Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first thing Katsuki did after he was struck by lightning and given magical exploding hands, was become a superhero. Because when you have the opportunity to become your very own not-so-friendly neighbourhood exploding Spiderman, how do you not become your very own not-so-friendly neighbourhood exploding Spiderman?

Fighting crime and kicking supervillains in the dick had been everything Katsuki could have ever hoped for. There was nothing better than justified violence and Katsuki didn’t care how controversial his alter ego, ‘Ground Zero’, was to the citizens he was protecting. He was kicking ass and looking cool doing it; and if he caused some destruction of property along the way, then at least it was in the name of justice.

What he hadn’t accounted for in the whole superhero deal was the inclusion of his very own ‘Damsel in Distress™’. That wouldn’t have been an issue, but his ‘Damsel™’ had turned out to be Deku, as in, the guy who worked for the same paper he freelanced at. As in, the kid he’d been in love with since he was a fucking child and had no way to express such complex feelings except through cruel bullying fuelled by his old superiority complexes. That Deku. The same Deku he was now saving from burning buildings and the clutches of evil and mortal danger in general every other week.

Well, if he didn’t save the nerd, who would?

Which was why he was landing on top of a building far away from his most recent destruction site, with his damsel, Deku, thrown over his shoulder. Okay, maybe damsel was the wrong word, Deku could kick a hole in a concrete wall if he wasn’t such a fucking pacifist, but it was the best Katsuki could come up with, shut up. 

“Do you have to carry me like that?” Deku asked, brushing himself off after Katsuki had put him down.

“Do you have to keep getting into danger like that?” Katsuki retorted, rolling his eyes for the sake of no one but himself; it wasn’t like Deku could see under the mask. 

Deku crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s not like you have to save me.”

“I wouldn’t be a very good superhero if I let you die.”

“You aren’t a very good superhero in the first place!”

“…Touché.” 

Deku held his disparaging look for a moment longer before it cracked under a soft laugh. He dropped his arms to his sides and looked away. “Thanks, again.” He sighed. “It’s not like I’m trying to get into trouble.”

“I know.” Katsuki shrugged and leant against the first wall like structure he could find. “It’s not like it’s your fault. Heroes need a damsel, whether they want one or not.”

Deku scoffed across from him, an indignant look spreading across his face. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“This was what, the tenth, eleventh time I’ve saved you so far? You’ve gotta admit D… Izuku, that this is getting a bit too much for coincidence.” Saying Deku’s actual first name like that was awkward, but it didn’t seem like Deku had noticed his slip. “Like it or not, you’ve become my designated Lois Lane.”

“Zero, I never agreed to be your Lois Lane.”

Katsuki raised an eyebrow at him, not that Deku could see it. “What if I asked first?”

“What?”

“Then would you agree to be my Lois Lane?”

“I…” Deku stared at him, dumbstruck, before dissolving into a quiet bout of giggles. “Maybe. I… I don’t know,” he squeezed out between stifled laughter. “You can try.”

Katsuki blinked, feeling a distinct heat wash over his face and was suddenly very glad that he was wearing a mask. He shook it off and stood up, putting his bullheadedness to good use.

He snatched up one of Deku’s hands and asked in the most melodramatic way he could muster under the surge of embarrassment, “Izuku Midoriya, would you do me the honour of being the Lois Lane to my Superman?”

Deku did well to maintain his rapidly degrading posture as he replied, “If you agree to continue to save me, in sickness and in health, forever and always?”

Katsuki snorted. “I do, I guess.”

Deku nodded. “Very well. I do, too.”

Nodding, Katsuki dropped Deku’s hand and stepped back. “Well… that’s good.” Suffice to say he had no idea what he was meant to do now and defaulted to all he knew: running away before the situation became too awkward to handle. “I’ll, err… see you first thing Monday then.” Katsuki bit his tongue, catching his flub about work a second too late.

“I’d certainly hope I can go a few days without getting into mortal peril.”

It took everything Katsuku had not to audibly sigh in relief at Deku’s denseness. “We’ll see.”

