Work Text:
i.
bleary-eyed, ochako stirs. immediately, she notices that the laptop is missing. it had been balanced on her stomach before they fell asleep to the credits of the hero documentary deku put on earlier. careful not to wake tsu-chan who is cuddled into her side, she turns to see deku-kun awake.
“where’s the laptop?”
“floor. put. i put the, the-the-the laptop. i put it ‘n th’ floorrrr.”
ochako snickers. clearly, deku is more tired than she is. deku grumbles, mouthing at her hair and yanking in retaliation.
she groans, “ gross! ” into his chest and makes deku wipe the spit out of her hair.
they were the only ones awake. she had been drifting in and out of consciousness and deku had been curled around her head, stroking her hair. ochako lifts her head slightly, catching a glimpse of the laptop’s corner, laying by todoroki-kun and iida-kun’s feet. they had fallen asleep in the remnants of their collapsed pillow fort, cuddling.
ochako checks her phone. 1:37 am. “have you been awake this whole time?”
deku hums. “half-awake.”
“tell me a bedtime story?”
his hand stills. “i- i don’t know any.”
“one from your childhood, then. i wanna know what you were like as a kid.”
“i don’t think i changed much.”
“still.”
deku-kun giggles, delirious. “quirkless.”
“what?”
“i was- i- friend had.” deku huffs, giggling into her hair. “give me a second.”
“pfft, alright.”
deku-kun runs his nails gently over her scalp. after a moment he shifts, pressing his lips against her temple, sending a pleasant shiver down her spine. “when we were younger, kacchan had a quirkless friend. we grew up together. our mum’s were friends and had decided to move into the same neighbourhood.”
“were they your friend too?”
“in a way. when kacchan stopped being friends with him he was all i had.” deku-kun has a faraway tone in his voice when he says, “they were going to be heroes together.”
she froze. “...were?”
“he died.”
ochako gulped, “how’d he die?” she asked, slightly scared as deku-kun paused. “you don’t have to answer if you-”
“-i killed him.”
“huh?” she looked up. deku-kun was smiling.
“i killed him.”
“you-” she headbutts him, hissing, “jerk! what kind of bedtime story was that?!”
he laughs, rubbing his chin. “sorry uraraka-san. i told you i didn’t have any bedtime stories.”
“ so you made up a horror story? ”
“ is it made up?”
“dekuuuuuu,”
he laughs harder.
“it’s just- the way you paused, you acted like he was going to kill himself.”
deku-kun doesn’t say anything else. he just wraps his arms around her head and tells her to sleep. she tries to protest but a yawn cuts her off before she can. she’ll kill him in the morning. after she’s taken a shower, just to make sure there isn’t any spit in her hair.
ii.
a couple sleepovers later and it’s the next time she and deku-kun are the only ones awake again. it reminds her of the stupid little horror story deku told her weeks ago at two am, giggly and delirious. she’s in the mood for another story, this time sandwiched between todoroki-kun’s warm side and the wall.
“psst! psst! ”
he shifts.
“ deku-kun! ”
“hmm? what’s up?”
“can you tell me a bedtime story? a happy one this time. not a scary one.”
deku-kun laughs, knees drawn up to his chest, curled up on his stupid swivel chair and tells her about the time his quirkless friend got lost when they were younger. “i think there were four of us playing with our matching all might figures. there’s ah- there’s a playground near my home that has a log bridge over the river leading into the woods. kacchan and tsubasa-kun’s quirks came in. it was so cool watching them try them out for the first time.”
“didn’t you know that public quirk usage was illegal ?” she teases.
“of course! that’s why we went further into the woods to hide kacchan’s sparks when our mums weren’t looking.”
“let me guess, you were the one who suggested it?”
“actually, it wasn’t. kacchan had overheard aunt mitsuki say it once when they were watching the news and said he didn’t want to get in trouble until i started talking about how cool his quirk is.”
it makes her giggle when she thinks a little harder on it. bakugou isn’t the rule-breaking type, not unless his pride was on the line.
“we found a couple trees for tsubasa-kun to compare his height to. he had red leathery wings. they were twice as big as he was and helped him fly two-three meters off the ground. i think, at least. i was four when this happened.”
