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Katsuki taps his stick experimentally on the ice, skating backwards in a wide arc. He’s bored. The extras are taking too long to get ready.
“Oi, are we playing hockey today, or are we just going to talk?”
Hanta flips Katsuki the bird from the net. He’s already in his goalie gear, but he’s been distracting Denki for thirty minutes. It’s just practice, and they are only a recreational club team. But still, they’re pro-heroes. They don’t have this kind of time.
“Chill out, bro,” Eijirou chirps, bumping Katsuki in the shoulder. “This is the only time most of us have to catch up.”
Katsuki rolls his eyes, but concedes that Eijirou has a point. “Is that your way of volunteering to start practice with a shootout drill?”
Eijirou rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. Katsuki loves Eijirou like this—used to his shit and happy to take it. “As if any one of you could actually score on me.”
“Extras!” Katsuki projects his voice, and his teammates’ attention snaps to him. “Shootout drill. Get into your teams.”
There are a smattering of complaints. Eijirou and Hanta are two of the best players on the team, and they happen to be the two goalies. It’s going to be hard to score on either of them, especially at the start of practice before they get worn down, but Katsuki loves to start practice this way. If they can’t score on their goalies at the top of their game, then Katuski’s going to have to up the conditioning.
Hanta takes his place in the net on the far right of the rink as Eijiro skates left. Katsuki takes his place at the center ice. His line is on Eijiro’s net. Denki’s is on Hanta’s.
Katsuki studies Eijirou as he squares up in the net, looking for any points of weakness. He’s here to win, and that includes getting the first goal against his friend. He hooks the blade of his stick around his ammo and rushes the net, his skates digging into the ice, eyes on the prize. Eijirou skates out to the crease to defend. Katsuki doesn't hesitate; ten feet from the net, he pulls his stick back with a short wind-up and slams the blade into the puck, blasting it towards the net.
The puck ricochets off Eijirou's glove, and Katsuki has no choice but to go collect the puck and get back in line.
“Better luck next time,” Eijirou taunts him.
“I don't need any luck. I am going to destroy you.” he spits.
“Actually, ya do, Explody,” Mina yells from his team's line. “If I score a goal on Ei before you, you’re buying my after-game refreshments, and I’m reallllllly hungry!”
“There is no way that is going to happen,” he says flatly, pushing the puck back to the center.
“So it’s a bet?” Damn it.
“Fine, you’re on.” he growls, falling to the back of the line. He watches as his next few teammates take their shot; they miss, of course, as they all need some serious practice.
Mina skates to center ice, grabbing the puck with perfect precision. It’s almost like she practices gliding on acid for her day job or something. Katsuki’s eyes twitch. She attempts a fake out, but Eijirou isn’t that easy to trick. He knows Mina’s fighting style the way she knows his blocking style, and this, in practice, usually creates an impasse. Any goal she could make on a regular day is blocked by Eijirou. His maneuver of the block is quick, but the sound after is not the satisfying click of a puck being discarded and thrown across the ice, but the cacophony of two sticks locking into each other.
Tooru Hagakure has blocked his block; Kyouka steals the puck with her own, and lazily knocks the puck into the net with a swing that belongs in mini golf, not hockey.
“What the fuck was that?” Katsuki demands. “That’s cheating.”
“Teamwork?” Mina offers.
“Wit,” Kyouka grins. Her left arm is bound in a bright orange cast, still in recovery from an injury on the field. Even Katsuki wasn’t exactly thrilled to let her practice, but she’s getting the cast off before any major game and her competitive streak though more subtle is on par with his own, so he can’t really stop her. He really should’ve been keeping an eye on her on the sidelines, now that he knows she was plotting against him this whole time. Really, Katsuki’s the one running practice, and yet his team does whatever they want anyway.
“Damn! With your arm busted still! Manly as hell!” Eijirou says.
“Don’t compliment the enemy!” Katsuki complains, but he’s fighting a grin. It really was badass.
“I’m complimenting our team!” Eijirou shouts from the goal, grinning; a smile that slices his face open and reveals no pretense in his excitement. Katsuki can’t retort back when Eijirou makes that face, all his insults retreating into the back of his throat. He manages to roll his eyes at the least; he does have a reputation, after all.
