Chapter Text
Katsuki meets Izuku in the fall, when the forest of his hair and the jade of his irises are like beacons amidst the auburn hues of the fading trees and smoky sky. Green, so different yet somehow complimentary to the vibrant red blood spattered all over him. Katsuki takes a deep, desperate breath—
“No.” The boy shoots him a fierce glare. “No more yelling at me when I’m trying to save your life.”
He wants to shove the dumb medic away and rejoin the fight. He wants to scream that he’s not done yet, that he has to win. He wants to strangle the green-eyed idiot for no good reason at all.
He grabs the medic’s neck with a trembling hand, blood still rapidly pouring out of his wounds. “Fuck…you…” he coughs before promptly losing his grip on the conscious world.
He meets Izuku again during first snow.
Katsuki ain’t a fucking sap like all the other losers out there, but even he knows that first snow is supposed to be a peaceful day where the Scrooge’s of the world grumble by their lonely fireplaces while the laughter of amused children fills the waking morning.
Apparently mother nature gives fuck-all about that mush and decided snowflakes look better falling beside buildings that tremble, melting on a ground that cracks open with deadly fissures.
He loses count of how many people he’s had to rescue, and how many he’s failed to save. The icy wind poses no challenge to his quirk as he sweats heavily from exertion.
“Dynamight, theres two people about fifty meters north of your location, one is trapped.” Earphone Jack’s voice bleeds through the static of his earpiece.
Katsuki turns, and amidst the rubble catches a blurry flash of green. His breath catches, just for a moment, before he steels himself.
“Copy. I’m on it.”
It’s too dangerous to go on foot, with strong aftershocks still shaking the foundations of the streets periodically. He propels himself with his explosions, landing roughly just a few meters from the familiar medic.
The boy doesn’t notice him. His eyes are closed tight with concentration and his arms are shaking with strain as he desperately tries to lift a fallen lamppost off of a woman’s body. Katuski glances at the woman’s unnaturally still figure and doesn’t need to check her pulse to know she’s long dead.
“Hey!” Katsuki demands the medic’s attention.
Wide green eyes meet his, but the futile struggle to lift the damn lamppost doesn’t end.
“D-Dynamight,” a trembling voice greets him. “Quick, help me…agh…lift this.”
Katuski notices the tears beginning to streak down that determined, freckled face, mixing with the wet droplets of the dying snowflakes landing on his flushed cheeks. His first thought is that crybabies shouldn’t be emergency medics. His second thought is that somehow the guy still looks brave as fuck and its admirable in a way that makes his insides twist and his muscles tense.
“You’re wasting your time. She’s dead. Fire and rescue will recover the body later, you should be over by the tents helping the wounded.”
His third thought was a question: Will you be covered in the blood of others again, next time I meet you?
He’s sick of the sight.
“I know she’s dead,” the medic’s voice cracks with sorrow, “but she’s—“
The ground quakes so suddenly and powerfully Katsuki’s field of view becomes blurry and he stumbles. The building next to them, already cracked, begins to crumble now too. A large slab of concrete from high up breaks, begins a fatal descent.
Katsuki is in his third year of hero studies at U.A. He knows this scenario in his bones. Not this exact moment, but how to react to it. Take in your surroundings Katsuki, then act. The dead woman, still dead, the defenceless idiot shielding the body with his own alive and breathing one. He has less than seconds to make a move, but thats all the time he needs.
When Katsuki’s mind catches up with his body, he’s standing over the medic with his hand raised as the shower of snow amongst them is transiently accompanied by tiny bits of exploded concrete.
His mind is calm. Rescue maneuvers are in his bones. But his heart is rattling against his ribcage.
He grabs the shitty idiot by the collar of his bloody uniform and shakes him hard. “What the hell were you thinking?!” He screams, anger heating up his whole body. “I told you she’s fucking dead already and you elect to get yourself crushed trying to protect a fucking corpse instead of run to safety! What the fuck is wrong with you—you—“
This boy has told Katsuki his name before. When Katsuki was lying half dead at the edge of a battlefield, smoke billowing in the air and blocking out the sunset.
“My name is Izuku Midoriya—not “shitty medic”—and you’re going to bleed out if you don’t lie back and let me save your life.”
Memories have an awful way of coming up at the most humourless of times.
“You shitty Deku!”
His breaths are heavy, frantic with the vestiges of the adrenaline that had coursed through him just seconds ago.
A bloody hand grasps his wrist.
“I know.” the boy takes a deep, weary breath. “I know she’s dead. But Dynamight, she’s pregnant.”
Katsuki shoves the idiot off of him and looks at the corpse more closely this time.
Fuck.
Pleading, hopeful eyes capture his. “If we get her out now, we might be able to save the baby.”
Fuck.
They struggle to lift the lamppost together, but Katsuki is a fucking hero who’s not going to lose against a shitty piece of metal, and Izuku is a crazy medic who’s apparently hellbent on saving as many lives as he can and die trying.
So yeah, they manage to lift the fucking lamppost. Obviously.
They let it slip from their aching hands as soon as they get it away from the woman’s body. Izuku gasps in a much needed breath, then straightens out and picks up the woman, as if the lamppost was nothing to him. As if he could lift a thousand more if it meant saving even one more life.
Katuski grit his teeth, his mind a jumbled mess at the sight.
“Do you know where the nearest ambulance is?” Izuku asks.
