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Almost one year into his hero debut, Bakugou Katsuki loses.
He and Deku had been sent to a rickety apartment block bound together by a convenience store in the predictable process of getting robbed. With the two of them not being the nearest Pro Heroes, he could only assume that this level of overkill for a wobbly little shrimp of a villain was the fault of dispatch underestimating them for their age. If Katsuki was inclined to be generous (he wasn’t), he would suppose that being 18 and fresh out of UA might have something to do with it.
They’re not officially partners, either, but always get assigned together!
He’s not an understanding man. If dispatch wanted to look down on them, so be it, he thought. He’ll kill this guy in five seconds flat, and then demand what he and Deku are due at their Monday review meeting.
Before they arrived.
The villain had been spooked by police arriving on the scene sooner than the Pro Heroes. It’s his second assumption, with the first being: that guy is shaking down the building.
He’s letting his quirk loose on anything that moves, flailing like a moron, screaming that he doesn’t want anyone to get hurt even though he’s striking people down left and right. With a wave of energy bursting from his hands, he clears a circular path around him, lined with bodies and shaking debris. It seems to punch through people when it hits, causing spasms to rip through their muscles and distorting their faces, flopping like gasping fish.
Katsuki goes for him immediately, launching himself above, off the railing of the nearest building and downward, into the eye of the storm.
He expects connection, the body of the villain crumpled beneath him, Deku’s bright and overly excited smile when Katsuki saves the day all by himself. Instead, he falls through the street.
It doesn’t make much sense being this far in the ground, all of a sudden, and with all air and light and sound rapidly fading away. He opens his mouth to curse, and mud rushes in. He’s freezing and burning hot all at once, and if he’s falling he’s falling too fast to tell if he’s really moving at all. Every part of him feels crushed, locked into place by the literal weight of the world.
It’s dark, dark, and Katsuki thinks, What a shitty and confusing way to die, before pushing all his energy into his extremities and rocketing back into the sunlight.
The scene has changed in the 45 seconds he’s been gone.
Deku had been right behind him before the attack, splitting off from the battle to go for the civilians caught up in this mess. The villain is nowhere to be seen, and briefly, not heroically, Katsuki wonders if he also just got swallowed up by the earth in his own attack, never to be seen again. There’s a gaggle of police vehicles just over the street, and hundreds of gawking bystanders, and a whole lot of people screaming and staring up into the sky. No Deku. No villain. Emerging from the mudpit, Katsuki has one full second to question it, before he, too, looks up.
All he can see is cement walls, looming over all of them impossibly high enough to block out the sun. Like a moon from the summit, the building seems like it will come crashing from orbit and crush them all, even though logic says that’s impossible.
Really, nothing is impossible in a world with killers who can make quicksand out of nothing.
The apartment building has decided to move. Tenants scramble out of the building and Katsuki’s body is in action before he can think much about it. He’s pushing his whole body forward, blasting over shattered glass to reach a howling dog, a brat, and his screaming mom from falling out the empty window socket where they’d prepared to jump.
They’re safe in his arms, and they whistle through space, through the ever closing opening of concrete to sky.
Impact.
The cacophony of the sounds melts into nothing but the impossible BOOM of the wall hitting the earth. Katsuki hits the deck with the woman and the kid, covering them as much with his body as he can. Suddenly there isn’t any sound in his left ear, and the screaming dissolves into an even ringtone that won’t stop. It scares him because that side of his body doesn’t know what’s going on anymore, except to read the impact of falling debris hitting his leg, crushing it and the lady down into the still-soft earth.
Don’t drown, he tells himself, the lady and her kid, and even the stupid dog, without saying it.
It’s alright, Deku would say here. Fucking idiot.
And everything slowly recedes into one long, mournful note, to black.
----
Katsuki wakes up on Sunday morning. His birthday. He knows it’s Sunday because Deku is perched just over his face, the sun blurring out his freckles and the exact shape of his button nose.
“Creeper,” he croaks. It’s been a thousand years. Or maybe just a few days.
Deku doesn’t exactly answer. He starts crying on Katsuki instead, which is worse. Fat tears fall on Katsuki’s face, leaking from his cheek and into the pillowcase, just like getting rained on. He’s not able to move much, but he bats at Deku’s shoulder in a loose way, trying to push him away from crying directly on him, at least.
