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“Why’d you lose?”
Katsuki had meant to spit those words out with all the vitriol roiling within him, even fresh off his victory high, but his exhaustion hadn’t let him. Fighting Deku had taken more out of him than even that final match against Half ‘n Half had. Fucking figures. All Might’s chosen one and all that crap.
Deku did nothing but hack and breathe raggedly, eyes shut tight and watering from the smoke and debris. Subconsciously, Katsuki moved his hand away from Deku’s mouth. This had the unfortunate side effect of his palm basically cradling the side of Deku’s face and threading his fingers through his mess of curls. Evidently, he’d been more influenced by Aizawa’s field medicine lectures than he’d thought.
Tch. Deku better be fucking grateful for his generosity.
“Ka…chan,” Deku panted. His eyes cracked open, though from the tears still leaking out Katsuki was pretty sure he couldn’t see shit. A vindictive glee shot up his spine at the thought.
“Y’re s-so str—str’ng. Amazin’,” Deku continued to croak out, his eyelashes fluttering rapidly. His words were getting clearer by the second. “Y’ve always…always been th-tha’ way. But I, I can’t…iz still All Might’s p’wer…y’said so yourself…”
Katsuki growled as he pressed down on Deku harder, making sure he was stepping extra hard on his left arm. Fuck his shitty bones. It was his own damn fault they were so messed up in the first place.
(Isn’t it All Might’s? His brain whispered to him.
Shut up, he hissed back.)
“I also said you’d made it your own, dickbrain,” Katsuki snapped, leaning close enough to Deku to feel the other’s breath on his face. “What? Having trouble hearing? Useless nerd.”
Deku smiled, but it was a brittle, broken thing. A smile Katsuki had rarely seen since they’d graduated from Aldera.
It made him feel weird. He decided that he hated it, as he hated all things Deku-related.
Deku’s eyes managed to open halfway, giving him a hazy sort of look. Paired with his general disarray, the tear tracks, and that shitty fucking smile, it was a pretty depressing sight.
(The last time he’d seen that look…
It’d been the second worst day of his life, ranking just below when he’d forced All Might into retirement and had been given the supervillain pitch in less than eight hours.
Katsuki had finally managed to shove off the EMTs by rattling off his old hag’s number so they could let his parents know which hospital he was about to be carted off to ‘just in case of any fluid in your lungs or toxins in your body, dear, we wouldn’t want you getting pneumonia.’ He made a beeline for Deku, who was still getting yelled at for interfering with hero work. Especially since he was a quirkless kid.
Heh. Served him right.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw some other EMTs approach. Their eyes were locked on Deku’s shaky, pathetic form, but when they got within earshot of Death Arms, they paused. Their gazes went shifty and confused before they turned back awkwardly. At the time, Katsuki hadn’t given a rat’s ass. Now, the memory made his stomach feel funny. He decided it was another Deku thing that he hated.
Luckily, Death Arms had stomped off just before Katsuki had made it to Deku. He opened his mouth to ask him what the hell he was thinking and why the fuck he’d come to Katsuki’s aid despite him not fucking asking, but—
There was something about the look in his eyes then that had reminded Katsuki of shattered porcelain. Delicate. Tenuous. Cracked and broken beyond all repair. Deku looked at him, and it was like staring into a void where countless stars used to be. Unreachable and unattainable in a completely different way than he was used to seeing.
It scared Katsuki.
“Aren’t you going to ask the heroes for their autographs or take notes in your shitty fan-book?” Katsuki barked harshly, his fight instincts flaring up.
Deku blinked at him as if not quite knowing if he was truly there. Then he’d smiled that same broken smile and something inside Katsuki had lurched, clawing and scratching to be let out. He opened his mouth again, acid on his tongue, but Deku beat him to the punch.
“No,” he answered quietly. “I think…I’m just going to go.”
Katsuki scowled. “What, so Auntie can drive your special little ass to the hospital herself?”
Deku’s smile faded at that, his brows drawing together as if he were confused. But what could he possibly be confused about? If he wasn’t riding with the EMTs, then obviously Deku was planning on going home, right?
“Mom…home. I should go…yeah, I should…go home.” With a shake of his head, Deku mechanically picked up his soiled schoolbag from the ground and shoved his wayward things into it haphazardly.
Straightening up, he turned to Katsuki and bowed once, stiffly, without meeting his eyes. Then, in the span of one blink and the next, he was simply gone. He’d vanished into the crowd like he’d been doing all his life.
Katsuki had stared after him, his mouth still open in a frozen snarl, until an EMT had taken him by the elbow and led him into an ambulance.
