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When Katsuki tries to think back to before it all began, he can’t find just one moment that splits everything perfectly into the long-gone before and the endless after. No discernible difference in the fragments here and there that he can manage to remember. But when he tries as hard as he can --
Even in May it’s a dead heat that summer, painfully humid, and it only takes one occasion of Katsuki’s shirt soaking through with sweat the minute he steps away from the safety of the air conditioning for him to abandon his favorite jersey into his upper desk drawer all throughout June. Izuku comments on it on the third day as they pedal lazily side by side, weaving across the rocky mountain path. “Where’s your jersey, Kacchan?”
“The hell?” Katsuki says, barely able to think straight with sweat pouring down his forehead, focusing all of his energy into keeping his bike from heading straight off the edge. “Which one?”
“You know the one. The Yagi one.”
Katsuki huffs, long and tired. “It’s too hot for that.”
“It’s too hot to do anything. Wear it. It’s cool.” Izuku grins at him. “You shouldn’t leave something so cool in a closet.”
“Oh yeah?”
Izuku isn’t looking at him anymore. His eyes are dead set forward, where the heat rises off the path in thick glassy waves and distorts the line of the trees below the clear blue horizon. His hair blows slightly in the wind.
“We should swim today,” Katsuki says, pulling slightly ahead without really trying.
“At the creek? Like right now?”
“Uh-huh. We don’t hafta change or anything. Let’s just go.”
“Sure. Yeah.” And everything was, had always been, that simple.
The rainstorm comes in the second week of June. Katsuki is in his backyard, laboring over his father’s doomed potted sunflowers that nobody knows how to take care of properly, when the clouds start gathering above him and the rain starts pelting down. It’s odd for summer in their little mountainside village; all the moisture really just rises and hangs in the air, leaving it thick and muggy and hard to breathe without a reprieve in the form of rain. But he feels the first drops on his back and looks up to see gray clouds, gloved hands still knuckles-deep in soil. “No way!”
Ridiculously, his first instinct is to call Izuku and tell him to check out the weather. But he can’t because today that nerd is going up the mountain to check on his dad or whatever, a noble tradition that the Bakugos have never and will never engage in. He returns to the flowers and hums to himself as the welcome wind blows in his ears and the rain mats his hair to his neck.
His mother comes out through the back, one hand over her face, and calls, “Get the laundry before it blows away!”
“Hell no! I’m still working on these stupid flowers!” Katsuki shouts back.
She snarls at him but concedes and goes around to unpin the clotheslines and bring them inside mostly because he’s the only one who knows how to take care of them anyway. He finishes transplanting them into their neat rows and rocks back on his heels, wiping his face clear of sweat and rain, and his father’s hand comes down on his head at the same time.
“Time to come in,” he intones. “Storm’s picking up.”
Katsuki scowls. “I know. I’m not blind.”
His father smiles and he rolls his eyes, peeling off the soaked gloves and flexing his sore fingers, before following him inside. There’s honey milk on the table and he begrudgingly takes a cup. It’s a bit too sweet but he can live with it. He perches on the couch in the living room and looks out the window, watching his sunflowers bend back and forth in the wind, yellow petals bright in the dark, and consoling himself with the fact that the stems are too short for them to properly break.
“Where’s Izuku?” his mother asks, bustling into the kitchen with an armful of glass wind chimes she seems to have rescued from the front of the house. “He still up on the mountain?”
“He is,” Katsuki says, and nothing else.
Izuku is missing for three days.
When he finally blunders down the mountain again, his mother bundles him away into the hospital first, for about twelve hours, and Katsuki isn’t allowed to see him. He receives a text message from Izuku’s mother telling him that he’s miraculously injury-free save for a few cuts and scratches and he’ll be heading up to the Bakugo household as soon as he’s discharged.
Sitting by the window in his bedroom and staring through the dusty glass, Katsuki sees first the pinprick of his seaweed-colored hair and then the harsh white of his bandaged arms.
He practically throws himself down the stairs to get to the front door and pelts down the road. Izuku is ambling in a directionless way down the road. He’s wearing a pajama shirt and shorts and mismatched socks with those stupid red sneakers. His big green eyes are ringed and dark, but he smiles when he sees Katsuki rushing toward him. “Kacchan!”
“Fucking – Deku,” Katsuki spits out, something flaring to life in his chest, and staggers to a stop in front of him, one hand trailing behind as clouds of dust erupt around his shoes. “Deku, you – ”
Izuku’s arms come up and wrap around Katsuki, and the breath punches out from his lungs.
“I missed you, Kacchan,” Izuku says into his ear. “I was really – scared. It was scary. I missed you a lot.”
For a moment, Katsuki thinks he won’t be able to say anything back or even move, because Izuku hasn’t touched him anywhere another person could see them in years, and beneath the scent of him – a distinct scent, like his house, shichimi and laundry detergent – there’s a tinge of dead leaves. Rot. Something cold and salty. He hugs him back and curls his fingers into worn cloth and tries to pretend like his heart isn’t beating twice as fast as it should.
“What’s wrong?” Izuku whispers.
Katsuki draws back at once. His hands remain on Izuku’s shoulders, clutching tight, as he forces out, “You’ve gotta be hurting. You should get home now.”
“What?” Izuku tilts his head. “I’m fine.”
Katsuki hesitates. He looks Izuku up and down, but aside from his disheveled state he looks perfectly fine. “Right – your mom said – but you really didn’t break any of your bones? Even your cuts aren’t bothering you?” When he doesn’t get a response, Katsuki’s eye twitches a little. “If you’re really fine, what even happened up there?”
Izuku rubs his neck in a simulacrum of a sheepish gesture. “I got lost. You know how that trail is.”