And with that, Katsuki leapt off the side of the building and blasted off into the night like a human sized rocket, but not without catching the ‘Goodbye!’ Deku yelled after him.

Chapter Text

This early in the morning, the newsroom was quiet. People getting to work in desperate need of caffeine, greeting their colleagues and preparing to receive their work for the day. The constant whirr of technology never really went away, but calm like this was rare, and one would be foolish not to savour it.

Katsuki breathed in the thick musk of exhaustion and dread of overtime before kicking the door shut behind him. He winced as he shrugged off his rain-soaked coat, muscles still sore after a night full of city saving.

“Morning, Kacchan!”

Katsuki turned to see Deku approaching him, a broad smile on his face, a file under his arm, and two fresh cups of coffee in his hands.

He grunted by way of a return greeting.

Deku held one of the mugs out. “Someone looks like shit.”

“Yeah, well,” Katsuki grumbled, snatching the proffered cup and taking a large gulp. “You’d look like shit too if you’d had the night I had.”

“I wouldn’t say my night was particularly uneventful,” Deku said with a shy smile.

Katsuki rolled his eyes and continued onto where his desk space was, Deku still trailing along behind him. “Yeah, I know. I was up all night investigating your little escapades with Ground Zero.”

Katsuki didn’t look, he didn’t want to look, but he knew that Deku’s face had started burning red. It always did when Ground Zero was brought up.

“Oh, right.” Deku laughed awkwardly. “Did you get anything good?”

“Of course I fucking did, it’s me. What kind of question is that?” Katsuki set his cup down with a little too much force, spilling coffee over the desk. He grumbled and wiped it up with his sleeve before collapsing into the desk chair. He spun around to look up at Deku (his face was definitely red) and crossed his arms. “Any comments you’d like to add, Mister I-was-there-getting-my-stupid-ass-saved-for-the-hundredth-time?”

Deku hesitated for a moment, biting his lip in thought, (which was an image Katsuki really shouldn’t be left alone with) before he eagerly moved to sit on Katsuki’s desk.

“Kacchan, you should have been there!”

“I was. I was in the press crowd outside the building.”

“No, no, I mean there there. Up in the tower. It was so cool!”

Katsuki slumped back in his chair and settled in for what was going to be a long ride. “Actually, I’m quite happy that I wasn’t in the middle of a fight between two superhumans.”

“Shush, you know what I mean,” Deku said, flapping his hand at Katsuki’s face. “It’s one thing hearing about what Zero does, but it’s a whole other thing actually seeing it. He’s just incredible!”

Katsuki nodded, turning to switch his computer on. Deku would go on like this forever if Katsuki let him, and it was difficult getting him to stop.

“…and the way he barely lets the villain touch him. And he ducks and swerves and punches and then…” Deku made a gesture that looked vaguely like an explosion.

“Sounds great,” Katsuki muttered, reaching for the cup of coffee, hoping to hide his scowl behind it.

“He is… Do you ever wonder how long he’s had his power? It must be a long time, he’s so good at controlling it. When he uses it against people they never come out in blisters or anything. It’s like he can choose how physically dangerous it is, yknow?”

Katsuki hummed in acknowledgement again, joggling the mouse to get the computer working. He bent down to plug his memory pen into the pc, thankful again for the ability to hide his face from Deku.

Katsuki probably should have told him to stop, but for as much as he loathed all of Deku’s blabbering about Ground Zero, there wasn’t a force on this earth that could make Katsuki put out the fire that burned in Deku’s eyes whenever he started. It wasn’t that often Katsuki got to see that side of Deku, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to squander the chance to now.

“I just wish he’d hang around a little more, he always leaves before I get the chance to ask him anything meaningful, yknow?”

Deku paused for a moment, staring into space and kicking his feet back and forth underneath the desk. Katsuki risked a glance up at him, at the dreamy look of adoration painted across his face, and felt his gut clench. He quickly snapped his eyes back on the monitor, his fingers rapidly tapping on the back of the mouse.

