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Bakugou Katsuki is on top of the world.
Or on top of his world, at least—perched at the peak of the jungle gym in a park halfway between his house and the Midoriyas’. He’s the only kid in their neighborhood who can climb all the way up. As expected of the future number one hero, of course.
Well, the only one except—
“Kacchan!”
The festival lights are brightest a few streets over, where they’ve converted the city park into a dizzy swirl of color that makes Katsuki’s head spin. Here, only the warm glow of the street lamps illuminate Izuku where he stands at the base of the jungle gym, waving at Katsuki with a big, dumb smile on his face.
Katsuki crosses his arms and peers down over the edge. “What’re you doing here?”
His dog mask must hide his (very intimidating, thank you) scowl, because the only response he gets from Izuku is a laugh. “Your parents said you ran away.”
Katsuki pulls his mask to the side to make sure Izuku gets the full force of his glare. “I don’t run away,” he insists. “I left ‘cause it was boring.”
“Sure,” Izuku agrees automatically, like he always does—and then he keeps talking, like he always does. “Only, it’s just—I know Kacchan doesn’t really like it when there are too many people making too much noise for a long time. So I told Auntie you weren’t running away, you were probably just tired and I knew where you’d probably gone to—”
“I’m not tired, either!” Katsuki fights the urge to throw the sausage he’s been eating at Izuku. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Hey! Don’t be mean!”
“Then don’t be stupid!” Katsuki huffs. “Besides, it’s better to see the stars out here, duh. How are you gonna see anything with all those lights?”
“Ohhh, that’s smart!” Izuku scrambles up the last few bars to take his place by Katsuki’s side.
“Course it’s smart.” Katsuki preens. “When me and Dad went out camping last month, the stars were way cooler out there. Too many lights here for ‘em to shine properly.”
“Too many lights,” Izuku repeats reverently. “I wish my—” His voice cuts off and his eyes drop down to his hands.
Katsuki nudges him with an elbow. “Huh?”
“What did you wish for?” Izuku asks suddenly. “On your tanzaku, I mean.”
“Tsch.” Katsuki rolls his shoulders. “I don’t need wishes. I make my own luck.” And if he wished to finally get the last limited edition platinum All Might collector’s card in his next pack—well, that’s not anyone’s business but his own.
“Wow…” Even in the dim light, the glimmer in Izuku’s eyes when he listens to Katsuki rivals the stars. “I guess you don’t need wishes when you already have the coolest quirk.”
Pride sparks in Katsuki’s chest and he grins. “That’s right.” Lifting his free hand, he sets off a small round of pops that makes their faces glow orange. “Gonna be the number one hero with this quirk, just watch me.”
“Like All Might!” Izuku wriggles on the jungle gym with excitement. “Maybe if your explosions get big enough, you could fly like him—or, or, or you could do like Heat Wave’s rays, maybe! Or—“
“I’m gonna do everything, duh,” Katsuki interrupts. “That’s how you become the best.”
Izuku nods eagerly. “Kacchan is gonna be the perfect hero.”
“Obviously.” Katsuki eats the last of his sausage and throws the wooden skewer into the darkness. “When are you gonna get your quirk, huh? How else are you supposed to be in my agency?”
“I’m trying,” Izuku whines. “I even wrote it on my tanzaku! I said, I wish for a heroic quirk like Kacchan’s.”
Katsuki frowns. “Hey, not exactly like mine.”
“No, of course not,” Izuku says hastily. “I just mean—the kind of quirk that a hero would have, right? Strong!”
“Yeah, I guess.” Mollified, Katsuki leans back against the smooth metal bars. They’re cool, despite the summer air, and he can feel the chill of them through his yukata. “Not as strong as me, though.”
“Not yet. But someday, right?”
The challenge makes Katsuki bristle. He straightens up and turns to Izuku, his mouth opening to remind him exactly whose agency he’s going to be in—
He pulls up short when he sees those big, dumb eyes gazing at him like Katsuki’s a shooting star and Izuku is wishing on him and him alone.
