Chapter Text
Chapter 1: We See You
That Icyhot bastard made him look like an absolute fool. Katsuki clenches his fists as he listens to the crowd above them chattering and Midnight droning on. He hates this. He’d honestly thought Todoroki was going to take him seriously, to go all out on him. The thrill of being taken seriously, listened to for fucking once, the look in his eyes had changed for a moment and Katsuki had thought…
“…and of course the award ceremony,” Midnight is saying.
Katsuki’s head shoots up and he gives her a withering glare.
“No. I’m not doing that shit. You saw, didn’t you? That fucking piece of shit didn’t think I was good enough to fight. I’m not going up there to accept some… some fucking pity medal I didn’t earn.”
“This isn’t a choice, Bakugou, you consented to follow through with the award ceremony when you agreed to continue in the final rounds of the tournament.”
“Give it to Icyhot then. I’m not taking first place. I didn’t win.”
“Giving up was Todoroki’s decision,” Midnight said calmly, talking to him like he was a fucking child. “First place is rightfully yours. You earned it.”
“You saw the shit he did to Sero. You saw his fight with Deku!” Katsuki growled. “I didn’t earn shit.”
“Bakugou! This tournament isn’t about you! This is a school wide event that is hosted internationally! We are expected to present the winners up there whether you like it or not! This is not the time to throw a temper tantrum!”
Temper tantrum.
He hates that shit.
He recognizes the game she’s playing from a mile away because his mom pulls that shit all the time. Calling him a spoiled brat and a child any time he disagrees with her. Like just being an adult always makes her right.
He scoffs.
“You can label it with whatever fucking negative connotations you want to make me feel bad, but I’m not fucking going. I said NO!”
He intends to slam the door but a purple mist surrounds him, he half turns, feeling a deep seeded betrayal as he looks her in the eyes. It feels too much like being back in the alley at fourteen to see the tar surrounding him on all sides. For a split second he can see guilt there, but he’s already falling. His legs giving out under him and the world goes dark before he has time fully process that he’s just been betrayed by someone he’s supposed to trust.
In the end, the bitch doesn’t have the balls to take the restraints off herself after the awards are 'handed out'. Instead, when he’s brought back down from the stage, it’s a couple of nameless fuckers who take it off of him. He spits venom at the two lackies, but he knows it’s not their doing. The medal’s ribbon is still in his mouth and the crowd above sound like a locomotive train as they all get up to start leaving as one.
Everyone is leaving.
The Sport’s festival has come to a close and Katsuki is left with this boiling anger in his chest that he doesn’t know what to do with. He’s clenching the medal in his hands, but All Might is gone. No longer within throwing distance.
That bitch Midnight is nowhere to be seen either.
He hasn’t stopped shaking in rage since he’d woken up on the stage with his hands bound and metal around his face. There’s a brief moment of ‘how could they’ that’s quickly overrun by the sheer humiliation and shame he feels. He hasn’t’ looked anyone in the eye, but he knows his classmates are staring at him.
He knows everyone is staring at him.
Not even in the arrogant or self-conscious way either. They’re fucking openly staring like he’s some circus attraction. There’s no subtleness and no delusions about what’s going on. Every eye at the stadium has been following him.
He has to spend most of this time focusing on his breathing. Because his breath feels thick in his chest, not like after a fight, but like its expanding past its natural abilities and taking up every crevice in his body with hot, heavy lead. It’s hard not to just… find a spot and sit down for forever.
But he’s not weak.
So he stands and he packs his stuff up in his bag and throws it over his shoulder, never loosening his grip on that fucking metal. He feels like if he lets go, if he doesn’t find a suitable target to launch it at, and it stays with him then he has to accept it. And he’s fucking not going to accept any of this sh…
Something hits his face.
He feels wet slime touching him and for one awful moment, he thinks the Sludge villain is back. His hands spark automatically and he whirls, but the crowd of people have left a gap between him and them and the slime is small. He touches his face and his fingers come back with… Mustard? Ketchup?
He looks down and splattered on the ground is a half-eaten burger.
Who the fuck…?
He looks around but no one in the crowd is looking directly at him. They have their eyes downcast and everyone is moving quickly away from him. Why would… Katsuki mentally falters even as he keeps his eyes angrily looking about.
Who would do something like that?
More so, why is the crowd protecting the asshole?
Katsuki wipes the stuff off his face, more confused than upset, though definitely that too. He didn’t even want the medal. Surely, they could see that Katsuki hadn’t wanted it. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with the ceremony.
