Shark in the shin for emphasis. Unfortunately, he'd hardened his whole leg, and Katsuki stubbed his toe.

“Do too,” Kirishima said, “Bro, You just hooked up with a villain! I mean, as far as villains go, Deku’s a pretty good dude, but… still. What gives?”

Katsuki shrugged, refusing to respond. Why did Shitty Hair always have to make him talk and think about things? Couldn’t he just let Katsuki do shit without having to think of the reasons for and consequences of his actions?

“C’mon, champ, what’s going on in that big ole Bakubrain?”

“Quit talking to me like that! I’m not a fuckin’ dog or a baby!” Katsuki spat, his shoulders hunching further downwards, “It’s nothing, okay? I saw a chance to exploit Deku’s weakness, which is me, and I took it, and we won! And maybe I… likeditorwhatever… but that’s not the point! The point is, this is how I’m gonna finally defeat him!”

“But don’t we always solve the riddles? Pretty sure that means we beat him every time.”

“No, it doesn’t! Not when—”

Not when Deku invaded Katsuki’s every waking thought, outsmarted him at every turn. Not when every single neuron firing in Katsuki’s brain, no matter how hard he tried to make them stop, sang Deku, Deku, Deku into the early hours of the night. Not when he needed that look in Deku’s eyes, the one that said that Katsuki was the only important thing in the entire world.

“Not yet,” Katsuki grumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets, “It’ll be over when I win, but I haven’t won yet.”

“Okay, man,” Kirishima said, “Just… don’t get in too deep, alright? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Ha! Like I’d ever,” Katsuki said. His phone dinged, a text from Deku: you were amazing again today, Kacchan. like always.

Make some better dungeons next time , Katsuki replied, and he had to turn his face away so Kirishima wouldn’t see his smile.

In hindsight, thinking that handcuffing Deku made him any less dangerous had been a mistake. 

Katsuki had defeated the shitty nerd in battle, clamped the cuffs around his wrists and called him in for transport, thinking that was the end of it. They fought, he’d won, end of story. So why was Deku wriggling in his lap in the back of a prisoner transport vehicle, his lips on Katsuki’s neck?

“Oh, what the fuck, how is this happening,” Katsuki gasped, trying to remember how they’d wound up in this position, “Thought I had you fuckin’ secured…”

Katsuki had captured Deku, fair and square, and then when he went to disarm him by taking that suit jacket off his shoulders, his hands had met the deliciously firm muscle of Deku’s biceps, and then Deku had arched into his touch, and now suddenly Katsuki was moaning into Deku’s mouth, his hands firm around Deku’s waist.

“You do,” Deku said, “You’ve got me all tied up.”

As if to punctuate his point, Deku arched up into Katsuki’s grasp, nearly unbalancing himself and forcing Katsuki to tighten his arms to keep him in place. His mouth curved into a smirk, and Katsuki’s pulse beat faster. Oh, fuck, what the hell? Did Deku know what he was doing to him?

“Oh, Ground Zero,” Deku sighed, his fluttering eyelashes doing little to describe the undertone of mocking laughter in his voice, “I really don’t want to get in trouble. Is there anything I can do?”

What the hell was that bullshit dialogue, huh? Idiot was reading too much doujinshi. Katsuki opened his mouth to tell Deku off. He was going to stop this madness, and get Deku off his lap, and then they were going to sit on opposite sides of the vehicle for the next fifteen minutes in absolute silence until backup arrived, damn it.

Then Deku did something with his teeth and Katsuki’s collarbone, and instead of a protest, the words in Katsuki’s mouth escaped as a sort of strangled whimper.

Deku wriggled his way downwards, brushing his way against some very interested parts of Katsuki’s anatomy in the process, and then Deku was on his knees in front of him again, bracketed between Katsuki’s thighs. It was just like last time, in the dungeon. Deku smiling up at him, Katsuki unable to resist curling his fingers into that soft, lush hair, and the most intense pleasure he’d ever experienced in his entire life.

“Holy fuck,” Katsuki said. He reached out and brushed his thumb against Deku’s cheekbone, stroked the short, fine hairs at the back of Deku’s neck.

“I’m completely at your mercy, Kacchan,” Deku said, “Just tell me what to do.”

Those words were like a cold bucket of ice water, shocking Katsuki back to rationality. His head was still swimming with pleasure and heat, but he leaned back and closed his eyes to regain his bearings. As long as he didn’t look at Deku… Katsuki almost clamped his hands over his ears so he didn’t have to hear Deku, either. If he didn’t see or hear Deku, he couldn’t be tempted, right?

“Wait,” he said, “No, wait, Deku, I can’t.”

The warmth of Deku’s body between his knees abruptly disappeared. Katsuki opened his eyes to see Deku on the opposite side of the truck, just like he’d wanted. Except it wasn’t satisfying at all to see Deku so far away, shaking and upset in a way Katsuki hadn’t seen in years. His shoulders hunched together, his feet curled up under him, his eyes staring at the ground as if that could hide the way they welled with those familiar tears. He looked small.

“Of course not,” Deku said, his lips wobbling, “Of course you wouldn’t really want to— this is stupid. I’m sorry, this was a mistake.”

Katsuki reached out a hand, and Deku moved away from it. It wasn’t a flinch, not really, but close enough that Katsuki’s heart plunged down through his stomach.

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” he tried, “I just. I can’t take advantage of you like that, goddamn it.”

“Ha,” Deku said, a short, toneless, bitter sound, “I never thought I’d see the day when Kacchan tried to make me feel better. You don’t have to. I’m the one who got ahead of myself when I should never have, when I…”

“Dumbass! I mean it!” Katsuki snapped, then winced. Great, good going, Bakugou, call the guy you’re trying to comfort dumb, that’ll definitely make him feel better. “Look, you think I don’t want a blowjob? Fuck, you offered me free head! But you’re my prisoner, idiot! Legally and ethically, you can’t consent!”

Deku groaned and slumped backwards, his head hitting the cool metal of the transport bench.

“I am, though,” he said, “I’m consenting so hard right now, Kacchan, you have no idea.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be much of a fuckin’ hero if I made exceptions for my dick!”

So, fine, that whole being nice thing had lasted maybe a total of fifteen seconds, but whatever. The nerd knew what he was getting into, and, fuck it, Katsuki wasn’t about to entertain stupid ideas like him not wanting to get his cock sucked by Deku just because the person having them looked a little teary and pathetic.

Deku pressed his cheek against the transport vehicle wall, his voice coming out in a strained whine instead of the seductive purr he’d been affecting just minutes before.

“Kacchan, if you’re not gonna fuck me, you have to stop saying sexy things, okay?”

“What the hell about that was sexy to you?”

Deku refused to respond. Katsuki groaned and stood up, waddling towards the double doors of the transport truck in an awkward gait that somehow still made his pants chafe against his boner.

“Look, I’m gonna just. Turn around, and adjust my dick a little, and when I come back, we’re gonna drive you to lockup like civilized people, okay? And no peeking!”

Not that he’d mind if Deku peeked, like, a little bit. Whatever. When staring at his dick and willing it to go down didn’t work, Katsuki awkwardly adjusted it in the protective cup built into his costume, then closed his eyes and thought of Grape-face. Mineta’s hair, the smell of his grandma’s gross apartment in Nara, Aizawa-sensei’s disappointed expression— oh, fuck, no, that one was weirdly hot, thinking about it had been a mistake—

A clang sounded behind him. Katsuki whipped around, dick still halfway out his pants, to see Deku’s handcuffs dropping from his wrists. 

“Sorry, Kacchan, but if being your prisoner isn’t going to get me laid, then there really isn’t a point,” said Deku. He even had the audacity to look genuinely contrite, the slippery bastard. 

“What the… How the hell did you get out? Those were supposed to be biometric locks! You motherfucker, have you been doing that this whole time?” 

Katsuki cursed, hurriedly shoving the Bakugou family scepter back into its rightful place, but Deku was already scrambling out of the truck and grabbing his suit jacket where Katsuki had ditched it on the floor earlier.

“No time to talk! Gotta escape!” 

“No way in hell! Get back here, you… you—”

Unfortunately, Katsuki couldn’t recover from literally getting caught with his pants down quickly enough. By the time he stumbled over to the other side of the vehicle, Deku was already gone.

Katsuki sat down onto the cold concrete, unable to even care about the street grime staining the seat of his custom-made, expensive support gear. Fuck it. These pants were goddamn traitors for being so complicated and hard to button up, and Katsuki was going to burn them at the earliest possible opportunity. Once again, he had lost Deku.

But, fuck, that look on his face. It had been so long that Katsuki hadn’t realized that it wasn’t just the worship that he hadn’t seen in years, it was the fear as well. The Deku that he knew now, the one he’d been bantering and fighting and exchanging puzzle tips via text with, was confident and even a little flirty, wearing his nerd status as a badge of pride.

He’d caught a glimpse of the old Deku today, the one that quivered and quailed any time another human person was more than a foot away from him. The one who preemptively cringed away from other human beings, who expected people to hurt him and was correct every time. The one who apologized even as he stood up for what he thought was right, because Katsuki had taught him to believe that even his most heroic acts deserved shame.

It hadn’t felt good, seeing the playfulness and nerve in Deku’s eyes crash down into disappointment. Knowing that, once again, Katsuki had been the cause.

Deku wasn’t supposed to be like that, anymore. He was supposed to be frustratingly idealistic, shameless in his horniness and his delight, looking at Katsuki like he’d given him the world instead of destroying it.

Katsuki pulled out his phone and sent a text, his heart pounding like a drum— Led Zeppelin, maybe, or Rush, fast and challenging enough to make him breathless with the risk of actually getting something wrong.

Bakugou K.

You’re not ugly or whatever.

I mean.

Don’t be stupid, Deku, I want you. Of course I fuckin’ want you.

There was a white-knuckled ten or so minutes where his message had been read without a response. Backup arrived, and Katsuki managed to eke out an explanation before storming off, his eyes still fixed on his phone. He scrolled through his emails, checked the time and the weather. Opened Twitter for the first time in months. Finally, a text came through— the address of a love hotel, and a reservation number, and a time.

Shitty Deku

prove it.

Was he actually doing this?

It wasn’t a matter of opportunity or advantage anymore. With every encounter he’d had with Deku before, Katsuki could rationalize it, somehow. He was getting something in exchange for the mission, or Deku was there and tensions were high, and, whoops, it just happened. This was different. A court of law would call it premeditated. Conspiracy to commit deviant acts together in the dark of the night. Was Katsuki actually, truly going to have sex with a villain? 

