Chapter Text
The relationship between Midoriya Izuku and Bakugo Katsuki could really only be described in short terms as complicated. To elaborate a little more on it, it could be described as insane.
But to be perfectly, unabashedly accurate, it would only be fair to call it a disaster the likes of which people had rarely seen, though for who exactly no one was quite sure until it was far too late.
From the day that Izuku had been born it was like lightning striking, Katsuki seeming to light up at the sight of the newborn from where he was swaddled in his mothers arms, barely born for almost three months and already dragged along to another birth. Their mothers had been friends for almost their entire lives, it only seemed right that the two of them would be introduced as quickly as possible too. Though the fact that Izuku immediately started crying and Katsuki started making his own noises in turn that sounded suspiciously like snarls, it really should have been obvious what their dynamic was going to be for the rest of their lives.
The two of them were borderline inseparable, even as Izuku turned more meek and Katsuki started getting more headstrong, more arrogant, spurred on by the adults around him that had absorbed one too many flawed papers on survival of the fittest. For the first four years of their lives they were almost attached at the hip, Katsuki showing a rare smile that whose existence would immediately be denied should anyone else see, and Izuku’s already doe like eyes taking on an even greater shine, like he was staring at the sun itself every time he looked at the older boy. The two grew so eerily close that Mitsuki jokingly suggested (much to Inko’s horror and Hisashi’s laughter) that they would probably have to give the two of them the talk by the time they were ten years old.
But much like all stories like this, this was not to last. Katsuki got his quirk, Izuku did not. Katsuki’s parents all but shouted from the rooftops how proud they were of him, Izuku got a father who left him behind and a mother who was too busy fussing and worrying over him to really pay attention to what he wanted anymore. Katsuki found himself gaining more followers by the day, whereas Izuku was more alone than ever.
Only one thing was the same for the two of them: They had both lost the only real friend that they had.
The love that Katsuki felt (and it was love, always had been, and he would think about that only in the darkest of nights when he couldn’t fall asleep from the vibrations in his palms) turned into hatred, and Izuku’s admiration turned into… something toxic, something that he spent years repressing into the darkest corners of his mind, no matter how many mirrors he smashed every time Bakugo’s birthday crossed the calendar. (It was always Bakugo now, never Kacchan, not even Katsuki. Not after what he’d done.)
Calluses grew on Bakugo’s palms at the same rate as scars on Midoriya’s back, and for a very, very long time, that would be the only way that the two of them would interact. Until the impossible happened, something that even years after the fact Bakugo would break down over until he could feel that familiar hand on his back.
Midoriya saved him, even after everything he’d done. And he had been mocked for it.
It wasn’t long after the sludge villain incident that Bakugo noticed changes in his oldest friend. He was more focused, more serious, and though he still wrote in his notebook (a new one his mind supplied unwillingly, given that the other had been all but destroyed at his hands), no longer would he shrink away when someone brought attention to it. It took until one of Bakugo’s lackeys, the one with the long fingers whose name he’d never bothered to remember, ended up following him after school one afternoon and came back the next morning with three of his fingers in splints for them to notice the calluses that were building up on Midoriya’s knuckles.
After Bakugo followed him one day himself (much more stealthily, because he wasn’t a fucking idiot), he discovered that Midoriya’s new after school hangout was a local dojo. He also discovered that there was more All Might merchandise than he could count in the dumpster outside the apartment that he spent so much of his early childhood in, but he didn’t want to acknowledge the meaning of that. After all, if the biggest All Might fanboy that he’d ever known had become disillusioned with him, then he didn’t want to know what it was that he’d discovered, it could very well ruin him. If the man that he’d fought so hard to surpass wasn’t nearly the man that he portrayed himself as, then what the fuck had Bakugo sacrificed everything for?
