Chapter Text
“Did anyone else not finish their math homework last night?” Denki asks, shoving himself between Hanta and Katsuki’s body as they walk down the hallway of their school. He throws his arm around their shoulder and pressed them closer to him like the world’s most fucked up version of a threesome. It’s a miracle that they didn’t stumble head first to the floor with every step that they take. “Please tell me I’m not alone.”
“Just you, buddy,” Hanta says, patting Denki’s hand hanging off his shoulder consolingly. “Told you not to procrastinate and play games instead.”
“Awe, damn,” says Denki, making a face. “Aizawa is going to kill me if I don’t turn my homework in again.”
“And with your luck, Aizawa-sensei just might throw us a pop quiz in too,” Hana says with a teasing jab to Denki’s side.
Denki whimpers helplessly and drops his arm from Hanta’s shoulder. “Don’t jinx me!” He turns to Katsuki with a haunted look in his eyes and desperation clinging to his words. “Please help me out or I’ll die bro. You’re my only hope, mister-rank-number-one-on-the-midterm-exams.”
“Then die,” Katsuki says flatly, shoving Denki off of him. “I’m not letting you copy my homework.”
Not deterred at all, Denki pushes forward anyway back into Katsuki’s space. “At least let me see your notes then?” he asks, hopes alight in his eyes.
Katsuki snorts, walking faster because at the snail pace speed they’re currently at he’s going to be late and it’s be all those bastards’ fault. He’s not going to screw up his perfect attendance this year again for their ass. “Dream the fuck on,” he says, mercilessly crushing that flicker of hope beneath his shoe.
“Katsuki, you heartless jerk! Stone cold as always,” Denki grumbles behind his back. “Does anything ever move you?”
“If it's not something he can’t make a competition out of and also systemically destroy his oppositions, then no,” Hanta points out with a gravity that prickles at Katsuki.
Instead of retaliating against that comment, Katsuki chooses to ignore it and continues to march right toward their destination with the two shitheads trailing closely behind him as they bicker endlessly between them.
Katsuki pulls to a sudden stop at large thick door of 3-A and yanks it open. Familiar faces scattered throughout the classroom greet him upon entry and he strolls into the classroom without a single word, even as heads jerk up at the sight of him making his way toward his desk.
The second he’s close to his desk, his morning is bulldozed over by an annoyance in the form of Izuku and his fucking groupies. Through some great cosmic joke or Aizawa’s sick sense of humor, his seat and Izuku’s are always in near vicinity with each other for the third year in a roll and for someone who was such a loner and outcast in the junior high, Izuku is startlingly popular in U.A.—which is fucking irritating, especially when there’s a small crowd forming around Izuku’s desk made up of nearly all the girls in their class and, unsurprisingly, Eijirou too, this morning.
“Oh wow, Midoriya-chan!” Asui says, excitement thick in her voice. “You look so good with it.”
“Don’t you love how that color works so well on his complexion?” Yaoyorozu asks, waving something black, small, and tubular in her hand. “I’m glad we went with this shade.”
“Hey, hey you girls shouldn’t treat Midoriya like he’s your toy,” Eijirou points out. “He’s not your plaything.”
“What are you trying to say,” Mina huffs, putting a hand on her hip and that’s all the cue Eijirou need to quickly backtrack his earlier comment.
“Uh, I just meant—” Eijirou scratches the back of his head and then turns to Izuku, whistling appreciatively at him. “Damn, Midoriya, you really do look good. You actually managed to pull it off pretty well. I’m impressed, man.”
“Thanks, Kirishima-kun, and I don’t mind,” Izuku answers quietly through the sea of bodies in front of him, because he’s fucking weak and has the annoying inability not say no. “It’s fun and I like it.”
Katsuki can feel a throbbing headache in the back of his head already starting to form and it’s just too early for this kind of shit. “Fucking move it, you shitheads, and get back to your seat already,” he snaps and forcibly throws his bag on his desk with a loud bang. “Can’t you see how annoying you fucks are?”
The group jump and turn around to catch sight of Katsuki’s glowering face.
“Geez, Bakugou,” Uraraka roll her eyes, “can’t you just ask us to get out of the way more nicely?” she says.
“Fine. Move your ass or I’ll move it for you,” Katsuki says and pauses to flash his teeth, all bite. “Please.”
Uraraka scoffs and rolls her eyes again in exasperation but she and the rest finally take the fucking hint and disperse back to their seat with a quick bye to Izuku.
The second they clear out of the way, relief swiftly takes root within him but it’s immediately cut short when he finally get a good and cleared view of Izuku without all those moving bodies blocking his view.
“Good morning, Kacchan,” Izuku greets him with a cheery wave, and a red smile blooms across his face.
Katsuki stops, his breath hitches, and his heart gives a painful squeeze. Red, the mutinous color, swims into his view in the form of a lipstick painted on Izuku’s lips in rouge, smearing across his face like an incitement to riot; the color courses hot and loud through Katsuki’s body and burning every common sense to ashes, till all Katsuki has left is the rosy-tinted view of Izuku’s infuriating scarlet lips.