He wasn’t some fake.
He wouldn’t take a medal he hadn’t earned.
So why? He exits the stadium with sticky hands and a sticky face. All the bathrooms being crammed full of people he didn’t want to deal with. He spots Deku far ahead of him. Heading in the same general direction. Arm bandaged and obvious wrappings around his head. His mom probably had a long shift at her job.
His dad was out of town and the hag would never bother to pick him up.
He was on his own.
Midnight has been waving around a book on ‘First Generation Hero Art’ for the past two hours. He feels his eyes tracing it in fury. Every inch of him is agitated, picturing himself launching the medal straight at her fucking head. He can’t do that though. As much as he wants to, he can’t launch a medal at a person’s head because that’s lethal if she isn’t paying attention.
It’s not like in the fight with Deku where he knows the nerd already knows what he’s about to do and will dodge him. He desperately wants to hurt her. Take her down in a match so hard she never tries to do that again. He doesn’t want her fucking apology but he wants her to know what she did was fucked up.
He wants everyone to know what she did was fucked up.
No one does though.
And that makes him falter.
Katsuki’s the one getting wary looks.
Not her.
No one seems to have even questioned her. It’s not like Katsuki attacked her. All he did was say no. All he did was walk away. Refuse to participate.
“This is one of a select few signed copies,” Midnight says proudly, flipping the book open, I’ve printed out packets Yaoyorozu is passing around since the passage I’ve highlighted here isn’t in your textbooks. I want you to browse through the topics and pick one to further research for your next paper.”
There’s a groan that rises up like a tidal wave among his classmates.
Bunch of fucking lazy pieces of shit.
It’s why most of them didn’t make it past the second round. When Ponytail gets to his desk, she puts the packet down on the corner of his desk in a hesitant manner, like he’s going to bite her head off right here and now. Katsuki sends her an annoyed glare that sends her skittering ahead to give the next one to invisible chick.
He can practically feel Deku’s busted up ass staring at the back of his head disapprovingly. That judgmental, condescending piece of shit. Ponytail is the one acting like a fucking deer in the headlights when she’s in a heroics class and should have a better spine. That’s not his issue.
But of course, fucking Deku thinks it is.
All the fucking time.
When class ends he clenches the medal in his hands and walks up to Midnight. She stands straighter, eyeing him warily, but defiantly. Yeah. She fucking knows she was in the wrong. He can tell. Just as well as he can tell that she’s not going to admit to it.
And in the end, like always, he’s going to be the bad guy.
Might as well own it.
Before she can pull her shitty quirk out, he detonates. The loud ‘bang!’ shocks the few classmates still lingering by the door. They look at him as if he’s insane as the teacher’s desk smolders. Straight through the center of her oh so precious book on the ‘First Generation Hero Art’ and into the desk itself, the first place sport’s festival medal is now fully imbedded into the wood. It had only taken on super focused explosion directly behind the medal to do it.
To her credit, Midnight doesn’t flinch, she glances down at the desk and nods.
“That’s fair.”
And then she packs up and leaves.
Distinctly unsatisfied but admittedly feeling a little better than before, he too moves past his still stunned classmates to lunch.
“What just happened?” Grape stain whispers, terrified.
Katsuki lets a small smirk take over his face.
As it turns out, the Sport’s festival did not end up being one shitty day.
It was the start of things going downhill in every aspect of his life.
The first letter comes in a deceptively pretty envelope. Gold lettering. Vanilla crisp, expensively looking paper. He unfolds it carefully in curiosity. He’s been so busy with UA schoolwork that he’s honestly clueless to what this could be. Exams fast approaching after the conclusion of the Sport’s Festival has him raising an eyebrow at it.
The first thing he notes is that it’s from a hero who attended. Aizawa had mentioned the internships but he hadn’t thought that letters would be coming from agencies so soon. He’s careful not to rip the paper as he opens it up, feeling a bit of reverence for it and excitement that he’d never allow his classmates to see.
This was it.
Actual hero work.
Katsuki reads the letter.
His excitement dies away. He feels as if he’s just swallowed burned popcorn on accident. Like he had a handful of buttery, fluffy popcorn and shoved it in his mouth and immediately began to choke on it. Spitting out ashy, burnt shit, a taste so strong he can’t get it out no matter how much milk he drinks or water he chugs.
His brow furrows and his lips press tight together the further and further down he reads. ‘A disappointment to the hero community’ stands out in bold. Katsuki is described as ‘A feral animal’ and an ‘abomination to UA’s reputation.’ His throat feels suddenly dry. Tight.
