Work Text:
Izuku bit his blood and tasted tongue.
Wait, no.
BAMB
He threw himself to the side, feeling the force of the explosion change his directory with a sharp, heated sting. He drug his tired limbs through the air, forcing himself to turn and roll into the fall, using the inertia to get himself up onto his feet. Izuku took a moment to catch his breath, searching the field for his opponent. Kacchan was standing a ways away, panting and covered in sweat, but looking far better than Izuku felt. That wasn’t hard, though.
They’d told his mom yesterday. Izuku had been selfishly putting it off, trying to find the right way to break it to her, the right words to make the blow soft enough that he could come out of it feeling like less of a sh*tty son. But he’d known all along there was the right way, and that every day he’d put it off was one day closer to her finding out in the worst way possible. So, Mr. Aizawa, Mr. Toshinori, and he had set a date. And no matter how much Izuku had wheedled and reasoned, the other two had held firm, and on March 15th he’d sat in front of his mom, the couch laden with two other heroes and his best friend and almost murderer.
It had been far from pretty, and Izuku was still carrying the guilt in his shoulders. His neck was unbearably sore, and he couldn’t yet tell if the pain in his head was the stress of it all, the ungodly amount of crying, or the fault of his restless sleeping that ended in him tucked in the wrong position. Guilt was a heavy burden, maybe even heavier than the constant weight of knowing his peace and happiness was existing on borrowed time.
They’d made it almost a whole year with not even a peep from The League, and Izuku was growing increasingly aware that there was a countdown with an unknown number of days, hours and minutes until that would change. None of them had any clue when The League would make their move, they only knew that there was no chance the group was remaining inactive. Izuku had no doubt that Toga’s leering face, spotted as he and Kacchan had stepped out for a breath of fresh air just the other week, fleeting though it had been, had been meant as a warning and a promise of that underhanded activity. He hadn’t rested since, upping his workouts and extending his practices further and further, and Kacchan had matched him pace for pace, blow for blow.
And maybe that was part of why Izuku felt so exceptionally rotten today. He’d rid his diet of every happy thing a human could ever hope to eat, spent every waking moment either buried in a textbook or pumping iron or getting the ever-loving sh*t beat out of him, and he felt like he was ten seconds away from losing it. But Kacchan? Kacchan looked like he was on vacation. There wasn’t a line of stress in his whole body. He ate his food like it actually tasted good, danced through workouts and practice spars like they were his favorite social event. Even in school, Kacchan was breezing by effortlessly, and there was nothing worse for Izuku’s sanity than standing to the side and watching.
The comparison game was a dangerous one, Izuku knew that, but when the object of perfection kept taking your tired, half-broken nose and rubbing in the fact that you still worse a shirt size small—we can’t all have giant man-boobs to fill our size mediums, Kacchan—it was hardly easy to forget.
Izuku was being unfair, he knew that. If he’d managed to gripe about the state of Kacchan’s chest out loud neither of them would be able to forgive Izuku, so it wasn’t fair to do it in his head either. He was just so…tired—stressed, and it felt like his friend’s sole purpose in life had become to remind Izuku why. It wasn’t like Izuku already felt enough guilt and confusion and pressure being the carrier of the greatest, most treasured quirk of all time. It wasn’t like he didn’t already stay up at night worrying about what kind of hero he could possibly be with a legacy like All Might looming over him. Every lost spar was another 300 people he couldn’t save, each mediocre exercise as another collapsed building full of orphans. A failed test was sixty people with failed tourniquets who bled out on the field, and each day they built up, until thousands upon thousands of hypothetical civilians lay dead before him, All for One cackling ominously in the background.
So yeah, he was losing it. Very much losing it, and he swore if he didn’t win this stupid game it would be the last straw.
Izuku slid into a crouch, prepared to leap into the air at a moment’s notice should Kacchan try an attack. He could see Toshinori watching, just a ways off and to Kacchan’s right, his face impervious except for the worried frown he seemed to carry permanently now. It was hard to know what else might be happening under those low brows and downturned mouth, and at times it left Izuku feeling all the more lost and helpless.
Movement from the blond drew Izuku’s attention back to the skirmish. Kacchan had switched his foot position. Izuku recognized it well enough to know what was coming next, but it was still too new of a discovery and he was too slow. Kacchan twisted into the air in the blink of an eye, sending himself rocketing over Izuku before the other boy could react. Though Izuku tried to duck, he was just a millisecond behind, and knowing it, he braced for the telltale feeling of two hands closing over his shoulder and the downward pull as Kacchan tried to land.
