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The truth is that most people, more often than not, value others based on their quirk.
Even Izuku, at the age of four, looking at Kacchan’s sparkly palms, knew this.
Kacchan was already special to Izuku, but then he became special to everyone else, too.
And Izuku had wanted to be a little bit special, too.
Enough to stand by his side and become a hero like they’d always talked about.
Instead, he didn’t even get to be normal.
But the dreams of being a hero like All Might never went away. He still wanted to save people.
And if he didn’t have a quirk to save them with, then it would be okay to do it with his life.
His life didn’t matter as long as there were people to save.
It’s the simplest of his truths.
-
The sludge monster has him.
It’s not like he remembers exactly, just a little.
Kacchan is here, in front of him. He’s coughing and looking up at him, but he’s free. His eyes are so wide.
Izuku is suffocating, but that’s okay. He needs to get away. He needs to lure the monster away from Kacchan, make sure that the Villain won’t go after Kacchan after he kills Izuku.
Izuku wants to save him above all else. Needs to. Everything would mean something if he got to die like this. His life for Kacchan’s.
No better way for him to go.
If I die saving him will Kacchan think of me better?
.
.
.
There’s so much blood.
Blood on the grass, pooled under and all around him. It’s all he can see: red, red and more red. Maybe it’s in his eyes. It’s all he can smell, pungent and coppery and he’s four years old and stumbling towards his childhood friend’s corpse.
“Kacchan?” His voice is so high. His hands are so small they can’t cover the hole in Kacchan’s chest. They fall inside instead, and it squelches and it–
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
Izuku is the one meant to die. Before and after OFA. Izuku is the one that puts his life on the line, because it doesn’t mean much, because this is the extent of his worth. This is all he’s good for.
Instead, his hands are dripping with the heart that was never meant to stop.
.
.
.
He deserved to lose his quirk. He wasn’t any good with it either.
He isn’t good enough for his dream.
Even with his suit. It doesn’t matter. He can save people’s futures as a teacher. Help them be the best they can be by preparing them for what’s to come. He is better when life or death isn’t in the picture.
He is.
.
.
.
Izuku wakes up crying. His face is tacky with it. His chest feels as if it has a hole in it as big as Kacchan’s was. He’d welcome it. Just so he could strangle his heart and be done with the pain. He’s so tired. So tired.
But his chest has no hole. There’s no way for him to stop the pain. Stop his thoughts. His heartbeat is strong and loud like a bird stuck in a cage.
He’s tired of being the bars of the cage. He’s tired of pretending.
Ochako isn’t sleeping beside him. Again.
Through the open door to his room, he can see a glow deeper in his apartment. The light is on in the kitchen.
He gets up and trudges his way there on heavy limbs and stops on the threshold.
Her head is in her hands, like it always is when he first finds her sitting alone in here. When she feels his presence, she looks up, sighs deeply and forces a weak smile.
A drop of water goes plink in the sink and Izuku sits in front of her. Another drip fills the silence.
This is his apartment. He’s been meaning to fix it for months but somehow, he never has the time.
Or maybe, the will.
What’s the point?
It’s his place but it has never felt like home. Alone or with her. It’s just a place.
He slouches down his chair the way some of his students do sometimes. He’s tired. Soul tired. The kind of exhaustion that saps at his will to do anything. To even live.
And perhaps he’s finally ready to face it.
-
Ochako is staring down at her clasped hands on the table.
Izuku waits for her to meet his eyes, but when she doesn’t say anything, he looks down at her hands too. He’s afraid she’s going to tear her own skin off the way she’s gripping at them, so he covers them with both of his.
The breath she lets out is slow and shaky. “I’m glad we tried.”
Izuku says nothing.
“You were the first boy I had a crush on,” she smiles slightly at this. “Everything was so easy back then… but after the war—” she lets out another shaky breath, and shrugs. “After the war everything changed.” She finally meets his gaze. “I changed.”
Izuku nods, tries to smile back at her, “I did too.”
