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Katsuki’s boots thud to the ground at the same time the villain crashed into – and through – the grocery store’s concrete wall and glass windows, her gloved hands curled into small but threatening explosions and mouth contorted into something of a feral grin. Her friends always said battles were the only time the ever saw her smile. She said that was the only time she felt the need to.
“Oi!” she barks, chest heaving from the exertion of the fight that she’s about to end. She stalks forward, glass crunching under her thick boots as startled civilians flee her path to the villain, who’s currently splayed out like a ragdoll on the produce stand. “That’s it?” She grabs him by the collar of his ridiculous fur-lined jacket, yanking up to her face with a snarl. A few apples topple to the ground. His eyes are wide, darting around like he’ll find any escape route, and she easily locks a pair of quirk-neutralizing handcuffs on one of his wrists, then twists him around and secures his arms behind his back.
“You’re all fucking bark and no bite, ain’t you?” she grumbles, grabbing the back of his jacket before he can fall to his knees and manhandling him out of the hole in the grocery store wall. It’s a sizable piece of damage done. She scowls. “Property damage comes out of my paycheck, dipshit.” The villain just whimpers. Coward.
She hands the man off to the police without any gentleness spared, like she could be expected to have any sympathy for anyone in this world, let alone the villain that’s been dragging her and All Might’s name through the mud for the past two weeks – and other hero’s, too, but those two are the important ones.
After ensuring that the police can handle the villain and the proper amount of under-her-breath grumbling about all the paperwork this is going to be, Katsuki finally turns her attention to the collection of reporters that have been vying for her attention since she flung a man through a concrete wall. But, unfortunately for this particular bunch of vultures, she’s not planning on answering any of their questions. She never plans on answering any of their questions, unless they come from one particular person.
“Excuse me! Coming through!”
The bright voice announces the presence of a small, green-haired reporter quickly making her way through the crowd and towards the police tape, a cameraman huffing at her heels. She had no doubt been waiting for Katsuki to finish her work before coming to question her. Unlike everyone else here, Deku respected the way hero work was done.
Katsuki watched as Deku ducked under the security tape, much to the dismay of all the other reporters that were being held back by a few officers. The officers had long since stopped trying to keep Deku behind the line, and if they did, one sharp look from number four pro hero Dynamight was all it took to make them back off. The reporter’s dark green ponytail swung back and forth with her excited movements, and she brought up a hand to brush her curly bangs away from her eyes and grin up at Katsuki.
“Dynamight!” Deku said, hugging one of the notebooks she always carries around to her chest and gripping her microphone tightly, “The villain you just took down has made quite a ruckus on social media the past few weeks, criticizing heroes like yourself and even the former Symbol of Peace, All Might. Did he live up to all that talk? Any comments on the fight?”
She tilts the mic towards Katsuki, holding up a bit in an attempt to reach Katsuki’s near six-foot height from her approximately five-foot four starting place. Katsuki has to wrench her own attention away from Deku’s freckles and to her question like it’s a misbehaving dog. Of course, Deku went straight to her interview with no useless pretense. No beating around the bush, no inane suggestions about her dating life and lack of male interest in a woman as harsh as her – like she wanted any male interest anyways – just relevant questions about the parts of hero work they both love. That’s part of the reason Deku is the only reporter Katsuki can stomach.
“He was easy to take down,” she sniffs, crossing her arms and glancing over at the hole in the grocery store wall, “not a shit ton of damage. As to his accusations…” she trails off for a moment, then looks back to Deku “Some people just want to point to someone else as guilty for all their damn problems, and heroes are big enough to draw in all those fingers. We can handle ‘em, obviously,” she replies, only half paying attention to the interview and her answer. The other half of her attention is on how damn sweaty she is and the hope that Deku can’t smell her.
Deku chuckled a bit at her response, corner of her mouth quirking up into another kind of smile, different from the sunny grin. It’s almost teasing, and Katsuki’s sure that her own racing heart rate is from the fight just prior and absolutely nothing else.
