Chapter Text
"I see you,
I mean I really see you,
I see through all your pretensions,
and right to the real you,"
~ Aaron LaLux
Bakugou is born angry. It is what his mother tells him in his childhood, the hag laughing gleefully as she recounts for the umpteenth time how Katsuki had been born a yelling, angry faced child, yowling his displeasure at being in the world to all and sundry, his father massaging his aching ears barely seconds after the child had been born. He wastes no time to tell her that it’s her own damn fucking fault that he was born angry, because she’s as angry as him, a tornado of rage and bristling energy only soothed by the presence of his father, a former punk of the playground that grew up to terrorize the fucking Quirkless Underground of their city to the great despair of his Auntie Inko.
( Bakugou wonders sometimes, what made his mother so angry, what made her rage at the world as a whole and whether it was the same feeling that he felt, a gaping, hallow emptiness that refused to be filled, a restlessness that told him he needed to change things, then, now, fast, fast, faster than their world would accept, faster than all the people holding him back, all the talentless hacks that seemed to think he’d end up a villain, that he’d end un destroying instead of saving, that his Quirk was destructive and something to be feared ).
Bakugou grows up angry; it’s seethed in his bones, a restless fury that he has no name for, not as a child, a driving demon that holds no direction but merely propels him forward ever on. He grows angrier still at Deku and his fucking smiles and his relentless optimism, Deku who is smaller and weaker than him and yet follows him wherever he goes, who does not run away no matter how much he yells and pushes him.
His Quirk makes things worse; Deku’s seemingly lack of a Quirk makes them a thousand and one times worse. The stupid nerd thinking he can look down on him, offering him help when he cannot even help himself. It goes like this for a few months, a spiral of destruction that alienates them, that breaks a fragile bond that had been there but not quite, a childhood friendship crushed into smithereens with each of Bakugou’s yells, each of his curses, each time his small explosions caused burns on Midoriya’s slim arms.
It would have probably gone on, a pattern unable to break from, had the green haired boy not displaced in front of his eyes, returning wounded and bruised, smelling of smoke and ash and blood and death, the terror in his green eyes something extremely new that chilled child Bakugou to the core.
( It breaks something in him then, warps it, twists it, takes his anger and channels it in a way it had never been channelled since then. He wants to be a hero that much is seared into his very bones so the first thing he must do is make sure the shitty nerd doesn’t get himself killed. The fuck use is even a Quirk if it tries to kill you? It angers him in a different way, this obsession of society with the superiority of Quirks because Deku might have been quirkless but at least he was not in mortal peril, now he has a Quirk that can kill him and what even is the fucking point of it all? He has no answer for it, so he merely settles for getting the answers from the damn nerd, for finding out all there is to find and making sure the shithead is alive each time. He supposes it should mean something when fucking Deku starts falling on him almost every fucking time he displaces, but he will not pay too much attention to that kind of shit. )
He is still angry, but he finally is offered reasons to be. It is as if the universe is telling him that if his being is made of fire and rage at least there should be a reason for it being so. He is angry at Deku’s quirk, angry at Endeavour, angry at the society that looks at Deku with thinly veiled disgust and at him with the sage looks of prophets expecting a fall, angry at the sludge villain who captured him, angry at his powerlessness, angry at fucking Deku for almost getting himself killed trying to save him.
For a time he is even angry with All Might, angry with him choosing Deku as his successor, because of course the idiot tells him, of course he cannot keep his mouth shut. Bakugou chases him out of the house in a hail of fire and curses that have more vitriol wrapped in them than they had ever had, Deku crying like he had back in their childhood. His own feelings of worthlessness, of insufficiency rear up their head in that moment, taunting him that if he had been better perhaps All Might would have chosen him; perhaps he would have been the successor of the number one hero. He does not speak with Deku for weeks, ignores him whenever he calls, and rages at him whenever he tries to come over.
The voices are still taunting him, the anger still coursing through his veins, steady, strong, and he hates it, but he has no desire to fight it, the betrayal he feel too insurmountable to push past. It isn’t until Deku displaces in his house, eyes haunted and empty, covered in blood and in shock, that Bakugou snaps out of it. He remembers his promise, remembers that just because stupid Deku was finally going to have a quirk it did not mean he had it now or that he would know how to control it. Suddenly the anger ebbs, flows in another directions and he needs to know who exactly made it on his still growing shit list.