The self-imposed silence that Bakugo had maintained since the day he’d been rescued from a suffocating death (from when those fucking fakes told the one person who stepped up to help him that he’d only gotten in the way of their jobs) was only broken when he, along with the rest of the class, learned that against all odds Midoriya Izuku, quirkless and weak as he was supposed to be, had somehow beaten out thousands of other candidates and not only earned a place in the hero course at UA, but had even come in second behind him. When he cornered Midoriya behind the school it was obvious that he’d been expecting anger, indignant and raging, and there was nothing except confusion when Bakugo nodded his head numbly and let out a dull, “Congratulations.”
The next time that they spoke was their first day at UA, and by the end of that first day it seemed like some of the light was coming back into his eyes, two friends walking side by side with him out the gates of the school. If Bakugo felt bitter that he was the one walking alone this time he didn’t show it, instead he tried to find something buried deep inside him to show some sort of happiness for the boy that he’d left behind so long ago, when for so long he’d only felt disdain.
Weeks went by, then months, and though the two of them weren’t anywhere near friends again, the sight of the other no longer caused pain in their chests, the holes that they’d left in each other so long ago were slowly filling themselves back up with other people, Uraraka and Iida almost a mainstay at Midoriya’s side, and Kirishima a persistent, often annoying, always welcomed presence wherever Bakugo went. For the first time in a very long time, things looked like they were looking up.
Then they found Midoriya’s notebooks.
Contrary to the impression that he gave off, Bakugo was anything but unobservant. It was obvious that people had been avoiding Midoriya, even his two best friends (Who were beginning to remind him more of the fucking snakes that had followed him around since his quirk had developed, only wanting a taste of the greatness that they could sense was coming) were more often than not nowhere to be found when Midoriya was around. Todoroki no longer partnered with him, Kaminari and Yaoyorozu always stopped their conversations when he walked into the room, even Jirou and Tokoyami looked incredibly guilty about something.
And though Midoriya was still quick to smile, still sure to wave at each classmate that he’d see and offer any help that he could give, it was clear that he knew that they were avoiding him. After all it wasn’t the first time that something like this had happened, and it certainly wasn’t something that you ever forgot.
It was only once Aizawa-sensei had sent Midoriya off on some task on the other side of the school and pulled out one of those godforsaken notebooks that suddenly everything clicked in place for Bakugo.
“Because of your bringing this to my attention, I’m certain that we’ve now found the traitor among us.”
And hold on just a moment, traitor? While Bakugo wouldn’t dare think of himself as unobservant, he had very few other options to think about given that he’d missed something of this magnitude.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He said, without thinking before opening his mouth. He would regret that soon.
Aizawa sniffed, tossing the familiar notebook in front of him, shaking his head sadly. “We didn’t inform you with the rest of the class because of your history with Midoriya, but what’s written in there is enough to get every single one of us killed, and given how targeted the attacks have been against us in the past… I refuse to believe that it’s a coincidence.”
“Bro I… I get that it’s hard to believe, but… it makes sense right?” Kirishima sighed at Bakugo, a fist clenching and muffling an explosion at how easily everyone had once again turned against Izuku. “He’s always just… watching us, like sometimes it looks like he’s dissecting us like an experiment. And the stuff that’s written in there is… it’s creepy!”
“He broke down my quirk in a way that I haven’t ever thought about...” Uraraka shook as she spoke, shooting nervous looks at the door. “I don’t… I didn’t want to think badly of him, but I can’t read what he read and not think about it!”
Bakugo snarled, turning in his seat and baring his teeth at her. “You fucking snake.”
Her eyes widened, along with everyone else’s in the room. “Wha-”
“The guy stops that robot from turning you into a shitstain on the pavement, and a couple words in a book make you piss all over yourself?” He scoffed, seeing Iida already rearing up to tell him how inappropriate he was being. As though proper manners mattered when you were throwing someone under the bus. “What about you I-Robot? Your pants filled with shit too? Or are we ignoring that you’re the one who ran off in Hosu to try and kill someone? Or are you still speaking that horseshit about it being a coincidence that you were in the same place as Stain?”
