Chapter Text
Katsuki was angry. Well, Katsuki was always angry, but now he was angry and he was starving –hangry, if you will– and he did not have pity for whoever was going to take the brunt of that unsavoury combination.
With an overly-obnoxious DING the lift doors curtained open, revealing a blissfully empty, steel box. Grumbling, he stepped inside and smashed the button for the basement floor.
This was all the nerd's fault, really –surprise, surprise!– It had been his idea to come to the hero museum, and when the self-proclaimed 'Dekusquad' saw his shitty, green form practically vibrating out of his body in excitement, Glasses immediately agreed. Claimed it would be "an excellent learning experience" or some bullshit.
Katsuki couldn't even say he was surprised. Him, Round-Face and Icy-Hot would lick the shit clean off shitty Deku's shitty, red sneakers if they were asked to.
No, he wasn't surprised about that. What both simultaneously surprised and pissed him off to no end was the fact that the fuckers actually expected Katsuki to go as well!
Of course they never said anything outright, (Katsuki dared them have the guts) but they were giving him looks.
Especially Deku.
He didn't really know what they meant other than that they wanted him to go with them, and it annoyed the hell out of him if he was being honest. Even if he eventually caved when Kirishima caught on and signed them both up for the trip. The pushy fucker.
Katsuki didn't even know why he let himself be dragged (he fully planned on staying). Perhaps he was also a little excited for their new expansions on the All Might floors. Not that he'd ever admit that of course, that would mean agreeing with Deku of all people.
Still, here he was. For All Might, he told himself. Not the weirdly hopeful side-glances Deku had been giving him all morning. Fuck that. Fuck him. He didn't know what the fuck that was about. For All Might.
Honestly, it didn't matter. Whoever it was originally for (All Might), it had been a terrible mistake and Katsuki wanted nothing more to do with any of this. In fact, he was fully ready to blast himself out of here promptly after screaming "DIE" at several random, inanimate objects, if only because actual people would damage his hero reputation. Because to say the museum was crowded would be an understatement; it seemed everybody and their granny decided to come and Katsuki hated it.
It was to be expected, of course, but Katsuki still hated it.
The noise, the clammy rub of skin-on-skin and the heavy breathing of some gross stranger down his neck certainly did not sit well with him. He needed space to move, to stretch, and to blast himself away without risking taking out somebody's balls in the process. Which was why, as he stood, glaring at nothing in particular in an empty space at last, he felt oddly relieved, albeit still annoyed.
He was a man on a mission and nothing would deter him from it. He was going to hunt down that shitty Deku and then he was going to grab him by his shitty, green hair and drag his damn nerd ass upstairs back to his weird ass-kisser friends, then Katsuki was going to leave this shitty museum and it's stuffing of human sardines behind forever. Then he was never going to give into De–All Might ever again.
Because leave it to Deku to get lost in a sea full of extras.
Katsuki took solace in the fact that an unfortunate side-effect of growing up together was having a library of useless knowledge on Deku's annoying nerd habits. Something of a curse most of the time, but which did come in handy at times like this.
Deku was in the basement floor.
He didn't even need to second-guess himself, he just knew.
The shit-nerd-squad was wrongfully skeptical of him when Katsuki had benevolently presented this information to them, apparently because Deku had, in his overly-enthusiastic, obnoxious Deku way, informed everyone that he was going to head there first, and he couldn't have possibly spent nearly two hours geeking out over the rarest figures, most limited, vintage hero posters and most legendary moments of All Might's career. Katsuki wondered if they were even listening to themselves.
Fuck that. Fuck them. They clearly didn't know Deku as well as they thought they did, because there was no doubt in Katsuki's mind that the nerd couldn't spend a measly two hours nerd-drooling all over the rarest items, and they all happened to be stuffed on this one floor. He'd seen him do it before.
So fuck Icy-Hot, fuck Pink-Cheeks and fuck Glasses for ever doubting Katsuki. Once he dragged shitty Deku upstairs he would make sure to rub it all over those self-important fucks that Katsuki still knew the nerd better than any of them without even trying. See them doubt him again after this. Ha! Not that Deku mattered, of cour–
The elevator jolted.
Katsuki stiffened.
The number one flashed red on the tiny screen above the gates. He must've been on the first floor, but it wasn't moving.
It wasn't moving.
The lift wasn't moving! What the fuck?!
His heart rate picked up, there was no way he was getting stuck here, was there?
A thunderous BOOM reverberated painfully past his skeleton; a rumbling so deep he could barely call it a sound over an unsettling sensation prodding his insides like a finger.
The lift jolted again, and Katsuki felt unsteady on his feet as another rumbling almost rolled him over; the steel quaking precariously beneath him. A metallic screech and a crack made his blood turn to ice, then his vision whitened and his heart might have stopped. He was free-falling.
Fuck!
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. He was falling. He was falling! He didn't know what to do. What could he do? Was he high up? What floor had he been on again? One, eleven, did it matter?
Explosion crackled along his palms on instinct. Of course it mattered!
Holy shit, was he gonna die?! Here, like this?! Really?! Talk about anti-fucking-climatic. Yeah, he could see the headlines now, "Angry Would-Be Hero Killed By Elevator, Missed By No One"
He didn't like them. He didn't want them. He didn't want this.
He was just getting better. He was focusing on his feelings more. He was doing that shitty communication thing people kept telling him about. He'd stopped yelling so much, kind of.
Point was, he knew he was a shitty person, but he was trying to be better and he couldn't die!
He didn't want to die. He didn't want–
Katsuki's world tilted, a resounding crack deafened his ears and his vision flickered black.
Katsuki was swimming.
He couldn't really breathe that good and his limbs felt ready to cave in on themselves, so he was probably failing at swimming, which was weird, because Katsuki was a damn good swimmer. He also wasn't by any means drowning. So okay, maybe not swimming, but he definitely felt floaty, which was also weird, because he was relatively sure his limbs had been surgically replaced by solid concrete. Very strange.
