Work Text:
“Okay class! Enjoy your Sunday!”
Izuku smiles wide as he stands by the open door of his classroom, bidding his students safe travels home.
It's the first Sunday he’s had off in a while, too—ever since picking up the mantle and reaching a high of three on the Hero Billboards, he’s as busy as ever.
He likes it, though. He’s finally found the perfect balance between both work lives, and though he prefers to always be doing something, he doesn’t mind blocking off this particular Sunday.
[Wednesday | Kacchan: 5:59PM] hey i found the recipe for that pasta sauce you liked. i’ll make it for you this weekend
✅READ
He’s giddy as he reads the text over again.
He naturally has Sunday off, and he knows Kacchan traded shifts with a fellow Hero to be able to spend the day together.
Izuku could care less about the pasta. He just… loves being around Kacchan. He closes the message app before he can think about his last text still left on “Delivered.”
It wasn’t uncommon. Kacchan is always busy himself, too. Texts from both sides often take a day or two to be noticed amongst the chaos. It’s just… Izuku’s heart flutters at what his text said, and he feels a little nervous.
He’s overly engrossed in his and Kacchan’s homemade dinner plans, missing Aizawa standing at the beginning of the stairway at the end of the hall.
“Midoriya.”
Izuku startles, just for a moment, his smile faltering. The way Aizawa carries himself now is… stiff. Face angled down, shadowed by the bangs of his short black hair. “Oh, Aizawa-san!” He keeps his voice peppy and bright. “Are you… can I help with something?”
Aizawa doesn’t respond right away. The silence stretches, pulls taught and leaves Izuku to wonder when it’ll snap. He doesn’t like it.
“Midoriya,” Aizawa repeats. And then, Izuku finally hears it. Barely there, completely missable if you weren’t used to the way the man talks. A waver. “Izuku.”
Breath catches quickly in Izuku’s throat.
“U-Uhm, you’re… you never—” Izuku clears his throat. “Is everything okay?” He tried not to ask, Aizawa having told him before he hates the question.
But the way his colleague is acting compels him to, if only to settle the unease brewing in his gut.
Aizawa inhales, a shaky staccato. “No,” he says, voice cracking.
Then, Izuku is forced to hear two words his childhood best friend promised him he would never have to.
“It’s Bakugo.”
Izuku sits across from Kacchan’s parents in the living room of their home. The crisp black suit feels two sizes too small, and his eyes pulse with fatigue.
He’s dehydrated, and his mother tries getting him to at least take a few sips from the glass of water she places in his hands. He manages one, before his throat clenches and he almost chokes.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
“Thank you.” Masaru reaches out a hand to place onto Izuku’s knee. Izuku didn’t even know he’d been bouncing it. “Mitsuki and I didn’t get a chance to say this during the service, but what you said about Katsuki…”
“I meant it.” Knuckles go white around the neck of the glass. “If… I’m sorry. I understand if it might have made you uncomfortable. I should have… run it by you, maybe. Before just. Saying it.”
“Katsuki was… a private person.” Mitsuki doesn’t move her blank stare from her hands, folded in her lap. “Even he couldn’t hide that he— Well, we’ve known for years.”
“Oh.” He doesn’t know what to say, so he lets it be. He’d hoped he was subtle enough, but that’s never been his forte, he supposes.
“No one else really got it, I think.” Mitsuki’s stare makes him nauseous. He clenches and flexes his fingers around his knees. “He… cared about you, too.”
Izuku squeezes his eyes shut.
“Kacchan is my best friend,” Izuku read from his handwritten letter hours earlier. “Was…? No, he is. He’s my best friend. There, uh, wouldn’t be a Deku without Dynamight.”
The paper crinkled in his hands.
“I…”
His vision warped. Words swam down the paper from the stream that drowned the ink. One word stood out above the rest, left untarnished.
Love.
“My best friend,” he repeated. A broken record to match a broken heart. “We, uhm, had a rough past. Expectations placed on us from other people can make us act different from who we really are, and I understood that.
“Kacchan has been called many things. Rude, vulgar, insensitive. They question how someone like him could be a Hero, but they never saw the Kacchan I did when we were kids.
“The one that wore a confident smile even when he was scared. Who tripped and fell, got scrapes and bruises, but always stood back up.
“They didn’t see the extra shifts he took to… help me get back up there in the skies with him. The sacrifices he made. Naps in the break room, no coffee—because it’s bad for his—his heart.”
He swallowed thickly. His ears rang in the absence of sound from close family, friends, and coworkers. Not even the wind blew as Izuku addressed everyone from his place in front of the cask—in front of Katsuki.