Fuck yeah he was.

The second Deku opened the hotel room door, Katsuki was on him, slamming their mouths together in a messy kiss. Deku squeaked into his mouth, flailing a little, but then he tilted his head and held onto Katsuki’s shoulders, devouring him with equal ferocity. Fuck, he was so goddamn warm, soft but solid in Katsuki’s arms.

When they broke apart to breathe, Katsuki was panting, his lips swollen and slick with Deku’s spit. He let his hands rest at Deku’s hips, smoothing the slick custom fabric of Deku’s suit down with his thumbs. Deku stared up at him, curls pulled into disarray and mouth hanging half-open, like he couldn’t quite believe his luck.

“Do you, um. Do you want to shower?” Deku asked, trying to play the polite Japanese gentleman despite having pinned Katsuki down mid-battle to try and lick the sweat off his chest just a few weeks before.

“Already did. Before I came here.”

“Oh, um. Cool. Me too.”

They came together again, Deku’s hands sneaking their way up Katsuki’s shirt. They skimmed up his obliques and closed around his waist, and Katsuki couldn’t help but gasp and buck his hips. Fuck, that felt good, skin on skin.

He tugged at Deku’s waistcoat.

“Off,” he said, and Deku obeyed, scrambling with the buttons. Then there was the tie, which turned out to be a clip-on, and the starched white dress shirt with too many goddamn buttons. Katsuki’s hands were dripping sweat. As he reached the button over Deku’s navel and saw the trail of dark, thick hair leading down below, a stray spark popped off, scorching the fabric.

“Shit,” Katsuki cursed, tugging the shirt open to inspect the burn, but Deku didn’t seem to be hurt at all. When Katsuki prodded the tender little pink mark on his skin, he moaned and arched into his touch, and the sound sent a rush of pure heat right to Katsuki’s groin.

He attacked Deku’s mouth again, twice as aggressively as before, scraping his teeth against Deku’s bottom lip. And Deku liked that, too, hands tightening around Katsuki’s waist. He sighed when Katsuki licked a stripe down his neck, just like he had earlier in the prisoner transport, and he trembled all over when Katsuki worked a thumb into the belt of Deku’s trousers and tugged downwards. Fuck, it was like Deku liked everything he did, and that meant—

Katsuki could do anything.

“I’m gonna destroy this ass tonight, Deku,” Katsuki said. placing a proprietary hand on Deku’s surprisingly ample cheeks.

“Yes, god, Kacchan, please,” Deku moaned. He wiggled his hips so Katsuki could divest him of his pants, tugged frantically at Katsuki’s shirt until that came off, too. Still kissing, Katsuki walked him to the edge of the bed and pushed until Deku fell onto it with a thump.

Deku flipped himself over and starfished out until he could reach the little pink bottle on the love hotel nightstand, tossing it backwards for Katsuki to catch. The movement made the muscles of his ass flex, and Katsuki stared dry-mouthed at the way Deku arched it higher, waiting just for him. Fuck, it was perfect, pale and full and freckled, and Katsuki was gonna, he was gonna…

Katsuki palmed a cheek. Soft , he thought, and tentatively, he moved it aside to get a better look at Deku’s small, puckered hole.

“Uhhhh,” he said.

Movement from further up the bed. Deku propped himself up on an elbow, sending an inviting look back at him.

“It’s okay, Kacchan,” he said, “I’ve done this before. You don’t need to be gentle. You have the lube, right?”

“Yeah,” Katsuki said, “I’m just gonna… Sure. Can do.”

More movement. Deku turned over completely, blocking Katsuki’s view of his perfect ass but exposing his half-hard cock in exchange. The way it bobbed a little as Deku moved looked like it should have come with a sound effect, like Boingggg! or something, but, uh, it looked good. Reddish at the tip, curved a little. Big.

“Kacchan… Are you a virgin?”

“What? No! I’ve done stuff!”

“Oh, yeah?” Deku asked, sounding way too skeptical for a guy who was currently buck-ass naked on a baby pink love hotel bedspread, “Like what?”

Katsuki resisted the urge to shuffle his feet like a schoolboy. He met Deku’s gaze with all the pride and bravado he could muster, lifting his shoulder in a half-shrug.

“You know. Like, hand…” Katsuki said, and then, remembering the hookup he’d had with Deku in the PlastiCo puzzle dungeon, “ And mouth stuff!”

Shit, calling it “mouth stuff” didn’t make him sound any less virginal, did it?

“I’m not sure you should top tonight,” Deku said, his brows furrowed in thought, “You’re going to come in like, three seconds, Kacchan.”

“No, I’m not,” Katsuki argued, mulish. He was Katsuki Bakugou, awesome at everything he put his mind to. Why the hell would sex be any different? Deku appeared to take his argument under consideration, almost shy as he looked up at Katsuki through his feathery eyelashes.

“I just can’t believe that you… you’ve never…”

“Shut the fuck up!” Katsuki snapped, “I’m gonna be the number one Hero, idiot! So what if I didn’t have time for any stupid distractions?”

“Hmm,” Deku said, grabbing the pink bottle himself and doing something with it behind his back, “Go on. Keep saying more stuff about being a Hero, okay?”

Which was kind of a weird ask, and Katsuki was fully prepared to shut it down, but then Deku’s wrist did this little twisting motion, and his eyes fluttered closed. Oh, fuck. Oh, holy shit, Deku was fingering himself! Preparing his ass for Katsuki to fuck , and, okay, yeah, Katsuki could say all the weird shit Deku wanted for that.

“I was trying to keep my goddamn focus, so of course I didn’t date in high school,” Katsuki said, tentatively, “Or after. What, like I’m gonna let some extra take up the time I could be using for training or catching bad guys? Like hell. I’m dedicated, goddamn it.”

“Yeah,” Deku sighed, a goofy little smile spreading across his face, “Kacchan’s always been like that. You’ve only always looked forward at your goal, haven’t you?”

“Damn right,” Katsuki said, puffing his chest out a little, “I didn’t even kiss anyone until I was twenty! And I’ve never had an online dating account! There’s no room for pointless crap in my life.”

“You’ve denied yourself your physical needs,” Deku said, “Stayed chaste and untouched for the sake of your dream…” 

Lacing their fingers together, Deku pulled Katsuki onto the bed. He tugged Katsuki’s loose gray sweatpants down with ease, ran a finger along the curve of his hard cock. Katsuki gasped, the back of his skull smacking against the headboard when Deku’s long, nimble fingers closed around him.

“Quit talking about it like it was some kinda hardship, dumbass,” Katsuki said, his hands scrabbling at the sheets. Deku took hold of one and placed it around his waist, using Katsuki’s shoulders to brace himself as he hovered above, fuck, above Katsuki’s dick. “It’s not like I ever think about that shit, anyway. I’ve never really cared.”

“Until me,” Deku said, a little laugh escaping him, “You never wanted anyone enough until me. Oh, fuck, I can’t believe I’m gonna be Kacchan’s first.”

He kissed Katsuki, letting Katsuki feel the stretch of his smile against his mouth, staying connected even as he rolled the condom down onto Katsuki’s cock and sank himself down.

It was so… it was so tight and warm inside Deku that Katsuki almost went cross-eyed. He braced himself against Deku’s shoulder, panting breaths into his skin. When Deku shifted forwards, pressing into Katsuki’s hands at his waist, Katsuki was glad for it. If he didn’t have Deku to hold onto, he would’ve floated clean away.

“Deku,” Katsuki said. He tightened his hands, using Deku’s green-eyed gaze as his anchor.  

“It’s good, Kacchan,” said Deku, pressing a kiss to the side of Katsuki’s mouth. He rose up and rolled his hips forward, guiding Katsuki to thrust upwards to meet him as he moved downwards again. Katsuki focused on the way Deku gasped when they came together, the litany of words he whispered into the air between them.

“You’re making me feel incredible, Kacchan. It’s good for you too, right? I can t-tell, the way you’re holding on to me— you’re so amazing, Kacchan, it’s your first time, and… wow, it’s your first time, I’m Kacchan’s first . I. I always thought you were so awesome, your dedication, your strength…”

Deku knocked his forehead against Katsuki, his voice frantic and intent. Katsuki couldn’t do anything but moan, driving his hips up into Deku with each whispered sentence.

“You’re a great hero. The best hero.”

They locked eyes, Deku’s wide and lust-blown and so damn sincere.

“My hero,” Deku said, and Katsuki came in three seconds.

In the moment, it felt fucking amazing. Katsuki’s eyes rolled back in his head with his orgasm, losing his rhythm as he shook against the mattress. Afterwards, his face pressed into a pillow, the embarrassment at doing the one thing he specifically said he wasn’t gonna do hit him and ruined his afterglow.

“Kacchan?”

If the shitty nerd tried to comfort him now, of all moments, Katsuki was going to explode him into next month. No, next year. He buried his face further into the pillow. Then, because he wasn’t a coward, he turned his head very slightly so he could peek at Deku’s expression with one eye open.

He was met with the sight of Deku’s cock, still hard and sprightly between his legs, and that gave Katsuki an idea.

“D’you wanna fuck me?” he asked, his voice a little muffled by the pillow.

“Yes ,” said Deku, then, in a scramble, “But I don’t have to! I mean, if you’re feeling bad about me not, um, coming? There are other things we can do, you don’t have to offer up your, uh, butt just because you feel obligated. If you feel obligated, I mean! I d-don’t want to put words in your mouth, I’m just. I’m happy with anything Kacchan wants to give me, I promise.”

“Shut up already! I want to, okay? But, shit, if you’re gonna be this annoying about it—”

“No, no, no, I’ll do it! I’m ready!”

“Hrmph,” said Katsuki, sinking back into his pillow. A moment later, he felt hot breath at the back of his neck, and then the sudden sharp shock of sensation as Deku bit down at his nape.

HIs dick gave a valiant twitch, his fingers curled in the mattress, his breath escaped him as an embarrassingly loud Ah! A little too late, Katsuki wondered if he should have chosen another position. On his back, maybe, or squatting in Deku’s lap like Deku had before. Pressed against the bed, he couldn’t see what Deku was doing behind him. Didn’t know what to expect.

“I’ll make it good for you, Kacchan,” Deku said, “I promise.”

He placed his next kiss a little lower on Katsuki’s spine, trailing his way downwards. Strong, broad hands gripped Katsuki around his waist, skimmed across his hips and finally palmed the two globes of his ass. Katsuki’s breath came faster, but he stayed mercifully silent— until Deku angled his mouth at the small of Katsuki’s back and bit.