Katsuki puts the letter down in shock.
He doesn’t touch it again. The words seeming to trail him the next few days through his coursework, both academic and hero studies. He’d only read it once, but it seems burned into his retinas. Katsuki’s good memory seeming to backfire on him this time because each insult and condemnation sits like an infection in his head.
It’s not too long after that first letter when the other ones start to show up.
It might have been that first hero who shared his address or it might have been someone else entirely, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t really want to know. Either way they come. From bystanders at the Festival who tell him he is too villainous to be a hero while he’s on his way to school to little old ladies who ‘suggest’ that maybe hero work isn’t for him while he grabs groceries for his dad to kids who send him badly drawn pictures of himself with fangs and blood everywhere.
He ignores them.
At first.
But there’s a little voice in the back of his head asking if he’s a coward and eventually when there’s a giant pile hidden under his bed, he pulls them out. One by one. He reads through them.
A psychologist wrote to him to tell him he was only pursuing becoming a hero so that he had a legal outlet for his clearly dangerous aggression and that his career would be littered with the bodies of both criminals and the innocent.
There were a few letters declaring him a terrorist whose dangerous quirk should not be allowed to be used in any profession, hero or otherwise, because it was by its very nature a violent quirk. A quirk whose traits were reflecting on the human that held it.
More heroes had written. Some of them were less straight forward, trying to ‘kindly’ steer him in a direction that was more ‘suited’ to someone like Katsuki. Demolition work or something ‘away from the public.’ Some of them were blunt; stating that if he chose to try to become a hero- something they were skeptical he could actually be, then they would never work with him. He would never intern with their agency and they would discourage other heroes from associating with him in any way.
A magazine reporter had written him asking if they could interview the ‘Villainous Hero who’d dominated the Sports Festival with passion and ruthlessness.’ There were several other places that wanted to talk to him, he imagined for the same reason even if they tried to sugarcoat it.
For hours he stared at the contents of the letters before tucking them away.
Katsuki blinks slowly as he realizes at some point he’d ventured off the path from his jog. He pulls out his headphones, not quite remembering when it had moved from his smooth classical to the rock music playing aggressive beats.
The path is familiar, but not one he’s taken in a long time because it leads back to town instead of doubling back to his home. He’s done the run so many times, its hard to believe he could mess up this badly. He’s been more absent minded lately, but it’s hard to believe he hadn’t noticed the landmarks changing.
He’s gone out of his way and as he sees an old apartment building he knows its where Deku lives. He slows and stares at it like the building itself is going to come alive and eat him. Why the fuck did he come here?
Sweat clings to him and he sets it off, burning the excess to keep it from getting to dangerous levels. He knows the old convenient store they used to get trading cards as kids was right around the corner and despite telling himself he should turn around, he finds his feet taking him towards the old nostalgic place.
He blinks and he’s inside the store. The bell is ringing loudly above his head. Huh. He doesn’t quite remember passing by the old fence with posters of movies long sense out of movie theatres. He’s dehydrated, he realizes, so he grabs two of the largest water bottles available as he looks around blankly.
He feels eyes on the back of his head.
He looks around, instinctively, for curls of green hair and a freckle covered face, but it’s only the store owner. Haji, whose been manning the front since before Katsuki was even born. He’s watching him too closely and wonders if the man doesn’t recognize him, it has been a few years since he’s been here, but the guy should still remember that Katsuki isn’t going to steel anything. He should remember that Katsuki has always bought his asshole friends candy after they run out with it because he’s not a fucking thief.
“You shouldn’t have to pay for them, kid, you should hang out with better people.” The man had told him once.
“They’re not bad people, they’re just dumb asses who think it's cool to smoke and steal. They’ll grow out of it.”
“Hopefully,” the man muttered.
They hadn’t.
And they’d left him to die.
Left him and run as fast as they could out of the area as Katsuki had a villain pour himself down his throat to try to take over his body. Not too far from here either, which was one of the reasons he’d stopped coming to this part of town. That and not having friends any longer.
Katsuki puts his two water bottles onto the countertop and pulls out his wallet.
“You’re not welcome here.”
He blinks, not quite understanding the words even though they're clear as day.
“What?”
“I said I’m not taking your money and your kind aren’t welcome here. Get out of my store,” Haji says, folding his arms.
“What the hell?!” Katsuki hisses.
