Chapter Text
“Katsuki Bakugou: captain of the football team, stellar grade point average, likely candidate for multiple scholarships, probable recruitment from nationally-ranked colleges, popular with the ladies.” Principal Yagi smiled, but his eyebrows dipped in pity. His long, yellow hair swayed when he rested both elbows on the table. “And yet, here we are again.
This is the third fight you’ve been involved in this semester, and you’re barely two months into your senior year. This isn’t the time to be reckless, Katsuki. The future is watching you now, more than ever.”
Katsuki grumbled low. His hands fiddled together above his knees.
“I wouldn’t have to ‘get involved in fights’ if the idiots of this school had an ounce of common decency.”
“Monoma said that you struck him first,” said Yagi.
“I did.”
“Did he provoke you?”
“Obviously.”
“How?”
Katsuki shifted backward, rattling the wooden chair meant for Principal Yagi’s visitors. After so many visits, the pads of his fingers recognized the smooth twists engrained into its arms.
“Why does it matter?”
“Do you not care for your reputation? Hitting a student unprovoked won’t go down well with-”
“I just said it was provoked.”
“Then, tell me how.”
He shouldn’t have to explain himself to the old man.
“Fu- God, this is so annoying.”
“Katsuki,” Yagi tilted his head. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter that he didn’t want to explain himself. He would have to anyway.
“The idiot was mocking Shitty Ha- Kirishima, alright? I couldn’t just let him lower team morale! He’s an asshole.” Katsuki looked away. He brought a hand to his hair, and raked loose fingers through his blonde spikes.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t swear in my office.”
“I’d appreciate not being in your office.”
“I could have you thrown off the team for this, you know?”
Katsuki went silent. Yagi wasn’t lying— even though Katsuki didn’t regret what he did, he’d rather not get kicked off the team. His team.
The Principal continued, “Luckily for you, several accounts have claimed to witness Mr. Monoma's disrespect toward your teammate,” Katsuki perked up, eyes wide. That bastard— acting like he didn’t know what happened, baiting Katsuki to spill his side of the story with lies just because he had the power to do so. God— Katsuki hated adults, “But… you can’t just hit someone. Whether he deserved it or not, I can’t let you go unpunished for this.”
“You won’t kick me off the team?” Katsuki said, innocent. Now that he knew Yagi was somewhat on his side, he didn’t need to justify himself. He just needed to play nice.
“I have something else in mind,” said Yagi.
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
Between them, the older weighed his words.
“Justified aggression is still aggression. I wasn’t lying about this looking bad for your future. No college wants to recruit a trouble-maker, even a trouble-maker as promising as you.”
Katsuki resisted the urge to roll his eyes, “Spit it out.”
Yagi shot him a stern, pointed glare.
“I want you to join a club.”
“I’m in a club.”
“You play football.”
“I don’t have time for anything else.”
This was true. When he wasn’t practicing, he was training. When he wasn’t training, he was studying. When he wasn’t studying…
Well, he had better things to do than some other school-organized practice. He had enough structured regimens in his life, already.
“You’ll make time, or I'll kick you off the team.”
“I thought you were on my side!” Katsuki almost stood up, “You know that kid’s bad news.”
“This isn’t about him,” blue eyes seared Katsuki’s own, “this is about you.”
“But you agree my aggression was justified?”
“It makes for a perfect image,” Yagi ignored his question completely. He looked to the ceiling before flattening his tone into a bad headline impression: “U.A. High’s elite student: Katsuki Bakugou finds that joining the chess club softened his attitude, and quenched his need to slap his fellow students.”
Not the fucking chess club— no, no, no.
“You’re kidding.”
“Young Bakugou, oh, I am not.”
“What the fuck would joining the chess club do for me!?”
The principal looked disturbed at his words. He said, quickly, “You’re on the thinnest of ice.”
“I’d apologize to that dunce of a student before I’d join the chess club.”
“How about both?”
“What!? Y-You realize I can barely handle everything I do now, right?” Katsuki knew he sounded desperate, but he didn’t really care.
“I already told you, nothing else matters if you’re not impressionable.”
He was standing now. “How could chess make me impressionable!? It’s a board game.”
“It’s a game, yes,” Yagi closed his eyes, opened them again after a brief pause in words, “A game about suppression- about strategy and intellect. It teaches humility, warm reactions to rejection and loss. It could teach you how to battle without your fist.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Oh!” Principal Yagi looked down at his wrist, at his watch, and suddenly shot his feet. The pair met in his office right after school, so it was about three now, “Would you look at that…”
“Look at what?” Katsuki had a bad feeling.
“The chess club. Their meeting started five minutes ago.”
“No."