Going with the movement, Izuku allowed himself to be bent backwards, charging surges of power towards his feet as he waited for what I hoped might be the right time. When he was nearly parallel to the ground, he kicked off, launching himself up and over Kacchan in a pathetic mimicking of what he had just done. Still, it broke the hold and kept his opponent from tumbling him onto his back and pinning him. But it was a shoddy move at best, and the look Kacchan gave him told Izuku they both knew it.
And if that just didn’t make him feel worse.
Izuku hopped backwards, putting some distance between him and Kacchan and tried to rethink his strategy. The goal of their little game was relatively simple. The goal was to make contact with the torso. Each hit counted for points and points added up to a grand total to the end of the night. No breaks (Kacchan’s idea, villains didn’t take breaks), and explosions counted as contact (again, Kacchan’s idea, villains didn’t fight fair). Thus far, Izuku had landed six hits, while Kacchan was sitting pretty at seventeen, most of them explosion hits. It wasn’t fair. But, then again, that was the whole point.
At this point, Izuk was better off just trying to avoid losing any worse than he already was, and that stung. All Might had faced smaller odds and overcome them, so why couldn’t he?
BAMB
Izuku launched himself into the sky, forgoing planning in favor of avoiding getting tossed around like a sack of meat. Kacchan was hot on his tail, however.
BAMB
Izuku yelped as the blond slammed a fist onto his back, letting the little sparks crackle and pop. Izuku cursed, the pain sparking angry frustration in his gut as he turned with a snarl, only to be met with the heat of another explosion and the empty air where Kacchan had been. He was given little time to wonder where his attacker had gotten to, however, when there came a telltale crackle and pop at his neck and the sharp sting of another strike to his shoulder. He swung, throwing his quirk behind the act and spinning with the force it carried when it missed entirely. A sharp explosion from the other side of him made Izuku seethe, and he quickly maneuvered a leg to land a blow. His leg met only the empty air and he felt another sharp sting to his back, right over where a previous hit was already bruising.
That was it. Izuku was done.
Izuku launched himself downward, uncaring of where Kacchan was or what he was doing. With the force of a hundred men he landed, sending dust and grass flying everywhere in the midst of the crater his impact made.
“That’s IT!” he declared, his body so tired that even stomping his way off the field felt jello-like and embarrassingly uncoordinated. Behind him, there was a rush of air, the telltale crack of another explosion following just half a second behind.
It was followed by a sharp jab to his left hip.
“I said I’m done!” Izuku snapped, whipping around to face Kacchan. The blond was giving his usual challenging snarl, his lips turned up in smug glee and his eyes full of mocking, goading light. “Kacchan, stop!”
Izuku’s declaration fell on deaf ears, and against every ounce of human decency, Kacchan let loose another blow. Izuku, tired and frustrated and not ready at all, took the full force of the assault on his shoulder. It wasn’t all that much, all things considered. It didn’t break his arm or anything, but it was the audacity of it that finally broke Izuku.
“I SAID STOP!” Izuku screeched grabbing the other boy by his stupid black tank top and shoving him backward with lightning swift speed and vicious strength. Kacchan slid back a few inches by the sheer force of it, before he hit the edge of Izuku’s crater and went tumbling in amidst a cloud of dust. Izuku knew he should be aghast at what he’d just done, but he was still far too furious to care. He was breathing so heavy he could feel his chest and shoulders rising and falling, and there were tears pin pricking at the corners of his eyes.
“What the hell was that?” Katsuki snarled, recovering faster than Izuku would have if he’d just been thrown in a hole. It only made Izuku all the more frustrated, and his anger continued to fester and burn as the blond crawled out of the crater with a vicious sneer. “You call that heroic?”
“Boys.”
“I said I was done! You’re the one who kept going!”
“You think villains are gonna stop just because you get tired? Don’t be such a wuss—“
“WELL THEY AREN'T GONNA ACT LIKE AN A*SSHOLE EVERY WAKING MOMENT OF MY DAY EITHER!”
“Izuku—“
“OH! SO NOW I’M AN *SSHOLE FOR HELPING YOU TRAIN? EXCUSE ME FOR GIVING A RATS *SS ABOUT YOUR *SS!”