“Obviously, Dynamight,” Deku echoes, bringing the mic back to herself and returning to the cheery reporter persona and the camera. She says some newscaster bullshit Katsuki doesn’t care enough about to catch, a few compliments for Dynamight that Katsuki definitely does catch, then finishes off with a, “Midoriya Izuku of Hero’s Reason, signing off from downtown Musutafu.”
“Cut!” the shitty cameraman that always trails behind Deku calls, throwing them both a sleezy grin. Katsuki scowls at him and resists the urge to put a fist through his face – Eijirou’s voice echoes in her head: “You can’t punch a civilian just because he flirts with your crush sometimes.” She shoves the nagging voice of her friend away. First of all, she can do whatever she wants; second of all, he makes Deku uncomfortable; and third of all, she does not have a crush on Deku!
Well, maybe she does.
She glances over at Deku, who’s worrying her bottom lip with one finger as she flicks through her notebook, bright green eyes narrowed.
Okay, maybe there is something adjacent to a crush. It’s an irrelevant matter either way.
She still can’t punch the cameraman, though, as it’d be even more money out of her paycheck and she’d probably get chewed out by Aizawa and Best Jeanist in their disappointed parent voices. She’d have to settle with her most threatening glower, full of all the loathing she can muster. It’s a lot, and it’s enough to make the sleezy grin drop.
Deku, for her part, is hardly paying attention to either of them, too busy scribbling away in her notebook and muttering up a storm. She’s tucked her microphone under her arm and pulled a pen from god knows where, and Katsuki feels her ears grow warm with the knowledge that Deku is definitely writing about her. The fucking nerd.
“Izuku-chan,” the cameraman says, moving to put a hand on Deku’s shoulder. She slaps it away before Katsuki can even start, whipping her head up to look at him with wide eyes that quickly narrow before she forces a smile.
“Again,” she says through gritted teeth, heavy with false cheer that almost seems real, “It’s Midoriya-san.”
The cameraman huffs like Katsuki’s not seconds away from throwing another man through a concrete wall and sending him to the hospital, but drops his hand. “We should probably go,” he says, glancing at Katsuki, “Other heroes to see and all.”
“Actually,” Katsuki growls, then turns to Deku with a smirk, “I was hoping you could come meet my PR lady right now. Got a moment?”
“Yes!” Deku exclaims immediately, shoving her microphone and notebook into her shitty coworker’s hand before he can even get a word out and possibly shoving him backwards a little bit for good measure, “I am totally free right now, I’ll clock in for my break right this second!”
Katsuki does her best not to let her smirk or confidence falter at the magnitude of Deku’s excitement or her bright grin, easily distracted from fantasies about shoving the cameraman’s face into the dirt. “Great,” she says, mischievous smile forming on her lips, “I’ll be your ride.”
She doesn’t give Deku the chance to ask what that would mean before hoisting her into her arms and blasting into the air, leaving every extra in the dust below. Deku shrieks, throwing her arms around Katsuki’s neck, burying her face in the crook of the hero’s neck, and locking her legs around Katsuki’s waist. Katsuki would be worried about her furious blush if she weren’t too busy laughing and focusing on flying with only one hand. It was completely worth the trouble to wrap her arm around Deku’s waist, though.
She lands them on a roof a few blocks closer to Deku’s apartment, which she knows the location of thanks to a few nights walking the workaholic reporter home after dark. Even on solid ground, Deku refuses to let go of her koala-like hold on Katsuki.
“Deku,” Katsuki says slowly, wrapping her other arm around Deku in order to better hold her, hoisting her up a bit. “You can let go now.”
This prompts Deku to say, “You never warn me when you do that.”
Katsuki can’t help it – she laughs. “Thought you liked flying, Deku?”
“I do!” Deku protests, suddenly grabbing Katsuki’s shoulders and leaning back to look her in the eye. Her legs are still wrapped tightly around Katsuki’s waist, just above her belt and grenades. “But one of these days you’re going to give me a heart attack like that!”
