Chapter Text
"Fuck off, assholes, don't you have anything better to do?!"
All Katsuki wanted was to go on a walk outside of school grounds, and he has to deal with these damn reporters getting in his face. If they ask him one question about that fucking article he's blowing up a camera.
"Is harassing students in your job descriptions?! Do you get bonus pay or some shit for pissing off future—"
"Okay, interview's over!" a frantic but friendly voice cuts in, and then Deku (great, just who he wanted to deal with today) is attempting to push him back towards the school gate, smiling at the reporters like an idiot. "We've gotta get back to campus now! Have a nice day!"
Katsuki allows himself to be pushed a single step before he turns and stomps back towards the gate on his own. He's not in the mood for a walk anymore anyway.
"I'll see you guys later!" Deku says to whoever the hell he was walking up with, and then trails close behind, because of fucking course he does, like he thinks Katsuki's gonna turn around and go punch a reporter in the face or some shit.
It's pretty damn hypocritical.
"They weren't here when we left, wonder if something happened," Deku says, and Katsuki literally does not care.
"Like they need a fucking excuse," he mutters.
Deku steps up next to him, and Katsuki can feel the look he's getting. "Were you heading out or coming back?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yeah," Deku says, lightly amused, and Katsuki glares at him for it. "Did you need to go get something? They'll probably give up before long if no one talks to them."
"God, let it go, Deku, it doesn't fucking matter, I just wanted some fresh air," Katsuki says, scrubbing a hand angrily through his hair and picking up the pace.
Deku stopped taking hints a while ago, though, so he just speeds up, too. "Any particular reason?"
"Are you a fucking reporter now, too?"
"No, sorry," Deku says, and stops walking, and Katsuki hopes that's the end of it.
It's not, of course.
"Kacchan," he says, insistent, and Katsuki would just keep walking but he knows Deku will just start following him again, so he stops and turns.
"What?"
Deku is smirking, a little, and it pisses Katsuki off immediately, but just as he's opening his mouth to ask if the nerd is fucking making fun of him, Deku speaks again.
"Wanna fight? It's been a while."
At that, Katsuki's own mouth starts turning up in what he knows the media calls his feral grin, and he feels his whole body loosening, like he'd been pushing hard against something and just took a step back. He flexes his fingers, his wrists.
"Stupid fuckin' question, shithead," he says.
—
They have more freedom now with their own "training" than they used to as first-years, and no one's going to care if they fight on their own as long as they do it during normal hours and in an actual training room.
And as long as no one ends up in the hospital.
They agree to meet back up in one of the training rooms, like always, after changing into casual clothes that they don't mind getting ripped up or singed. Not their costumes, because they never wear their costumes when they fight like this. (They're technically not allowed to wear their costumes without requesting permission first, but they never ask. Katsuki prefers beating the shit out of Deku with just his bare hands.)
Katsuki gets there first and has enough time waiting to get good and pissed that Deku is the one who suggested this. It's not a bad idea, and he should have thought of it himself. He's been in a weird fucking mood all week, and a good brawl is exactly what he needs.
He knows there's a chance (more than a chance; it's likely) that that shithead Deku noticed the weird mood and brought up fighting for that same reason, thinking he's being a good fucking friend or whatever. Or maybe he thinks it gives him an advantage this time and he might actually win for once. Doesn't matter. The result's the same no matter the motive.
(Katsuki knows it wasn't that second one, shut the fuck up. He knows.)
"What the hell took you so long?" he asks when Deku shows up, maybe three minutes later.
"I couldn't find the right shoes, then I remembered they caught on fire the last time we did this," Deku answers, sheepishly.
"You didn't buy new ones?"
"Not yet, but uh, I don't think wearing brand new ones would be very smart anyway," he says with a soft chuckle.
Katsuki huffs. "Whatever, stop playing around."
Deku squints a little at him, like he's considering something or trying to figure something out. Katsuki narrows his eyes back, then drops into a fighting stance. "What the fuck are you looking at."
"I dunno," Deku says, smirking again, just slightly, and moving into his own stance. "Let's find out."
—
Katsuki will never tell him this, but fighting with Deku is not like fighting with anyone else. Mechanically it's nothing special (that's a lie), but it's satisfying in a way that doesn't have as much do with whether he wins or loses (not that he ever loses).