“Bakugou-“
“I DON’T NEED YOUR IDEA OF CARING FOR MY *SS, YOU JUST MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE!”
“WELL THEN GO AHEAD AND GET KILLED FOR ALL I CARE! SEE IF I WASTE MY TIME AND ENERGY ANYMORE. SHOULD’VE SAVED MYSELF THE NEW INTESTINES AND STOPPED CARING ABOUT YOUR *SS A LONG TIME AGO!”
“BOYS!”
The air fell deadly still around both of them as Toshinori’s voice echoed into the night with a level of furious finality that dampened their rage into something less senseless. Kacchan’s words hung between him and Izuku like an ugly rag, second only to the one Izuku himself had tossed in the ring just before. Izuku shuffled awkwardly, shame starting to douse the anger that had left him feeling certain and justified of all he’d just said and done. Kacchan looked visibly upset.
“Whatever,” the blond snapped, ducking his head and stomping over to his bag, shouldering past Izuku without looking at him. “I’m done here.”
“Bakugou-“ Toshinori began.
“Save it,” Kacchan cut him off bitterly.
Izuku winced at the cold treatment of their mentor and turned to watch as his friend slunk off the practice field, shoulders hunched and posture reeking of defensiveness. Once he was out of sight, Izuku flopped to the ground with a defeated sigh. He was cold, tired, sweaty, tired, hungry, tired and tired. He was sick of this hero thing, and just for one night he wanted to walk away and pretend it had never happened. Even with that thought, he felt an immeasurable wave of guilt, and the twisting in his gut that dared to ask if he was really cut out for this if he could think such a selfish thing.
He couldn’t do this, he was too weak, too easily angered—look at how he’d snapped at Kacchan! He wasn’t cut out for any of this! He was just some quirkless kid parading around like he could be something, tricking the greatest hero of all time into selling the world’s safety to some cheap hack who couldn’t even keep himself in once piece. Izuku didn’t feel anything like a hero. He felt like he was drowning, and he didn’t know how else to express it than to be angry.
“I know,” he snapped, scrabbling up onto two feet and ripping off his stupid, burnt workout shirt and bending down to go at his shoelaces next. “I shouldn’t have done it and I’m sorry.”
“Are you now?”
The voice was humoring, slightly amused and light, as if Izuku hadn’t just been short with the man who had given him everything. He felt immediately ashamed and twice as angry as he was. He bit his tongue to keep from saying worse.
“It’s alright,” the frustratingly gentle voice continued. “I’d be angry too, if I were in your shoes.”
It was both justifying and frustrating. Toshinori was not in his shoes. Toshinori had gotten a nice cushy upbringing with a hero who wasn’t ten seconds from blowing away in the wind and an entire league of villains breathing down his neck. Toshinori had no idea.
“You’re working yourself to the bone, Young Midoriya,” Izuku’s mentor said softly. “You need to take care of yourself as much as the rest of us.”
But that was just it. Izuku didn’t get to have that. He was farther behind than All Might had ever been, AND facing bigger issues. None of this was normal, none of this was comparable. None of the normal rules applied! And yet Izuku was the only one who seemed to notice—probably because he was the only one who wasn’t keeping up.
“Kacchan doesn’t need it,” he argued.
There was a pause behind him, and for a moment Izuku actually believed he’d managed to prove his point. But then Toshinori was back with his unwanted wisdom, swiping the legs of Izuku’s argument out from under him.
“Perhaps he’s taking care of himself by trying to take care of you?”
“well I don’t want him taking care of me!” Izuku shouted, his anger stoked by Toshinori’s suggestion. It wasn’t that it was necessarily an outlandish thing to suggest. Izuku, in fact, knew it was true. It was just that there was too much guilt involved for either party for him to be even remotely happy about that factoid of life. “He’s been nothing but a jerk to me for the last week and I’m sick of it!”
Izuku turned to face Toshinori, angry and tired and entirely fed up and found himself immediately deflated by the gentle giant looking at him patiently, sympathy and honest care plain in his face. How was Izuku supposed to be frustrated when he was looking at that?
“You’re right, he has been a little pushy this week,” Toshinori relented, slowly shuffling through the ruined training ground as the beeps and churrs of cleanup droids could be heard in the distance. Izuku fell into step alongside him, hobbling barefoot and relishing the feeling of cold air between his disgustingly sweaty toes.