He tried to extract some form of explanation from his surroundings, but the thick layer of tar saturating his vision only made him dizzy.
What in the ever-loving fuck?
It took Katsuki's pathetic, slow-turning, gunked-up cogwheel brain an embarrassingly long time to realise that his eyes were, in fact, closed, and an even longer period for it to actually occur to him that this was probably the cause of his blindness.
Experimentally, he pried an eyelid open. Nothing changed. Well, fuck.
As his sluggish senses returned to him, the second thing Katsuki realised was that he was positively suffocating. The air surrounding him was heavily coated with dust, and as a result, each breath felt like scrubbing sandpaper down his throat.
In other, less poetic words, Katsuki felt a little bit like roadkill; waiting for someone to come scrape his sorry carcass off the asphalt in the past thousand years he's surely laid limp there.
A small, shameful part of him just wanted to be knocked out again; put straight out of his misery. Katsuki squashed that part like he'd squash a particularly bothersome fly. Then he locked, burned and blasted it into the stratosphere for damn, good measure. Bakugou Katsuki could save his own ass and then everyone else's ass along with it, because he was a fucking good hero.
Violent coughing seized him by the neck then, and that probably meant the universe was laughing at him.
Right. Dark, suffocating, remarkably cold, and– Under a fucking building, his brain supplied helpfully. Fuck, he'd been at the hero museum, hadn't he?
Twisting his head in an attempt to confirm this theory earned him nothing but a twinge of pain up his spine. It was still too dark to see and his eyes seemed to be making no breakthroughs at speeding up the whole night-vision process.
He felt an involuntary groan bubble in his throat and didn't bother trying to stop it before it spilled past his lips. Fuck, his arm hurt though.
He hadn't noticed it before, but now that he felt more awake, he could tell his shoulder was definitely dislocated.
Reaching down with his uninjured left arm, he fumbled for his phone. From what he could tell, he wasn't trapped in any way and although his head thumped in time with the ache in his shoulder, he believed his injuries to be minor. He couldn't know for sure until he checked.
The brightness that lit up the screen hit Katsuki's head harder than a steel bat. A sharp, involuntary breath pulled itself in through gritted teeth and a short sequence of expletives. The thickness in the air only had him hacking up his lungs in time the pounding in his head. He probably had a concussion.
Only once his body had stopped attempting to cough up vital organs and once his brain had assured him it wouldn't commit suicide right inside his skull again, did Katsuki dare tap the phone screen again. It hurt just as much, but he was more prepared for it this time.
A single, splintered crack meandered his screen protector, and his worries were confirmed when at the top of the screen flashed a little "No Service".
Fuck! Okay, fuck, okay, focus, alone and under a building, hero training, assess the situation, identify your priorities, work out a solution.
Taking as deep a breath as he dared to, he turned the flashlight on his phone.
He was in the elevator still, lying on his back as he stared at the monstrous dent in steel sitting diagonally overhead. The lift had been partially crushed under the weight of the rubble, so that the ceiling was now bent downwards, indented by the mountains of concrete doubtlessly overhead. The thought of being buried under a building in a steel coffin had Katsuki forcing down vomit. Assess the situation, identify your priorities, work out a solution.
The worst of the indentation was at his feet, where there was only about three feet of leeway between the ceiling and the floor. Through the length of his body though, it bent gradually upwards, so that directly above his head was barely even a mark to the metal.
It hit him as a stark realisation that, had he been any less lucky, he would've been crushed like an insect in a matchbox. Then even grimmer, he realised that the majority of the people in the building probably had been crushed like insects.
He grimaced as he thought about his idiot classmates somewhere under a mountain of rubble, bleeding out. He quickly shook himself out of that train of thought, because fuck no, Shitty Hair had his quirk to protect himself, Icy-Hot's ice could've shielded him and the others, and well, Deku was no damsel in distress either. They were heroes-in-training, they didn't need Katsuki to babysit them. He had to focus on himself right now.
Gingerly, as to not offend any of his injuries, Katsuki rose to sit. His (suspected) concussion pounded its disapproval nonetheless and he decidedly told it to go fuck itself as he reached up to feel for any blood in his hair. He found none.
The relief that the pain was due to a rather inconspicuous bump over a head-wound was quickly drowned out by a different discovery altogether.
The elevator looked wrong.
Toppled, his brain quickly supplied.
The elevator was toppled. Meaning Katsuki currently sat on the perfectly level, closed gate over any actual, intended floor.
Quicker than his brain could process, Katsuki jumped to his feet as though the ground would open up and swallow him, hitting his head on the low ceiling in the process. A colourful, little profanity vomit later and he was sure that if he didn't have a concussion before, he definitely had one now.
In his distress to get to his feet, Katsuki's phone and flashlight lay abandoned where they were ditched, screen face-up, the darkness that washed over his surroundings no longer as oppressive under the faint, halo glow escaping from beneath the rectangle. It eased some of the tension in his skull, which he was fucking thankful for, because what the actual fuck, his dislocated fucking shoulder hurt less than his head.
A shoulder he should probably do something about.
Breathing through an unencouraging diversity of aches, Katsuki bent carefully down to flip his phone. Even the deliberate movements jostled his injuries painfully, and once he had successfully knelt to a crouch, his legs shook, spluttered and crumpled beneath the body weight.
"Fuck!" He rasped around another lungful of dust, scarcely avoiding fucking his bad, right arm up further as he collapsed on his ass like a puppet cut from it's strings. Nausea truckered through him like a hailstorm and the long string of expletives that left his mouth did nothing to curb the labourous task that was not throwing up right then and there.
It wasn't as if Katsuki had never dislocated a bone before (he had, numerously), but every time it'd happened, he'd been too ferociously doped up on his own adrenaline to care, and by the time the rush came down, he'd already be under scrutinous medical attention and high as a kite on painkillers instead. Therefore, if anyone was to judge Katsuki as he twisted on his spot to retch up a puddle of stomach acid, he decided it wasn't going to be himself.
