The art of getting by

by Acnara

Summary:

He runs into this guy; as the buildings crumble, the sky falls on their heads and the world ends. As the birds sing and the new tomorrow comes.
Katsuki runs into him, again and again and again, until it feels like fate.

Or: tdbk keep running into each other during the alien invasion.

Notes:

• For chalk.

HIIIIII!! Reveal time hehehe. I really like these exchanges, they viciously force the "leaving everything in WIP" out of me. This one took a few tries because one thing about me is I find it hard to shut up. I will probably pick at this more until I manage to make it just perfect, but in the mean time I hope you liked it, Chalk :) You might find some interesting links on the end notes!!

 

(Me kicking the 6k of Starwars AU under the carpet 3 days before the deadline: nah this is gonna be too long gotta figure something else out
This soon to be 13k baby: bet.)

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 

The world as mankind knows it ends during an unsuspecting Friday afternoon, while Katsuki is on his way home from Physics II. The sky is bright blue, summer is just about to roll by, and Tsubasa is walking just a step behind him complaining about his major and a teacher Katsuki knows nothing about. 
 
(It was a nice afternoon. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could still remember every detail. The crisp colors in his roommate's round face as he cursed out his anatomy professor. The unease in his own stomach thinking about how close to finals they were. The lights in the sky, like shooting stars getting closer to the city instead of disappearing. Tsubasa’s “Hey, why did you stop?! I almost tripped on yo— Wait. Is that a comet?” The way the sky remained bright blue as the aliens began to fire down on them).
 
The sight of the spaceship looming over Musutafu central station is incredible. Better than any movie Katsuki has ever seen. It stops him dead in his tracks, awestruck. The machine hovers over one of the skyscrapers, weightless as if it hung from the clouds, black and smooth and elegant. A true work of art. Katsuki’s eyes drink it in and the analytical part of his brain points out how beautifully crafted it is.
 
 It kind of single-handedly ruins Fridays for Katsuki forever, though.

 

--o--

 

The city drowns in chaos. Katsuki loses Tsubasa in the crowd the second the third spaceship shows up in the sky. It is as deadly as the first two, but with the added fun factor of being small enough to get closer to the ground and shooting point blank at the mass of bodies trying to run away. Not that the aliens needed the extra help swiping the city clean. The buildings all around are crumbling, falling on top of the people trying to find their way back home.

Screams and smoke fill the air, and a big explosion coming from the east side of the city has the hair on his back standing up. He changes directions so fast he steps on something warm and wet and red and chunky —which ew gross  but also  fuck, fuck oh my god—,  and as he is trying to hold in his lunch at the sight of the spilled insides he just  buried his entire foot in, fuck, FUCK, when something sends him flying to the floor. Someone kicks him in the guts as they jump over him.

“Get out of the fucking way!”

A second figure runn pass him, not even looking down at him, and Katsuki is angry enough, confused and scared enough to stick a hand out, grab the second one by the pants and yank.

“ Fuck you!”  He screams, vindictive as the boy with the ugliest hair dye in the world meets the floor face first.  He gives another tug to the leg under his grip for good measure, making sure the asshole's face drags through the pavement. Hope that fucking hurts, bitch.

The boy turns, his hair half red and half white, and a scold so deep on his face that both his eyes look murderously black. There is a cut high on his cheek and his top lip is split, probably from the fall. Good. Halfie snarls at him, canines showing and everything, and he kicks Katsuki square in the face so hard he sees white for a second. 

The thing is, Katsuki has been into boxing for a while now, okay? He knows when a second punch might break his nose. He lets the boy go with a hiss, the taste of blood familiar behind his teeth.

There is no thank you. The taller one grabs Halfie by the back of his clothes and lifts him off the ground like a cat would a kitten, and neither of them even looks back at him. Katsuki barely manages to see the two idiots running towards a parking lot before a building collapses over them. In the blink of an eye, the one with white hair and piercings that had pushed him screams, pushing the other out of the way. Katsuki stands up and runs away.

 

—o--

It’s barely been two hours since the attack. His phone is useless, the signal dead for the last thirty minutes. He tried to check the news on his way here but the satellites must be down because he can't even get the WiFi to work. He gets pushed around as he moves against the thick of the survivors. He is trying to get deeper into the city's district while everyone else is trying to escape it. 

Katsuki's pulse is loud in his ears. It fogs his vision.

There are spaceships still hanging in the sky, he has seen around a dozen of them, but they are silent now. Frozen in the air. The silence is unnerving, but it's the sight in front of him makes his knees give out. 

There is a military helicopter peaking out from the roof of his house. There is fire coming out from the kitchen window. Half the house is  gone. His parents are nowhere to be found.

So that's it, huh? That's how the world just ends. Goddammit. He had so many dreams. So many things he wanted to do. He hadn't even taken his second year finals. He doesn't even know if LOONA is ever getting back together, fuck. He is not ready for everything to just be over. Not like this.

His heart is beating so fast. Too fast.

 

(That’s how Deku finds him. Deku, out of all the fucking people in this world, of course. Or maybe he finds Deku, because the creep is sitting right where Katsuki’s porch used to be, face buried on his knees and blood in his hair. He cries, because of course he does. 

“I’m sorry Kacchan, I was following and evacuation group when I saw the accident and— I’m so sorry I wanted to— I thought you died!  I...”

He doesn't have to say it, of course. He wanted to save Katsuki. Even if that meant leaving his mom with the police while they rounded up the survivors. Even if that meant he gave up a safe haven to go. They are not even friends. 

Fucking idiot.

 

It’s nice though. The sight of Deku makes the pain in his chest slightly less overwhelming. The water filling his lungs gives him a break. With Deku here, Katsuki has something to do. He can make a plan. Keep himself busy so he doesn't have sit whith his thoughts for a little longer.

Yeah. Yeah, Deku is here because Katsuki can handle this. He can handle anything. Alien Apocalypse fucking included).

 

—0--

 

Going to Shizuoka city might be an even worse idea than staying in Musutafu, but Deku won’t shut up about the safe zone the police were taking his mom to, about how all survivors would be heading to the larger city where the military would show up, no doubt. He suggests that maybe their families managed to escape, both of them, and Katsuki’s brain is too fried to put up a fight. 

Maybe the attack had only happened in Musutafu. Maybe the rest of Japan was safe. The military could be on its way as they speak. Deku shifts closer and tightens the grip on his waist, trying to hide his sniffling as Katsuki tries to ignore how the nerd is grossing out his jacket with his crying. 

Maybe, maybe,  maybe. 

The motorcycle under them hums as they fly across what's left of their neighborhood, dodging the remains of houses and abandoned vehicles clogging up the streets. Katsuki’s knuckles turn white around the hand clutch. His mom left her bike behind. Why wouldn't Mitsuki take the bike if they were leaving town? it was the fastest, most efficient method of getting anyone's ass out of town. 

Well, whatever. His parents are tough. If anyone could survive an alien invasion, laser cannons firing from the sky and everything, that's the fucking Bakugous. They knew Katsuki would be fine and left with whatever evacuation group had been organized.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

Deku makes a choked sound whenever they pass by unnatural, scorching holes in the ground. He sniffs at the sight of lonely pets roaming the streets. Cries for the burning houses and other survivors, some of them begging them for help or a ride. Katsuki tries not to look around, ignoring the pleads coming from the windows and the spacecraft shadows still over them, in the sky. He focuses on nothing but the road. Here, now. If he keeps the tasks simple he can achieve each one of them. Take the next turn. Slow down to go over that debris. Don’t look up, and don’t think about the shitty discs floating in the sky. Glowing purple, ready to fire again while he and Deku are here, easy targets. No, don't panic. Just keep your eyes on the road.

They turn left, engine screeching, and something on the edge of his vision catches his eye. A house burning. A young woman on the floor, shoulders shaking in a silent cry. And he stands there, covered in ashes so the white part of his hair looks gray. Halfie, face bare of any expression at all. He looks like a marble statue.

The pair gets lost down the road. Katsuki blinks. Breathe in, breathe out. As superficial as that breath might be, at least he is still fucking breathing.

