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“A shark would still kill you though,” Kirishima said, pausing with a bite of food halfway to his mouth, “Like I get what you mean—you’re more likely to get hit by a brick if—”
“But a brick is denser,” Kaminari said, tapping the table with his finger for emphasis, “It’s more likely to be deadly if it comes at you at a high speed.”
“I think,” Deku started—and then he winced. His hand on the edge of the table clenched, knuckles white.
“You good man?” Kirishima said, setting his chopsticks down.
For a second, Deku didn’t say anything—just sat there with his mouth still hanging open. Katsuki leaned forward to get a better view around Kaminari.
“Fine!” Deku gasped.
“You sure about that?” Todoroki said. Katsuki couldn’t see his face from the other end of the table, but he hoped he looked as put out as he sounded.
Deku sat quiet for a second. “I’m okay,” he said finally. It sounded tentative.
Uraraka put her hand on his arm. “You’d tell us if something was up, right Deku?”
Slowly, Deku nodded. Like a liar.
On the way back from lunch, Katsuki passed Todoroki in the hall, and he looked more than put out. He looked like he was ready to burn down the building.
Katsuki wasn’t a sympathetic person, so all he said when their eyes met was, “What?”
“He’s been doing this all day,” Todoroki said, and he didn’t have to elaborate, “Longer, probably.”
Katsuki shrugged. He was frustrated too, but a little more resigned. He knew Deku. But Todoroki hadn’t realized how much Deku kept to himself until he’d left those letters for everyone, explaining about One for All. He’d taken it hard.
“Drag him to Recovery Girl then.”
“He’ll never learn that way,” Todoroki said, leaning back against the wall. “If he’s going to be an idiot and make things worse, I’d rather he does it before he graduates—while he’s living with twenty other people and a medical professional three doors down.”
“Fine,” Katsuki said. He couldn’t argue with that logic.
“And anyway,” Todoroki said, “Maybe he’ll tell us.”
“Sensei,” Deku said, raising his hand, “Can I sit out of this exercise?”
Aizawa Sensei narrowed his eyes. “Is something the matter?”
Deku stood frozen for a moment, mouth open. “Um—no?” he finally managed.
“Then what is the meaning of this?” Aizawa demanded.
“I uh—have homework to do?” Deku said.
Katsuki rolled his eyes.
“You want to skip an assignment—a thing which would require you to do makeup work—in order to do homework?”
“Um,” Deku said, looking a little sheepish, “Yes.”
“No,” Aizawa Sensei said, turning back to the rest of the class, “Split yourselves into two groups.”
“Maybe he’s just upset about something,” Uraraka said.
Katsuki snorted.
“No, I’m serious,” Uraraka said. “Being hurt never stops Deku from heroics.”
Katsuki looked around at the twisted pipes that sprung up over Ground Gamma. Uraraka did have a point, actually.
“I don’t know,” Uraraka continued, “I want to think that he’s gotten better—that he’s smart enough not to try to practice injured.”
Last week at their internship, Katsuki and Deku had dealt with a quirk accident on their own. Katsuki had battled the monster from a kid’s closet, the fear her own quirk had brought alive—and Deku had just sat talking to her, breaking down the creature’s abilities and explaining how cool they were until she wasn’t afraid of it anymore, and it dissipated.
“I don’t know,” Katsuki said, because none of it quite made sense. Nothing could upset Deku enough to make him sit out of class. Nothing could injure him enough that he wouldn’t find a way to help anyway.
“I also hope Midoriya will learn to take better care of himself,” Iida said, setting his hand on Katsuki’s shoulder. “But for now, let’s plan our attack.”
“Where’s Deku?” Katsuki said.
Jirou frowned. “He was supposed to come after you guys on your left flank—I stopped hearing him move around, so I figured you guys had tagged him.”
“You thought he went down that easy?” Todoroki demanded.
Jirou glanced between the two of them, sizing them up to see if they’d understand. “I was hoping he surrendered himself.”
Katsuki blasted himself up over the training ground. It only took a second to orient himself—once he’d determined where their team’s left flank had been, he took off in that direction, swooping low again.
There were so many nooks and crannies in Ground Gamma, and Katsuki wasn’t totally sure what he was looking for. He really hoped Deku hadn’t gone inside a building.
Finally, he saw something—the wrong color against Gamma’s grey. When he touched down in the alley, Deku was just sitting there, back against the corner, head bent down over his knees.