His eyes cut away and he breathes, slow and steady as he gathers his bearings again. Katsuki won’t be shaken right here, right now.
“Kacchan?” Izuku tries again when Katsuki hasn’t returned a single word to his greeting.
“Tch, whatever,” Katsuki says instead, gluing his gaze to the front of the room as he drops down on his seat. His hands clench tightly under the table, nails digging into the palm of his flesh till the pain is enough of a distracting factor that it erases all traces of the red that is tinting his vision.
He could feel Izuku’s eyes on him the entire time like pinpricks against his skin, scrutinizing his every move and reading too much into everything Katsuki hadn’t say but he won’t look back. He can’t. Fuck, fuck, fuck Izuku and those red lips of his.
It’s obscene and offensive. What a fucking joke all of this is because it’s not like Izuku had up and went to rearranged the structure of his entire face all of a sudden. Familiar unruly green hair and bright matching green eyes with freckles that sit high on his cheekbones, Izuku looks about the same as Katsuki had last seen him the night before with the rest of their classmates in their dorm but his lips are currently stained red and that’s not fucking okay.
Izuku have always been annoyingly good at getting under his skin, slyly slipping his way pass Katsuki’s ironclad defenses but this time he’s bulldozing his way through the metal walls on a head-on collision course and he isn’t taking any prisoner either; Katsuki doesn’t know how to not be affected by it.
“Damnit,” he says under his breath, body going rigid as his feet start to tap on the floor in beat to the count in his head.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
The seconds ticking by too slowly for his taste and Izuku, that little shit, don’t even pretend he isn’t casting a furtive glance at Katsuki every now and then like Katsuki can’t feel the weight of it on him. Just—fuck.
Aizawa’s unhurried entrance to their class is marked by the abrupt stop in the lull in the conversation around the class. They all quickly scatter and rush back into their seat as Aizawa takes his time to stand in front of the class. With Aizawa’s entry, Katsuki’s shoulders finally relax and his insistent foot tapping draws to a stop.
He looks out into the sea of students and his eyes, unsurprisingly, soon lands on Izuku. Aizawa stares at Izuku deliberately for not even three seconds, eyes falling to Izuku’s red mouth before he turns back to the class. “We’re having a pop quiz on your English homework last night,” he declares unprompted.
No comment. Not a single word passes Aizawa lips. He didn’t even pretend to care as though he’s so used to the weirdness of Class A that if a boy from his class suddenly chose to wear lipstick one day it is not even worthy of a response from him. Aizawa’s insistent to remain in a state of apathy is grating in moments like this. Katsuki wants Izuku to be called out, for Aizawa to use his damn authority to actually do something about it, and to straight up tell Izuku to knock it off and get that fucking thing off his face this instance but no. No.
It’s here to stay and Katsuki have no power to rid of it.
A series of groans and moans ripple through the class, and Eijirou is the loudest of them all.
“Aw, sensei,” Mina says, from the front row. “A pop quiz this early in the morning?”
“Have mercy on us, please,” Denki begs, two seats down from his.
“If you really don’t want to take the quiz then I won’t force you. This will be optional for everyone,” Aizawa says and just as the class immediately perks up at the idea, he heartlessly crushes it underneath his boots, “but you’ll be taking a zero for the day, so is there anyone who doesn’t want to take it then?” Aizawa is met with a wall of silence and not a single movement from the class. “Good,” he says finally. “You forty-five minutes to finish.”
“That’s not a quiz, sensei!” Eijirou bemoans.
Aizawa levels Eijirou a look. “It is what I said it is it,” he replies. He takes out a stack of papers and hands it off to Iida before crawling into his sleeping bag to nap as Iida pass it out to the rest of the class.
“Kacchan,” Izuku says, leaning over the gap that divided their desk. He’s close enough that Katsuki can feel the warm of Izuku’s breath against his right ear. “I’m sure you do great but good luck anyway!”
Katsuki stiffens and heart thudding loudly in his chest as the hair on the back of his neck stands up. He thinks of Izuku’s red mouth close in on him as he talks, each word drawn out with the curve of his lips and the deep swat of crimson across it like a bold brush stroke across a blank canvas. It’s all Katsuki can see in his head. Red, red, and red and Izuku dyeing over and over again in his color.
But he kills it, mashes the canvas over his knee and set whatever remains of it on fire. Katsuki doesn’t need. Doesn’t want it. It’s all an unnecessary distraction right now.
When the quiz arrives on his desk, Katsuki quickly gets to work and push of all other meaningless disruption from his head. The only thing that requires all his entire focus is the wall of text in front of him. The careful groundwork of the laying down the proper grammar, syntax, and punctuation of each answer takes center stage for him. Katsuki’s heart rate eventually settles down to the routine of translating from Japanese to English and back, and just for a little bit, he doesn’t think about anything else.
Katsuki is the first one to finish. He claims that victory decisively over the heads of his classmates through hours and hours of studying beforehand and to the bitter taste of the last time he fell two spots behind Yaoyorozu and Todoroki a previous test.