Katsuki has never been up there, so he doesn’t know. He tightens his grip on Izuku’s shoulder. “Don’t go up that mountain. Not after this.” He hates the way it sounds, shaky and desperate, almost angry, almost scared, but he can’t change how it comes out. “You’re – too damn clumsy to stay on the path – ”
“I won’t,” Izuku cuts him off in a perfectly steady voice. “I’ll never go there again.”
He’s wearing this pleasant little smile. There’s a smear of dust on his face that Katsuki fights the urge to wipe away with his thumb.
“Can I stay for dinner at your house? My mom’s freaking out at home ‘cause she doesn’t have anything to eat.” He laughs. “I feel sort of bad, but I don’t want stale rice as my welcome home meal.”
Katsuki wants to say no, but he wants to say yes more. He releases Izuku and steps back, looking back at the gate to his house. “Yeah. Course. I’ll ask my dad to make it so you don’t have to eat my mom’s shitty cooking. Call your mom, will you? Ask her over.”
“Oh, I lost my phone up there. Can I use yours?”
Katsuki digs his phone out of his pocket and shoves it at him in lieu of an answer, but Izuku fumbles it somehow and it clatters to the ground in a swirl of dirt. “Shit! Sorry.”
“What the fuck, butterfingers?”
Izuku, already on the ground retrieving the phone, says, “Not used to it,” and then laughs again, a little too loudly this time.
Katsuki blinks. “Used to what? You weirdo.” Then he tenses. “Does something hurt after all? What’s wrong?”
“No – nothing. Nothing. I’m just tired.”
And he looks so tired, face pale and wan, arms wrapped up in bandages and wrists a little thinner from three days alone, that Katsuki doesn’t question it.
But it isn’t really him, of course.
It first occurs to Katsuki sometime between early June and late July, a sick and cold feeling in the pit of his stomach that is too foreign to recognize in its entirety. It’s vague enough that he can put it out of his mind for a long time, and strangely, it blurs away into something he can ignore when he’s with Izuku; beyond the grassy hills of the village and among trees that glitter as the breeze rushes through their leaves; eyes half-open in the cold clear shallows of the creek, taking in the gold light bouncing off the silt below and reflecting into the surface above.
But nothing lasts forever. The actual realization is slower and it doesn’t come all at once. It sits in the back of his mind like the remnants of a dream he’s forgotten, and it creeps up on him when he’s alone and there’s nothing to draw him away until he’s sitting in the dark with his head buried in his arms.
During these late nights he stares down into the black mass behind his eyelids and questions himself over and over again. He knows he can’t forget it now, but what’s off, exactly? What is it that tips Katsuki over the border between uncertainty and sureness? His movements – there and there and there, jerky and twitchy in a way Izuku never was before; the scratches and sickly purple bruises that disappear overnight; or is it just that feeling, that twisting in his gut that wakes him up in a cold sweat when he manages to doze off for minutes at a time, that something is wrong?
Katsuki has always trusted his intuition.
He chooses not to say anything for a long time because to say it aloud is to abandon his friendship with Izuku – if he’s wrong, which he isn’t – and to throw himself into something much worse otherwise; and because really it is, more so than a dream, a living nightmare.
More than Katsuki could have ever imagined, it hurts to look at him. His best friend, his everything, Izuku. And behind that smile, whatever has made a puppet out of him.
In the last week of July, Katsuki wears his favorite jersey, and he winces as he climbs onto his bike, feeling the thick, rubbery fabric dampen along his arms and his waist. Heatstroke in the summer isn’t so common anymore since the village’s parents collectively encouraged their offspring to hook up cup holders to their bikes; he chugs from his plastic bottle and rides down to Izuku’s house.
He waits outside for a few minutes. The sky is a sweet, sickly shade of blue. Then he sees Izuku’s mother through the window in the front. She waves to him and disappears up the stairs, presumably to fetch Izuku, and he comes out a minute later in a long-sleeved white shirt Katsuki’s never seen before.
“Hey, Izuku,” Katsuki says, leaning against his bike.
“Hi, Kacchan.” He watches Izuku’s gaze pass over his jersey, the picture of Yagi on the front and the big gold logo, and then flick up to his face. “What do you wanna do today?”
Something in the back of Katsuki’s mind quiets.
They go to get sodas. The corner store is open, with only slim pickings remaining; delivery day is tomorrow. Izuku picks a weird new flavor of Ramune that Katsuki doesn’t like the look of. “Nothing natural is that color,” he grouses, popping open the cap on his cola. “A normal soda should be brown or clear, that’s it.”
“Really?” Izuku looks at the ingredients list. “I guess that makes sense.”
Katsuki pays. On the way out, Izuku struggles with the cap of the Ramune for a few minutes, eventually having to pass it over to Katsuki to open, and smiles when the glass marble finally drops down into its little groove. They sit on the swings in the nearby park and sip their drinks. The never-ending chirp of crickets and buzz of mosquitoes comes droning into Katsuki’s eardrums, thick and pitiful, the song of short-lived creatures.
“So, when did it happen?” Katsuki says.
Izuku presses the blue plastic cap down onto his drink. “When did what happen?”
“When did you replace Deku?”
The sound of the crickets is so loud. Izuku’s eyes are so green. The swing creaks as he shifts his weight.
“What… ?”
A wasp lands on Katsuki’s arm. He doesn’t twitch, doesn’t move a muscle, doesn’t look away. The wasp climbs up his shoulder and starts heading towards his collar. Before it can get there, Izuku reaches out and, faster than the sun-drunken wasp can move, crushes it between his thumb and his index finger.
“You’re serious, aren’t you,” Izuku says.
Katsuki holds his gaze. “Serious as I’ve ever been.”