“I don’t know, there’s just something about him that’s always lacking from your articles,” Deku said.

Katsuki snorted. “So you’re saying that my writing’s shit, is that it?”

“What!?” Deku yelped, whipping his head round, hands jerking so that his now lukewarm coffee sloshed in the mug and over his hand. “No! I’d never say that, you’re amazing at writing, it’s just…” he trailed off when he finally looked down at Katsuki’s self-satisfied smirk. Deku huffed.

“Amazing, am I? Well, I already knew that.”

“Kacchan.”

Katsuki’s smile broadened as he turned back to the computer. “Come on, watching you panic is hilarious.”

“Not for me," Deku complained, drying his hand on his shirt.

“But it wouldn’t be funny if you liked it.”

Deku rolled his eyes and set his mug down next to Katsuki’s. “Seriously though. I mean nothing against your writing,” he paused to throw Katsuki the stink eye, “but there’s something about Zero that’s just… impossible to put into words, yknow? The aspect heroes like him have that comics somehow always fail to capture.”

Katsuki felt like someone had driven a pike through his chest.

He wanted to come out and tell Deku there and then that he was Ground Zero, just so he could have those adoring eyes on him, and not the person he pretended to be.

But no.

If Deku knew, he’d stop talking that way in an instant. There was nothing about Katsuki without the mask worthy of such reverence. Not after everything he’d done and said to Deku. No matter how long it had been, no matter that they’d mended the rift between them years ago, Katsuki wasn’t so stupid as to delude himself like that.

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“I knew you would.” Deku smiled and hopped off of the desk, securing the file under his arm. “I’d better get to work, though.” He picked up the mug and nestled it between his palms.

“I don’t know if I should even bother with mine, seeing as I’ll never be able to really get the essence of the visionary that is Ground Zero.”

Deku poked him with his elbow and shook his head. “You’ll get closer than anyone else ever could.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Katsuki swatted him away. “Go do whatever inferior story you've got lined up; I’ll see you at lunch.”

As Deku nodded and left, Katsuki felt the space behind his shoulder where Deku had been grow cold. He grit his teeth and took a deep breath. He couldn’t slack, especially not for useless unrequited feelings. Even superheroes had to meet rent after all.

Though no one said he couldn’t meet it while sulking.

Chapter Text

The night started off familiar: almost midnight, the roof of Deku’s apartment building, slinging Deku unceremoniously onto said rooftop. All in a night’s heroing for Ground Zero.

“Thanks… again.”

Katsuki shrugged. “I’d tell you to stop getting into trouble but at this point I think you’ve lost all choice in the matter.”

“Maybe, but at least you’re always there to save me.”

“I can’t have you dying on me now, can I?”

Deku laughed and grinned, and judging by the way it made Katsuki’s heart hiccough, he figured that it was time to leave.

Katsuki turned to step onto the edge of the roof. “Right, well, there’s a whole lot more city to keep safe so…”

“Wait.” Deku lunged forward and grabbed Katsuki’s wrist, something he was not expecting.

“Fucking hell, Izuku, this is a roof.”

“S-sorry, it’s just…” Deku dropped Katsuki’s wrist and looked off to the side. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Katsuki stared at Deku, not sure if he should let this happen or if he should bolt. Bolting sounded good, because it also had the plus side of Deku having less to gush about at work the next day. On the other hand, it had been a long time since Katsuki was in the habit of refusing Deku anything the world had to offer.

“And what’s that?”

For a moment it looked like Deku was too stunned to follow the request up with an actual question. But his expression quickly turned from shock to determination.

“Why did you become a hero?”

Katsuki blinked at him. “Are you saying that I’d make a better villain?”

“No.” Deku rolled his eyes. “Just… when did you decide you were going to do this?”

“You do know this isn’t my only job, right?”

“For goodness sake, Zero, just answer the question.”

It was an easy question, Katsuki didn’t even have to think about it.

“I knew I’d be a hero the second I got my power. I mean, you don’t get something like this and then not become a superhero, yknow?”