“This, or suspension from the team,” Yagi almost sang these words. It made Katsuki want to scream.
“This… isn’t fair. Principal Yagi- literally, I’ll do anything else. I’ll-”
“Katsuki, I’m giving you a choice,” the man started moving towards the door, and Katsuki’s neck twisted to watch, “Follow me, or don’t.”
It wasn’t a choice.
Katsuki followed Yagi out of his office for his team, for his future. No, Katsuki didn’t have a choice.
The meeting was in a classroom on the third floor, and the walk upstairs came with dense silence. He had Statistics up here, but he’d never been to this particular room; the walls were lined with maps and old-timey faces.
Desks were turned to face each other— oddly strewn about. Boards of squares laid across them, topped with wooden pieces placed in patterns Katsuki didn’t recognize. Didn’t understand, and definitely didn’t want to understand.
Students sat across from each other in the series of arranged desks. There were more people here than he’d thought would be in the chess club, and barely half of them turned to look at Katsuki when he entered.
“Hello!” said Yagi, from his side. His booming voice seemed to echo, and some more people looked their way.
A girl approached them first, fast, and Katsuki recognized her as Ochako Uraraka. She was in his Chemistry class but they’d never talked before.
“Oh! Principal Yagi? Bakugou?” she looked anxious, “what’re you two... doing here?”
“Ochako! Young Bakugou wants to join the chess club this year.”
Katsuki squinted his eyes, scowling at the old man.
“He does? That’s unexpected.”
The Principal smirked. “I hope it’s not too late to join.”
Uraraka’s brown hair shook with her hands in refutation. “Not at all! We really only started meeting last week. Does he know how to play?”
Katsuki didn’t respond, figuring that if he didn’t, Yagi would eventually answer for him. He instead looked around the room, attempting to memorize the names and faces he saw so that he could steer clear of every single one of them during the school day now that he knew they played chess in their free time.
“He doesn’t, but he’s a fast learner,” Yagi assured.
“Right! Well, Midoriya’s right over there. He’s really good at teaching the game- I’ll grab him.”
Uraraka had a finger pointed to the back of the room, towards a game going on in the corner. Katsuki eyed one of the players: a student with green for hair. Green for eyes. He was hunched forward, fully immersed in whatever was happening on the board.
Yagi said, “Thank you. That sounds perfect.”
Izuku Midoriya.
Katsuki’d known Midoriya since preschool. Hell— earlier probably. They’d lived on the same street their entire lives, but they’d never gotten close. Midoriya was quiet, and Katsuki was always too loud.
Uraraka shuffled towards Midoriya and his opponent. When she tapped Midoriya’s shoulder, he seemed to stir from a daze. She told him something, and he scanned the rim of the room until he met Katsuki’s eyes. Midoriya nodded, and then looked back at the board. He moved a piece, and smiled at his opponent before standing. His opponent slumped backward in their chair. They held out a hand for Midoriya to shake after a few seconds spent staring at the board.
Katsuki barely understood the interaction.
When the pair started Katsuki’s way, the blonde averted his eyes.
Yagi spoke directly to Midoriya when he got close enough, “Izuku! You run things around here now, huh?”
Midoriya’s eyes widened, lashes fluttering. On his cheeks, freckles swam in warm pink.
“Seems like it, sir.”
“He’s still undefeated,” Uraraka interjected, from beside him. She chuckled when Midoriya gave her a hesitant sideways glance.
“Not surprised,” Yagi sounded proud. His tone came lined with honesty and admiration. Katsuki noticed the way Yagi watched looked rather personal.
The green-haired boy breathed a nervous laugh.
“So this nerd’s gonna teach me how to play?” said Katsuki, after minutes of a closed mouth.
“Yeah! He’s our club’s captain- the best of the best,” Uraraka smiled through her words. Midoriya flushed at the praise. This guy? Team captain, huh.
“He won’t be undefeated when I’m done with him.”
Next to them, two boys he barely recognized hollered, hooted, at Katsuki’s threat. Uraraka lowered her head, eyes broad in what Katsuki read as doubt.
Chess was a board game. If he could win football championships for this goddamn school, he could win a silly board game against this idiot. Maybe, if he won, he could convince Yagi of how pointless this was. If he could beat the captain, or whatever, in one try.
Midoriya grinned. He bent his head back, looking unphased, but not particularly confident, either.
Katsuki could do this. Principal Yagi laid a firm palm on his back, pushing him forward, “That’s the spirit! Alright Katsuki, I’ll be in my office. If you’re not here when I come to check on you, you know the consequences.”
Everyone looked at Yagi— silent, sort of shocked. Katsuki guessed most of them didn’t hear their kind-hearted principal talk so stern on the regular, like Katsuki did.