“yeah?”
“for kacchan, we tried finding a dark spot to test how bright his explosions were. and since we were looking for shadows instead of landmarks, we got lost.”
“oh no!”
“mhmm.”
he goes on to tell her how he cried, worried that his mother might never find them, and how col kacchan was when he told him to stop being stupid and calm down. “if they can’t find us, we’ll find them ! i’m gonna be the number one hero, how am i supposed to save the world when i can’t even bring you losers home?” deku muses, a nostalgic note in his voice. “he kicked my ass into gear and made his quirkless friend help make the plan home.”
they had tsubasa climb the trees, to scope out which direction they should be going. he was to stay near a branch at all times because he could only fly a couple seconds at a time. they marked their way with upright twigs and defended themselves with the all might figures. they had the old ones where all might’s hair was spiky enough to hurt, before marketing had rounded out all might’s hair and made it rubber. “on the way back, it was beginning to get dark. if we took too long, we wouldn’t be able to cross the river. and we were starting to worry our parents didn’t care. but as soons as we did we found the bridge and the search party they called. they grabbed all the parents in the neighbourhood.”
ochako thinks the story was more bittersweet than happy, but she claps anyways and doesn’t tell deku.
(later, izuku will realise he accidentally said four instead of five. and calm down again when he realised he never specified how the fourth person wasn’t him or his “quirkless friend” when he meant the boy who could stretch his fingers real long. their quirk came in after this incident. uraraka-san wouldn’t know the difference.)
iii.
“when my quirkless friend and i were younger, his mother would make us katsudon.”
deku-kun’s favourite , ochako thinks as she watches him, hugging tsu-chan closer to her.
ochako doesn’t believe deku-kun’s friend is actually dead, she thinks he just says that to carry on the joke.
she thinks.
but deep down, she worries, maybe they are actually dead, and she wonders if that’s why bakugou-kun has such an issue with talking about quirkless people.
“it always tasted good. especially when the other kids were extra mean.”
when she asked what deku-kun and his friend used to do together. she meant: “did you analyse heroes together?” not: “what did you do when you weren’t being bullied?”
he didn’t mean to tell, but she knew, in the way that stories about other friends were vague and quickly dismissed. in the way that he and his friend ate their lunch hidden under the stairs.
iv.
“your- your friend.” it’s just the two of them this time, without iida-kun, todoroki-kun and tsu-chan as a buffer. it makes the butterflies in her stomach flutter and she has to yell at a part of herself to just digest them. “is his dad still around?”
“why do you ask?”
“you didn’t mention him.”
“he isn’t. he left when he was seven, when he was sure he couldn’t be a late bloomer.”
“oh, that’s… that’s mean.”
deku smiles.
“and his mum?”
“she’s still around. she loves him. i know that for a fact. but she worries, and she never thought he could be a hero.” and as an afterthought, he tacks on, “nobody did.”
ochako looks at him in disbelief. deku thinks everyone can be a hero. he’s so good at finding the good parts of everyone. he wouldn’t ever say it out loud, but she thinks he agreed with some of the things stain said. “even you?”
“dunno. never thought about it too hard.”
“you think everyone can be a hero! like bakugou. and shinsou.”
“you think they can’t?”
“they’re hissy and don’t like people. they don’t strike me as the comforting victims type.”
deku-kun looks like he disagrees but keeps his mouth shut.
“did he get into a hero school at least?”
“uraraka-san, he died.”
ochako ducks her head. “right. sorry.”
v.
when she awakes, deku-kun is nowhere to be found. she stamps down her rising panic, opting to check the room for a note or a sign that he had left in a rush. stepping over her friends sleeping bodies to double and triple-check.
finding nothing, she slides her slippers on and pads down to the common room. she’s just about to turn the light on when she spots a dim light moving behind the pantry door and bouncing curls. she sighs.
the light immediately goes out.
“deku-kun? what are you doing?”
he doesn’t reply. ochako walks around the island, peering around the door to see him pressed into the cupboard and the flashlight of his phone pressed into his chest. realising who it is, he lets out a breath and steps down.