Deku’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “So you immediately knew that you wanted to help people?! That’s so cool!”

Katsuki had to force himself not to burst out into uncontrollable laughter. “Fuck no.”

“Huh?” The way Deku’s face dropped almost made him wish he’d just live up to his hero fantasy, but Katsuki wasn’t about to lie to him (as hypocritical as that sounds).

“I’ve never been selfless. Number one is the only one that matters, and all that. But I mean, who wouldn’t turn their life into a comic if they could?” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked over the midnight cityscape, the hundreds of cars zipping around, citizens going about their night as if he hadn’t just saved a skyscraper from an evil space monkey. “Besides, if I’d wanted to be a saviour or whatever, I think I would have quit a long time ago.”

“B-but…” Deku stuttered, face screwed up in confusion. “But why? If you set out to save people and you become famous for saving people, how could that be bad?”

“Okay, one, half of the lives I’ve saved have been yours. Two, I’m not famous, I’m infamous. Having explodo-hands is great and all for taking out supervillains, but the masses don’t take too kindly to the person who renders them unemployed because he blew up their office building.”

“But if you didn’t, we’d all be dead. Or worse .”

“I know that, and apparently you do too, but no one else does. I’ve seen the shit they write about me in the papers. If I was gaming for public approval and all that, I’d be about neck high in depression right now. Lucky for me, all I need to be happy is an excuse to beat up scum.” Katsuki shrugged. “Although I won’t lie, I didn’t think the job would be quite so thankless.”

That had not meant to sound so depressing. Katsuki was aiming for mildly comedic, but from the dejected look on Deku’s face he’d say he fucked that up. 

“That’s not right,” Deku said.

“Yeah, well, what can you do?”

“There has to be something.” Deku had his hands clenched and his face was going red with frustration. Katsuki would have found it cute had the mood not been so grim. “There must at least be something I can do to say thank you?”

Katsuki could think of something he’d like as a thank you, but he wasn’t such a piece of shit as to ask for it. “You really don’t need to do anything.”

“But someone has to thank you. Is there really nothing I can do?”

“You really don’t have-”

"I want to!” Deku took a step forward. He had that look in his eye, the one Katsuki knew meant that he wouldn’t budge until he got his way.

“Okay, but what?” Katsuki asked.

Deku looked off to the side, tapping his fingers against his lip as he thought. Katsuki really wished he’d stop providing him with such images.

After a second, Deku’s face warmed to a deep red, but he opened his mouth to speak. “I could… um… Well, I am your Damsel in Distress or whatever, right?”

Katsuki was worried he knew where this was going.

“Isn’t the damsel supposed to like, thank their hero with a… a kiss, or something.”

Dear lord, was Katsuki glad his mask covered his whole face because he was certain he was red from head to toe.

“You really don’t want to do that.”

Deku frowned, looking rejected and Katsuki felt like he should just jump off the roof. “Yeah, I get it, I…”

“I never said I didn’t want to,” Katsuki blurted out before he really knew what he was doing. He could curse himself for his lack of filter around Deku later though. “I just think… look, this isn’t something you want to do, okay?”

Now Deku’s frown looked less devastated and more petulant. “And how could you know that?”

Katsuki cringed. “No it’s… you don’t even know who I am under this mask. If you knew-”

“I’m sure I’d like him too.”

“But you wouldn’t.”

“How do you know that?” Deku stepped closer again, so that he was entirely too close for Katsuki’s comfort. “I… I want to know you. You’ve done so much for me, but still I don’t know you at all. And I just know that I’m going to like the person beneath the mask as much I like you now.”

Katsuki let himself hope for a second, and when that second ended, he felt his soul crash and burn and shatter. Because it didn’t matter what Deku was saying, he didn’t know anything. Katsuki already knew, he faced that truth every day and none of this would change any of that.

“But you already don’t.”

Deku blinked at him. “What?”

Wait.

“Do you… do you mean…”

But Katsuki didn’t let Deku finish. He scrambled back and fell over, but the pain that blossomed in his pelvis as he crashed to the floor was nothing compared to the sheer panic and terror waging war in his head.