Then, it was like Katsuki couldn’t stop making noises, ahh and hah and mm when Deku’s mouth trailed down past his tailbone, every time those large hands massaged Katsuki’s muscled cheeks.

Deku opened his mouth against Katsuki’s… he put his tongue on Katsuki’s asshole , and Katsuki squeaked.

He clapped his hand over his face, because what the fuck was that sound that just came out of his mouth, but then Deku made a little circle with his tongue, the sensation wet and hot and entirely strange, and a moan ripped his way out of his throat anyway.

“Wh— what… you’re so gross,” Katsuki said, and he felt rather than heard Deku’s little hum of satisfaction, the vibration like electricity shooting up his spine.

Deku’s tongue worked at him, and Katsuki squirmed up into it, or maybe away. He couldn’t tell which direction he was trying to move in, only that he had to thrash and shake with every insistent lick. One of Deku’s firm hands pressed down on Katsuki’s back, keeping his upper body in place even as his hips writhed. 

If Katsuki bucked up hard enough, he could have dislodged him. He should have, just to prove that he was stronger, that he was the Hero in this situation, to take back some kind of control, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to stay where he was put.

The tip of Deku’s finger circled Katsuki’s hole, and then, oh fuck, it was inside, a hot and thick intrusion that Katsuki couldn’t help but clench down on. He jerked in surprise, but all that did was force Deku’s finger deeper.

Deku kept kissing Katsuki’s neck until he relaxed boneless into the mattress, and only then did he move.

“How does it feel, Kacchan?”

“Like taking a monster shit,” Katsuki huffed, “Except backwards.”

“Hmm,” Deku said, and then his finger curled, and Katsuki saw stars, “Better?”

“F-fff….” Katsuki started, his tongue feeling too thick in his mouth to form words. He grasped at language, focused his entire mind on getting out the words he needed to say. “Ffffffuck you.”

Deku put another finger in. Katsuki rocked his hips back before he even thought about it, instinctively chasing his own pleasure. He was sweltering even in the air conditioning of the hotel room, burning up from that one specific spot that Deku kept stroking, over and over again.

“It’s kind of funny, you know,” Deku said, “You stayed pure your whole life because you were trying to become a Hero, and now you’re in bed with a villain.”

“Who the fuck is pure,” Katsuki bit back, before Deku added a third finger and he collapsed into even more embarrassing noises, and wiggled his ass in the air so Deku could have easier access, and tilted his head so Deku could bite at the juncture of his neck.

“You are, Kacchan,” Deku said, “The way you’re reacting, it’s so… you’re so innocent.”

He sounded like one of the characters in the B-grade pornos the boys could sometimes hear from Mineta’s dorm, a gross otaku creep getting to touch his favorite idol. Katsuki hated the way Deku’s words wormed their way into his core, how, despite the sheer amount of sweat he had soaking into the sheets, there was no way he was about to raise his palm and use it to blow Deku off him. At least not until he came.

“Again, who the fuck is— I’m no—” Katsuki started, and then, “Oh, fuck. Fucking hell, fuck, ahhh, ah!”

There was something thick at his entrance, slightly larger than the four fingers Deku had been using to stretch him out. Objectively, it was probably only a little above average, but as he pushed into Katsuki, Deku felt impossibly huge.

“I’m gonna ruin you, Kacchan,” Deku said, “I’m gonna fuck you so good you won’t be able to think about anything except how good my cock feels.”

Holy shit, was that actually possible? Katsuki’s mind went again, unbidden, to Grape Face’s porn vids, with the weird words in the titles like ahegao and mindbreak that he made sure to avoid like the plague. The way Deku felt in him… it was overwhelming, too much, the heat of him and the stretch and the little zings of pleasure overtaking Katsuki’s thoughts.

“Fuck you,” Katsuki gasped, “I can think about— about lots of things.”

Deku laughed, a dark little chuckle that accompanied a thrust that hit Katsuki’s prostate dead-on, punching another strangled moan out of him.

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

Oh shit, oh shit, oh, shit. Katsuki clutched at the sheets as Deku pounded into him, pressing his forehead into the soft, damp fabric of the pillow. 

“Like…” he said, willing his brain to actually work, “Like math.”

Deku’s movements stilled. Katsuki could feel him shaking very slightly, the tensing of his stomach against Katsuki’s back and the shivery tremble of the dick inside him.

“Die!” Katsuki snapped, rearing backwards to deliver a slap to Deku’s shoulder, and that was what made Deku collapse into ugly, honking laughter. 

“Sorry, Kacchan, I’m not— Okay, I might be laughing, but c’mon! Math!” Deku said. He took a few deep breaths to try and hold in his breathless giggles, but that only made them come out as the loudest snort possible a few seconds later. “Are you gonna do derivatives on my d-d-dic… ahahaha…”

“Shut up! I could if I wanted to!”

“Yeah,” said Deku, hooking his chin over Katsuki’s shoulder and flashing him his dopiest grin, “Kacchan always got the highest score on math tests when we were kids. I remember.”

Deku moved against him again, just one slow, lazy thrust, and this time it didn’t feel scary anymore. What the hell was Katsuki so worried about, anyway? Dick in his ass or not, it was literally just Deku.

The way Deku wrapped his arms around Katsuki was kinda nice. Comforting, maybe. It should have been vaguely comical, having a guy around fifty pounds lighter than him clinging to him like a koala, and the wet slide of their sweat-soaked skin together should have felt gross, but it wasn’t, it didn’t. It felt good. Sweet and steady, like Katsuki was being taken care of.

Even when Deku picked up the pace, he still kept an arm wrapped around Katsuki’s waist, his head tucked against Katsuki’s shoulders. They stayed connected at every point of their bodies, and Katsuki never wanted Deku to move away.

Sparks fizzed under his skin, bright sensation where Deku splayed his hand against Katsuki’s stomach, let his thighs slap against Katsuki’s ass as he bottomed out, angled his hips upwards so he pressed against Katsuki’s prostate, every time.

“Is this okay, Kacchan?” he asked, apparently having completed the full transformation from covetous villain to anxious nerd, “Do you— I mean, if you don’t like it, we don’t have to…” 

“Nnno, fuck,” Katsuki said, meaning don’t you dare stop, but Deku took it the wrong way and actually pulled back, making Katsuki jerk upwards in alarm, grinding back onto Deku’s dick, “No, wait, I like it, I like it!”

“Fuck,” Deku said. Katsuki could feel his dick twitch inside him, and then Deku grabbed at his hips and pounded back inside at a frenetic pace, “Yeah, okay, good. Ah— Kacchan!”

Katsuki arched upwards into Deku with every thrust, matching his pace. He closed his eyes and bit his lip, trying to focus on the pleasure building in his core, so close to brimming over.

“Touch me, you fuck,” he said, and Deku obliged, wrapping a hand around Katsuki’s cock. It was a little sloppy, just a bit off-rhythm, but that didn’t matter when Katsuki’s whole body was alive with sensation, the feeling of Deku inside him and around him, the smell of them together, the desperate way Deku said his name.

He felt Deku come first, hips stuttering as he moaned Kacchan into Katsuki’s shoulderblade, and even as fucked-out as he was, Katsuki smirked. Ha! Who was the one coming in three seconds now, shitty Deku? He chased his victory rutting into Deku’s fist, fucking himself back up onto Deku’s softening cock even though Deku whined at the overstimulation.

When Katsuki came, it was with his whole body, pleasure overtaking him all the way to his fingertips. His toes curled, his eyes rolled back, his vocal cords let out an uncontrolled, animal noise that wasn’t so much sexual as just raw, an uncontrolled release of pure sound.

His body still pulsed with the aftershocks when Deku threw away their tied-off condoms and  returned from the bathroom with wet towels. Katsuki was only barely aware of the cloth that prodded around his asshole, cleaning him gently. Just once, when Deku swiped a little too roughly, Katsuki hissed at the stimulation. Deku yelped and dropped the towel entirely.

“S-sorry, Kacchan!”

He placed a frantic, apologetic kiss to the closest part of Katsuki’s skin, which turned out to be his right buttcheek. Without the rampant sexual tension of earlier, it just tickled. Katsuki shoved him away and grabbed a hand towel for himself, shifting around on the bed so he could see Deku’s nervous, guilty expression.

“Still the same, shitty Deku,” he yawned. Because he was: under all the flash and jokes and villainy, Deku was the same gawky, awkward nerd that Katsuki had always known. Quick to apologize and spiral into muttering, an indecisive overthinker until a switch flipped and he stopped thinking at all.

A weird, dorky kid. A good kid, one who wanted to be a Hero.

“What the hell happened to you?” Katsuki asked, a little too softly, “How the hell did you of all people become a villain?”

“Funny you should ask that,” Deku said, propping himself up on an elbow so he could gaze admiringly at Katsuki’s form, “You don’t even know it, but it was all because of you.”

The warm, fizzy afterglow in Katsuki’s veins turned to ice. His stomach twisted on itself, his pulse kicking up for reasons that had nothing to do with bliss.

“Shit, Deku,” Katsuki said. All of a sudden he felt the nakedness of his limbs, the chill of his skin against the air. It had been him all along, his cruelty that had driven Deku to it. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Huh?”

“Listen. It’s my fault, it’s my fucking fault, and—-”

“Wait, wait, wait, Kacchan, no!” Deku yelped. He stretched his hand out, hesitated, and then clasped Katsuki on the shoulder, fingers curling around his bicep. “Not like that! I was talking about the cultural festival!

“You know, in your first year? I got the invite, which, um, thanks for that, I guess, because it led to my entire career path, and when I was walking to Class 1A’s performance I got lost and this tired old guy and a little girl gave me directions, except they were looking for a lost cat so I volunteered to find it for them before your show, and…”

“And?”

“And I ran into Gentle Criminal. He was filming this whole thing about wanting to attack U.A., kind of just right there on the street where anyone could hear him? And I went to talk to him, and we ended up having a conversation about Hero Society, and… I convinced him there was a better way.”

“So that’s why you never came to see the band!” Katsuki roared, indignant. He’d spent weeks brooding over that back in high school, gnashing his teeth as he wondered whatever the hell was more important to useless loser Deku than witnessing Katsuki’s musical debut. He crossed his arms, dislodging Deku’s hand, but then Deku shuffled closer and wrapped his whole arm around him, heavy against Katsuki’s side.