“Just a little?”
“A lot,” the man agreed. “and I’m not condoning it. But, I think it would ease your mind to consider his side of things too.”
And there it was. Izuku sighed and slouched in exasperation.
“But All Might, I’m so sick of being a guilt trip. Everyone says it’s so wonderful that he’s sworn his life to help me after everything that's happen, but do you have any idea what it’s like to sit there and have to be constantly reminded that you’re just a burden someone’s trying to use for atonement? Maybe I don't like him sticking around me just so he can stop feeling guilty! Maybe I don’t want to be reminded that I’m just a reminder of all the messed up sh*t in his life! And if he’s got to hang around just because he feels bad he almost killed me, the least he could do is be nice about it!”
All Might gave a quiet sigh, and Izuku immediately felt guilty. A hero wouldn’t have complained like that. They would have said how noble and honest it was and not been so selfish. But Izuku couldn’t help it. He wanted a friend, not an unwilling acolyte. Was that really too much to ask?
They walked on in silence for a moment more, Izuku feeling worse and worse about his outburst with every moment, until All Might spoke again, his words simple and his voice light and frank.
“I think that’s fair.”
Izuku paused for a moment, groaning as he struggled to catch up despite the many aches and pains he was suffering through. Kacchan was a brutal sparring partner.
“I think that’s fair. You feel like he’s simply jumping through hoops to reach a desired end, not that he cares.”
Well…yeah, basically. Except it sounded so much less messy when it was stripped down and simplified like that. Izuku nodded, shrugging afterward, just to emphasize how little it bothered him. He didn’t care, it was whatever.
“But, might I consider Young Bakugou’s side-“
And here they went again. Izuku didn’t want to hear Kacchan’s side. He wanted to feel justifiably miserable.
“Young Midoriya, how does your mother take care of you when there is a crisis?”
“What?”
What did that have to do with Kacchan’s side?
“Something happens, you’re upset, what does your mother do to show you she cares?”
“Well, she makes tea and we walk about it? Or she makes Katsudon. Sometimes we watch a movie or something else nice,” Izuku recounted, being very careful to leave out the kind of movie they watched. He already looked creepy enough after the room-thing, he wasn’t going to make himself look any weirder in front of his idol.
“And what does Young Bakugou’s mother do?”
Ah, point taken. Izuku hung his shoulders and sighed in defeat.
“Still. He was being a jerk,” Izuku defended.
“A caring jerk,” Toshinori insisted.
“An emotionally constipated jerk,” Izuku agreed with a frustrated sigh.
Izuku didn’t immediately go to find Bakugou. Sue him, he was tired and in pain and still not entirely ready to forgive and forget. He took a shower instead, taking some extra time to melt away a few of the bruises and burns. They weren’t bad, all things considered, but the goal was not to get hurt, and this was not meeting that goal.
Izuku snorted at the thought. That wasn’t his goal. That was Kacchan’s goal for him. And yet there was only once place Izuku was getting beaten to a pulp and this bad. It was fittingly Kacchan--tough love and aggressive to a T. It was, if every wise person in the world would have him believe, a testament to how deeply Kacchan did care.
Still, Izuku would have liked to know it for himself too--not just because everyone told him that being brutalized to the point of insanity was a valid love language. What were the odds he could just ask?
Feeling a little refreshed and a whole lot less frustrated with his friend, Izuku finally left the warmth of his shower and meandered to the kitchen. A few of his classmates were there studying, and they exchanged casual greetings with him, offering him a seat which he politely declined. Instead, he found one of the disgustingly healthy meals Kacchan had marked with his name for the week and heated it up, pausing for a moment before he plucked out the one with Kacchan’s name too.
It was not too hard to figure out where Kacchan had gone. There were relatively few places one could go to sulk in privacy, and with Kirishima being next door, Kacchan’s room was not one of them. No, there were only two places Izuku could expect to find his friend in these sorts of situations, and Izuku had just come from one. So, up and up he climbed, pushing the door to the roof open with a casual familiarity that failed to express the relief Izuku felt when Kacchan was exactly where he’d expected, perched along the ledge, leaning against the wire fencing that kept them enclosed and safe. Maybe it was the near death experience, but Izuku had never quite been able to shake the underlying anxiety that constantly fed him the “what if” of his friend being lost, or worse, in trouble.