Izuku frowns a little. As he pulls his hand back, the side of his hand brushes against Katsuki’s cheek, and he has to fight not to flinch.
“How did you know?” Izuku says, wiping the wasp’s remains on the chain of his swing. There’s something swirling in his irises, something dark and muddy and inhuman, like blood draining into a rain puddle. When he speaks, Katsuki can see his too-sharp teeth and straight down his throat, black and lightless, a never-ending tunnel. “How did you know that I wasn’t him?”
Katsuki blinks slow. The air rushes from his lungs, and then it rushes back in, and the world continues to orbit on its axis.
It feels good, in the worst way, to finally have a straight answer. It would probably have been worse to go on forever without ever knowing if he was imagining things. Not that it’s an avenue of thought he can afford to trace. He understands that a response is expected of him; it’s hard to find one to give, but he manages.
“You just aren’t. You look the same – and you sound the same – but you’re not the same. He wouldn’t wear that or drink that. He wouldn’t… ” He gestures limply at the dead wasp. “Do that.”
Izuku is perfectly still.
For a while he had wondered if there was some kind of real, human explanation, but that reached its logical conclusion fast; he had been kidnapped and spirited away by some murderer who was pretending to be him, but what, a teenage boy was roaming the mountains looking to replace other teenage boys in stupid tiny mountain towns? No. And for better or for worse it really was Izuku’s body, with the same scars and freckles, the same short, spiky eyelashes and messy curls. All the mistakes, it seems, are on the inside.
“Kacchan,” Izuku says, and then he’s standing up, and then he’s reaching for Katsuki, and he really does flinch away this time, but all he does is hug him. It feels wrong. It feels terrifying. He smells of the same bitter otherness he did when he came down from the mountain. His body hunches over Katsuki’s, his back bending in a way that should pain him but doesn’t; and this is when it really sinks in for the first time. It’s his body but not. It’s not him at all anymore.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Izuku says, his mouth hovering above Katsuki’s face.
“Fuck you,” Katsuki spits out, as harsh as he can. It comes out broken. His cola bottle falls to the ground and rolls away into the dust.
“Kacchan, please. You can’t tell anyone. You can’t, okay? I never got to live like this before, and I don’t wanna hurt you. I don’t wanna hurt anyone, not when – his mother’s so kind and his father, he wants to – he wants to be good at it, but you’re – ” Izuku is begging him. The crickets are making it hard to hear. He doesn’t want to hear. “You’re my best friend. I know it’s different but you’re still my best friend, Kacchan. And I’m still your best friend, and I can, I know I can – ”
Katsuki snaps, “Stop it.”
Izuku stops instantly.
Katsuki’s hands are trembling. He looks up for a second and sees the monster’s face and instantly regrets it. The fear there is Izuku. It’s Izuku at five when he sprained his ankle falling off the play structure, Izuku at twelve when he broke his new bike running into a tree and had to show it to his parents, Izuku every time they talk about what happens after high school; what happens if they don’t get into college and out of their town. It’s all Izuku and it hurts so badly Katsuki can barely breathe. Every inch of their history worn on the familiar face of a stranger.
Izuku says, “Please,” and Katsuki wants to cry.
The crickets keep chirping.
There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing I can do.
“Don’t call me Kacchan,” Katsuki mumbles, hating himself for it, and shuts his eyes. “Can you… could you call me Katsuki?”
A long, long pause. He realizes he’s scared of what Izuku’s response will be.
“Okay,” Izuku says, at last, sweet and light. Same mouth, same throat, same vocal cords. “Katsuki.”
It’s cold. Something is cold. Katsuki shudders.
He doesn’t sleep that night. How could he? In the morning everything, from the tips of his fingers to his back teeth, aches. He gets up and cuts an apple into slices and eats each one, bite by bite, and doesn’t taste them. The peel sticks in his throat and he swallows it.
Then he steps outside and wheels his bike down to Izuku’s house.
“Morning, Katsuki,” Izuku says from where he’s sitting on the stoop.
Katsuki.
He bites the inside of his cheek.
“Morning, Izuku.”
And everything goes on.
In the days after that it’s too hot to move or think or do anything except lie around in front of the desk fan and complain about how hot it is. Someone left the slider open but neither of them wants to get up and close it. There’s a whole colony of frogs croaking outside from the channel surrounding Izuku’s house that hasn’t dried up yet. “Ow,” Katsuki says, one arm over his face. “God – fuck, man. The bugs are getting me. I have, like – a whole row of bites up my leg.”
“They don’t bite me,” Izuku says, propping himself up on his elbows and laughing. “They’re scared of what my blood tastes like.”
Katsuki closes his eyes. “Tastes like shit, I guess.”
“Probably.”
“What are you?” Katsuki says, looking over at him.
Izuku blinks, like – is it really okay? Katsuki can appreciate his caution, but there’s nobody else in the house. “Well?” He cracks one eye open. “Do you even bleed?”
Slowly, hesitating, Izuku says, “I – I dunno. I kinda don’t have blood in me. I have something else. I don’t know how to say it, but I’ve always lived here. Up on the mountain. But before I was just a thing, and now I’m a person.”
“You’re not a person.”
Bizarrely, Izuku seems hurt. More bizarrely, Katsuki feels that he should apologize. He doesn’t. “Well, you’re not,” he says flatly. “You’re – a spirit. Some ancient old mountain spirit. Or something like that. That right? You were roaming around and looking for somebody to possess?”
Izuku looks away. “That – ”
“Well, you found him.” Katsuki shifts. “Good for you.”
After a beat, Izuku offers. “I’m sorry.”
It’s too familiar. Sorry, Kacchan.