At the hospital, throughout the revolving door of busybody nurses, prodding doctors, and his squabbling, coddling parents, Deku had never truly left his mind. He snuck out of the house later and caught Deku somehow still walking home despite downtown Musutafu only being a twenty-minute walk away from their neighborhood.
He would never admit to the rush of relief he’d felt at that moment.)
“I hate you,” Katsuki hissed emphatically. He bashed his forehead against Deku’s. His emotions were churning inside his gut and he was starting to feel antsy and in need of an outlet. Since blowing Deku’s arms off would probably net him a suspension, brute force and insults it was. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you I hateyouIhateyouIhateyouI—!”
“I don’t think I can,” whispered Deku. His mouth had slipped into a grimace, as if he’d wanted to keep smiling but couldn’t quite remember how to anymore. “I really want to. You have no idea how much I want to hate you. I think I do, sometimes.”
Katsuki’s growl started back up again, rumbling low in his throat. It was more instinct than conscious action.
Deku continued, apparently unbothered. He still wasn’t looking at Katsuki. “Every time I begin to really, truly hate you…you, you act like you again and I just. Can’t.”
Fresh tears appeared in Deku’s eyes. These ones were thick; born from whatever over-evolved tear ducts all Midoriya’s seemed to possess instead of the body’s natural response to weird shit in your eyes. “Why can’t I hate you?”
Katsuki really fucking wished he could answer that question.
It was inane. Stupid. Self-destructive. Katsuki knows exactly how much Deku should hate him because even the people Katsuki’s reluctantly sort-of-friends with call him the devil incarnate and Katsuki really fucking hates Deku. Not to mention, he just took his idol-slash-mentor out of commission permanently. The whole world should hate Katsuki.
(Katsuki hates himself.)
Katsuki wants to express all of this to Deku but can’t even begin to think of how. He doesn’t even know why he wants to express anything to Deku at all, which is only adding to his frustration. He can’t think he’s so fucking enraged. His emotions bubble over like lava; in his stomach, up his throat, into his mouth—
He closes the minuscule gap between himself and Deku and kisses him fiercely. It’s unrefined. Uncoordinated. Uncomfortable, even. Deku’s lips are chapped and he tastes like sweat and smoke. Katsuki doesn’t think that his are much better. He keeps his eyes locked on Deku’s stupid, starry emeralds, which have widened in shock.
Abruptly, Katsuki reels back, his head spinning.
He’s a man of impulse, sure, but usually, even his impulses have plenty of logical thought behind them.
So what the fuck was he thinking?!?!
Katsuki lurches backward, letting go of Deku in favor of falling on his ass and scrambling back like Deku had kissed him and not the other way around.
(It felt like his first breath of air. It felt like his last.
It felt like coming home after a war. It felt like bullets searing at his skin.
It felt like love. It felt like hatred. It felt like Deku and Kacchan, running together in the woods, lost to any world that wasn’t their own.)
Deku sat up slowly. Cautiously. He drew himself into a seated position, shoulders braced defensively. Finally, he finally looked into Katsuki’s eyes. All traces of That Look were gone.
“Kacchan?” he posited. It wasn’t a question, not really. It allowed Katsuki to answer Deku however the fuck he wanted. It soothed Katsuki’s frayed nerves and he hated himself for feeling placated by fucking Deku of all people.
“I—you—that was a mistake,” Katsuki bit out. Fuck. He hated stumbling over his words. It made him feel like Deku and he didn’t need to give the nerd any more ammo than he already had.
“A mistake,” Deku echoed. A sharp laugh tore itself from his lips, followed by smaller giggles that climbed in pitch until they approached hysterical levels. The last thing Katsuki felt like doing was looking at Deku but he forced himself to meet his eyes, anyway. Katsuki was no little bitch.
That Look was back on Deku’s face. Any words that may have been resting on Katsuki’s tongue turned to ashes in his mouth. His palms sparked and popped with the force of his turmoil. He needed Deku to stop making that fucking face before he blasted it off of him. Permanently.
“That’s enough, you two!” Called the voice of the last person on Earth he wanted to see right now.
Both boys turned to see All Might jogging towards them in all his withered, skeletal glory.
Katsuki just watched him approach silently. He’d take whatever punishment was awaiting them if it meant avoiding Deku for a little longer.
“Kacchan,” whispered a desolate tone from his side. It was the exact same tone he’d heard a year ago, just before he got dragged away into an ambulance. Katsuki refused to look at Deku making that stupid expression for one millisecond longer than he had to.
“...I think I hate you again.”
Katsuki said nothing. What else was there to say?
Katsuki hated Deku, too.