“I, err…” Katsuki continued to move back as he got back onto unsteady feet. “I need to go.”

“Wait, Zero! ”

Katsuki ignored Deku as he took off at a sprint, flinging himself off of the roof and propelling himself away from the building, his stupid hands unable to get him away from there fast enough.

He crashed back in his own apartment minutes later, still unable to quite comprehend what had just happened but he knew that it was Bad. He didn’t know how he’d be able to show his face to Deku ever again, or his mask, anyway. But he couldn’t just let him die next time he was in danger.

Confused, scared and angry, but mostly just sad, Katsuki slunk to bed, crawling under the covers without bothering to remove anything but the mask.

Chapter Text

Katsuki’s eyes were trained on the small clock in the corner of his screen. The little cursor continued to blink at the end of the half-finished article, which really needed finishing before mid-afternoon, but he just wasn’t feeling it. He hadn’t been feeling it for a good couple of weeks at that point, but work was work.

Still he put it off. He had confidence he’d be able to bullshit out something decent enough to please his editor, but that was something he was looking to do after lunch.

The numbers refused to change, the static 29 clinging onto its little, meaningless life just long enough to make Katsuki wonder if the computer had frozen.

“Hey, Kacchan!” Right on time, just as that stupid 30 flashed onto the screen, Deku was hailing him down. “Ready for lunch?”

Katsuki leant his head back as far as it would go, watching Deku’s approach upside down. “I guess…” He stretched languidly. “I’m way in the zone though, might be a bad idea to stop mid-sentence.”

“Says the man who’s been staring blankly at his monitor for the past half hour.”

“You been watching me that long Deku?” Katsuki snickered as he stood up, snatching his lunch off his desk. “I should file for a restraining order.”

Deku rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “You don’t have to come.”

“Shut up.” Katsuki jabbed at the button to turn off the monitor, missing the first time, and moved to follow Deku outside.

While Katsuki knew his past few weeks had been a mess, he’d been taken aback by Deku’s utter lack of change.

He’d been worrying Deku would start questioning him, now knowing that this identity-less figure in his life was someone he knew, but that had never happened. Katsuki had skulked into work the following morning as usual, and everything was… normal. Deku had cheerfully greeted him and brought him coffee, they’d chatted for a few minutes before starting work. Nothing suggested the gravity of what had gone down the previous night.

This wasn’t a problem to Katsuki, in fact it was the furthest from it he could get: normal was great, normal was his friend.

At least, he thought it was. As the days passed, he started wondering whether the normal front was just something Deku was doing to get him to say something or act weird. It was nothing Katsuki would put past him, Deku could be a crafty little piece of shit when he wanted to be.

He’d spent the weeks in a constant state of paranoia, thinking twice about anything that came out of his mouth, wondering how it could be traced back to him secretly being Ground Zero, just waiting for Deku to jump from his seat and accuse him of betraying his trust, of being a freak and a criminal.

It was admittedly a stupid feeling and not the kind of thing Katsuki ever fell into, but…

When it came to Deku, Katsuki just gave way too many fucks.

“You wouldn’t believe the guy I had to interview this morning.” Deku had started complaining without prompt the second they’d gotten out of the stuffy office building.

“Yeah?”

Deku groaned. “Yeah. Just thinking about him makes me want to rinse my ears out.”

“You’re the one who brought him up,” Katsuki pointed out.

“Because I felt like bitching about him, and if you’d kindly shut up, I’ll get started.”

Katsuki snorted collapsing down onto the old bench just outside the building, ignoring the way it squeaked under his weight. He sat back and settled in for a rant about some piece of shit artist whose latest exhibit Deku had been told to review. He’d finished his limp, and rather unsatisfying, sandwich by the time Deku had run out of things to be mad about and finally started on his own lunch.

“What about you?” Deku asked through a mouthful of pasta salad. “You looked enthralled by your piece.”

