Chapter Text
Katsuki Bakugou first met Izuku Midoriya when he was four years old.
He remembered the day vividly — it was bright and sunny, and the playground had smelled like hot wood and plastic. His mom sat on the flaky-painted picnic table with a tupperware full of watermelon and a thermos of cold apple juice, smiling at him whenever he looked back from the top of the slide.
Then he had spotted Izuku.
It wasn’t Izuku himself that had caught his eye at the time, it was his T-shirt; blue, white, red and yellow, with the cracking rubber visage of All Might emblazoned in the middle.
Katsuki did what any child would do when faced with a fellow connoisseur, and ran over the wood chips to say hi.
“Hey, dweeb! I like your shirt. All Might is cool.”
The boy had looked up at him from the ground with big, shy green eyes, and grinned from ear to ear. He had fluffy, curly hair, a dark shade of green like a pine tree, and big red shoes. Katsuki thought he looked a little silly with his gap-toothed, chubby-cheeked, freckle-spattered face.
“Y…Yeah he is! He’s my favorite hero!”
They hit it off instantly, like little kids do, and they spent the rest of the afternoon playing heroes and talking endlessly.
It was just like any other day from Katsuki’s early childhood; warm, hazy, sticky as summer fruit and just as sweet.
On Katsuki’s fifth birthday, he had a sleepover with Izuku.
Izuku had brought him an All Might plush and two bags of spicy BBQ popcorn. They were good gifts.
They built a fort out of couch cushions and blankets and a broom, and they watched a movie, and then they talked until midnight. They talked about heroes, and they talked about Quirks, and they talked about what they wanted most.
“When I grow up,” Katsuki had said, “I’m gonna be a really cool hero. Just like All Might. I’m gonna have a really good Quirk. Actually, I’m gonna be number one!”
“Me too!”
“No, you can’t be number one too, Izuku! Only I get to be number one. You gotta be number two!”
“Okay, Kacchan!”
A few months later, Katsuki fell in a stream. Izuku offered his hand. That stupid nerd.
He was always so condescending — always asking if Katsuki was okay, if he was hurt, if he wanted the last sweet or the flattest skipping-stone, like he thought Katsuki couldn’t handle himself. Like he thought Katsuki was fragile.
Izuku was diagnosed as quirkless.
That was fine, in and of itself. Katsuki didn’t have anything against quirkless people.
The problem was that Izuku still thought he could become a hero — he defended other kids, he kept writing in those stupid goddamn notebooks, and he never fucking shut up about All Might.
He had this spark, this intense, willful drive to save others, and even though Katsuki would never admit it, it scared him.
Because Izuku had nothing, and he was still a better person than Katsuki ever was.
He tried to push Izuku away. He didn’t want Izuku around anymore and he certainly didn’t need him, or his ‘help’, but Izuku just kept coming back.
Katsuki called him names, he burned his analysis books, he threatened him.
But he just kept coming back, and looking at Katsuki with those intensely green eyes (god, Katsuki felt like Izuku could see into his soul sometimes), calling him Kacchan, like Katsuki was something dear to him. Something close.
When he got a little older, Katsuki picked up manga reading as a hobby. Though he pretended to follow all the classic action-packed shounen, what he really preferred was romance manga.
It was all extremely formulaic to the point where Katsuki could read the back-cover blurb and predict exactly where the story was going to go, but he read them anyway.
By the end of every story, the protagonists were happy and married in peaceful bliss — sometimes they even had a kid.
Katsuki never wanted a life like that, though; maybe that’s why he liked to read about them.
He knew that heroes didn’t settle down. They rarely got married, they rarely had kids. The statistics were solid; most heroes die during work or from work-related injuries, and few ever retire or live long enough to.
Katsuki was more than okay with that.
He’d accept whatever he had to, in order to become a hero.
Katsuki’s eyes burned from the smoke, and he couldn’t breathe. He was suffocating; sinking; gasping for air he couldn’t reach, clawing and clawing with desperate hands for any leverage he could gather against the cold and thick sludge.
And then, Izuku was there.
He was always fucking there.
Throwing himself into danger like he didn’t fucking matter, acting like Katsuki was the one that mattered.
He didn’t need Izuku’s help.
He never needed Izuku’s help.
Self-sacrificial bastard.
Katsuki ended up getting into U.A. Highschool, of course he did. He never doubted himself.
Against all odds, Izuku did too. Fucking quirkless Izuku, who was apparently not quirkless anymore, whose skin could glow with sparking veins and the static-green shock of electric energy.
His quirk hurt him, though. It hurt him badly, every single fucking time he used it — it was a second-hand quirk, not meant for his body.
And Katsuki hated that.
Izuku had a self-destructive streak a mile long, and a savior complex even longer, and those two things were never going to mix well — Izuku was a fucking ticking time bomb waiting to explode, and as much as Katsuki tried to distance himself from that inevitable disaster, he couldn’t.
He may as well have been a hostage strapped to it.
A lot happened.
Katsuki’s class was attacked, and they won, at least for the time being. The sports festival happened, and Katsuki won that too, even though he didn’t fucking want to, not under those circumstances; Izuku kept going off on these secret fucking missions and coming back in a cast and Katsuki hated it, he fucking hated how everyone was enabling Izuku to destroy himself. Katsuki was kidnapped, and kept in a rancid and hot and dilapidated bar for days, chained and tortured and fucking taunted, and eventually he was saved — but All Might lost his powers in the process. And Katsuki knew, he just fucking knew that if he had been a little faster or a little stronger or if he had pulled himself together and got the balls to escape by himself, that never would’ve happened.
All Might, his idol, his teacher, the person he looked up to for all of his fucking life, nearly died because of him.
And useless Izuku, the loser, nerd, the nobody, kept destroying himself with the power that All Might gave him — he knew it was All Might’s power now, because of course it fucking was.
And Katsuki lay awake at night wondering why Izuku.
Because if Izuku got that power, then what the fuck was Katsuki doing wrong.
One hot, frustratingly humid summer night, Katsuki confronted Izuku and they fought at Ground Beta.
Sparks of energy lit up the night; dust kicked up by Katsuki’s own explosions and Izuku’s whip-fast red sneakers made his eyes water, punches were thrown at the speed of sound and the hot rush of blood was all Katsuki could hear. And eventually the tremble in his lip won and he cried. He cried to Izuku about all of his fucking insecurities. And Izuku said some bullshit, and they fought more, and the boom of explosions and the crackle of One-For-All painted a cacophony of sound across the still, dark sky.
And, eventually, the dust cleared, and to Katsuki’s complete and utter dismay he found himself pinning Izuku to the ground.
Katsuki held Izuku’s head to the ground, and for the first time Izuku didn’t say anything.
He just looked up at Katsuki.
With those fucking green eyes.
Izuku went and got himself hurt, again and again, but he was slowly and surely making All Might’s power his own. Win to save, and save to win, is what All Might had told them after their fight at Ground Beta. He and Izuku were proper rivals now, and Katsuki wasn’t really sure what to do about that.
Katsuki sat in on Izuku and All Might’s secret quirk chats now.
Katsuki needed to make sure Izuku didn’t blab his secret to more people. Katsuki knowing was bad enough as it was. The nerd couldn’t keep a secret to save his life, literally.
The more All Might talked about the history and qualities of his quirk, the more Izuku’s eyes darkened. Katsuki knew he was the only one who could see it — that deep, deep conviction brewing inside him. Izuku’s trademark intensity.
Katsuki knew it would be the death of Izuku, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he had a part in the cause of that.