“Sorry,” he said when Katsuki glowered at his stifled smile, “It’s just. You’re kinda cute when you’re sulky, Kacchan.”

“The hell!”

Katsuki tried to push him off the bed. Not with enough force to actually shove him off, but enough that Deku squeaked in alarm and clung to Katsuki’s arm, pulling himself even closer until his face was smushed up between Katsuki’s chest.

They lay there for a while. Deku rubbed his cheek against Katsuki’s pecs like a contented cat, which was pretty weird and they would be addressing that later. Katsuki buried his face in Deku’s tangled curls and inhaled, which, ugh, was a mistake. Maybe he’d try it again after Deku took a damn shower and see if he could smell floral shampoo or the milk-sweet scent of Deku’s scalp, half-remembered from Katsuki’s childhood, instead of just nasty, stank sweat.

“I really am, though,” Katsuki said, eyes fixed on the faded damask-print paper on the love hotel walls. Somehow, it was easier to talk that way. He didn’t have to look at Deku, but still felt him near. “For being a shit when we were kids, and everything.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve known for a while now, Kacchan.”

“Wh— how? I never even told you…”

“Oh, I dunno,” Deku said airily, his curls tickling Katsuki’s chin as he tilted his head to look up, “Probably around the time my mom checked the mail and found U.A. Sports Festival box tickets, then a cultural festival invite, an amphitheater seat for the Hero Rankings Gala the year of your debut, Comiket circle passes that time you saved a doujinka…”

“Those coulda been from anyone,” Katsuki said, looking away from Deku’s too-knowing smile.

“Oh, really? So anyone would’ve made the tickets out to family name Shitty, given name Deku?”

Katsuki had no response for that. Deku giggled into his chest, tightening his arms around Katsuki’s midsection.

“I figured that was your way of apologizing without, you know, actually having to talk to or look at another human being.”

“I don’t… I don’t think it was,” Katsuki said slowly, brushing an errant curl off Deku’s forehead. He paused, trying to summon up the roiling mass of rage and hormones that he’d been in his teenage years. He hadn’t even known why he’d sent the nerd he professed to hate tickets to everything back then. He’d just done it, and refused to think about it afterwards.

“I mean, the first time I sent you sports festival tickets, that would’ve been, what, first year of U.A.? Yeah, no. That fucking brat was nowhere near ready to even think about being guilty.” Katsuki shook his head, letting out a disbelieving huff of a laugh. “There wasn’t any grand plan for apologies, or, hell, any kind of fuckin’ introspection. I just… I just wanted you to watch me, I guess.”

Deku took Katsuki’s face in his hands and pressed a kiss to his mouth, short and sweet and utterly satisfying. When he pulled back, he was smiling, looking at Katsuki like there was an entire solar system’s worth of planets in his eyes and Katsuki was the sun.

“I am watching you, Kacchan,” he said, “I always have been.”

Chapter Text

“You hear that, Gentle viewers? Even Kacchan, stooge of the capitalist establishment, admits that the Kagasaki Group’s brutal culture of overwork is wrong!”

Deku punctuated this sentence with a theatrical sweep of his hand. They were in another of Deku’s goddamn dungeons, and Katsuki was just about sick of dancing to Deku’s tune. He was tired, slightly hungry and he’d just put together a giant block tower that was supposed to be a metaphor for the impossibility of meeting a toxic supervisor’s production demands. Whatever little dregs of patience he’d ever had were already long gone.

“Fuckin’ obviously! It’s a scummy move! But stealing the CEO’s toupee and holding it hostage over, what, is that a vat of goddamn acid? That’s not the damn solution!”

“Oh? And what would you suggest, Kacchan?” Deku asked. The way he smirked at Katsuki could only be described as flirtatious. Cheeky bastard.

“How about organizing a boycott of the company? Lobbying the legislature to enact more stringent overtime limitation laws? Calling out the Ministry of Labour until it actually enforces them?” Katsuki growled. “Hell, you might as well unionize the employees so they can strike and walk off the job!”

“That’s right, Gentle viewers,” Deku continued, staring somewhere up and to the left, probably at the many cameras hidden around this cursed empty warehouse. “Ground Zero himself is encouraging you to boycott Kagasaki Group’s products and unionize your own— Ow! Hey, Kacchan!”

“Quit spouting exposition while I’m trying to fight, damn it!” Katsuki said, readying another warning shot. This one clipped the tile near Deku’s ankles, forcing him to jump back in a stupid little half-jog.

Predictably, Katsuki almost won the fight. He’d learned by now how to counteract most of Deku’s shitty moves, and despite the nerd’s dexterity and surprising strength, only one of them had spent his entire life focused solely on the art of violence. Equally as predictably, however…

Deku clicked a remote, and the mechanical claw holding the CEO’s custom toupee jerked lower with a creak.

“It’s me or the toupee, Kacchan!” he said, already springing off to the escape route.

Katsuki wanted to choose catching Deku. His fingers itched to wrap themselves around Deku’s hips again, to taste the victory of tackling that shitty nerd into the goddamn ground. He didn’t care about this latest crappy CEO. Frankly, the guy was lower than slug shit, and deserved the worst that Deku gave him. 

But Best Jeanist had made it absolutely clear that the victim of this latest crime was important enough to be a priority, and, damn everything to the eight great hells, Katsuki was a professional. He saved the toupee.

Later, after he’d handed off the disgusting wig to a lab tech in a Hazmat suit and disinfected his own hands about three times, Katsuki made a call. He was ensconced within the safety of his own apartment, costume shorn in exchange for the soft fabric of the tank top and sweatpants he wore around the house.

“Kacchan! Did you like the dungeon better this time?” said the voice on the other side of the phone, disgustingly eager to hear his feedback.

“You’re getting better,” Katsuki admitted. “The one where every answer was another variation on karoshi statistics? Shit, that one almost got me. Pissed me the hell off.”

“That wasn’t the puzzle you had the most trouble with,” Deku said, and Katsuki could just hear the smug little grin in his voice. He knew the one Deku was talking about. The fuckin’... stupid-ass, kanji-Mandarin character nonsense that he’d spent a full hour trying to make sense of.

“Oi, I got a bone to pick with you on that one!” Katsuki yelled. “You stole that from the goddamn Da Vinci Code! An’ it didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now! It’s not even a fucking puzzle!”

“Yeah, and you still couldn’t figure it out!” said Deku, giggling into the receiver, “I finally stumped you, Kacchan!”

“Kirishima solved that one,” Katsuki said. “That guy doesn’t have grey matter in his brain, he’s got hair gel. You don’t think there’s something wrong with that?”

“I think I’m very proud of Red Riot for solving his first ever puzzle, and you should be proud of him, too,” Deku said, primly, and Katsuki almost crushed his phone in his fury.

“Wait a second… You did that shit on purpose!”

Katsuki couldn’t believe it. What happened to the sanctity of the puzzles, the pure intellectual challenge of the solve? Forget that he’d spent the past eight months deriding the hell out of riddles, brain-teasers, word problems or any other Deku-generated intellectual conundrums. There was still something important about the quality of being challenged, the pure cat-and-mouse battle of wits between him and Deku.

“I felt bad for him!” Deku protested. “He doesn’t have anything to do in the dungeons half the time, you just make him hold things for you and yell at him!”

“You fuckin’ sap,” Katsuki said, leaning against his bedroom wall. Ah, hell, he couldn’t stay mad about it. Even if Kirishima was going to be insufferable about The One Puzzle I Figured Out And Bakubro Couldn’t, Neener Neener for the rest of their shitty lifetimes. Katsuki tried to tamp down his smile, his lips twitching, then gave up because it wasn’t like Deku could see him, anyway. 

“Maybe it’s part of a dastardly plan to turn Red Riot to the villain side,” Deku said. “He’s really friendly! I feel like we could use him on our team, you know, to get that influencer demographic.”

“Good luck with that,” Katsuki said with a sadistic little smirk. “He’d eat you out of house and home in a weekend. Ever seen Shitty Hair at a buffet? There’s a reason he’s banned from all the All-You-Can-Eat places within a fifty-mile radius of the agency.”

Katsuki listened to Deku’s soft little laugh, and for a moment he wished that he could see it, too. When they fought, there was no way for him to see Deku’s mouth, the way his lips curved around a smile. There was so much under that half-mask that Katsuki had no idea he could even miss.

“Hey, what’re you gonna steal next?” he asked, balancing his phone in the crook of his neck as he opened the fridge to pull out the night’s meal prep.

“Hmm,” said Deku. “What’re you gonna give me if I tell you?”

Katsuki shrugged, and the movement almost dislodged his phone, making him awkwardly hunch his shoulder to his ear to keep it in place.

“I don’t know, I guess we’ll fuck again.”

“We could,” said Deku, his voice going soft and molten around the words. “But Kacchan, that’s not really an effective bargaining chip when I know you want it just as bad as I do.”

“Well—”

For a second Katsuki considered denying that he ever wanted to do anything with Deku at all and taking it to the grave. But what if rejection hit Deku again like it had earlier, turning him small and sad and scared? He’d hang up. Katsuki wouldn’t get to see him.

“How about dinner?” he asked instead.

“What, like, in public?”

“Uh, where the fuck else?” Katsukis said. It sounded like a better idea the more he thought about it. Not a fancy restaurant, no, but one of the small, hearty places dotted around the neighborhood, good, simple food done well. There was the soup dumpling place run by the older Taiwanese guy who’d moved to Japan for his wife, a story romantic enough for Deku to cream his pants over, or the little curry house beside the train station that had baby spices for Deku and real food for Katsuki…

Deku would like it, curling up with him at the back of a restaurant, a beanie pulled low over Katsuki’s head so he wouldn’t get recognized. Katsuki would let Deku ramble on about cryptography or social justice or whatever cool new quirk he’d seen this week, and he’d only make fun of him a little. Deku would slide a little closer when they left the restaurant, let Katsuki put his arm around his shoulder. They’d share dessert.

He’d talk about all the cool shit he’d done as a Hero, telling stories about his missions, and Deku would be like, really impressed or whatever. Impressed and horny.

Deku’s response, when it came, was slow and hesitant.

“Kacchan, I… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Well, fuckin’ forget it, then!”

Katsuki slammed his finger against the hard glass screen of his phone and hung up. Not more than a quarter of a second later, it rang again, Shitty Nerd and a picture of Katsuki’s own middle finger buzzing on the screen.

Katsuki ignored it. It kept ringing. He got a text: kacchan please pick up?

