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Katsuki startles himself awake with a gasp, cold all over with fear that his mind had dreamt up last night as some kind of twisted coping mechanism. Half awake, he flails and makes a wounded noise in the back of his throat, and his hand makes contact with a warm, solid figure in bed next to him.
Deku. His freckled, pallid face is pressed into Katsuki’s hip, and air rushes past his parted lips in hot puffs. Katsuki stares down at him, memorizing each detail of him, from the way his greenish eyelashes fan over his cheekbones to the gaunt spaces under his collarbones and the rippling of scars over his shoulders and arm.
God, when did he become such a creepy stalker? Probably when Deku up and—no, he didn’t die. Because here he is in Katsuki’s dorm blurting out theories about that short-haired bitch’s Quirk with a shaky smile plastered on his face and his hands clutched in Katsuki’s to keep him upright. He’s not dead.
Deku is alive.
Thank fuck.
His own words seem to echo back at him as he and Deku breathe together in his bedroom. What the fuck am I supposed to do without him, he’d asked Aizawa, the weight of Deku heavy in his lap. He’d said a lot of shit as he and his class and his teacher kneeled in the middle of the street, but that’s the only thing he can remember with such stinging clarity.
He still doesn’t know the answer. Aizawa, thankfully, hadn’t said any dumb shit like keep going or become a hero for him . He would’ve killed his teacher then and there if he had, and maybe Aizawa knew that.
Without Deku, it’s all obsolete. He can’t let Deku get hurt like that again, no matter what. He makes that promise to himself in the dark quiet of his own bedroom.
Katsuki runs his calloused fingertips over Deku’s face.
Deku snorts unattractively at the contact and shoots into a sitting position fast enough that Katsuki tumbles off the bed. As Katsuki curses and rubs at his tailbone, Deku blinks down at him, then at his own hands as if he’s surprised.
“Um,” he starts, trailing off. “Good morning, Kacchan.”
Katsuki huffs and gives Deku a dirty look. He’s been back for, what? Six hours? And he’s already riding Katsuki’s last few nerves. Shit, he’d missed the nerd.
“You get enough sleep?” Katsuki asks awkwardly. He’s still sitting on the floor so Deku has to peer over the edge of the bed to look at him, but somehow, getting back up feels more awkward. Katsuki doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
This whole caring thing kind of sucks.
“Yep!” Deku’s face breaks out in a blinding grin. His eyes are squinted closed with the force of it. “Well, I’m still tired, but I don’t think I can go back to sleep now that I’m awake.”
“That doesn’t make any damn sense, nerd. If you’re tired, roll over and go to sleep,” Katsuki huffs. He rolls his eyes because Deku is a dumbass.
“But I’m hungry , Kacchan.” As if to prove his point, he pokes at his gut and purses his lips. “I haven’t eaten in three days.” They stare at each other, both gaping slightly. Deku raises a hand to his mouth to feel himself repeat it: “Three days.”
Katsuki had lived without Deku for all of three days. It felt like a life-time; he’s had bouts of food poisoning that lasted longer.
He debates on what to say for a long moment that seems to drag on for minutes or hours. Finally, he settles on blurting out, “I’ll make you pancakes.”
What he means to say is you’re not allowed to fucking die ever again and I can’t live without you. He means to say something that scares him shitless, so he doesn’t say anything else.
“You really mean it?” Deku asks, his tone dire as if it’s not just pancakes on the line. He shouldn’t be surprised that the nerd can hear everything he never said—Deku’s still here, isn’t he? Of course he hears all of it.
“Yeah. Now get the fuck out of my bed.”
“Can I…borrow some clothes first?” Deku fiddles with the top hem of Katsuki’s gray bed sheets, biting his lip and avoiding Katsuki’s eye as if they didn’t just sleep pressed chest-to-back for the entire night.
“Tch. Fine, but I want them back when you’re finished with them.”
Which is a mistake because the moment he sees Deku in his clothes, his mouth goes dry. He blinks, and he must stare for too long because Deku coughs awkwardly and rocks back on his heels.
“L-Let’s go,” he scoffs, feigning indifference. “Wanna get to the kitchen before the other extras clog it up.”
It’s early enough that they don’t come across anyone else on their way from Katsuki’s dorm on the fourth floor to the kitchens. He wonders why until he and Deku exit the elevator into the common room and find the entire class sprawled out together, still asleep or, at least, not yet awake enough to register their supposedly dead classmate standing over them.
