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"Bakugou!" a too-chipper voice calls out behind him. Bakugou freezes. "Want to walk back together?"
He turns around and yep, wasn't imagining the voice, that sure looks like Deku grinning at him. The way he did at his loser friends, too, none of that wobbly unsure shit. Suspicious.
"Why," says Bakugou, jutting his chin out.
"Oh," says 'Deku'. "I just thought it would be nice, you know!"
Bakugou stares. 'Deku' tilts his head in question. No muttering, shrinking in on himself, or flat agitation. Bakugou fires an explosion off at his face, which has him tumbling over his own feet in surprise. Yep, just as he thought.
"Fuck off, faker," drawls Bakugou, as the imposter starts to whine in surprise. "Deku would dodge. And what the fuck did you call me?" He kicks the fake's foot for good measure. Bakugou stalks off to the gym, deciding to work his frustration out productively instead of getting in a fight with some extra who thought they could punk him.
He'd really thought today would be the day.
"Bakugou!" calls the wrong voice the next day.
"Who?" he growls, sweeping their legs out when they dodge the explosion to the face.
"Kacchan," calls Deku. He's waiting outside the dorm entrance, and is pulling that wobbly face he does when he thinks his next decision is probably a shitty one, but golly gee he's gonna do it anyway. Bakugou has been the number one reason for that face existing since childhood, and he loves to hate it.
Today's gonna be the day, huh.
"We doin' this?" asks Bakugou.
"Huh?" says Deku, which is hint one. Hint two is looking him over and seeing—
"Black shoes?" shouts Bakugou, as the fake steps out of range of his one-two attack. "You think I was born yesterday?!"
"Sooooorrryyyyyyyy!" squeals the fake as they take off into the trees. They fucking better be.
The real Deku doesn't look up at him when he storms through the common area, but Bakugou feels eyes on his back as he ascends the stairs, and that just pisses him off more.
"This week," Bakugou growls at Kirishima. They're ensconced in Bakugou's room for what was originally a study session. Growls, and not whines, because he's not a fucking baby. "This week, you guaranteed it! And I've fuck-all to show for it!"
Kirishima laughs at him. Kirishima does that a lot. Most of the basis of their friendship is the grudging respect Bakugou has for anyone willing to laugh in the face of a literally explosive temper. "It's like half-way through the week, bro, don't give up yet!"
Bakugou rolls onto his stomach and defeats the urge to start hitting his pillow. He's not a fucking baby but a tantrum would probably do wonders for his mood.
"I still say you're being too obtuse," Kirishima says, once he's done laughing at Bakugou's plight.
"Big word for you, Hair-for-Brains."
"And who do you have to blame for my improved vocabulary?" Himself. Kirishima's grades and book-smarts had increased exponentially once they'd cracked his learning style. "My point stands. If you already know how you feel, you should make the first move! Nothin' more manly than going on the attack by confessing first!"
"Fuck no," says Bakugou. "The confessee holds the real power, and he knows it. I ain't blinking first."
"But you both like each other..?"
"Did he put Round-face up to telling you? Tryna sow the idea in my head and see if I get impatient? That's so fucking like him!"
Kirishima sighs. "Dude, no… he's probably just waiting for the right moment? Like, when you go outside and see the flowers in bloom and think 'damn, today's looking romantic'! Midoriya isn't the sneaky type!"
Bakugou decides not to punch his pillow, and instead lobs it at Kirishima's head.
"Kacchan," says Deku, and he's pulling the wobbly face. The location checks out. His shoes are the right shade of red. His expression gets wobblier when Bakugou spends too much time looking at him without saying anything. "U-um, can we walk back together?"
Bakugou grunts in agreement. He looks around. The sun is shining pleasantly, a slight breeze picks at the trees, and the scent of flowers is in the air. It's objectively nicer than the last three afternoons. Kirishima's bullshit romance theory is lent some weight.