“You’ve got five goddamn seconds.”

“Kacchan, wait, sorry, it’s not— I don’t— what if I come over, instead?”

“Hah?”

“I mean, that m-minimizes the risk of you getting caught fraternizing with me,” Deku explained, tripping over his words. “I just, I don’t want you to get in trouble? So instead I could just come to your apartment, in secret, and we can still have dinner! Just you and me. I haven’t had your cooking in a really long time, and I think it would be, um, nice. You know, I’d really like to try your katsudon.”

“Hrm,” grunted Katsuki, only slightly appeased. “You’ll get what I make for you and like it, goddamn it.”

He heard, over the crackle of the connection, Deku’s sigh of relief.

“‘Course, Kacchan! I’m sure I will.”

Katsuki pre-toasted the panko crumbs before he even cut the onion, frying them on the stove until they turned a warm golden brown. He simmered the onion in his stock of homemade dashi, filling the kitchen with warm, savory smells. Kitchen noise was all percussion: the thunk of his knife as he trimmed the meat, the sharp crack of eggshell against ceramic bowl, the sizzle of breaded pork as it hit the oil.

Deku had better fuckin’ appreciate dinner. Everything was perfect, from the silky smooth egg draped over rice seasoned with the drippings from the pan to the parsley and green onion arranged on top as a garnish. He took the bowls out to the balcony, along with two smaller servings of enoki miso soup, and even dug through the bottom of his cabinet until he found  the nice tablecloth the old hag gave him when he’d moved in.

For one long, demented second, he considered running down to the conbini to see if they had candles. Then he recovered himself and shook the thought away. What the fuck? What was this, a fuckin’ date? Candles and goddamn rose petals—- what, like he was trying to impress shitty Deku? Nah. No way.

Instead, Katsuki just adjusted the outdoor balcony lighting to 70%, low enough for an intimate glow but unobtrusive enough to Deku wouldn’t even notice how everything was suspiciously well-lit. He checked his phone for the time— seven thirty-four.

A gloved hand appeared on his balcony railing. Katsuki fought the urge to pry the fingers away, and soon enough he was rewarded with the sight of a sinewy forearm, then a head of curly green hair, and finally the nerd himself, popping up like a toddler trying to peek over their playroom baby gate. 

“You’re late,” Katsuki said.

“Only by a little! I didn’t realize you lived so high up.”

“Ha! As if you haven’t known where my apartment was since day fuckin’ one, you gross stalker,” Katsuki crowed, and Deku hung his head in response. “Oi, come eat already before the food gets cold."

It was a little like Katsuki had imagined it. Parts of it were better, like the way Deku babbled as he complimented the food. Are those fried shallots? They perfectly balance the richness of the pork and egg sounded a lot less annoying when it was about his own amazing cooking. Other parts, were… not worse, but different. 

In Katsuki’s mental image for the night, everything passed with a warm, hazy glow. When he thought about Deku rambling, he’d only remembered the way Deku looked when he really got into a topic, the spark in his eyes and the waving of his hands in the air. He hadn’t expected actual words, AKA the twenty-minute conversation they had about a man whose Quirk was that he compressed food in his stomach and literally shat diamonds.

“Right, but like, his, um, anal tissue hadn’t evolved to adapt to the needs of his digestive system—”

“Nasty,” Katsuki said, almost impressed by just how fucked-up a human body could get. Deku seemed not to notice the clash between his words and the way he dug into his katsudon with abandon, grains of rice sticking to his cheek. Katsuki reached over and brushed them away with a thumb. The way Deku’s lips parted made his heart beat a little faster, but then they parted a little too much and Katsuki was treated to a view of Deku’s half-chewed dinner.

Though he wasn’t going to admit it, Katsuki may have kind-of, sort-of, maybe liked this version of the night better even better than his mental montage. The sheer awkward presence of Deku had the alarming ability to kill the mood without him even realizing, but that was a little nice in its own way. Katsuki didn’t know how to make charming conversation over dinner, but he did know how to tease Deku about scraping the bottom of the barrel with All Might trivia-themed riddles until Deku howled in protest and threw a mushroom from his soup at him.

And how to wrestle Deku to the ground for wasting food without upending the little folding table between them. How to muss up his suspiciously well-coiffed hair (just as Katsuki had thought, the whole thing was coated in pomade) as he yelped in protest. How to kiss him, long and slow, until the back of Deku’s head started to hurt from being pressed against the cold tile floor.

“So why villainy, anyway?” Katsuki asked when they finally decamped to the kitchen to do the dishes. Deku froze and almost dropped the bowl he was washing, but Katsuki refused to feel bad about it. Shitty nerd had to have known Katsuki was gonna ask.

“What else would I do?” Deku asked, his voice deceptively light. “A Quirkless guy with no college degree…”

“Escape room designer,” Katsuki said instantly. “Hero strategy analyst, support gear designer, high-class prostitute…”

“Kacchan! ”

“What! You’d make a ton of fuckin’ cash from that one!”

“You’re just saying that because I’m the only person you’ve ever slept with,” Deku said, blushing all the way up to his ears. He scrubbed at Katsuki’s saucepan a little before he calmed down enough to continue, though he still stared fixedly at the dishes in the sink, refusing to meet Katsuki’s eyes. “I mean, I know I could’ve gone to a normal university, probably gotten a normal job, but…

“Working with Gentle Criminal, even though we’re the opposite of heroes, we still go after bad guys, you know? We find the people the Hero system doesn’t punish, the ones who still exploit and hurt people even when they stay within the letter of the law, and we remind them that they’re not so untouchable after all. All I ever wanted was to make a difference, and I am.”

Deku’s shoulders straightened, the corded muscle of his forearms flexing even though he was only scrubbing Katsuki’s frying pan. He sounded like he believed what he was saying, and though Katsuki usually scorned the fanatic types who tried to justify their actions, Deku might have a point. 

When he stole, he only went after absolute scum, exposing them for who they were. No one had ever gotten hurt in any of his plans, unless you counted Kirishima getting food poisoning after eating street meat at one of the many trash cleanups Deku kept organizing. And as annoying the videos were, Katsuki could see Deku’s logic, every time.

Deku had always been a bleeding heart, wanting to save everyone from everything. Of course he found some kinda way to warp even being a villain back around into being a hero. It all made sense, but… it still didn’t feel right. Something about the saintly, altruistic aura Deku radiated with every word pissed Katsuki off.

“Bullshit.” Katsuki said. He moved closer, leaning in so Deku was caged up against the sink. “If all you wanted to do was make a difference, you’d be a nurse, or a preschool teacher. You’d work at a goddamn charity. There’s something else behind you being Deku, and you’re not telling me what.”

“I’m not, it’s not…”

Deku tried to hide, his eyes darting away from Katsuki’s all-seeing gaze, but Katsuki didn’t let him. Even taking a step back just pushed him flush against Katsuki’s body, close enough that they could feel each other’s chest move as they breathed. Katsuki saw the exact moment Deku realized that curling in on himself wouldn’t help anything, that there was no escape. He erupted, twisting in Katsuki’s hold so they were facing each other head-on.

“Fine! I… I like it, okay? Is that what you want to hear? I love being a villain, I love the heists and the thrill and giving out puzzles only you can solve and, and fighting you, Kacchan, god, I love fighting you.

“And…”

Deku trailed off, breaking eye contact for the first time in his entire tirade. His fists clenched, curly bangs dropping forward to hide his eyes. Katsuki almost reached out, but it felt like there was an impassable wall between them. They were separate, and Deku felt so far away.

“And you saw. What I was like at Mom’s house. I was a total mess, Kacchan, a shut-in, a useless bundle of nerves. But when I put on the suit, I’m different. It’s like, all of a sudden I don’t second-guess myself anymore. Midoriya Izuku’s a nobody, but when I’m Deku, I’m strong.”

“What the hell are you even talking about? You’re Deku all the time.”

Katsuki was completely lost. He did touch Deku this time, impassable wall be damned, tilted his chin up with a knuckle so he wasn’t hunched over anymore. He didn’t know what to do or what to say— Katsuki had never really been the guy people went to for comfort. More like the guy people went to for hitting things until you’re too beat up to talk about your feelings anymore. All he knew is that he wanted to be touching Deku, and he wanted him to look up.

When their eyes met, Deku was smiling and Katsuki was even more mystified. Happy, then not happy, then happy again… why the hell couldn’t Deku just pick an emotion and stick to it?

“I guess I’m always gonna be Deku to you, huh?” he said. He pulled Katsuki closer with a content sigh, thumbs hooked into his belt loops, and kissed the side of Katsuki’s neck.

“Let’s go to bed, Kacchan,” Deku said, and all Katsuki could do was say yes.

They had another dinner the week after, in exchange for Deku telling him about Gentle Criminal’s quirk. And then another, in exchange Deku talking through how he’d pulled off that latest museum heist, and then one more a few days later in exchange for Deku downing three spoonfuls of Katsuki’s spiciest hot sauce to see if he’d cry (unrelated to the case, but very entertaining). Within a month, Katsuki was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Bakugou K.

Oi. Hedgehead. I’ll make omurice for your whiny baby palate tonight if you…

Ah, fuck, he couldn’t think of anything. Katsuki glared at his phone. He couldn’t just invite Deku over without a reason! Dumbass was gonna get ideas.

Then, as fast as Katsuki’s own stun grenade, the idea came to him, a way to lure Deku into Katsuki’s home and preserve his dignity at the same time.

I’ll cook the best omurice you’ve ever had in your life IF you give me sexual favors.

Shitty Deku

i thought I was qualified to be a high-end prostitute? just omurice isn’t much of a payment

Bakugou K.

Double omurice. I’ll make you a bento for tomorrow.

Shitty Deku

b there in 10

It wasn’t like Katsuki cared or whatever, but as time went on he stopped giving so much of a shit about playing into Deku’s devious plans. So maybe he let the shitty nerd’s social justice monologues go on for a little longer than usual, just ‘cause he had to sit through three separate rehearsals the night before. Maybe he even yelled out a few practical solutions (call your legislator! go to a city council meeting! donate to a damn charity!) to issues that, spoiler alert, still weren’t solved by stealing shit and making a video about them.

“It’s not like you Heroes are doing anything about those issues either,” Deku said. “The current system exists to protect the status quo— not that Heroes aren’t amazing when they save people, which they are, but when it comes to substantive structural changes—”

“So?” Katsuki said. “What, are you gonna complain that a hero didn’t come by your house to clean your apartment next? You think my day job of patrolling and beating the shit outta people makes me qualified to fix institutional problems? Quit waiting for someone to swoop in and come save you! When it comes to actually changing how society runs, all of us are on the same level.”

