ʜᴇ ᴘʀᴇғᴇʀs ᴋᴀᴄᴄʜᴀɴ

by Baguette_Me_Not

Summary:

Best Jeanist continues, “I won’t keep you. Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight is waiting for you.”

Izuku staggers, taken aback.

One blink, then two. “Who?”

Notes:

Day 3463 of me writing a hospital fic. These boys have SO MANY things to say, okay
And I have so many other fics to procrastinate :))

It honestly surprises Izuku that he's gone this long without hearing Kacchan’s finalised hero name, ‘Bakugou’ only a placeholder when King and Lord Explosion Murder were both shot down in quick succession, leaving the only thing murdered here Kacchan’s name. And when he had, apparently, figured out a passable alternative that didn’t sound like a playground kid’s villain-sona, Izuku hadn’t been the first person Kacchan wanted to share it with. And whilst that’s all well and good, it means Izuku’s ended up the last person on Earth to hear it.

 

Okay, maybe not the last on Earth, but it very much feels like it. And maybe that’s on Izuku, sprinting off unannounced to his peers, looking out for signs of the League with no means of contacting Kacchan to interrogate him on matters concerning his hero name. So he’s only finding out now, after the war.

 

Izuku’s been frequenting Kacchan’s hospital room, much to the ongoing frustration of the nurses who have yet to release him. But sheer grit and determination, along with a high dosage of pain meds, are enough to keep him standing on two feet with minimal staggering and swaying. No nurse or broken bone could keep him away from Kacchan.

 

(Though, Kacchan glares at him the first time it happens, demanding Izuku to rest up so they can get back to becoming the best heroes and say good riddance to this hospital. 

 

Maybe it would be a good argument if Izuku didn’t know for a fact—thanks to his classmates being complete gossips except when it comes to Kacchan’s hero name—that Kacchan had charged through the hospital like a madman last time this had happened, yelling for ‘Deku’. 

 

Something in him warms at the knowledge that Kacchan cares enough, blatantly so these days, that he would do the same.)

 

It’s during one of these daily escapades that he happens upon Best Jeanist, shutting the door to Kacchan’s room behind him with a soft click. He’s in casual clothes, apparently having been released some time ago, and like with all things he wears, true to his name-sake, they’re jean-based. Though Izuku wouldn’t be surprised if he asked for his hospital gown to be custom made with denim when he was here as a patient.

 

He spots Izuku immediately, nodding to him in greeting. “Deku,” he says, addressing him by hero name, “Shouldn’t you be resting? I recall you sustained quite the damage after your fight. I can’t imagine you would have healed quite so quickly.”

 

“Well I—” Izuku awkwardly chuckles, itching his cheek with the hand that isn’t stuck dragging around his new best friend: the portable IV pole. “Just had to make sure Kacchan is okay. And keep him company. He hasn’t thrown me out yet.”

 

Only the nurses have. Time again and again, like the weed that keeps on springing back with just as much vigour. He thinks he’s overheard them talking about him in the halls sometimes. 

 

“Ah, I see. You’re both jeans of the same pair,” Best Jeanist says, which, like most jean-based metaphors of his, somehow sounds both profound and nonsensical all sewn (damn, now Izuku’s doing it) into one. Izuku thinks he knows what Best Jeanist is getting at, though. Only slightly. “With threads as intertwined as yours, you certainly make for a troublesome two.”

 

Never mind. Best Jeanist has lost him. Izuku has no idea if that’s even a compliment or an insult anymore.

 

But Best Jeanist starts chuckling, this good natured thing, though from what little Izuku can see of his face, he’s looking slightly tired—perhaps troubled by whatever he was speaking to Kacchan about.

 

He continues, “I won’t keep you. Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight is waiting for you.”

 

Izuku staggers, taken aback.

 

One blink, then two. “Who?” Izuku croaks out of reflex.

 

It seems redundant. As soon as the question leaves Izuku’s mouth, he knows without a doubt who the pro is referring to. Who else would name themselves something so bombastic, so overly Kacchan than Kacchan himself?

 

And that name, it tingles with familiarity, static in his memory fading out to the golden hues of nostalgia as he uncovers the memory, chipped and torn, weathered by the years, but no less beautiful.

 

(They’d often played in the park as kids, staying out as long as four year olds could, the streets their stomping ground for make-believe in an adult’s world. In this park, they were heroes, they could do anything, aim high, because Kacchan was always leading the way to victory. There was certainty in him, gravity in Kacchan’s confidence, and it pulled Izuku in, along with the neighbourhood kids.