They walk for a while, but Deku doesn't ramble, prod, or launch into the reason they're together. Bakugou aims a friendly explosion at him (dodged), goes for the leg-sweep (evaded, with a deftness that doesn't suit Deku) which launches into a mid-section kick (pivoted away from, instead of a more advantageous solid block and leg grab that the real Deku would absolutely have executed). "For fucks sake," Bakugou shouts.
"How d'you keep figuring it out so quickly?!" the faker shouts back, cartwheeling away into the trees before he can give decide to give chase.
"For fucks saaaaaake," Bakugou repeats, face-down on Kirishima's floor. This time he can't deny he's whining.
Kirishima leans down to pat his shoulder and say 'there, there' which just makes him grumble more and kick his legs out a few times. The tantrum idea is ever more tempting.
"And to top it off," he yells into the carpet, "Some fucker keeps tryna prank me or some shit with his fucking face! I've seen more of some fake shitty nerd than the real one all week!!"
"Wait, whaaat?"
Bakugou looks up. He has an idea. "You know everyone right?"
Kirishima may be his friend first, but he's also a - blech - people person, which occasionally comes in use. Like right now, when he's on the hunt for soon-to-be dead meat.
"Like I keep telling you," Kirishima says with a bemused look, "Making some friends outside our class doesn't mean—"
"Find out which extras in the school fuck around with illusions or shape-shifting. I need to have words."
"Not when you're making that murder face you don't!"
By Friday, most his classmates are giving him a wide berth. Electro-dunce had taken one look at him when lunch rolled round and noped his way out the classroom backwards. The teachers don't try calling on him in lessons. Heroics training is all paired first aid drills instead of anything he can really get his teeth into, and if he was on a lower boil Bakugou would have noticed it's a change to the lesson plan.
He's paired with Shoji, who couldn't give less of a shit about his mood and keeps tripping him up by duplicating weird shit when it's his turn to act as first responder. After a while he gets into it, and if he paid others more attention he would've noticed the idiot squad breathe a collective sigh of relief when he stops radiating killing intent.
Deku gives him a significant look across the changing room at the lessons end, which improves his mood no end.
"Kacchan," says Deku. He's waiting outside the school building. This one doesn't look wobbly or over-cheered, and isn't smiling; he's looking Bakugou in the eye, back straight, mouth set in determination. An anticipatory shiver creeps up Bakugou's spine. "We need to talk."
"Then talk," says Bakugou.
"Not here," says Deku, gesturing toward the treeline with his head. He walks off. Bakugou follows.
Not long ago, Bakugou would have balked at following Deku's back. A lot's changed. They walk silently into the trees, Bakugou growing ever more excited for the confrontation to come, the thrill of a battle he's already won. They come to a clearing and Deku stops, turning to face him. Bakugou doesn't bother to wipe the smile off his face.
"I've thought long and hard about this," says Deku, looking straight at him. He doesn't fiddle or mumble; they are both focused only on each other. "And I decided I had to tell you, just how I feel." Deku steps toward him; Bakugou does the same. "You see, Kacchan, I really, really…"
I win, I win, beats a tattoo in his heart, and it takes all his willpower not to shout 'Me too, me too!' before Deku even finishes.
"I really hate you, you know?"
His heart stops. The anticipatory feeling in his stomach turns sour. His head is full of static. Deku smiles.
"Wow," he says, with a touch of breathless glee. "It feels so freeing to finally say it to you! I hate you. I haaaate you!" He laughs. Bakugou is frozen to the spot. "You look so surprised! You must have known, surely? What's there to like? You're so cruel, Kacchan~! So weak— oh." Bakugou doesn't realise he's moved until his fists are balled in Deku's shirt. Deku grins at him, eyes fever-bright with amusement. "Ooh, have we struck a nerve?"
Before he knows what's happening, Deku's sprayed something in his face and hooked a leg behind his knee to topple him over. He still has his hands in Deku's shirt, so they both go over; by the time they hit the ground the static's turned to cotton wool in his head and he can barely resist having his hands moved. "Boys like you are soooooo easy once you find the right button, huh~?" coos what's increasingly obviously not Deku. The rage at this fucking shit happening to him again is overtaken only by relief. "Find the right one and boooom, guard down, easy peasy!"