“Shut up,” Katsuki says. “Never mind. Just drop it. It’s too early for this.” It doesn’t feel right to talk so easily, with the weight of whatever this is hanging in the air between them, but there’s nothing else to do. “Can you close the slider? I’m gonna puke.”
“For real? Should I get you a bowl?”
“Just close the damn slider.”
Izuku gets to his feet, nearly knocking over a chair or two, and slams the slider shut against the wall. The sound of the frogs quiets immediately.
Izuku settles on the floor again. “Are you hungry?”
“After I talked about puking? Shut the hell up.” Katsuki pinches the bridge of his nose, regretting choosing a T-shirt that morning instead of a tank top. “Ah, man. I think you just trapped the bugs in here with us, you idiot.”
“You’re the one who told me to do it!”
“It’s your fault,” Katsuki drawls, already starting to fall asleep. “Take responsibility.”
When he wakes up, Izuku is watching him.
He’s sitting with his chin propped in his hand, head tilted to one side, eyes big and clear. There’s no expression on his face, at least – nothing communicating something like I’m going to kill you and cut you up, which is good, because Katsuki is too tired to move and do anything anyway.
“What the fuck?” he mumbles. “Creepy.”
“You snore.” Izuku buries his smile in his palm. “Has anyone told you that?”
Katsuki sighs. “Yeah.” He turns onto his side, facing away, and closes his eyes again. “You have. A thousand times.”
Izuku’s soft sigh fills up the quiet.
Over time they fall, more simply than they should, into an uneasy rhythm.
He’s so afraid and also not at all; and that’s a little frightening in itself. His stomach twists in never-ending nausea when he tries to sleep, but he never has a single nightmare once he does. He wasn’t sure at first, but he knows now – and it fills him with a strange guilt – that it won’t hurt him as long as he keeps its secret. But who would he tell anyway? His parents, or their classmates? There’s nobody who he wants to know. It’s even easier done than said.
The odd thing about the monster is that, despite its inhumanity, or maybe because of it, it’s not quite as demanding as the old Izuku. He knew what he could get away with, and pushed and pulled in equal time with Katsuki, the two of them balancing each other out in conversation and action. It was the easiest pace to keep. This new Izuku is different. He – it – whichever address Katsuki can think to use at any given moment – is somehow more timid, waiting for Katsuki’s affirmation before doing anything at all. It agrees with him on even the smallest details; it forgets requests after they’re denied. It feels wrong in the most literal sense. He and Izuku knew each other better than anyone else in the world. This monster has every memory but comprehends none of them.
Katsuki hates the lack of it, that simple and incomprehensible rapport, more than he can let on. Every day he wakes up and sees the ceiling of his room and turns over and presses his face into the pillow in those brief blessed five seconds before he remembers and the hurt, like a dull knife in his stomach, returns.
He doesn’t let himself cry. He doesn’t think he could.
But then he sees Izuku at the front door on his bike, and it’s like a punch to the gut all over again, the sweetest ache. Somehow it’s more painful to see him again than for him to disappear entirely, though if he did Katsuki would probably crumble away into nothing. He can allow himself to think that, now that it almost really happened.
It's because of all of this that he knows it’s unfair of him to feel what he is – to tolerate the monster – to even care about it, to care for it. But at the same time, whatever he and Izuku had, it could be called ‘understanding.’ Understanding of exactly where they stood in each other’s worlds; understanding of where they stood in everyone else’s. And when Izuku was alive, Izuku who looked at everyone with the same stars in his eyes, he would never have – not in a million years –
Well, he might have, but it doesn’t matter now. How can Katsuki think of that if he wants his heart to remain intact? This Izuku wants him. He wants him in a way that his Izuku never did.
So even though it’s not right, even though it’s like spitting in the face of everything Izuku ever was to him, he just sits there and lets him touch his hand and feels the calluses on his palm. He doesn’t want to wonder whose they really are anymore.
The summer wears on and on and on. It feels like it’s longer than it should be. It’s every kind of village summer they’ve always had, the kind Katsuki wants desperately to leave behind in search of beach vacations and city trips. They read manga at each other’s houses and fall asleep on the floor on throw pillows and under kicked-off sheets; they play video games long into the afternoon and spit out the seeds from watermelon slices into the dirt, swearing that they’ll grow a new vine; and they walk through the forest and away from the village, up into the dark under the trees where nobody can see them. Nobody can see anything at all.
The sunset tinges everything pink and orange. The water glitters in all the colors it should. It makes Katsuki sick, but he’ll never say anything.
When they return in the evening and eat dinner at each other’s houses, Katsuki’s mother allows them to eat outside in the backyard, which Katsuki suspects is what she believes to be a grand gesture of freedom for the two of them. On the other hand, Izuku’s mother is more doting than ever, sitting them down around the table and cooking elaborate and slightly ridiculous spreads every night. She’s doubtlessly celebrating the survival of her only son. It’s sort of sad to watch, but Katsuki can’t blame her for believing what she needs to.
No, he blames her. It’s a lie to say otherwise. Multiple times while they’re all sitting around the table, Katsuki catches her looking at Izuku with this relieved expression in her watery eyes. So eternally grateful. Grateful for what? That she didn’t lose her son along with his father? He’s always liked her. She’s a strong woman even though it would be easy to say otherwise. But now something like disgust curdles in his gut when he sees her cluelessness. How can she – the one who’s raised her own son for fifteen years – fail to recognize his absence now?
She looks a little like a frog with her wide mouth and big eyes. Katsuki forgives himself the unkind thought about someone he’s meant to respect when he makes eye contact with Izuku, who’s laughing too hard at something his mother has said, and sees the sharp points of his teeth.
“What’s funny?” Katsuki says, looking away and picking with his chopsticks at an overcooked piece of beef.