 

—0—

The first night is rough. The second night is a fucking nightmare. Not because of the aliens. Or hunger. Or because they burst a wheel two hours ago and there is no fucking way they are making it to Shizuoka. It’s just because he hates Deku’s guts. 

 

Because Deku cries. Deku doesn’t know where north is. Deku can’t even find berries for dinner and tries to make a fire as if his damned peanut size brain can’t compute the fact that the spacecrafts started moving again ten minutes ago, and if they make a   fire  they are gonna get  spotted,  and Katsuki doesn’t  care  that they are both freezing to death. He would rather be cold than shot.

And Deku looks at Katsuki like that. As if Katsuki cares about his hag's stupid bike. He doesn’t care that they have to leave it behind. He is pragmatic like that. It's no big deal. It's a bike, not his actual mother. If Deku just stopped making it a big deal. 

(“We will come back for it. When this is over you can even gift it back to your mom! I'm sure she will be happy to see it again. I don’t think anyone is going to steal it, it’s kind of useless without a wheel. And I don't think the aliens need it —I mean, they can fly. I wouldn't take random bikes off the road if I could fly. Not that I know what an alien thinks! Maybe they would find it interesting. I find their aircrafts so cool.")

Deku rambles and mutters and talks himself into corners, driving Katsuki further down his own rabbit hole with each word. 

(Cause what if he can't return the bike? What if his mom is dead? His phone run out of battery at some point in the last 72 hours and he can't even check what was the last thing he said to her. Probably something awful.) 

But Deku talks. Smiles. And the grit in his face lets you trace the tracks his last tears left behind. And he starts to pack and talks about getting to Shizuoka as if Katsuki hasn’t been calling him names for ten solid minutes. Unphased. Unshakeable. Ever positive in any given situation, parroting Kacchan nonstop while Katsuki’s fingers can't stop trembling. How is he doing that when Katsuki just wants to sink into the pavement and disappear? Drown in the concrete and be done with it all. 

(Cause what if everyone but him Deku is dead? What if his thesis professor is dead? Then he can't graduate. Is he a college dropout now? Does that even matter anymore? It used to be the only thing that mattered to him. His degree, internships, and success. His bright future. What a bright fucking future awaits him now.)

(... But Deku doesn't have to think about those things. Ever the fucking perfect son, with his probably alive mother and so few goals in life he might as well be stuck in this hellish situation and find it  so cool.)

It fucking pisses him off. 

Katsuki hasn’t hit him in years, not since they sort of mended their relationship enough to go on their separate ways and be civil when crossing paths at the grocery store. Hasn’t hit anyone outside a ring in a long time, for that matter. When the punch comes it does so naturally that it’s almost scary.

No one has swung back at him outside the ring in a fucking long time either. Aside from Halfie kicking his teeth in, that is. Deku punches back, eyes dark. He has a mean right hook. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Morning comes and Deku keeps walking, like he always does. And Katsuki follows, silent and face swollen, because Deku is the only thing that remains from his life before everything went to shit, and he can’t let it go. Doesn't want to let him go. Looks like he might have to learn to live with it. 

 

(He hasn't been able to cry yet. Not a single tear. Maybe that's what pisses him off the most. Deku looks so relieved after he cries.)

 

—0—

 

Shit’s like this, okay? They make a good team. They stay away from the main road to avoid travelling on plain sight and, even if their teamwork is not that great, Deku is not that bad at keeping himself alive. He is quick on his feet and most of his plans are okay. Good, even. So they see them in the distance, ugly-ass robotic jellyfish walking around the edges of Musutafu as if they are guarding the city, they are not scared. Not much, anyway. Not over the reasonable amount of scared one is supposed to be when an alien species taller than a building tall invades your hometown. 
 
The robots never move too far from Musutafu, but they force Katsuki and Deku to hide in an abandoned warehouse immediately, their plans for reaching Shizuoka taking hold for the time being. Neither of them wants to find out what those things might do if they spot them walking around. 
 
Sometimes they hear screams comming from the city in the quiet of the night. Deku tenses, but none of them move.

 

—0—

 

Turns out near-death experiences never come alone. They like to hang out together in tight and stealthy groups of three or whatever the fuck, because they don’t let Katsuki catch a break.

First, the alien attack. Obviously. An easy one to recognize. A once in a lifetime experience, hopefully. In the scale of ways to die it would have an overall score of 10/10. Took everyone by surprise, very hard to avoid, and somewhat of a cool aesthetic. A very American-movie way to go.

Second one? That food poisoning from three nights ago. 6/10. KInd of unexpected, but he should have seen it coming anyway. No more letting Deku go berry picking. That’s on Katsuki, he should have known better than to let the nerd take care of the food. Puking for half a day straight was his divine punishment. 

(They fought afterward. Which turns out to be very good for their relationship. Using each other as punching bags is doing wonders for their sleeping schedule. It’s not the healthiest way of dealing with the all-consuming dread of watching the world fall apart in front of your very eyes and the anguish of thinking your entire family is dead, but it works for them. His fists still hurt.)

This way to die though? A solid 0/10, incredibly obvious, totally their fault. Very dumb mistake on their part.

After three uninterrupted nights of hearing people calling for help, a spacecraft mysteriously wanders off a bit too far from the city. The spacecraft mysteriously makes the equivalent sound to nails on a chalkboard and crushes into the ground, conveniently close to the little stable house Katsuki and Deku have been sleeping the last two days. It somehow takes Deku sixteen full minutes before he decides  fuck it, I’m gonna go see it and I don’t care what you think, Kacchan. 

Of course, something comes out of the spaceship. Something big and purple hits Katsuki on the head so hard it sends him flying before he can even process what is going on. With his ears ringing and vision blurry, he can barely make out the features of the thing that is slowly emerging from the ball of twisted metal. It has a yellow, duck-beak mouth, bug eyes and, God, that’s fucking nasty,  part of its brain is exposed. 

The creature twists its neck, eyes fixed on him and ready to charge again. He opens its beak, never breaking eye contact, and the voice of a man comes out of it. Help! Help!

The screams up close sound way less human than they do at night. As if the monster is playing screams recorded in the lowest quality possible.

Things happen very quickly after that. The thing changes voices, now a woman cries help me please, my baby, a poor baby!, as the alien rips its body off the spacecraft, gaze locked on Katsuki. 

He is about to die. He knows it. His pulse is beating hard right behind his eyes and  fuck me, I’m going to die in a Looney Toons level trap. 

And the alien's eyes get slightly yellow. For a moment Katsuki can see the insides of its head, as if the alien had swallowed a lightbulb. Then, it just… explodes. 

Blood and viscera splash onto Katsuki’s face, some might even get into his mout— no, he can’t even think of it. He swipes the warm remains of the alien off of his face, getting purple goo all over his sleeves. On the other side of the alien, there is Deku. Deku holding a long, heavy-looking cylinder in his hands, and so startled you wouldn’t ever guess he is probably the first man in Musutafu, if not Japan, to ever kill an alien. 

Well, maybe he is the second or third. He is the first one Katsuki has ever seen, that’s the important part here. Deku, whose greatest achievement before the apocalypse had been running a popular All Might fanblog. 

But again, near-death experiences never come one at a time. With the literal apocalypse came falling buildings and helicopters, with the food poisoning came dehydration and hearing Deku almost barf his guts out three times in a row. And now, well. As Deku’s face stretches into a smile, the body of this fucking thing moves . 

“FIRE AGAIN” Katsuki hears himself scream, his throat burning. Deku just looks at him with that dumb expression of his. “FIRE AGAIN, FUCK, COME ON.”

The cursing seems to finally spark something in Deku's brain, because the idiot starts to pat down the metal in his hands like a lunatic, panicking“I DON’T KNOW HOW I DID IT THE FIRST TIME!”

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”

It's funny, in retrospect. There is Katsuki, screaming at the top of his lungs, and Deku, fumbling around with an alien gun as the freshly decapitated body of the alien starts to stand up. And as he is about to die, again, a red sports car crashes into the body. It sends the alien rolling over the dirt and it stops moving for good.

