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Katsuki’s knuckles sting, still. He’d hit Deku, and his knuckles sting, and he’ll have to wrap them after they pass this shitty final — after both of them pass with flying colors because they get the same grade on this shit for some shitty reason — and he’s going to have to sit through a shitty lecture from Aizawa-sensei.
Dammit.
It’s been so long since he hit Deku. Before now, he means. Months, at least, since the last time Katsuki really, really went after him like he used to do. It’s been so long he almost forgot about that look Deku gets in his stupid face after he realizes what, exactly, Katsuki did. He almost forgot, but now it’s burnt into the backs of his eyelids because he saw it again, just now when he hit Deku in that stupid, shitty alleyway that isn’t really an alleyway because this place isn’t really a city, and he really hadn’t meant to hit Deku, hadn’t been planning on ever hitting him again.
Well. Deku is still as irritating as ever, and Katsuki sort of really hates his guts, so maybe it was bound to happen. Just — it was stupid to have it happen now, and that’s on him. This is their final, their grade is riding on this, and he wants to, needs to become number one, so it was stupid. Okay, he gets that. He’s sorry about it if only for that reason.
“Kacchan —” Deku is saying, still determined and brushing his fingers along the blooming bruise on his cheek, the one in the shape of Katsuki’s glove because they haven’t even been attacked by anything else yet. There is no other danger, here in this alleyway — All Might is somewhere, somewhere not here, and he won’t hurt them seriously. Maybe Katsuki but not Deku, there’s no way he’d ever hurt Deku, even if it is supposed to be a test. Whatever. Deku and All Might can go straight to Hell for all Katsuki cares. He’s going to pass this test on his own strength while Deku is going to scrape by because he’s All Might’s favorite.
“I told you — shut the hell up , shitty Deku,” Katsuki hisses, glancing over his shoulder at the corner of the alleyway. There’s no one there, not that he expected there to be. All Might is much less subtle than that; they’ll hear him coming from miles away. Aizawa-sensei wouldn’t interrupt their final. It’s just Katsuki and Deku here, and there’s water dripping from a pipe somewhere on the other side of the alley.
“We have to work together,” Deku tells him and like hell they do, Katsuki is strong enough to do this by himself, let alone with Deku’s help, he doesn’t need him, “or we’ll never defeat All Might.” He whispers All Might’s name with that same, familiar reverence he’s always said All Might’s name with. It’s annoying, and it’s so Deku that it makes Katsuki mad all over again. His fingers curl into a fist again, his arm shaking with the force of it, but he hisses at the feeling of his raw skin opening around the knuckles inside his gloves. His sweat stings in the open wounds.
“Shut up,” he says, shouldering past Deku, back into the openness of the street instead of the claustrophobic closeness of the alleyway. He uncurls his fingers and aims them toward the ground, his body poised and braced for his own explosions. His chest heaves despite the fact that he hasn’t fought anyone except for Deku yet — the worst is yet to come, he reminds himself. He’s strong but so is All Might. He needs to be ready, and he needs to be away from Deku because Deku is just going to get in his way like the shitty nuisance he is.
Why can’t he just butt the hell out? Ugh.
Before Katsuki can fire off his explosions, there’s a light breeze that gives him pause. This place, this fake city, is sealed off from everything. There shouldn’t be wind.
The light breeze is followed by something strong, then stronger still until Katsuki is bracing against it as hard as he can, and the buildings around him are creaking and groaning.
“My boys!” All Might calls, sounding cheerful. There is a wide smile on his shadowed face. “Er — I mean, you damn heroes. I am a villain!” He stands at the other side of the street with his hands on his hips, his biceps bigger around than Katsuki himself. There are weights on his wrists to make him weaker, Aizawa-sensei told them. Even the playing field.
Jokes on them. Katsuki doesn’t need anyone to level any sort of field. And he isn’t playing here.
Katsuki launches himself at All Might, forming a plan in midair. There’s no time for pausing or for working together, even if the hair on his arms raises with the static electricity of Deku’s Quirk. He scowls and roars as he nears his teacher, who hasn’t yet moved out of his victorious pose. He won’t look so victorious after Katsuki’s done with him, that’s for damn sure.
