Chapter Text
The day of Kacchan's big interview, Izuku clocks out as early as he can manage and rushes home. He's already set their television to record it, but there's just always something better about seeing it live.
He still doesn't manage to make the start, meaning by the time he dives onto the couch and is done scrambling with the remote Camie's already finished their introductions. They've seated themselves on the roomy circular couch that serves as the set's centerpiece, the both of them made up impeccably and kept in frame.
Kacchan's already (downright unfairly, in all honesty) photogenic, almost always coming out of messy calls artfully tousled with his costume only torn in the most tempting of places. There's still something lost about him in photos, and only partly because he's not nearly so photogenic the moment he realizes someone's trying to take a picture. On film, in motion, it's still not the full-impact Kacchan experience, but it much better carries the absolute force of personality that's always simmering under his surface.
Being paired with Camie puts Kacchan in one of those rare competitions for the brightest spotlight in the room. Camie's an anchor of charisma herself, if of an entirely different type. Her disarming charm and bubbly-with-a-hint-of-blithe personality easily draws others in. It gets her far, clearly enough: what had started as an independent webshow had gotten Camie all the way to hosting her own live televised talkshow.
But only drawing others in is no match for Kacchan's own raw pull, and especially Kacchan's raw pull when he's wearing a suit cut and fitted like that. He's kept his mask, too, which of course only serves to make him look all the more sharp.
"Soooo, Dynamight, now that you're here…" Camie drawls, looking first to the camera.
"Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight," Kacchan corrects sharply.
"Oh believe me, babe, we are gonna get to that," Camie says, nodding through and utterly ignoring Kacchan's answering eye-roll.
Camie's leaned in, ankles crossed, hair perfect, and her dress the sort of generously low-cut she favors. Noticing that so immediately as a taken man makes Izuku feel slightly guilty, but that's easily swept away by Izuku turning his attention to Kacchan and feeling the familiarity with which his entire self reorients to keep Kacchan in his focus.
Kacchan, as Kacchan does, dominates his side of the couch in a steady sprawl that stakes his usual claim over the limits of his immediate space. His presence on camera is always as commanding as it is in real life, seizing the attention in the room effortlessly with only the fundamental confidence that he deserves it. Izuku's always fiercely admired Kacchan for it, as much as he's never, ever managed to replicate that authority through all his attempts himself.
"Nothing else you ever wanted to be when you grow up?" Camie prods with a playful purse of her glossy lips. "Like, ever?"
"No. Only a hero," Kacchan answers, direct the way he does best.
"Oh really?" Camie says, leaning to the side and closer. "'Cuz that's not what I heard."
"Then get your ears checked," Kacchan scoffs. "There never was anything else."
"Oh reeeally?" Camie says, this time her trill of it thoroughly teasing. "'Cuz what I heard is there were, like, three months in there where what little Kacchan really wanted to be when he grew up was a wolf."
"Who told you– Deku," Kacchan says, nearly rising from his seat in his rearing up in affront.
Izuku can feel himself doing a bit of a rear of affront himself. "Hey!" Izuku tells TV-Kacchan. Izuku has the habit of talking back to the television he's watching, though he only does so loudly when Kacchan isn't home to be annoyed by it. "Kacchan, why me?"
"Worse!" Camie says brightly. "I called you mom."
"What?"
"Surprise!"
"Bubblehead, you absolute fu–"
"Yay!" Camie chirps, bumping Kacchan out of frame with her shoulder and flashing a beaming smile and peace sign to the camera. "That's our cue for commercial!"
The audience is still laughing as they cut away.
Izuku's never seen Kacchan's guard this low when he's willingly being filmed. It speaks to why Camie's hosting her own show, but he's always gotten along with Camie remarkably well.
Izuku knows that's something people find unexpected, but it isn't, really, not if you know Kacchan's type of people. This being the type of people Kacchan actually gravitates to, opposed to the type he loudly professes to have, of course.