“Yeah,” she takes another breath, then, pulls her hands away from his and holds them against her stomach. “I was in love with her.” Tears fall down her cheeks, sudden and quick. She has to breathe through them and Izuku thinks he can feel her pain, but his eyes remain dry. “I didn’t know it for a long time. But I was. And it was still too late anyway.”
Izuku’s heart throbs.
He knows her grief. He’s lied right next to her, awake, as she cried in her dreams. Always calling out for the same name.
He understands. He’s haunted by ghosts too. Not only of people long gone, though.
“When you came to me that night, I thought I could go back to that old me. The one that had a crush on the boy she looked up to the most. That I would be happier, finally. But I can’t and I’m not.” Her voice breaks at the end and Izuku can’t stand it.
“It’s okay, Ochako,” he doesn’t try to hold her hands again but attempts a real smile. “I understand.”
Her shoulders drop as she sighs and smiles back, the tear tracks shining down her cheeks. “Yeah. I know you do.”
Izuku bites the inside of his cheek and looks away.
.
.
.
After, he sits on the couch and watches the sunrise— he’s waiting for it to wash over him and warm him up, but he feels nothing.
What was the point of all this?
Kacchan’s face is a recurring visage.
Kacchan talking while chewing obnoxiously just because Izuku was sitting beside him at the class reunion.
Blood on his face, just like in his dream. Blood on the ground.
Kacchan crying his eyes out when he’d found out Izuku had lost OFA.
Kacchan’s annoyance and quick anger and the things the public would say about him sometimes, even though he was the one that saved it all.
Thoughts and feelings Izuku had tried to bury since he was six years old and Kacchan started to push him back when he tried to stick too close.
Is it normal to remember things so far back?
Or maybe it isn’t remembering, it’s just being— who he was and who he still is.
Someone that will never think of Bakugou Katsuki as just one of the others.
Oddly, he thinks of what the fifth user always told him: “Control your heart.”
The front door clicks shut, like a sentence. Like the end of a story.
Or maybe it was just a chapter of a much longer story.
Izuku’s stomach turns. He runs to the bathroom and retches. Nothing comes up, except a bit of bile that burns at his throat.
This is it, he thinks.
Everything he’s worked for since he graduated, the last ten years, all of it is gone.
There’s an odd wheezing sound and Izuku realised it’s coming from him only when he feels his chest trembling under his palm.
He’s laughing.
He’d thought he’d been doing the noble thing. To keep teaching even after getting the suit. To prove to everyone and especially himself that— “Hey! See? I didn’t become a teacher because I couldn’t become a hero! I’m still doing it even when I can! Because I like it! I love it!”
And he does! He does– he does!
So, why does it all feel like walls closing in on him? Why does he still feel trapped in a cage? Why is no one trying to get him out?
No. That’s not true.
There is someone.
Kacchan.
Kacchan is always trying, even after Izuku’s rejections. He still tries. Always reaches out.
“Changed your mind, yet?”
“That place is still available, you know?”
“Izukuuuu why won’t you join, already?”
“Look at us, we’re the dream team. We should do this permanently.”
A put upon sigh, “Ready to join my agency, yet?”
Yes.
Izuku stumbles out of the bathroom, slips his red shoes in the entryway, and gets out.
.
.
.
The chill of the morning air immediately feels like a blessing against the stuffiness of his own apartment. It incites him to walk quickly, passing by the train station because he decides he wants to walk all the way to Kacchan’s agency.
It’s a forty-minute walk, but Izuku passes each familiar landmark with excitement and dread building steadily in his chest.
He watches his beloved city wake up. Shop keepers getting ready to open for the day, bakers and coffee shop workers already hard at work and the occasional dog-walker easily throwing a friendly smile or a nod as they pass by.
This is his city. These are the people he’d wanted to protect and help keep safe since he learned what a hero was. And yet, after the war, after losing OFA, it all seemed to fall away. Like everyone was moving forward while he was stuck in place.