It’s been almost a week, but there is no mistaking that hair. The woman in Halfie’s passenger seat sticks her head out of the car and waves.

“Need a ride?”

 

—0—

 

Halfie and his sister are going to Shizuoka’s central hospital. It’s not close to the refugee center the police had mentioned to Deku, but a ride is a ride. And Katsuki’s eardrums are still tingling from that alien gun’s blast, and the whole almost dying again thing, so he gets in the car and is happy to turn off his brain for a while. They squish in the back seat, just Katsuki, Katsuki's kind of only friend left on earth, and said friend's alien firegun. That thing is roughly the size of Deku's thigh.

The nerd also managed to give himself a nasty cut on the arm, right below the elbow. They will need to get that checked.
 
The siblings are looking for their mother and brother. Apparently, Musutafu city has become a death trap for humans, and the little voice tricks the alien had tried to fool them with was a staple hunting tactic of theirs. Luring humans out and capturing them. Fucking assholes. 
 
Halfie drives. Fast and precise even though no other spaceships seem to be following them. He avoids most of the bumps in the road and Katsuki tries to drown the yapping between Deku and the sister. She seems cheerful, for some reason. Deku, arm swollen and half covered in green goo, is explaining to her in great detail his mom's katsudon recipe.

When Katsuki looks up —he's left a little trail of blood on the car window, a small cut on his eyebrow still bleeding— and he locks eyes with Halfie through the rearview. He looks focused. Intense. The severe look almost ruins his surprisingly good looks. Even the scar on his face looks less intimidating than whatever is going on behind the dead empty look in his eyes.

Katsuki doesn’t ask about the boy Halfie had been with. Something in his stare feels like a warning. Maybe the sister doesn't know. Or she hasn't found out yet. You hardly have to be a genius to figure out what his secret is, but still. Not his problem.

Damn, he might be a little delirious from all that almost dying, but it's strange how someone can look so nice and presentable while driving a dirty car in the middle of an apocalypse. Halfie looks like a movie star in real life. Even the dirt and sweat seem to be carefully arranged around his cheeks and jaw to give him the perfect action star pretty look. But the death staring plus no face expression combo really is killing his pretty boy charm.
 
(“Shouto calls them Nomus.”

"Like the video game monsters? You play too?”

“I swear to God, if anyone here starts to geek out about All Might game references, I’ll fucking kill you all. I promise.”)

 

 
(They do look like Nomus though. The name sticks with Deku, and so do the siblings. He cries a bit when the pair drops them near the city center. The nerd is smart enough to know they will never see the pair again.

Good riddance.)

 

—0—

 

They find survivors. Not the ones they are looking for, not Deku's mom, but something else. A little society of sorts. Hiding in the tunnels of the metro like rats, but alive. Deku smiles and says sorry and thank you, and everyone looks at him with a bit less suspicion than they do Katsuki. The end of the world has made everyone wary in less than a month, but here they are fed and safe. And they have Deku’s gun, which turns out to be a big part of why the survivors are so eager to let them stay. At least they are not dumb. And they take care of Deku's wound.

The cut looks bad, oozes a dark puple slime of a couple of days, but Deku seems to be completely fine.

They find out that every city has been attacked. That there is no running way from this. They can't even comunicate with the capital to ask for help, and the military either never came or they are long gone.

They stay, beacuse the city if filled with aliens and they have nowhere else to go. The days turn into weeks and months.

The thing is, now that he is not in immediate mortal danger, Katsuki could have much more time to think. So he helps with cooking and cleaning. Joins Deku in his inevitable descent into thinking he can make a difference in the world and gets busy with maps, finding shops and markets they could raid, far from alien patrols. Eventually, Deku gets a spot in the radio room. He tries to get Katsuki involved a couple of times, but Katsuki turns him down each time. 

The nerd is still looking for their parents. Gets into that radio room every day hoping someone he recognizes would pick the other end of the line. Katsuki can’t be bothered. After weeks of starvation, anger and fear, he can't be bothered. He is too busy to think about his parents, other survivors, or the future beyond walking up tomorrow. Wake up, find supplies, try to find a way to operate the alien gun, cook, sleep, repeat. One task, then the next, and he can almost forget about the concrete over his head shielding him from reality.

There is a rhythm here. Things that have to be done. Things he has to get done.

(And Katsuki works; works; works; and never thinks. And the numbness, while he is awake, is a blessing compared to the Nomus in his nightmares. Twisted monsters that use his dad's voice and his mom's screams and force Katsuki to think about how they know what his parents sound like. The Nomus that charge at him and he can't move, thinking and now I die, I die, I die )

Eventually, a tall man called Hakamada —Jeanist, as Katsuki calls him, fucking jean overalls from head to toe— takes him under his wing. The man puts Katsuki's engineering degree to good use and he helps fix things around their tunnels, always under Jeanist's watchful eye.

There is a purpose for him here. He keeps these people safe. Makes sure Deku doesn’t kill himself in any self-sacrificing way. And that’s enough for him. 

(It has to be. It's not like there is anything else out there for him. Not really. Tomorrow is gone. The tomorrow he wanted, the one he fought for, the only one that matters. That shit is gone now. So what if he doesn't want to think about it?)

And if sometimes Deku, and even Jeanist, send concern looks his way, he doesn’t care. He is not “fading”. He is fucking fine.

Turns out people don’t like him when he is loud, and also don’t like him when he is quiet, so fuck them all. 

(He is neither of them, nowadays. It does scare him a bit how unfaced he feels lately. Like there is a thin fog inside his brain cushioning every thought and feeling. It gets thicker and thicker as time goes by. It's even hard to be angry. Feeling slightly miserable is easier. Less tiring. Sometimes he just lays in bed, awake all night and good part of the morning, and doesn't do a single think outside of his robotic tasks. Some days even looking at Deku's alien tech, watching him tamper with it, sends nausea down his throat.)

Eventually Deku stops going to the infirmary every few days. He assures Katsuki that the wound is compltely healed. Katsuki can't find it in himself to check and takes his word for it. Deku does look normal, after all.

 

He only calls Deku “Izuku” once, though. The look in his eyes is somehow so monumentally earth-shattering, so sad and concerned that he buries the name deep in the back of his brain and locks it under everything else he would rather forget about. Like the helicopter, and the bike, and the broken spaceship, and the eyes of that first Nomu they had seen, who had red wings and kept looking at Katsuki like it knew him.

So there it is. He doesn’t think about it, and things are okay. Help Jeanist, be a bit of a dick to Deku so the bitch doesn’t start crying and worrying, avoid the radio room and forget the faces of any passers-by, because if they don’t stay they will be soon dead. That’s why Halfie and her sister are still missing, even though Deku told him they managed to get in contact with the hospital last week. They are dead, just like everyone else. Every one. 

(So what if he laughs when Jeanist asks him about his plans for the future? What future? He is just waiting until death catches up with him. His turn will come sooner or later.)

He doesn’t really think about it. Works hard, gets by. Until he doesn’t.

Good things never last in this brand new and not at all terrible world, after all. Someone gets cocky and tries to fight the Nomus positioned near the camp. The aliens of course follow the idiots back to camp and attack.

Katsuki had gone on a last minute patrol with Jeanist.

He can’t even find Deku's body under the debris.

—0—

Jeanist wants him to join the survivors and go west, near the edge of the city. It would be harder to find food and medicine, but there is less Nomu activity. It will be easier to hide and start again.

Katsuki is tired of starting again.

He watches them go and thinks dead, dead, eyes jumping from head to head in the crowd as the memory of the Nomu’s head falling apart repeats as a loop in his mind.

There is nothing here for him. In this city, or this country, or anywhere else. And he feels… numb, about it. He has been trying not to drown for so long, and if Deku is gone, and his mother and father are gone, and Jeanist is gone, he doesn’t feel like staying afloat any longer. Letting the water finally over his head is almost a relief. 

The fuckers are going to pay tho. Everyone knows where the main Nomu nest on this side of the city is, and Katsuki is tired of waiting to be the next in line to the pearly white gates. He has faced death more times than he can count in the last four months. For the first time, he fucking wants to go out swinging. 