Katsuki swings an arm forward, bracing the elbow with his other hand. His palms heat, the sweat on his skin getting hotter and hotter and —
All Might catches him in one hand, his own palm clammy against Katsuki’s face. It’s hard to breathe like this, but Katsuki won’t be deterred or defeated so easily. Stupid All Might for thinking this would be over like that, so quick and so effortlessly. No, Katsuki is here to win this stupid, shitty freaking final, and if he has to bring down the number one hero, he’s damn well going to do just that.
He aims a hand for All Might’s face, the other going for his arm.
“Kacchan!” Deku calls from somewhere, and All Might turns away to look at him, to look at shitty Deku .
“I told you,” Katsuki growls, setting off a number of crackling, orangeish explosions at All Might, “to leave me alone, shitty nerd.” All Might’s grip loosens, and Katsuki drops to the ground like a stone. His shins sting with the force of his fall, but he stumbles upright again, cursing Deku under his breath.
“Ah, so you two aren’t working together,” All Might notes, still grinning. “I see.” He nods, more to himself than to either of them, it seems, and that pisses Katsuki off. He’s mad, and he wants to punch Deku again, maybe, or something like that.
He’ll settle for fighting All Might.
He launches himself at the hero again, not quite sure where Deku even is, now, but Katsuki is acutely aware of the sound of crackling not too far away, an unintelligible cry — it sounds like ‘ Kacchan! ’ maybe, but Katsuki sure hopes that’s not what Deku’s saying right now. It’ll piss him off more if it is. He’ll kill the shitty nerd, swear to God.
All Might bats him away, but he rolls it off and comes back angrier and sweatier and with bigger explosions. Katsuki’s smiling, too, now. He catches sight of himself in the reflection of an apartment window (the inside, he sees just from a glance is empty, the facade of the testing center broken only for a split second) and his eyes are wild, the smile feral. He cackles.
Deku is flying through the air, toward All Might, his leg outstretched and his brows drawn together in that stupid, terrible determined expression he wears all the damn time. All Might whirls around, quick on his feet as ever.
“I won’t be going easy on you!” he promises, and he dodges the kick only to catch Deku by the leg and throw him to the side. Deku crashes into a building in a plume of dust and glass, and Katsuki gapes.
He gapes only for a second before the grin returns, his palm crackling. Oh, so he’ll beat All Might when the hero’s at his best, not going easy. He’ll prove to all these extras he’s the best. Deku emerges from the settling dust, shaking off the blow and sinking into another offensive stance. The air around him turns green and electric. His eyes glow.
They start off toward All Might at the same time, but Katsuki gets there first, of course. He lands a punch on All Might’s side but has to jump away from a powerful knee before it can make contact with his gut. He’s too busy recentering himself to see what sort of move Deku tries, but it fails.
Of course it fails. Katsuki huffs and rolls his eyes and charges. He’s out of breath and aching already, but like hell he’ll ever give up. He’d rather die than admit he’s weaker than All Might or, worse, Deku.
The three of them keep up this dance, this exchange of blows and retreats, Deku from one side and Katsuki from the other. Katsuki only catches sight of him in snatches as he readies himself for more fighting, and there is sweat on his face and a swollen bruise on his cheek that’s somehow different from the scrapes he’s acquired from this fight.
The pace is brutal — punch, jump back, get back in there, kick, back away — and only getting more and more frantic as All Might works the two of them away from the gate at the end of the street. They won’t be able to keep this up for the rest of the timer, let alone long enough to wear All Might out, but Katsuki keeps trying.
His exhaustion makes him sloppy. All Might catches his fist and tosses him away, and ow, okay. The street crumbles into pieces with the force of Katsuki’s body, and he slides down the road.
Dammit. Dammit, dammit. Shit.
Katsuki staggers to his feet as Deku launches himself off of one of the remaining standing buildings. The brick crumbles under the soles of his red shoe, and Katsuki can only watch, eyes wide and jaw dropped as his own chest heaves and burns with exertion, as Deku gets closer and closer again. His green hair whips wildly around his face as he moves in the air.
All Might sees him and spins, arm raising, and Katsuki winces prematurely in sympathy for the shitty nerd because the man’s fist is closed, the muscles in his back rippling as he moves to strike Deku down out of the air like a superpowered fly swatter. It’s going to hurt, but Deku is going to walk it off. He’s going to have to because — Katsuki sees the opening for their success before anyone else, probably. All Might is going to swat Deku down, and he’s going to hit him toward the gate. The gate that would mean them passing the final.