“I… I have admitted that I was wrong, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for my mistakes, but that does not take away from the current issue!” He chopped the air with his hand, and it was rare that Bakugo felt such a strong urge to blow something apart. “The amount of information in that notebook about us is… concerning, and I believed that Midoriya was my friend, but I can’t come to any other conclusion than it being used to hurt us.”
A hand slammed down on Bakugo’s desk, Todoroki’s mismatched eyes staring down at him with more anger than he’d ever seen in them before. “Rather than running your mouth, maybe you should just read what he wrote.”
Bakugo snatched the book from under his palm, sneering with a feral amount of teeth. “Some friend you are. Guess there’s really no room left in you for anything other than daddy issues.”
He flinched, an obvious sore point. Good, fuck him.
Everyone held their breath as he thumbed through the book, eyes darting across each page and his tongue wetting his lips in his focus. The silence was so thick that it could have been broken by dropping a pin, everyone startling when he scoffed rather than gasped as they’d expected. “This is it? This is what you’ve been talking about behind his back?”
“This isn’t shocking to you?” Iida asked, eyebrows furrowed in confusion, “I… how can that be?”
“Because, you fucking moron, it’s just like every other book of his that I’ve read.” He closed the book, tossing it back onto his desk and rolling his eyes. “You stabbed your best friend in the back over this?”
Aizawa stiffened, hand clenching into a fist behind his back and his stance widening. “You were aware of this?”
“Yeah?” Bakugo shrugged. “He’s been doing this for years, every hero that he sees he does this, he’s a fuckin’ quirk freak, there’s nothing illegal about that last I checked.”
“There’s more than just quirks in that notebook, there’s examinations of patrol routes, fighting styles…”
“He was bullied when we were in middle school, he probably wanted to know where heroes were going to be if one of the dipshits chased him down after school.” Not that it ever helped him when Bakugo was around. “As for fighting styles… shit, the guy has no quirk. How the fuck else is he going to fight against someone with one if he doesn’t know how they move?”
“Was my brother in one of these books?” Iida asked, his voice strangely tight and controlled.
“Probably, I dunno.”
“And Detective Tsukauchi?” Aizawa asked, eyes narrowing, “What about him?”
That was certainly out of left field. “I dunno, maybe? We met him like, once, but his quirk is pretty useful I guess? Fuck does that matter?”
Aizawa scowled, stepping closer and his quirk activating as Bakugo felt something cold settle within himself, the smoke drifting from his palms ceasing instantly. “You know, I always wondered how it was that you came back from the League of Villains with no injuries. There were times where Midoriya couldn’t conceivably get in contact with them, I admit that, but those times often coincide with you being nowhere to be seen.”
And oh, now Bakugo see’s what’s happening. Kirishima shuffled away from him as much as he could, his normally open eyes holding an expression of fear, his quirk already hardening up around his hands.
“You…” Bakugo growled, teeth showing in a growl as he tried very hard to control his next words, “Be very fuckin’ careful with the next thing you say to me.”
“Bakugo Katsuki, where were you last night between six and eight o’clock?”
“In Musutafu, jogging in the forest near my parent’s house.”
The next few moments felt like they’d happened in fast forward, Aizawa’s eyes flashing before his capture weapon shot out towards him, wrapping around Bakugo’s shoulders and pulling him roughly against the desk, ice shooting around his hands before he could get them up to try and defend himself, whatever sweat there was on his palms freezing instantly and leaving him defenseless.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Bakugo howled, murder in his eyes as he glanced between his teacher and the rest of his classmates, “You let me the fuck go or I’ll RIP YOUR FUCKING HEADS OFF!”
“Kacchan?”
Every set of eyes shot towards the door at the voice, Midoriya standing there with a shocked expression on his face as he took in the situation in front of him. He took a step forward, before sprinting towards where his once-friend, now-something-else was being held down by the people that the both trusted.
“What are you doing?! Let go of him!”
Uraraka lunged forward, palm slapping against Midoriya’s arm at the same time that Iida let out a roar of rage, running forward almost faster than any of them could see and sending his leg shooting into Midoriya’s side, the lack of gravity holding him to the ground thrusting him back into the wall at a sickening speed, the crack of the tile giving way almost making them feel regret.