Once that ordeal was finished, Katsuki gruffly shuffled across, leaning back against the wall opposite to the bile. At least the light would make it easier to do what he was about to do. Staring down at his deformed shoulder, the bone protruding against a layer of soft flesh and skin, clearly out of place, he didn't want to do it.
He pulled his sleeveless shirt further up, bunching the fabric as far from the injury as it could comfortably go. Angling his palm correctly (he did not want to do this twice), he pushed. A sickening, wet pop and a yell that seemed emerge from the depths of his gut splintered the air like it was solid ice. Katsuki had to fight tooth and nail not to detonate his own shoulder right then and there.
The swell in his stomach returned with a vengeance, but Katsuki swallowed it down in favour of yelling an uncreative "FUCK!" punctuated by the smash of his fist against the floor. Thud
Thud. Thud.
That wasn't him.
Thud. An almost imperceptible groan, muffled by a layer of steel reached his ears. Adrenaline gushed into his system and all pain was forgotten. Was there somebody trapped under him?
With somewhat difficulty, Katsuki stumbled to his feet and the center of the small, metal box. With flight-or-fight instincts kicked into high gear, he could already start to feel the beginnings of claustrophobia web at him.
Cursing the aftershocks of pain that dimly coursed his shoulder, he knelt down, slamming a fist against the floor again, "OI!" He winced at the roughness in his voice, swallowing around a dry throat to try again, "Oi, is somebody stuck there?"
A weaker thud came this time and that was response enough. Katsuki struck to work in prying the gates open, which to no one's surprise, was an incredibly difficult feat to achieve one-handed. Still, he tried, Plus Ultra.
When using his feet, knees and –at one particularly angry attempt– his teeth, didn't work, Katsuki resigned himself to, begrudgingly and against all medical advice, use his right arm for leverage.
It was weird at first. The pain didn't quite reach the surface of his still-very-present adrenaline rush, but he could feel it there and humming under his skin. Still, Katsuki wedged his hands between the gates and pulled with all his might. It was alright if it was just pain, he decided, heroes could handle pain.
Slowly, the gate began to give.
He wedged his foot between the gap once it was wide enough, pulling until he could wedge his whole body between it. His spine and legs creaked under the strain of trusting a side-ways sort of squat to open the doors the rest of the way.
Broken slabs of concrete were the sight that greeted him, a heavy wheezing that rivalled his own reaching his ears now that there was only rubble separating them. Suddenly, the realisation that Katsuki might be currently standing on –and crushing– the person had him hopping to the side. Tentatively, he reached for his phone where it had dropped onto the rubble.
Amidst the grey, a pale patch of green caught the light and Katsuki's breath caught his throat. He stilled for a second, before his brain caught up and he jumped to clear the concrete, switching to both hands when a breathless wheeze choked off into coughing. If he was gonna fuck up his arm once, he could fuck his arm up twice, especially if this was–
"Deku."
Holy crap, Deku looked like shit.
"K'cch'n?"
Holy crap, Deku sounded like shit.
The boy in question turned his head slightly to gaze up at Katsuki, it's usual vibrancy now paled to a sickly green, pupils uneven and distant. As crimson eyes caught the splotch of red caking the back of the greenette's head, he realised why.
"Fuck, Deku, are you concussed?" The question didn't seem to register as Katsuki scrambled to grip the hem of his shirt and rip.
"Mm?" he blinked slowly, like he'd just woken up from his morning nap, "No?"
"The fuck you aren't! Your fuckin' head's about to make this place look like fuckin' The Shining in a minute! You're bleedin' everywhere, fuck."
Deku looked at him for a solid three seconds, then seemed to registered the words, "Oh."
"Yeah, oh–fuck– okay, just hold still for a minute."
Biting back the profanities on his tongue as he examined the greenete's head, Katsuki thanked whatever God there was that the cut wasn't as serious as it looked; bleeding sluggishly as he tied the fabric around it with perhaps more force than was strictly necessary.
Deku winced and Katsuki almost felt bad. Almost. He liked that shirt, damn it.
"Do you have any more injuries you wanna tell me about before I help dig the rest of your helpless ass out?"
Deku took a moment at this, eyebrows pinching in concentration as he either assessed his injuries or just processed Katsuki's request, he didn't know.
"M'back hurts," he mumbled finally, head lolling to the side like it weighed a hundred tons, "s hard t' breathe, m'legs're stuck 'n..."
The unfocused gaze widened for a moment, then fell. The silence that stretched was unsettling, and Katsuki was about to yell at the nerd to hurry up and stop keeping him in suspense when the whisper reached his ears.
"Kacchan, I can't feel m'legs."
What?
"Kacchan, I can't feel m'legs, I can't– I can't feel m'legs." he was babbling now, fat tears streaming down his face, carving grimy tracks as Deku propped up on his forearms to stare at Katsuki with big, doe eyes, swimming in tears. It was a frankly pitiful sight which he would've normally found endlessly annoying, but couldn't seem to bring himself to now.
Something akin to terror stewed in his gaze that caught even Katsuki off-guard.
"M'Shoot Style," he breathed suddenly, somehow sounding even more panic-stricken, "Kacchan, I can't– M'Shoot Style, I can't lose it, Kacchan."
"You're not going to lose your Shoot Style, Deku," but Katsuki didn't like the passive in his voice, and apparently, neither Deku, because the emotional torrent only came down harder after that. Breathless, heaving sobs that rattled gruesomely in the boy's chest as he continued.
"No, no, you don' understand, I can't– I can't, Kacchan, I can't lose m'... I can't lose m'Shoot Style– I can't."
Fuck, this nerd was going to pierce a lung and kill himself.