Bakugou says what the fuck, which comes out as "Oh thank fuck." He tries for an explosion, but whatever the fake dosed him with turns everything hazy and confusing; moving feels like wading through tar and he barely manages a pop. He feels a too-tight grip on the wrist of the offending hand, a sting almost sharp enough to knock his senses back in order, followed by something damp that feels deeply uncomfortable.
"Ooh," says the fake Deku, hovering over him, mouth wide in a hysterical grin. Is that blood on their lips? "That's like cinder toffee! No wonder he wants you~"
"What the fuck," Bakugou says again, significantly more slurred. He knees the fake in the gut - or tries to. His body won't move how he wants and his increasingly blurred vision would have fucked with his aim anyway. The fake coos again, rubbing a thumb across his cheek in a way raises his hackles, and he tries again.
"Gosh, you're so cute like this, I almost want to play longer! Buuut~", says the fake, pinching his nose as their face gets — goopy? what the fuck? — "First I've got to give my sweetheart juuuuuust what he wants. Right, Kacchan?"
The last thing he sees before blacking out is a funhouse mirror reflection grinning down at him.
Bakugou comes to abruptly in a bush. The sun's still up so he can't have been out long. He checks his pockets and adds mugging to the rap sheet for the fake creep. Would being dumb enough to leave him his phone have been too much to ask?
In standing up - and maybe the impostor will get a reduced sentence for leaving him somewhere no one can see how many attempts that takes - Bakugou notes the neat cut across the length of his palm, still bleeding sluggishly. He has the distinct feeling the creeper licked it, which sends an involuntary grossed-out shiver through him.
He has no fucking clue where he is, other than the fact it's probably still on campus, so he starts walking in the direction that feels vaguely uphill. That itself is a challenge, as he's still dizzy and his legs have been replaced by overcooked noodles. Whoever thought of sticking a school in the middle of a mini-forest would usually get his kudos, but right now catches his ire.
Stumbling around like a toddler, that ire turns inward quick. It pisses him off to 1) be in this pathetic state because of his own idiocy, 2) have completely missed the tells that had caught the impostor the days prior just because he was getting excited/ragey, and 3) not have once considered the little creep might be a fucking villain. Once everything stopped spinning he was exploding someone for sure.
Bakugou walks into three different trees, gets tangled in a vine, and trips on a bush — each time considering going full terrible twos until someone shows up to tell him to shut the fuck up — before he finally hears signs of life. He nearly faceplants into another bush when he sees himself.
It's uncanny. They're wearing his clothes, imitating his slouch perfectly, hands stuffed in pockets per habit, even standing the right fucking distance from—
"Deku," growls his voice from the impostors body, and Bakugou fails to explode outward from his position and smash the fake in the face only as a result of the lasting effects of whatever they dosed him with. "I'm in love with you."
His heart stops again, because that— that was fucking— perfect, straight to the point, extremely him, he can't see the idiot nerds face but he was gonna fucking fall for it—
"Kacchan," says Deku. "I- I also—"
"I want to kiss you," says the fake, and they both close the distance to make it happen. Bakugou fumbles into action, thinking how he could probably just barrel into Deku to get him out of the creeps clutches, when—
—once close enough, Deku executes a hip throw with a roar that makes Bakugou almost wince, pinning the fake face-down on the forest floor one-handed before they can get their wits about them. It takes seconds.
Bakugou has never felt more attracted to a person in his life.
"The fuck, Deku?" rasps Bakugou.
"The fuck, Deku?!" yells the fake in time. They try and get out of his hold, but Bakugou knows Deku is a solid wall of stubborn muscle under the shrimpy exterior, and the only way out is to not get pinned in the first place. "I'm bearing my fucking heart here!"
"You'd have to try a hell of a lot harder to trick me!" yells Deku back. "One! Kacchan's frown is at 80 degrees, not 90! Two! Smell!"
