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Shinya let out a huff as he walked up to the bar counter.
“I thought I’d find you here,” the Ninja Hero mused, his voice a mix of amusement and annoyance at his new colleague’s behavior.
“Leave me alone,” the blonde muttered, still nursing a glass of scotch as he hunched over on his stool.
“Bakugo, are you really this upset about being turned down by a girl?” Edgeshot questioned.
Katsuki went quiet. “I’ll get over it, I just… Let me be a baby about it for a night, okay?”
The older hero rolled his eyes and shook his head. “How many of those have you had?”
“That’s his first one,” the bartender answered.
Shinya groaned. “Pour me one too.”
Bakugo looked up at the older man with surprise as the bartender handed him a scotch glass of his own.
“Thank you.”
“Why do you wanna drink with me?” Katsuki asked.
“You’re obviously determined to wallow in your own sorrows, I might as well join you so you don’t do anything stupid. Or at least nothing stupid while you’re alone.”
“Thanks,” Katsuki replied, finally taking a sip of his liquor. “I guess.”
“Tell me about the girl.”
Katsuki let out a deep breath as a small smile graced his features. “Her name’s Izumi.”
“Ah! The green haired girl! All Might’s successor.”
Katsuki nodded. “Yep. That’s her. Izumi Midoriya. She was my best friend when we were three.”
“Did you stay close?”
The blonde shook his head.
“What happened then?”
“I…” Katsuki took a deep breath. “I was a dick to her.”
“Just one time?”
“For years. She was…” Katsuki trailed off. He remembered when she was working with Endeavor, Hawks, and Best Jeanist during the war, they were obviously in on the secret, but was Edgeshot? “She was misdiagnosed as being quirkless and so I picked on her because she still wanted to be a hero even though that was impossible…” The blonde snorted and took another sip of his drink. “And then she turned out to be a better hero than anyone else in our year.”
“So you lost touch and then got to be friends at UA?” Shinya guessed.
“You’re half right,” Bakugo muttered, downing the rest of his glass. “I only picked on her at first but then when we were 4, maybe 5, the two of us and our friends were walking through the forest and I slipped off a bridge and fell into this kind of shallow river.”
Shinya smirked. “Let me guess, sweetheart that she was, Midoriya ran down to give you a hand and asked if you were okay, and you lost it because you thought this quirkless girl was looking down on you even though you had this incredible quirk and she had nothing?”
Bakugo made a pointing gesture and mimicked the sound of a gunshot. “Got it in one old man.”
“And so you made her life a living hell until you both got into UA?”
“Yep!”
“But you eventually made amends?”
“Can I get another one of these with some booze in it?” Bakugo asked, raising his glass towards the bartender as he tried his best to seem disinterested in this conversation.
“Well?”
Katsuki huffed. “Eventually, yeah. She and I sort of settled everything after All Might retired, but I never really apologized to her until that whole weird shit where she was running around as a vigilante.”
Shinya nodded. “So by the end of first year, you two had buried the hatchet?”
“I guess so,” Katsuki sighed.
“So when did you fall in love with her?”
Katsuki let out a small laugh as his cheeks started to burn. “I think somewhere in the middle of that.”
“Tell me why.”
“Well it wasn’t a mistake,” the younger pro smirked.
“Well it most certainly was a heartache if you’re sitting here,” the older hero countered, a smug grin crossing over his face in response.
Katsuki burst out laughing. “I thought you were gonna smack me for that one, but you actually followed up on it!”
“Of course I did! It’s a classic!” Shinya laughed.
The two men shared a laugh for a bit longer. It was a dumb joke and they both knew it but they couldn’t help but lose their shit a little bit.
“Alright alright, but really why did you fall for her?” Edgeshot wheezed out as the two of them finally gathered their senses.
“Why did I fall for Deku?”
Shinya nodded.
Katsuki took a deep breath. “I was nothing but an asshole to her for 10 years, and then this bitch had the Goddamn gall to turn around and save my life. I tormented her. I used my quirk to hurt her, I used it to break her stuff, to scare her, and she still spoke to me like I was her friend during all that time, not really because she thought we still were, but because she figured if she was nice to me, I’d go easy on her. But then we got to UA and saw that underneath that damn nerd I picked on, there really was a hero, and someone who knew more about how to be a hero than I did. I thought being a hero just meant winning the fights and nothing else mattered.”