“Yeah, I guess,” he says without meaning to, then coughs and looks away. “Someday. But you better work for it, you hear me? I’m not waiting around forever for you to catch up.”
Izuku nods so vigorously his curls bounce. “Of course! I’ll start breathing fire or moving things with my brain, and then we’ll study together and get into U.A. together and—and then we’ll save people like All Might!”
The conviction in his voice is so strong, so unwavering, that Katsuki thinks Izuku might not need wishes either.
Good. He tilts his head back to stare up at the stars, twinkling valiantly despite the clamor of Musutafu below. That’s the kind of thing Katsuki will need by his side someday.
It’s been a while since Katsuki spent a holiday at home instead of on patrol. Then again, that’s largely because he prefers it that way. Holidays mean crowds and crowds mean messes for heroes to clean up; the last thing he wants to do is schedule a vacation and end up working anyway.
Although, this is a kind of work too—and the kind Katsuki is notably worse at, to boot. At least the public speaking is done and he’s been seen by enough people that he considers his civic duty well and truly fulfilled. With a gruff thank you to the governor and nods to the various officials and heroes scattered around, Katsuki finally extricates himself from the stage.
It’s near impossible for a man his size to be inconspicuous, but no one stops him from slipping down a side street and away from the festivities. When the color and clamor fade away in favor of cicada song and the hum of street lamps, Katsuki finally feels like he can breathe again.
His mom will definitely expect him home at a reasonable hour, but for now he’s free to walk the familiar streets of Musutafu—not as a homecoming hero, but as a boy finally grown into a man. Everything is familiar but different, like their shapes settled deeper into the skyline while he was away. He walks and, for once, lets himself be aimless. His feet move and his eyes roam and his mind is blissfully empty.
He spares a glance upward. The stars aren’t as bright now as when they’d been children, but he can still make out a few constellations his dad taught him. At least something stayed the same.
His pace slows naturally until he comes to a stop on a quiet street with low concrete walls topped with hedges. Looking past the greenery, he realizes his feet have carried him to a familiar spot. Figures.
The jungle gym doesn’t look nearly as grand as it had back in the day. The red paint is chipping away to reveal rusting metal and it’s covered in scuff marks from countless tiny shoes. It almost makes him laugh to think that, once, this had been the peak of everything.
“Thought I’d find you here.” Deku’s voice doesn’t startle him. It’s damn near impossible for it to, considering they live and work together and the nerd’s never really had an off switch.
“Yeah?” Katsuki raises his eyebrows but doesn’t move, waiting for Deku to walk up to his side. “Funny. I didn’t even know I was gonna come here.”
Deku hums a small not-quite-laugh. “I can’t believe how old and small everything looks.”
Katsuki snickers. “So, like you?”
“Ugh, don’t be mean.” Deku shoulder-checks him—not hard, but the man is solid muscle so it smarts a little anyway. Not that Katsuki is going to tell him that. “You’re older than I am, and we’re not even old-old anyway.”
“Old enough to have our own agency,” Katsuki counters. “Bet if we went back and saw ourselves as brats, we’d think we were pretty damn old.”
“Like we knew anything,” Deku replies. He says it with a smile, but his eyes are distant. “I remember wishing for a quirk that never came.”
Now it’s Katsuki’s turn to bump his shoulder against Deku’s. He doesn’t move away after, letting their arms press together in an easy, constant reminder. “You got it eventually.” He laughs. “Hell, even got All Might’s quirk. Almost enough to make me believe in wishes.”
“I thought you didn’t need them,” Deku teases. “Since you make your own luck, after all.”
Katsuki snorts. “You really believed anything that came outta my dumbass mouth when I was five?”
Deku’s grin softens and he tilts his head. “I believed everything.”
