Work Text:
Katsuki noticed Izuku walking over to his little gaggle of friends out of the corner of his eye but didn’t pay any attention to it really, his mind writing it off because it was normal for them to all congregate together before walking to the cafeteria for lunch. His own loudmouthed group distracted him plenty from looking back over to the green-eyed boy before they dragged him out of the classroom.
(What Katsuki missed was Izuku nervously wringing his hands together asking if he could still at least sit at the table with them at lunch because he didn’t have anywhere else to sit. He also missed the big sad yet tragically understanding eyes when they turned him down. He also missed Izuku sitting back at his own desk, acting fine and content before his old friend group wandered out of the room finally. He missed the tears and quiet sobs as laid his head on his desk using his arms to shield him from anyone that might come back into the classroom.)
That day Katsuki wasn’t paying enough attention to realise Izuku never came to lunch that day.
---
The next day he noticed though, but he wrote it off. A one time thing, surely. The nerd was probably staying back to go over something with Aizawa.
Katsuki was watching Kirishima and Kaminari argue over the best smash character while Mina and Sero randomly stuck in their own opinions on certain characters. Earning some scandalised gasps and gleeful whoops from one or the other every now and then. He tuned them out. He wasn’t feeling up to debate that kind of thing, not when his head was plagued with thoughts of a certain boy that was… still not in the cafeteria? It had already been about 15 minutes since the bell and Katsuki had no idea what could keep Izuku back that long, he would never say it aloud publicly but he knew Izuku was fucking smart. Nothing could keep him back this long unless it was serious. These thoughts were interrupted though, as Iida and Uraraka walked past his table to their own.
He only heard a bit of their conversation but it was enough to piece some loose picture together in his mind.
“I think it’s better that he’s not sitting with us. It gives us enough space from him to distance ourselves properly.”
“Yeah! It’ll be better in the long run for all of us, you know?”
From that he could gather that the rest of them and Izuku were not on even speaking terms currently. And that the nerd probably wasn’t going to be coming in the cafeteria because god knows Midoriya Izuku is way too fucking nervous to ask to sit with people because somehow just existing at a table could be a burden to someone in his mind. Katsuki randomly took note how he needed to make sure that mindset changed. But back to his mini analysis of the nerd’s friend group situation; they needed distance. Why though? What could Izuku of all people have done that warranted distance and space? It didn’t really make sense but he shook it off because well, shit happens. He gave it a week at most before everything was back to normal.
---
A week passed. In his opinion, it went from that initial Tuesday to the next rather quickly but still… nothing changed. He hadn’t seen the nerd interact with any of them, even that weekend. In fact, he only seen Izuku leave his room about twice and both times it was to get the smallest fucking snack and a bottle of water before he practically ran back to his dorm room before anyone could so much as speak to him.
To put it simply. Katsuki was fucking worried.
There was something much bigger going on and based on how Midoriya was acting it was definitely not his fault. How does Katsuki know this? Because this is exactly how Izuku used to act when he first got ostracised from their peers in elementary school when he discovered he was quirkless. When he hid from everyone out of fear of confrontation and all the bullying that manifested from that fateful announcement. How he even started avoiding Katsuki, his fucking best friend, out of not wanting to burden him or make other students look at him differently because ‘quirkless deku’ was hanging around him.
And that behaviour was back full force. Izuku could barely make eye contact with someone before he hunched in on himself and put his head down, how he skirted around corners and walked out of rooms if he saw Iida, Uraraka, Todoroki, or Tsuyu in the room. Katsuki was losing his fucking mind because Yuuei had been different. Izuku and Katsuki both got into the hero course, class 1A, together! Just like they planned when they were kids and playing pretend and making fake hero personas and characters and binge watching hero fights on the computer late into the night before one of their parents inevitably caught them. And they were already two months into the year! There was no fucking reason it should be like this again all of the sudden.
So Katsuki made it his mission to keep an eye on Izuku from afar and hopefully manage to talk to him at some point if he could manage to catch him before he somehow vanished to places no one could find him.
---
His friends started to notice how distracted he was. They noticed how he always had an eye on Izuku and would be searching for him if he didn’t. So, they took it upon themselves to do the same.
