Chapter Text
Bakugou licks his lips, unable to look away from Izuki's age standing by the window. He watches how the rays of the morning sun dance on the pale, swallow-covered face and how the plump but bitten lips stretch into a smile after Uraraki's words. He hears a low, husky laugh that sends goosebumps up his spine, and the beast inside demands that he put aside his pride and finally admit the obvious. He never sneezed. He could hate, despise, compete, and then love. To love so strongly and desperately that I didn't even think that I would ever be able to love anyone in the whole world. He loves damn Deku until his fingertips tingle with the desire to touch him, hold him close and never let him go, build a strong family and maybe later when they're both ready to have a couple of kids. He loves Midoriya to the point of chest pain and shortness of breath from the realization that all his dreams will remain unfulfilled because the Rookie of the Year simply doesn't need a former childhood best friend who once trampled, shattered and broke all his hopes. He does not need a sad reminder of his failed past.
Izuku Midoriya doesn't need him, Katsuki Bakugo.
"Approach him" pushes Eijiro forward, which makes Bakugo shudder at someone else's voice. "I think that would be better than staring at him for hours like some kind of maniac."
"I don't stare."
"Really dude?" Denki smiles. "It feels like you are undressing him with your eyes for fifteen to twenty minutes. A little more and you will cover everything around with saliva."
"You can invite him to a meeting. You know, I overheard him talking to Momo recently about wanting to go to a new bar near his house. Obviously, it serves great burgers and real beer." Todoroky interjects, not taking his eyes off his pile of reports.
Bakugo doesn't say anything, but mentally it is really accepted to scroll in his head what it would be like to ask Midoriya on a date and get consent. Father Izuku blushed and would have definitely started stuttering for just a minute, but once again becoming the nerdy nerd he was used to back in middle school. He would take Izuku wherever he wanted and would do anything after, when it was time to leave the omega awkwardly pecked him on the cheek showing his approval. Katsuki would do anything to make this insufferable fool the happiest. He would die for Midoriya. He would kill for him without a second thought. Anything to atone for his past sins and prove to everyone that he really has changed. He became softer and friendlier, and this damn Deku didn't even notice it, spending more and more time with his bitch girlfriend and paying less and less attention to Katsuki himself. It seems that after he apologized, Midoriya was finally able to begin to let go of past grudges, and with that, the offender himself. He no longer looked at his childhood friend as if he knew something no one else did, he no longer addressed him as "Kacchan" only a coldly detached Katsuki, he no longer sought to be close to Bakugo talking to him only when work required it or another task.
"True, only after you fill out all the papers, otherwise Yaoyorozu will take care of cutting your salary so much that you won't even have enough money for insurance, let alone to take someone somewhere." The same Todoroki interrupts all thoughts.
"I went to hell with the idiot." snaps Katsuki, really returning to work.
The devil pulled him right after school to agree to Shota's stupid idea that he still wants to prove something to his father, the world and himself, and instead of a prestigious agency, he goes after the rest, risking everything at once. Career, reputation, salary and own pride.. After all, it is unheard of that all twenty graduates decided to open their own agency at once, undertaking to work together with such tenacity as if they did not want to kill each other every day for the last three years.
Deku believed the half-hearted bastard and followed him without even looking back. Bakugo followed him because he knew he couldn't do otherwise. To give up, to be alone, was to go back to where he started years ago. Solitude. One against the world again.
"You know, if you don't do it, someone else will. Not necessarily Ochako." Kirishima snorts. "It can be anyone. The last time I was on patrol with him, I saw all those full adoration and longing looks that the alphas throw at him and someday he will notice them too. He will understand how he affects others and will decide to make some loser happy, and you will lose your last chance to tell him the truth. No. Of course, if your plans include losing him once and for all, then go ahead. Continue to do nothing and then all your life you will have to look at how he is happy with someone else, look at how he raises other people's children and always know that it could have been you. You could have been with him."
" You know, as soon as you started dating Minai, you became too intelligent. It's annoying."
"Love works wonders." Eijiro shrugs, getting up from his seat and kneading his hands. "Okay, it's time for me to meet with Hatsumi to talk about some improvements for my suit, and you can stay here and continue to attack Midoriya."
Katsuki indeed turns his gaze again to the green-haired omega, who managed to move to his desk and was now concentrating on explaining something to Kyoka, leaning over a map of the area. He feels like the last pervert, spying on someone he has no right to even look at. Certainly not after everything he's done over the years.
"Hold on. I will go with you."
"Do you understand that you are just matching?" whispers Todoroki. "You run from Izuka and from yourself like a real, scared boy."
"Shut your bad mouth you jerk!" Bakugo growls loudly, grabbing his opponent by the collar of the hero suit. "Otherwise, I will close it for you myself!"
He sees nothing in front of him but Shoto's mocking gaze and blood. He wants to smash someone else's face on the table, erase that ridiculous smile once and for all and break a perfectly straight nose. He wants this half-assed bastard to finally stop prying into other people's lives like a fucking Mother Teresa, because he, Bakugou, doesn't need advice from someone who, not long ago, he hated so much that he was ready to fire a few explosions right in his face. They are not friends. Never were them.
"Enough!" shouts Kaminari, extending his hand forward.
"Let him go!" echoes Jiro to his boyfriend.
"What happened to you?" Tokoyami asks.
Katsuki doesn't care about their words and their looks. He doesn't even care what people think or say about him. All that matters now is the cheeky smile of Todoroki, who knows that he won't do anything, he just won't be able to. while Midoriya is around. After all, he promised himself that he would become better, kinder, calmer. He promised that he would make Izuki believe that he had changed. He will make them all believe, parents, the whole world and himself. He can be better. Maybe there is no disgust or malice in Izuki's gaze yet. He can be better as long as there are those who believe in him.
"Katsuki!" sounds a familiar, unfamiliar voice at the same moment when the siren suddenly starts to sound from the speakers, and the fists are involuntarily clenched.
Bakugou wants to fall on his knees in front of Midoriya and beg for forgiveness and to call him "Kacchan" again and look at him with the usual warmth. He has so much he wants to say and do, promise, but all he can do right now is pick up his gloves from the table and head towards the exit.
"What did you freeze? Looks like we have a job to do."
….
"No Bakugo! No!" shouts Izuki, pressing the bloodied body to himself.
He seems to sneeze at the blood and soot that contaminates his suit and even at the battle going on around him. He knows that Kirishima and Tokoyami are behind him, and that Uraraka and Denka are dealing with the remnants of the villains, and that's enough. He believes in them and their powers, one by one, and he knows what crazy feats they are ready for one day together, and this is enough to fully surrender to his fear and panic.
"You can't leave me! Can not!" with his free hand, Midoriya wipes the tears flowing down his cheeks. "Please…" I sobbed. "Please stay with me."