With that, he clicked his handcuffs around Deku’s wrists, once again. These were antique, with a physical key, because apparently the fancy biometric Quirk-canceling restraints the agency gave him did a lot of Quirk-cancelling and not a lot of actual restraining. Then he hauled Deku up into s standing position and started walking, because he’d learned his goddamn lesson and they were going back to the agency on foot.

“Kacchan, that was actually pretty inspiring!” Deku chirped, way too chipper for a guy who was getting literally dragged down the road. “In sort of like, a backwards, convoluted, reverse-psychology kind of way… it’s like you’re saying anyone can help change the world!”

“Where the hell are you getting that from? Maybe I'm trying to say that everyone’s equally useless and ineffectual, you ever thought about that?”

“Wow, Kacchan, I never thought I’d see the day where you called yourself—”

“Fuck you! Obviously, I'm the exception!” Katsuki snapped. “When I’m number one, I’m gonna use my fame, influence and metric fuckton of merchandise money to directly overhaul the system, just you watch!”

“That’s amazing, Kacchan! I can’t wait!”

“Oi, quit believing in me so hard, damn it! Your smile’s blinding me!”

“Where are you going to start?” Deku asked. Katsuki thought about striding faster and further ahead, so he could have the last word, but then he remembered that Deku was his prisoner, and they had to walk side by side. Or even with Deku in front of him, so he could always be in Katsuki’s line of sight. God fucking damn it.

“Because All Might was the Symbol of Peace for years, and even though he tried to stay out of politics entirely, he did end up making a few more general statements, and despite the fact that he commands near-universal respect among the Japanese populace, his speeches haven’t actually moved the needle on policy choices—”

“Well, I’m not a wishy-washy fuck, so I’ll say what I think about shit outright,” Katsuki said. “Starting from the bullshit we use for our Hero ranking system…”

Talking politics with Deku always got Katsuki’s blood going. He always had a counterargument or a caveat for everything Katsuki said, and the worst part was that he was never just playing devil’s advocate. Deku believed every goddamn word that came out of his mouth.It was annoyingly sincere, especially because in order for Katsuki to win he had to dig down into the actually-pretty-shallow depths of his soul for whatever earnestness he could muster.

Katsuki still put up a fight, though. Deku might have his mumbling, but Katsuki knew how to rant. They were still arguing by the time they got to the agency doors, and if someone inside hadn’t spotted them, Katsuki would’ve taken them around the block so they could keep talking. He hated leaving a conversation unfinished.

“Fuck, okay, I’m gonna put my damn report in,” Katsuki said, nodding to the receptionist on duty. “Don’t you dare escape while I’m gone!”

“No promises, Kacchan!”

Grumbling, Katsuki typed in the standard report. He could do this shit in his sleep. Blah blah blah, caught Deku, blah blah, transfer to prefectural holding… The agency analyst he turned it into skimmed it, humming quietly, then paused at the very end and tapped the transfer papers.

“Oh, that one’s wrong, Ground Zero. He’s not just going to the local anymore. Deku’s going straight to Tartarus.”

“What the fuck? Tartarus?”

“Orders from above,” said the analyst, shrugging as she moved on to the next Hero like she didn’t even care. Katsuki followed her as she processed Twinkletoes’s report on getting a balloon down from a tree or whatever that loser did on patrol.

“No, wait, fuck, what the hell do you mean? Deku ain’t dangerous. He’s a— he’s a fucking joke, he makes stupid videos and never steals anything really important—”

“Yeah, well, he’s a joke who’s pissed off some pretty powerful people, so… Hey, you’ve been wanting to get off the Gentle Criminal case, right? Congratulations. They’ll have him flipping on the big guy in a week and you’ll be done.”

She walked away before Katsuki could say anything. Before he could even react. Katsuki was frozen, standing in the middle of the hallway as sidekicks and staff stepped around him. Deku, in Tartarus? Katsuki’d been to Tartarus. They named it after a hell for a reason. The cold, institutional white walls, head-to-toe restraints, months with no human contact except the glimpse of a hand pushing a meal through the slot in the door.

He imagined Deku trapped in that concrete hell, with no way out. Deku, who was so full of life and energy. How long would it take before he stopped trying to smile?

Katsuki spun around on his heel, abruptly, and stormed back the way he’d came. There was something he had to do.

“Oi, you’re not gonna lose him again this time, are you?”

The cop handling Deku’s transport made a face when he saw Ground Zero bearing down on him with all the belligerent arrogance of his high school years. Not intentionally, of course, but there was a flicker of annoyance that Katsuki caught before he smoothed it out into bland professionalism.

“No, Ground Zero—”

“You sure you got those cuffs right? They go over his wrists, remember?” 

Katsuki loomed over the cop, watching as he strapped Deku in for transport and readied the truck. They were close enough that the cop could feel the heat radiating off him, a side effect from having just used his quirk.The cop’s movements grew choppy. His shoulders hunched defensively, eyes darting towards Katsuki every few seconds. Good.

“You really don’t have to hover over my shoulder like this,” the cop tried.

“I think I do. You know, your incompetent ass has lost my collar every single time I got him,” Katsuki said, putting the maximum amount of entitled douche into his voice. The cop’s jaw clenched, and Katsuki didn’t even try to hide his obnoxious smirk. If there was one thing he knew, it was how to piss people off. “Looks I gotta do your job, hah? I’m just fuckin’ wondering what else you’re gonna fail at next. Ha, I bet your mommy still wipes your ass for you—”

“Step the fuck off, Zero—”

The veneer of professionalism was gone. The cop glared up at him, teeth bared in a snarl. It was pure animal instinct. Defensiveness disguised as intimidation. Katsuki met his eyes and gave him a feral smirk.

“Hey, next time you need someone to fuck your wife right, gimme a call.”

“You goddamn bastard, you better shut the fuck up or I’ll—”

Fuckin’ got him. Katsuki rolled his shoulders back and channeled that Ketsubutsu knockoff-Deku bastard he’d met at the licensing exam with a condescending laugh.

“Or what? What the hell are you gonna do about it, you glorified chauffeur?”

The cop lost it and took a swing, the veins of his arm glowing with whatever bullshit Quirk he had. Katsuki dodged it, easy. Seriously, this was Mustaufu’s finest? He fired an AP shot that went wide and took out the cluster of security cams near the garage doors. 

The cop was getting ready to punch him again. Katsuki could see it in the way he leaned on his back foot, telegraphing his every damn movement. When he finally got the nerve to go through with it, Katsuki sidestepped it and blasted a stun grenade right to his face, catching him and laying him to the side when he fainted from the disorientation.

He opened the doors to the back of the prisoner transport truck. Deku was huddled in a corner, restraints held up in front of his face like a shield. One last explosion broke them off, making them clink uselessly onto the hard metal floor. The adrenaline didn’t drain from Katsuki until he had his hands on Deku’s shoulders. Katsuki had to touch him, just to reassure himself that Deku was real, that he was okay.

“They were gonna take you to Tartarus,” Katsuki said. “I just— I couldn’t let them.”

“Kacchan, what…”

Deku was dazed and uncertain, a half step behind Katsuki as Katsuki hustled him off prisoner transport and poked his head into the corridor to scope out the rest of the garage. When he determined that the coast was clear, he pushed Deku towards the door. 

“Lay low, Deku. You have to be safe,” he said, then, darting in to give him one last hurried kiss. “Go.”

Katsuki’s life went back to normal. He was still on the Gentle Criminal case, nominally, but without any movement from either Deku or Gentle Criminal himself, Jeanist put him on other work. He still explodokilled the hell out of bad guys, just as he had before. He flew through the skies of the city on midnight chases, spearheaded high-profile raids and villain takedowns. Objectively, his life was still pretty awesome.

It just didn’t feel that way.

Deku hadn’t responded to any of his texts since Katsuki had let him go. His social media had gone dark, with nothing posted on any of Gentle Criminal’s channels in weeks. Sometimes, when Katsuki was feeling particularly self-flagellating, he’d still send off messages to Deku, links to All Might analysis videos or photos of his lunch, and stare at his phone until, hours later, he saw the little text at the bottom of his message that said Read . He’d even sent a few shirtless pictures. One really good one, too, in Katsuki’s opinion, of him lounging on the bed and pulling down his underwear. That had gone read and unanswered as well. 

After a full week of being furious at Deku for daring to ignore him, Katsuki found himself on the Midoriya family doorstep, dressed in civilian clothes. They were slightly nicer than his usual tank top and sweatpants, a button-down and some dark slacks because like hell was he wearing jeans. When Auntie Inko opened the door, though, she didn’t seem to be impressed by the effort.

“Can I see Deku?”

“Not if you’re just going to harass him again,” Auntie Inko said, trembling a little despite the venomous undertone to her voice. “You’ve been horrible to him all his life, and I won’t… I won’t let you…”

“Okay,” Katsuki said, just the barest breath of a whisper. He’d been right all along. Deku didn’t want to see him. Why would he, when Katsuki was the one who’d almost sent him to Tartarus? Hero and Villain had been a game they’d played, and for once Katsuki hadn’t thought about the consequences. He turned from the doorstep, pulling his cap further down over his face, then stopped. Inhaled a shaky breath. “I just. If you could just tell me… Is he okay?”

Auntie Inko gave him a long, assessing look. Katsuki resisted the urge to squirm and shuffle his feet, even though he’d always been completely unrepentant every time Auntie caught him making trouble as a schoolboy. Why, oh why had he chosen to invest in his emotional development during high school and develop a sense of shame?

Katsuki followed her down the hallway, without trying to make conversation. He stared at the floor, hands in his pockets, feeling like a sulky teen as Auntie Inko knocked on Deku’s door. Her taps were gentle, so soft that Katsuki wasn’t sure how she ever got Deku’s attention, but after a moment they heard a faint “Yeah, mom?” coming from inside. Auntie opened the door.

Curled up on the ground, Deku was wrapped in a thick, heavy comforter, glasses askew and headband pulling back his hair. A thin film of grease covered his unwashed face. His lips were obviously chapped and dry, the dark circles around his eyes a deep bruiselike gray. The black and orange sweatpants he wore had a hole along the inner seam of the knee. 

“Ka… Ka… Kacch…” Deku said, his mouth flopped open like a fish.

