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"Deku! I'm gonna kill you."
Perhaps Izuku is a masochist, because he keeps coming back to Katsuki no matter how many times he's been pushed back.
"Come on out, Deku."
Oh, he does.
Ironically, Izuku has learned how to communicate with Katsuki by being a better hero. It takes bravery, of course, to walk towards the ticking bomb and approach it with a gentle hand.
(It takes bravery to reach out to a raging fire when you've already been burnt.)
""Deku, you're dead."
Oops. Izuku's running, running down the halls and his heart is racing, racing faster than his body can move. But his mind.
He's never been able to see the possibilities like this, like the shock of being near Katsuki has jump-started his brain and he can see it.
Uraraka's on the top floor - Iida's fast, he can incapacitate her - but Kacchan's gone missing in action - he's right below.
"Hah!" He's laughing, triumphant and golden. Izuku could fly in this moment, even without All For One. Katsuki always makes him feel like that - high on adrenaline and ready to jump off of any cliff without seeing the bottom.
And - oh. He's gone down one too many wrong turns down the hallways, because Kacchan's right in front of him.
"Whoa," Izuku murmurs, and that's clearly the wrong answer. Katsuki flames him. Literally.
Drifting in between consciousness, a warm, gravelly voice: "You planned all of this?"
"No," he replies, and he wants to respond with some smartass comment that the old him would have never dared to make, not to Big Bad Kacchan. The darkness drags him down again, though.
Izuku knows that he'll pay for that later, but in his dreams, he is soothed by callused hands and soft blonde hair that smells of ash and burnt sugar.
When he wakes up, he is clutching at his chest with one hand, and reaching out with another, as if trying to reach the sun.
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Katsuki Bakugou is not prone to worrying.
Why worry? He's at the top of every class (or, used to be, before Half n' Half fucked it up), has an amazing quirk (not compared to anyone else at U. A. ), he has friends (does he?), and now that he thinks about it, all of his excelling qualities now come with exceptions in smaller print.
Maybe it's U. A. itself. This school is fucked up, because Deku is somehow the most popular one in their class, the most gregarious and beloved by everyone from the navel laser to engine man, and Bakugou is the antisocial one.
"No," he imagines himself saying, imagines diagramming out his and Deku's dynamics to the teachers. "No, I'm the popular one. He's the quirkless one, you see?"
But they don't see, do they? Because as it turns out, the nerd has a quirk that's suspiciously similar to All Might's. (Of course he does. That's a hero's quirk, for someone with a good heart and values and all the other bullshit that helped Deku pass the entrance exam.)
That's fine. Bakugou was planning to blast his way through U. A., through the sports festivals, rising up the ranks until he is considered one of the best heroes by sheer statistics.
Until the Heroes vs. Villains contest. For his part, Bakugou would like to say that the competition was, and still is fucking idiotic.
He doesn't know why it pisses him off so much. It shouldn't. The heroes will excel in their role, and the truly competent ones will play the villain and apologize afterwards.
Bakugou doesn't apologize. If he started - well, that's a path he doesn't want to go down. (He knows that at the end of it, there will be a hand, reaching up to him, looking down on him. "You okay, Kacchan?")
As the lots were being drawn, he prayed to gods he didn't believe in, promised that he would try to be quiet, be more polite to his mother, even. Make less noise, draw less attention and ensure that when he exploded - when, not if - it would be contained in his arms.
"Midoriya Izuku and Bakugou Katsuki."
If God wanted him to be self-contained, he wouldn't have paired Bakugou with Deku. This was a test, probably, to see how far they'd both come.
That was an excuse, a bad one, too. He'd just wanted to beat the shit out of the boy, and it was almost fun when Deku fought back.
Like they were kids again, jumping over barricades, playing at being heroes and villains before the words blended together and became indistinguishable from the other.
Heroes are strong. (Villains are stronger.)
Heroes are beloved. (Villains are feared.)
How's he supposed to bury his past, sweep over it when the nerd keeps dredging up their history together? And, all right, maybe he could've contained himself if he hadn't heard that "Whoa."
For the first time in a while, Bakugou felt shame. Both icy and scalding hot, burning inside of his gut.
"Don't call me Kacchan."
"You planned all of this?"
Deku had smiled at him. Smiled, said "No," as in, he hadn't planned to be awed at Katsuki.
Bakugou thought he saw Deku's mouth form an "o", and he'd thought that the boy was about to apologize to him.
Say, "I'm sorry, Kacchan! You're so cool that I couldn't help it."
Even in his daydreams, Izuku called him that. Kacchan. That stupid nickname, the name that made him equal. Kacchan and Deku, hero partners. Kacchan and Deku, the next best and second best heroes.
Kacchan and Deku - and Katsuki always came first, though, because he was insecure that was how they were.
What he meant to ask, and what he whispered at Izuku's bedside: "How can you still call me Kacchan?"
How can you call me Kacchan, with that same innocence you had back then?
(When you thought that I was a hero, and now you're the only one that I can't fool. Look in these eyes, these blood-red orbs of mine and tell me that I am not a monster. Wake up, Izuku, and hold my hand like my mother's never done, and pretend that I am your hero.)
Izuku sleeps peacefully, even with a monster by his side, and Katsuki hates him for it.