"Oi, Deku. Deku. Fuck, Deku, look at me!" He moved to grab his wrists, squeezing them until glassy eyes shot to meet his, "You're not going to lose your Shoot Style," he said firmly.
Deku grimaced, "Kacchan-"
"'Kacchan' my ass! No, you don't get to give up this easy, shitty nerd," he sighed, straightening, "You're not going to lose your Shoot Style, because I won't fuckin' let you."
Wow, okay, Katsuki may as well have told him the easter rabbit was real and shat chocolate eggs with the look Deku gave him, tears frozen streaming down his face. At least the sobbing had subsided. "Kacchan, if–"
"Ya callin' me a liar, shitty Deku?!"
"No, but Kacchan.." He sighed, though it sounded dangerously close to a scoff, "you can't.." Promise me that.
The fuck he couldn't!
"Fuck you, ya really think I'm just gonna sit here and let your pathetic ass go down this easy? If I'm gonna beat you, which I fuckin' will, I'm gonna beat you at full strength, Deku, not after some fuckin' building came down on ya. So like hell I'm lettin' you break this easy, fuckin' got that?!"
The boy looked away, looking a healthy mix of sad and.. sad. "Kacchan, you can't work miracles."
"Hah? The fuck I can't! You underestimatin' me again, shitty nerd?!"
Deku's face twisted in incredulity, shifting quickly to an undecipherable expression that for one, blood-boiling moment, made Katsuki sure that he was going to argue again, but then he quietly shook his head and laughed. Deku fucking laughed. Sure, it was weak and far too quiet than it had any right to be coming from fucking Deku, but it was genuine.
Katsuki's heart did a weird rolly, tighty, fluttery thing and what the actual hell?
Smearing grime and wetness around his face in a poor excuse of a clean-up job as Katsuki tried to understand what the heck sort of heart palpitation bullshit jusy happened to him, Deku sniffled, lips curling up slightly, "'f course not, Kacchan. You're right."
"Damn right, I am," he replied, more on instinct than anything else.
"Kacchan's amazing."
"Damn right, I am!" He snarled, settling back on his heels. Maybe now that the crisis was over he could actually do something useful like, oh, maybe treat Deku's fucked up body rather than panicking about it.
See? This is exactly why Katsuki hates feelings, so fucking unproductive.
Tentatively chewing his lip, Katsuki pulled on the hideous fabric of the nerd's shirt. He couldn't see any obvious blood stains on the ugly yellow, but that didn't mean there was no bleeding. He had mentioned a hurt back.
Apprehensively, Katsuki singed the T-shirt and ripped it open. A pained whimper escaped it's owner, though he didn't know whether it was for his injuries or some emotional attachment to the damn thing. Either way, it wasn't like he could've taken it off normally anyway; they both knew moving a victim with unknown injuries was dangerous.
Blacks and purples littered the sight before him like a canvas. The sorry state of Deku's back had Katsuki's own aching in sympathy. The bruising looked painful, but not life-threatening. Trailing a ghostly touch up the boy's spine, nothing seemed to be out of place, and he breathed a cautiously optimistic sigh of relief.
Katsuki may be stubborn but he wasn't stupid. He knew Deku losing feeling of his legs wasn't a good sign, but he also couldn't handle the thought of his rival losing his hero career like that. The thought of what their relationship would be like if Deku could no longer fight back against him. Would Katsuki go back to hating him? Go back to calling him Deku and meaning it?
It was selfish, he didn't want to. Katsuki hadn't seen Deku as useless for a very long time, and he liked to think he'd grown since the days he did. Surely he wasn't that shitty a person, to fall back on old habits and old feelings so quickly? To turn on Deku like that.
Deku who wasn't his enemy, who was his classmate, his rival, his friend.
He didn't want to put that to the test. Didn't want to wake up and realise he hadn't changed at all.
Blinking, Katsuki realised he'd completely spaced out. Staring down at muddled bruises and what, to his best knowledge, appeared to be an intact spine, he also noted the nerd had grown uncharacteristically quiet beneath his touch.
He shifted to look at the boy's face. Finding his eyelids fluttered closed, Katsuki poked a grimy cheek, "Oi, Deku, stay awake."
The skin was cold to touch. That got his attention.
A half-hearted groan and the eyelids dragged open with what seemed to be herculean effort. That also got his attention. His head wasn't bleeding that much, and he seemed to have been better. So what the fuck gives?
Shuffling back, he re-examined the sight before him, testing out the ribs and finding two broken. He needed to get the nerd off his stomach.
"The fuck did I just say?" He hissed when the body beneath him relaxed again, "I woulda just left you here if I knew you'd be this shit at following instructions."
"'M awake, Kacchan." It was barely a half-asleep mumble, Katsuki should've laughed.
Instead, he 'tch'd, "Better be, nerd." Eyes trailing and locking onto the sight that was Deku's lower-body.
Whereas his abdomen and arms had been crushed by the elevator when it toppled, his legs were still out of Katsuki's reach, out of Katsuki's control, caught outside from under the lift.
That was bad, because Katsuki needed control. Who knew what kind of injuries the rubble could be hiding?
The explosive hero sat back with a decisive huff, "I need to get you unstuck," he declared, "your back seems fine but you've broken your ribs."
Worrying his bottom lip for a moment, Katsuki glared at the meeting point between the end of the metal and Deku's hip like it owed him money. His head snapped back to the nerd to find him watching him. He had that annoying little look on his face that he only made when in the works of figuring out an impossible puzzle.
Except that puzzle was Katsuki and the nerd looked like he might faint if the wind blew on him too hard from the wrong direction.
Katsuki swallowed, expression steeling.
"How well can you move your arms?"
Izuku hurt. All of him really, to some extent. His head really hurt, his back really hurt, his arms kind of hurt, his legs– well, his legs were a different matter, but he was certain if he could feel them, they would hurt.
"Ready?"