“morning uraraka-san. i was just looking for a snack.”
glancing down at his feet, with a laugh she realises he must’ve been standing on the bottom shelf. “you worried me for a second there. turns out you’re just a midnight snacker.”
deku-kun smiles back. “want anything?”
she spies the skyflakes in the back corner. “could you grab me the biscuits?”
nodding, deku grabs two packets. chocolate. it’s weird how carefully deku grabs them. his fingers barely graze the outer packaging. for himself, a bag of prawn chips.
settling onto the couch, the sound of her tearing the plastic open is like a car crash in comparison to deku’s near-silent munching. “i didn’t know eating crunchy chips quietly was possible. you have to teach me some time.”
“you have to let it dissolve in your mouth first.”
“huh. did you sneak food at sleepovers with your friend?”
there’s a pause before deku says yes. “people treat quirkless people differently. even being associated with one gets you a lot of weird looks. pity, too.”
“pity?”
“i went shopping with him and his mother sometimes. people would tell her she should try for another one soon right in front of him.”
her heart drops to her stomach and a surge of anger nestles itself in her chest in its place. still, she can’t be angry, not with how casually deku said it. like it was just common knowledge. a fact of life. the sky is blue, everyone dies and quirkless people are worthless.
“isn’t it, though?” deku asks. she realises she said that part aloud and she hate hate hates the little bit of amusement in deku-kun’s voice. “most retail stores actually have a button on the register to increase prices for quirkless people on each item by twenty-five, fifty yen.”
“that’s horrible! ”
“what do you think about denying him medical services because they don’t have the equipment to deal with the quirkless?”
“ huh? ”
the affronted noise she makes must’ve encouraged him, because deku-kun starts listing instances of blatant discrimination. cars intentionally driving through puddles to splash him. bullying. being forced to sit out because he’s too delicate, too stupid, too unevolved. docked grades for doing too well on a test, you must be cheating. detention, for getting beat up and forcing his bully to use their quirk on him. detention for disrespecting the teacher when all he did was ask to go to the bathroom. destroying his school supplies. detention for being unprepared for class.
ochako gasps, affronted.
deku-kun actually laughs then, and he does a poor job of muffling it because she hears it when he finishes it all off with a, “back in my old school i had to clean curses and red spider-lilies off my desk nearly everyday. for associating with him.”
ochako doesn’t end up eating her second packet of skyflakes and leaves her unfinished biscuits in the fridge for tomorrow.
she wonders when deku started saying ‘i’ instead of ‘he’.
vi.
“almost.”
“almost what?”
“he almost got in.”
“but he died.”
“mhmm.”
it was the first time deku ever brought up his friend on his own. maybe it was the mood, and how he’d told her a story about him every other time they were alone together.
deku stretches his arm out in front of him. (in his mind, he remembers how it felt that day, when strength came pouring through his veins, burning from the inside out and all that he could think about was saving her. there was a spot in his chest, in his ribs, the source of the burning. it wasn’t his heart but just below it, he took the power and concentrated it in his legs, building and building and-) “he jumped.”
ochako whirls around to look at him, ask him, but deku’s picked up the pace and they’re only a few meters away from their next class.
deku beams.
he looks awfully bright for someone who just implied his quirkless friend killed themself only a couple months ago. it makes her a little bit ill thinking about how soon he died. was that why deku-kun was so jittery? (a darker part of her mind wonders if his friend died taking the test and that’s why deku pushes himself just that little bit farther.)
vii.
laying around the common room, hair dripping onto the towel around her shoulders, ochako groans. she was still sore from training with tsu-chan and bakugou earlier. deku gives her an odd look when she tugs on his arm and demands a massage. but, he’s got energy to spare so he might as well. ochako twists her hair into a towel hat and sits sideways on the couch. she asks for a story.
(izuku spies the scars on her shoulders.)
as he presses his thumbs between her shoulder blades and asks if she wants to hear about some of his quirkless friends’ scars. she nods. deku hums, carefully indicating each scar with gentle hands.
upper-back, mostly. a couple on his arms above the elbow, and on his sides where his ribs would be. and chillingly, one on the back of his neck.
viii.