“Over that way. I’ll take you.”
“No. I’ve got this. There are other people who need you.”
“Stupid Deku, there could be more aftershocks!”
“I’ve got this! And I told you my name is—“
“I know what your fucking name is!”
“Then why—nevermind. You don’t have time for this, so go.” Then, after a breath, “I’ll be okay.”
It takes Katuski a moment to register the easy, reassuring smile sent his way.
He was going to be a pro hero soon. He knew what the most logical course of action was right now. He let Izuku go.
No one ever said being a pro hero would be easy.
When the work is done and his muscles ache and his eyes sting, he heads to the nearest hospital.
Despite the earthquake finally settling and the disaster zone having been cleared, the ER is still in shambles, lives being saved and lost in a mad frenzy that threatens to drown out the reason he came here in the first place. Hands grab at him, cries of gratitude and cries of loss flood him. He gently pries away, holding back his more aggressive instincts.
His nails dig into his palms as he regains focus, striding over to the triage station. He asks a clerk if they’ve seen a green haired medic come in with a pregnant woman. A dead woman.
They dont have updated information yet, the clerk tells him, but they were last checked into an emergency OR.
When Katsuki finds him, an older physician is squeezing his small shoulder and murmuring something in a low voice. He doesn’t like the pitiful look on the physician’s face.
He doesn’t like the blood covering Izuku’s uniform.
Green eyes meet his.
“The baby lasted for two minutes,” Izuku tells him later.
They’re sitting on a bench in the dim, empty staff room, Izuku’s changed into civilian clothes, all washed up aside from a spattering of blood on his brow that he missed. Katuski has a hard time averting his eyes from it.
“We failed to save it. I failed. And wasted your time…I’m sorry.”
He grits his teeth. “It’s not your fault, dumbass. You fuckin’ tried and thats more than most people would’ve done in your situation.”
Izuku huffs out a humourless laugh. “Why are you even here?”
Katuski had thought about that while he was waiting for Izuku to change out of his bloodied clothes. He mostly came because he wanted to know if he’d helped to save one more life, to somehow make up for the countless one’s he didn’t today. As if lives could be balanced on a scale to make him feel good. For fucks sake, Katuski was so messed up in the head, thinking like that.
But he also came because Izuku Midoriya pisses him off. For almost three years now, he’s been on top. He got into the top class at the top hero school. He even surpassed Todoroki to be number one in the whole damn region. He was always ahead. Always winning. He was going to become the number one hero no matter what.
Then he saw a simple medic, with no hesitation, throw his body over a dead person’s on the minuscule chance he could save an unborn child. Izuku Midoriya, a seemingly powerless crybaby, had made Katsuki Bakugo feel inadequate as a hero for the first time in his life. He didn’t fully understand why, and he wasn’t sure he was even here to figure that out.
All he knows is that he hates Izuku. He hates him, and yet he wanted to see him succeed.
He ignores the idiot’s question and asks one of his own. “You were crying like a fucking child earlier when you had hope. Where the hell are the tears now?”
Izuku studies him. “You know how it is, don't you? You can’t save every life. And I don’t deserve to mourn the people I failed. Only the people who loved them have that right.”
“Stupid logic from a stupid Deku,” he scoffs.
“Is that some sort of nickname or an insult?”
“Both.”
“Oh…”
They sit in silence for a few minutes, and Katsuki still cant find one single coherent reason why he’s there, so he gets up to leave.
“Wait!”
He waits, then silently chides himself for obeying.
“Wanna grab a drink?”
Katuski scrunches his nose in disgust. “What the fuck?! I’m seventeen you creep!”
Izuku’s brows raise at the sudden outburst, before relaxing as he began to laugh. An honest laugh that left a small, amused smile on his weary face even when it faded. “I know, you’re a hero course student. I meant coffee or tea. You know, at a cafe not a bar.”
Oh.
“Why the hell would I go to a silly cafe with a shitty medic?”
Izuku sighs a dreary sigh, but the small smile hasn’t left his face yet and somehow that feels like a small, unintended victory. “Uh, I’m not a medic, actually. I’m a first year medical student, but I have extensive EMS training so I can volunteer aid in situations like these. Sorry, I probably should’ve corrected you earlier.”
Katuski looks away from Izuku, unable to withstand how increasingly heroic the idiot becomes the more he learns about him.
“Still creepy for an adult to wanna hang around a student at night,” he grumbles.
“We’re the same age, actually,” Izuku corrects him again. “I graduated high school a year early, so…”
“So you’re a fuckin’ nerd.”
“Uh…”
“Shut up, nerd, I’m leaving.”
Yet his body doesn’t move. He looks back at Izuku, who’s gaze is now fixed outside the large windows. It’s still snowing outside. Small, distant snowflakes that fall wistfully, in the manner that specs of dust in a beam of light do.
“So much for first snow, huh?” Izuku whispers the words so softly he almost doesn’t catch them.
He thinks for a beat. Two. Gets up, heads for the door, turns around.
“Well? Are you coming or not? Don’t keep me waiting, Deku, its already late and I have a curfew at campus.”
Izuku startles, then smiles at the invitation. He gets up to follow Katsuki.
Moments later, while they’re walking side by side and the snow is glittering around them from the city lights, Izuku turns to him with a teasing smirk.
“Curfew, huh?”
“I’ll blow your head off, shitty Deku!”
Bright, amused laughter fills the hollow night.