Katsuki smirks at her, tilting her head back and forth. “I think it’s funny.”
“Of course you do,” Deku says, snorting a little laugh. She finally drops her legs, letting Katsuki let her go, and Katsuki would be lying if she didn’t immediately miss the closeness. Deku does her best to straighten out her rumpled t-shirt and skirt, shedding her jacket to tie around her waist, then starts pulling the hair-tie out of her loosened, wild ponytail. Katsuki resists the overwhelming urge to reach out and do it for her, desperate to run her fingers through Deku’s soft-looking hair.
“Ugh, I hate all this stuff,” Deku mutters, flipping her head over, gathering all her hair together, then straightening back up and tying it all back in one smooth motion, “It’s far too long.” She runs her fingers through her bangs, fluffing them out a little, then smirks at Katsuki, “No good for spontaneous flying with my lovely hero.”
Katsuki briefly wished her own hair was long enough to cover her red ears, but she’d chopped it way short after one too many singes, yanks, and pieces of tape stuck in it back in hero training during high school. Thanks, Sero. Now Deku can see her blushing.
“I could always burn it off for you,” Katsuki offers, holding up one hand to show her explosive palm as she does her best to veil how flustered Deku makes her with humor/threats.
“Thanks, Kacchan, but I think I’ll go a more traditional route,” Deku says with a cheeky smile. Katsuki had made a few feeble attempts to get her to drop the nickname at the beginning of their relationship, but they were futile from the start. Besides, the familiarity of the name gave Katsuki the fleeting idea that she could be someone special to the woman beside her.
“Serve yourself,” Katsuki responds, leaning back against the railing and propping herself up on her elbows, “The burn and chop method worked great for me.”
Deku moves to her side, resting her arms on the railing and leaning forward a bit as she seems to appraise Katsuki’s hair. “It did,” she says, then quickly turned her attention to the view from the rooftop. Katsuki blinked at her in surprise, but by the time she fully registered the statement, the moment had passed. Instead, she was left admiring her own view.
The moments where she had Deku all to herself are few and far between, and she soaks them in as much as she can. Little beats of silence, away from the hustle and bustle of her chaotic hero life and Deku’s busy work as a reporter for one of the biggest networks in the prefecture, when she can just stand on a rooftop and admire the way Deku’s hair ruffles in the wind, the green of her eyes Katsuki’s never been able to find anywhere else, her soft silhouette in her fitted clothes. Her freckles travel from her cheeks and down her neck until they disappear under the collar of her shirt, only to reappear on her arms. Katsuki wants to follow all of them wherever they lead, kiss them until she reaches the tiny dot above Izuku’s lips.
She wants a lot when she’s with Deku. She wants more than just that number one spot that she’d been reaching for since she was a child. She wants to hold her without the time limits of every interaction hanging over her head, looming like dark clouds over Deku’s never-ending warmth. Because, yeah, maybe Eijirou was right – though he could never know that.
Katsuki’s head over heels for the idiotic green-haired reporter that would do anything for a story and once threw herself into fire to protect a lost kid. Katsuki had never gotten so close to breaking in her entire career than the day she almost couldn’t stop that villain from getting to Deku.
She’s head over heels for the woman she met by chance, stuck with by choice.
“Oh, hey, look,” Deku says, looking up at the grey sky as a few drops started to fall into her open palm, a knowing smile playing on her lips, “I think it’s starting to rain.”
--
It really could’ve been any random day, any random time, when Katsuki had decided to use her off-duty time to walk around the city, too antsy to sit around in her apartment all day. It was a workday, the streets mostly empty but for a few civilians here and there. She’d thought it would be a good idea to head to a bakery a few streets down from her apartment, the one with way better coffee than the shit in her agency’s kitchen.
It had started pouring rain.