Kyouka puts her body weight on her stick. “Thanks, Ei. But my arm isn’t busted! I didn’t, like, Midoriya any bones.” Katsuki snorts and somewhere behind him, he hears Denki choke down a laugh. “It’s a minor TFCC tear.”
Mina sighs. “Sweetie, baby girl, honey. No. You have surgery scheduled for it. That ain’t minor.”
“I’m just glad I’m left handed,” Kyoka continues, ignoring her. “Okay. But for real, I do want to practice as much as we can before I’m out for surgery, so that when games start, I can be more than just your water girl.” She cringes. “No way will I be a water girl.”
“You can’t be anyways. That spot is filled!” Denki shouts. Katsuki furrows his brows; he doesn’t remember greenlighting any one else being there today. He presses his lips together and gives Eijirou a frustrated look, and instead of Eijirou giving him the usual “chill out you big baby” l, he simply scratches his head and looks sheepish.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Hanta asks, skating across the ice over to them.
“So you see, Denki and I have more of a schedule that aligns,” Eijirou starts. “And we were running errands. Some kid recognized us, and he told us about his sister. She’s really sick, and her dream is to meet heroes, and I told him that his sister could be our VIP, our water girl. He totally lit up.”
“Aw, our bleeding heart Red Riot,” Tooru says softly. “That’s sweet. I hope we make it worthwhile!”
It’s rare for Katsuki’s anger to fizzle up and die, but where the rage was starting to form in sparks, fire spiraling in his stomach, the reality douses the fire into smoke, leaving only fondness and warmth. Katsuki can’t even hide a soft smile.
“Get the fuck in your places! We have a game to win, then. Make it worth it for our water girl!” Everyone cheers and slots back into place. When he looks back up at Eijirou, he’s smiling. Not the same as his all teeth and joy one, but it’s fond, gentle. It’s meant only for Katsuki at that moment.
Eijirou looks away, and laughs out: “For our water girl!”
The water girl is, admittedly, pretty cute. Not that Katsuki will actually say that.
She’s excitable like most kids, but seems to actually be respecting the idea that all of the heroes swarming her are real people, which is rare. She’s also astonishingly knowledgeable about hockey; Katsuki isn’t sure what the venn diagram for hero fans and hockey fans is, but it seems to be much closer to a circle than he expected. Shit, when he was a kid, he was both of those things, too. Maybe they should do a study on that.
Regardless, the smile on her face when Mina and Eijirou fawn over her during their break is blinding, so Katsuki can’t even be mad about everyone being distracted. Tooru’s showing her the water bottle carrier and carefully explaining the job, and everyone else is pretending that they’re not watching while they actually are.
Katsuki will allow it, mostly because when he walks over and she sees him, she gasps,
“Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight!”
And, okay. Most kids don’t fullname him, but she knew the whole damn thing, no hesitation. She’s high up in his child tier list already. He stops and turns to face her.
“You’re my favorite!” She emphasizes, getting to her feet despite some difficulty. Katsuki eyes the cane resting next to her spot on the bench, but he’s not about to tell her what she is and isn’t capable of, so he walks over and holds his hand out.
She does his little fan explosion handshake fucking perfectly.
Hell yeah.
“What’s your name, kid?” Katsuki asks.
“Tsurara!” She pipes up happily. “I’m seven. You’re twenty-four!” She adds, seemingly very proud of knowing this fact about him. It kind of reminds Katsuki of himself at that age, which is somewhat awful to think about.
“Tsucchan,” he says, graciously electing to ignore Denki’s “aww” from somewhere behind him. “What’s the best hockey position?”
“Winger!”
“Let’s fucking go,” Katsuki agrees. Tooru slaps him where Tsurara can’t see. He ignores her. If the kid’s a real fan, she won’t give a damn if he swears.
True to form, Tsurara just laughs. See. Real fan.
“How do you deal with rain?” She asks suddenly. “If your explosions use your sweat, do they become weaker when it’s raining from all the water getting mixed in?”
Oh god. She’s another fucking Deku.