 

But those others had gone home by now, the evening hours fettering the sun to the horizon, pulling it back for the night. Soon even Kacchan would have to go home.

 

But until then, Izuku stays. Because where Kacchan goes, so does he.

 

“Mighty Boy sounds dumb,” a young Kacchan had said. They’d been discussing hero names, what they would be called when they truly went pro, so Izuku had shared a few of his ideas. He’d thought long and hard on all the ways he could incorporate his favourite hero into the name, scribbled as many words as he knew how to write—with the assistance of his mum—so even though it’s Kacchan, even though it’s the boy that Izuku admires so much, an insult to that name was by extension an insult to All Might. And that couldn’t stand.

 

“Nu-uh, Kacchan!” Izuku shook his head vehemently, looking about as cross as a kid barely past toddler-hood could. It probably looked more like a pout. “It’s like All Might. And nothing about All Might is dumb.”

 

“But your name is. Mine will be better.” Kacchan had grinned, wide and smug. Izuku had been awed, and all prior frustration had been forgotten. “No, the best!”

 

“Do you have any ideas, Kacchan?” Izuku had asked, genuinely curious. He had no doubt that it would be the best, but if Kacchan didn’t have a name thought out already… “I can help.”

 

“No way.” Kacchan scowled, turning up his nose. “I’m not gonna let someone who is gonna be called Mighty Boy choose my name.”

 

“Oh,” Izuku said quietly, his shoulders slumping under a familiar pressure. It had been expected. Kacchan never accepted help from anyone.

 

He gravitated people to him, yes, but he was a little lonely like that.

 

Izuku would keep trying, though. His hand would always be there, if only Kacchan could take it.

 

“It’ll be real cool,” Kacchan enthused, oblivious to Izuku’s inner turmoil, “Like Super Ultra Exlodo Murder Killer Bomb!”

 

“Kacchan, that’s not a hero name.”

 

“It is too! You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kacchan huffs, crossing his arms as he looked pointedly at the dirt. Izuku wouldn’t say Kacchan is capable of pouting now, but back then he certainly was. “Whatever. Just know that it will be cool. Like my new quirk.”

 

And Izuku, with all his four year old earnesty, had agreed, “Okay, Kacchan!”

 

“Don’t mock me! I mean it!” Kacchan had that funny look in his eye again, the one that he would pull whenever he wanted distance between the pair of them. He did that sometimes, more often after that time at the river than before. What Izuku didn’t know then is how much distance would end up coming of it.      

 

But the expression flickered out as soon as it came, a cocky smirk burning far more brightly. 

 

“As… er… Explosion Murder King Dynamite, I’m gonna be number one!”

 

Now that had Izuku’s attention.

 

“Dynamight?!” he reiterated, stressing the ending, “Like All Might?!”

 

Kacchan’s eyes widened like he hadn’t even considered the the possible connection. “What? No! Dynamite like the hero who is gonna beat him! Me!”

 

Izuku giggled, finding joy in Kacchan’s antics. “Kacchan! We match!”

 

“No we don’t!”)

 

Izuku snorts, smiling slightly to himself, the giddy swig of amusement curving into his lips. He can’t remember quite what was said word for word, but the memory had lodged itself into his core. Not forgotten, just lost. Until now.

 

It seems Kacchan didn’t face that problem.

 

“Oh,” Izuku says softly, only vaguely conscious of how Best Jeanist is still present, “So that’s what he finally decided on.”

 

---

 

Katsuki doesn’t remember setting up a meet and greet, yet here he is, already on the sixth guest of today—after his parents, then Sparkplug, Shitty Hair, and Soy Sauce face—when the seventh barrels in, well, as quickly as he can with an IV tailing to him like some lifeless puppy.

 

Of course Izuku would drop in. These days it’s only a matter of when, not if.

 

(And for that, he’s glad. 

 

Dying with his absence, waking to his presence.

 

Izuku being here, right now, is comforting in a way he never knew he needed. In a way he never wants to be without.)

 

“Kacchan!” Izuku says in greeting, waving as he makes his way over to Katsuki’s bed, taking up the chair next to it. With so much enthusiasm pumped into the gesture, it has Katsuki wondering what’s left him in such high spirits. Any higher, and he’d be floating.

 

Which is something he can actually do. Katsuki had been there to witness the nerd navigating that quirk, and had seen the countless times All Might had to pull him down from the ceiling when he was distracted from excitedly mumbling. Shit had been funny as fuck.