He grunted in response, bruised arms reaching up for leverage, and once he felt the crushing pressure ease off his hips, Izuku pulled himself forward. Climbing across the rubble with as much speed as his tired arms could give him, he jerked suddenly. Something had snagged onto something. Izuku halted for only a second, bracing himself as he pulled with all his strength, back and ribs protesting loudly in return. There was no way Kacchan could hold the elevator off him much longer; he'd already looked exhausted.
"Hurry the fuck up, Deku," Kacchan wheezed as though to prove his point, voice strained behind him.
It's now or never, Izuku.
With blinding-hot determination and nothing short of sheer will power, Izuku white-knuckle-gripped a rebar sticking out through his rapidly blurring vision, green energy crackled around him and he pull–
Water.
An icy river, which may as well have been a tidal wave came crashing past Izuku's bruised and abused body. Freezing cold washed over him with the water, and he felt as One For All snuffed out of his bones like a rat skittering from the light, a deep exhaustion settling snugly in its vacuum.
"Fucking hell?! Deku!" Metal and concrete creaked and cracked, then Kacchan was there, rubbing the soaking, green hair of his pitiful face. "Deku?"
Izuku's world was spinning and the blonde before him was its axis; crimson red painted over with an emotion he felt too tired to understand. A long string of expletives crowded his hearing as Kacchan shuffled out his line of sight, leaving his head to slump down on it's own.
Huh, he should probably move too, right? Kacchan would be mad at him if he just lied there. He already did so much to help, the least Izuku could do was move his broken corpse out of the way. Faintly, he tried moving his arms, but Izuku was tired. What little strength had been scraped together at the hopes of freeing his legs sapped out of him the moment the water hit his back.
His arms didn't listen to him. Distantly, he realised he was shivering.
Then, that he was being dragged. The scratch of loose rocks on his skin switched to an icy, solid ground, and curiosity gave him the strength to unglue his eyelids.
He was lying in the elevator now; cheek plastered against the frigid, steel frame, remnants of fabric sticking uncomfortably to his body and Kacchan... Nowhere to be seen?
"Shitshitshitshitshitshit."
But somewhere to be heard, apparently.
Straining his ears past the low buzzing, Izuku could hear the boy cursing faintly under his breath somewhere.
That was weird, Kacchan was always loud. He squinted, as if it would somehow help him hear better.
Gingerly, hands rolled him onto his back. The blond's face hovered into his line of vision and the relief of seeing it was quickly tamped down by wrong, wrong, wrong.
Because Kacchan looked scared. Kacchan never looked scared. Kacchan would sooner saw off his own toes with a crusty butter knife than look scared.
Yet there he was, in the flesh, scared. Wide, dinner plate eyes staring at Izuku's, who –naturally– was now terrified. "Kacch–"
"Don't talk."
Izuku didn't talk.
The blond raked a frustrated hand through his hair with an exhale, flaming gaze fixing somewhere away from the One-For-All-bearer's. He was staring at his legs, Izuku realised. Why was Kacchan staring at his legs? What was wrong with his legs again? He couldn't remember. Vaguely, it came to him that he couldn't remember much of anything, really. Where were they again?
He craned his head in a meek attempt to gather that information. An elevator. Why were they in an elevator? Why was it so cold? Why couldn't he sleep?
"Fuck, Deku, why do you always do this? Fuck!"
There it was, Kacchan was mad at him again. What had Izuku done this time? He didn't mean to, whatever it was, he was sorry.
"No no–fuck, FUCK–don't, don't apologize alright? 'S okay, I'll–I'll fix this, just–don't apologize."
Huh.
His head may be stuffed with cotton, but Izuku was fairly sure he hadn't said anything yet. Had he been mumbling again? Kacchan didn't like it when he did that. He should probably stop, he didn't want to make Kacchan upset, after all.
He felt sleepy, all this shivering was tiring him out. Maybe Izuku should just sleep, that way he couldn't do anything to make Kacchan upset. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea, Aizawa Sensei always took a nap when he was tired, and Izuku was so tired. Maybe Izuku just needed a nap.
Almost unprompted, his eyelids closed. The action was immediately met with violent shaking. He felt as his eyebrows creased, didn't people usually blackout when they had seizures?
Opening his eyes with some effort to investigate, he realised he wasn't actually having a seizure. It was just Kacchan. Shaking him. Oh, and his lips were moving, when did they start doing that? Izuku should really pay more attention.
"–the fuck awake, shitty Deku! I don't know how much that dumbass, broken brain of yours is understanding of this situation, but I'm gonna move to tie your leg and you can't fall asleep! I–" a shaky inhale, "I don't know how to set this kind of fracture, so I'm just gonna try and stop the bleeding, alright? Don't. Fall. Asleep."
Perfectly on command, a dull pain rapidly blossomed in Izuku's right shin, the all-encompassing numbness parting like clouds to make way for the first sensation other cold he'd felt in possibly forever.
Izuku still found it in himself to smile dazedly, "'kay, Kacchan."
The tension in his shoulders eased at the coherent response and Izuku felt inexplicably responsible for this situation.
"Tch! Don't give yourself so much credit, nerd, we chose to come here of our own accord," Kacchan grumbled somewhere away from his field of vision, "Besides, you didn't know this was going to happen as well as we did, so quit throwing yourself a pity party over shit and tell me about that All Might comic you bought last week."
"The Lim'ted Edition Heroic A'ventures o' All Migh'?" His mouth had slurred before Izuku could stop it. His eyes widened, was he just saying everything that came to his mind now? Was that why Kacchan was psychic? What was even going on?
"I'm not psychic, dumbass! You're just too far gone to keep any of your shitty thoughts to yourself now. It's like instead of slowing down, blood-loss just made your dumb brain start working over-time, it's creepy as hell to listen to."
Izuku short-circuited.
Blood... loss?
"And yes, that comic, have you talked about literally anything else this entire week? For fuck's sake, I think even Icy-Hot's gotten sick of hearing about it. Round-Face looked like she was about to deck you in the face when you mentioned it this morning."