He takes his sorry ass from the floor and starts walking the opposite way from the survivors, into the heart of the city.

 

(He is done waiting for death to eventually come find him. It's time to go find the fucker himself. Blow up the nest and go out like a hero, Deku's style.)

 

—0—

 

He moves around the city like a ghost, keeping a low profile as the buildings arond him start looking more and more decayed as he marches onwards. He avoids rooftops and big, open streets. Not because he particularly cares if any aliens find him, they are fucking welcome to try, but because the plan is reaching the nest. And he needs a plan to stick to. Doesn't matter how imposisible it sounds the more he thinks about it. He just needs to keep himslef going until he reaches the nest.

Then he can go scream at Deku in the afterlife for leaving him alone in this hellish place.

But maybe the apocalypse has turned into too much of a cynic, because when he sees fucking Halfie stalking the Nomu’s nest the first thing that crosses his mind is damn it, couldn’t even be original about it. 

The next one is fuck, he is gonna get himself killed.  Which, yeah. Halfie here stealing his plan.

The thing is, Katsuki is not being dumb about it. He is in an abandoned bobba shop, keeping an eye on the perimeter, stalking his prey from the other side of the plaza, as one does. He is not strolling around, dangerously close to the Nest, limping. Although Halfie does have a weapon, a gun visibly raised in front of his face and another sticking from the back of his pants. Unlike Katsuki, who is hidden but only has a baseball bat and a swingshot.

Only the dumbest of all fucking idiots survived the apocalypse, that's for sure. Save for Jeanist, maybe. If he is still alive out there, somewhere. 

He intercepts the fucker with a little light trick he used to pull on Deku when they were younger. The sunlight reflects on Katsuki's watch —one of the only working gadgets he owns since the electricity of the city when to shit, a month and a half into their alien overlords arrival. It hits Halfie right in the face and he turns, gun first. His eyes grow big when he sees Katsuki in the window, down the road.

He would have probably made that same dumb face when the Nomus found him in his little adventure and killed him. All surprised and taken out of his rhythm. A little bit like Katsuki felt when he saw him.

 

—0—

 

Todoroki doesn’t talk much. But he is here, walking into Nomu territory, no sister, no mother or brother, and fresh burns that extend past the rim of his neckline. Katsuki doesn’t have to ask. He can see the same fire that burns inside his chest reflected in Todoroki’s eyes. Thankfully Todoroki doesn't ask about Deku either.

He feeds Halfie, happy with the way he downs the cheap-ass microwaved ramen noodles Katsuki has been eating for the past week like they are the most delicious shit he has ever tasted. 

Maybe he is just hungry. The hollows of his cheeks point in that direction, for sure. He looks haunting, but somehow he still retains the soft J-Pop idol look Katsuki remembers from the ride to Shizuoka. God, it’s been ages. He had almost forgotten this idiot has two-toned eyes.

They are close enough to the nest to hear the Nomus roaming outside. The nest had been built in what remained of a small bar, with purple tentacles, thick as a grown man's arm covering the front of the building. From up close the tentacles seemed to glimmer. Gives him the creeps.

Todoroki's shoulders are tense, one eye always watching the door. Katsuki studies his face in silence, back against the wall. Up close and personal he can see that the boy is a redhead, has the freckles and everything to prove it, but is also half albino or something like that. The red coloring is cut straight down the middle, not a single freckle getting over the imaginary line that parts his right and left sides. Even the hair in his arms, visible now that he has pushed up his sleeves, is two different colors. It’s kind of freaky. 

They sit in silence for a while. Todoroki keeps eating, and Katsuki keeps studying him, and they both don’t ask about before or why  or anything like that. And Katsuki pretends he is not fucking happy to see him, this dumb idiot that he keeps running into in the worst possible situations. 

Todoroki holds the plastic cup to his lips and drinks whatever flavored water is left of the ramen, a single drop escaping his lips and running along his neck. Katsuki shits in place. Todoroki catches the drop before it can reach his collarbone and dries a hand in his pants.

“There is a little girl," his voice is rough, as if hasn't spoken in a while. He can relate to that. "A couple of blocks down the road. She is alone. And. Uhm. Ankle.” 

Straight to the point. No watering it down. Katsuki can appreciate honesty.

He bites the inside of his cheek. This deep inside the city moving is difficult. Especially carrying a child. And an injured child at that. By the edge of their territory, the Nomus are even more aggressive, trying to capture any human they can before they manage to flee the city. It’s almost as much of a suicide mission as getting the bomb resting in the corner of the shop that Katsuki has been making into the Nomu nest. 

Alone, Todoroki would never make it. He would get spotted, caught, wouldn't be able to run away. You can't carry a child and take an accurate shot at the same time. He would have to watch the kid die. 

Yeah, he gets why Todoroki left her there. He also gets where this conversation is leading.

It's not impossible with two people involved. Hard, yes, but doable. It could work. Todoroki is looking at the floor, playing with the rim of the instant noodles cup. 

"She needs help."

If it doesn't work, well. Katsuki could die a fucking hero, like those All Might comics he loved as a kid. That is better than hiding underground, better than waiting for the Nomus to find him in his little bobba shop while he tries to put together a homemade bomb that might not even work. Maybe he can win by saving someone, for once. Like Deku would.

Deku would not leave the kid behind. And Katsuki is not Deku but, with Todoroki by his side, maybe he can be the imitation of him that this girl needs to survive another day. 

“There is a camp, west of here. Good people. They had kids too.”

Neither of them talk. Todoroki doesn't ask Katsuki how he knows about a camp but is here, alone in the city. And Katsuki doesn't ask why he is here, limping outside a Nomu nest with a half loaded gun.

Maybe together they can take one step at a time, and give someone a tomorrow to look forward to. They can at least try. 

(Deep down, maybe both of them were hoping to find something worth keep fighting for before reaching the nest. Or something like that. Hell if Katsuki knows, he doesn't do this feelings shit.)

 

 

They leave in the morning.

 

—0—

 

The kid looks so much like Todoroki’s sister it fucking hurts to look at her. Big round eyes and white hair, her eyes lighting up the second she sees Halfie’s dumb pretty head pop into the room. 
 
“You came back.” She whispers, and Todoroki doesn’t look Katsuki in the eye. Maybe he is ashamed that he made her promises. Katsuki knows he did not plan to come back, but honestly who would? It’s not like he could have saved her. They might all still die here, promise kept or not. 

The girl's house is a shady looking building at the end of a dead-end street, and the state of the house is bad even for the apocalyptic situation they are currently living. The bandages covering her arms are filthy, a striking contrast to the quick fix Halfie had done to her ankle. 

Katsuki would rather not know, so he doesn't ask. He checks the whole building just in case someone else is around.

Todoroki had found the house while looking for a place to treat the cut on his thigh. She found him swiping the kitchen cabinets clean. Stands to reason someone else might have slipped in in the meantime.

“Hey, Eri,” Todoroki smiles, walking towards the girl slowly and carefully to not frighten her. Katsuki has never seen the fucker smile. It’s the softest, most heartwarming sight he has ever seen. What the hell is he doing that for.
 
The girl stares at him like he hangs the sun from the sky or something. She doesn't even look at Katsuki when Todoroki points at him. “This is Bakugou.”
 
“No one ever comes back.”
 
Todoroki’s soft smile falls. It feels like a crime of lesser humanity on the little girl’s part. 

That's... a weird thought to have in the middle of a rescue. Katsuki huffs, kicking an opened can of beans under a counter with a little more force than necessary.
 
“This is all very fucking touching, but we have to keep moving. Get your ass up, kid.”

 

 

(Katsuki makes them stop by a pharmacy on their way out of the district. The kid is long asleep, clinging to Todoroki's back. Her face is pressed between his neck and a cat stuffed animal that looks as unsanitary as her ragged clothes.

"Get some proper bandages, asshole. I'll be dammed if I go through all this trouble just for her to get an infection and die anyway."

Todoroki stares at him as Katsuki has grown two fuking heads or something. Then he blinks and nods, a determined glint in his eyes.