 

“Kacchan, I— hey, uh, are you alright?” Izuku’s eyebrows pinch, joy draining from his face as he gets a look at Katsuki. “You seem kind of down.”

 

Oh.

 

Katsuki’s head dips as he schools his expression, teaching it a calmness he doesn’t feel. Not after that conversation with Best Jeanist.

 

He hadn’t realised he’d let it show on his face.

 

Izuku tries again, eyes skittering as his fists clench in his lap, “Do you um, want to talk about it?”

 

“Already did,” Katsuki says bluntly. There’s little emotion to it, the charred soot of spitfire passion. “There isn’t anything else to say.”

 

(A life traded for another, he’d learned from his mentor, giving him a run down of the truth. There was no luck in Katsuki’s return, no miracle revival of a beating heart. An act of sacrifice had kept Katsuki alive to breathe another day whilst Edgeshot had taken his last one.

 

It wasn’t a fair deal to make.)

 

“Oh,” Izuku says. It’s quiet and breathy, and he stares at Katsuki like he sees anyway. Like he needs no words because his silence has spoken for him.

 

He’d hated being seen, once, by Izuku. Now it’s all he wants, being understood by him like no other.

 

Izuku winces, this painful thing, like the wounded animal of expressions. “You know.”  

 

“I know.”

 

“That’s why Best Jeanist was here.”

 

“Among other things.” Katsuki shrugs, falsely nonchalant. But his shoulders sag, droopy and low when he usually holds them with such high confidence, even in his casual stance. “Yeah.”

 

Izuku’s eyes swim, grief a tumultuous sea. When he sobs, he drowns in depths unbearable. Izuku’s tears have always been felt with everything he has. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when I should’ve been.”

 

“Izuku,” Katsuki says simply. But the name is nothing but simple. Between them, it’s everything . A start at something new. And now, a successful way of pulling Izuku out of his own head. “Stop. I was the one who was weak. It was me.” Without meaning to, Katsuki finds his hand clenching at the fabric of his hospital shirt, conscious of the heart beating underneath, and just who had given it to him. “Fuck. I don’t— Let’s not do this now, okay?”

 

Katsuki hates how his voice breaks at that, the same fragility that had got him killed.

 

He knew he couldn’t do it alone, strength in numbers. Strength he didn’t have. Not against him.

 

He aimed for a victory he knew he would lose.

 

(And now someone else pays the price.

 

Who else? Who else must pay for his mistakes?)

 

A hand rests atop his own. Katsuki looks up, noticing how Izuku’s arm stretches out, his callouses brushing against Katsuki’s skin.

 

It’s oddly comforting.

 

“Sorry, I just… I get it. Feeling guilty over what went down,” Izuku says with a tired smile, eyes that ache in their depths, that have seen the same sights Katsuki has, and changed with them, “But know this, Kacchan. At the end of the day Edgeshot made his decision, and I am endlessly grateful to him for it. I almost lost you… and I don’t want to imagine a world like that.”

 

Something thudders in Katsuki’s chest, clamorous and demanding. In the stillness of the room, he swears the whole world could hear it.

 

The beat of his borrowed heart.

 

The one given so he could reunite with the boy he’d spent so long waiting on.

 

(‘Izuku.’

 

‘Is this me reaching you?’)

 

“But with what Edgeshot did, I don’t have to,” Izuku speaks softly, this glimmer to his eye that has nothing to do with tears he’s shed. It’s as if he sees a precious gift in Katsuki’s life, one to treasure, one to cherish. Katsuki wonders what he did to earn such a look. “I think that we both saw that he saved a very capable hero, right, Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight?”

 

The tension snaps.

 

His hero name in Izuku’s voice, the lilt of it on his tongue, Katsuki hadn’t expected that at all. Hadn’t even realised Izuku knew it, having missed its debut.

 

Katsuki jolts in his bed, his eyes widening.

 

“He told you?”

 

Izuku nods, eager. His face is still wobbly from the tears, and he’s scrubbing at them with his cuffs, but if you ignore the reddish bruise around his eyes where the skin rubbed with grief, there’s something lighter to him. Less downtrodden from the beaten track of their year.

 

It’s good news to him, his name. At last, something to celebrate.

 

Is this what Izuku wanted to talk to him about?

 

“Best Jeanist? Yes, he did. Just a moment ago.” Izuku waves his arm in the general direction of the door. “I think it didn’t occur to him I didn’t know. But now I’m glad I got to hear what you chose.”

 

“Yeah?” 