Izuku waves his hand, still smiling. “Nothing, Katsuki.”
His mother smiles surprisedly. Katsuki drops his chopsticks. The loud clatter they make on his plate is startling. “Huh? What’s with that?” he says, with a trained false easiness.
Izuku blinks. “Oh. Did I say something weird?”
“Idiot. You might as well just call me Bakugo,” Katsuki says, picking his chopsticks up again.
That night they hole up in Izuku’s room and watch an old movie on his computer. Katsuki can feel Izuku stealing glances over at him every few minutes. Like mother, like son… though that doesn’t seem to follow in their current circumstances.
“Quit looking at me,” Katsuki says eventually, during a particularly bloody fight scene.
Izuku deflates. “I was just thinking I should say sorry. I didn’t mean to call you Katsuki at dinner.”
“It’s… fine,” Katsuki decides, not because it really is, but because it’s his own fault in the first place. “When we’re around others, you should still call me Kacchan, I guess. Or just don’t call me anything.”
“Hey, you,” Izuku mimics, pitching his voice down. “Like that?”
Someone onscreen gets his head cut off. It flies across the room and smashes into the wall. Katsuki points at the rest of his body. “See, that’s gonna be you if you keep joking around.”
“Jeez.”
The scene plays on. Izuku is absorbed.
“What would happen if you did get your head cut off?” Katsuki hesitates. It feels wrong to acknowledge the truth directly like this, disrespectful almost, but he has to know. “I know you can heal that shit or whatever, but would you die for real?”
Izuku studies the dead guy. For a while Katsuki thinks he won’t respond, either that he didn’t hear or doesn’t want to let on to a potential way of getting rid of him, but finally he speaks. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” He turns and bares his teeth in an unsettling smile that Katsuki is sure he means entirely genuinely. “Are you asking ‘cause you’re trying to find out?”
Katsuki leans back against the wall. “What if I was?”
“You know? I wouldn’t blame you if you tried.” Izuku laughs. “No, I might blame you a little. But I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m kinda surprised you haven’t already.”
Katsuki snorts. “Why’s it surprising? ’S not a hobby of mine or anything.”
“Well, I mean, I don’t have any clue what this is like for you, but… ” Izuku tilts his head to each side, eliciting two little cracks. “Then you could tell everyone the truth. And you would get to lay him to rest.”
Katsuki tenses. “What the hell is your problem? Don’t say that shit.”
He genuinely can’t tell if Izuku knows the weight of his words when he says things like that. Part of him knows it’s inevitable, because all he’s doing is acknowledging what he is, but also he just wishes he wouldn’t.
“Sorry,” Izuku repeats, sounding genuinely apologetic, which doesn’t make up for anything. “Sorry. I’m taking it too lightly, I know. I can’t help it.”
“Of course not.”
You’re the monster, not me.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. The only truth there is now,” Katsuki says, fixing his eyes on the bright glowing screen and pushing his hand through his hair, “is that Izuku is alive.”
While walking down the trail above the village one day – Katsuki strolling ahead with one earbud in, Izuku lagging behind and admiring the few flowers that have managed to survive through the summer – something happens. It’s the sort of thing Katsuki can write off as a dream. It follows a long day for the both of them. He really could chalk it up to exhaustion if he likes.
So he’s walking along, listening to his music, some random pop group that keeps showing up on all of his playlists but so far he’s not really feeling it, and he looks off the path for a second and sees, through the trees, a single character.
は
He pulls his earbud out and rubs his eyes. It’s still there. Outlined in white, hovering just on the edge of his vision. There’s an odd thudding sound like a cannon blasting miles away.
は
He blinks and it’s closer, lurching into a strange, fuzzy definition: an old man clutching a walking stick. The man’s face is so shriveled it seems to wilt in on itself.
Turn around. Turn around.
Katsuki is rooted to the spot. The thudding sound comes again, and the old man is closer and taller, and his eyes are dark and beady, and his mouth is open in a horrible grimace that twists itself into a smile as Katsuki watches.
Turn around, damn it. Thud. The old man looms over him, and he has the same bottomless pit of a mouth that Izuku does, but the feeling Katsuki gets when he looks at Izuku is completely different than the complete, chilling horror seeping through his whole body.
A terrible groan comes from the old man’s lips. Katsuki thinks he might like to do some things differently in his next life.
“Katsuki,” Izuku says, suddenly right behind him, one hand on his shoulder. “Don’t look anymore.”
And like it’s not even his, Katsuki’s head snaps down to stare at the soil with eyes so wide he starts seeing two of everything, the pebbles on the ground and his dusty sneakers, the headphones still dangling from his fingers, and the thud of the walking stick echoes deafening in his ears and Izuku is saying something behind him that he can barely hear and then there’s this awful snapping sound like someone’s neck breaking cleanly or a tree toppling a million feet down to the ground.
All at once he can move his body again.
He’s screaming; it echoes through the forest and the mountains. He collapses backwards to the ground like the strings holding him up have been cut and scrambles away from Izuku and the space where the old man had been standing. There’s nothing there.
“What the fuck was that? What the fuck was that?” he shouts, trembling arms barely supporting him and practically hysterical.
Izuku looks upset, less angry than sad, like an adult who’s just had to tell a child some bad news. “Try to calm down a little – ”
“Shut the fuck up! I’m not gonna calm down!” Katsuki cries. He’s shaking. “What did you just do!”
Izuku opens his mouth and hesitates. He presses a hand to his head, and it comes away wet; something, a liquid much darker and blacker red than ordinary blood, is dripping from his ear and running down his neck.
“You’re – I thought you didn’t – ” Katsuki presses his knuckles to his mouth. “What happened?”