He fills his pockets with first aid equipment and grabs an extra belt to carry even more stuff. When Katsuki raises a questioning brow at the number of bandages he is trying to fit in the back pocket of his pants he just shrugs. 

"We might find others who need it.")

—0—

 

Eri is nice enough. She is quiet and doesn’t throw much of a fit when Todoroki suggests that they can take turns carrying her so they will be lighter on their feet. 

It's efficient. They cover a long distance like that, one carrying Eri and the other opening the way, gun or bat at the ready.
 
“He is a Prince, and you are his knight,” she says one night, when Halfie is out there scouting tomorrow’s route from the top of the building. It’s a risky move, the Nomus are taking their jellyfish robots out again, but it’s better than running blind and finding themselves face first with a nest, or at the wrong end of a blaster. Those plasma guns the aliens carry hurt like a bitch, even if they don’t kill you. Todorki's thigh and Katsuki's side can attest to it
 
"Hah? The fuck are you talking about, kid?"

“He is pretty, like a prince,” she explains, petting the cat plushie they had found her with. “And good. He came back with you. Big and strong so he could save us. I was afraid he gave me Tabby because he wasn’t coming back. A lot of people give me things when they leave. Makes them feel better, I think.” 

The toy stares at Katsuki with its dumb button eyes. It was white at point, but now all that remains is grey wool and a weird stain around one of the sides of it's head. It looks a bit like Halfie, honestly. It's something Katsuki might have picked up from a shelf himself to give to him. Like ha, look, it looks as dumb as you.

Ah shit, Todoroki gave the kid a present someone else gave him, didn't he? Fucking sap. 

 

 

When Todorki comes back he can't resist the teasing. Just a little. It's so easy.

“Hey Princess, tonight we have canned tuna for dinner.”

“What?”

 

(He does look a bit like a prince. Regal and elegant. Pretty. Whatever.)

 

—0—

 

 

They reach the edge of the Nomu territory without much trouble. They barely avoid danger a couple of times, but nothing major. They eat and sleep, and even manage to make Eri smile quite a bit along the way. Their peculiar trio becomes a small bubble in the city, and Todoroki...

 

Well, Todoroki is not how Katsuki expected him to be. 

 

He is smart, quick on his feet, and scarily accurate with a gun. Good at close combat too. Can find and follow a trail like hound. Can treat wounds and never flinches when Katsuki screams at him. And he is soft, when needed. Blunt and kind and dumb, too. He feeds stray animals and holds Eri's hand if she asks. He doesn't get most pop culture references outside of All Might comics and is a bit slow with sarcasm. It's like he was raised in a crystal palace very far away from the world.

 

(Todoroki likes to look at the sky at night. He stares at the stars and sometimes, if Katsuki sits still enough, he would lean against him and ask Katsuki to tell him stories. Nice stories, where there are no aliens in the streets and the good guys always win in the end.

They don't speak about it. Ever. But it's nice.)

 

(It's very nice, so it can't last.)

 

It’s like death is toying with Katsuki, blowing a breath on the back of his neck. Tickling him every once in a while, so he won’t forget he is living in an awful time and place and should hate his life. 

 

They fall into an ambush, Katsuki carrying Eri on his back. Todoroki passes right by a car as he chats with Eri about a cat they had found in the streets last night. The car explodes.

 

Message fucking received.  

Loud and clear.

 

It takes a moment for Katsuki’s ears to get used to the ringing, and three Nomus round a corner and open fire on them. His body freezes in place.

 

Two smaller ones, and a big one. The big one is looking at him. It’s moving towards him.

 

For a moment he is back in Musutafu, the winged Nomu crawling out of the spaceship. Charging against him. Something crushes his chest and he can’t breathe, fear suddenly overwhelming his senses. Eri’s nails bite the back of his neck. 

 

Fuck, Eri. Eri.

 

Todoroki rolls on the ground —thank   fuck   he is alive— and shoots the two aliens closer to him dead in the face. It's not enough. He takes aim again, and this time the smallest Nomu falls to the ground with a screech, blaster falling from its claws. The second one opens fire immediately and Todorki is forced to hide on the other side of the street.

He is going to run out of bullets eventually. Katsuki can't charge with his bat with Eri on his back. Fuck, they are so dead. Fuck. He needs to do something!

 

Eri clings to him, sobbing in his ear, and one of her legs kicks Katsuki's bag. And the homemade bomb he carries in it.

It feels like a sort of epiphany. The closest thing to it Katsuki has ever experienced, at least.

 

(Jeanist voice as he looks over his shoulder, can you make that work?)

 

The bomb is nothing but a prototype. It might not even work. But there is a chance. And that's all he really needs, isn't it?

He thinks of Deku, holding onto dear life in his mom’s motorbike. The big Nomu takes another step towards them, and Katsuki takes a deep breath for the first time since a black spaceship showed up over Musutafu’s central station. For the first time in forever, maybe.

 

He is fucking Bakugo Katsuki, and he is going to kill some goddanmed aliens.

 

"Eri, I need you to get down. Hide behind us."

"Bakugou!" Todorki screams from behind a car. "What are you doing."

"Cover me, Halfie!"

Eri gets off of him and Katsuki takes the grenade in his hand and runs straight toward the middle of the street. He can hear Todorki shooting in the background, giving him some coverage.

He throws the grenade and prays to every deity out there for it to work. 

The explosive makes a perfect arc in the sky. It falls down on a car just as he slides on the floor, taking a little souvenir from the ground.

The car explodes, bathing the big one in fire. Todoroki takes the opportunity to get closer to the second Nomu. He presses onto it with military efficiency. His hands don't even tremble as he gets closer, still shooting and never missing his target.

The big Nomu moves, burning alive but not down yet. Katsuki whistles at him, and when the Nomu turns to roar at him, he takes aim and shoots his brand new alien gun. Fuck yeah.

He fires at the second Nomu too, making sure to aim at the exposed brains. The soft flesh seems to be a tender spot, and the alien gun blows the bitch apart before Todoroki can finish the job. The Nomu falls down. Halfie looks at him, surprised, and Katsuki can’t hold in a manic laugh. Eri is still sobbing as she crosses the street and runs towards him.

“Yeah, take that!” He screams, throwing his arms over his head as he fires one last plasma laser into the sky. They only sent three aliens? Well, they underestimated him. Katsuki is going to send every last one of them to hell. 

He opens his arms, ready to catch a sobbing Eri quickly approaching him, when something moves behind her. 

The big was not done. Half of its face is missing and his lower half is on fire, but he is not down. It looms over Eri and the girl turns, screaming at the top of her lungs. And Katsuki is not going to be fast enough to take aim and shoot again.

The Nomu takes another step, Eri screeches and falls to the ground. Suddenly something sticks out of the Nomu's left eye. It takes another step and falls to the ground, barely avoiding crushing Eri under its weight.

It's a deadly shot. Todoroki is down, arm barely raised for the ground and a determined look in his eye. The handle of a throwing knife is sitcking out the back of the Nomu’s head.

 

“Always take a second shoot.” Halfie says, breathless. He has blood all over his face. He looks—

 

Bakugo can only nod and stare at him, a strange strain in his chest and Eri's crying filling the air.

 

 

—0—

 

They find the camp. Or the camp finds them. Depends on who you ask. They call themselves the Resistance and have way more guns than Shouto and Katsuki together. All of them are raised and pointing at them. A dude with purple hair and bad manners takes a warning shot right by Todoroki’s injured leg and Katsuki almost goes feral on him. 

 

Luckily, Jeanist recognizes Bakugo under all the grit and blood before he has the chance to shoot the dumbass between the eyebrows.

 

Aizawa, their new leader, recognizes Todoroki’s last name.

 

Turns out Todorki’s father is some big strong military man and that’s how Todoroki knows self-defense, how to throw knives, and all those other things that saved his and Bakugo’s ass in the last couple of weeks. Katsuki would be lying if he said it didn’t feel like cheating. A little bit. The guy was trained as a death machine, and here Katsuki was thinking it was anxiety and depression keeping him Todoroki levels of skill. Todoroki’s face is unreadable as Katsuki screams as much in his face later. 