Katsuki can hear Eijirou’s shocked laughter, but he ignores him. He was a Deku, and Deku was a Deku, and they’re both fucking balling now, so he’s—predisposed. To answering real questions from children, nowadays.
Katsuki takes off a glove before he leans over and grabs one of the water bottles from the carrier. He pours some water on his palm, showing her the way that it makes the next few explosions splatter in unpredictable directions until it evaporates and they return to normal.
“You’re right,” he says. “I gotta keep firing small explosions when it’s raining so that I can blast villains properly when I get to ‘em.”
Tsurara lights up like he’s given her the world with this information. Katsuki feels a little bit smug about it.
“Blasty, get over here, you said break’s only fifteen minutes!”
“I’m fuckin’ coming, give me a second,” Katsuki shouts.
“Oh, so now he wants to let people take their time—”
Tsurara comes back at the next practice.
Katsuki catches her standing next to the old man and Eri, and Katsuki’s way too young to feel this old, but damn he remembers when Eri was little, littler than Tsurara even, and now she’s a full-blown teenager and—Katsuki’s not going to spiral about this, not when there’s hockey to play.
He finishes his sprint and skates up to the player’s bench, intentionally spraying Aizawa with ice as he stops. Aizawa glares at him, wiping frost from his face. Eri giggles at her adoptive father before using her quirk to undo the ice spray and return him to a dry state.
“Good to see you aren’t dead yet,” Katsuki says.
Aizawa heaves a long-suffering sigh.
Tsurara is looking up at Aizawa with unrestrained mirth in her eyes and, shit, Katsuki should probably be a better role model. Maybe next time, he thinks, and then shoves his fist out for another one of his dynamite handshakes.
“Came back for another round, kid?” Katsuki asks, pretending to dodge non-existent punches.
Tsurara bursts into laughter. “That’s the wrong sport,” she says.
Katsuki raises his eyebrows, then scrunches his face up in confusion. He grips his hockey stick and brings it up, swinging it as if chasing an invisible baseball.
“No,” she says, “that’s baseball.”
Eijirou comes up behind him and Katsuki grabs his hands without warning, spinning him into an effortless waltz.
“We taking up ice dancing?” Eijirou asks, dramatically letting his head fall back as Katsuki dips him.
“You mean we aren’t already ice dancers?” Katsuki replies, flashing Tsurara a smile as he brings Eijirou back to stand on his skates. “Oh, right, we’re here to play hockey.”
“Water me,” Katsuki says towards Tsurara, and takes a long drink when she dutifully hands over his bottle. He hands it back to her, fighting down a smile at the careful way she puts his bottle back in the rack. She’s clearly got a whole organizational system going on. When he checks, it seems she’s got them sorted by their lines and positions. Katsuki’s a first line right winger, and his is in the first row on the far right. Eijorou, as one of the goalies, is in the back.
He glances around to check that no one’s looking. “See you soon, kid,” Katsuki promises, giving her a wink before turning back to start practice in full.
Katsuki has finally gotten the idiots to actually start playing when Icyhot’s brother and sister walk in carrying two silver foil balloons shaped like the numbers 2 and 4. This can't be good.
Fifteen minutes later, he scoops up the puck and slings it into the net like child's play. Eijirou has abandoned all pretense of protecting the goal and is watching something over on the side lines. Todoroki’s siblings are setting up a—is that a fucking carnival over there in the mezzanine? Is that a kitten—he squints. Correction, kittens. Katsuku clenches his fist in an attempt to not spark on the ice.
“Icyhot, what are they doing here?” Katsuki shouts.
“Kats, it's his birthday. Remember?” Eijirou says, skating protectively between himself and the half n’ half bastard. Katsuki side-eyes both of them. “So we’re celebrating! Don't worry, it won't interfere with practice.”
“It’s already interfering.” Katsuki slams his stick against the ice. “You didn't even try to defend against me. If I wanted to shoot at an empty net, I could come alone.”
“Aww man, it's just I thought I saw them bring in something that looked an awful lot like a popcorn machine,” he flashes a toothy grin.