“That was another spirit,” Izuku says evenly. “It looked like an old man to you, I think. It was going to cause some trouble so I got rid of it. It struggled a little. Nothing to worry about.” He wipes away the liquid – not blood, but whatever it is – on his face and throat with the collar of his shirt.
Katsuki, eyes as wide as plates, speaks through his hand. It comes out muffled. “Could you look like that? If you weren’t in someone’s body?”
Izuku stares at him.
Katsuki struggles to his feet. His headphones dangle from one fist, emitting nothing but crackling static. He throws up in a bush and throws them away when he gets home. Then he sleeps for the rest of the day, and when he wakes up, the events of the afternoon feel foggy, like they never really happened at all.
It rains again, the second unexpected storm of the summer. They sit in Izuku’s room and do nothing for a while besides picking raindrops and having them compete to drip down the glass faster. Katsuki loses twice and Izuku ends the game after he starts threatening to roll down the window and let his posters and bed get drenched.
Eventually Izuku brings up summer homework. It’s not the first time, but it hasn’t been mentioned in a non-joking tone before. “We should get it done, right?” he says, pulling out a sheet of paper from beneath a stack of books and blowing the dust away. “I feel like we should… I dunno any of it, but I remember a little. That you guys used to always get it done right away.”
The summer homework has become less than an afterthought. It sits in the corner of Izuku’s desk or remains stuffed in a folder deep in Katsuki’s backpack, untouched for months. Izuku’s always been a good student; they both are, the kind of classmates that could be relied on to supply answers and give tutoring sessions if they were feeling like a few extra minutes could be spared before beginning the bike ride back home.
The difference is – back then it was fun in the loose sense to sit in desks opposite each other and see who could finish faster or get more answers right on their homework. And of course their goal was always to sit the entrance exams for some university in a city far away from here and get out for good. But now, neither of them can be bothered to get the reading done or fill out the packets covered in splatters of black equations and conversions that make Katsuki roll his eyes into the back of his head when he looks at them now. Is there a point? How can he find a proper reason to do it now? It feels like anything that remains from the real world is on a completely different plane of existence than the one they’re wandering through.
When he says as much, Izuku is amused. “Won’t it tank your grades if you don’t do it, though?”
Right, okay, there’s a good reason. If Katsuki allows the monster to ruin Izuku’s spotless report card, that would probably make him the worst friend to ever live. Of course, he’s practically already achieved that status.
“I guess we should,” he says. “Can you actually do any of it? I mean, I’m guessing not the English or history, ‘s not my thing either, but the classic Japanese has to be in your wheelhouse, right – ?”
“You’re calling me old!” Izuku crows, smiling. “No. Sorry. It doesn’t come easily anymore. Too much time around you, I guess. You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“Sure. I’ll teach you math ‘til your head hurts.”
“Will you now.” Izuku grins. “English, too?”
“Would that I could.” But he’s just saying that. He can and he will. It’s something that he owes.
A few hours pass; Izuku’s mother peeks in on them and seems to approve. Izuku tries valiantly and desperately to recall any of the things learned in school before they were then forgotten, though Katsuki still has to instruct him on things that seem self-explanatory in a way that’s jarring to see.
At one point, Uraraka from school calls after sending multiple texts asking for answers to the harder worksheets. It’s rare that they would all be doing their work at the same time; she and her friends are slackers in a way Katsuki can’t typically understand. The ringtone is some awful, gaudy rock song from the nineties that Izuku would never have listened to before.
Izuku looks blankly at the screen as though unsure of whether he’s allowed to answer it or not. Katsuki snatches the phone and snaps into it, “Do your work yourself, lazy.”
“I am,” Uraraka protests. Her voice is tinny and Katsuki can hear yelling in the background. “But nothing makes sense and Himiko’s totally useless at English. Put Midoriya on – ”
“Use Google Translate!” Katsuki barks, and hangs up.
“Was that… ”
“Uraraka,” Katsuki says. “She’s one of our classmates.” And then, because Izuku is looking at him as though he’s expecting more, he offers, hating the way it tastes as it leaves his mouth, “He liked her.”
Izuku laughs, quietly for a second, and then louder. “No, he didn’t,” he says, and goes back to his homework.
It’s finally nice out one day – not too hot or humid, and the bugs are shutting up for once – and when Izuku meets Katsuki at his house they start off to the creek without having to discuss it. They settle on the bank, peeling off their sneakers and depositing them in a pile within the tall grass to watch how the sun glitters over the water like diamonds.
“Katsuki,” Izuku says as they’re sitting by the water, “I’ve got a question. Don’t get mad.”
Katsuki hesitates; with the monster, it could really be anything, but his curiosity wins out. “What is it?”
“Why do you – ” Izuku glances down at his feet, blurred within the water, and pushes one finger through the muddy sand. “Why do you call me Izuku?”
Katsuki goes still.
“I remember… he remembers you calling him Deku. You always called him Deku. Like… you were calling him useless. But you call me Izuku.” His tone takes on this awful hopeful quality. “Is it because you… because I’m not… ”
“Shut up,” Katsuki says before he can stop himself, standing up and wading into the water, and Izuku’s face falls. “That’s not why. There’s no reason. It’s just that he’s him and you’re you. That’s all.”
“Oh.” Izuku rocks back, pulling his knees to his chest. “Okay.”
And later: “Is that why I have to call you Katsuki?”
Katsuki blows out a breath, shaking his head back and forth without knowing he’s doing it until he sees Izuku’s confused expression. “Why’re you asking so many dumbass questions?”
“I’m just… ”
“It’s not, anyway. That’s only – ” Katsuki wants to laugh but can’t get it out, balancing gingerly as he steps from rock to rock in the midst of the water, away from Izuku and then back toward him again. “Only me being selfish.”