To put it frankly, and meaning it in the kindest– well, mostly kindest– way, neither Kacchan or Camie have ever particularly cared what the other one thinks of them, just as neither of them have ever particularly cared all that much about anyone else's opinion but their own.
The entire lack of stakes in the rally of shots that's their interview back-and-forth gives it the ease that comes from knowing you're watching a mock-battle. There's none of the usually-palpable looming tension between them that Izuku knows Kacchan quite purposefully deploys to menace away the more cowardly reporters. Kacchan may prefer to use his volume like a cudgel, but he can wield a disdainful silence like a knife.
"Okay but like, really?" Camie asks Kacchan, her tone skeptical. "Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight's best advice to aspiring heroes is to work hard in school and go to bed on time? You wanna like, tell them to eat their veggies as your closer?"
"Obviously you should figure out what the ideal diet for your training program is early," Kacchan says, in the tone of one explaining such to an idiot.
"Oh obviously. Cop to it, Kats," Camie says, leaning in to elbow him in the arm. "Your publicist told you to say all that."
Kacchan sweeps a hand towards the audience. "If I ever once cared what any of these people think do you think I would be Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight," he states, straightforward as always. Izuku winces.
Kacchan's interviews are always an event, which is perhaps also the most-kindest way to frame them. He avoids any but the most essential avenues of communicating with the Hero media. It's not that unusual, although as-usual no one manages to do it quite like Kacchan.
The combination of his attention-grabbing ability, personality, looks, and just general… Kacchan-ness, his fiercely private handle on his personal life, and his clear disdain for the influence of celebrity news just paradoxically left the fans hungry for the slightest of details and the magazines hungry for the fans.
And of course, Kacchan, as Kacchan does, refused to placate the attentions and instead only crystallized in his defiance. Either side's refusal to do anything but escalate has turned the media's attempt to get Kacchan in the tabloids into something less like a hunt for a scoop and more like a hunt for a rare beast, aggressive yet elusive. By this point, Izuku honestly suspects that some of the more dedicated reporters who chase after Kacchan are just doing it for the thrill of the sport.
But the empty space Kacchan leaves in his own media narrative has been too much a temptation recently for the less-honorable of the media to fill in with whatever they can make fit. And Kacchan's, well, general Kacchan-ness– he's always been a bit of an acquired taste for most anyone but Izuku– in combination with his habit for howling threats, obscenities, and threatening obscenities in full view of the public means that none of the personas invented for him are particularly flattering.
The media's opinion and how it permeates their work is not something Kacchan's ever had a true sense of, to his ever-and-increasing frustration. It's one of his rare and unprotected areas of naivete, to his continued consequence.
Kacchan himself has absolutely no interest in hero gossip– or any gossip, given how little he respects obscuring truth and avoiding confrontation. It leaves him with a poor understanding of how arguments he'd thought he won can be recast and resold by their losers, and no track kept of the seeping of resentments he'd thought he'd made futile and then immediately discarded without further thought.
He also still has yet to fully grasp that the media's recent shift to framing him as some kind of wild beast is a bad sign, under his very, very Kacchan logic that wild beasts are cool as hell. (Undeniably true, but very much missing the point.)
That had been why Camie had been so determined to get him on her show. She'd sold it to Kacchan as a favor for her ratings, but Izuku knows Camie's even more familiar with the tangled webbing that's the hero media's social network. Izuku also knows it's gotten to the point where the same rumors have been passed around for so long they're so worn-through and familiar that people have started taking them for fact. He's deeply grateful Camie's stepping in to artfully defang Kacchan to the public before Izuku even thought to ask her to.
Like now, as she's already casually directed him away from explicitly defining his scorn for those he considers life's extras completely under his notice.
"Ya, but like, knowing what a polynomial is has helped me exactly zero times in my hero work and also my entire life," Camie points out. "I feel like I could've skipped some of the homework."