“This is what I'm talking about!” Katsuki yells. “Keeping you idiots in line is already like herding cats, so why are there actual fucking cats now? We are supposed to come here and play hockey—”
Fuyumi is fussing with the tablecloth when she overhears a conversation between All Might and Shouto’s old teacher, Eraserhead. Because of course All Might is here, at her youngest brother's twenty-fourth birthday celebration. That’s just how Shouto’s life is.
“I have a feeling someone forgot to mention this to Young Bakugou,” All Might observed with a dry laugh.
“Forgot,” Eraserhead mocks as he pets a kitten. “I have a feeling this is more of a don’t mention and instead beg for forgiveness later type situation.”
“That seems... likely,” All Might says shrugs and turns to Fuyumi. “Well this is quite the shin-dig you are setting up here, young lady,”
“Oh yeah, it's no big deal,” she says quickly.
“I’d hate to see what a big deal is, then,” Eraserhead quips.
“Well, Shouto told me that he always wanted a carnival party when he was little.” she grins, “and a little helper told me they’ve been having a special guest recently at their practices, so I thought it’d be a good time to let Shouto live out his dream, even if it's eighteen years too late.”
Tsurara, the special guest in question, comes up from beside her water station. “Can I play with a kitty now?”
“I don't see why not. Plus, once they come off the ice, you might have a bit of competition,” Fuyumi informs her gently. “My brother is very fond of cats.”
Fuyumi fetches a kitty from the pen and passes it to Tsuara who asks with a sparkle in her eye, “what is its name?”
“This little guy is Koko.” Fuyumi says.
Natsuo comes in shortly after, carrying a cake decorated like a puck. “Where do you want this, sis?”
Fuyumi takes in the little girl now standing next to Bakugou. The girl, Tsurara, gingerly cups the tiny body of the baby ragdoll she’d been handed in her even tinier hands. Fuyumi seldom gets to see young children outside of their school uniforms, and is always so surprised how much she can learn from how a kid dresses themselves. Tsurara wears a soft-orange corduroy pinafore over a long-sleeved, mint-green henley. Her hair is black and cut short to her skull, most of it hidden under a Gang Orca beanie. Fuyumi smiles, then glances up at Bakugou.
“Cute,” she declares. Bakugou surprisingly doesn’t negate this. He shrugs. “I have been meaning to get ahold of you,” Fuyumi continues. “You asked for my sufure chīzukēki recipe last time we spoke, so I brought you a recipe card.” She slides out the pale blue index card from her purse and hands it to him. Bakugou stares at it and then groans, takes off his large gloves, and takes it from her hands.
“Guess I have to thank you?” His eyes dart to Tsurara, who is gently petting Koko, as the cat not-so-gently tries to bury itself in her neck. She giggles loudly. Fuyumi feels her heart clench.
“You’re welcome,” she chirps, clasping her hands together. She watches as he slides the card into his gear and puts the glove back on. “I hope that I’m not making too much trouble for you with all of this. Shouto wanted to support you guys for the upcoming game, and since it landed on his birthday, he decided to bring his party here.”
She knows it’s more than that, of course, and she is sure that Bakugou does, too. Shouto can never make his birthday solely about him, never has, and it’s another one of the million things she blames their father for. After years of suppressing them all, the second she’d let the anger in, a wave of regret and shame crashed over her, as did all the blame she held for her father that she’d tried to wish away. But blame didn’t come with the wives’ tale of wishes, and blame doesn’t cleanse her of the guilt of letting their tragedies happen. She can’t blame Shouto for his habits, of course; how could she, when his very birth was never about him?
She at least hopes that Shouto isn’t haunted by the days surrounding his birthday, the only mercy from being sequestered away from her and his brothers, cocooned safely in their father’s obsession. She hopes he never felt the absence of another birthday, for another brother. She hopes it doesn’t haunt Shouto, that the celebration of his birth is followed by the ‘what could have been’ for another life, where a ghost is neither celebrated nor even truly mourned, just lamented over. She hopes the best for Shoto, but she can’t help but wonder if it bothers him that he is celebrated today, and there is a ghost whose celebration will never happen again.
