Work Text:
Katsuki sees traces of Izuku, sometimes.
Normally, Katsuki has to put up with Deku, with the useless nerd, with the useful hero—and if Deku was useful, then what was Katsuki?
(He’s starting to realize that he should stop complaining about putting up with Deku when Deku has to put up with him.)
It’s always been a dance between them. Katsuki demands; Deku smiles, hollow yet sincere, and defies. Katsuki sparks his palms; Deku backs off. It’s such an old dance that they can do it in their sleep—have, in fact, done it in their sleep on mornings after Aizawa trains them all past the point of exhaustion.
Sometimes, Deku misses a step. Sometimes, Deku will laugh where he is supposed to cower, retort where he is supposed to mumble. Sure, the laugh is strained, the retort a bit off, but that fact remained that it happened. It happened, and Katsuki has no idea what to do with it.
Sometimes Deku will reach a hand out, patient and shy, and Katsuki has to choke back the urge to put Deku in his place.
(Except this isn’t Deku. It’s Izuku. It’s always been Izuku.)
Deep down, Katsuki knows what Deku’s missteps are; they’re not errors at all, but tired, determined attempts at dragging Katsuki out of their old dance and into a new one, an equal one, a kind one.
It takes the brutal stripping away of half Katsuki’s temper and most of his pride to admit that he’s scared—scared that he doesn’t know the steps to Deku’s dance, scared that he won’t be Katsuki if he doesn’t have a Deku to dance the old dance of submission and fear.
(Scared that if he loses Deku, he’ll lose Izuku too.)
If he could just drag Deku into a room and tell him to stop being better than me, tell him you have All Might and I only have my pride, and maybe, eventually, impossibly, I’m sorry—
But Deku didn’t let himself get dragged around anymore, and Katsuki doesn’t have enough left of his pride to hate Deku for it.
(It infuriates him as much as it pleases him, to see Deku grovel to his every whim. Only now can he begin to admit that the pieces he hated most about Deku were pieces that Katsuki himself burnt into his once-friend.)
From behind him, Deku laughs, quiet and delighted, too caught up in the joy of whatever it was to remember that he was supposed to be embarrassed by the crime of making unwanted noises.
Katsuki sees traces of Izuku, sometimes.