It's an emotion thing, then, probably, but that's as close as he's getting to figuring it out. Close as he wants to get. He doesn't really give a shit why, and asking questions is just wasting time he could use pummeling Deku's face in.
He does know this much: it used to be frantic, before; it used to be desperate, it used to be a need springing from the depths of Katsuki's fucking soul to prove himself, to himself, to his shitty childhood friend, to — everyone. Everything. The universe at large.
It's not that anymore.
Now it's a fuckin'...catharsis, or some shit, whatever. It doesn't matter.
He can't seem to make this idiot understand that, though.
"You've been weird this week," Deku says, wiping dirt or blood or something off the corner of his mouth.
"Shut up and fight me, asshole!" Katsuki yells, but he's paused too, waiting for the right moment to attack again.
"Is it something that happened with your internship? Or is it about that article from last week? Or did something maybe happen with your parents?"
Katsuki stares at him, wide-eyed. How the—"Where the hell are you getting this shit?!"
"I don't know!" Deku throws his hands up, exasperated, and there it is—Katsuki moves in again, catches him off-guard, even, but the little shit recovers quick.
The next pause comes when Deku throws him into one of the concrete blocks littering the area. They're hollow, and the edges are thin, so Katsuki's body breaks the damn thing and he's lying in the rubble, catching his breath. He shouldn't; if this were a real fight he wouldn't have the time.
(Since when are fights with Deku not real fights, shit.)
"I've been trying to figure it out all week!" Deku says, picking right the hell up where he left off, like they're in the middle of a conversation and just punctuating it with random violence. "You've been weird, and I don't know why!"
Okay, fuck, here's the thing.
Something did happen with the internship. It was—it wasn't even a something, it was a tiny stupid thing, and on its own it wouldn't have even been worth remembering.
But then that fucking article—that piece of trash article. Get kidnapped by villains fucking once in your life and they have to talk about it every year like it's news all over again.
It's stupid. It's not even worth being pissed about, so he hasn't been. He's just been...
Well, fucking weird, apparently.
(And yeah, maybe his parents tried to be supportive or some shit and there was some screaming and he hung up on them and hasn't answered his mom's calls since, but what the fuck ever, what does shitty Deku know about it?!)
But even with all of that, that's not what the real problem's been.
(Not entirely, anyway.)
It's Deku.
"That article was shit," Katsuki says, standing up and spitting concrete dust out of his mouth.
"It was! I told you it was!" Deku says. "They don't know what they're talking about!"
Katsuki looks up at the ceiling and groans. "Shut up, Deku. I told you I don't give a shit about the article."
He doesn't have to look at the nerd to know Deku is staring at him like he's trying to read Katsuki like one of those damn notebooks of his.
"Then what—"
"You almost punched somebody in the fucking nose over it, you absolutely fucking useless moron of a nerd!" he yells, finally, turning to face Deku, arms waving, but not moving from his spot in the middle of the concrete chunks. "Some weak-ass fucker from the business course, and you almost punch 'em in the fucking face because of that article!"
Deku is staring at him with a wide-eyed, completely flabbergasted expression. Katsuki is pretty sure he's never seen that look on the idiot's face before, and he files it away to laugh at later.
"You—you saw that?" Deku squeaks.
"'Course I fuckin' saw it," Katsuki says, finally stepping out of the concrete pile. He saw it, but he didn't understand what he saw until Todoroki blabbed the whole thing to him later that day. He'd heard it from Iida, who had been there when it happened and managed to block Deku and snap him out of it before he'd actually hit the guy.
What Katsuki had seen was Deku heading towards some business course student holding up a copy of that fucking magazine, ripping the magazine from the guy's hands once he got there, and then pulling his arm back. He couldn't see Deku's face, but he could see the other guy's, and he looked terrified.
It was hilarious.
"I—I'm sorry, Kacchan!" Deku is saying now, flailing as Katsuki steps closer. "I didn't—I wasn't thinking, he just—I couldn't just listen to that—I know you don't need me to defend you, but—"
"That wasn't it," Katsuki says, cutting him off. "It's because that wasn't fucking it."
Deku blinks. "Huh?"
Katsuki's only a few feet away from him, now, and he lowers his voice. "I should have been pissed. I should have been—I should still be pissed. Why the hell wasn't I pissed off about it? Huh, Deku?" He's right in front of him, now, and pokes Deku hard in the ribs.