His chest aches.
“Oh, all right,” Izuku says. “I think I understand.”
Maybe unfairly, Katsuki shakes his head. “You don’t.” But that has to be okay, which is maybe the worst part of all.
The sun is setting and Katsuki is leaning over to watch the tiny fish dart in the clear water and over the rocks; they billow in shades of brown and black and gray. He dips the tip of his finger in and they all swim away. He stammers for a second when he talks and hates himself for it. “Did he – when I called him Deku – did he think I was – that I meant it?”
He had never meant it. Or at least, he didn’t think that he had. The idea that Izuku could have ever thought so is suddenly unbearable.
Izuku glances over at him. “No. I don’t think so. At least, the memories of it don’t feel that way.” He lowers his hand into the water, too, turning it this way and that, seeming to wonder at how his fingers distort under the flow of the creek. “They feel warm. When he was with you.”
Katsuki can feel, if he concentrates, the feeling of his heart physically cracking in two. It’s a prolonged thing. He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. “No, no, you asshole. God, you make me sick.”
“I’m sorry,” Izuku says, hurt and surprised.
Katsuki keeps his eyes shut. “Don’t apologize anymore. Just be quiet when you want to.”
No response. The sky bleeds red and orange over the water.
They sneak into some old abandoned house at the top of the village where nobody lives anymore and lie on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Dust and cobwebs have collected in the rafters; there’s a pervasive scent of stale mildew from the rains that have dripped through the floorboards and soaked into the roots of the house. Katsuki has come here before with Izuku, a find from the spring between seventh and eighth grade, but he’s never brought the monster before. Maybe this in itself is a form of goodbye.
“So I heard the next town over’s gonna have a fireworks display at their summer festival,” Izuku says, holding up his phone. It seems wrong that he knows how to use the Internet, but maybe it’s just one of those things he seems to instinctually understand from the muscle memory of the body he’s in, like riding a bike or knocking his knuckles against Katsuki’s. “Wanna go?”
“Why not just go to the one here?” Katsuki huffs.
“Obviously ‘cause of the fireworks. Come on, you don’t want to see them?”
Katsuki rolls his eyes. “You’ve seen them once, you’ve seen them a million times.”
“I’ve never seen them before.”
“Yes, you have.”
Izuku drops his phone against his chest and sighs.
Against Katsuki’s better judgement, he acquiesces, because he feels bad when it’s clear how much Izuku wants it, and he supposes it is different to see them in real life than in whatever memories he has, the same way that you wouldn’t want to watch a recording on someone else’s flip phone. “Sure, it’s fine,” he says. Izuku’s glee seems disproportionate to the situation.
They ask their parents if they can go and set up a ride with a neighbor who’s hosting an okonomiyaki stand at the festival. The hardest part ends up being talking Izuku down from wearing yukata. He’s elated just to be there and darts through the crowd more quickly than Katsuki would have expected, spending his meager allowance on a rigged shooting gallery game at which he wins only a single keychain.
“Want it?” he says, holding it out to Katsuki. It’s a little plastic orange goldfish, with big eyes and a shiny tail.
“What would I do with that?” Katsuki carps.
“Put it on your school bag or something? I’ll give it to someone else otherwise.”
“No, whatever.” Katsuki snatches the keychain and stuffs it into his pocket. When he looks up, Izuku is grinning at him. He scowls back.
They keep walking around. The faces are all unfamiliar, but everyone smiles at them anyway. The air is thick with heat and the scent of cooking food. Eventually Katsuki gets a snow cone from a nearby stall. Muscle memory has him scooping out the adzuki beans and condensed milk to give to Izuku – it’s always been too sweet for him – but when he holds out the spoon, Izuku just looks at him confusedly. “What?”
Katsuki feels oddly embarrassed. “You like this part, don’t you?”
Izuku’s eyes go to the spoon, then Katsuki’s flushed face. “Oh, I… yeah, I can eat it,” he says, opening his hand. “Here – ”
“It’s fine,” Katsuki says, pulling it back. “Don’t force yourself just ‘cause I mentioned it.” He flicks the spoon and the toppings fall to the ground. The mess is sticky and repulsive. Izuku looks troubled but doesn’t say anything else.
After looking around some more at the food offerings, Katsuki gives Izuku a few hundred yen to get a candy apple and goes to buy okonomiyaki from the neighbor as a thank-you for taking them there and back. The sauce is some homemade concoction instead of the kind that comes out of a jar; it’s too sweet and it stains Katsuki’s fingers as he takes bites of cabbage and pork.
“Oh, pretty good,” Izuku says when they reconvene and he tries the okonomiyaki. “You got double pork? I didn’t know that was an option.”
“It’s better that way.” Katsuki peers at the half-eaten candy apple. “How is it?”
The lanterns and torches light up Izuku’s face as he gives a thumbs-up. “You want some?” he says, holding it out.
Normally Katsuki would say no, but he hasn’t had one since he was little. “Sure,” he says, and leans down to take a bite. His teeth crunch through the candy shell and catch a soft spot beneath, but the cinnamon taste is overpowering enough that he doesn’t taste any of the apple at all. “Not bad.”
Izuku licks red sugar off his wrist where the dye is bleeding out and bobs his head.
They find a hill on which to sit and wait for the fireworks at the edge of the path, just below the village’s shrine, since Izuku can’t cross beneath the torii gate due to the nature of his existence. It’s dark, but Katsuki can make out a line of birds sitting on a telephone wire at the bottom of the hill.