And then the blonde scoffed, looking away from his elder’s head of yellow. He listened to the old man’s heavy footsteps soften as he walked out the door.
“There’s already a board set up over there,” Uraraka said after Yagi was completely out of the room. She pointed at a pair of desks a few feet away.
“I’ll be over here, ‘zuku. Tenya wants to play me again, or else I would help explain. He’s still sour over last round,” they walked and talked. Reluctantly, Katsuki followed them to the pair of desks.
“No worries! Good luck with him,” Midoriya shot her a knowing glance before turning fully towards Katsuki. The nerd’s mop of leafy curls wagged every time he moved his head— it was wildly infuriating.
“So,” Midoriya met his heavy, concrete glare, “you’ve really never played before?”
Katsuki took a seat at one of the two desks.
“I’m not a nerd.”
Midoriya smiled. “So you don’t know any of the rules?”
“Enlighten me,” Katsuki’s tone was mocking. He leaned over the table a bit, and the motion rattled foreign wooden pieces on the board between them.
“Well,” the other looked down at the light and dark squares— straightening a particularly wobbly piece towards the middle before looking back up, “have you ever played checkers?”
“Who hasn’t played checkers?”
“Some people.”
“I’ve played checkers.”
“You could have said ‘yes,' then.”
Katsuki disliked this guy more and more, with every passing second.
“You know what- I don’t have time to deal with this snarky-ass attitude of yours. Just teach me how to play so that I can beat you, and then hopefully I’ll never have to speak to you again.”
“Harsh.” Midoriya tilted his head. If Katsuki’s words had any effect on him, it didn’t show in his face.
“If you think that’s harsh, just you-”
“Chess is nothing like checkers,” Midoriya interrupted, “The boards are the same, but the rules, the gameplay, are completely different.”
“Why would you ask if I knew checkers then?”
“I just wanted to mention that they were not the same. Lots of people think they’re interchangeable, or something.”
“I know they’re different. Chess is prestigious and annoying.” Katsuki huffed, “Checkers is bearable.”
Midoriya hummed, “Noted.”
Katsuki hated the way he didn’t have an upper hand on this kid. He hated the way Midoriya responded to everything he said with a silver tongue. After all that blushing earlier, he’d expected… compliance. Or at least a different reaction to his aggression than this.
“In chess, there are six different types of pieces,” he told Katsuki, “Each has a separate set of rules. There are eight pawns, a pair of rooks, a pair of knights, a pair of bishops, a queen, and a king,” he pointed to pieces as he spoke.
“Needlessly complicated,” the blonde replied.
“Pawns move vertically forward one square. They can never move backward, and they capture diagonally. Pawns are the only piece to capture differently than the direction they move. On their first move, they can move two instead of one.”
Katsuki groaned.
“The other ones aren’t as elaborate,” he touched the piece with a flat head, “Rooks move horizontally or vertically any number of squares.”
He shifted to touch the one with a divot in its oval top, “Bishops move diagonally any number of squares. Neither rooks nor bishops are able to jump over other pieces.”
Then, he touched the horse, “Knights move in an ‘L’ shape— two squares in the horizontal or vertical direction, then one square in the opposite,” he moved the piece in an ‘L’ on the board to demonstrate, “they’re the only piece able to jump over others.”
“I’ve mentioned that this is needlessly complicated, right? Emphasis on needless.”
Midoriya persisted, tapping one of the tall pieces in the middle of the wooden army, “Queens move horizontally, vertically, diagonally, any number of squares.” He touched the one right next to the queen, with a cross poking out of its top, “Kings can move one square in any direction unless it puts them in check.”
“Check?”
“When your king is threatened by another piece, it’s in check. The point of the game is to put your opponent's king in check from every direction, rendering it immobile. This is called checkmate.”
“This is giving me a goddamn headache.”
“Do you not want to know the rest of the rules?”
“I’m not an idiot. I’ll figure it out as we go, let’s just play.”
“I’m the one with an attitude?” Midoriya’s grin didn’t waver.
“Fucking stop.”
The nerd lowered his eyes, and green flopped around on his forehead. He nodded up at Katsuki and said, “White goes first.”
Katsuki scanned his array of pieces, dressed in white. This was indeed complicated, but he got the gist. He moved a pawn forward two squares quickly, confidently, priding himself on the fact that he remembered that a pawn’s first move could be two.
Even if he didn’t know of strategy or norms, he’d learned long ago the benefit of a constant act of confidence.
Midoriya moved a pawn too. When he set it down in its new square, it barely made a sound.
Katsuki learned quickly that chess was a game of sacrifice.
He watched Midoriya take his pawns, trap him into moves that left him knight-less, queen-less, and down a bishop.