And maybe he had been stuck. And he’d learned to be okay with it. But Kacchan came back for him and gave him his dream back, just so they could stand side by side like Izuku had imagined at four years old.
And yet.
Yet, the nightmares were still there. All his failings as a kid with too much power and too much to prove. He had a decade to sit and stew in it all.
Perhaps, now, with Kacchan’s help, again, he can learn to move past them.
Speaking of… his agency is right there. Right across the street.
Izuku takes a deep breath and crosses the distance with his heart drumming steadily in his ears and drowning all thoughts.
Maki-san, Dynamight Agency’s wonder receptionist looks up in surprise as Izuku pushes the glass door open, then smiles. “Deku-san, good morning!”
“Ah, good morning,” Izuku nods politely, suddenly unsure. Oh god, it finally hits him. It’s five something in the morning! Kacchan is probably not even here, yet!
“Come to get that workaholic, huh? I just gave him an earful, he should be in the process of gathering his stuff together now. If he knows what’s good for him,” she mutters that last bit before she beams at Izuku again, “But Deku-san is more than welcome to hurry him along!” She winks at him and nods towards the corridor that Izuku knows leads further into the agency and into Kacchan’s office.
Overwhelmed by her cheer and all the information, Izuku can only manage a nod and half a smile before he’s hurrying down the hallway.
Kacchan’s door is the last one at the far end before the stairs that take to the upper floors that were still in development. Kacchan never told him what he intended to do with the space, but Izuku is patient and always figured he’d tell him eventually or he’d find out on his own once they were done with the works.
At the door, he knocks twice before he opens it, not letting himself linger a moment longer — too afraid that he’d turn back and run home.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m going already, Jesus, lady, you’re worse than my ma!” Kacchan looks haggard and worn, deep shadows under his eyes and day-old stubble darkening his jaw.
Izuku feels as if he was punched in the chest, “Kacchan.”
Kacchan’s head whips around at the sound of his voice and he stares, “Izuku?” He blinks, gives him a once over and is on his feet the next second. “What’s wrong? Did you get on the subway in your sleep shirt?”
“I walked, actually.”
Kacchan pauses with his black hoodie in hand. “You walked?”
“Needed to clear my head.”
“You walked.”
“Yup.”
“In those shorts and your sleep shirt,” At Izuku’s placid look, he explodes, “It’s 3°C outside!” And unceremoniously plops his hoodie over Izuku’s head and helps him put the arms through the armholes. “You’re fucking crazy, Jesus Christ in hell– the fuck am I gonna do with you?”
Izuku looks up at him as Kacchan runs furious hands over his arms in an attempt to warm him. He says, “Uraraka-san broke up with me.”
Kacchan’s movements freeze. He searches Izuku’s gaze for a long moment before he asks, quiet and measured, “S’that why you walked all the way here?”
Izuku inclines his head, “Kind of. Not really… maybe— I don’t know.
Kacchan squeezes his arms, then lets go abruptly. “D’ya wanna talk about it?” He looks like he’d rather do anything else, but he still looks at Izuku like he would try if that’s what Izuku wanted.
It’s everything Izuku ever wanted and too fucking much. He feels as if he’s heart is about to give out and of course thinks about how Kacchan’s already did for him. Because of him. He reaches out, both palms just resting lightly on Kacchan’s black tank. “Why did you die for me?”
Kacchan’s breath stutters. Izuku feels it under his hand. “What?”
“For so long I dreamt of doing that for you,” Izuku confesses, hypnotised by the feeling of Kacchan’s heartbeat under his palm. It’s fast but strong. As it always should be. “If I died for you, it would all be worth it. My life for yours. Instead—” Izuku chokes, breathing hard as rage chokes him, “Instead! You had to go and die for me! Twice!”
“Once, actually.” One of Kacchan’s hands come up to close around his, still over his heart. “Came close to it that first time, but my heart didn’t stop.”
Izuku glares through his tears. “Why?”
“Why?” Kacchan bursts back. “Are you fucking with me right now?”