"Smell?!" repeats Bakugou, finally in range. They both look up at him. The fake curses, and Deku grins at him, eyes bright with righteousness.
"Three! Kacchan would never confess like that!"
Bakugou doesn't sigh, because he's not relieved, but he does drop to the ground just close enough to give the fake him a kick in the arm. "Good luck getting one past the guy who's been obsessed with me since we were born." The fake pouts at him, which is a frankly disturbing expression to see on his own face.
"Can I have a kissy anyway, Izuku? I made myself into what you like! Pleeeeaaaaase?" The fake starts making chuu noises, which Bakugou can only tune out by groaning increasingly loudly.
"Make that stop," he tells Deku, who is ignoring both of them to try and do something with his phone in his free hand. "It's creeping me out. Cut that shit out!" he yells at the fake, who just sticks their tongue out at him. Bakugou tries a pop with his good hand; it's weaker than intended with his still messed-up senses, so it'll take longer than normal to explode the fakes face off, but he's got nothing else planned for the next hour.
"Kacchan," says Deku, disapproving. "A teacher will be along in a minute, just ignore her til then."
That's increasingly difficult, when they keep saying gross embarrassing shit to Deku with his voice, but eventually he gets his respite in the form of Aizawa and Midnight showing up to cart them away, back in their own gross body thanks to his teachers quirk. Deku didn't look surprised at seeing the face of the knife freak Toga, whose attempts to up the yandere factor were cut short by Midnight knocking her out, thank fuck. Aizawa gives him and Deku a typically reproachful look, but does give Bakugou his phone back and leave them to it, so he can't be too mad.
Deku joins him on the forest floor and starts pulling leaves out of his hair. "You look like you lost a fight with some shrubs."
"Fuck you, I won." Bakugou shoves him over for good measure, which has Deku laughing right up til they both realise he'd done it with his still-bleeding hand. Deku drags him upright to walk him somewhere with a strong grasp on the wrist of his good hand, and keeps making fretting noises, which just winds him up. "Will you stop? I'm fucking fine dumbass!"
"You can't walk in a straight line, Kacchan…"
"I'm a hand down, dizzy as all hell and a strong wind could blow me over, sure. I can still take you down, you little nerd," says Bakugou. "Ergo, just peachy."
"What even happened to you?"
"This is all courtesy of your murder girlfriend," says Bakugou, gesturing vaguely at himself. "She dosed me with some bullshit and fucking licked me, Deku. You better dump her."
Instead of rising to the dig, Deku puts his deep thoughts face on and starts muttering. "How did she get in close enough, given your reaction time? Was it the disappearing trick or did she look like me? Uraraka said that Kaminari told Ashido you'd been catching a lookalike out all week, so your guard would have been up, unless—" he stops abruptly, and Bakugou walks into him. Deku grasps his shoulders, with a look of dawning horror that almost makes him laugh. "K-Kacchan, did she beat me to it? Did she do the same to you as to me?? Noooooooooo!"
"No, you idiot," says Bakugou, flicking him in the forehead to make him stop. "She just said some bullshit that wound me up." Just the content of his own worst fears from the past month. "Won't happen again. How'd you catch her out anyway?"
"Wellll," Deku says, resuming dragging him along. "I wasn't kidding, the smell was a big part of it?"
"That's fuckin' creepy even for you, stalker."
"It's very distinctive! The glycerin in your sweat always smells like bitter toffee!"
Bakugou stares at Deku, who pulls his half-embarrassed half-shameless fanboy face, the one he uses when he realises the useless factoid he's produced comes from way down a rabbit hole, but still feels some pride at having delved down there himself. "There were some other tells, just small things that added up. And there was that confession."
"Other than saying it first, that was the most convincing part of the impression, Deku."
"Kacchan." Deku stops again to look straight at him, eyes bright, like he can see to the core of him. "There's no way you could do it like that."
"Yeah," says Bakugou, "Because I'm not dumb enough to say it first. Confessee holds all the cards."