Kacchan tensed minutely as Izuku stepped outside and gestured with the food to give an unobtrusive greeting. Kacchan took his and the offered chopsticks, nestling the hot bowl of boiled chicken breast and greens in his hand without a second thought. Izuku took his time settling onto the ledge, trying to make himself comfortable for the dead silence that was about to settle between them. They ate their food, Kacchan looking out at the glowing cityscape, paying no attention to Izuku’s constant glances, and Izuku doing his best to ignore Kacchan’s ignoring of his constant glances. The tension between them was obvious but it was an undercurrent instead of the crashing waves of frustration and anger it had been before.
The silence continued past their eating. Eventually bowls and utensils were set down and still eye contact was sparse and the noise between them relegated to awkward shuffling and the sounds of the city.
Izuku broke first...obviously.
“So, you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. “
“I know,.”
“Look, I’m sorry I snapped at you. I know you’re just as anxious about this as I am and you’re just trying to push me to be better,” Izuku declared.
Kacchan snorted, giving Izuku a scathing glance.
“What?” Izuku asked, frustrated and confused with the response.
“Don’t apologize for things you don’t have to. You’ll just get walked all over when you’re in the public eye.”
“I’m not,” Izuku huffed with a roll of her eyes. “You’re deflecting.”
“Deflecting what?” Katsuki scoffed.
“You know what,” Izuku insisted. “You do this every time we get in a fight. You come up here and you stew in your guilt like we never dealt with it. You apologized, I accepted, we moved past it, so why do you keep coming back to it?”
Kacchan’s irritation was plain to see. His lip was curled and his shoulders were hunched high in a plain show of defensiveness. Izuku still couldn’t believe there had ever been a time that he’d thought of this pose as something predatory. It couldn’t be more obvious how much of a self-preserving wall it was--how much all of Kacchan’s bluffings were just ways to keep others at arm's length.
“You’re seriously going to call that an apology?” Katuski asked scathingly.
Izuku balked.
“Was it not?” he asked hesitantly.
It was perhaps a bit telling to Izuku that Kacchan’s words felt similarly to thinking you were at the bottom of the stairs and then realizing there was one more step that you just missed. He’d argued from the beginning with his therapist that he didn't need an apology from Kacchan, especially not after finding out how much of his wayward friend’s actions hadn’t been his own. Izuku had been elated to hear that their relationship’s ugliest blemish had been another horrible outcome of a curse that neither had any control over, and he’d felt more than comfortable giving the same benefit of the doubt to every other negative situation they’d been in. But, his therapist hadn’t seen it the same way. She’d called him “self sacrificing to a fault” and said it was time for him to “stop relinquishing his personal needs for a sense of peace”. So, he’d sat through Kacchan’s awkward apology and accepted it with a thank you and an even more awkward hug and he’d moved on. He hadn't needed to hear an apology, after all.
He seemed to be the only person capable of doing that, moving on, forgiving and forgetting with ease. Or, at least, he’d thought he was the only capable person. The implication that Kacchan’s apology had not been genuine had his stomach twisting and something heavy in his chest that had him realizing it maybe meant more than he’d thought.
“I just said what they told me to. Might as well have been the curse,” the boy replied flippantly.
“Oh,” was all Izuku could think to say, the world falling flat between them.
Kacchan was just so confusing sometimes. Everything he did screamed that he was trying to make up for things. The incessant practices, the nitpicking of his grades, even the way he’d snapped at Izuku earlier. Izuku knew it was because Kacchan cared. So then, why was the dumb blond trying to make things difficult?
“So then you’re not sorry?”
Kacchan looked even more irritated by that question, throwing his hands up and turning on Izuku with a fierce glint in his eye.
“What do you think?”
“I dunno, you just told me you didn't mean it when you apologized.”
Izuku knew he was being purposefully eristic, but at this moment he suddenly didn’t feel particularly inclined to help Kacchan figure out his feelings. As a matter of fact, he would have liked it more if Kacchan was there to help fix his own.
“I was an *sshole. I was a jerk and I pushed you around and then I almost got you killed. You think I’m not f*cking sorry?” Kacchan asked, somehow managing to make what should have been a very apologetic admission sounds defensive and antagonistic.
Still, even if Kacchan had to say it like he was picking a fight…
“Alright then. I forgive you. You don’t have to worry about it anymore,” Izuku replied simply.