( He doesn’t get an answer. Deku remains unresponsive for a full day, even as Bakugou manoeuvres him into the bathroom to wash the blood away, even as he presses hot bottles around his body to stave away his chilled state. It takes a day until he breaks from this state, a day until his green eyes flood with terror, then anguish and then visceral pain, his arms wrapping around Bakugou’s waist and sobbing in his chest as he had never done before. Bakugou simply vows to render whoever drove Midoriya in this state to pieces ).
Getting into U.A. changes and does not change things at the same time.
The Sports Festival leaves a sour taste in his mouth, his win something he would have never accepted. The indignity of having to accept a medal he does not deserve, not when half n’ half refused to fight him at full strength burns inside him, the anger lashing out, the tight coil inside him turning into a tide wave sweeping everything in his path. There is no way to channel it this time, not when Deku is in the hospital wing having fucked his bones up one more time and none of the teachers willing to accept no for an answer. He rages, like he had raged in the past, rages until they tie him down and then there’s a feeling of claustrophobia weighting him down, the sharp edge of wrong, wrong, wrong making him struggle all the more, making him fight to break free, the awarding ceremony no longer his main concern, but rather getting out of the restraints. All Might forces him to accept the medal and part of him breaks at his action, a trust he held in a childhood hero chipped away just a little bit when no one sees anything inherently wrong with chaining up a student on live TV.
( He never had problems with tight spaces and constraint before then. He has them now and they burn in him, a shame he is unwilling to admit, a weakness he refuses to acknowledge even when sometimes he feels the walls closing down on him and he struggles to even his breathing, struggles to remember that no matter what they did and how they did it, he was never in danger. He has no way of knowing that will soon change, in the near future. )
Deku is the only one who understands how utterly abhorrent it had all been, the only one who acts against it as soon as he finds out, as soon as he gets out of Recovery Girl’s caring hands. He fusses over Bakugou, flails and mutters and scowls, complains to Auntie Inko and makes Bakugou to spend the night at their place, forces him to succumb to Inko’s fussing and ministration until something inside him unwinds, until the burning anger that had been raging until then soothes at least a little bit, until the feeling of entrapment goes away.
It does not mean Deku is done by any stretch of imagination. The fucking nerd flips his switch, raging like he had never seen the boy rage before, not since he had first met that flaming piece of garbage that was Endeavour. Deku rages with cold fury, green eyes burning like emeralds whenever he glances Aizawa’s way, whenever All Might tries to speak to him. He rages silently, coldly, in a way so unlike Bakagou’s own brand of anger, and yet frightening nonetheless, a long lasting grudge that is so unlike the green haired boy that it is Katsuki in the end that gets him to forgive, to let go. He will never admit to the fact that Deku’s anger balanced his own, that the idiot’s desire to protect him, to take his part, is no longer something that grates on his nerves, but rather something he grudgingly comes to accept.
Deku explains later why half n’ half didn’t fight. Explains later all he had been told, much that he had missed despite the many displacements at Todoroki’s side, tells Bakugou in a cold voice all about quirk marriages and fire and pain, offer more information than they had ever known, starts to put plans into action that would come into fruition long in the future, but would happen nonetheless. He does not flinch when Bakugou lets off explosions in his anger, does not raise his eyes from the highly detailed plans he is constructing to pay attention to the barrage of curses pouring from the other. He simply waits patiently until Bakugou calms and joins him, his hands-on tactical expertise more than versatile enough to point out any flaws in Deku’s analytical planning.
( It makes him smirk, to see this side of Deku, this unrelenting, ruthless side. People look at the boy and see innocence; fools the lot of them. Bakugou knows all too well there is more to Deku than that, knows the strength burning under his skin and the controlled anger that is so finely honed that the other can shape it in whatever form he wants, present despite his overwhelming kindness and loyalty. Deku wasn’t weak even when all he had going for him was a time displacement Quirk and a mountain of determination. It took him months to see it, but in the end, he did. And Bakugou would be a fool to underestimate his rival – friend – enemy – whatever the fuck they were – now that he has so much more going for him. )
Bakugou is born angry and grows up angry. He is a maelstrom of fire and rage, a being designed for destruction, a hurricane meant to sweep everything in its path and leave behind merely chaos and disaster. It is what he has heard, what was presumed of him, what the League of Villains sees in him. It was a future others had set in stone for him and one he had spat upon and tuned his back on as soon as he was able to, burned to smithereens while he carved his own path in its place.
He simply had not expected to have shitty nerd with the self-preservation instincts of a fly and the stubbornness of a bull alongside him as he did that.