“I mean winning the fight is important, if we don’t fight to win, then people die,” Edgeshot countered.
Bakugo nodded. “See I get that and I think Izumi did too, but what neither of us really understood at first was what winning really meant. I thought winning for winning’s sake was the only important thing, and Izumi figured, letting yourself be destroyed to protect others was the purest form of heroism, but as we got older, we sort of found ourselves kind of meeting in the middle.”
“You can’t save people if you don’t win the fight but you can’t win if you don’t save people,” the Ninja Hero reasoned.
“Exactly. And I slowly realized that even if she understood, Izumi’s heart still prioritized protecting people over herself. She wouldn’t give a shit if she never had a full night’s sleep, clean clothes, or a decent meal ever again if it meant our classmates got to have those things and so did everyone else.”
“So how did you ask her out?”
“That’s the stupidest Goddamn part of this whole thing,” Katsuki groaned.
“What do you mean?”
“I asked if she wanted to start an agency together.”
“And that was your way of asking her out?
Katsuki nodded, trying to hide his face now.
“And what did she say?”
“She said she was leaving in the morning with her mother. She’s moving to America to be Star And Stripe’s sidekick.”
Edgeshot nodded. They were both enormous All Might fangirls, they would likely work well together, especially when they came together to defeat Shigaraki and All For One during the war.
“America’s going to be lucky to have her,” Shinya mused, finally taking a sip of his drink.
“Tch. Sure. I guess,” Bakugo grumbled.
Shinya smirked. “You know, I know I’m here to help you get through this but it really is sounding like this was a situation you brought on yourself.”
“That’s why I’m so pissed,” the blonde groaned, pressing his face against the bar counter as he wrapped his hands around the back of his head.
“Life is full of regrets,” the older hero conceded.
“Here here,” the bartender chimed in.
“If there’s truer words, I haven’t heard ‘em yet,” Bakugo huffed, taking another sip of his scotch.
Shinya smirked. “You know long distance relationships are a thing, there’s no reason you can’t talk to her right now and see if things could work. This doesn’t have to be one of your regrets.”
Katsuki shook his head. “There’s no sense in trying to slow her down.”
“What do you mean?”
“Eh, some things are meant to fly, others were born to run,” the younger hero explained.
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
Katsuki paused. What the hell did he mean?
“It’s just that… When she said she was headed to the States, I just knew she's not coming back here. That’s her home now.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She always told me her top three heroes, All Might, Star And Stripe, and a really old hero called the Wandering Guardian.”
“Wandering Guardian,” Shinya repeated, trying to see if it sounded familiar. “I’m afraid I don’t know him.”
“He’s a really old hero, he showed up before All Might did, and his big thing’s always been he’s international. He never had a license for just one country, he applied to the UN to get a license to go wherever he was needed and he was able to get it because he was a member of the Vatican.”
Shinya nodded, now he remembered. “The priest hero.”
“Yep. That guy.”
“What does that have to do with Midoriya?”
Katsuki smirked. “The ultimate westaboo, the American number one, and the guy with no fixed address. Those are her favorite heroes. What does that tell you?”
Shinya chuckled and gently raised his hands in concession. “You make a fair point.”
“Yep, not one bit of a ‘stick around’ in that girl,” Katsuki snorted, taking another sip of his drink.
“But you know, there’s still no reason you can’t join her.”
“There isn’t but…”
“Really? You love Japan more than you love her?”
“I don’t know if it’s Japan itself that I love, it’s just that… You know, my whole life is here. Every important thing that ever happened to me happened in this country, in this town really, I owe my everything to Musutafu.”
“So it’s not Japan that you love, it’s your city?”
Katsuki thought it over for a moment and nodded. “I think so.”
“I can respect that.”
“So right now I’m gonna get a little wasted, then I’m gonna see her, her mom, and All Might off at the airport tomorrow morning, then I’m gonna go watch the BayStars open the season with my old man and Kirishima, and I’m gonna try my best to move on with my life.”