Deku is going to get up and walk away from this, and he’s going walk his shitty, nerdy ass over that finish line so Katsuki can go get a shower and rub it in all those extras’ faces that he fought All Might and won. And he fought longer and harder than that shitty Deku.
But All Might changes the trajectory of his power, not away from the gate but so that his curled fist makes contact with the very middle of Deku’s back. Deku cries out, his expression pained and scrunched, as he shoots into the ground so hard his body bounces off the crumbled pavement. Katsuki watches from yards away on the other side of All Might as Deku’s back arches away from the ground in the air after he bounces, his eyes wide and mouth open. He rolls and rolls until he hits an overturned bus, which rocks harshly on impact. Katsuki holds his breath and prays it doesn’t fall onto Deku, who lays there, just under the bus, on his side with his back to Katsuki and his limbs twitching.
He’ll get up, and he’ll limp over to the damn gate, and they’ll pass this stupid exam. Katsuki’s job is to keep All Might’s attention away from his own blunder of throwing Deku toward the gate, so he launches himself at the hero one last time (he can’t take much more of this, he knows, despite the fact that it looks like All Might’s barely even broken a sweat yet).
All Might’s knee, this time, before Katsuki can see it coming and even try to dodge, makes contact with his gut, and the back of his throat is hot with acidic bile as he throws up everything onto the pavement next to All Might’s boot. He coughs and splutters and listens for the buzzer that says all of this is over, that they’ve passed — or failed, maybe, just so long as it’s over because this is, his body aches, and he, where is the…the buzzer…Deku?
All Might restrains Katsuki with a knee in the middle of his back and one hand clutching both of his smaller, explosive ones.
“You needed to work together to beat me, my boy,” All Might tells him, his breathing labored. But Katsuki’s attention is elsewhere.
Deku hasn’t gotten up. He is still laying next to the bus, his leg jerking and body half-convulsing, rocking like he’s trying to get up or roll over or something.
“Deku,” Katsuki urges, wiggling under All Might’s weight. “Deku, get up,” he says louder in case Deku didn’t hear him the first time. “Let me up, let me up.” He struggles against All Might’s hold, desperate and more scared than he’s ever been because Deku isn’t getting up , isn’t walking it off . It’s less about the final, now, and more about the fact that Deku wouldn’t just give up if nothing was wrong with him.
All Might’s grip loosens just enough — surprise, probably, more than a willingness to let Katsuki go — and Katsuki jerks away from him and crawls toward Deku on shaking arms and legs. He coughs on the taste of his own vomit and collapses onto the ground not far from where Deku is, groaning and wishing he didn’t have to be the best so he could just give up here and now. Throw in the towel. Take a nap, maybe.
“D-Deku?” Katsuki stutters. Deku’s back is heaving irregularly, the movement uneven. From here, Katsuki can hear his panicked breathing. His hand makes contact with Deku’s shoulder, the touch as gentle as he can make it, and he rolls the nerd onto his back.
The movement elicits a gasp and a pained, terrified cry from Deku. His eyes are wide and glossy, but he isn’t crying — he isn’t crying, oh shit shit shit — and his legs keep twitching and jerking every other second.
“Why didn’t you get up? Huh?” Katsuki spits, and he doesn’t want to sound so angry. Deku didn’t get up, he isn’t crying, his mouth is working around silent words.
“Kah,” he breathes, eyes fluttering. Katsuki takes him by the shoulders and shakes him.
“Nuh-uh, shitty nerd,” he says. “Answer the damn question.”
“Kacchan,” Deku breathes again. One of his hands closes into a fist, opens, closes again. “C-Can’t — my…back?”
“Your back?” Katsuki’s seen Deku get up and walk away from broken, shattered bones and terrible burns and scrapes like they were nothing.
“I c-can’t…feel my —” His legs jerk again. His face screws up, and the first tear escapes. Something catches in Katsuki’s chest. Panic, he thinks, but he’s above panic. He doesn’t panic.
He’s panicking. His hands are clutching at Deku’s torn hero costume.
“It’s okay,” he says, shaking his head. “You can move them. You just — gotta get up, shitty nerd.” There’s a shadow over them, wide and muscled, and Katsuki turns around fast enough to give himself whiplash.
