Chapter Text
If there was one thing Midoriya knew how to do right, it was keep a secret. Well, as long as it wasn't his. Bakugou had been subject to too many accidental slip-ups that left the green-haired boy stumbling over his words in an effort to explain himself and take back whatever ancient oath he’d just revealed.
One time was just bad luck. Twice? A weird coincidence, but Bakugou could accept that. Three times? The idiot had to be doing it on purpose at that point.
“But I digress,” Bakugou said, giving his head a little shake as Uraraka’s stifled laughter jostled his shoulder. As Midoriya’s oldest friends—ugh, technically, Uraraka could be classified as such a lot longer than Bakugou, but fuck that—they were both privy to…everything, really. So when Uraraka asked him why he told Midoriya his plans for running away, Bakugou couldn't help himself from complaining.
“I've heard this one too many times,” Uraraka sighed. “We get it, Kat, Deku is a little loose-lipped! You're just jealous.”
Bakugou scowled, but they both knew he couldn't refute that. It would never not piss him off that such a blabbermouth got to bear the greatest power in the world and not him.
“I digress, ” he repeated, spitting the words out through gritted teeth, refraining from shoving the brunette away from where she was leaning on him, practically boneless in the summer heat.
“You know, you don't have to run away,” Uraraka said after a moment, and if she’d heard him complain about Midoriya’s dumbassery too many times, Bakugou had heard this enough for a lifetime.
“She won't let me go.”
“She did the exact same, Bakugou.”
“It’s different. She ran away to get married. I'm just…I don't have a reason.”
Mitsuki had told him time and time again the reason she became a hunter. Bakugou knew her story like the back of his own hand. She wanted out of the stifling pressure her family shoved onto her. As boring as Bakugou had thought the story was when he was younger and dumber, he understood her, and he understood that his own motivation didn't hold a candle.
“You want to explore. That’s reason enough.”
Not for his parents, it wouldn't be. Mitsuki and Masaru had met by pure chance—or kismet, as they liked to call it. At first, the correspondence between the two had solely been a way for Mitsuki to rebel against her parents. Wasting resources, time, and dignity all to talk to the kind of man Bakugou’s grandparents considered the dregs of the earth? Mitsuki had never thought she could actually fall in love, but miraculously, after keeping in touch for four years, it didn't take much at all to convince Mitsuki to run away from home and elope with the damn guy she had only ever seen one time.
“They're going to think you hate them,” Uraraka pressed, either not noticing or not caring how Bakugou’s fists clenched and his shoulder bunched up. “They're going to think they were such awful parents that their one son—who they love very much—hates them enough to run away without telling them. Or they'll think you're dead.”
“Ura—”
“Even after you saw what it did to Deku, you're going to just leave? ” Her voice raised a pitch as she sat upright, directing the full force of her glare on Bakugou. “Don't you dare say it’s not the same,” she warned. His mouth snapped closed. “His dad, Bakugou. It wrecked him. You're willing to do that to your parents?”
It was true. Midoriya’s dad leaving him had destroyed the Midoriya family, who, after prompting from pretty much the entire village, took on Inko’s maiden name.
“I can't risk it,” Bakugou said quietly. “I can't risk that they'll tell me no.”
Because really, if they asked him to stay, Bakugou wasn't certain he could refuse. He loved them, he loved them more than he could ever admit out loud, but more than anything, he wanted to get away from this place. He wanted to be a real hunter, the kind his mom had been before finally deciding that she couldn't risk leaving Katsuki to grow up without one.
“Katsuki,” Uraraka murmured. She covered his hand with her own, gaze flicking off over his shoulder where he could hear the sounds of shrieking laughter, followed by a booming laugh more familiar than Bakugou’s own. His father, babysitting their neighbor’s brats. “Just think about it,” she asked finally. “If you leave and they get too sad, just know I won't hesitate to blab.”
“Bitch,” Bakugou muttered, but his heart wasn't in it. That was one risk he had been willing to take, when he'd decided to tell this fledgling witch he called one of his best friends. He didn't want his parents to be sad, and it was nice to know that there was someone who would take that burden off their shoulders, if Bakugou decided to pile it on them.
Fuck.
Abruptly, Bakugou stood, ignoring Uraraka’s yelp of surprise. “I'm going home,” he said tersely, stomping across the green and letting out a breath of relief that his father hadn't noticed him go. He could just write a note, but Bakugou had no idea what he could say. Hey, sorry for running away and not telling you to your face that I'm leaving because I'm a big fat fucking coward. Take this shitty note instead.
Yeah, that wasn't happening. He hated the idea of someone else, like Uraraka or Midoriya, breaking the news to them even more, but it was preferable to fucking things up because he couldn't put his feelings down onto paper.