Izuku craned his head.
"Oh."
There was blood everywhere.
"Shit! Deku, don't fuckin' look!"
Nausea bubbled in his gut. Red, red, red, everywhere he looked. His shorts were soaked with it, it was in Kacchan's hands, in Kacchan's face, saturating Kacchan's shirt around his shin. And he couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel any of it. He was cold. Everything was cold. He wasn't shivering anymore.
Izuku felt sick.
"Kacchan. Kacchan, wha' 'happ'n'd t' my leg?"
"Did you– did you stop shivering? Fuck, Deku, your lips are blue, fuck, hold on, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tie this. Hold on."
Kacchan tied the shirt firmly around the wound, pain registered mutely under the unshakable cold. Izuku was tired, any previous worries for his health suddenly taking a backseat as another wave of exhaustion flattened him over like a rolling pin. Holding his head up should not be this draining.
Shamefully, and not for the first time, Izuku kind of wanted his mum.
Warmth spread across his chest suddenly. Not damaging or oppressive or burning, but gentle and nurturing and weirdly hand-shaped and nice. He dragged his eyelids open (which, when had he closed them?) to be met with the glorious sight that was Kacchan's face.
Even half-gone with exhaustion, Izuku couldn't have helped the squeak if he tried, "K-Kacchan!"
"It's just so you won't die and be a massive pain in my ass, Deku," Kacchan huffed, settling alongside Izuku with a hand idly, innocently over the greenette's chest, and another already worming it's way to sandwich his back as well. Probably leaving bloody handprints. Not that he cared, it was warm. Tense muscles relaxed against the heat, and although Izuku hadn't noticed it before, the icy steel under him had done a job of numbing his back.
Had Kacchan's quirk not felt so soothing, Izuku probably would've put up more of a fight. Would've squawked, reddened and flustered away with coughed up excuses. But Izuku was tired. He'd let himself have this.
"I think a pipe must've burst," Kacchan said after a while, frowning at empty space, "That water was freezing. No wonder you couldn't feel your legs, you were sitting in it for fuck knows how long," he spat the last sentence somewhat disdainfully, frustrated, but not at Izuku. The One-For-All-bearer could relate.
Kacchan turned to look at him, "Can you feel them now?"
"Huh?"
"Your legs," he clarified, "can you feel them now?"
"Oh, a little," Izuku felt himself grimace, "no' sure I wanna though."
The blond snorted, but didn't disagree.
A compound fracture. Also known as an open fracture, a type of severe breakage, in which the bone protruded the skin. He'd done some research on it, naturally, and while he kind of knew how to treat it in theory, it wasn't worth the risk of permanently damaging his leg. Not when they had the option of waiting for help.
With that in mind, his biggest issue at the moment was not bleeding out, but as long as the bone hadn't hit an artery, he was probably okay about that, and if he had to wager a guess, it probably hadn't. Izuku was no expert, but he was pretty sure if an artery had been severed, he'd already be dead. So as long as the bleeding was contained–
"For fuck's sake, Deku, come up for air," Kacchan pressed lightly down on him, sounding somewhat concerned, "If you pass out like this, then I'm fuckin' laughing."
Izuku reddened, realising he had accidentally voiced his entire train of thought. Oops.
He also realised he was shivering again. Violently.
Good. His body's temperature regulation was resetting itself. That meant–oh. He could faintly feel his legs now, sensation returning to him in the waves of throbbing that lapped at his lower leg lightly, almost innocently, but seemed to be gradually building. The despairing realisation that, in a few minutes, this was probably going to be agonizing, shot fear up his spine like a three inch needle, and Izuku felt the sudden urge to just start talking. If only to convince himself that no, the burning in his leg wasn't worse than it had been ten seconds ago, stop being silly, Izuku.
"The characterisation was all wrong," he breathed out after a pause, biting back to keep the shivering out of his voice.
"Huh?"
"F-For the All Might comic," he clarified, "All Might was out of character. And the villains were unrealistic, like, w-who takes over the world because of parking laws? It's ridiculous."
Kacchan seemed at a loss for a moment, then realisation sparked and his confusion cleared to a feral grin.
"Hah! And didn't ya pay a fortune for it too? Fuckin' told you not to waste your money on that shit."
Izuku huffed, but it was hard to sound amused when one was shaking like a leaf, "Don't act like you don't own a t-ton of All Might merchandise too, Kacchan."
"Well, I don't hang his face up on my walls, Deku." Kacchan's nose scrunched, "You got him on your bedsheets too, it's creepy as hell."
Izuku cringed, yeah he was guilty.
"Maybe, but I've s-seen your All Might figures, and I know those are s-super expensive!"
He snorted, "Maybe for you. I don't go burning my savings like a madman every time a new shirt comes out."
Kacchan moved his hand from Izuku's sternum to his stomach, other kept still on his upper back. Izuku could feel the warmth of the stifled quirk seeping to the rest of his limbs, it should've been relieving, or at the very least embarrassing having Kacchan be so close. But mostly he only knew it because the burning in his leg was increasingly distractive.
Izuku laughed once, through gritted teeth, "They're 14000 yen, Kacchan. You don't think I ch-checked?"
It was the blond's turn to cringe.
Izuku continued, emboldened by the reaction, "So yeah, y-you can't really judge me when I 'spend my money on that shit.'"
Kacchan looked up in surprise, confusing Izuku. Then a smirk cracked his lips and poor Izuku realised his grave mistake. "You kiss your mother with that mouth, Deku?"
"K-Kacchan!"
He laughed, "What? Afraid I'll tell Auntie Inko?"
The greenette felt his ears redden. "No, I was quoting you!"
"Tch, doesn't fuckin' matter. You can't just go spoutin' curses like that, De-ku." There was a dangerous grin on his face that did weird things to Izuku's stomach.
"You just swore!"