Katsuki walked over and kicked him gently in the side.
“Hurgh,” Deku moaned. He looked up, blinking slowly, “Kacchan—is the exercise over?”
“Yeah,” Katsuki said, “Get up.”
Carefully, Deku set his hand against the wall behind him. Then, methodically, he pulled himself to his feet. His face was pale.
“Feeling good?” Katsuki asked.
Deku nodded, wincing with the movement.
Silently, Katsuki grabbed his arm and started dragging him back to the front of the training grounds.
“Okay listen,” Kirishima said, setting his arms down on the kitchen table, palms up, “I want to preface this with the fact that I’m also upset.”
Katsuki continued eating the curry he’d made. Kirishima didn’t need random pleasantries to know he was listening.
“You used to be a jerk,” Kirishima said.
“Used to be?” Kaminari interjected.
“Get to the point,” Katsuki said—less out of annoyance, more to keep Kaminari from derailing this.
“You’re a really cool person, and I’m so glad that we’re friends,” Kirishima said, “But for a long time, and even still sometimes, you’d make the same dumb mistakes over and over. And you were really trying! You always try your hardest at everything. Changing habits just takes time.”
Katsuki took another bite of curry. He understood—it made him feel better and worse at the same time.
At least, out of the two of them, Deku wasn’t trying to hurt anybody.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and Katsuki pulled it out. The text was visible on his lock screen.
hey kacchan, Deku had sent, come look at my latest quirk analysis
Katsuki knocked on Deku’s door and waited. Then he realized that Deku hadn’t told him where he was—and for a moment he wondered if he should have gone to the library or something. Then he heard a thump from inside.
“What’s taking you so long?” Katsuki demanded, because it sounded like Deku had fallen, and he wanted to hear a response.
“Sorry!” Deku yelped, and then there were footsteps. The door handle turned.
Deku was still in one piece, which was a good start. His hair was squashed on one side, like he’d been sleeping, and the overhead light was off behind him.
Katsuki pushed through the doorway and past him. Deku’s desk lamp was on, turned to shine down on a group of notebooks scattered on the floor. Most of them were opened to blank pages.
“What am I looking at?” Katsuki asked.
Deku softly closed the door, walked over to Katsuki and crouched to grab one of the notebooks. Then he stood and held it out.
Katsuki narrowed his eyes. “It’s blank.”
“Huh?” Deku said. Then he turned the book around and stared at it. “Huh,” he repeated.
“Did you fall asleep?” Katsuki asked.
“Yeah, but I—um—yeah, I guess so.” Deku said. He stepped back, still staring at the notebook. “Maybe I was just—dreaming about writing.”
Suddenly, Deku gasped. He stumbled, fell back against the side of his bed. There was pain on his face.
“Deku,” Katsuki demanded, “What’s going on.”
“Nothing, everything’s going great,” Deku said, too quickly for it to be true.
“Look me in the eye and try that again.”
Deku looked at him, “I’m—”
“And remember what you promised Todoroki,” Katsuki interrupted, “That you’d tell us next time you were in trouble.”
Deku opened his mouth and froze like that, the same way he had at lunch and just before their class exercise. But this moment stretched out much longer. Maybe the guilt had been eating at him a little back then too—maybe it was stronger now. Even if Deku didn’t end up telling them anything now, it could be like Kirishima said. Maybe he was slowly slowly starting to realize that he should.
Then Katsuki looked again, and there was something wrong in the color of Deku’s face.
“Are you choking?” Katsuki asked.
Deku didn’t respond.
“I’m calling Recovery Girl,” Katsuki said, pulling out his phone.
Deku shook his head, and then he gasped, suddenly breathing again. “No—you don’t need to do that!”
Katsuki looked down at his phone again. In his panic he’d actually texted Iida, recovery girl. Quickly, he added, dekus room
“Are you,” Deku asked, still gasping, “scared?”
Katsuki crouched down beside him. “Stop talking,” he said.
“I’m not,” Deku continued, “I’m not scared.”
“You’re wasting air,” Katsuki said, grabbing his shirt collar. He should move Deku so he could breathe easier somehow, right? He’d had so many different trainings on this kind of thing.
Funny, he couldn’t remember any of them now.
“Don’t be scared,” Deku said. Then he screwed his eyes shut—pushing back some pain he didn’t want to share.