“You…snuck past all of them last night?” Deku nods. “God, it’s a wonder none of them have died yet. We need a dorm guard dog or something.”
“But Kacchan, that’s why we keep you around.”
“You little shit ,” Katsuki growls, half laughing, as he lunges for Deku. The nerd evades his grasp with a laugh that’s muffled by him pressing his hand to his mouth. The group on the ground next to the couches doesn’t so much as shift as the two of them shuffle into the kitchen.
Deku sits on one of the counters next to the fridge and watches as Katsuki mixes the batter for his pancakes. They sit in comfortable silence as the pancakes sizzle on the griddle and still while Deku all but inhales the first pancake.
“So good, Kacchan,” he sighs as he starts in on the second.
As he takes a bite, Dunce Face and Shitty Hair seem to materialize in the kitchen.
“Yo, Baku-bro!” Shitty Hair greets because apparently they’re both dense enough to not see Deku. What the fuck. “You came outta your room finally. Good to see you’re ali— okay . Good to see you’re okay, bro.”
Katsuki only stares back at him, incredulous. He sees the moment Dunce Face catches sight of Deku stuffing his face like a pig. His cheeks are puffed out around his breakfast, but he at least has the decency to look embarrassed.
Dunce Face tugs on the sleeve of Shitty Hair’s sleep shirt, apparently struck speechless at the sight of Deku. Shitty Hair’s attention, however, is stuck on Katsuki. He rambles about not being alone right now and all the same junk they’ve all been spouting at his closed door since everything happened, and he keeps talking until Dunce Face regains the ability to talk.
“Ei,” he whispers harshly. “Ei, tell me I’m not—am I imagining Midoriya sitting over there? Am I losing it? Have I shorted out too many times? Ei, oh my God.” The mention of Deku seems to stop Shitty Hair short in his lecture because he turns very slowly away from Katsuki and finally sees Deku.
Katsuki’s pretty sure he hears him stop breathing.
“What,” he mutters, “the hell. ”
“I’m not imagining him?”
“No.”
“Is he a zombie? Do we have a ghost classmate now?”
“I don’t…think so?”
Katsuki scoffs and turns back to his pancakes on the stove. They’re starting to piss him off with all the disbelieving bullshit.
“You’re not imagining him, and he’s not a damn zombie, idiots,” he grunts, and Deku doesn’t have a moment to set his plate aside before the two dumbasses descend on him, wrapping him in a hug so tight he might as well start turning blue. Dunce Face blubbers into Deku’s shoulder like a little kid, and Shitty Hair buries his face in his curls. “Oi, oi! Don’t kill him right when he comes back—not so fuckin’ tight!” Katsuki barks, suddenly aware of the fact that Deku could choke and die right there in the kitchen.
A cold bolt of fear goes through him at the thought.
Deku is so fucking fragile suddenly. And no one else seems to give a shit about it.
Katsuki chews on his bottom lip and turns away from the tearful reunion, repeating his promise to himself: protect Deku at all costs.
—
Katsuki has to watch Deku cry about seventy more times over the next two weeks as he reunites with everyone who thought he was dead: their classmates, their teachers, Auntie Inko, the hag and Katsuki’s own father, All Might (Katsuki thought he’d seen Deku blubber before, but it was nothing compared to him seeing All Might again), the list goes on. It seemed like an endless stream of people and tears.
Not that Katsuki wants to leave him alone to cry and explain things for the millionth time. He kind of…hasn’t let Deku out of his sight since he came back. He’s gotten a hell of a lot of strange looks from their peers when they very slowly realize that the two of them have become a package deal.
Deku, for what it’s worth, hasn’t commented on it. In fact, he seems to bask in Katsuki’s attention like a cat in a pocket of sunshine. Stupid nerd.
When Katsuki ruffles his curls in the morning, Deku laughs or huffs but doesn’t duck away from his explosive hands. When Katsuki stares for a beat too long, Deku turns bright red and shuffles his feet but meets his gaze head-on. When Katsuki makes him breakfast—him and no one else because all the other fucking extras can fend for themselves for all he cares—Deku scarfs it all down, practically scrapes the plate or bowl until it shines again.
Life is fine again.
Except for—Deku seems hell-bent on getting back into hero training as soon as humanly possible.
