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Pressure.
Midoriya felt the stabbing pressure of the water as he turned the shower handle, dialing it to the hottest setting.
Three hundred sixty-five days. That’s how long it had been since he’d seen Katsuki—since anyone had seen him. He had left his class’s New Year’s party embarrassingly early, making up an excuse about how his dog was sick when he had no dog. His classmates allowed him to lie.
Izuku pulled the showerhead from where it was held up by a metal bar, dragging it to his heart. He closed his eyes, but he didn’t see darkness.
Instead, he saw Katsuki—a disfigured and distant image of him. He tried, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t remember what his best friend had looked like. How could he be so cruel? Katsuki had died, and he couldn’t even be bothered to remember what he looked like? Disgusting. Disgraceful, Izuku thought.
He died for you, Izuku. He made that choice—to push you out of the way, to protect you by sacrificing his own precious life. A life much more valuable than yours.
The showerhead dropped when Midoriya started to drift too deep into his mundane thoughts. The noise hardly stirred him. It was probably loud for Kacchan, too. His hearing aid had been ripped from his ear halfway through the fight. It must’ve been painful.
Izuku made an attempt to push the shower dial harder, to somehow replicate the pressure or heat that of an explosion. His explosion. The explosions that had tortured Izuku his whole life—the ones he had wished would go away forever—were now the ones he most longed for. If he could go back, he’d thank Katsuki for all the times he hurt him.
“You don’t deserve to go to U.A.! You can’t even protect yourself—how are you gonna protect others?!”
He was right. In the end, he couldn’t protect the one who mattered most. What sort of a hero was that?
It wasn’t always like this. Midoriya attended mandatory therapy after the war, just like everyone else had, and he did feel better. Survivor’s guilt—that’s what he had, what he has. Knowing what was wrong helped relieve him a little. But only a little. The rest of the guilt stayed latched onto him. The showerhead continued to leak.
He wasn’t the only one with issues after the war, obviously. But the others were just so good at masking it. He felt like he was the only one who had been on that battlefield. Him, and Kacchan.
And then he was gone. Like the sweat in his hands—there one minute, gone the next. Erased, absorbed.
Why did it have to be on New Year’s? Why couldn’t it have been on a random day, so he could enjoy a nice party with his friends?
Midoriya shut his eyes again, not realizing he had opened them. He was blonde, wasn’t he? His eyes were red, weren’t they?
Izuku wanted to cry, but nothing ever came out. Like a faucet—only this one was faulty. It only worked every few days, and when it did, the water rushed out with no prior warning.
He traced the space under his eyes. A scar. Eye bags. Another scar.
He wondered how many scars Katsuki would’ve had. He wondered what his faucet would be like. Would he cry? Had he ever cried? Izuku wasn’t sure.
In his own selfish way, Izuku hoped he would have. So he could hold him, trace over his own scars, feel his own eye bags.
And he would have liked it—at least, Izuku hoped. He could be vulnerable around Midoriya, he could show a side he had never shown to anyone, to him.
But he can’t. Not now, not ever. And Izuku has yet to come to terms with that.
Why? Why did you have to leave him on his own? Nobody could ever fill the hole Katsuki had left in Izuku’s soul. No girl, no boy—nobody. Nobody would ever live up to his standards, because there was nobody like him.
He could never compete with somebody the same. Feel the same burn to win. The same burn to overtake. The showerhead continued to leak.
Midoriya placed it back and returned the dial to its original position.
Watching as the last of the water poured.