The two sat in silence as they listened to the music in the bar. An American country song about moving on from lost love
"Of course," Katsuki grumbled.
Shinya glanced at Katsuki and smirked. It was actually quite a catchy tune. “Like a runaway southbound train.”
Katsuki shook his head. “Like an Arizona desert rain.”
“Like lightning in the sky.”
“Like fireworks in July.”
“Like a leftfield home run ball.”
“Like a whiskey shot at last call,” Katsuki replied, holding up his drink before finishing it off .
“It’s like she was made for moving on,” Shinya continued, patting his young friend on the back.
“That girl is going, going, gone,” Katsuki concluded, letting out a defeated sigh. He was gonna miss her.
“One more for the road and that’s it boys,” the bartender offered, setting two shot glasses of Hibiki in front of the two men.
Katsuki picked up his shot and let a small smirk cross over his face as held up the small glass. “To loyal friends and amazing mentors, thanks for stopping by, Kamihara.”
“It was a pleasure, Bakugo,” Shinya replied, clanking his and Katsuki’s glasses together. “Let me know if you want to talk more. Don’t forget, we’ve got a special connection now,” the older pro added, tapping his heart.
Katsuki nodded, his face looking just a little bit paler. “Yeah, thanks again for that.”
Edgeshot laughed. “For the record, I’m glad you stuck around. Despite it all, you’re a good man and a great hero.”
“Great enough to move past you and Jeanist?” Katsuki quipped.
“Don’t push it you jumped up little shit,” the older pro laughed, taking his shot before getting up from the counter.
“Had to try!” the new pro laughed, downing his drink in one go before reaching for his wallet.
“No need for that kid, your bill’s already paid for,” the bartender reassured.
“Who the hell already paid for my bill?”
“By the number one hero.”
Katsuki turned to Edgeshot. “Jeanist?”
The Ninja Hero nodded as he and his new colleague walked out onto the street. “Eraser saw Midoriya turn you down, he had a feeling you might do something stupid or at least needed someone to talk to, so he called Hakamada, he called me.”
“Did Aizawa-Sensei really assume girls were Jeanist’s forte?”
“They aren’t but he’s still no stranger to heartbreak, he once had a fling with-”
“Hey hey, listen, having my heart literally broken two years ago and then figuratively this morning was already traumatic enough, I don’t need to hear about Jeanist’s torrid affairs from his early days. Alright?”
Shinya laughed. “If you say so kid, have a nice night.”
“Thanks Kamihara, you too,” Bakugo huffed, walking up the left side of the sidewalk while Edgeshot went down the right.
His mind kept circling through this morning. As much as he wanted to, he still couldn’t fully accept that his oldest friend was leaving him. He respected her choice. He respected that this wasn’t born from any malice or hard feelings about him and their past together, but it was still hard to process. He let out another huff. At the end of the day, it wasn’t meant to be. Or maybe the whole idea of ‘meant to be’ was something people misunderstood? Maybe they were meant to know each other but they weren’t meant to be lovers? Who the hell knows honestly? “Good things come and then they go, I guess.”
“Hey Bakugo!”
Katsuki looked back to see the elder hero pointing up at the sky. Katsuki followed his gesture and gasped in awe as he saw what Edgeshot was pointing out. A comet was passing over them. An honest to God shooting star.
“Amazing isn’t it?” Shinya mused.
“Goddamn right it is,” he whispered.
“Make a wish kiddo.”
Katsuki let out a small laugh. An hour ago he would’ve wished for her to stay but as per usual, his mentors had him thinking better. “I wish for the BayStars to finally win the Japan Series.”
“I wish for this country and this world to see more peace than ever before.”
The two men stood on the street corner watching the celestial body race through the sky until it was out of sight.
The younger hero smirked. “No sense in trying to slow her down.”
Edgeshot gave the young man an amused glance. “No, I don’t suppose there is.”
“It’s going,” Katsuki hummed, straining his eyes to get one last look.
“It’s going,” Shinya muttered, trying to see if he could still see it too.
“It’s gone."