“I’ll have to reduce my percentages for a while,” Deku is rambling next to him, furrowing his brows and fiddling with his hands in his lap, “but I think that will just help me with control. My muscle mass didn’t diminish too much in three days, which is good, but I still think I’ll go back to four- or five-percent. Maybe three would be better, actually, because I don’t want to break anything now. What do you think, Kacchan?”
Katsuki grunts, biting back the urge to scowl. He doesn’t like the idea of Deku going back to training. It’s been a week since he woke up again, but still. It’s too soon.
“Are you even listening to me?” Deku huffs, leaning into Katsuki’s personal space. Katsuki rolls his eyes and crosses his arms but doesn’t bother moving away. He can feel Deku’s body heat, that’s how close he is.
“‘Course I am.”
“Doesn’t seem like it.”
“I was listening.”
“Mhm.”
“You were fuckin’ rambling about your stupid percentages,” he blurts out. Deku hums, and the sound rumbles through him too. “You wanna reduce them ‘cause you spent three days practically dead in Recovery Girl’s office. See? I was listening. Stop telling me I wasn’t.”
“Hm. I guess you were listening—sorry, Kacchan!” And Deku leans away again. Katsuki really does scowl now.
He’s still scowling when Aizawa tells Deku he can join in on training the following Thursday, barely two weeks after he fucking died by any scientific or medical definition. Katsuki knows anger like he knows the freckles on Deku’s stupid face, but he’s never felt rage like this before. He wants to explode Aizawa’s face off, but he doesn’t because Deku looks thrilled about it. He clenches his fists inside his gauntlets and watches the nerd cheer along with his stupid nerd-squad.
Katsuki seethes in silence, so caught up in himself that he misses Aizawa explaining the training exercise (and he’s glad, sort of, because he feels like he might just explode if he hears his teacher talk right now) and assign groups. His class separates into groups around him, and he stands staring at his own boots until a hand slaps him on the shoulder.
He jumps at the contact and turns to growl at whichever poor soul the hand is attached to.
“Bakugou!” Dunce Face crows, pumping his other hand in the air victoriously. “Can you believe our luck? Us on a team together? We’ve practically got this thing in the bag, dude.” When Katsuki fails to respond, too busy taking in breaths through his nose and out through his mouth, Dunce Face gets closer, pressing his face farther into Katsuki’s personal space. “You okay, man? You seem, like, totally out of it right now. Maybe we should ask Aizawa-sensei about you sitting out or—”
“No,” Katsuki barks, violent enough that Dunce Face recoils. “I’m fine, idiot. Just…let’s get this stupid shit over with, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Totally. In and out, super easy. We’re up against Midoriya and Aoyama, though, so…maybe not super easy.”
Katsuki goes cold all over.
“We’re up against Deku?”
“…and Aoyama.”
His first reaction would be to let out a string of curse words that would make his mother blush if she had actual human emotions, but before he can, he develops a plan. He shrugs Dunce Face off of him and catches sight of Aoyama and Deku huddled together just over Dunce Face’s shoulder, their heads bowed in close as they discuss strategies. Deku rubs at his chin with one finger and nods at something Sparkles says to him. They stay like that until the class moves onto the training grounds.
“I’ll go after Deku, you stay on Sparkles, all right?” he growls, not taking his eyes off of Deku.
“Really?” Dunce Face starts. “You think it would be better to split up?”
“Yes, dumbass. Just do what I say, and it’ll be fine.”
“All right, uh. Try not to go all AWOL on me, okay? I’m kinda failing this class, and I need this grade boost, man. Pretty please.”
“Tch.”
Ground Beta looks too much like the street they— he —found Deku on. It’s all carnage. Crumbled buildings, the remnants cast over the streets, and no one to be seen for as far as Katsuki can see. He makes sure he keeps Deku in his line of sight. His curls bob with every step, and he talks animatedly with Icy Hot. Parts of his costume hang off of his frame in places where the fabric fit well last time Katsuki saw him in it. It’s a harsh reminder of the fact that Deku went three days without eating or working out or—
(breathing, blinking, laughing)
—keeping up with his training.
Katsuki draws in a long breath, his vision blurry with anger or maybe something else. He can’t tell the difference.
Aizawa jerks his head at Katsuki and Dunce Face for them to get into position while the others, sans Deku and Sparkles, stay on the observation deck in one of the standing buildings. Katsuki stalks off without so much as a backwards glance, and Dunce Face follows at a half-jog.