The wind is still. No breeze in sight. Izuku finishes his candy apple and twirls the stick between his fingers. Katsuki folds the paper boat he was given and stuffs it into his pocket. Below, blurry figures are beginning to shuffle around, setting up the fireworks.
“Can I ask you something?” Katsuki says after a while.
“Sure. Anything.”
“Did you kill him?”
Izuku’s head snaps around to stare at Katsuki, but he refuses to look over at him. He can feel the weight of his eyes, whatever horrified expression he’s surely wearing, and it frustrates Katsuki a little. More than a little. As if it would be wrong to ask such a thing in the current circumstances. He clearly wants to live even at the expense of others. But how far would he really go?
“Answer it,” he bites.
“No.” Izuku sounds almost angry, which feels unfair. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“Liar.” Katsuki’s only a little serious. The topic hurts too much to hold in its entirety.
Izuku glares at him. “I mean it. He died naturally. It was windy and raining really hard… he wasn’t looking where he was going, stumbled down a ravine, and broke his neck.”
Katsuki flinches.
“Shit,” Izuku says. “It wasn’t – painful. If you thought that. It was instant. He doesn’t have any memory of it. Except for falling.”
He could so easily be lying but Katsuki would only make everything worse if he asked. And of course he would prefer to imagine Izuku’s death, since it can’t be as peaceful as falling asleep, like a single unending blink. But still. “Why did you take his body?”
Izuku opens and closes his mouth.
“Like you can help it. It’s just in your nature.” Katsuki sighs, a little mocking, mostly just tired.
“I know it’s not enough, but I wish I hadn’t needed to do it. I wish I had been born a human,” Izuku says. “If I had been born at all.”
Katsuki tries to imagine it. Him looking like anything other than Izuku. Nothing comes to mind except those bottomless dark eyes. “No point in imagining, right?” he says tiredly.
“Right.”
People are starting to come up onto the hill, lining a good distance away from them but still too close to continue talking so obviously. They lapse into a thin silence for a second, and then something thick in Katsuki’s throat forces him to talk before he can stop himself.
“I really wanna hate you.” He sniffs and swipes the back of his hand over his face. “I’m not supposed to admit that, am I.”
“Which part?” Izuku doesn’t look very bothered by the confession.
“Either. I don’t know. I can’t even do it right.”
Izuku leans over. “Why not?”
“Fuck if I know.”
Izuku smiles at him. Then, abruptly, the grin collapses off his face. “Can you tell me about him?”
Katsuki stares at him for what feels like a hundred years.
“I’m serious. I want to hear. I wanna know.”
There is probably a world where Katsuki says no; where he recognizes that the idea of talking about the real Izuku with his replacement is a violation of the worst kind, that it’ll do more harm than good, that the memory of Izuku as he was needs to stay locked up in his own brain where nobody else can see it. For the sake of himself and everyone else. But Katsuki is selfish and grieving for someone who is here and also gone forever and this is not that world.
“Okay. Sure.”
The words come to mind easily, the million pictures he remembers, too, rise to the surface with barely a nudge in that direction, like bubbles rushing upwards from where a pebble’s fallen into the water. “Deku sucked at everything except school. He liked to watch sports that he wasn’t any good at. He was too scared to talk to girls unless they were friends and then he talks way too much but they liked him anyway. He liked history and science… and his mom’s katsudon… ”
Izuku is rapt. The absurdity of the situation strikes him like a knife in the heart. Katsuki thumbs the wetness out of his eye and goes on.
“He was dumb and clumsy. He cried too much. He wanted to be a doctor or a teacher, or own a store, something that would get a lot of kids coming in. Merch or whatever. We used to talk about… but I never took any of that seriously.” He rests his chin on his folded arms, staring with narrowed eyes at the dark horizon. “I guess maybe I should have, huh.”
It’s like there’s a hole in the pit of his chest. He can’t tell if talking about Izuku helped fill it up or made it deeper.
“You miss him, don’t you,” Izuku says.
Katsuki rips a blade of grass out of the ground. “What kind of stupid question is that.”
“Am I anything like him? At all?”
He doesn’t want to say it, but he has to. “You’re a lot like him,” Katsuki admits, and then shakes his head. “But I don’t know how much of that is really you and how much is just your imitation.”
Izuku reaches over and takes the piece of grass out of his palm. He raises it to his mouth and, between his hands, whistles with it. The sound is sharp and alarming. A flock of birds sitting on the telephone wire explodes into the air and flies away down the hill.
“Stupid party trick,” he says when Katsuki looks over. “You know, I thought as long as I was here, then it wouldn’t be so hard for you.” Izuku flashes his too-sharp teeth. “But it’s just making it harder, isn’t it?”
“If you left again it would be worse,” Katsuki says, hard and fast. It’s true. If he left – the world would lose all of its color.
Izuku’s mouth falls ajar. It’s probably the first time Katsuki has really indicated that he wants Izuku there beside him. There’s a reason for that, and it’s a reason that Katsuki can’t make himself care about right now.
“Then I won’t,” he says. “I won’t ever.”
Katsuki says nothing.
Someone shouts that the fireworks are about to begin, and it sets off a cacophony of cheers from the watchers that are now clustered up and down the hill. When it dies down again, Izuku is looking at him.
“What?” Katsuki says flatly.
“Did you and him ever… ” he hesitates. “Did you like him?”
Katsuki considers how to respond for a long time. He wants to get angry at the question, but he can’t. Finally he just says, “What do you think?”
Izuku presses his hand into Katsuki’s palm. His skin is cold. Katsuki leans back and looks up at the clouds as the fireworks start swimming their way up through the dark, exploding into red and yellow fractals. When he glances over at Izuku he sees the reflection in the mired black of his irises, blooming in shades that don’t exist in real life, and the firmament of the sky has never felt so heavy.