Katsuki shrugged. “I’ve had to move onto new topics, and they’re boring as fuck. Who cares about the prices of gas being lowered at a single pump in the middle of town? It’s stupid.”

“Yeah, at least writing about Ground Zero was somewhat interesting, right?”

“Obviously. Who wouldn’t rather write about a guy fighting mutant cockroaches than the price of gasoline?” Not to mention that field work and research was unnecessary when he’d been at the centre of all the action.

Katsuki opened his mouth to complain about gas prices again when something suddenly occurred to him.

He hadn’t heard Deku bring up Ground Zero in ages. Not since before the whole… thing.

He shut his gaping mouth and stared at the fruit in his hand. Maybe Deku had acted differently, only Katsuki hadn’t noticed because the grievance it caused before had been replaced by a brand-new kind.

“Now I think of it, you’ve been rather quiet on the Zero front,” Katsuki stated, not caring to beat around the bush. He didn’t think it was at all suspicious to bring it up, considering how much Deku used to natter on about it every single goddamned day. Really, Katsuki shouldn’t have said anything, it was nice not having to be reminded about his public life inadequacies, but if it could give him even a tiny bit of insight into how Deku had taken it, he figured it would be worth it.

Deku looked a little forlorn at the question, eyes trained on his lap. “Yeah, I guess… It’s been weird.”

Katsuki nodded, trying to look confused and curious, which wasn’t hard because he already was. But trying to do so in a non-suspicious way felt difficult, not that Deku showed any signs of noticing Katsuki’s overthinking.

“At least I haven’t been on the verge of death in the last couple of weeks. It’s been a breath of fresh air, really.”

Katsuki had found that strange himself. Before, Deku had been getting into trouble on a weekly basis, but his Zero patrols had been eerily quiet since… the thing. If he was working on comic book logic, he’d say it was a warning for the approach of some climax, but he had enough faith in his life to think it wasn’t that contrived. Hopefully.

“Nice to know you’ve been safe, for once.”

Deku chuckled. “Yeah. But I’m starting to hope that something’ll happen again.”

Katsuki raised an eyebrow. “And why the ever-loving fuck would you want that? Finally realised that death is the only true peace?”

“Shut up, Kacchan, that’s not true, and… it’s not adrenaline chasing or anything. I’m not you.” Deku threw a pointed, although mirthful, look up at Katsuki. “I just want to talk to him. I kinda left it badly last time.”

“Oh.” Katsuki didn’t have much to say to that. Or at least, he didn’t want to risk saying anything to that.

“Yeah, it’s… I…” Deku looked off across the street, brow furrowed. “I’m pretty sure he’s someone I know.”

“Fuck…”

“I know, right?”

This was just getting worse and worse. Katsuki couldn’t tell why Deku was even telling him this? Was it some plan to get Katsuki to tell him that he was Zero? Or was he that convinced that it wasn’t Katsuki that he didn’t see the problem with confiding in him?

“Not that it really narrows it down too much…” Deku seemed to be thinking hard about it. He’d probably been thinking about it a lot, trying to figure out who he was. Knowing Deku, he’d probably been battling over whether it was ethical to even try.

“You are quite the social butterfly,” Katsuki agreed, figuring that was his safest option. “You and your admirers.”

Deku laughed. “I do not have admirers, shut up.”

“I’ll shut up when you stop having admirers.”

Deku continued to laugh and it seemed to wash away the tension that had been starting to build up.

“I’m sorry, this isn’t really your problem.”

“I’m sure our editor would care to disagree.” Katsuki stood up and threw his waste in the nearest bin, shoving the leftover peach into his pocket. “Speaking of which, if I’m not back and finishing off that piece of shit article, he’s gonna be on my ass.”

Deku nodded and followed suit. “I spent most of that complaining, huh?”

“It’s cool.” Katsuki ruffled Deku’s hair for good measure before heading back into the building. “Come on, before we both get in trouble.”

“Coming,” Deku said, a small smile set in his face as he chased after Katsuki. And looking at him, Katsuki wondered how he thought that face could be out to get him.