Chapter Text
Bakugou Katsuki is very young when he meets broccoli head for the first time. He doesn't even remember it, his mom told him about it. While Aunty Inko and Witch were talking, kids were placed together in a playpen. This day Izuku, right after inspecting his new surroundings, laughed and tried to eat the foot of the blond boy. It was quite typical for babies, to be honest, but still. Ew.
Nowadays Katsuki is four years old. He is smart, strong and absolutely certain his future quirk will be as cool as he is. On the other side, Izuku, his friend, is small, weak with big watery eyes. In comparison they are like heaven and earth. Everyone know and understand Bakugou is a genius, while Midoriya is but a naive doormat. But Katsuki knows Izuku is much smarter than they think. Not the same way of smart as blond boy is though, no. Utterly different.
The sun is only starting to set, blond boy looks over his sandcastle with a prideful grin. "It's so pretty, Katsuki-kun!" – aunty Inko smiles. "Yeah, and dirty shorts are very pretty too, punk." – his mom snorts.
Katsuki simply rolls his eyes and contemplates his creation again. His castle is made out of wet sand, which he dug out from the sandbox's depths; two floors, three high towers, stones used as windows, and deep moat around. He tried his best, he always did, and he is proud of result he got. Even aunty Inko enjoys his work. It's a good sign. For a second Katsuki feels a strange itching. He's not fast enough to meet eyes to eyes with Midoriya because the greenete hid his face in his palms, but gives him a confused look anyways. Huh. Weird. Well, Izuku's castle is nowhere close to Katsuki's masterpiece, but it's not that bad for an extra.
The short blondie snorts deciding to go search leaves for the sandcastle's flag and stands up, shaking off dirt from his knees. He wanders here and there all over the playground, trying to find a perfectly beautiful leaf because anything less is unacceptable. Soon the boy realizes that all leaves on the ground are messy and torn apart, so he determinedly climbs on the tree glancing at mom from time to time. (Witch can start yelling if she spots him climbing!) His palms are sore and one particularly annoying branch hit him in the face, but a small sprig with bright green leaf and unopened bud was worth it. At least Katsuki thinks so.
Katsuki comes back right in time to witness Izuku starting to cry. He whimpers and whines and both women rush to see what happened, cooing and desperately trying to calm down the curly boy. "Izuku, what's wrong? Are you hurt?"– aunty Inko picks Midoriya up and hugs him tightly.
"I c-c-can't bui-i-i-i-ild a cas-s-stle!"– boy mumbles in-between sniffs.
Katsuki frowns. Izuku's sandcastle was not so terrible, was it? He throws a look at the place where broccoli head was playing and freezes, bewildered. On the original walls out of wet sand there's a layer of dry one, and corners of the sandcastle are destroyed, even though five minutes ago everything was fine, lonely tower bows to the ground, stone windows are ridiculously big, ruining it’s walls.
"Izuku-kun, don't cry."– his mom tries to smile sweetly (And fails in Katsuki's humble opinion).– "Katsuki will help you build a new castle, even better than previous!"
"But we d-d-don't have enough time for this!"– pleads Izuku, which immensely annoys the blond boy.
He would never allow himself such display of weakness.
"Well, Katsuki will share his castle with you, so you can finish it together!"
Katsuki opens his mouth in pure shock and switches glances from Witch to Midoriya who immediately stops crying and shifts to a wide sunshine-like smile. Katsuki's ears are red from anger. Bullshit! How can they believe this story?! How can they even dare to take what belongs to him and give it to someone else?! Without asking his opinion, too!
"Oi! Izuku can build his stupid castle by himself!"– Katsuki barks, confronting the curly boy with an angry scowl.
Midoriya does not look upset at all.
"I think Katsuki-kun is right, Mitsuki. Isn't this unfair?"
Midoriya smiles from ear to ear, his lips are white from pressure and stretching.
"All’s fair! Hey, punk, did ya get it? You'll help Izuku-kun with the castle!"
Midoriya's eyes are wide open and glow with acid green, pupils huge and black like void.
Katsuki frowns yet another time, silently goes to his sandcastle and sits down. This battle is already lost. He knows it. Izuku is smart, but not in the same way that Bakugou is. Bakugou is educated and quick-witted. Midoriya is sly, like a snake. Situations like this happen quite often. Every time when the blond boy success in something, gets gifts or is being praised, the smaller boy starts to play dumb. Takes away part of Katsuki's glory with whims, ends up playing with Katsuki's new toys, scares kids who wanted to be friends with Katsuki. And then he gives The Look. Disgusting acid look with wide pupils black as coal.