But then again, Fuyumi knows that Shouto, who is so selfless, who can’t help but give his whole self to everyone, is haunted like the rest of them. Maybe more so. Fuyumi has witnessed all three of her brothers blow out candles, but Shoto hasn’t, and maybe what haunts him about birthdays is that he gets to know for her and for Natsuo, but there will always be a day, so close to his, that will never be celebrated.
She gazes at Tsuara whose black eyes are glittering with joy, giggling at the kitten in her hands. The girl wears her heart on her sleeve, and that is the most telling part of how this girl dresses. There is no cowardice, not there, she hides no ounce of her jubilance and excitement.
“Birthdays are great,” Tsurara cuts in, oblivious to Fuyumi’s contemplation. “Both of my brothers’ birthdays are in the winter, too.”
“When will yours be?” She asks, pushing away her thoughts. Tsurara doesn’t answer.
“Kid?” Bakugou prods.
“They happen in summer. I turned seven last August.” Her eyes stay locked onto Koko. Then she passes him back to Fuyumi. “Thanks.” Tsurara picks up her cane and works her way to the elevator towards the Shouto, Kaminari, and Jirou who agreed to ride down with her to the rink from the mezzanine. Koko squirms in Fuyumi’s hands, pawing at her wrist.
Natsuo approaches them and takes the cat away from Fuyumi. “I wish we knew she was here before we made birthday plans specifically.”
Bakugou scoffs. “Do you expect foresight from any of these idiots?”
“Not in the slightest. I’m no hypocrite,” Natsuo says, grinning. But the grin slips off. “No, it’s just… I work with kids from time to time. Kids like her. Birthdays are… Well, they’re only days reached more than celebrated milestones. I can’t help but feel like we’re rubbing salt in a wound.” He shakes his head. “I’m generalizing, of course, but…she said she turned seven, not she turns eight. You learn to pick up on those things, I guess.”
Time. Katsuki isn’t a patient person. He doesn’t do well stuck in time’s purgatory-like clutches, forced to endure its fingernails pushing firmly into his skin, waiting to draw his blood as he can’t do anything to stop it. He persists, but hates that he must. He must wait for practice to start. He must wait for Icyhot to blow the candles out on his sufure chīzukēki, because he had to be special and have birthday candles in cotton cheesecake. He must wait. He waits. And maybe he feels time more than ever, because now it feels finite, a reminder that he’s mortal. He gets these reminders, day after day, being a hero. He witnesses death, he has felt death, and that hardens any romanticism he could have felt into an icy layer of grief and guilt. Regret.
It took him growing up to be reminded that any day could be his last. As a kid, he felt so large and immortal, a giant that could never die, a kid that would age, and become, and dream. He did become. He did age. There was a time when the worst thing that could happen to him was falling off a log and into a shallow creek of water, to be offered a hand by someone weaker. He never thought then that the worst thing could have been the water being too deep, or the current too fast, that a hand held out to help would be less than insulting, but useless.
There is no hand he can hold out to this little girl who can’t even refer to her birthdays in the future tense.
He’s not like Deku. He’s not a romantic. (Besides, Deku isn’t here today.)
Tsurara has stars in her eyes watching Icyhot hand her a slice of his cake. “What did you wish for?”
“I can’t tell you,” Shoto says. “It may not come true.”
“I’m a great secret keeper! I’ll bring it to my grave,” she says. Ballsy for a kid, and only Shoto cracks a grin at it. The rest of the table grows a bit uncomfortable. Strange, considering glib humor has always been way to illicit a laugh in the class, but something about an almost-eight year old, and he fucking means that almost, saying it splinters the class’ usual spirits.
“That’s a long time away,” Shoto says, as if wishing that into existence, too. Tsurara says nothing.
Eventually, she gets picked up and is made to leave. Katsuki practices on the ice by himself in the low light, unable to leave the rink, feeling antsy and out of time, or almost out of time. His heart stutters in his chest. He hates this feeling; he has to push through it. He has to ignore it, but sometimes his feels his pulse in his neck, and it’s loud, and it fucks with his head until it sounds like ticking, ticking, ticking, until he is one timebomb away from being taken by the current and gone.