Izuku shakes his head, tries to take his hand away and step back but Kacchan won’t let him. Won’t let him go. “I don’t get it— I just don’t get it!”
“You’re seriously asking me that? Why did I die for you! Why did I spend eight years of my life designing and making a suit for you so you could come back and fight beside me? You really can’t think of a single reason why I would do all of that?”
“No!” Izuku’s breaths were harder and harder to get. “No— I don’t know, Kacchan!
“You used to be so good at reading me,” Kacchan smiles, ruefully. “Everyone else always misunderstood, but not you. You saw through all the bullshit. When did that change?”
“When you died for me.”
“Why?”
Izuku pushes him. Kacchan rocks with the motion but still, doesn’t let go of his hand. “That’s my question.”
“No. Why did it change when I died for you?”
“Because—” Izuku shakes his head. He’s trembling all over. His teeth start to chatter as he lets himself feel the vacuum of his grief. “Because I wasn’t worth it.”
It speaks of all the anger management sessions and experience handling his emotions that Kacchan doesn’t immediately snap, or even raise his voice as he hisses, "Fuck you."
"It's true! I lost OFA, I couldn't save Tenko, I didn't get there in time to fight with you. I was never enough even with All Might's quirk and even now— I’m not—” he sobs. “I’m not worthy of working with you.”
“Shut up shut up shut up, SHUT UP” Kacchan finally lets go of his hand, but only so he can grab him by the shoulders and squeeze. “You know why I made the suit for you,” he says it so forcefully, but it still sounds like he’s pleading Izuku to get it. “Because I love you, that’s why!”
Izuku’s chest is shaking. He can barely see Kacchan’s face through his tears, “What is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?! YOU’RE A FUCKING MESS!”
“I’M AWARE, THANK YOU!”
Kacchan pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing deeply. “Fucking hell Izuku. What the fuck.”
Izuku falls to his knees, slipping from Kacchan’s grip. The fight has gone out of him as quickly as it’d come. The truth is out. He feels even emptier than he did after his talk with Uraraka-san. “I’m so sorry,” the corners of his eyes are burning like they always do when he cries too much. “I’ve been so blind. I hurt you so much, Kacchan.” He stares down at his hands, but they bring him no comfort. “I didn’t want to see. I was afraid. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Fucking hell Izuku,” Kacchan’s voice is rough. He kneels down too, right in front of him.
Suddenly, Izuku is overwhelmed by his self-hatred and the disgust he feels for having acted so insensitively towards his childhood friend that has only wanted to bridge the gap between them. He goes lower, pressing his forehead against the back of his hands resting on the floor. He begs, “Forgive me, Kacchan.”
“Stop— stop, god,” Kacchan’s big hands try to yank him out of the position but Izuku doesn’t budge.
“Please, Kacchan.” He’s crying again, his hands clammy with sweat tears and snot. He doesn’t remember the last time he cried like this. Must’ve been before the war.
“There’s nothing to forgive.” Kacchan sounds like he’s crying, too. “I love you. Don’t say you’re not worth it— you said you didn’t want to hurt me, so don’t hurt me saying that shit. If I was worth your love when we were in middle school then, you sure as fuck will always be worthy of mine. But that’s not what’s it about, right? It doesn’t work like that with us. Izuku— Izuku you know it doesn’t work like that for us— it just doesn’t.” Kacchan buries his face onto the back of Izuku’s head, because Izuku still can’t get up. So, his next words are said directly onto Izuku’s skull. “I did all those things because I love you and because I thought I was giving you your dream back.”
At that, Izuku shifts and Kacchan leans back, allowing Izuku to straighten enough to look at his face.
There’re tear tracks down his cheeks; he reaches for Izuku’s face and cups it like Izuku’s something precious. “I wanted you beside me. But if that wasn’t what you wanted, nothing I could say against it, right? I promised I’d never stand in your way again.”