“S-Sorry. Uh. The last few years flying up high with him have been the best of my life. I don’t… I don’t think there’s a way that I can ever repay him for that.
“A big piece of me is gone.” The admission came out in a rumble. His tone flat, deep, and empty, void of the pep he usually tried to reflect. “I won’t get it back. But that’s okay, I guess, because when… when I see him again, he’ll have it to give to me.
“I love him very much, and he’ll… he’ll always be the—my g-greatest he-hero. Thank you.”
“At least… At least it was quick.” Mitsuki sighs out. “I always feared he’d go out with a bang, I guess.”
Izuku only half hears her, a tide of thoughts sweeping him back out to sea.
Izuku bunched the collar of the surgeon in tight fists.
“Bring him back! You should be in there trying—!” Izuku tasted the blood as he screamed in the face of the doctor. “E-Eri!” He gasped. “Sh-She could—”
“She can’t,” came Aizawa’s blunt disappointment. Understanding, underneath it all, but Izuku didn’t care.
“B-But she can rewind him—”
“Eri can’t bring back the dead, Midoriya.”
“They—They tried. We all know he was… gone long before he made it to the hospital.”
Gone, Izuku’s thoughts spat. Gone before he hit the ground. Gone before they performed CPR. Gone before they could have dinner together.
Gone before Kacchan could read Izuku’s last text. His stomach churns as he remembers, days ago now, how nasty he’d been. Izuku hadn’t stopped to take in the fact that the staff were crying with them.
“According to the logs of his pacemaker, it was instant. The impact to his chest was too great and sudden. It tried sending shocks, but… pacemakers maintain and regulate hearts, not restart them.”
Izuku bent forward, sat on a waiting room couch. He tucked his head between knees; took two shuddering breaths…
“Of course, Hero Dynamight has taken hits like this before, but… unfortunately, between the way he impacted the building and the villain’s Quirk factor, there was nothing we could do. I’m so sorry.”
…then he threw up.
“The woman he saved stopped by Best Jeanist’s agency.”
Izuku thinks to himself if it’s possible to drown without water filling his lungs. The waves are too turbulent, so loud, that Mitsuki raises her voice for him to hear her.
He perks up, slingshots his gaze from a discolored patch of the wood of the floor up to Mitsuki. “I-I’m sorry?”
“She stopped by Best Jeanist’s agency.”
It was Kacchan’s last year there, then he was free from his contract. Izuku thinks about the meticulously signed stacks of their own contract papers, loan documents, and government permits.
They won’t have a chance now to leave that drawer in his home office. “Really?”
“Mmm. She and her unborn child were cleared from the hospital. Aside from minor cuts and bruises, both of them are healthy and safe.”
“That’s—” not Kacchan, not fair, not how it was supposed to go “—amazing.”
Mitsuki pauses, turns to Masaru and whispers something Izuku doesn’t care enough to register. It’s only when Masaru reclaims his seat and a phone is held in front of Izuku’s face that refocuses.
“Katsuki left a letter for us, after the war, if anything were to ever happen to him,” Katsuki’s father says gently. “One of his requests was that we give you his phone. He said you knew the passcode.”
“Our brat told us that unless he said otherwise, we had to tell you to check the folder. That you should be home, with a friend or us or your mother because he didn’t want you to be alone afterward.”
Izuku takes the phone with unsteady, scarred hands. Masaru places his over Izuku’s.
Kacchan’s parents are already dressed down for the evening. Only Izuku sits there, stiff and still donning his suit from the service.
“I can take you to my house, honey.” Inko wraps an arm around his shoulders, and he flinches. He hunches into himself before shaking his head.
“If it’s okay… you can go home and get some rest, Mom.” He hugs the phone close to his chest as Masaru also retracts his hands. “If it’s not a burden, I’d like to look at them here.”
Inko squeezes at his shoulder. “Okay, dear.”
Even after she leaves, the three of them sit in heavy silence. Izuku finally removes his suit jacket, draping it over the back of the couch.
“Do you want us to give you some privacy?” Masaru smiles so, so affectionately at him that Izuku has to swallow down a sob.
“Uh… maybe a few minutes. I’m sure it’s nothing serious, I’ll call out to you if I need you?”
“Sure, hun.”
They shuffle off down the hall to their room, closing the door so silently it almost makes no sound. He turns his attention back to the phone, and punches the code in in less than a second.
He already knows where to go. A folder named “Nerd,” that has a locked file housed inside.
Izuku has one too, under “Kacchan.”
He opens the folder. don’t open unless i’m dead glares back at him, and his eyes feel like millions of glass shards are scattered over their surface. Scratching and cutting with every blink.