“Are you still here?” He hears from behind. He turns and sees Kyouka on the ice, her cast scribbled in the handwriting of different names. She was first to leave after Shouto’s party. Her agency called in, something about a PR event since she can’t do hero work in her current state. It was a cast signing, by the looks of it.
“Nope, you’re just going fucking crazy. What pain meds are they giving you?”
Kyouka snorts. “The good shit, if my hallucinations are this detailed. Ugly, but…” He flips her off, but can’t help but grin. She is in skates, but isn’t wearing any gear. Just jeans, a washed out band T-shirt, and her neon cast. In her good hand is a stick, and she intervenes with his puck before hitting it back to him. He passes it back. They do this several times, just still enough that the automatic lights shut off.
They stop. He can barely see her or the puck. They could both move and turn the lights back on, but neither do. Kyoka sighs. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” he says, and even he hears the defensiveness. “Don’t worry about little old me,” he draws out the sarcasm, but he knows she won’t budge.
“Tsurara likes you,” she says. “Quite a bit. I think it has to do with what you represent?”
He doesn’t want to ask what. Power, strength, victory, won’t be the answer. “That’s what heroes do. Be fucking… symbols and pillars.”
Kyoka scoffs. “That’s not it. You represent second chances, Kats. That loss can still be a victory. That mistakes can be undone. That death can be overcome. You did that. On live television. You survived death. You made death…” she trails off and skates forward so all the lights turn back on at one. “A lot less scary.”
Katsuki doesn’t believe in bullshit like miracles.
For him, it’s always been simple: you want something, you work for it. And yeah, sometimes people are born lucky, or born unlucky—their world is admittedly a bit fucked up like that—but Katsuki’s still always believed that most good things need to be earned. His quirk was crazy good from the start, which is something he’s never denied, but he still had to train the hell out of it. And his friendships, god damn did he have to earn those, too. And he didn’t start off fucking incredible at hockey, or cooking, or any of the other things he’s awesome at. But he keeps himself on a tight schedule, and it’s always worked to make him the best of the best. So maybe he’s always been a grindset, self-actualization kind of person.
He’s somewhat surprised it took twenty-four years for that view to be challenged.
Katsuki’s seen death, of course. He’s been unable to get to someone in time before. But he always makes himself improve, and improve, and improve, and ensure that he has a better chance at saving them when it happens again. There’s always been something that he can do, even if it’s just… being stronger for next time.
But Tsurara’s in the hospital again, and Katsuki is woefully aware that he can’t fucking do anything about that.
There’s no… new potential treatments, or villains to fight, or lessons to learn. There’s just, fucking… the whims of fate, or something. She’s in the hospital, and there’s nothing anyone can do but hope that her body and the treatments pull through and keep her alive. Relying on hope was something that Katsuki always scoffed at, but he’s quickly discovering that sometimes,
Katsuki hates that it’s taken twenty-four years to understand a truth that Deku learned at the age of five.
So he—he asks about it. Not at hockey, or anything, no. He goes to Deku’s stupid fucking house and spills his stupid fucking beans to his stupidest, longest-term friend, and asks him how he dealt with being quirkless.
Deku is, understandably, rendered speechless.
His face goes through an entire series of expressions during Katsuki’s rant that would have definitely been incomprehensible to anyone else, but that he would understand.
“I don’t know, Kacchan,” Deku says quietly. “I just hoped. I kept hoping. Honestly, I got a little delusional for a while,” Deku admits, “but I just didn’t give up. ” He sighs. “There’s not an immediate solution to this kind of problem. I mean, I got One for All, which kind of cheated the problem, and I kinda…felt bad about that for a while. But now we have support gear that can let someone who’s quirkless be a hero, even if it didn’t exist when I was a kid. And Tsucchan doesn’t have that opportunity either, so we have to hope.
“I don’t want to just hope,” Katsuki spits.
“Okay,” Deku says easily. “Well, there’s one thing you can do.”
“Tell me,” Katsuki demands, as if it’s something physical Deku could take from him.
“You do what you always do, Kacchan,” Deku insists with a smile. “You go out there, and you live your life at your fullest, and you show Tsucchan the best freaking time she’s ever had.”