“Ahh!” Midoriya screamed at the feel of his ribs giving way, capture scarf wrapping around him as he bounced off the wall and tugging him to the ground, the side of his head cracking off of the edge of Aizawa’s desk and making his vision swim and the ground speckle with blood that was rapidly turning from drips to a stream.
“You two, shut your mouths if you don’t want to make things worse for yourselves.” Aizawa’s gaze was nothing short of murderous, even Bakugo feeling fear winning out over the anger that was pulsing through his entire being.
Midoriya looked up at where the voice was coming from, unable to focus on anything in front of him as he croaked, “Ai… Aizawa-sensei?”
The last thing he recognized was the black boot coming towards his face before everything turned dark.
“You don’t think you could have been a little more delicate with them Aizawa?” Principal Nedzu hummed from his position in front of the two way mirrors, staring into the two interrogation rooms holding both their suspects. “I was under the impression that you had a plan to bring him in peacefully. And, I might add, alone.”
“That was before it was revealed that there are more of these books, with who knows how many pros and classmates laid bare and exploitable within their bindings.” Aizawa shrugged. “Besides, Ingenium will never work again, he can’t even walk for longer than a few minutes. I’ll scold him later, but I’m not going to condemn Iida for showing anger towards someone who potentially had a hand in harming his brother.”
Midoriya still had blood staining his hair, white collar turned red and his eyes unfocused as he squinted at the lights above him. The bruises under his eye obscured his freckles on one side, but Aizawa didn’t have it in himself to feel sorry. He had warned him.
“Well, much as I hadn’t expected it, the idea that both of them have been working against us makes sense. They’ve both had occasions where they’ve come into contact with members of the League and come out untouched. What do you suppose that Midoriya and Shigaraki were actually talking about during the mall incident?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
The process of finding out, according to the police on the case, consisted of screaming in the face of a child and demanding to be given the answers to questions that he had barely had the chance to process. Midoriya still didn’t understand anything that they were saying, everything feeling fuzzy even when one of the cops lost his patience and kicked him out of his chair, hitting him once, twice, almost a third time before he was pulled off of him and out of the room. Even then, Midoriya didn’t say a word, didn’t even cry, still not knowing why he’d been attacked by people that he’d trusted and thrown into an interrogation without so much as a glance in his direction. And in that corner where he’d been thrown was where he stayed for the next few hours, nose broken and streaming blood down his lips, metallic and sharp on his tongue.
Bakugo however was much more receptive of their questions, in that everytime they asked him how long he had been working for the League of Villains he spat in their faces and almost succeeded in snapping the chains on his quirk suppressing cuffs.
Sansa clenched his fists together, having stepped in after the fourth cop had to be escorted out of the building to cool off after losing their temper with the very hot headed and very angry student. “For the last time, how long have you been an associate of Shigaraki Tomura?”
Bakugo spat a glob of blood into his chest, snarling in his face and itching to get his hands around his throat. “Fuck you! Why don’t you ask that jumped up fucking hobo since he seems to know everything?!”
“If only Tsukauchi were here…” Sansa grumbled under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose and almost regretting taking over the case. But he had, and Tsukauchi wasn’t here, so he would have to make do with getting the answers himself. “We know that the two of you have had contact with the League of Villains on multiple occasions, multiple occasions on which you escaped with suspiciously no injuries to be seen. All I’m asking is for your side of the story here.”
“Yeah, that’s what this has been so far. They were sure asking politely when they kicked the fuck out of Deku in the middle of the classroom, that’s what the last four guys in here have been doing every time they asked me a question. Why don’t you cut the shit and GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SIGHT YOU STUPID FUCKING COCKSUCKING FUCKING CUNT!”
“This would all go a lot easier if you would just coopera-”
“Get out of this room,” Bakugo said, tone suddenly deadly serious and his gaze unblinking, “Or I swear to God the second that I get out of these cuffs I’m going to burn your eyes out of your skull.”