Katsuki had a whole speech planned. About being from two different worlds, and not wanting to lose what they had, and how the months they’d been, uh, together-ish, were the happiest of his life. But at the sight of him, all the words fell out of Katsuki’s head. All he could say was “Deku.” Just Deku.

“Kacchan,” Deku said, brain finally working well enough to say at least a single Japanese word. His hand darted closer, just enough to brush the corner of Katsuki’s sleeve, and then he was springing backward, almost knocking over a half-empty, uncapped soda bottle onto the floor. “You shouldn’t be here! It’s dangerous, they’ll find out and you’ll lose your license—”

“It’s fine. No one knows.”

“Is that classified information? Oh my god, I’m making you feed me confidential knowledge about my own investigation, what if they think we’re conspiring? You could go to prison— we’re both gonna go to prison, and, and, I’m in my sweatpants. Oh god, I didn’t want you to see me like this, you c-c-can’t…”

Deku’s blabbering stopped when Katsuki put a hand to his cheek, thumb brushed over his mouth. He pulled him in, despite Deku’s babbling protests, clutched him to his chest. Something in him quieted at having Deku close to him again, feeling his snuffly little nerd breaths against his skin. 

“Deku, can we just...” Katsuki said. He couldn’t bear to look at Deku, but everywhere else in the room bore his own likeness, all flashing eyes and feral grins. He didn’t feel very feral right now. Just tired, and a little too grown. “Can we just go on a normal date, like normal fucking people?”

It didn’t sound like enough to say, not in this claustrophobic little room with its blackout curtains and disgusting half-eaten convenience store microwave meals on the floor and photos on the wall that were merchandise instead of memories, so Katsuki took a deep breath and added:

“Please.”

Deku’s eyes shimmered as he looked up at Katsuki, as if Katsuki was the hero at the end of a romantic movie, whisking the protagonist away with a kiss. It would have been a perfect fairytale moment if not for, well, everything else about his appearance and hygiene.

“Kacchan, I… Yeah, we can do that. Okay,” he said, then, with a sudden attack of energy. “But I have to shower first! And change my clothes! ‘Cause I, um, haven’t. In a while.”

“Heh, yeah, I can fuckin’ smell it.”

Katsuki sat down on the bedspread, careful to avoid the body pillow for fear of touching a weird, crusty stain. He looked around the room. Shit, Deku really did have all of his merchandise, didn't he? Even the Genius Agency promotional group posters, carefully folded over to show Katsuki and Katsuki only. There was only one thing missing.

Digging through the piled detritus (seriously, who put laundry on a table?) on Deku's desk, Katsuki found the All Might memo pad. Your first autograph, he wrote. He signed it with Ground Zero's bombastic flourish and put it in the little scrap of wall between his sidekick debut poster and an art print of him as some kind of… cat guy?

Huh. Still looked kinda incomplete. Picking up the pen again, Katsuki carefully added one last amendment to his autograph: AKA Kacchan .

They went to one of the places Katsuki had thought of inviting Deku to before, a cozy neighborhood store with souvenirs from the owner’s travels on the walls, a bookshelf full of manga and travel magazines, handmade chair cushions in polka-dot and bright plaid. Katsuki usually frequented the busier places himself, noisy joints full of solo diners looking to get fed quick and get out, but when he came across this restaurant he immediately thought of it as a Deku-place, somewhere the nerd would belong.

Except Deku wasn’t smiling at the vintage Hero figures on the shelf behind him, or even muttering about the handwritten chalkboard menu. He’d shrunk in on himself again, eyes fixed on the blank surface of the table instead of curiously darting around. His answers to Katsuki’s questions came as monosyllables and sentence fragments, without any rambling at all.

What the hell was he nervous about this time? It wasn’t like they hadn’t had dinner before.

Deku tugged on the sleeves of his All Might sweatshirt, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, and suddenly Katsuki understood. It was like Kirishittyhair and his shitty hair, where he didn’t feel confident without his appearance as a shield. Like his costume was what changed him, somehow, like all his confidence was a false persona to make himself better than he really was.

Which was bullshit, because, tacky villain outfit or not, Deku was still the one who’d planned heists and made speeches, the one who’d built Gentle Criminal’s obscure channel into a movement that reached millions. The Deku who stuttered over every word and the Deku who flirted with Katsuki mid-battle were one and the same. All Katsuki has to do was bring him out.

“You know, this place kind of reminds me of that one All Might fight,” Katsuki said. drumming his fingers against the table, “In Hosu. With the elephant quirk guy and the other two extras who called themselves, what, the Barnyard Crew?”

Deku’s eyes flicked upward, his mouth pursed like he just ate a lemon. Got him.

“Yeah, uh, those guys. You know, they destroyed, what was it, the taiyaki stand? And when All Might beat them, he said ‘That wasn’t very sweet of you’?”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” said Deku. Katsuki leaned back in his chair and gave him a one-armed shrug. Sure, all those All Might facts were obviously nails-on-a-chalkboard wrong, but could Deku resist correcting them? He could not.

“It was the zoo crew! And they wrecked a ramen stand! And All Might said ‘Guess it just wasn’t ra-meant to be’!” Deku blurted out, his whole face screwed up in annoyance. The irritation made his lips thin and chin wrinkle like he was trying to force out a constipated bowel movement, but the fire was back in his eyes, and that made the tangled knot of emotion in Katsuki’s chest ease.

“Yeah, whatever. All Might got them all, anyway. That All Might. Hey, what was his catchphrase again? I am fear? I am queer?”

“Kacchan!” Deku protested. He was trying to stay mad, but it didn’t work. WIthin a second, he broke into helpless laughter. “Oh my god, you’re such a jerk!”

Conversation flowed easier from then on. Deku rambled on about All Might’s Wordplay Era and suggested a few puns for Katsuki, too, though Katsuki maintained the superiority and elegance of “Die!” and “Fuck off!” as his official catchphrases. They got into a chopstick fight over Katsuki stealing cubes of beef from Deku’s curry (“Kacchan, those are mine!” “Yeah, well, I need ‘em. That’s Hero fuel.”) and tried to develop an official ranking for kabocha soup in the city (this place was #2, but only because Katsuki’s own recipe was better).

By the time they stumbled out into the evening, they were knocking their shoulders together companionably, a breath away from holding hands. The corners of Katsuki’s mouth kept curling upwards, despite his attempts to smooth them out and play it cool. Deku was smiling too, not the seductive smirks and sly little grins of his villain persona, but something smaller and shyer and full of hope

And then they were on the doorstep of the restaurant, and dinner was over. Deku was going to go back to that gross, messy bedroom in his mom’s house, and Katsuki would return to an apartment that had a 43-inch 4k TV, and custom craftsman-carved furniture, and no Dekus. He couldn’t let that happen.

“Wanna come back to my place?”

“Um,” said Deku, his cheeks going pink. “I don’t know if I’m in the mood to um, you know... “

“We don’t have to fuck, dumbass,” said Katsuki. “Shit, you think that’s all I want? We can talk, or just sleep in the same bed, and I mean literally just sleep… Deku, I just. I fuckin’ missed you.”

Deku sidled up beside him and, daringly, linked their hands together, not even minding Katsuki’s sweat.

“Okay, then. Let’s go home.”

It was weird sharing a taxi together, Deku nestled up to him in the backseat. They swung their hands together, in public (!), stood next to each other as they took the elevator to Katsuki’s apartment. When they passed the judgmental old lady who lived next to her, Katsuki didn’t even restrain himself from making a face at her. That’s right, lady. Deku was his.

He let Deku shower first, because he was the guest, and lent him a soft old pair of sweats to sleep in. They stood next to each other as they brushed their teeth, sneaking quiet glances in the bathroom mirror. When they sank into bed, it felt a little weird at first. Without the distraction of kissing or post-fuck exhaustion, they lay next to each other awkwardly, like parallel logs.

Then Deku shifted over a little, and Katsuki stretched out an arm. Suddenly they were clinging to each other, holding on tight because both of them knew how close they got to having to let go. Katsuki felt Deku shake against his arms, wet tears dampening the front of his sleep shirt.

“I didn’t think I’d get to have this again,” Deku said, a quiet confession whispered into the dark of Katsuki’s bedroom. “Kacchan, they want to send me to Tartarus. I’m scared.”

“It’s bullshit, is what it is,” Katsuki growled, dragging a rough hand through Deku’s (thankfully freshly cleaned) hair. “Legally you should get a fine and ten months at worst. Probably just some shitty community service. Now all of a sudden they want you to go to Tartarus just ‘cause someone at the Hero Commission took a damn bribe? When I find the guy who made that call, I’m gonna blast him to smithereens.”

Deku smiled into Katsuki’s shoulder. Katsuki could feel his mouth stretch against his skin, the barest brush of his breath as he spoke.

“Oh, yeah? And then what, Mr. Hero?”

“Then, I dunno, we go on the run together,” Katsuki said. “Get a boat or something, sail to another country. Go off the grid.”

They could live in the wilderness or whatever. All Katsuki needed was his own two hands to kill and cook wild animals for food, and he knew enough about plants to forage. He wasn’t so sure about constructing a house in the woods by exploding trees into logs, but how hard could that be? Their fuckin’ ancestors did it, and those guys didn’t know shit.

Or they could become mercenaries, floating from city to city, their only companion (besides each other) the Grim Reaper. Because they’d totally murder people, but only the bad ones. Like assassins... with a code. 

Deku broke into muffled laughter about halfway through Katsuki explaining how he’d disguise himself by dyeing his hair and giving himself a cool facial scar.

“Oh, wow, Kacchan, you’d be a terrible villain.”

Katsuki wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted, and settled on mad.

“Shut up, I was serious! Isn’t that your whole thing? How the legal thing isn’t always right and the right thing isn’t always legal? You’re always trying to make everyone see that, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Deku, who had gone suddenly very still and quiet beside him. “I guess I am.”

“Morning, Kacchan! I made tamago kake gohan!”

Deku looked way too chipper for eight A.M. and far too proud for someone who just cracked a raw egg into rice from the rice cooker. Huh. Maybe Katsuki was really good at emotional support after all. Shit, he was really killing it at being Deku’s… enemy? rival? not-friend-with-benefits? person-who-was-deeply-invested-in-his-happiness-and-
presence-but-not-in-a-weird-needy-way? Fuck, what the hell even were they?

Eh. Whatever they were, Katsuki was winning.