“I thought you were one of the good ones, but that was before I saw the way you acted at the Sport’s Festival. That display you made was disgusting and I won’t have you in my store. Now get out before I have the cops toss you out.”
Stunned, Katsuki steps back, his palms igniting in response to his anger and shock.
“Fine! Fine, you piece of shit!”
He slams the door so hard on his way out that a crack forms in the glass, but he’s so furious he can’t think straight. He feels humiliated and confused. He feels wrong footed and uncertain. He only goes a block or so before he sits down hard on the curb.
He’s shaking, he realizes.
He still feels dehydrated, to make matters worse. He feels heavier than normal, his head a little fuzzy. He breathes slow and watches as the sky goes from a bright blue to a dazzling orange. He should really get up and go home before it gets dark.
“Kacchan?”
Katsuki turns his head slowly, there’s the green curls and freckles, set in a face that looks younger than fifteen. Has always looked younger than he actually is. He’s in work out clothes, and Katsuki thinks with amusement that he’d been out here doing exactly what Katsuki had been doing.
Deku wipes the sweat from his forehead, breathing evenly as he looks at the sky and back over at him. He walks a little closer, but keeps that solid six-foot distance Katsuki’s practically ingrained into the shitty nerd.
“What are you doing out here?”
Shitty nerd probably has Katsuki’s normal course memorized. The stalker. He recognizes every abnormal thing about this situation and that kind of pisses Katsuki off, but he doesn’t feel like making a big deal out of it like he normally would.
He stands, too quickly, causing dots to float in front of his eyes and Deku to take several steps back at the sudden movement. Like a startled deer.
“Tch.”
He shoves his earphones back on and hits play, putting his hands in his pockets. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Deku wilt and frown at him, watching too closely, analyzing everything Katsuki is doing like its all got some bigger meaning or some shit.
Always overthinking.
He lets his mind drift again and before he knows it, he’s home. Taking his shoves off and heading to the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of water and drinking it greedily, tips of bitterness sinking in as he refills it a second time.
What the fuck was up with that?
‘Your kind?’
The letters had used wording like that too.
Like he wasn’t quite human.
Katsuki felt sick to his stomach as he stared at the most recent letter. He glanced around himself self-consciously before looking back down at the paper in front of him.
We see you.
That’s all it said. Three simple words sitting directly in the middle of a piece of paper. The dumbest thought filtered through his head in that moment, a little hysterical. ‘What a waste of paper.’
It wasn’t the words that unnerved him. In the last several weeks he’d received a number of threats, both implied and directly state. No. That wasn’t what had him feeling like he might vomit.
It was the picture that came with it.
It was an ugly shot. Being the child of a model, Katsuki knew he had a rather pretty face. He hated having his picture taken though and tended to scowl just to fuck with whoever the dumbass was taking his picture against his will.
Here though, Katsuki was on his way to school, unaware that there was a camera present at all. It was a side profile, he’s turned to someone, the tips of green hair in the corner of the picture probably pointing to an occasion when Deku had decided to attempt to talk to him again, since they walked in the same direction to school every day.
Both wearing UA uniforms.
Katsuki’s face sneering at Deku off screen. His face looks unimpressed, eyes narrowed, one hand in his pocket. Which means Deku hadn’t gotten to the part of the conversation where he inevitably asked a personal question, he had no business asking. His old childhood friend was as predictable as he was persistent, always pushing just a little too far. Because the bastard knew the line Katsuki drew and it was like he delighted on standing firmly on the god damn line and grinning at him like a kid pretending to poke their sibling. ‘I’m not touching you. I’m not touching you.’
“What’s your problem with Izuku?” Uraraka had asked once.
Question of the fucking century, that.
It’s not like he can point to a list of clear cut grievances. Because Deku never crossed the line. Most of the little things Deku did sounded ridiculous when spoken out loud, like a child tattling about being poked. If there was ever a case of little brother syndrome, Deku’s fucking stupid face would be the poster child right next to the definition. Nothing he could say would sound legitimate to anyone, hell even when he mutters the things under his own breath, they sound really stupid to be upset about.