Kacchan snorted, "Nobody cares if I swear, but you? Sweet, innocent Deku uttering impurities? The scandal! Auntie Inko would be appalled."
"Kacchaaaan," Izuku whined, but Kacchan just looked endlessly amused. The devil.
He huffed, sucking a breath, "I'll tell you what, nerd–"
Their world went dark.
There was pin-drop silence, neither of them breathed, then softly, "Fuck," what- "Deku, my phone's dead." Oh, "Fuck!"
The heat on his stomach vanished, and he had little time to mourn the top half of his warmth sandwich when he heard Kacchan curse softly, fumbling at the device.
Izuku bit the inside of his cheek.
"H-Hey Kacchan? I think.. u-um, I think.. my phone's in my back pocket?"
The greenette worried at his bottom lip, and explosive hero went silent for a moment. Izuku could feel the invisible eyes on him, and though he wasn't sure the blond was doing much more than just looking in his general direction, it still set him on edge.
The breath hitched in his throat. He heard him shuffling, felt the shift in position via the hand still wormed under his back, but it didn't do enough to prepare him. He thanked the Gods Kacchan understood the reason behind his hesitancy at least, because he was deliberate, but in the end, that didn't matter either. The second the shift in his leg happened, Izuku was gone.
Sensation cracked back into him so extraordinarily fast it gave Izuku a whiplash, hot and blinding and ablaze like a clap of thunder. The fire in his leg was so dizzyingly concentrated, Izuku didn't even notice he'd began crying until salt-water and snot were sopping his collar. He didn't hear himself screaming until his throat burned. Then there was nothing. He must've blacked out because, when he awoke, the hand was back. Warm and comforting against his skin. He'd lean into it if he weren't so damn tired.
"Deku! Fuck. I'm sorry. Fuckin'– talk to me, Deku. Deku. Shit, Deku!"
And there it was, Kacchan's voice. Rich and curled with something foreign. If Izuku didn't know any better, he'd say the boy sounded scared, but that wasn't right, because Kacchan was never scared. Kacchan kicked scared's ass. He had said so himself once when they were kids. After he chased away the monster in Izuku's closet.
"Kacch.."
A breath of air brushed past his cheek, "Thank fuck."
"Ka..cch'n, did.." he swallowed around a dry mouth, "'s my phone working?" Izuku cracked his eyelids open. Only black pooled into his vision.
"It's broken," Kacchan spat, effectively propelling the device across the elevator. "Piece of shit."
Of course the phone wasn't working, otherwise Kacchan would've turned it on already and they wouldn't be sitting here in the dark, stupid Deku.
Kacchan sighed, resigning back to his previous position as Izuku's space heater. It was a long pause before he gruffed, "So, what the fuck now?"
And that was the million dollar question, wasn't it? Hell, if Izuku wouldn't have been glad to answer it, but at the moment his mind was a rowboat in the pacific, and the throbbing in his leg was the bonfire to his hull. He felt like he was sinking; thoughts drifting in distorted and leaving quicker than they should.
Like clouds, his brain mused somewhat coherently.
"Hey, Kacchan?" Izuku whispered. The blond grunted. "'Member that stray we found when we were kids?"
Kacchan paused at this.
Izuku continued at the silence, "Neither of our parents were going to let us keep her, so you hid her in your room 'til your dad found the chew marks on your shoes?"
Kacchan huffed, "Course I remember, the old hag all but ripped my hairs out that week. Why you bringing that shit up now?"
Izuku didn't know what possessed him to say it. Maybe it was the fact that the burning in his leg was so ungodly it was starting to make him feel woozy. Maybe it was the realisation that they might die in here. Maybe it was the fact that this was possibly the first amicable conversation he'd had with Kacchan since they were four. Heck, maybe it was just the concussion, but either way, "Clouds was a really stupid name, Kacchan."
"HAH?!" The spike in volume almost had Izuku wincing himself into a tailspin. "The hell does that mean?! Clouds is a fuckin' awesome name!"
"Her fur wasn't even white, Kacchan."
The scoff that left him came so aggressively it sounded more like a cough, "Who says clouds have to be white, dipshit?"
Izuku's nose scrunched, "What kind of cloud is brown?"
He sputtered. That seemed to put him at a loss. "Tch, whatever, if you hated it so much then you shoulda said something then, stupid Deku."
Oh, but that was just the thing wasn't it? He knew he should've. It was like naming a dog 'Cat', and even as a kid he was aware that had it been literally anyone else, he would've criticized the name in a heartbeat and saved a poor, brown dog from a lifetime of having a stupid, no-good, silly name. If it just had been anyone other than *Kacchan's* idea.
Why? Why was Kacchan allowed to be stupid? Well, the answer was quite simple actually, because at the end of the day, despite after everything they'd been through, Izuku kind of loved him.
Whaddya know? Kacchan was right, Izuku is stupid.
Clouds what a stupid name for a brown dog. What a stupid reason for an emotional crisis. Kacchan was so stupid. Izuku was so stupid. They were bound together eternally by their joint stupidity.
A moment passed in silence. Then two.
"Oi, you fallin' asleep ag–"
Then, after a long pause of trying to understand them, Izuku gathered his emotions and resigned.
"I loved everything you did when we were kids, Kacchan."
It wasn't the whole truth, but it was something, and Izuku needed something, because frankly, he was starting to feel faint. A mighty weight had been roughing down on his chest for a while now, and it frightened him. Like there was a great, big balloon currently attached to his head and it kept threatening to pull him away every time he blinked or closed his eyes.
So yes, he was getting a bit desperate, because if they were going to die here in the dark, he needed Kacchan to understand. He needed to somehow claw a hole in his chest and tear his ribcage open so Kacchan could look in and see for himself the full extent of the prison riot of feelings gurgling so feverishly in his chest they threatened to foam out his mouth.