He closes his eyes again, listening to the muted gulps of air from Deku’s crying, the whistling wind in one ear, and knows in his heart that he isn’t at home, suddenly. It’s force that makes him look again, focusing on the fine details: greasy green hair that’s darker and curlier than usual, puffy undereyes more purple with paler skin. Hospital smells. Deku’s too-cold hands wiping his own tears from Katsuki’s cheeks.
“Izu..ku,” he says, slowly. Beginning how he’ll apologize for this. “I,”
“Shut up, shut your mouth,” Deku interjects, breathing fast, still hiccuping. “It’s not your fault.”
----
Katsuki almost believes him, except no one wants the dog.
The woman Katsuki thought he had saved had actually been suffocated under the rubble that broke Katsuki’s leg. Her son and Katsuki had been fortunate enough to land head first into a sizable air pocket, large enough for them to keep breathing until Uraraka arrived on scene.
Many people were buried that day. Mostly civilians from the apartment building who hadn’t made it out, because the police on scene successfully evacuated the initial area enough. At least someone was doing their job right, even if it wasn’t him.
Deku had saved more people. Katsuki doesn’t have it in him to be competitive right now, otherwise he would have been pissed.
The little boy is named Hinata, and he’s down the hall from Katsuki’s room with minor injuries. Apparently he’s visited Katsuki a few times now with Deku, without him knowing, because Katsuki has been in a coma since Thursday.
“Her name is Echo,” Hinata says very seriously that morning that Katsuki wakes up, as if they’d been having this conversation already for three days. “She likes yelling. Echo, Yell!”
Echo barked loudly in his good ear, making him involuntarily jump. She wagged her tail when he moved, proud of him for still being alive. Hinata and Deku both beam, proud of Echo for yelling on command at Katsuki. He sighs, holding out a hand for her to sniff, which seems to perplex her more than hands usually do. She’s cautious enough not to lick it, because there’s enough of a chemical smell to spark danger even in a mutt.
“Kacchan likes yelling too,” Deku adds helpfully.
“Shut up nerd.”
No one wants the dog in the family. Hinata’s aunt will be here tomorrow from Hokkaido to pick him up, with the plan of having the dog put down if they can’t find someone to take it in. Deku can’t take the dog because of his shitty apartment building that Katsuki is now afraid will also fall down, for some reason.
Katsuki thinks it’s ok to cautiously touch her yellow, fuzzy head, sliding a finger gently between her ears. She goes quiet then, letting him, before shaking her whole body like he’s tickled her.
Then Echo body slams him. She’s all up in his business, pushing her fluff into his armpit, smooshing against his ribs and licking his kind-of broken collarbone.
“Shit!”
“BORK”
“Gross!”
“BORK”
“Kacchan!”
The little boy whose mom he didn’t save is laughing, lit up like the sunshine in his name, and Katsuki knows he won’t let this stupid dog die.
------
Katsuki is on leave until his collarbone and leg heal a bit more, because the old lady is out of the country and she doesn’t owe him anything. His ear is probably perma-fucked, and some asshole at the hospital had incorrectly assumed certain things about his and shitty Deku’s relationship, so there was no keeping that to himself. Hero partners are legally allowed to know certain things about medical history that even childhood friends aren’t.
So now they’re in line at the conbini near Katsuki’s (safer) apartment, Deku insisting on holding the dog food and dinner, while Katsuki holds the dog. This hopeless nerd is a regular at Katsuki’s convenience store, so they don’t really get the celebrity treatment here and he’s grateful. Echo huddles in his good arm, tail thumping him gently in the chest as she chirps along the noises in the store.
Not loud, just.... mimicking?
“This mutt is bizarre,” he mutters to himself, which of course, Deku can’t ignore.
“Mmm?”
“Psycho dog.” Katsuki says, with finality.
Echo stops talking, settling into a growl instead, perches over Katsuki’s shoulder. He can’t tell if she’s growling at him, or is about to leap into the aisle at someone more suspicious. He looks. There’s a scruffy looking business man with a phone out, creeping carefully forward from the back of the store.
Katsuki sneers and makes a much louder growl of his own, matching Echo in pitch and volume. The phone is put away very quickly.
“She cares about you,” Deku says, picking up what he was going to say before, now with more evidence. “You can’t blame her for being protective.”
“What the hell are you on about? It's a dog.”
From under his eyelashes, Deku smiles, sly. He pays for Katsuki’s groceries before he can do anything about it, and leads the way back to the apartment. Hobbling fast, Katsuki lets the dog go and tells her to get ‘em, watching as Deku and Echo start running, far, far ahead.