“My boy —”
“Get away from us!” Katsuki shrieks, pulling Deku half into his lap and curling both of them into the exposed underside of the bus. All Might reaches for them, and the buzzer for the end of the exam sounds, but Katsuki doesn’t care. The exam was stupid, and Deku is making terrible sounds, really, and there is a bruise on his face and his legs are jerking and he’s crying and
Katsuki’s grip goes slack without him meaning for it to. All Might looms over him and Deku’s prone forms.
“Young Bakugou —”
“No,” he hears himself slur. His ears are ringing. His lips burn. His knuckles sting. Deku stutters out his name somewhere below him, sounding pained and panicked.
There are footsteps somewhere nearby. Katsuki tries to be strong — the strongest, he has to be the strongest — and protect Deku, but he…can’t. His chin knocks against his chest, and out he goes.
Dammit.
Katsuki wakes up with Recovery Girl looming over him, the warm imprint of her lips lingering on his temple. He reaches up with a fumbling hand and wipes the feeling away. The skin on his knuckles is flawless, completely healed. He stares at it for a long moment.
“Oh,” Recovery Girl murmurs.
“Deku?” he asks, and his voice is hoarse. She raises a hand and points to the next bed over, and the nerd is there with a bunch of wires coming out of his head and a chunky thing around his neck and shoulders and down his sides. His chest is rising and falling, his expression slack and nothing at all like the scared, agonized look he wore however long ago after he went down.
After he went down and didn’t — didn’t get back up. Katsuki swallows.
“Broken back,” Recovery Girl tells him. “I told All Might to be careful, that he might hurt someone. He said it was a disrespect to both of you to go easy during the exam. Look where that got him.” She huffs and hobbles toward the other bed, taking Deku’s limp hand in her own. She stands over him but doesn’t kiss him better, and then she leaves, leaving Katsuki and Deku alone in the white, sterile room.
Katsuki sits in his bed, his hands on his lap, for a long time, not thinking but — reliving the moment of All Might’s fist making contact and Deku bouncing and rolling and laying there over and over again. His leg jerking. Not crying. Bruised, back broken. Katsuki himself probably doing more harm than good with moving him around like he did.
He growls at himself, frustrated tears welling up behind his eyes. They burn and prickle, and he digs the heels of his palms into his eye sockets to keep them at bay.
“K-Kacchan?” comes a voice from the other bed, and Katsuki jerks. Deku blinks sluggishly at him, lips working and brow furrowed. “Y’okay?” Katsuki lurches our of bed and stumbles across the room on unsteady legs, stopping only once he can grip the railing on the side of Deku’s bed.
“Am I —?” he splutters, and Deku nods.
“You —”
“I hate you,” Katsuki spits. There is a practiced venom in the words. Deku doesn’t even flinch.
“I wanted to get through the gate,” he murmurs, his voice weak and breathy, “but it — it hurt really bad, Kacchan. You have to…have to understand.” One of his hands worms its way out of the big contraption Deku’s all wrapped up in (a brace, Katsuki realizes, which means Recovery Girl can’t just make the shitty nerd better like she usually does, like she makes Katsuki)
“That’s not —” Katsuki makes another frustrated sound and grips the roots of his hair. “Shitty nerd. You didn’t get back up .” He tries to make Deku understand, but he doesn’t understand it himself. Not an hour before he passed out trying to protect the nerd he’d punched him square in the face.
It’s pissing him off, not understanding what’s going on in himself. Dammit, shitty nerd. Damn it all to hell .
“I-I know. I told you —”
“No, I —”
“You were…worried about me, Kacchan?” Deku whispers, his eyes shining. Katsuki scowls, but that’s always been enough of an answer for Deku. “You’re an amazing hero.” His hand comes to grip the sleeve of Katsuki’s stiff hospital gown. “The best.”
“Tch. Shitty nerd. I damn well know that. Stop doing dumb shit like — like getting your back broken by shitty All Might and maybe you’d be a better hero.” Deku only laughs, wincing at the movement not a second later. “Stupid. Get some rest. Get better. God.” Katsuki rolls his eyes.
“Will you — will you tell All Might it’s okay, Kacchan?” Deku asks, eyelids drooping and the hold on Katsuki’s sleeve loosening. “I don’t blame him.”
“What?” Katsuki splutters.
But he’s asleep already, his hand falling away and landing softly on the hospital bed next to the railing. Katsuki takes it and tucks it in closer to Deku’s body so he doesn’t wake up with a weird cramp in his arm or something.
Shitty Deku.