“Shut up!” Katsuki shouted, “You should be!”
Deku shook his head. “No—Kacchan—”
“You could die,” Katsuki said, “You couldn’t breathe. That’s scary.”
“Don’t—don’t say that!” Deku said, eyes wide, “Kacchan—”
“What part of stop talking—”
“I’ll be—okay!” Deku shouted. His breath was still uneven, “Kacchan—trust me!”
“Why should I!” Katsuki shouted back.
The door opened.
Katsuki looked up. “Sensei,” he said, “He’s not breathing right.”
“Understood,” Aizawa Sensei said, striding forward, “Go wait downstairs.”
Katsuki opened his mouth to protest—and then he stood up and walked out of the room. He actually wasn’t sure if he’d be much help right now.
“Kacchan!” Deku called again—quieter this time.
Katsuki didn’t turn back. Deku needed to calm down, and he had a better chance of that with Aizawa Sensei.
“What is this?” Katsuki demanded, setting his hands flat on Aizawa Sensei’s desk. “Why’d you call me here?”
“Recovery Girl ran every test she could think of,” Sensei said, folding his hands in front of him, “Nothing looks wrong.”
Slowly, Katsuki sat back in the chair behind him. “So it’s a quirk effect.”
Sensei nodded. “You two are interning together—is there anything like this Midoriya might have been exposed to?”
That was a loaded question. They’d been doing patrols—walking around on the street, where anyone could have looked Deku in the eye, shaken his hand, learned his name. The odds were that they’d never find the person this quirk came from. Aizawa Sensei had to know that.
“We helped a kid last week,” Katsuki said, “Her quirk just manifested—it had something to do with turning fears into reality.”
Sensei nodded. “That’s pretty vague. It’s worth a shot to try erasing her, in case she activated it on accident.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Katsuki said. Midoriya wasn’t scared of getting hurt. It would be easier for everyone if he was.
“Understood,” Sensei said. “We’ve also contacted your agency—they’ll be searching the city databases for anyone with a quirk that might have caused this.”
Katsuki knew that. It was a long shot—that’s why Sensei had asked for his input.
Aizawa Sensei stood up. “Let me know if you think of anything else.”
“When can we see him?” Katsuki blurted.
Sensei stopped on the way out the door. “That’s a question for Recovery Girl.”
The next morning Katsuki was standing in the kitchen, pretending to be making breakfast, but mostly slamming the cabinets open and shut—when Deku opened the front door and walked into the common room, completely nonchalant.
Uraraka jumped up from the couch and shrieked. “Deku?”
“Uraraka!” Deku exclaimed, a little quieter.
Uraraka ran over and tackled him. Deku didn’t break free—but he didn’t fall over either. He’d had time to set his feet.
Suddenly, Uraraka jumped back. “Wait—are you okay?”
“Yeah!” Deku said.
Uraraka narrowed her eyes. “Really?”
“There was a quirk effect,” Deku said, and his voice was steady enough to be truthful. “It was from this girl we met on patrol—but Aizawa Sensei and Monoma erased her quirk a few hours ago, so now I’m feeling better. Really!”
Katsuki slammed the cabinet he’d been pretending to stare at and stalked off toward the stairs. He was glad Deku was okay, but it might take a bit before he was ready to stand there and make small talk, pretending nothing had gone wrong.
Someone knocked on the door of his room, and Katsuki sat quiet. Living in the dorm had taught him that pretending to be somewhere else usually worked better than yelling at people to go away.
“Kacchan I know you’re in there can we please talk!” Deku yelled.
For a split second, Kacchan considered doing nothing. Then he remembered what Kirishima had said, and how Deku had never wavered, and he stood up from his desk chair, walked over to the door.
Deku stood on the other side, holding an open notebook. There was writing in it this time.
“Don’t be upset,” Deku said, and he held the notebook out to Katsuki.
Katsuki took it, turned it around so it faced the right way. It took a moment to decipher—Deku was a messy writer. Then he recognized the sketch on the left page. “This is that girl—the one who used her quirk on you.”
Deku bit his lip.
“Wait,” Katsuki said, “Did you write this before or after the quirk got erased?”
“Before,” Deku said, “But I guess you couldn’t see it.”
Katsuki closed the book. His stomach was turning over.