Katsuki looked even more frustrated than before, his face starting to turn an angry shade of red.
“It’s not that f*cking simple!”
“And why not?” Izuku shot back contentiously. “You apologized with your own words!”
“No didn’t!”
“You said you were sorry!”
“No, I asked if you thought I was sorry!”
“Then apologize already so I can forgive you and we can be done with it!”
“Fine!” Kacchan shouted, whirling on Izuku and slamming his hands down onto the ledge like he was going to war, and not about to apologize for something that, at this point, Izuku didn’t even feel like he needed one for. “I’m sorry I was an *ss and I told you to kill yourself. I never meant it, but I still F*cking said it and I wish I never did. I’m sorry I made your life a living hell and I’m sorry I nearly got you killed! And I’m sorry you’re going to spend the rest of your life dealing with it because I couldn’t keep my f*cking mouth shut!”
Izuku had planned to politely accept Kacchan’s apology and put things to rest between them, he really had. But, somehow, Kacchan had developed an obnoxious ability to goad Izuku into anger that even Izuku couldn’t fully understand. It was a mixture of love and frustration and righteous indignation that couldn’t seem to find a healthy way to get itself out in the world other than to yell and snarl and act just a bit too much like Kacchan for Izuku’s liking. Still, it felt like the only way to make his point known, and that was exactly what Izuku was going to do.
“I don’t accept that apology,” he opened, immediately wanting to strangle himself but carrying on and digging his hole of ‘Izuku can’t leave well enough alone’ even farther. “In fact, I think that’s bullsh*t! You were under a quirk! My life isn’t a living hell and you only did what they told you and trying to act like its for fault is stupid! I don’t care what you say, but it’s not your fault and I won't forgive you for something you shouldn’t apologize for!”
And, because of course it did, that only made Kacchan all the angrier.
“So you think you can tell me what to apologize for!?”he yelled. “Well, I’m sorry for everything! I’m sorry I called you useless! I’m sorry I hit you that one time when you got a better grade on the math test than me because I guarantee you I did it of my own free will, and I’m sorry I made you angry tonight!”
SO now they were just going to scream things they were sorry about? Fairs enough, better here than inside the dorms.
“Well I’m sorry I followed you around all the time and made you do things you didn’t want to do!,” Izuku yelled back, searching for anything and everything he could throw at the other fuming boy. “I’m sorry I didn’t help you with the curse and I’m sorry I put the burden of All for One for you! I’m sorry you almost had to die because of me and I’m sorry that I’m such a burden!!”
It took Izuku a moment to catch his breath after his tirade, but he didn’t mind. Was that why Kacchan yelled all the time? That was cathartic. Why hadn’t he done that before?
“You think you’re a burden?”
Probably because of that.
“I mean, yeah,” Izuku admitted hesitantly, biting his tongue and gaging Kacchan’s reaction before the dam finally broke and this time he wasn’t yelling, he was getting close to having a big, ugly stress cry.. “I’m literally All Might's successor and I didn’t learn to stop breaking my bones until, like, a month ago, KAcchan. I’m supposed to be able to save the world and I Can't even pass my math class. I can’t gain any muscle in my delts and I have constant stress acne and everyone else is spending every hour of the day trying to make sure I’m going to be okay and I can’t even make myself okay! I’m stressed 24/7 and I feel like I’m going to fail and how am I supposed to look you and All Might and Mr. Aizawa and the whole flipping world in the face then?”
Kacchan looked at a loss for words, which was fine by Izuku. He didn't particularly know how his confession would be received. Kacchan was the one with all the trauma, who was being brave to get up each day and face the world. Izuku was just some kid who’d gotten lucky and was too much of a wuss to handle it.
“That’s a lot,” he replied. Izuku might have thought Kacchan was mocking him, but the morbid chuckle that followed was too commiserating for Izuku to be suspicious of. He returned it with is own miserable agreement.
“Yeah. How are you?”
“F*cking peachy,” Kacchan replied with a snort. “I spent my whole life doing whatever else anyone said, told some guy to kill himself and then proceeded to nearly murder him. Now’s stressed because I f*cked him over.”
Ohhhhhhh, now that was a guilt trip.
“Kacchan, I’m sorry-”
“Don’t you f*cking dare. This is not your fault and you’re not a f*cking burden,” Katsuki growled.