-------
It turns out that it’s really easy to love a constant companion, if you let it happen.
Echo follows him around the apartment, and sometimes he’ll tell her “hey” just to hear it back from her. He desperately wants to be out doing something, not letting his muscles atrophy indoors. He’s already done the “normal” things that wounded heroes are bound to do when they’re on sick leave: called his mother and told her to leave him alone, watched all the good press he got after the incident turn into bad press turn into good press again, ordered food that he’s allergic to because he’s fucking sad.
Through it all, Echo is there. She sits with him on the couch and noses her way into the bathroom when he’s throwing up. She’ll sit on the tiles and put her paw on his pantleg, or his foot, until he’s done, and nudge him so that he doesn’t stagnate there on the floor. She warns him when she hears someone coming up the stairs, and warns him excitedly when it’s Deku.
She’s extra disappointed when he doesn’t answer the door for Deku.
After two weeks they go outside, to face the sunlight and breathe the fresh air, and Katsuki watches the sun rise not quite alone. It’s not bad. He’s just still not used to it.
He lets her go, and she runs the full length of the pond, showing him that he can do it too. Eventually, and slowly, he makes the full circuit, dragging his tender leg on crutches, to where Echo is waiting for him at the end of the lane.
“Bork!” she exclaims happily, proud of him.
“Don’t be patronizing,” he snaps, before he can stop himself.
Katsuki smiles a little as they’re making their way back upstairs, to the familiar room and the the familiar view. There’s a lightness in his chest that wasn’t there when he woke up, and it propels him up the painful journey to the third floor. Echo still beats him there, chirping encouragement.
Deku is sitting on the couch reading Katsuki’s battered copy of Six of Crows, hunched over it as though he’s been reading here all night, just outside Katsuki’s room.
“That’s not a hero book,” he says in the weird, liminal orange light of the room. It’s loud, startling Deku and Echo both. He has to get used to lowering his voice on purpose.
“I know,” Deku says gently.
It’s so soft that Katsuki’s body moves on its own, intent on hearing him better, seeing him without the sunlight haze interfering. He crouches, slowly, on the floor in between Deku’s knees, carefully stretching out his stiff leg.
“You know what it’s about yet?”
“... people who make tough decisions.”
“Mmm.”
Echo is on the couch because Katsuki gave up his seat, burrowing into Deku’s side like she hasn’t seen him in a year. Deku puts down the book, resting one hand on her yellow and fuzzy belly, and looks down at him.
“You got a letter from Hinata.”
“You’re illegally reading my mail now?”
“Yes,” Deku says firmly. “I’m reading it to you, so it’s not illegal.”
Katsuki would roll his eyes, but it would mean looking away from Deku’s, and he’s not going to lose here.
It seems like Deku waits until they’ve both stopped breathing to snap open the large envelope, because he has the sense not to want to lose, either. Maybe he just doesn’t want to stop looking at Katsuki, because it’s been two weeks and it’s the longest they’ve ever gone without setting eyes on each other since the day they were born.
Katsuki will allow it.
Dear Great Explosion Murder God Dynamite,
This letter is from Hinata, at my auntie’s house in Hokkaido. I hope you get my letter soon because I have a lot of stuff to tell you. Deku says you like mountains and I think Echo would too. It is sad you can’t come here on vacation. I’m sorry that I didn’t get to tell you all the things Echo likes to do before I had to go live at my auntie’s house, because that’s really important.
I’m really glad you get to take care of Echo from now on because she is good at taking care of people back. She will be a really good hero dog just like you are a really good hero. Here’s how you are the same and she will be a good hero dog:
- she is loud
- she is really, really fast
- her hair is yellow and big
- she pays attention all the time
- she cares a lot
Think about what I have said and make Echo your hero dog so I can see her on tv sometimes.
Get better soon,
Hinata
“What an entitled brat,” Katsuki says in wonder.
“Will you consider making Echo your hero dog?” Deku says, pushing back Katsuki’s messy too-long fringe. “.... after you come back to work?”
As the sun finally rises, light changes the gleam in Deku’s eyes from challenge to hope. To both at once, like he’s looking through the Katsuki that shut him out and into the man this kid thinks he can be. Maybe even the man Deku has always known him to be.
“I already have a hero partner,” Katsuki says. “But I’ll think about it.”