Katsuki is silent for a few seconds.
“Get your ass to practice next time, then,” he declares. “I don’t give a fuck if you’re busy, I need you as center for her first season match.”
Tsurara is doing better by their next game, having made the last handful of practices. Deku and her got on like hell on wheels, and even Eri seemed to take a liking to her. Katsuki’s got big dreams of introducing her to some of the players on the other team, who are mostly their old support classmates. He has a feeling even Hatsume would kill to pick that girl’s brains.
Katsuki makes his way to center ice, readying for the opening face puck. He taps his stick against Hatstume’s, grinning wildly as she battles him back.
“If you think for a second this puck is going to be yours, you are out of your mind.”
“Well, then call me delusional,” Katsuki chirps, and the ref drops the puck. Katsuki scoops it effortlessly, sliding it out to Deku, who skates through the neutral zone toward the other team’s net.
Once Deku crosses the blue line, he shoots the puck out to Icyhot while Katsuki catches up, their defensemen following in the rear. Icyhot handles the puck like a fucking champ, passing it back to Deku as Farusa checks him, sending him to the ice. Katsuki doesn’t even spare him a glance as he hustles up the right side of the rink while Icyhot and Shinsou create traffic.
Deku dekes, and Amajiki doesn’t abort his block quick enough to change directions as Deku buries the puck in the upper right corner of his net.
“And that’s how you play fucking hockey!” Katsuki yells, colliding with Deku, pressing a sloppy kiss against the visor.
“Thanks Kacchan,” Deku says, clearly pleased with the play.
Katsuki taps the top of his helmet. “Now let’s do it again.”
When Katsuki’s on the bench, he makes idle talk with Tsurara, watching her interact with the players. Denki seems to be, by far, her favorite. Other than him, of course.
“What do you think of your first game, kid?” Katsuki broaches, when Denki swaps out with Mina, who immediately seeks out Jirou to chat.
Her smile is brilliant, a gap where one of her baby teeth had fallen out just a few days ago. Eijirou had tried to give her tooth fairy money, and Katsuki had lost his mind laughing when she’d told Eijirou that she didn’t believe in magic, but she’d take the yen if he was still offering.
She’s a sweet kid, he’s got to admit.
“It’s awesome! I’ve been to your games before, but never so close.”
Denki takes a hit against the boards as he tries to keep possession of the puck through a scrum, and Tsurara throws her hands up in excitement.
Kid after his own heart, Katsuki thinks, feeling the vibration of the boards in his fucking chest. He loves this about being a hero and hockey. The adrenaline, the knowledge that if you’re faster and stronger than your opponent, you can get away with some nasty hits.
And they are absolutely getting away with it this evening. By the third period, they’re up three goals. Amajiki has left the net to give the support term an extra attacker in order to try and bridge the gap. But Katsuki’s team (hell yeah) isn’t giving them an inch. Every advance up the ice is hard-won, every mistake leading to a breakaway by Katsuki or Deku or Shouto.
The buzzer sounds with a final score of 5-2, and Katsuki roars as their team floods the ice.
He zones out through the aftergame handshakes until he reaches Hatsume.
“I’ve got a whipsmart kid I think you’d love to meet,” he pitches, and Hatsume’s quirky eyes zoom in interest.
“Tell me when and where, Dynamight.”
He invites along Amajiki too and, when he sees them in the stands, Aizawa and Eri. Tsurara is talking to her mother when he steps off the ice, and he quickly exits the line to the tunnel to bully them into dinner, but he doesn’t tell them about their additional guests. He wants Tsurara to be surprised. He wants to give her something she can hold, even when she’s not here in the rink with Katsuki and his team.
“You did good, Kacchan,” Deku says, once Katsuki steps into the locker room.
Katsuki rolls his eyes and runs his shoulder into Deku’s as he makes his way toward the showers. “Shut up,” he mutters.
But he can’t hide how proud he is of this life he’s built. He’s living the dream on and off the ice, and he’s trying his best to pull Tsurara into the orbit. Whether she’s got a few years or the rest of her life, Katsuki’s gonna make sure she experiences it all to the fullest.