Instead of turning onto the narrow gravel path that led to the Bakugou home, the blond continued forward, not slowing even as he reached the treeline. He picked his way through the foliage, unsheathing his hunting knife—the useless one, not the real deal—and slashing at everything in his way until he reached the cliffside. One of the only parts of their secluded corner of the peninsula that faced the west.
The west.
If Bakugou closed his eyes, he could practically hear the beating of dozens of dragons’ wings, feel the wind their powerful strokes generated. If Mitsuki had become a hunter for freedom, Bakugou wanted adventure. More than anything, he wanted to find a dragon. A real one, not the inaccurately drawn ones found in biology almanacs and history textbooks detailing the hundred year long war that ended not thirty years before. They should be back. The dragons had been right fucking here, not half a century ago, but then they all left, and they never came back.
So Bakugou was going to go to them. The sparse rumors he’d heard from travelers passing through said that all the dragons resided in the west and the north, the latter only recently, after King Enji had miraculously lifted the ban on creatures of magic. Not only that, he laid down harsh punishments for those who hunted dragons especially. Bakugou would go north, but everyone knew that you couldn't go three feet in the south without a fight, and fuck did he want to fight. He would go south first, sail across the gulf separating the west side of the peninsula from the eastside of the main continent. Bakugou had paid enough attention in class to know that it was far more perilous as a fresh-faced traveler to cut through the desert than to take the long way around, and he wasn't keen on dying before his journey across the world was complete.
Bakugou opened his eyes, watching the waves crashing on the rocks far, far below, and lowered himself to the grass. Soon he’d see a dragon for himself. No, soon he was going to ride one.
“Kacchan?”
Even as the rustling grew closer, Bakugou didn't look back, only bothering with a glance when Midoriya sat himself at his side, giving him a small smile. “Hiding from Uraraka?”
“Shut up,” Bakugou said automatically. “She was being annoying. As per fucking usual.”
“Ah, she was talking about you leaving then, huh?”
Midoriya didn't say anything for a moment as he turned to watch the water. Bakugou almost humored him. “Spit it out, Deku.”
“She's just nervous, you know. She's going to miss you a lot. I am too, but you know Ochako. One minute she’s threatening to tear you limb from limb and the next she’s acting like a mother hen,” he laughed, nudging Bakugou’s arm. The fondness in his voice was almost sickening.
“She thinks I can't handle myself, and she's been getting on my ass about telling my dumb parents.”
Bakugou didn't say why, but Midoriya wasn't stupid. He definitely knew, if the sad smile on his face had anything to say about it. “Of course she knows you can handle yourself. Ochako would worry about anyone. Hell, she’d worry about All Might himself, Kacchan. As for your parents, well…you know how I feel about that.”
“Tch, you're on her side, as usual,” Bakugou grumbled. “And as usual, I'm the fucking asshole for not going along with what you two morons want.”
“I didn't come up here to fight with you,” Midoriya responded, unwaveringly patient in the face of Bakugou’s fury, unbothered by the telltale sound of his teeth grinding together.
“Then why are you here, Deku?” Bakugou spat, finally turning his body to glare at the other boy. For just a second, he saw the pudgy toddler from fifteen years ago, always running after him, never beside him. Things had changed, but the shine in Izuku’s eyes hadn't.
“Well, I said I'd miss you, didn't I? This spot won't be the same without you,” Midoriya sighed. He leaned his head against Bakugou’s shoulder, and for the first time in months, Bakugou let him. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Bakugou was acutely aware that his next breath wasn't going to be as steady as he wanted. The three of them—they'd been together a decade and a half. Longer, in Midoriya’s case. Izuku and Ochako were the ones to smack some sense into him when his head was too far up his ass. They put up with him until Bakugou stopped pretending that all they were to him was ‘tolerable.’
They took care of each other, and in turn, let Bakugou take care of them. Izuku needed someone when the weight of the world became too much to bear. Ochako needed a reminder that looking out for the whole village meant shit if she wasn't looking out for herself.
Bakugou knew he would drive himself crazy if he stayed, but he was beyond denying that he was going to miss these idiots like hell.
“Don't spout that mushy crap,” he muttered, feeling the huff of amusement Midoriya let out. “Come on. If we don't get back, Auntie will get mad.”
“She couldn't get mad at you if she tried,” Midoriya scoffed. “It’s me she’ll yell at.”
The green-haired boy pushed himself up, offering a hand and yanking Bakugou up with him when he clasped it. Their days together were numbered, now, and Bakugou was determined to make the most of them.
He’d try, at least. There was no guarantee, what with the nagging in the back of his mind telling him to figure out something to tell his parents, and to figure it out fast.