Sansa sighed, shaking his head and pulling the door open and stepping back out into the observation room. “He’s not budging. I think we call it a night for now and come back tomorrow.”
Aizawa shook his head. “We don’t have that sort of time, I want to know what they’ve said about my class-”
“With due respect, unless you feel like going in there and literally torturing someone, we’re not going to get anything out of either of them. We have them for the next twenty two days, we can afford to take our time for now. I’d also rather not risk another one of my coworkers breaking their hand on either of their faces again.”
Aizawa looked between his two former students, one still snarling with rage and the other still silent in the corner of the room, both with blood on their faces that was rapidly drying. He had to admit, he almost admired how well they were keeping onto their secrets. “Fine. Keep them together and under observation, if the two of them talk about anything then I want to hear it myself.”
If they thought Bakugo had been a handful before then he turned absolutely feral when he saw the state that Midoriya was brought out in, wrists cuffed and his thumbs secured together to stop him from moving them a single inch. The dazed look in his eyes had only gotten worse, his steps fumbling him into the wall as his guard shoved him forward.
“What the fuck did you do to him?” He asked, horrified at the state that the normally lively boy was in in front of him, “What the fuck did you do to him?”
“Shut up and keep moving,” Their guards said, rolling their eyes and pushing them forward with their batons, “You’re staying the night, get your sleep because we’re doing this all over again tomorrow.”
“K-Kacchan?” Midoriya asked, falling against his shoulder and slumping, before the guard ripped him away from him, “Why are you here? What’s happening?”
“I’ll tell you later ok? Just… fuck, just stay awake, you look fucked up.”
“I… I feel pretty bad…” Midoriya shook his head, trying to clear the dots from his vision. “Is the building moving?”
The two of them were shoved into a cell, their cuffs staying on and the door locking behind them before their two guards marched off to another part of the building, leaving them both blissfully and dangerously alone. As soon as he didn’t have to be marched anywhere anymore Midoriya stumbled forward, shoulder slamming into the concrete wall and his legs giving out from under him, Bakugo barely making it over to him in time to stop his head from bouncing off the wall again.
“Hey, hey! Come on Deku just… take it easy ok? I’ve got you, don’t… don’t fall asleep ok? Help! Someone help!” He screamed in the direction where their guards had gone, receiving no reply, “He’s fucked up! For fuck sake someone help!”
“Kacchan…” Midoriya shook his head, the dots slowly clearing but he was still so tired. “Just… tell me what’s happening, I think… I think I can focus a little now...”
Bakugo sucked a breath in, pulling open Midoriya’s eyelid and staring down into a pupil which was barely reacting to the light. “They… they found one of your quirk notebooks, you know the ones that you write about our classmates in?”
“Oh… I was wondering where that went…” Midoriya snorted dopily, staring up at him. “What did they want with it?”
“They think that you’re the traitor, and they think that I’m a traitor because I told them they were full of shit. Fucking morons.”
Midoriya screwed his eyebrows together, and if it wasn’t for the fact that there was still blood crusted in them Bakugo would think it looked irritatingly adorable. “Was Iida the one who hit me?”
“Him and Round Face ambushed you when you came running in, he punted you into the wall so hard I’m surprised you were even still conscious. Aizawa slammed your head into the desk and kicked you in the face. Cowards.”
“But… why?” He shook his head, not having any dots to clear this time. “I wrote those to help them, why would they…”
Bakugo almost stepped back, the look in Midoriya’s eyes hardening into something that he honestly hadn’t seen in a long time (hadn’t wanted to ever see again either, had thought it was gone when he’d found people who supposedly cared about him). “They’re just like everyone else from our old schools, aren’t they? They finally got tired of the quirkless kid and they want me gone, don’t they?”