They reach the starting line, and the ringer goes off, the sound ear-piercing and unnecessarily annoying, but it sends Katsuki into immediate action. He and Dunce Face start toward the other side of the training grounds. The air smells like smoke and caramel as the wind whips against his face, but the faux-city is quiet except for the sound of his own explosions. He holds his breath and hopes to God Dunce Face will listen to him for once in his life.
He needs to be the one fighting Deku. No one else. Katsuki’s not about to go easy on him, but…at least, if he’s the one fighting Deku, he’ll know that the nerd is okay. He can make sure not to use his biggest explosions on him or send him into any buildings or anything…
Fuck. Is he going easy on Deku? The nerd will kill him if he figures out that he is.
There is green lightning in his peripherals. He jerks toward it before twisting in the air and starting toward Deku. He lets himself fall hard onto the roof of one building, his knees twinging on impact, but he can see Deku in the middle of the intersection down the street. At the sight of him, the tension seems to drain out of Katsuki like sand through his fingers. The nerd spins in a slow circle, watching and waiting.
Katsuki doesn’t make him wait much longer.
His stomach swoops as he lands near Deku, and the nerd turns toward him in a heartbeat, his eyes sparkling.
“Hi, Kacchan!” he greets, a little too enthusiastic for the middle of a training simulation. He’s sure they’ll catch shit for it from Aizawa during the rundown when they’re finished, but Deku is grinning at him, so Katsuki doesn’t give a shit about it.
“Hey, nerd.” He smirks. His palms spark, and Deku’s feet slide into the offensive position, ready to leap at Katsuki at the drop of a hat.
Something glints on the edge of Katsuki’s vision. He turns slightly and catches sight of an annoyingly blond head of hair hiding in the rubble on the left side of the intersection. Dunce Face creeps out of his spot and starts toward Deku, his finger-gun aimed at the nerd.
On the light post on the other side of the intersection is one of Dunce Face’s discs. Deku stands in the line of fire for Dunce Face’s electricity.
Stupid fucking Dunce Face. Then, First Deku, now Dunce Face. No one listens to me anymore, what the fuck.
Katsuki shoots forward, startling Deku out of his own stance—Katsuki is an aggressive fighter, but when he fights Deku, he usually allows for a little more preamble than this—and shoulders the nerd out of the way.
Deku lands on the ground with a grunt, and he’s looking up at Katsuki with a strange look (eyes wide, mouth open around the beginning of a question, an accusation, something) when Katsuki goes rigid all over. His muscles strain, and he chokes as he grits his teeth against the electricity running through his body.
It’s not too bad of a shock considering the fact that Dunce Face isn’t shorted out afterward as far as Katsuki can tell in his haze, but it could’ve killed Deku. That short-haired bitch touched him, and it sent his soul careening out of his body; no one else seems to care about that fact other than Katsuki. Who knows what’s going to take Deku out for good anymore?
But Katsuki can take it. He promised himself to protect Deku no matter what, and if that means throwing himself between Deku and the rest of the world, then that’s a-fucking-okay with Katsuki.
He can take it. He’s going to be number one.
He can’t do that without Deku alive to see it. He makes some stupid excuse to himself about rubbing it in Deku’s face, but God , those three days sucked so bad. He can’t imagine the rest of his life without the nerd.
He collapses in a heap the moment the electricity stops running its course through him, panting and clutching at the ground. He trembles all over and groans at the feeling of a hand on his back. His ears are ringing worse than they usually are after a big blast.
The hands are on his cheeks after that, lifting his head off the asphalt in an angle that makes his neck twinge.
“Kacchan!” Deku says (maybe he yells it if Katsuki can hear it over the fucking ringing).
“Pu’ me down, nerd,” he slurs. “Hurtin’ m’neck.” His head drops onto the ground again— ow , Deku sucks at taking care of hurt people apparently—before the nerd takes him by the shoulders and heaves him onto his back. The ringing starts to grow dimmer and dimmer as he catches his breath.
“Why would you do that ?” Deku sobs, his hands clutching at the front of Katsuki’s costume. Katsuki blinks dazedly up at him from where he lays, half propped against the nerd. Deku is crying. Big, fat tears streaming down his red cheeks, but he looks more pissed than Katsuki’s ever seen him. For some reason, that pisses him off, too.
“Because I can’t fucking live without you, Deku,” he spits, and he tries to tear away from the nerd’s hold on him, face burning like hell, but his movements are uncoordinated and twitching still. Deku is too close to him, they’re sharing the air between them, and it’s charged with too many feelings. Katsuki isn’t sure what those feelings are anymore.