Izuku’s shaking all over, his chest shuddering at every breath he takes, “I’ve loved you for so long, how did I get here?” He shakes his head again. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt Kacchan. Never Kacchan— I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
“Izuku, please.” This time when Kacchan pulls, Izuku lets himself be brought up on his feet and face the wretched expression on Kacchan’s face.
Izuku pleads, “Tell me how to fix it.”
“Tell me what you want,” Kacchan throws back, “What you really want.”
Izuku pauses. Lets himself really think about it. His head feels heavy, so he rests it on Kacchan’s shoulder and Kacchan’s hand comes around his waist to hold him better. “I- I think. I want… to try and see if I can be a hero like I dreamt to be,” he whispers, “I want to see you every day. And work here, if you’ll still have me.”
“If I’ll still have you?” Kacchan is laughing, so Izuku comes out of hiding to witness the wonder of it. “Izuku,” he cups his face with both hands. “Do you know what the second floor is for?”
Izuku shake his head, mesmerised by Kacchan’s true, happy grin. He has never seen him smile like this. Was he really the cause of something so wondrous?
“That’s where our joint office will be at,” he laughs again. “I’ve been waiting for you forever. This is literally the best day of my life!”
Izuku’s brain turns off and the next thing he knows is that his lips are pressed against Kacchan’s. He registers warmth and wet and the slight taste of coffee and then— Kacchan is kissing him back. Oh my god— Kacchan is kissing him back!!!
His head is filled with buzzing, every inch of his skin feels on fire, his heart pounds at his throat where Kacchan’s thumbs press as he holds his face and kisses and kisses him back. At the swipe of his tongue against his lips, Izuku’s knees buckle and Kacchan saves him by pressing him against his desk.
Izuku holds for dear life, fingers clenching over his shoulders, greedy over the feel of bare skin— has he ever felt Kacchan’s skin against his palms before this? No. No, he hasn’t and he mourns all that time lost.
He can’t stop touching. He’s never felt anything like this with— oh it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t. “Kacchan,” he tries to say but it comes out unintelligible, barely a sound and all breath.
Kacchan won’t let go of him either. He feels just as frantic, almost vicious in his frustration and god— Izuku feels alive.
He pulls on Kacchan’s tank with a little more force than he should and the room is suddenly filled with the sound of ripping.
“Woah,” Kacchan laughs against his lips and the feeling is so addicting, Izuku wants to feel it again, immediately. “I love all of this, but I don’t think we should go for it, now.”
Everything in Izuku stutters to a stop. “I’m sorry,” he blinks widely. “I wasn’t— I didn’t mean to— I wasn’t thinking—”
“Hey, hey, no,” Kacchan kisses him twice in quick succession. Two noisy pecks right on his lips, and then two more on each of his cheeks. He holds his face and looks him square in the eyes. “I’ve wanted you for so long and I still do. And I’ll still want you a year and a decade or eight more of them.”
Izuku’s face burns, his eyes burn even more as the meaning of Kacchan’s words sink in.
“You don’t have to catch up to time lost,” Kacchan continues. “You didn’t lose anything. All of it— everything is still here for you. It was all just waiting for you to come and get it. I was waiting for you to come and get me.”
That, most of all, makes Izuku burst into tears all over again.
It’s exactly what he needed to hear.
He might’ve gotten here so late, but maybe he can really still get what he wants?
“I’m sorry for being late.”
Kacchan kisses him on the temple, brushes his thumbs up and down his cheeks like he can’t help himself. “It’s okay. You’re here now, and it’s all that matters, Izuku.”
Izuku closes his eyes and gladly welcomes Kacchan’s hug as he rubs their cheeks together and keeps kissing whatever part of Izuku he can.
“I’m here,” he whispers.
Kacchan holds him tighter and breathes him in. Izuku finally laughs a little, cries some more and wonders at how someone can feel this happy. Especially, him.
“I’m really here.”
“Yeah, baby.” Kacchan kisses his cheek, his nose and forehead and dries his tears with continuous, soft little pecks. “You’re here.”
It took him a while and he got lost along the way but he’s here now.
Where he was always meant to be.