Except, he couldn't do that, because –well– he kinda needed his bones. So he was stuck with words for now. Words and a growing sense of urgency, because he was feeling both completely calm and totally terrified at the same time, and it had likely something to do with the Earth's mysteriously increasing gravitational pull on his head. He was running out of time.
A long minute had already passed in silence, and although Kacchan had noticeably tensed, he made no move to reply.
Izuku didn't really know what he was doing. They hadn't talked about Clouds in years, Kacchan had been inconsolable when he was forced to give her away, and now Izuku felt an unscratchable itch to criticize the name they'd collectively agreed on for a (probably) dead dog over a decade ago, and he kind of felt annoyed about it too. He really shouldn't be saying these things, he really shouldn't be feeling these things, but they were just sorta... stumbling out.
Exhaustion was looming over him like a shadow and the relief it brought was sinfully alluring. It was calm and still draped over him, and it pleasantly hummed the burning in his leg down to a low simmer. Izuku was terrified by it.
"Hey, Kacchan?"
He frankly wasn't sure how he managed to do it, but Kacchan somehow grunted with palpable uncertainty. Like he was worried he was walking into a trap.
"I think I'm gonna pass out." No matter. Izuku was too tired for scheming now anyways, and feelings were exhausting.
An audible choke-scoff, "You will most certainly fucking not!"
Izuku wrestled with the dizziness Kacchan's fighter-jet voice slammed him with, "'S not really something I can control, Kacchan."
"If you pass out, so help me God, Deku, you'll wake up with my hands on your throat." Izuku tried to chuckle at this, but it came out like a series of breathy puffs. Boy, was he out of it. "I'm not joking Deku! You know I'd fuckin' relish the chance the strangle you.
He made a vague agreeing sound, eyelids fluttering shut, "Kacchan's no liar."
"Damn right, I'm not! So you better stay awake if you don't want me to make good on that promise, ya hear me Deku?!"
The words curled oddly in Izuku's ear, out of place. The sentence was phrased like a threat, but in Kacchan's tone, it sounded wildly like a plea.
Or maybe Izuku was just delirious. Both were plausible.
Either way he didn't know how else to respond other than agreeing, but Izuku didn't want to be coaxed into making promises he couldn't keep, especially not to Kacchan. So he didn't. He also didn't bother to open his eyes again. It's not like Kacchan would be able to tell anyway, and he was so tired.
"'Member when we were four and you said you'd scared the monster in my closet away?"
A pause. Likely Kacchan determining whether or not he'd let the deflection pass.
"You remember that shit?" Izuku thanked his lucky stars.
He hummed, "We stayed up late when I couldn't get to sleep, then I sat on your shoulders so we could steal cookies off the counter, and we slept in the living room watching All Might cartoons because I was too scared to go back in my room," he paused, a reminiscent smile, "Then you said I shouldn't be scared, because you were there and you kicked scared's ass."
Silence. Kacchan seemed to shuffle in his spot awkwardly for a beat, and Izuku really wished he knew what face he was making. "There a point to any of that, Deku?"
"No," he answered truthfully, "It was just really nice." A pause as he mulled the words, "I guess I wanted to say thank you."
Another audible choke-scoff, though remarkably more flustered-sounding. Izuku really really wished he knew what face Kacchan was making.
"Well, you're fuckin' welcome I guess." He continued under his breath, "Dumb nerd Deku was a crybaby even then, the hell was I s'pposed to do, leave 'im crying? Tch, stupid nerd, fuckin' pain in my ass." It was half-hearted at best.
Izuku's lips tugged up, "Thanks Kacchan."
"Tch, whatever."
The two sat in silence for a long minute. Their skin was touching; quirk-heated hands on Izuku's chest and back and Kacchan's knees feather-light against his side. They were close, intimately so, but Izuku still felt like there was an entire ocean between them. Like Kacchan was miles away, hiding behind behind a lake and a canyon and towering walls and a fortified fortress. It prodded his heart in a weird way.
"You better not be fuckin' falling asleep again, Deku."
"Did you mean it?" Izuku blurted before he could really think about it.
A pause.
"What?"
"You kicked fear's ass?"
Kacchan thought about this, then clicked his tongue, "Do I ever say shit I don't mean?"
Izuku couldn't help the breathy laugh that left him at that, did he really want an answer? "Oi. The fuck you laughing at? Shut up, Deku."
He felt as a small, amused smile laced his lips and puffed air from his nose. It was nice having Kacchan close. It was comforting. And even though Izuku felt a little silly for it, moments like these, where it almost seemed like Kacchan cared for him were always treasured. Izuku could almost fool himself if he tried.
He really was terrified. Izuku didn't know how he'd managed to stay awake this long, but he could feel it wasn't going to last. He couldn't even really work his eyelids anymore, and as he gradually forgot where his face was, sleep seemed less and less like a bad idea.
He was running out of time.
"I'm scared now, Kacchan," he mumbled. Kacchan breathed a sharp breath, noticeably tensing. Izuku felt almost tempted to apologise, but he was just so sleepy.
"Well, you shouldn't be," Kacchan drawled very seriously, like he was making a promise, "Because I kick scared's shitty ass all the way to Mars, Deku."
Oh.
How could he forget?
And then, like a good kick to thin ice, the dam was broken. Izuku sobbed. Fat tears meandering the dried tracks, lips pulled into a wet grin anyway. "Thanks, Kacchan."
"I'm serious. We're gonna get outta here, that's a fuckin' promise."
He could imagine the sight they made: battered and bloody, sitting amongst the dust as Izuku choked on his sobs, about thirty seconds from fainting, smiling like Christmas came early.
And for all his exhaustion, he really was happy. After all, how could he forget?
"Oi! Deku? Are you listening to me?" A tap on his cheek, "We're gonna get outta here, just stay awake, okay? Just-just a little longer and they'll come find us."
He tried to listen. He really did. But there was only so much exhaustion one could take, and Izuku was afraid he'd reached his limit.
"K'cchan's 'mazin' af'er all."