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe I can’t live without you, either? You can’t just—you can’t throw yourself in front of me, you can’t, Kacchan. Don’t—don’t leave me, please.” Deku slumps over so his face presses into the back of Katsuki’s shoulder, and as tears soak into the skin there, Katsuki’s embarrassment at his own admission seeps out of him, leaving a hollow guilt in the center of his chest.
He made Deku cry.
His hand creeps up to cup the back of Deku’s head and hold him closer. Deku presses his nose into the back of Katsuki’s neck. His chest hitches with heavy sobs.
The position feels too much like that day with Deku. Katsuki blinks at the sky, his mouth moving around silent words.
Dunce Face’s stupid face appears in his line of sight. With a fumbling hand, Katsuki waves him away. This is his moment with Deku and screw Dunce Face for trying to ruin it.
His head isn’t working right because what the hell was that ?
“I see you die every night when I go to sleep.” Shut up, shut up, oh my God. Katsuki squeezes his eyes closed and curses himself. “I can’t do it again, Deku.”
“I’m not glass,” Deku tells him after a moment, “and I don’t want you treating me like I am. You’ll get yourself killed for me, and then what? Then what, Kacchan?”
“Then you go on…without me?”
“You’re an idiot,” Deku laughs, but it’s humorless and tearful. He pulls his face away from Katsuki’s skin and sniffles. “I was here those three days, and I never left your side. I watched you throw away your life, and I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to tell you—to tell you to move on from me. You’re going to be the number one hero because you’re strong, even without me. Kacchan is strong.”
“I’m nothing without you, Deku,” Katsuki admits, his vision blurring and voice cracking.
“That’s not true.”
“It fucking is . I can’t—you don’t understand .” Tears well over and run down the sides of his face and wet his hair. “You can’t die. I don’t know how to live without you. Those three days were the worst days of my fucking life. I can’t do it again, and I promised to always protect you, no matter what, because this world is nothing without you. It’s fucking bullshit nothing, Deku. Shitty nerd.” His hands jerk at his sides, and Deku cups his face in his own hands. The scars are rough against his damp skin. His chest heaves because he can’t get a breath in around the thought of moving on from Deku. He can’t, and he gasps and heaves against Deku.
He sits up in a hurry and nearly knocks his head against Deku’s chin.
“Kacchan—” Deku starts, reaching for him because Katsuki is hyperventilating and fumbling with his stupid gauntlets (who designed them to be so fucking unyeilding, anyway? He’d like to have a good, long chat with them because he needs to hold Deku close right the hell now, and he can’t do that with these gauntlets on). “Kacchan, you have to breathe or you’re going to—”
Finally, the gauntlets are off, and Katsuki twists to grab Deku by the face and pull him closer.
“I think I’m in fucking love with you,” he gasps. Deku trails off, blinking once, twice, three times, and a fourth for good measure. His mouth falls open in a gape. “D-Deku,” he stutters and starts to pull away, an apology (or another Ground Beta fight) brewing under his skin.
Before he can get too far away, Deku wraps a hand in the front of Katsuki’s costume and pulls him into a clumsy kiss. They pull away from each other, and Katsuki closes his eyes. They rest their foreheads together, and Deku doesn’t bother letting go of the front of his costume.
“This doesn’t mean you can go easy on me, Kacchan.”
“I hate you,” Katsuki responds, pulling away and rolling his eyes. A headache blooms behind his eyes, either from having to deal with the dumbass nerd or from getting shocked with Dunce Face’s electricity. At this point, he can’t tell.
“No, you don’t!” Deku cheers. “You love me, you said it. No take-backs.”
“Fuck you. I’ll do what I want, Deku.”
There are footsteps in the rubble behind them.
“Bakugou,” Aizawa huffs. “Come on, you have to go see Recovery Girl.” Katsuki glares at him over his shoulder.
“We were having a moment , asshole.”
“I don’t care. Get up.” Aizawa stands over them for a second before sighing and rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “By the way, we all saw what just happened on the observation deck cameras. There’s going to be a class meeting concerning new…dorm rules.”
Katsuki and Deku share a wide-eyed look before they both turn bright red. To hide it, Katsuki scowls at the ground, and Deku covers his face with his hands.
“Fuck you,” Katsuki calls as Aizawa wanders off. In response, he mutters something that sounds terribly close to damn problem children.