Bakugo wanted to tell him no, wanted to say that UA was different than that, but he couldn’t force the words off his tongue. If it was Iida, or Yaoyorozu who had a notebook like that, would they have come under the same scrutiny? Or would they have just been commended for their thoroughness, their dedication to helping their classmates, because of course people as smart as them would have thought of something like that! Not quirkless little Deku, there was no way he was as smart as the people who had actual quirks, he must have been pretending, he must have cheated, wasn’t that what his teachers always used to say?
“I thought… I thought this place was going to be different. If they actually let me into the hero course, then surely…” Midoriya snarled, hands closing into thumbless fists. “They're just the same, our classmates, our teachers… I can never actually succeed anywhere I go, can I? I’m always going to be punished just for existing, aren’t I?”
Bakugo let go of him, settling in the spot next to him and pressing their shoulders together. “Is this… is this how it was, all those years?”
“Oh right,” Midoriya sniffed, a bitter passing of a laugh, “You never actually knew properly did you? I tried to get you and the others in trouble with the teachers back in middle school, I think the first time was after Tsubasa flew away with my bag and dropped it in the middle of the lake. I figured that they were teachers, so I could trust them to be fair and punish you.”
“And… what happened?”
“They gave me detention for a month for making up stories, Tsubasa couldn’t possibly have done something like that, because he was always such a well behaved boy.”
Bakugo tried hard not to laugh at that description. “Tsubasa was a little shit, ‘Well behaved’ was never something I would use to describe him.”
“He had a quirk though,” Midoriya said, “And I didn’t. So who were they going to believe?”
The two of them were silent for a long time, the tick of the clock outside their cell echoing in the room and showing that it had been eight hours since this nightmare had started. Midoriya’s mouth opened and closed a few times, the beginnings of sentences dying in the back of his throat before he sucked in a breath.
“Back in Hosu… I think I saw him.”
“Who?”
“Tsubasa.”
“What?” Bakugo’s eyes snapped towards him. “But… he went missing, right?”
He nodded, humming emptily. “The nomu that grabbed me, the one that Stain killed… it looked like it recognized me. And… I mean it looked like a nomu and they look like monsters obviously but… when I looked into its eyes I swear that they looked the same as Tsubasa’s.”
“You… why didn’t you tell me about this?”
He shrugged. “The chief of police told me, Iida and Todoroki never to tell anyone about taking down Stain, otherwise we’d be charged with vigilantism. And besides…”
“What? Besides what?”
Midoriya huffed through his nose, turning his head and staring at the corner.
“Alright fuck this, let’s just ignore that you took down the fucking Hero Killer and they just… dropped that whole thing, why didn’t you tell me about Tsubasa? That fat idiot might have been a complete asshole, but he’s still someone that we both knew, that should mean something.”
“Kacchan…”
“Just fucking tell me!”
“I… I felt bad. He was nothing except cruel to me, and when I saw him like that… when I saw Stain kill him… I felt like… like he got what he deserved. I felt terrible after I thought that but… that doesn’t change that I thought it to begin with.”
Bakugo didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything at all. All he did was bump Midoriya’s shoulder with his own, and refused to move away from him. Bakugo was suffering right now too, but he would be damned if after all this time he let Midoriya go through this alone again.
“You should get some sleep,” Midoriya said, “You usually go to bed around eight thirty right?”
He snorted, “You’re the one with the concussion, you need to rest, I’ll wake you up every hour or so, make sure you’re not dying since these assholes don’t seem to care.”
“Kacchan…”
“Shut the fuck up and sleep Izuku,” He stated firmly, “Don’t argue with me on this, alright? Just… just do it.”
Midoriya stared at him for a few moments before he sighed and nodded, sliding down the fall to lay flat on the uncomfortable concrete floor. “You promise you’ll wake me up if you need to go to sleep?”
Bakugo’s first instinct was to snap at him, but seeing him look so earnest, so genuine in his want for him to be ok… he just nodded and gave what he hoped was a somewhat passable smile. “I promise.”
Midoriya snorted, already drifting off. “You look weird when you try to smile normally. You… you look… cute…”
Bakugo counted himself lucky that Midoriya was already passed out when the blood rushed into his face.