 

Todoroki Senior is leading another group of rebels in the south. That’s what Aizawa tells them that night, anyway. Between warm bowls of soup and Shinso’s careful eye, Aizawa speaks of a rebellion, a proper one. Organized and armed. 

 

About an alien Mother Ship deep in the heart of the city. A perfect sphere half buried in the ground with a mix of biological and metal tentacles that extend around the metropolis, digging into the buildings and ground around. The scouts say it looks like a heart, poisoning the soil as it pulses with a life of its own. 

 

Sounds like a bunch of bullshit, but once you have lived enough time through the apocalypse things that sound like bullshit start to feel slightly less bullshitty. Like, six months ago he was wondering about his mechanical engineering finals, and now he is here. So, perspective. Very shifty thing.

 

That’s how Todoroki packs his things —five personal rations of ramen noodles, his two loaded guns, and his knives. And Eri’s cat plushie she insists on him taking. The plushie is missing an ear after their last encounter with the Nomus, so Eri patches him up with some yellowed bandages and hangs it from Todoroki’s backpack. 

 

She gives Todoroki a little kiss on the cheek, then another to the cat. Todoroki’s face is stone cold, but he melts a little when Aizawa carries Eri back to the camp.

 

Halfie is leaving with the group of volunteers that is heading south. Katsuki stays, because the Nomus he has to kill first are the ones that followed Katsuki’s last family back home and killed them all in a subway tunnel. Those Nomus are all here, and he can't leave.

 

They hang around each other as the rest of the group packs. Looks like both of them are awkward at goodbyes. Todoroki is staring at him, a frown deep on his features. It's obvious that he wants to say something, because the idiot must have been raised in a barn or something, and is as subtle as Katsuki's homemade hand grenades.

 

“Spit it.” There is no malice behind the words, and Todoroki chuckles. Katsuki takes it as a win. 

 

“Don't forget to double tap.”

 

“Hah?”

 

“It's a thing from an American movie. A zombie movie but, saving the distance between one apocalypse to another...”

 

“You really take advice from movies, Halfie? Fuck me, and here I thought you had some brains.”

 

Todoroki just smiles. It warms Katsuki’s ears for some reason. Maybe it's the way the skin on his ginger-side eye wrinkles, making the blue eye pop against the burnt skin. Katsuki’s guts twist a bit at the sight.

 

“Rule number two of a zombie attack: Double Tap. You think it’s dead, one more shot makes 100% sure it stays dead.”

 

The irony is not lost on him. Todoroki has saved his life twice now, all thanks to that Double Tap thing. (Maybe three times, if he counts the time they stopped each other from going on a suicide mission fueled by rage and anguish and despair. But who's counting.)

 

“And what’s rule number one?” He teases, just to see Todoroki’s eyes light up once again.

 

“Dunno. Didn’t pay that much attention.”

 

They stand there, not  ot smiling at each other until one of the volunteers, a huge dude named Inasa, starts to lead the group out of the camp. 

 

Todoroki shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Well. See you when I see you.”

 

And— You know what? Okay. Katsuki can live with that. The world is fucking horrible, but he can fight back. He can help reclaim some ground for humanity, or whatever. And he can live enough to see this fucker again. He might need his ass saved by Katsuki's grenades again.

 

 

 

The cat plushie looks ridiculous, bouncing left to right with each one of Todoroki’s steps, as he runs to catch up with the rest of the group.

 

 

 

“They left,” Shinso says, emerging out of the shadows like the creepy eye bagged freak he is. He is giving him weird side eye too, arms crossed over his chest, and a funky-looking ponytail keeping his bangs away from his face. So Eri got to him, huh?

Katsuki breathes in. Deep and long. With purpose. “Yeah, they left.”

“He your friend?”

“Nah, we just keep meeting.”

Shinso clicks his tongue. Stays silent for a while, then says: “Well, then let me give you the number one rule of the apocalypse, genius. Don’t be a fucking hero.”

 

 

—0—

 

 

He makes friends, surprisingly enough. Kirishima and Mina come from further north, both of them ready to join the fight after losing everything back home. Still, they are both bubbly and talkative and don’t give a crap when Katsuki calls them names, because they call him names right back. Kirishima is especially clingy, determined to make sure Katsuki has at least one friend who is not a little girl because that is  like, real manly bro, but you need a training partner! 

 

Sero is more chill. He is friends with Shinso before he is friends with Katsuki, and he is the sharpest shooter in the whole camp. Katsuki is not about to let the opportunity to kick his ass pass by. He needs to practice so he can beat Todoroki the next time they cross paths.

 

So he trains. He falls right back under Jeanist's wing. Uses his degree for something other than looking at people over the shoulder and tries and succeeds in building some explosives with Mina’s chemistry background. He goes on raids. He laughs. He kills Nomus and walks into map rooms and talks strategy and thinks  what would Deku do,  and then does exactly the opposite because Deku was an idiot and Katsuki is not going to follow in his footsteps. 

 

(Only when it's necessary, maybe.)

 

He gets revenge, one day at a time. For his family. For Deku. For Todoroki and his family. 

 

For himself, most of all. Because he almost lost himself in this hell and he is still fighting to get it back, one day at a time. 

 

He still avoids radio rooms and, most of all, the hospital wing. Only bad news ever comes out of them, anyway.

 

—0—

 

They manage to have a little garden. With spring onions and other fast growing crops at their disposal, soon the group of idiots that hang around him at all times discover he has a thing for cooking. Katsuki finds himself in the kitchens often, if only to make their food taste a smidge more palatable. Then some old lady complains that his cooking is too spicy and he is relegated to only preparing food during his nights off.

More people join the resistance. Few decide to travel south, to Endeavor, as people are starting to call him. Aizawa is now Eraserhead, which is honestly even worse. People are so fucking tacky.

His aim is not as good as Sero, but Katsuki is nothing if not naturally talented at anything he puts his mind into, so he soon is a very close second. Aizawa personally asks his opinion during meetings and his tight group of scouts never has a single loss. Katsuki settles for nothing but a perfect victory every time he steps out of the camp. 

 

(He doesn't ask about Todoroki, because how lame would that be. But Katsuki thinks about him.

When Mina makes a joke about having to repopulate the earth, and shares a list of who exactly she would pick to help her do so. For the good of society, of course. Katsuki thinks of him.

It's a dumb joke. And he is an adult, he can rub one off to a pretty face once, is not that weird. The apocalypse might have plummeted his libido to the lowest it has ever been, but Katsuki has eyes. And a dick. And Todoroki did have a very pretty mouth. It's really not that serious.)

 

 

(He has a little box filled with things that Todorki might like. A Hello Kitty charm. A stone in the shape of a cloud. A poster from a movie he mentioned once. It's not like he plans on giving it to him, just... He picks them up in the city. They remind of him. He keeps them in the box under his bed and that's all there is to it)

 

—0—

 

 

Rumors fly in the middle of the apocalypse. Weird, since radios barely work anymore and the amount of passers-by is very scarce this far into the alien invasion. But the news still come. 

The rebellion faction down south is winning. They are somehow making the Nomus retreat deeper into the city, and they are finding new weapons and materials as they raid the Nomu’s hideouts. 

They are spreading their forces thin into enemy territory like brainless idiots.Of course they get dragged into a trap.

Katsuki and his team can hear the explosion all the way from their advancement night camp, and he curses as Kiri loads his gun and runs towards danger, Mina and Sero close to his talons.

“Fuck, Bakugo, wait—” Shinso’s words fade in the distance, and soon enough Katsuki finds himself doing what he does best. Getting some Nomus straight to hell, or wherever they came from.

He has two laser guns, courtesy of his last encounter with some High-End Nomu, and a bunch of homemade grenades that he doesn’t mind using on whatever type of Nomu gets in his way.

He clears a group of three Nomus, and gets assistance from Kirishima to take down another two before he sees the impossible to miss two-toned hair in the crowd. He shoots the Nomu coming at his back point blank in the back of the face before the alien can even realize what’s happening, a feral grin on his face as he marches forward.