“Every time I tried to explain what was happening—it was like my throat closed up,” Deku explained, “So I thought, maybe I could kind of hint in the right direction.”
“The pages looked blank,” Katsuki said. They had all known something was wrong. They’d just assumed Deku was trying to hide it, badly. Instead, he’d been waiting for their help.
Deku shrugged. “I figured. But I just—what you said about Todoroki—you really were right. I wanted to answer you. I want to become someone that—I just, I don’t want you guys to have to worry. I don’t want anyone to worry about me.”
“You really were scared of getting hurt,” Katsuki said, “That you wouldn’t be able to tell us.” He had been so sure that wasn’t it. But then again, he’d spent years thinking Deku looked down on him. He could be wrong, sometimes.
“Please don’t be upset,” Deku said, and there was something in his tone. Whatever he said next, Katsuki was going to hate it.
“Okay,” Katsuki said. He could try.
“Kacchan,” Deku said, hesitant, “I don’t think the quirk was activated on me.”
After Katsuki’s fifth lap around campus, Kirishima flagged him down. Katsuki stopped and walked over to him—he was probably too tired to just outrun him now, and trying and failing would be embarrassing.
“It took forever to find you,” Kirishima said, and he handed Katsuki a water bottle. “I thought you’d be in the gym.”
Silently, Katsuki took the water. His second impulse had been to go to the gym, but he’d been a little afraid he was too upset, that he’d break some expensive piece of equipment. So instead he was here, just running in circles.
His first impulse had been to punch Midoriya in the face, but he’d dismissed that option pretty fast. He’d already done enough.
“I’m mad at Midoriya too,” Kirishima said.
Katsuki popped the water bottle open and took a long drink. Then he said, “I’m not.”
“Oh, huh,” Kirishima said, scratching the back of his neck. “Maybe we need to talk about my feelings then. I’m mad at Midoriya.”
“The quirk wouldn’t let him tell us what was happening.” Katsuki said. He took another sip.
“Oh,” Kirishima said, stopping in his tracks. “Wow. Man, I’m suddenly a lot less mad at him. I should process things with you more often.”
“I’m mad at Deku now,” Katsuki said, walking past him. “He should have told you what the quirk did.”
Kirishima laughed, hurrying to catch up. “And balance returns to the world. But actually, last I checked Midoriya was up in his room. After you stormed out, we sent a delegation to check on him—so maybe he told them what happened.”
“You didn’t stay to find out?” Katsuki asked.
“Nah man,” Kirishima said, tapping Katsuki’s shoulder with his fist. “I was the Bakugou delegation. So what were you upset about?”
Don’t be scared, Deku had said, I’ll be okay.
And if Katsuki had listened, he would have been.
“Let’s head back,” Katsuki said, though they were already walking toward the dorm. “I’ll tell you inside.”
When they got back, the door to Deku’s room was propped open. Iida, Todoroki, and Uraraka were already inside.
“So I am glad,” Deku was saying, “We needed more data on this quirk anyway—at least I wanted to know how it worked—and it also helped me to realize that—oh, Kacchan!”
Katsuki sauntered into the room. “Is he seriously trying to put a positive spin on this?”
“No,” Deku said, crossing his arms, “The positive spin was already there.”
“Bakugou, some additional relevant information has come to light,” Iida said, swinging his hand forward for emphasis, “The fear quirk that was causing Midoriya pain also prevented him from communicating—”
“I know,” Katsuki said.
“I don’t,” Kirishima said from behind him, “How did this work?”
Todoroki extracted himself from the depths of a bean bag and sat up a little straighter. “It made his fear come true.”
“My fear,” Katsuki corrected.
Katsuki got one of his frequent wishes—and like all wishes, it came twisted and wrong. Everybody suddenly shut up. It made the buzzing of the light above them sound deafening.
“So like I was saying,” Deku continued, hesitant, “I’m glad that—in the future, I’ll remember this. I wouldn’t want to do something that—that you guys would hate just—just on purpose.”
Katsuki glanced around. Uraraka was nodding, Iida was sitting impossibly straight, and everyone was trying to pretend they weren’t throwing him sidelong glances. Katsuki decided not to point this out.
“Yeah, I guess that’s it,” Deku said, looking down at his hands, “I’m glad to know how you all feel.”
How I feel, Katsuki thought, but he didn’t say it. Deku didn’t need to say it. It was there still, hanging in the air between them.