“do you wanna know how he died?”
the question comes as a surprise. quick and casual, it had taken her a moment to process what he just said, let alone believe that he would really say something so macabre. “i do.” she hesitates. “uh- only if you wanna tell me. you don’t have to.”
he smiles tearily. “it wasn’t the first time someone told him it was impossible for a quirkless person to become a hero, but it was the first time his hero said so. point blank. to his face. and because it was his hero, it counted. i- he left him there. on that roof. i don’t think i- i didn’t even cry.” deku’s tears start spilling over. “it was so hard. getting him off that roof. i couldn’t- he couldn’t even walk . i had to drag him down the first few steps on his butt before he could stand again .”
he gasps, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. he pressed his lips together and held his breath until he stopped shaking and since when was he shaking? she hadn't noticed. she grabs his hands and squeezes them tight. deku started breathing again and god- was he always this quiet? if she weren’t watching his every move she would’ve thought he passed out.
he isn’t gasping anymore and that had always been the first indicator that deku was crying.
always.
“i’m so sorry.” what else could she say? that guy is an asshole? i’m sorry you had to talk your friend off that ledge? i’m glad you’re still alive?
deku’s face is a carefully blank mask. flat, and void of emotion, save for the shimmering tear tracks down his cheeks. then, he smiles. it’s small and awkward, and has no trace of despair. she shuffles closer, pressing their knees together. deku-kun puts his forehead on her shoulder. “no. i’m sorry.”
she squeezes his hands. “for what?”
his smile widens. “the hero found him later and apologised for snapping. i- my friend impressed him, somehow. the hero said he could get a quirk. all he had to do was disappear. no one would ever know he existed.” he laughs. and she loved the sound of it, even though it was bitter and sad, she loved it because it was deku’s laugh and she loved everything about him. (there’s a little flutter in her stomach as he does and she thinks it’s because she likes the way deku is relying on her for comfort. twisted joy, born from deku telling her about the way his maybe dead friend died. but this isn’t about her.)
“i told him to go for it. he’d finally be worth something.”
“ deku! ”
“what? you think so too.”
“why would you-”
“i killed him and covered it up.”
at that, all the breath leaves ochako’s lungs and she feels like she’s choking. she’s missing something here. she knows it. deku-kun isn’t the type to kill his childhood friend. she knows this. because she’s watched him and bakugou-kun together. they aren’t friends, not at all, but they aren’t at each other’s throats anymore and even then, deku never tried to kill him. but… “ why? ”
deku looks her in the eyes. “because he asked me to.”
ix.
ochako laid awake all night, slipping out of bed long before her alarm. wandering into the common room she finds bakugou washing the rice. deeming the rice appropriately washed, he pours the out and refills the rice cooker with clean water.
“bakugou?”
he grunts, turning the rice cooker on.
“deku-kun’s been telling me about his quirkless childhood friend.”
bakugou glances back at her, jaw tense. his eyes flash with an emotion she can’t quite identify. “and?"
“is it true that he’s dead?”
his shoulders fall and he gives her one stiff nod.
after a moment of charged silence, bakugou goes back to rifling through the drawers. he’s quiet, like deku is. he puts two pans on the stove to heat up. bakugou slips his fingers between the crack in the fridge, pressing on the seal until it opens soundlessly.
it’s in interesting parallel, watching him get out a fresh cut of filleted salmon, tofu, and two eggs. the salmon and tofu are grilled on the cast iron and the eggs are scrambled.
fast and methodical where deku was slow.
bakugou wasn’t afraid to be loud, he was just really good at making it background noise.
“is it true that deku killed him?”
his hands falter. the salmon falls back into the pan, spitting hot oil onto his fingertips. bakugou doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near thing.
he laughs, like it was a bad joke. it might’ve been because all he says is, “i helped.”
she doesn’t get the chance to ask him what he means because iida walks into the room.
omake: ocha confronts deku abt his qf
deku continues to insist that he’s dead. “i killed him!”
“why?”
deku seethes.
after ocha and deku calm down, she asks, “can i tell you what i think happened?”
reluctantly, deku nods.
“i think… i think that you were a really really late bloomer and that you feel like a piece of you died when your quirk came in.”
the way deku bursts into tears is answer enough.