 

(‘So what do you think? Do you know why I chose it? Do you recall when we were four and—)

 

“You remembered,” Izuku says, eyes a sky full of stars, and a grin that could light up the entire universe, cosmic glory all on one freckled face. It’s unabashedly fond. “You remembered the name I gave you when we were four.”

 

Of course he did.

 

But Katsuki doesn’t say that.

 

“My other options were shut down.” Katsuki clicks his tongue, mild annoyance resurfacing from when his two perfectly good suggestions weren’t given the time of day by their teacher. But the reminder of Midnight comes as a melancholy one. “And last I checked, I came up with Dynamite.”

 

“But I came up with Dynamight,” Izuku adds, this teasing edge, an inflection of mirth, “That is the one you went with, right?”

 

“Tch. Fine, yeah,” concedes Katsuki, as grumbly as it is, because a win is a win and technically Izuku has this, “I went with the name you gave me. Guess it was kinda cool. But the rest was all me! It’s Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight, you hear? Not just Dynamight.”

 

“It’s a little wordy.” Izuku taps his chin, thoughtfully, and though he isn’t quite mumbling, Katsuki can see he’s dangerously close to teetering off on an analytical tangent. Nit picky nerd. “And it still has murder in it. I’m surprised you got away with that.”

 

Katsuki scowls, blistering defiance. Mighty Boy Deku sure is one to talk.

 

“It’s fucking awesome, that’s what!”

 

“It’s very you.”

 

“‘Course it is.” Katsuki settles back, self satisfied. “Hearing that name will drive fear into any villain.”  

 

“That’s if you haven’t knocked them out by the time you get past ‘Great Explosion’.”

 

“ Oi.”

 

Apparently Izuku doesn’t hear this, because he carries on. Or maybe it’s in spite of it. Dweeb doesn’t know when to give up sometimes. “I’ll have to shorten it in battle.”

 

“The hell you will! Best Jeanist can manage my name just fine!”

 

For all the misgivings he’d originally had from his mentor— no one touches his hair, okay, no one— the guy’s pretty decent, hit the top ten rankings for a reason. Katsuki’s picked up a thing to two from him.

 

Along with jeans. Lots of jeans. Katsuki doesn’t even wear skin tight shit. He doesn’t even know what to do with it now.

 

But Izuku’s still at it, dismissing Katsuki, and putting his terrible naming skills to the test, “How about… Dynamy… no… Dynama-chan?”

 

Well. Katsuki’s definitely going to prove just how much he isn’t kidding about the murder part of his name.

 

It’s there for a reason.  

 

“That cutesy shit?! Do you wanna die?”

 

Izuku goes all pouty, puffed cheeks as he gives him a mildly offended side eye. “It’s not all that different to Kacchan.”

 

The solution is obvious. “Then call me that instead.” 

 

Izuku does this cute head tilt thing, this innocent blinking as he gives Katsuki one long, considering look.  

 

This is the closest he’s ever come to saying he doesn’t mind being ‘Kacchan.’

 

(But it’s not like he ever told him to stop.)

 

“… You really don’t mind?” Izuku says, awed. 

 

Katsuki rolls his eyes. It really isn’t a big deal.

 

“It’s the lesser of two evils,” Katsuki reasons. Besides, after so many years of Kacchan this, and Kacchan that, anything else would be weird. Katsuki doubts the nerd could even manage to say his actual name, yet alone his hero one. So Kacchan he will be, and Kacchan he will stay. “The second you call me that in public, Sparkplug won’t let me hear the end of it.”

 

Idiot had a field day when he first heard Izuku’s name for him, and he hasn’t dropped it since. 

 

He wonders if Izuku knows this.

 

“Hmmm… I do prefer Kacchan.” 

 

(Katsuki’s lip twitches, this slight, subtle curve. And for the first time in years, Katsuki finds himself smiling while Izuku’s looking. How the beat of affection rises, undisguised, out of him, giving back to the boy who is an infinite source of it.

 

And he wants him to know.

 

Just how much he prefers Izuku. Deku.)

 

“I know you do.”

---

 

BONUS:

“I’m going to tell All Might your hero name,” Izuku says victoriously, still beaming. “I mean, out of the two of us, I didn’t expect it to be you who ended up with the name inspired by him. He’ll love it.”

 

Katsuki knows his face is ripe with embarrassment as he reaches out to grab Izuku before he makes good on that, like he’s going to sprint off to All Might the second he lets go. So he won’t. Izuku’s staying here. 

 

Katsuki can and will hold his IV pole hostage.

 

“Don’t you fucking dare!”

Notes:

I started writing this as platonic… these two had other ideas.

 

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