Deku frowns, and pulls half his mouth back in disagreement. "Not true, Kacchan — the confessor picks the location, timing, tone — they decide the flow of events, it's the power position!"
"The recipient decides how the fight ends!"
"But they only re-act!" Deku sighs, and pulls a distinctly disappointed face, scratching at his cheek with his index finger. "I set things up so you'd try and beat me to it, but you were never going to, huh Kacchan? Even now there are things I don't understand about you…"
Bakugou fucking knew it. Deku was the least subtle mastermind of all time. That still left a huge question mark, though. "Then — what the hell twigged you? That was picture perfect for what I'd do."
"Okay," says Deku. "Then do it now."
Bakugou does not.
Deku laughs. "See, that's how I knew. That might be how you imagine it in your head, but Kacchan's confession would be more like… um, when your friends do something nice for you and you won't just say thank you, so you do something nice back but say something mean and stalk off! Either that, or you would just start yelling and exploding things."
There's no way that's true. There's also no way Bakugou is going to evaluate any of his recent interactions to prove Deku wrong. He also can't start yelling and exploding things like he wants to, as that would just prove the little nerd right. "Says the fucking motormouth here? Trained interpreters would have trouble picking any confession out of your mumbling."
"See, there's the mean side already…"
The fakes words suddenly loom large. You're so cruel, Kacchan. "Yeah, well," he says, at a loss. "You must hate —" me "— that."
"Hmm," says Deku. He must see something Bakugou doesn't intend, as he steps closer, right into his space, giving him that analytical look that usually starts a screaming match. "Sometimes, yeah. It makes things harder than they need to be."
"Then you can just—"
"But," says Deku, turning the grip on his wrist to two hands holding his good one, when Bakugou tries to step back. His eyes are bright and determined. "I've always seen the good and bad parts of you together. I know what I'm getting into, and I love the whole Kacchan best, warts and all."
Oh.
Oh.
Bakugou rescinds his previous position immediately. The confessee has no fucking power in this exchange, there's no way he can return a direct hit like that. Deku's finally found a way to beat him.
He looks away, knowing his face must be as red as Deku's fucking shoes — he has some pride to maintain. His hand is squeezed in return.
"Say it again," says Bakugou, after a pause. His voice definitely doesn't crack at the end.
"What, really?" says Deku, tugging on his hand to try and get Bakugou to face him again. There's a tinge of teasing in his voice. "Did I say it too fast for you?"
"You didn't say it loud enough! There's some bullshit needs drowning out of my head, get on with it!"
"Okay," says Deku, with a clear thread of glee. "Lets try some variants. Kacchan, I like you best!"
"Again."
"You're my most important person!"
"Again!"
Deku lets go of his hand. He wonders why. "You're the only one for me!"
"Keep going, nerd!"
"No," says Deku, who is suddenly right in his face again, his hand snaking round the back of Bakugou's head, closing the small height difference. He's smiling. "I think the first version worked best. Kacchan, I love you." Deku pulls his head down further, kissing him squarely on the forehead, then softly on the lips, smiling throughout. Bakugou learns there must be hitherto unknown explosive sweat glands in his face, based how it feels like it's combusted. Deku keeps them close together, still grinning like a dork and looking at him expectantly.
"Me too!" he blurts out uncontrollably, volume control shot. Deku starts giggling. "Fucking— don't laugh! I said it!!"
"You almost did!" says Deku, grasping his hand and leading him along again. "That's how I know it's the real you!"
"You think I can't do it?!"
"Do things at your own pace, Kacchan~"
"FINE, what the hell, I l-LOVE YOU TOO, DIPSHIT, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!"
Deku's eyes are sparking and maybe, just maybe, that's worth the aneurysm likely to do him in any second. "Ecstatic," says Deku, and finally shuts the hell up, turning just as red as him.
When they finally make it back to the dorms, both Kirishima and Uraraka are waiting expectantly. When Kirishima gives a thumbs up at his and Deku's linked hands, Bakugou decides the moratorium on yelling and exploding things is over.