“Ugh.” Warmth crawls across the back of Katsuki’s neck at his earnestness. He should be used to it after all these years, but it still gets under his skin like nothing else can. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” Christ, where to start? How many things has Katsuki said in his life that Deku should never have believed, should never have even heard? Katsuki hisses in a breath through his teeth and settles on a simpler answer. “’Cause I wasn’t even telling the truth about the wishes, idiot.”
He doesn’t have to look at Deku to know exactly which confused expression he’s wearing. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? I made wishes too, is all.”
“Oh.” The softness in Deku’s voice draws Katsuki’s eyes to his face. He finds that tender look Deku gets sometimes when he looks at the old photo albums their moms kept. “Kacchan, that’s sweet.”
“Not sweet,” Katsuki grumbles, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Every kid did it. I was just a dumb kid.”
“And that’s sweet.”
“Whatever.”
Warm summer silence settles between them for a few moments. It’s easy in a way that Katsuki still doubts he’s allowed to have.
After a beat, Deku asks, “Did any of them come true?”
“Hm?”
“The wishes you made.” Deku leans in closer and lets his head settle on Katsuki’s shoulder. “I mean, since you think my quirk wish came true, it’s only fair if I know about yours.”
Katsuki grunts. “Fine. I guess…I got that last All Might trading card—”
“The limited edition platinum one?” The excitement makes Deku bounce on the balls of his feet even after all these years. Katsuki can feel it where their arms bump together and he stifles a laugh.
“Yeah, that one we got at the same time. Probably didn’t need to make a wish, since it looks like we just got a lucky batch.”
“No, no.” Deku shakes his head. “I wished for it too!”
“Christ, of course you did.”
“Maybe we really do have the magic touch when it comes to wishes,” Deku says with a grin. “Anything else that came true?”
“You gonna tell me about one of yours first?”
“Oh, sure, I have plenty.” Deku starts counting on his fingers. “Getting into U.A., meeting All Might, becoming a pro hero, saving people—”
“All right, we get it,” Katsuki cuts him off. “Your life is a dream come true. Should’ve known you wished for all that.”
“Yeah, probably,” Deku agrees with a giggle. “So, tell me another one of yours?”
Katsuki opens his mouth, then hesitates. “Well. I wasn’t lying that much about not needing wishes,” he admits. “I didn’t usually care. I wanted to be a hero, obviously. But other than that…I guess there was only one other I remember.”
The words slow and stop, the way they always do when the feeling behind them gets too big for Katsuki to grapple into submission. Deku knows, though. So, he waits patiently with his head on Katsuki’s shoulder and the backs of their knuckles brushing.
Finally, Katsuki says, “Wished for this.”
“Yeah?”
“You remember—ugh, it was stupid, but you remember how I always said you could join my agency?”
Deku chuckles, the sound low and warm. “How could I forget?”
“Shut up,” Katsuki replies without any bite. “I wished for that. But, uh—like this.”
“Like…” Deku’s head lifts off Katsuki’s shoulder and he can feel inquisitive green eyes on him. “This? Us?”
“Yeah. As…co-founders, I guess.” It should probably be embarrassing, that he can’t admit to wanting Deku by his side since they were toddlers when they literally live together now.
Deku doesn’t press, though. He lays his head back down, then curls his fingers into Katsuki’s elbow for good measure. “That’s funny. I wished for the same thing.”
And that shouldn’t come as a surprise. It doesn’t, really—they’ve been chasing each other for so many years now that it feels like an inescapable orbit, like something inevitable and maybe even cosmic. Still, after everything, it’s sometimes hard to believe that Katsuki didn’t manage to make their little system implode. It’s hard to believe that they’re still here after all this time.
Katsuki huffs out a laugh and tugs Deku closer. “Guess we just gotta keep wishing for the same things, then,” he says. “That way they’ll keep coming true.”
Deku’s giggle is brighter than all the stars in the sky. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a problem with that.”
Katsuki looks down at that familiar face and thinks about how believing in wishes and believing in people have never felt like the same thing to him.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “I think you’re probably right.”