Kacchan tchs derisively. "Half the garbage they teach in most schools is a useless waste of your time. So do your homework."
"Ummm, babe? You forgot which side of the argument you're on."
Kacchan raises his hand already half-formed to a middle finger before Camie quickly puffs out a black bar over it and cheerfully shoves his hand right back down and out of frame. There's another laugh in the audience, though Kacchan's gotten himself genuinely involved in the discussion and doesn't bother to care about both the contact and the reception to it.
"Catch up, Bubblehead. It's about building discipline," Kacchan pulls his hand back so he can smack the back of it into his palm for emphasis. "You think you'll get anywhere that counts just running on bravery?"
"Hold up. You don't think bravery is the most important thing to a hero? You, Great Explosion yadda yadda Bakugou Katsuki?" Camie leans back in her seat, pressing her hand to her chest dramatically. "Guys, is it still too early to cut to commercial? I think I need a moment. I am in, like, legit shock."
Kacchan snorts inelegantly, which he yet somehow manages to pull off. "Reducing what it means to be a professional hero to something like bravery– no one gets to the top just by being the first to run in. It's willpower," he states, with unequivocal certainty. "That's the strongest power anyone can train."
"Sure, maybe I'll get my willpower into pilates," Camie laughs.
Kacchan rolls his eyes. "We call it willpower because that's what it is. Power. You think any power gets stronger by just sitting on your–" he stumbles, and Izuku can almost see the moment Kacchan remembers that right, he's actually live in a vitally important televised celebrity interview. He tends to forget about the full picture when he's truly invested.
"–by just sitting on your hands and not training it?" he curtly corrects.
"Nice save," Camie stage-whispers to the audience, giving Kacchan a thumbs-up. Kacchan rolls his eyes again, though this time it's with a hint of a smirk.
Kacchan directs his attention to the camera for the first time since the start. He's brutal in his earnestness as everything else, and Izuku loves it every time. "The strongest power you can have is the will to make things happen. That's what I'm telling the kids."
"Totally killer quote, Kats, but my jury's still way out on why that means learning your polynomials," Camie prompts, angled in from her own clear interest in their talk.
"Training anything starts small," Kacchan says, his intensity lessened by the transition of his attention back to Camie. "You're trying to build self-discipline. No matter what you feel, no matter what you're facing, you have to act. That's what being a hero is," he continues.
He shifts his focus to the audience, now. "Whatever your quirk, if you're quirkless, doesn't matter. If you can't be bothered to finish your own homework at a reasonable time, you're not ready to be a hero," Kacchan concludes, leaning back in his seat. "Make a tough schedule to stick to and stick to it, first. There's your start."
"Kacchan." Izuku leans back, too. He hadn't expected anything like that. Even with how far they've come. Not from Kacchan. He's changed so much, in the man he's built around the unchanging core of him.
"That's actually good advice," Camie says, far too wonderingly to be actually wondering at it.
"Haaa? You saying I don't give good advice?" Kacchan immediately shoots back.
"Basically the only advice I've ever heard from you is repeatedly advising your enemies to die," Camie points out pragmatically.
"You saying that's not good advice?"
Camie laughs, then gestures widely around the set. "You heard it here, peeps! Who would have typed Dynamight as a jokester!"
"I am in no way joking," Kacchan says.
Camie raises her eyebrows. "No, I really don't think you are," she says, to a rippling laugh from the audience. "Okay! Stick around, peeps, 'cuz you better believe we're gonna get to Hero Deku." She claps her hands once in an accurately loud illusory recreation of Kacchan's quirk. "Aaaand commercial!"
Izuku chokes on his own spit. Oh, he thinks, that's right. He's Kacchan's partner in all meanings of the word, and this is Kaccan's first vitally important televised celebrity interview. Of course he'd come up.
…It's possible, Izuku thinks over the buzz of the commercials, that he might forget about the full picture when he's truly invested, too.