It was all about the consistency and the longevity of it all. Katsuki knows the sound of Deku’s two step shuffle as he walks. The muttering under his breath as ingrained in Katsuki’s mind as breathing. Katsuki knows the soft click as Deku carefully closes his locker to make no noise and the way he holds both his fists in front of him in a defensive stance that Katsuki himself taught the fucker years and years ago. He knows the loudest thing Deku does is when he claps his hands together with too much enthusiasm before he eats. He knows for the longest time Deku had a habit of hopping out of his shoes because they were just a little too big for him (as most shoes are designed with evolved quirk feet in mind) and the shoe laces would loosen with his constant movements. He knows the shitty nerd still tries it sometimes and ends up stumbling around, startling and confusing the people around him. He knows Deku’s obsessive nature involving quirks, All Might, and heroes. The pile of notebooks he carries around and writes in. The ridiculous amount of merchandise he has. The videos he puts on replay over and over and over and over and over again so that he can catch every tiny detail.
And that Katsuki himself somehow became one of Deku’s obsessions.
How does he explain to his classmates all the little things that mean nothing? All the harmless little inconveniences and annoyances. All the questions that were too personal or too specific, like he was being dissected. Being followed and watched, feeling those too big, green eyes on him even when he hadn’t realized Deku was anywhere near him just the moment before.
Deku didn’t know what ‘personal space’ meant. There had been times he’d wondered if the shorter teen had some kind of Asperger’s or social disorder of some kind. He took every ‘don’t follow me’ or ‘leave me alone’ as a personal challenge, it seemed to do exactly what Katsuki had asked him not to do.
Now, when he saw Deku in the corner of his eye, it was just habit to snap at him. A reflex. Cause even though he knew it wouldn’t do any good, he wanted the reassurance for himself that Katsuki had done everything in his own power to stop it from happening. It made him feel like it wasn’t his fault.
Of course, that only made Katsuki look like the crazy one when it came to Izuku Midoriya.
“What’s your problem with Izuku?”
Those words make him want to throw his hands up in the air in exasperation. To bang his head against the wall. To scream into the void and tear his own hair out. Your problem. Your fault. Your issues.
‘You’re the one causing problems, Katsuki.’
‘Izuku is so sweet, I don’t understand why you don’t want to be his friend.’
‘Can you explain why you set off an explosion in his face?’
‘He hasn’t even said anything to you yet! Take a chill pill. He doesn’t deserve you treating him like that.’
His first thought when spotting Deku walking into the hero course wasn’t to question how the quirkless kid got into the class, or even to wonder what the hell he pulled off in the entrance exam to get there. No. Katsuki never doubted Deku had the brains or wit to claw his way here. The moment he saw Deku enter into his class he felt his whole being wilt in exhaustion and he thought: ‘I need to transfer to 1B.’
All of his threats and his anger and Deku still followed him.
He was aware enough to know that Katsuki wasn’t the reason Deku was here. That Deku wanted to be a hero more than anything. But it felt like it.
Katsuki asked for the transfer papers from Aizawa the end of that first day. He couldn’t be in the same class as Deku. Not for another three years. It spelled trouble. There was no one he clashed with more. Katsuki was a pretty calm person as long as no one bothered him, but Deku was always bothering him. He didn’t want that.
“Can I ask why?” Aizawa asked.
Katsuki pointed at the seat directly behind his own, empty now that school had let out, the shitty nerd glancing at him questioningly as he'd left the classroom a few minutes ago.
“I don’t get along with De… with the Midoriya kid. I’m not trying to be a pain. I just feel like I’ll have a better school experience if I can work away from him.”
“Alight, but you’ll need to get your parents to sign.”
Katsuki’s whole world darkened.
“Is there any way around that?” Katsuki asked, and if there was a pleading tone to his voice, Aizawa didn’t acknowledge it.
“I’m afraid not.”
To his utter lack of surprise, both of his parents refused to sign the papers.
“I just need you to be on my side this one time,” he begged them.
“You need to resolve your issues with Izuku, Katsuki, you can’t keep up this attitude with him,” his mom had snapped. His dad had given him an apologetic smile, but had agreed with the Hag. A rare occasion aligning perfectly with Katsuki's shit luck.
When he gives the crinkled, unsigned papers back to Aizawa the next morning, its with such a resigned air of depression that his teacher is startled.
“I tried,” Katsuki muttered, a little hysterically, under his breath. When he sits down at his seat, and feels worried, green eyes on the back of his head, he lets himself fall a little less steadily with a ‘thunk’ that he knows has the nerd wincing without ever seeing it.
This is his life.
He thinks the same thing as he looks down at the picture of himself. Deku just out of sight of the camera’s eye. And wasn’t that just the perfect parallel? His ugly expression while no one can see what Deku is doing. He laughs a bit hysterically at the words
We see you.
It’s so fucking ironic that no one actually does.