Izuku couldn’t help but smile. Kacchan could say the nicest thing and make it sound terrifying.
“Thanks, Kacchan,” he replied.
“I’m serious, Deku,” the blond pressed.
Izuku smiled at his feet, picking at some of the still healing scars around his knuckles. It meant a lot to hear Kacchan say that, and not only say it, but press the issue. In some sense, yes, Izuku knew that Kacchan didn’t just see him as a burden. But, it was hard to trust that others could see in him what Izuku himself couldn’t quite believe about himself.
They fell into silence for a while, Izuku pondering the meaning of life and Kacchan being prickly and unapproachable. He looked like he was thinking about something and Izuku figured he could expect another outburst at some point, so he settled in for the long wait, surprised when his wait was cut abruptly short.
“There was this time when we were maybe four or five and we were at school and some jerk told me to eat sh*t,” Kacchan started. “I didn’t want to, obviously, so I cried.”
Izuku coughed, shuffling in his seat and glancing sideways towards Kacchan, who was looking out at the skyline. It was not polite to laugh. It was not polite to laugh. If Kacchan really did have to eat it, it would not be polite to laugh.
“And then you stuck your big, fat nose into my business and asked me why I was crying. And you know what you said?” Kacchan lilted his voice into something shrill and obnoxious, which should have been offensive to Izuku, and yet he couldn’t help but be amused. “‘You don’t have to eat sh*t unless you want to, Kacchan! It’s okay!’”
Izuku felt this might be appropriate to laugh at, so he allowed a short little bark of amusement. He was happy to see the way the noise softened the hard lines of Kacchan’s brows.
“You laugh now, but the teacher caught you and you got in huge trouble for talking about sh*t.”
Izuku couldn’t believe he didn’t remember this. It was a story of iconic levels, and yet he couldn’t remember even a bit of it.
“Well, it saved you from eating crap, so it was worth it I guess,” he replied good naturedly.
“Yeah,” Kacchan replied quietly. “Look, Deku, you were annoying as sh*t and I swear no one ever ordered me around half as much as your demanding *ss, but you never purposefully hurt me, and I can’t even count on one hand the amount of times you got me out of a mess that way. You would always would say “you don’t have to do it if you don’t want”, and f*ck, I didn’t get that a lot.”
Izuku felt dangerously close to crying, but he bit his tongue and kept listening.
“You didn’t deserve what I did to you, no matter if someone told me to do it or not.”
Well, Izuku’s heart was melted. He wished Kacchan were more open to things like hugs and passionately weeping about best friends on rooftops.
“It’s okay, Kacchan--”
“No it’s not,” Kacchan interrupted, his voice rising again before he settled back down with a frustrated jerk, turning to pin Izuku with a fiercely determined gaze. “I said those things. I did those things. It doesn’t matter how it happened, it did, and I let them happen. If I had cared enough I would have tried harder, or I would have made those *sshats leave me alone so they wouldn’t make me do that sh*t. But I was angry at you for not understanding so I let it happen! That’s not fair, and it’s not okay.”
And here they were, back up against the same issue Izuku felt like they ran into again and again. Kacchan’s guilt, held fastly in the blond’s own hands, the constant barrier they couldn’t cross and Izuku couldn’t pull from his white-knuckled grip. So what was there left to do than simply work with it?
“That’s fair,” Izuku admitted, taking a page out of the book of a wiser man. “But you also gave up your life for mine. I watched you do it, Kacchan. You were crying blood--do you have any idea how much stress you have to be in for that to happen? Anything you did, you made up for and then some, as far as I’m concerned.”
“And what about afterward?” Kacchan scoffed. “You said it yourself, you’re miserable. The League is breathing down your neck, you’re overwhelmed and afraid your going to fail, and I’m the *sshole who keeps pushing you around.”
“You’re not just pushing me around, Kacchan. You’re pushing me forward. And if you want to argue about it, I got you into this mess just as much as you did me. All for One is the reason they sent you after me, and that’s only because I couldn’t keep it a secret. You can blame yourself all you want, but at the very least give me my fair share!”
All Izuku got in return was a mocking laugh and a scathing reply.
“I’m not going to blame you, idiot.
“Well, I’m not going to blame you either,” Izuku shot back.
“Your mistake,” Kacchan said with a shrug.
“Yours too.”