“Bakugo?” There is a second shot behind him as Mina makes sure the fucker can’t get back up. “We are busy here, where are you going?!”

Todoroki has a sword. A fucking steel katana, for fuck’s sake. Of course, he had to be a flashy bastard and decapitate Nomus instead of just shooting them, like every other lowly mortal. But his position is not very good, his hair, much longer than Katsuki remembers and tied in a high ponytail, is stained with blood. He is injured. And he is carrying someone in his arms. 

Halfie slices a Nomu's head right down the middle, gets bathed in the green-red goo that flows inside the aliens’ veins, and kicks the corps to unstuck the sword. He is quick and lethal, but the extra weight makes him sloppy. He dismisses the Nomu too quickly, trying to check for a pulse in the body he cradles.

The Nomu gets back up, and Katsuki shoots him three times with the green plasma baster just for good measure.

“Looks like someone forgot to Double Tap, Princess,” he barks. Todoroki turns to look at him, his tight face morphing into awe and relief. There is dirt on his face and the rebels are still fighting around them, but he smiles and —fuck. Katsuki is happy to see his stupid dumb face. As he is about to return the smile, his eyes fall onto the body Todoroki had been protecting so jealously.

The world stays still for a second, ash barely hiding the green curls.

 

 

Deku.

 

 

—0—

 

 

The infirmary is full for the next week and a half. Most of Endeavor’s rebels retreat back to the camp in the south, but the ones with the worst injures have to remain north. 

Katsuki sits by Deku’s bed every night for a week, and he still doesn’t wake up. Todoroki keeps him company, or maybe both of them keep Deku company as the fucker decides to wake up. He can’t die on Katsuki twice, he will drag him back from hell to kill him personally  if he does. There is not much of Deku drag back, anyway. 

His arms are… gone. Well, not gone, but the skin below his elbows seems to have melted into the smooth, alien metal that hangs over the bed. The two apendices end in sharp claws that reflect the little light that the candles let them have.

“I found him in Endeavor's camp. He is very smart. It was his idea to use their own technology against them, to figure out where the Nomu nests might be. My father appreciated him very much.” Todoroki whispers the first night. “He can take off the suit when he is awake. This material… likes him. I have never seen anyone do what he does with it.”

Because that doesn’t sound cryptic at all. The air between them feels cold. Maybe it's just the corpse in the room.

They haven’t really talked since Katsuki’s group found them in the city, and whatever camadery they had built up during their brief team up all those months ago seems to have frozen with time. Katsuki feels stiff and awkward around Todoroki, and he can’t stop looking at Deku’s face. He looks dead.

The silence stretches for a few moments. “He was very happy to learn that you were alive. He thought you died.”

The only thing filling the room are Izuku's soft breaths.

“Yeah? Anything else?”

Todoroki shifts in his seat. “Uhm. Well. He remembered the first rule in case of a zombie apocalypse. Cardio.”

Katsui laughs. It almost sounds like a sob.

 

—0—

 

Izuku wakes up, eventually. He cries a lot, as expected of him, and gifts Katsuki a fucking All Might colleactable golden sticker he found the middle of somewhere. Apparently it reminded him of Katsuki. That’s how ridiculous he is.

(His box remains hidden under his bed. That's what you do with those things.)

Turns out that old wound was the best thing that ever happened to the nerd. Something about his bood getting contact with the alien space ship made him receptive to the biotech they use. So he is a fucking cyborg or something like that now. Pretty sick, but very disturbing to look at. Katsuki is never going to get used to Deku's arms changing form to make different alien weapons.

Eri is delighted to meet Deku, both showering Todoroki in praises until the pale side of his faces matches the red one. It’s hilarious. There is just one think that irks Katsuki. Deku calls Todoroki Shouto. It feels personal, and weird, and he doesn’t know why it bothers him so.

(He avoids being alone with Todoroki at all costs, even when he keeps looking for Katsuki. Katsuki can't look at him in the eye. If he stares at him too long he can't stop thinking about those dreams he has sometimes. About the box. About how pretty and soft his hair looks. He wonders what it would be like to call him Shouto, and then Deku does it with ease and Katsuki doesn't even know what he feels. So he avoids him.)

Even his squad takes notice.

“What crawled up your ass and died, man?” Kirishima snaps at him when Katsuki all but pushes him out of the shower. 

“You are on my way, asshole. Move.”

“Ah, I see,” Shinso turns a page from his book, voice completely monotone. “He has his panties in a twist because he chickened out of kissing his boyfriend again.”

“I have no fucking clue what you are talking about, eyebags.”

“I know. Being so emotionally constipated must be exhausting.”

(Eventually Todoroki stops looking for him too. He spends his time by Deku's hospital bed, or, surprisingly,  training with Kirishima. For some reason it makes Katsuki's blood boil. He is fine when he sees him walking around with Eri on his shoulders, though.)

 

—0—

 

Todoroki and Deku won’t stay for long. They want to go further north, where there are rumors of a little village that was fully transformed into a hospital when the medics flee the city. The military should be there. With survivors. Musutafu survivors. 

There are rumors about another person with a leg just like Deku’s arms, morphed with the material. The Organic Fiber Allotrope, as they —mostly Deku— calls it. OFA

The rumors bring gruesome stories about abductions too, about Nomus stealing people’s corpses and doing things to them, turning humanity's dead against itself. Looks like humans are hard enough to kill that the Nomus want to try new tactics. And they are moving north as they speak. 

Katsuki is not going anywhere. The fight is right here, he is not going to chase some made-up medic camps.

 

(“I need to find my mom Kacchan.” 

Deku’s body is still black and blue from the fight. 

“Well you fucking go then. As if I fucking care”.)

 

They leave. Some of their squads stay back with them, and that’s how Katsuki meets Denki, the most annoying motherfucker he has ever met, and Momo. Who is actually quite okay, all things considered.

 

As they leave Katsuki can still make out the stupid cat plushy tied to Todoroki’s bag. It hangs beside a bunny with a missing arm. Katsuki's Hello Kitty charm is still in a box under his bed.

 

—0—

 

Katsuki loses friends in some raids, that’s just how the world is now. Midnight and her squad fall. 

He makes other friends. Other friends who are afraid of dying, of losing themselves in the fight, and they keep him grounded. Even when the Nomus reach the districts they live in and the Resistance has to move back and lose some of their good bases. 

Even as Aizawa takes Eri and Shinso and the rest of the men and women who can’t fight and leaves for the countryside to protect them. 

Shinso pats him heavily on the arm before he leaves. 

 

Jeanist stays with him. Or he stays with Jeanist. Depends on who you ask.

 

 

 

 

(Sometimes he thinks about the night before Deku and Todoroki left. He was angry, it was easy enough to see. Todoroki came looking for him and found him over the infirmary’s rooftop. 

The ice between them was still there, and Katsuki mourned over Shinso’s words. Boyfriend, yeah sure. Whatever might have been there last summer between them was now long gone. If it ever even existed in the first place. 

Todoroki, looking at the stars for a long time, deadly silent as Katsuki’s palms began to sweat. He looked very pretty under the moonlight, his pale side facing Katsuki. It’s a weird contrast, to find such a two-faced exterior in a man as blunt and face-value as Shouto. It made him want to trace the invisible line that divided his face with his fingertips, to see if he could find the stitch that parted him in two.

Todoroki, talking about the Nomu abductions and mutations. Apparently, most of the dead ones walking are from Musutafu. Looks like that’s the first place the aliens landed. Great. 

Todoroki, talking about his brother Touya’s burnt body coming back to life. One of his father's informants had seen him in the city and Shouto had charged head first, dragging Midoriya with him to the heart of an ambush. And Deku had almost died. 

A lot of Nomus had escaped. Maybe Touya did too. Todoroki doesn’t want to fight him again, because he swears that Touya recognized him. So maybe he is still alive, somewhere inside the monster. Katsuki knows that feeling. 

Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

Maybe Todoroki needs to have his own epiphany, his own propouse to keep fighting in this new world, so Katsuki tells him about his dad and his mom, and lets him go.)