Sero, Kirishima, and Mina were the nosiest about why he was suddenly so much more interested in his childhood best friend’s whereabouts. Meanwhile, Kaminari seemed to become completely dedicated to worrying about Izuku. Katsuki even saw the electric blond approach Izuku in class a few times, trying to strike up casual conversation and small talk, maybe try to (gently) pry some answers about where he was during lunch these days but the responses were always short and clipped, he was still friendly and polite but there was almost an undercurrent of urgency to get people away from him.
That was what initially queued Katsuki in.
At first, he admittedly thought that, hey, just because he was acting like he did back then didn’t mean it was the exact same situation, you know? Maybe this was just Izuku’s response to upsetting or jarring social situations, including friend quarrels? Katsuki should have known better.
That same day was when he heard it again. A nickname from middle school that haunted both him and Izuku. He hadn’t heard it in months, it wasn’t ever said even in their time in high school yet. He didn’t know anyone even fucking knew about it here.
“ Move, Deku. ” It was said by Todoroki, which was fucking surprising and a bit appaling, to say the least, because wasn’t that the only other guy with (somewhat similar) childhood trauma in the room? Didn’t he know better? Katsuki nearly gave himself whiplash with how fast he turned his head when he heard it. He watched as Izuku carefully stepped out of his way, stuttering out a quiet apology. He saw the same dull haze wash over normally bright, expressive eyes. The way his face went carefully relaxed in an eerily familiar way. It was a defence mechanism. One he remembers all too well. It usually was followed by Izuku dissociating for several fucking hours and becoming emotionally numb for a few days, usually going mute and resorting to signing if he absolutely had to communicate with someone.
Katsuki had to get him the fuck out of this classroom.
Barely registering his own flurry of movements he got up, grabbed Izuku’s wrist, and marched right the hell out of the classroom. He didn’t stop walking until they came across an unused classroom that he knew no one would suspect them to be in.
Gently, ever so gently, he pulled Izuku into the room and eased him into sitting down on one of the chairs before crouching down in front of the dazed boy.
“Izu? You with me?” Katsuki’s voice was soft but gruff, just above a whisper in the quiet of the room. Trying with everything he had to make sure Izuku didn’t spiral, trying to catch him and snap him out of it before it was too late. Somehow, thankfully, he did. He caught him. His voice bringing him back to the present, back to the surface.
Izuku slowly nodded, his mouth opening and closing a few times before he gave up. Katsuki just sat there in front of him, offering some sort of silent support as he watched the boy try to gather his thoughts, his feelings, his words. He’d wait for as long as Izuku needed him to.
After a minute or two of Izuku just staring down at his lap, Katsuki saw tears gather in the corner of his eyes before they scrunched shut and he brought a hand to his mouth to try to muffle a heart-wrenching sob. Katsuki quickly stood up in order to gather the boy in his arms and pull him against his chest. Izuku’s hands reaching out to blindly clutch onto the back of Katsuki's shirt as he cried.
“K-Kacchan h-he,” Was all Izuku managed to gasp out before devolving back into sobs but Katsuki understood. Todoroki, someone he trusted, someone he helped, called him a name that was probably told in confidence about how much it previously hurt him. How his peers and teachers used to exclusively call him that as a way of looking down on him, how his own best friend accidentally started it because he read the kanji of his name wrong but when people caught wind of it, they fucking ran with it. But now, that same trust was used against him. So yeah, he understood, no full explanation necessary. Izuku was fucking heartbroken.
But in that moment all he could do was hold his best friend and make sure he didn’t fall apart. Make sure he knew someone was there for him, that no matter what at least he had Katsuki. He would always have Katsuki.
They stayed like that for a while, even after Izuku finally calmed down and managed to be able to breathe again. Izuku held onto him, somewhere in the middle of it all he stood up from the chair to latch onto Katsuki better. His arms tightly wrapped around Katsuki’s torso with his head tucked against his neck, breathing in the scent of burnt caramel, relishing in the comforting warmth and safety of his best friend’s being. Katsuki had one arm wound around his shoulders to keep him close, while the other went up to softly wind itself through forest green curls.
Carefully, like stepping onto a lake that had just freshly froze over, with only the thinnest layer of ice, he asked “Do you wanna talk about it?”
‘It’ could be anything. It could be about how hearing the nickname Deku made him feel, about how Todoroki abusing his trust made him feel, about the situation with his friends as a whole. But alas all he got was a barely felt shake of his head and murmured, “Not yet.”
But he could work with that. He could wait.