WIth that, Izuku stood, brushing off his pants. Maybe they hadn’t gotten very far, but they’d at least laid some things that hadn’t seen the sun in a while. Izuku could work with that, and he, at least, was feeling far better than he had before.
“It’s getting late, Kacchan. We should study.”
“Is that what you want to do?” Kacchan asked.
Izuku paused. There was something in Kacchan’s voice that was unfamiliar to him. It didn’t sound dangerous, but Izuku just wasn't sure what to think of it. It was light and casual, and it just lacked the normal grit that seemed to line everything Kacchan said. It almost felt like an invitation, although to what, Izuku had no clue. Either way, it made Izuku feel safe enough to speak his mind, something he might not have done so freely at the beginning of the night,
“Not really,” he replied frankly. “Honestly, I’d rather just lay in bed and eat every piece of junk food I can see in sight and look at memes. But, that’s not exactly the heroic option, so I guess I’ll just live in misery instead.”
Given Kacchan’s more cruel nature, even in his more comedic moments, Izuku expected some comment on the misery portion, or even a scolding on being so lazy. Instead, Kacchan languidly stretched, walking past Izuku with a suspiciously casual shrug.
“It’s one night out of the rest of your life, Deku. Just do what you want.”
Later that night, Izuku couldn’t help but smack himself upside the head for acting like a total idiot at Kacchan’s words. What was he, a child? He did need Kacchan’s permission to watch memes. He was a grown *ss sixteen year old!
Still, diving into bed with a bag of Umai Bou that Ochako had kindly gifted him upon hearing his plans to slack off and be as lazy as humanly possible and a playlist of perfectly curated hero-centered memes to watch was the best thing Izuku had ever done, and he felt 100% like a puppy who’d just been given a treat.
Happy as a clam, Izuku shuffled in close and grabbed his phone, starting the first video and chuckling in amusement as Kamui Woods smashing into Mt. Lady’s thigh replayed to the beat of some popular song. HIs phone pinged and a notification came from Kacchan. Izuku paused the video and clicked the link Kacchan had sent. It was a meme he’d seen on the hero subreddit yesterday, but he replied with an “lol” anyway, before returning to his video.
In a moment, another message came through with another video attached. This one Izuku hadn’t seen, and he chuckled, his double chin increasing as he snuggled in deeper into his covers. Before he was even finished with that one, he got another from Kacchan.
Izuku huffed a little. This wasn’t going to be fun if Kacchan was just going to spam him the whole time. Pulling open their messages, Izuku typed out a quick reply.
“Just come over, it’s annoying.”
The moment the text was sen,t a thousand ways Kacchan could have misinterpreted his response flooded his head, and Izuku found himself eyeing both the door and his phone with trepidation. Kacchan wasn’t texting back, and Izuku had no way of knowing if the blond was stomping around the building until he actually got to his door. It was too comfy in bed to try and brace himself for being murdered.
Eventually the knock came, and Izuku nervously informed Kacchan that the door was unlocked.
“Scoot over, fat*ss.”
Izuku grinned, shuffling over and lifting up the blankets for him to crawl under. Kacchan swatted his hand.
“Don’t. I’m not going to risk your cold feet anywhere near me.”
It took some shuffling, but eventually they settled, the bag of “f*cking bland sh*t” settled between them, and Izuku under the covers and Kacchan over. Together, they dug through their phone feeds, chuckling at videos before leaning over to show the other.
It ended up being a good night. One of the best Izuku had had in a long time, actually. Kacchan ended up sleeping in his room, and although the bed was cramped, neither complained. Izuku even dared to say it was the first time in a while he hadn’t had stress nightmares, and the uncomfortable shrug from Kacchan left him sure the other boy agreed.
And despite the dramatic shift from either of their norms, they still got up and their normal times, and went for their early morning runs and drank protein smoothies for breakfast along with Kacchan’s healthy food. And nothing went to hell. Despite all odds, nobody died, and Izuku didn’t spend the rest of his week wracked with guilt because he had failed.
Life just forgave them that night. It said, “you’ve been working hard, here’s one on me”, and for that, Izuku was eternally grateful. And if the look on All Might’s face when they had their next sparring match and neither Kacchan nor Izuku killed one another said anything, Izuku probably wasn’t the only one.
Although, he did look a little scandalized when Izuku managed to send the blond careening face first into the ground with a horrendous battle cry of “EAT SH*T, KACCHAN!”.