 

 

("Hey, Princess. Don't be a hero, okay? Don't get yourself killed.")

 

—0—

 

Life is not always an absolute nightmare to live in. Sometimes life is Jiro finding an old CD player —-who the fuck owns those anymore— and blasting old Japanese and Korean rock songs all over camp. 

Sometimes is finding a house with a cabinet filled with spices and preparing the meanest, spiciest mapou tofu ever known to mankind.

Sometimes is clearing an entire area of Nomus and getting Shinso back for a three-week visit.

And sometimes life is him getting called to the radio room, and hearing his mom’s voice on the radio.

("A friend of yours passed by last night. He was scouting before his caravan crossed the territory. He is traveling with Izuku! I’m so glad he is okay. Oh, that boy was always too good for his own good. He left me the radio frequency so I could call your camp. And what did you join the rebellion for, brat? You are going to give your dad a heart attack with your stupid ideas! You should have come north with this Todoroki kid. You might think you are very brave, but you are still just a child, Katsuki. Still a dumb child, joining a rebellion against aliens!”

And if he cries at the phone, well. That's between him and his sobbing parents.)

 

(God. Crying does feel quite good.)

 

—0— 

 

He talks with his parents a lot. His mom calls so much he sometimes yells at her to die so she can stop pestering him, and she screams back that if got killed already she would not have to call so often just to check on her idiot of a son. Both of them mean it very little and Katsuki cries a lot more than he lets it seem.

It catches someone's eye though. Ochako. One of the girls that came from Endeavor's resistance with Deku and Todoroki.

“I’m glad to see you smile more. It suits you. You are Katsuki, right? Kacchan. Deku and Todoroki speak very highly of you.”

He is not sure how to take that. The only thing that kills his mood nowadays is the way those names are always together. Todoroki and Deku. Shouto and Izuku. He doesn’t know what it makes him feel.

They are alive. That's good enough. It has to be. 

They are not here, though.  

Ochako hums, studying his face. She smiles. 

“You know, I’m glad they found each other. They gave each other hope to keep going. Hope that things could change and that a difference could be made. In the world we live now I think it’s important to find something like that, don’t you think?”

Katsuki doesn’t answer.

“They talked a lot about you. About how you pushed them to keep going when all they wanted to do was drown. Kept them focused on the next simple task until they learned how to swim. Find something that gave their new life a little more meaning."

He doesn't know what to say. It feels like it's exactly the other way around. Katsuki had been chasing them both around as the world fell apart, their light so bright it called him in like a moth. 

“Yeah, I guess,” he says. 

 

(They talk a lot after that. Ochako is... weird. Keeps talking about being happy in the middle of all the mysery the world keeps throwing at them. Somehow, her smile feels more genuine than even Deku's. )

 

("I have this beautiful secret, you see? I'm not afraid.")

 

—0—

 

 

Izuku comes back. Triumphant and completely syntonized with his OFA and an old man by his side. He introduces himself as Toshinori, and he has a whole leg fused with OFA. The moment either of them set a foot in the battlefield the resistance can't lose.

Katsuki meets Endeavor. The dude is imposing, and the way he speaks of Todoroki doesn’t really match the dead glare in Halfie’s eyes the first time Aizawa mentioned the name Todoroki Enji. There must be some history there. History he had missed, because Todoroki had spent almost a full year fighting in the southern end of the city by his father's side, getting to know Deku while Katsuki dealt with the Nomus established west. 

The man comes down to Jeanist’s territory with a blubbering idiot named Keigo who keeps asking Katsuki about Todoroki. How annoying.

 

(It's annoying because Todoroki is not back. Why is he not back?)

 

—0—

 

With the two factions acting together the fight becomes fiercer. Humanity gets bolder, attacking bigger Nomu Nests and taking bigger prices with them. Katsuki gets to see the Mother Ship once, and it’s as terrifying as the scouts described it.
It is buried in the concrete, extending metal tentacles all over the crater is landed non and the buildings surrounding it. It's alive.
 
They send messages up north, calling for Aizawa and reinforcements.
The Nomus catch two out of three messengers. Both factions of the Resistance wake up one day to their heads, found hanging from streetlights during an expedition.
 
They have to hit the alies with all they have. Bakugo votes to attack before the reinforcements from the north can reach them. There is no time, and the message might never get far enough to reach Aizawa anyway. Now that they know where the Mother Ship is the Nomus are getting vicious. They need to strike first or they might never get the chance.

Deku reluctantly agrees, but is not like he can say no. He is the centerpiece of this whole game. Without him, they are all dead.

 

—0—

 

 

It’s a mistake. Humans drop like flies around Katsuki, who has a freshly opened wound in the abdomen from pushing Deku out of the way of a deadly shot from one of the High-End Nomus. He is bleeding out, he can feel it, but Deku —  Izuku—   is flying across the air, his shadow black against the sun. Fist black and morphed into some kind of blaster ready to strike the soft tissue of the Mother Ship, when a Nomu appears out of nowhere blocking his path. That's it. It’s over for them.

 

A blade shines in the air, silver and regal and it strikes the Nomu in the head, its brains flying out.

 

He doesn’t need to see the hair in the crowd to know who that blade belongs to. Aizawas’s reinforcements are here. He's here.

 

Katsuki smiles and raises his gun. Double Tap. For good measure.

 

 

 

 

 

 Oh my god, they are so fucking cliché, he thinks before losing consciousness. The Nomus around the battlefield start dropping to the ground, puppets with their strings caught off. Their Mother Ship chirps and stops glowing after Deku strikes it with the force of twelve suns and one green gremlin with a mean right hook can provide.

 

 

—0—

 

 

He wakes up in the infirmary three days later and asks for Izuku and Shouto before the nurses can even realize he is awake. They tell him Izuku is resting. Yes, they were successful. Yes, the Mother Ship has been destroyed. Yes, Deku managed to connect his OFA tissue to the Ship and order it to destroy itself, fucking up the enemy's systems and the spaceships in the near radius. The city is theirs.

 

Humanity's first real win.

Katsuki is going to make sure it’s not the last. 

 

(In the euphoria, he thinks about what Ochako said. Small thinks. Simple thinks. Little things he can give himself to feel whole still.)

 

(“I give myself things all the time, Kats. Mostly to make myself feel lucky. Stops me from going crazy, you know? I have nothing to be shy for. The world already ended and I'm still here, like a cockroach. I can take any risk I want. And if something doesn't go my way, well. Then I will do something else. That’s the secret. That’s how I get by. I stand back up and take the risk before convincing myself that it's not worth it to even try.”)

 

He runs out of the infirmary. Pushes people out of his way and storms half naked into the war room.

Todoroki looks at him like he has lost his mind, a bit bent over the table by his father's side, Shinso and Aizawa with them. There is a group of medics in the room, one of them with white hair looking exactly like a young Endeavor, frown and all.

 

Katsuki can't really see them. Damn. Halfie looks gorgeous even with that ridiculous ponytail swinging over his shoulder as he turns to talk, weaty bangs clinging to his forehead.

 

"Katsuki, you should be resting. I told the doctor-"

 

Katsuki grabs him by the neck of his way too fine of a shirt for the end of the world, and kisses him. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Luckily, Shouto kisses him back. It would have been a very awkward beginning of the end of the apocalypse if he didn't.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

You know the drill, if you liked this monster of a fic please feed your local alien invasion author with a comment :)

Shouto’s aesthetic is heavily inspired by @_amipang and their headcanons I saw that half and half Shouto and it altered my brain chemistry forever.

 

I'm very new to writting for this fandom so you might not know this but whenever I write anything longer than 3k it comes with a Pinterest board and a Spotify playlist with all the music I had on loop while writting some parts. Hopefully you will see the same character developtment in the playlist as Katsuki has in the fic. It's very important to me that you visualize that kiss scene with Somebody To You in the background. Those two go together!! Do not Separate!!! Oh, and in my head Katsuki has his 'epiphany' and during that Nomu fight to the rythm of Black Parade because I'm lame like that lmao

And come hang out with me on Twitter or Tumblr if you feel like it :)