They played silently for the most part. Just the soft clicking of wood and little huffs of breath prove this interaction to be real. Midoriya didn’t share any telling expressions, so there were no clues of the right or wrongness in Katsuki’s moves. Except when he moved the knight diagonal, at one point. But even then, Midoriya corrected him swiftly, and they moved on.
Midoriya moved each piece quickly, actions smooth and practiced— infuriatingly so. Katsuki had never once, in all his years and battles, wanted to beat someone more than he wanted to beat Midoriya right now, if only to break his straight face.
Katsuki felt that he was getting the hang of it.
He’d put the idiot in check twice and in the next few moves, he planned to do it again with his-
“Checkmate,” said Midoriya.
Katsuki eyed the board.
Somehow, every direction was suddenly blocked for his king to escape. Trapped, dreadfully cornered. Katsuki’s stomach sank. He wanted to yell and curse and he’d forgotten about that goddamn knight, huh?
“You…”
No. No, no, this wasn’t just the knight. Katsuki squinted to further dissect the placement of the pieces.
He’d been…
He’d been setting this whole fucking thing up since the beginning, hadn’t he? He’d let Katuski have his pieces, for a reason. He’d let him think he was being smart, let him believe he could actually take him down, all so that he could crush him in this…
frankly beautiful, final move.
Katsuki wished he wasn’t fascinated by the stunning strategy, hidden intellect this boy seemed to have stored behind bug eyes and messy hair.
Only now, that he’d been defeated, could he see just how alluring this game could get. Right now, he felt the way he did after his team lost a football game. Except worse, because this loss had come to be purely of his own mistakes.
There was nobody else to blame but himself.
So this loss was beating his heart loud, beating him down, intense twirls of anger and longing mixing in his brain, egging him to show this nerd that he was as smart as him. Stronger than him.
Katsuki could barely defy his desire to punch Midoriya bloody, right there. Maybe he could use the little pieces to bruise that soft, pretty face.
When he looked back up, Midoriya’s hand was outstretched.
“Good game. For a first-time player, you’re not bad at all.”
Katsuki pointedly didn’t shake his hand. Midoriya took it back after it was clear that the other had no intention of taking it. Katsuki wished he could melt that fucking grin.
“Again,” the blonde insisted— shamefully, eagerly.
“Hm?”
“Let’s go again.”
“You sure?”
Katsuki didn’t answer. He just started setting up the pieces again, recalling the starting pattern to the best of his ability.
Midoriya must’ve been going easy on him the first time, because the next round went somehow, so much worse.
In… ten? Moves, Katsuki had fallen into mate.
It was as if Midoriya had planned the whole round out before they started. As if he knew where Katsuki was going to move before he knew himself. As if he could read his mind or something.
It was awful.
“Again,” said Katsuki, instead of using his arm to whack all the little pieces off of the board in a fitful rage.
Midoriya chuckled. He must’ve known Katsuki wouldn’t take his hand if he reached out to shake it, because he didn't do so after the second round.
Defeated. Again, defeated. Again, his thirst for victory rang loud in his ears— louder than it’d ever rung on a grassy field. It spilled into an iron grip on the pieces, making his knuckles white. Spilled into his red, hungry eyes of a predator in a cage.
Chess was a board game. The dumbest, stupidest, most beautiful board game. Katsuki groaned, leaned back in his chair, and rose aching palms to his eyes.
He heard Midoriya’s chair rattle when he stood.
“Get up,” said the naturally quiet voice.
Katsuki lowered his hands to his knees. His vision ran black and starry for a few seconds, and when he looked around the room, all the boards had been put away and students were moving desks back into their original positions.
“Huh?”
“Today’s session is over. It’s time to clean up.”
“Over?”
“We end at four,” Midoriya started lifting chess pieces from their board, the only one still out. He placed them into a little silk bag.
The way he touched the pieces was so delicate, like he was moving diamonds or fragile plaster.
“I hate you,” Katsuki said.
Midoriya lifted his eyebrows, lips turned up, “Noted.”
When all the pieces were put away, he raised the board. It folded into itself and he placed it in its box that’d been sitting on the floor, along with the bag of pieces.
“Welcome to the club. We meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from three to four.”
Midoriya picked up his backpack. Katsuki stood up, “I’m going to beat you.”
He didn’t respond. Emerald eyes bore into Katsuki’s— unreadable, and Katsuki didn’t know why he was suddenly envious of this boy’s ability to restrain emotions so well.
He repeated, “I promise, I will beat you.”
“You can try.”
Katsuki grabbed his own bag, practically stomping out of the room a second later. He didn’t look back.
He would beat Izuku Midoriya. In chess, and perhaps into the ground.