The trail that follows the shape of his cheek is blood, not tears. It has to be with how much he hurts .
One tap.
Please input your password.
A thought from the past. Standing atop the summit at the end of a hike. Cool autumn air.
“Hiking with you,” Kacchan said. “Capital H, proper spaces.”
“What are you talking about?” Izuku kept his eyes glued on the sunset.
“How we made those stupid folders. You told me my password had to be something I love doing. So that’s what I made it.”
“Ah.” Warmth bloomed in his chest. Izuku filed the information away nonetheless. Told himself he’d never need to remember it as long as they took care of each other. “Wanna guess mine?”
“Something to do with Heroes.”
“Okaaaaay…?” A tease, always a challenge.
“You’re sentimental, so something about me.”
“Am I? Or is that your ego poking through a little?”
Kacchan shoved him, a slight push really, and Izuku barked out a laugh. “Watch it be corny like, ‘Biggest Dynamight Fan’ or something.”
Izuku let out an embarrassing squeak.
Kacchan’s eyes squinted in suspicion, before his lips curled into a mischievous smirk. “Oh my God. It is.”
“N-No! Well, kind of, but—”
Izuku sputtered over Kacchan’s cackles, cheeks tinged red from the way Kacchan hunched over.
“Not Dynamight.”
Kacchan straightened, brow quirked. “No?”
“Kacchan.”
Izuku would never forget the backdrop of the setting sun, clouds painted in multitudes of yellows, reds, and oranges. The way Kacchan had a nervous set to his shoulders as he tried to play off his apprehension.
He’d never forget how red eyes softened the most Izuku has ever seen when he said, “Mine is Kacchan’s Number One Fan.”
Inside the locked folder is a text document. There’s some pictures of Izuku that he’s never seen before, and he tries to remember to send them to himself later.
In the document, Izuku reads:
it’s easier to admit shit when i know you won’t see it. you’ve always read me like you penned the pages yourself, but even i’m capable of keeping a secret or two. you reading this means there was one battle i never managed to win. not against a villain, but myself.
There’s a date tacked onto the end, along with keywords for him to search. There’s a shortcut to the messaging app they use, and with trembling fingers, he presses the icon and pastes the words.
At first, he’s not sure what he’s looking at. Double texts are scattered across different days and weeks and months from Kacchan’s side, the first always followed by “Not Delivered.”
He reads them all. He loses his place a few times, tears splashing onto the screen and the app closing when he tries to scrub it off. The more he reads, the closer to the present he gets, and the harder it is for him to breathe.
One batch is from not long after Izuku spars with his students for the first time using his hero suit.
❗NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 3:37PM] you looked good today. happier.
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 3:38PM] i never thought i’d see that again. a fancy suit doesn’t fix everything, but i’d do it all again if it means you keep smiling like that.
[Me | 4:02PM] hey, good shit against your brats today. you’ve still got it.
✅READ
Another, when Izuku had broken his arm. His suit had absorbed the shock from a Villain’s attack, but he’d pushed it past its limits.
❗NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 9:17PM] you fucking dumbass
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 9:17PM] you MORON
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 9:17PM] why do you always have to push yourself
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 9:19PM] getting that call scared the fuck out of me
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 9:19PM] thank god it was just your arm
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 9:20PM] what the fuck would i have done if you
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 9:20PM] fuck you
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 9:25PM] asshole
[Me | 9:28PM] better not be overworking that arm. i’m coming over with takeout.
✅READ
There’s so many different instances that Izuku feels like the room’s spinning. He’s touched, he’s confused, he’s… he feels so damn conflicted. These were purposeful. The kind of purposeful where he can imagine Kacchan grumbling to himself as he switches his data off long enough to send them.
How different would things have been between them, if either of them stopped being so scared?
[Me | 8:02AM] still up for a shift with me after school?
✅READ
[deku | 9:40AM] Sorry! Just saw this.
[deku | 9:40AM] The students are being released early today, so we can get lunch before!
✅READ
[Me | 8:02AM] 👍
✅READ
[Me | 6:36PM] made it home.
✅READ
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:37PM] you didn’t have to do that
❗NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:37PM] people say nasty shit about me all the time
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:37PM] everyone who knows me knows that reporter is full of shit
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:37PM] but fuck, izuku
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:39PM] i haven’t seen you that mad in years
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:42PM] i’ve watched the clip a few times already. makes me wish that i could stop being so weak, that i could just tell you the shit that’s been on my mind
[Me | 6:49PM] thanks for having my back.