"I honestly have no clue," Deku answers, not even taking a step back for self-preservation. "I assumed you didn't know anything about it because you haven't seemed pissed at me all week."
When Todoroki told him the full story—because for some reason he thought Katsuki had any interest at all in knowing why Deku was being stupider than usual that morning—he'd included the gist of what the guy had said to his classmate that had set Deku off. It was about some moronic conspiracy theory bullshit about Katsuki working with the villains and the kidnapping being a ruse to lure All Might out. Katsuki had heard variations on it a few times in the last couple years, but he hadn't done anything about it because if he went around hitting every idiot who deserved it he'd lose his provisional license, and like hell he's going through that shit again.
So if Katsuki hadn't taken any action about it, what the hell right did Deku have to nearly punch some idiot over it? None, but instead of screaming exactly that across the cafeteria at Deku, Katsuki had just scoffed and thought, It's a good fucking thing four-eyes stopped the moron or he'd have gotten himself expelled for putting that asshole in a coma.
And then he had stopped, and wondered where the hell that thought had come from.
Then he stopped wondering, because he didn't want to know.
Now here he is, standing in front of this total shithead who had the audacity to intend violence on someone on Katsuki's behalf, like he needed protecting, and who hasn't even been made to suffer any consequences for it.
And he's pretty damn sure he still doesn't want to know why.
"Fucking fight me, asshole," Katsuki mutters, an almost-growl right in Deku's stupid face.
"Right," he says, but he's looking almost dazed. "Right!" he says again, blinking, and shakes his head, then jumps back.
This time, Katsuki's not stopping again until it's done.
—
He's on his back, a hand around his throat, another pinning his left wrist, and a slightly-smaller but fucking strong as fuck body holding him down.
But his right hand is on Deku's face, so he's calling this, at worst, a draw.
(It's not a loss. He never loses.)
They're both breathing heavy, but neither one is smiling, which is unusual, anymore, for these fights.
They're just staring at each other, through the fingers splayed across Deku's face, and it's weird.
Katsuki can feel Deku's mouth move under his palm—like maybe he's biting his lip—before Deku lifts his hand from Katsuki's neck, slowly, and uses it to pull the hand on his face off and away. But then he doesn't let go, just keeps holding Katsuki's wrist like an idiot.
Only then, then, Deku glances briefly to the left, and moves the hand pinning that arm as well.
Not very far, though.
He slides it onto Katsuki's palm.
The fucker is holding his fucking hand.
Katsuki feels his eyes go wide, because what the actual fuck?! Deku is looking at him again, and he looks just as startled.
"What're you—"
"Kacchan," Deku says, voice quiet, earnest, and urgent, and Katsuki shuts up. (He had already shut up.) "I'm...I..."
Katsuki waits—briefly—but nothing else comes out of the idiot's mouth, although he's biting his lip and his face is turning red.
"Spit it out, Deku," Katsuki says, in a voice he doesn't recognize.
His heart is beating wildly, and he has no idea what the fuck is happening.
Apparently neither does Deku, who started this whole thing, because a second later he yelps and jumps up like he was just shocked or some shit.
"Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry, Kacchan, I don't—what was I—" He cuts himself off mid-flail then turns and walks quickly away, muttering.
And maybe Katsuki had no idea what was happening a second ago, but he's a quick damn study and he fucking gets it now, so he's up and after the dumb nerd before he can remind himself what a stupid idea it is.
"Deku," he says, when he gets close.
Deku doesn't stop. "I know, I know! I'm sorry, I have no idea—"
"Deku."
"I didn't mean to, it was an accident, I can't believe—"
"Deku," Katsuki says, again, just short of a threat, and he's right behind him now, so Deku stops this time, finally, and spins around to face him.
Before he can open his stupid mouth again, Katsuki kisses him.
He kisses Deku just long enough for Deku to know he's being kissed, and just hard enough for him to know who's doing the kissing.
Then he pulls back, says "Fucking spit it out, next time," and turns around and walks away, ignoring the heat rising on his face.
(He only gets to see Deku's slack-jawed, completely dumbfounded expression for a couple of seconds, which is a damn shame, really.)
This whole fight has been a colossal failure, Katsuki realizes as he's leaving. Not only did he not shake the weird mood, it's even worse now, and what the hell is he supposed to do with this new information?
Fucking Deku.
Whatever. He'll get him back next time.