Deku finally started texting Katsuki again, a never-ending stream of small talk, articles he found online and delayed compliments for the photos he had so heinously ignored earlier. It was like he’d been storing up words the entire time they were out of contact, and now the dam had broken and they were all coming out at once. Katsuki had to mute his phone because even Kirishima was starting to get annoyed at the constant pings.

Despite his digital clinginess, though, Deku still said no when Katsuki asked him to come over that night, and the night after.

Bakugou K.

What do you even have to do anymore? Stay at home and beat it to my promo pics?

Shitty Nerd

ahahahaha something like that! rain check for friday? i promise i’ll be free then

Bakugou K.

You better be. Not that I care, shitty Deku!

On Friday, when Katsuki came back from patrol/a trip to the market to buy the nice kombu for dinner, he returned to an agency in chaos. The usually sedate atmosphere of Genius Agency had turned completely frazzled. Sidekicks congregated in huddled groups, Aoyama raving to a small crowd about how he’d warned them, he’d warned them all !

Kirishima pulled Bakugo aside as soon as he walked through the door.

“Dude, where the hell have you been?”

“Fuckin— Patrol, where else?”

Genius Agency didn’t have a TV in the the lobby because having some goddamn entertainment instead of just minimalist chaise lounges was apparently tacky or whatever, but someone had wheeled in an antique from a forgotten office, and it was showing Deku. Screens all over the agency were showing the same thing, sidekicks and staff huddled around phones or laptops. Katsuki heard Deku’s voice from all around, overlapping on itself as one stream or another hit a lag.

“—corruption and bribery between Hero Commission members and private business interests. Board member Ohtani Touma received 30 million yen, a weekend at a resort in Kauai and a yacht valued at twenty million yen from oil industry executives—”

“—paid to turn a blind eye to villains linked to yakuza operations and crack down on threats to profitability, like myself—”

“—and if you’re wondering where the proof is? All you need to do is watch.”

Deku had everything. Screenshots of financial records, a paper trail that followed money from shell company to shell company to international bank account, a recording of a conversation Hero Commission board members had with the CEO of PlastiCo at an expensive kaiseki dinner. And then Katsuki’s own voice, from the conversation they’d had the last time Deku was arrested, going on about how a Hero’s job was to save civilians and fight wrongdoers, just that, without giving a damn about who they were.

“Oh, that cheeky little shit,” Katsuki said, completely unable to fight off a grin.

The agency’s phones started ringing. Had been ringing, for a while, without Katsuki having noticed. He could hear Jeanist getting shouted at by Ohtani Touma himself—

“Take it down, damn it! I don’t care what you have to do—”

“Well, Ohtani-san, I’m sorry to say that I don’t control the internet—”

“It’s everywhere,” Kirishima said. “Twitter’s going wild and you should see the Niconico comments overlay. He even hacked the big screens at Kamino Square, there’s a whole crowd watching.”

The agency receptionists panicked as they took more calls than they could handle, PR staff arguing their way into a frantic meltdown. Some of the more junior staff had abandoned their jobs entirely to stare, enraptured, at the livestream, and Katsuki didn’t even judge them for it. Deku’s eyes glowed with fervent joy as he broke the biggest scandal Mustaufu had seen in decades, and Katsuki couldn’t look away.

Katsuki was waiting for Deku’s glove to appear at the edge of his balcony railing when his doorbell rang. Staring through the fish-eye of the peephole, Katsuki saw a head of green hair and a shirt that read CELEBRATION SUIT in bubble letters. Deku had come to his front door, like a normal person, for the very first time.

The door banged as Katsuki threw it open, and then he picked Deku up and whooped and spun him around.

“You’re fucking amazing, Deku!” he said, “We had to close the whole case ‘cause the public outcry was so bad. Hero Commission can’t get you now. You’re untouchable!”

“I couldn’t let them win,” Deku said with a breathless grin. “You were right. I’ve been trying to show people the truth this whole time, so why not do it for myself?”

They stumbled into each other when Katsuki set Deku down, and Katsuki took the opportunity to kiss Deku, pressing against him as if all the stress and worry he’d felt these past few weeks could be absorbed by Deku’s skin. When they pulled apart, they rested their foreheads against each other for a moment, wearing twin smiles of relief.

“You know they’ll come after you again if you ever put a toe out of line, right?” Katsuki said, abruptly worried again. “The second they think they can justify it for public opinion, paint you as just another criminal…”

Deku nodded, hooking his chin onto Katsuki’s shoulder.

“Gentle Criminal has to stop stealing things, I know,” he said. “But I have another idea for the channel, actually. I was thinking maybe we should pivot to guerrilla journalism instead.

“It’s perfect. We’re still exposing horrible business practices and educating people about institutional problems. Striking back at the worst parts of society, giving the people who’ve fallen through the cracks of Hero Society a voice, bringing some kind of justice for acts that aren’t illegal but definitely wrong...”

“Pissing off powerful people,” Katsuki said, smirking. It wouldn’t be Deku if he wasn’t out looking for danger to run right into, after all.

“Yeah, that too. We’ll be making a difference, same as if we were still villains. I’m gonna miss the fighting and the heists, but the crime thing was always just a gimmick, anyway.”

Deku was the one who kissed him this time, with a ravenous intent that took Katsuki’s breath away. It was the kiss of someone who knew exactly what he wanted and was absolutely certain he was going to get it, confident and sure. Katsuki found himself pressed against the wall when they finally broke apart for air, his hand pressed against Deku’s broad back and wide hips.

“I hope you’re not disappointed we’re not enemies anymore,” Deku said, and Katsuki shrugged.

“Eh,” he said. “Works out pretty great for me. I mean, it would’ve been kind of awkward having a villain as my…”

He trailed off into an awkward pause, only realizing then that he didn’t have a word for what they were. Deku, that bastard, didn’t even try to help him define their relationship, staring at him expectantly with both hope and anxiety in his gaze. Katsuki considered exploding his way through the hall and out the balcony doors for a second, but then it came to him in a flash:

“As my boyfriend!” he announced triumphantly, daring Deku to object.

“Boyfriend!”

If Deku had been holding something, he would have dropped it. As it was, his hands just tightened around Katsuki’s waist, squeezing his core. Katsuki tried to look uncaringly into the distance, but he couldn’t resist peeking at Deku from the corner of his eye.

The surprise on Deku’s face melted into joy, the kind of hundred-birthdays-at-once, mountain-of-All-Might-merch, lifetime’s-supply-of-katsudon glee that radiated off him in waves. Katsuki couldn’t help but puff out his chest a little, shoulders straightening with pride. He’d caused that look. It was his .

“Uh, obviously,” he said. “The fuck did you think we were doing this whole time? I don’t let just anyone bribe me into making katsudon with their dick, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Deku said, lacing their fingers together. “Kacchan’s always made me feel special.”

Katsuki was going to murder every single guest at his dinner party with his food. They would perish from how absolutely delicious it was, ground into the dirt of realizing how inferior they were at cooking in comparison. He chuckled as he arranged his hand rolls into a perfect fan, then placed the last garnishes, daikon and cucumber cut into roses, into the center of the croquette plate.

Deku was blabbering over IcyHot’s quirk when Katsuki brought the last dishes into the living room. Something about quirk synergy with Kaminari? 

“Oi, quit shoring up their self-esteem! I’m trying to crush their egos with this meal,” Katsuki said, somehow not dislodging any of the food from the plates as he slammed them onto the table. “Eat it and weep, losers.”

“Never needed my ego anyway,” said Soy Sauce Face. “I’ll just live off these leftovers, thank you very much.”

The idiot squad crowded around the table, IcyHot and Ponytail hanging back because they had enough richie rich manners to not immediately clamor for the choicest morsels. Deku must’ve been in nerd heaven today, getting to meet all of Katsuki’s Pro Hero friends like this.

Surveying his table like a king looking over his domain from the castle battlements, Katsuki nodded in satisfaction at the speed with which everyone stuffed their faces, even Ponytail. The conversation didn’t go back to normal for a good ten minutes.

“So you’re going to Chuo University?” Ashido asked, a fleck of curry-tinted rice plastered to her cheek.

“Um, yeah!” Deku said. “I’m majoring in journalism, so…”

“That’s awesome! Super manly!” Kirishima said with a little too much enthusiasm. “Honestly I’m so glad Bakubro’s dating such a nice, normal person with a normal non-illegal job, ‘cause honestly, I was pretty worried there for a while… though didn’t he accuse you of being Deku a couple times? Ha!”

Katsuki and Deku shared a panicked glance. Fuck, he hadn’t realized that trying so hard to convince Kirishima of Deku’s identity was gonna backfire on him! Kirishima was the one man who knew everything (or, well, most things, outside of the bedroom) that had happened between Deku and Katsuki. He’d been on the investigation team, too. He’d seen Deku’s face — 

“R-right! You see, um, what happened was…” 

Deku stuttered as he spoke, hands waving in wild patterns. Katsuki was lucky the nerd wasn’t holding a spoon, because the whole room would’ve been splattered with sauce if he were.

“Kacchan developed a crush the moment he saw me, but you know how he is with emotions, so he misinterpreted that whole gut feeling he had as suspicion…”

Katsuki glared. That was the explanation the shitty nerd chose? Seriously? 

“Oh, snap! So that’s how it is, huh, Blasty?” Dunce Face chortled.

“Yeah,” Katsuki said through gritted teeth, with no choice but to agree. “That’s exactly what happened.”

“Oh, speaking of Deku, did you see his latest video on how the wealthy game their way through the high school and university entrance exam system?” Ponytail cut in. “I thought he made some interesting points about the U.A. recommendation exam in particular…”

“Rich kids of Todai!” Kaminari cheered. “That was a good one!”

The topic of conversation turned to Deku’s video: one third intelligent discussion (Ponytail and Deku), one third yelling and miscellaneous jokes (Kaminari and Ashido) and one third totally off-topic interjections (Half’n’half, completely spaced out as usual, and Sero egging him on). As they continued on, Kirishima shuffled his chair a little closer to Katsuki, lowering his voice.

“You know, you seem pretty chill for someone who never actually caught the guy,” he said, his eyes narrowed and far too assessing.

“Yeah, well, he can have his new career,” said Katsuki. He glanced down the table at Deku, whose curls bounced as he explained some point or another, until Deku noticed and grinned at him, giving him a covert, dorky little wave. Katsuki leaned back in his chair with a slow, lazy smirk, holding Deku’s gaze until the nerd turned faintly pink.

Kirishima was still looking at him, waiting for a better explanation, and all Katsuki could do was shrug. 

“What can I say? Guy was a pretty good nemesis.”