✅READ
The nausea is back. Hundreds of tiny hands curling their fingers around his guts. Twisting, pulling, squeezing. He wheezes, bolts from the couch to the kitchen where he drags over the trash can.
His heart pounds so hard against his ribs he swears he can hear the bones rattle. With every passage he reads, the more Izuku’s sure Kacchan is… that Kacchan might have—
Saliva pools under his tongue. He heaves air, but nothing comes out. He’s close to the end, close to the present where their chat log stops.
He holds the phone out in front of him again. Keeps scrolling until he’s met with the last message Kacchan sent.
[Me 5:59PM] hey i found the recipe for that pasta sauce you liked. i’ll make it for you this weekend
✅READ
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:02PM] i want to stop being a coward
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:02PM] i want to tell you so fucking bad that i want this to mean something
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:03PM] every moment with you means something
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:04PM] i don’t want this with anyone else
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:04PM] but how do i admit that to you
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:06PM] how am i supposed to say that i’m afraid
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:12PM] i’ll always love you, not just a little bit
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:13PM] sometimes way too fucking much
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:20PM] for as long as i’m alive
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:24PM] probably long after i’m dead, too
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:24PM] on sunday, i’m gonna try
❗ NOT DELIVERED
[Me | 6:26PM] plus fucking ultra
Izuku’s lungs burn. The phone slips from his fingers and clatters to the floor. He’s a fish out of water with the way he gapes, trying to suck air into his lungs but he can’t. Izuku has cried dozens of times since Aizawa broke the news to him.
But right now, Izuku doesn’t want to cry.
He tries to scream, but it comes out choppy like the chitters of a mouse. His tongue is steel in his mouth.
Kacchan.
Love.
Kacchan and love and fuck, Kacchan loved him. Loved him like Izuku loves him back.
Now, he’ll never know. He’ll never know what Kacchan was going to look like when they made dinner together. When they sat at Izuku’s kitchen table across from each other, armed with the knowledge that Kacchan would have seen his text.
Izuku will never know how three specific words would sound tumbling from Kacchan’s lips; how those same lips would feel on his for the first time; how it would feel to make love some day, instead of Izuku only doing it with safe people as a means to blow off steam.
He won’t know what his favorite pasta sauce would taste like, prepared with Kacchan’s hands.
“Please.”
Izuku’s body meets the floor with a thump. On hands and knees, he wishes he could pray for Kacchan to come back.
“Please.”
Begging for anything but this hollow crater in his soul. Begging that every emotion he’s worked so hard to keep under control stops bubbling to the surface.
“A-Auntie. Uncle,” he wheezes.
The panic is settling in. They can’t hear him. They won’t come out and he’ll be alone. Alone, like Kacchan left him to be.
“Auntie! Uncle!”
He flops to his side, burying his hands in his hair. The roots pull from his scalp.
“Please—!!”
A door from down the hall bursts open. His hands are pried from the tangle of his curls. Long, manicured nails cup the side of his face before he’s pulled into a warm, comforting embrace.
There’s a heartbeat under his ear, another set of hands rubbing along his back.
“We’re here,” Mitsuki whispers. “Shhh, shh. We know.”
His hands grapple at the fabric of her shirt. “H-He didn’t see. He—didn’t see. ”
“C’mon, Izuku.” Masaru’s voice is like hot chocolate. Izuku won’t get to hear Kacchan complain about how he puts too many marshmallows in his cup anymore.
He breaks when he’s sandwiched between the only two people who could ever have loved Kacchan more than Izuku does. For the first time, Izuku wails. He screams and swears and curses the universe because it’s not fair.
Mitsuki and Masaru cradle him through it. They ignore the mess of tears and snot he rubs onto her blouse, and Masaru doesn’t hesitate to use his sleeve to wipe away the spit and drool that runs down Izuku’s chin.
They stay huddled together in the living room until Izuku’s sobs finally ebb. When he lays in the guest room, the digital clock reading well past midnight, he swipes his phone from the nightstand.
It’s hard to focus on the screen with the way his eyes throb, but he manages to find his way to his messages.
He stares.
Stares, and stares some more. It’s jarring. He knows words are there, more than was shared between them. “I love you, too,” Izuku whimpers.
Kacchan will hear him. Izuku is sure that he’ll hear him say it when they see each other again.
His unread text is the last thing he sees before his eyes grow too heavy to bother keeping them open. He takes in one more shuddering breath. Makes a promise to himself as he drifts off to sleep.
[Kacchan 5:59PM] hey i found the recipe for that pasta sauce you liked. i’ll make it for you this weekend
✅READ
[Me 7:07PM] Can we make it a date? (ᵔ▿ᵔ)
☑️DELIVERED