He twirls his pen between his fingers as he waits for the rest of the class to finish. Some have their head bent down in frustration as they look at the paper in front of them bleakly while other look up the ceiling in hope, seeking help and inspiration where they could not find it anywhere else, and then there are the few that are unfazed and methodically tearing through the test with an ease of someone who as confident of their answer, but none of them seem close to finishing yet.
With a sense of superiority and secured in his victory, Katsuki surveys the class silently and, for a second, he looked toward his right, where his eyes immediately zero in on Izuku hunching over his table, brows pinched in deliberation and pencils moving rapidly across the pages. Izuku’s pencil suddenly stops, hovering over a lengthy paragraph and he frowns. He bites down on his pencil, red lips wrapping around the head of it as he looks at his paper in an intense concentration and right beside him, Katsuki abruptly snaps the pen in his hand in half.
Black ink explodes all over Katsuki’s hand and some of it drips down toward his table. Katsuki jumps right out of his seat, his chair falling backward in a loud bang as he grabs his paper away before the droplet of ink could damage all his hard work.
His surrounding neighbors jerk up in their seat at the crash and Katsuki finds all eyes fall on him in an instant.
“Kacchan!” Izuku shouts, concern thick in his voice. “Are you alright?” He reaches out toward Katsuki as though to steady him but Katsuki immediately pulls back.
Hurt flickers across Izuku’s face but it’s quickly gone and replace with a stark confusion. “Kacchan?” he says again.
Katsuki ignores him because this is all Izuku’s fucking fault, to begin with. Instead, he looks down at the blotches of black on his desk and ink all over his hand and sees his escape right then.
Hanta, sitting in the seat in front of him, looks back at him with a raised brow. “Hey, is everything okay with you man?” he asks.
“’m fine. Worry about yourself more,” Katsuki snaps and turn his eyes toward the front where Aizawa is supposedly taking his nap but he knows that’s not true. Aizawa is always attentive even when he doesn’t look like it. “Excuse me, sensei, but I’m going to need to use the restroom.” He raises his inked stained hand up as proof.
Aizawa’s eyes flutter open and he sluggishly raises his head up to look at Katsuki. “In the middle of a quiz, Bakugou?” he asks flatly, unimpressed. His voice is clear and strong, not all sounding like someone who had just woke up.
Katsuki grits his teeth and squares his jaw. “I’ve already finished mine,” he replies.
“So fast!” he hears someone says in the back.
“Damn, I’m not even halfway through,” another hiss, sounding a lot like Eijirou.
Aizawa gives him a pointed look that knows exactly why Katsuki wants to leave right now and it has nothing with the ink all over his hand but the boy right next to him. Katsuki beats down the flush that threatens to rise in his cheeks but stands his ground and it takes a moment before, finally, Aizawa gives his assent. “Fine, just go,” he says dismissively, and that’s all the permission Katsuki needed.
He flees right out of the classroom before anyone can utter another word but not before the corner of his eyes catches sight of Izuku’s concerned face and the way his teeth sink down on his lower lip in thought, white on red and red on white, cutting a swath of color that ripple across the surface of Katsuki’s carefully laid foundation of control.
That image of Izuku’s bitten lips, plump and flushed red, dogged his every step through the winding hallways of the building and Katsuki almost trip over his own two feet thinking about it. Katsuki’s perverted mind twists that image and another into something lewd and wrong, a pornographic reel of Izuku’s red mouth falling on the head of something harder and bigger before drawing back, eyes hooded as he tucks in his lower lips between his teeth in an uncontrollable pleasure and then he parts them for more. The scene plays over and over again in an endless tortuous loop and this isn’t how Katsuki wanted to go out.
He is not that weak or pathetic to ever fall like this, but the flesh is weak—
Fucking hell.
Katsuki storms into the bathroom and thankfully it’s empty. It’s mid-class still for the majority of student population so there’s nobody here to witness his embarrassing meltdown as he heads right toward the sink. He turns on the faucet all the way to as cold as possible and ignoring his stained hand, he splashes his face with the icy water in the middle of autumn.
Katsuki stares down at his wet hands and they’re trembling but it’s not from the cold he knows. He thinks of Izuku and he thinks of Izuku’s red, red lips and how it is slowly killing him.
He doesn’t know what Izuku is trying to do but it’s as good as a declaration of war as any. There’s nothing innocuous and accidental about it Izuku choosing to wear a red lipstick to class. It’s too purposeful and calculating; especially now, after that particular incident at the gym between them and Katsuki deciding that he was going to avoid Izuku for the next couple of days because of it.
He’d already expected that Izuku would not be taking being ignored well, that little shit has never been good at having to give up any part of Katsuki up, but he didn’t expect Izuku to do this. Katsuki was prepared for anything but not Izuku and his fucking weaponized scarlet lips. It’s fucked up and dirty because Katsuki got no defense against that.
He bangs his head against the mirror and, “Fuck,” he mutters. Of fucking course, Izuku has to ruin his entire day already and it only just gotten started; for the very first time in along time, this is a war Katsuki isn't sure if he can win.