The gutters had filled with miniature rivers before the first minute was up, the drops falling hard and fast onto Katsuki’s leather jacket with hundreds of tiny plick plick plicks. Her boots splashed into puddles, splattering the fresh rainwater everywhere with the force of her steps. In no time, she was heating her palms in her pockets to keep her hands from freezing off. Needless to say, her mood was not a good one.
She was making her way to the bakery as fast as she could, impatient for shelter from the downpour and surely minutes away from blowing up on some poor undeserving barista when a movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Hero instincts wouldn’t allow her to ignore it, and before she knew it, she was turning down an alley, away from the heavenly reprieve of the indoors.
What she encountered in the shitty alleyway was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, her dark haired soaked to her head as she shivered in the cold and curled around the professional camera hanging around her neck. The woman had slicked her wet bangs back off her forehead, biting her bottom lip as she snapped a few photos of the men further down the alley as they entered in the side door to some bar. She quickly ducked behind a dumpster, covering the camera with one hand and squinting at the screen.
Katsuki watched as she tried to wipe the rain from her eyes, still shivering in her drenched blue t-shirt and dark jeans. She was hardly dressed for the weather.
To this day, Katsuki couldn’t give one reason as to why she did what she did. All she knew was that one moment she was watching the woman struggle in the rain and thinking about how stupid she must be, the next she was kneeling down next to her and covering her and her camera with her thick leather jacket, shielding them both from the rain. The dark-haired woman startled, eyes wide and mouth opening as if to yelp before she met Katsuki’s gaze.
It was only that close that Katsuki realized her hair wasn’t black, just a very dark, very wet green. What was more striking was the woman’s vibrant viridian eyes, like a brand-new type of jewel that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the world. Her freckled cheeks were flushed soft pink, and a slow smile broke across her face. “My hero.”
Katsuki felt her heart stutter in her chest as she tried not to suck in a sharp breath, suddenly feeling a little less cold. She forced herself to pull herself together and focus on the situation at hand. “Spying on people isn’t exactly star civilian behavior,” she pointed out in an effort to distract herself from how warm this mysterious stranger felt so close to her chest, “You trying to get yourself arrested?”
To Katsuki’s mild surprise, the woman just laughed, the pulled on a lanyard around her neck until she produced a laminated press permit from under her shirt. It identified her as an investigative reporter from the Hero’s Reason. “I think I’m okay with my star civilian track record,” the woman joked, “But I wouldn’t be opposed to you taking me in for questioning. I’ve been trying to get an interview with the pro hero Dynamight since you made your dramatic debut.”
Katsuki looked at her, searching for any of the signs of this woman just being another sleezy reporter chomping at the bit to insult her taste in fashion or shove allegations of being “too mean” down her throat. All she found was a beautiful girl staring at her with a spark in her bright eyes. That spark was too intriguing to ignore.
“What’s wrong with dramatic?” she challenged.
The woman grinned wider. It was a dazzling sight. “Absolutely nothing. I thought it was the best debut since All Might.”
She certainly knew how to flatter. But something about the way she said it felt far more genuine than other extras just trying to get on the number four hero’s good side. This woman was real.
Katsuki glanced back down at the press permit, scrunching up her nose to read it. “Midoriya Deku.” She frowned. “What the hell kind of name is that? Your parents hate you or something?”
Deku laughed, holding out her hand for Katsuki to shake. “It’s Izuku, actually. Nice to meet you too.”
--
The raindrops start to fall in earnest, pattering on the rooftop with increasing speed. Katsuki glares at the sky as if that will make it stop. Deku, however, wordlessly unties her jacket from around her waist and offers it to Katsuki with a small smile. Katsuki takes the hint and the jacket, lifting it above her head and moving closer to Deku, covering them both.
Deku easily shuffles even closer than Katsuki did, far closer than is strictly necessary – not that Katsuki’s complaining – a shiver running down her spine as she presses her back into Katsuki’s chest and lets a soft sigh escape her lips. Katsuki feels trapped in the best way, her breath catching in her throat. This is the precipice of the kind of closeness she craves to feel with Deku, her body curling around the smaller woman’s as if to shield her from the entire world but unable to do anything more. It’s closeness, it’s familiarity, but it’s not the kind that Katsuki wants. It’s not the kind she aches for.
She’s wanted things before. She’s wanted prestige, power, her rightful seat at the top, and she was willing to work for it. She had worked for it, day in and day out until she clawed, bit, and scratched her way closer to that dream than she’d ever been. But this want wasn’t like that. It wasn’t something she could blast her way to and through, guns blazing with a fire in her eyes. This was territory she’d hardly ever encroached on. Deku was something she didn’t know how to handle. She wasn’t used to that.
She wasn’t used to someone else having sway over her. She wasn’t used to giving a part of herself to someone else. She wasn’t used to caring for someone else so much it hurt.
Deku shifts, turning around to face Katsuki with her back pressed into the railing, chin tilted up to meet Katsuki’s eyes. It’s their first meeting all over again, Katsuki enamored with jewel-bright eyes, their faces mere inches apart, warm breathes mixing over their lips.
“Kacchan…,” Deku says quietly, like a prayer, and Katsuki chokes on the word. Deku doesn’t continue, though, instead drawing in a deep breath and screwing up her face into a frown. Her nose is scrunched up, brows furrowed, and Katsuki wants nothing more but to lean down and kiss all the creases away.
She finally opens her eyes again, that determined spark returning in full. The look in her eyes that drew Katsuki in in the first place. The one that makes her heart skip a beat. She might very well let Deku do whatever she wanted with that part of herself Katsuki had so readily offered.
Slowly, Deku reaches up to lay her hands on the sides of Katsuki’s face as the rain faded to white noise around them, using her thumb to smooth a furrow in Katsuki’s brow, meeting her eyes. She’s got a look like she’s searching for something, analyzing everything in front of her, until her eyes dropped to Katsuki’s lips at the same time she rose to the tips of her shoes.
The wound-up rubber band holding Katsuki back snaps in an instant, and she leans down far faster than Deku’s pulling her in, pressing their lips together like she’d imagined a hundred times before. She feels her heart take root in her chest. She feels her entire world tilt sideways on its axis and realizes it’s always been off kilter until this moment. She feels Deku’s hands on the back of her neck and fumbles the jacket to the ground, shaking off her gloves and sinking her fingers into Deku’s hair like she’s a drowning woman and it’s her only purchase.
This is nothing like she’s ever experienced before. This is nothing like the short flings with former classmates, nothing like the feelings-free nights with girls who didn’t care who she was or what she did with her life, nothing like what she’d expected it would ever be.
The kiss is slow and sweet and deep and clumsy and assured and every other word that could describe a kiss. Deku sighs into her mouth and the Great Explosion Murder God feels herself go weak in the knees. It’s the best thing that ever happened to her. It might as well be the only thing that ever happened to her.
It doesn’t matter what happens after this, or what happens before. Nothing can ever match the woman in her arms right now. Nothing.
And she was right. Deku’s hair is really soft.
When the kiss finally breaks, Deku stays close, her arms still up around Katsuki’s shoulders with Katsuki’s hands tangled in her loose hair, the hair-tie hanging off one of her fingers after she pulled the ponytail free. Katsuki drops her forehead down to meet Deku’s, catching her breath.
“I’m never letting you go back on that,” she murmurs.
One of Deku’s hands slide from her back to her jaw, swiping a thumb across her cheek. “As if I’d ever look at anyone else, Kacchan.”
Katsuki gives a victory grin, feeling herself flush warm from her chest to her ears. “Damn right.”
Deku chuckled, tilting her head up until their noses press together, gravitating towards another kiss. “You dropped my jacket.”
“I’ll get you a new one,” Katsuki exhales, swallowing any response Deku might have had with that second kiss.
For the first time in her life, she tastes Izuku’s smile, and she’s never liked anything more.