Katsuki will never admit it but he's a little bit afraid of that look. Instead he will shout louder, frown deeper and use more harsh words. He will continue to go forward, sometimes alone, ignoring weird-ass Izuku who's following behind, like a shadow. And still... Izuku is a friend he can stand. He's quite a good friend, actually. Besides, Katsuki really likes aunty Inko and it's nice to talk with broccoli head about heroes and play in epic battles using action figures.
Even though he's terrified imagining Izuku as a hero.
Midoriya is left by Katsuki's side, mom and aunty return to the bench, while Katsuki continues his work, keeping a watchful eye on his friend.
Broccoli head does nothing. Nothing at all. Simply pets walls and windows of sandcastle with a strange, nervous and excited at the same time expression.
Katsuki ignores it.
***
Katsuki shuts his eyes. Listens to ringing in his ears. Holds itching hands, palms up. Something warm drips to the floor. Few seconds later, ringing finally disappears.
He can hear the panicking mumbling of a teacher, whispering of children and hissing of his own damaged skin. Katsuki looks down facing the burnt mess that his hands now are. He tried to experiment with his just awakened quirk. Little sparkles were gracefully dancing, shiny and flashy. Kids were gaping, admiring the show, excitedly calling it "fireworks". As a result of this childish play he ended up blowing his pores up.
Was it painful? Oh, yes, very much so. Something blew up right inside of his palms, ripping muscles, tearing apart tender childish skin, colouring his world in white and silencing sounds around with thunderous BOOM. Did he scream? Not even a single whimper. Sweet smell oddly resembling melted caramel filled the room, tickling his nose. Katsuki pierces the palms that betrayed him with the most hateful and offended glare. Pathetic.
Second later he grins showing off his sharp teeth. It was so damn powerful! A whole explosion! Katsuki squeezes his eyes stopping tears from falling. He is above crying. Immense pain annoys the blond boy but somehow he knows everything will be just fine. Now he knows how strong his quirk is. Now every fucking single extra in this room knows how amazing he is. Katsuki does not have rights to cry, especially infront of the mob, instead he stops his fingers from shaking and with strong-willed steps proceeds to the medical room.
"B-B-Bakugou-kun, wait!"– caretaker lady stumbles behind with worried expression.– "I need to call your parents!"
"Humph. Call them then,"– Katsuki tries to hide his trembling lower lip behind arrogance.– "Or do you want me to do this?"
Caretaker manages to call his parents. Witch and Dad scoop him up from kindergarten immediately, former laughing her ass off looking at boy's annoyed face and latter being on the edge of crying, squeezing steering wheel with all his power. Everything afterwards is a blur: quirk doctor, tests, a brief check from a psychologist, expensive minor healing (His parents can afford that easily enough), special bandages for his palms and reassuring words from experts. "It's absolutely normal for kids with strong abilities to hurt themselves at first. His skin just started forming a protective layer so it can't protect from strong explosions at the moment, but, I believe, in the future he will be able to create massive explosions with ease! Frankly speaking, I haven't met such a strong quirk in a while. Your son has all chances to become a high ranked pro-Hero!"
Katsuki, of course, remains calm and collected.
Dad buys two tubs of mint ice cream and suggest to celebrate his Quirk Awakening at home rewatching his favourite Hero Movies.
Katsuki is indeed very calm.
Witch grins like the witch she is, loudly claims that "ain't no way we are going to do this so lame" and proceeds to buy two big bowls of super hot katsudon (and one with level one spice for dad), four bottles of Coke ( a.k.a "Sweety, I think it's too much sugar-" "SHUT UP, DORK, I HAVE SO MUCH MONEY AND IT’S NOT FOR LIVING A HEALTHY LIFE"), bag of red licorice (Witch jokingly offers to buy caramel and gets a glare for that), AllMight sparkling cereals™ (He loves them so much), five packs of chilly chips (dad looks terribly scared paying for these) and huge set of sushi (Which is mostly for parents, but still).
Katsuki is indeed very collected.
They watch six movies until midnight with one point half speed, Dad miserably tries to catch up with the plot, asking questions getting only mocking laughs from his wife and son as an answer. Witch praises Katsuki about his mighty will and amazing quirk. Katsuki smiles brightly, bounces from one side of the couch to the other, waves his bandaged hands in the air and tells for the millionth time how his quirk felt like.
Katsuki is very damn fucking calm and collected.
Really.
And even if afterwards he falls on the bed, hugs his orange stegosaurus plushie and wheezes into his pillow, shaking and quivering out of sheer happiness, he is still composed and unruffled.
The blond boy looks at the ceiling that has little glowing stars stuck to it, unable to drop his cheerful smile. Tomorrow Izuku is going to stay for the night, so they can celebrate his Quirk Awakening together. Broccoli head, perhaps, is not as clever as Katsuki is, but he's still a decent friend who can hold an interesting dialogue and understand his ways of playing games (Katsuki doubts Izuku even knows what "decent" and "dialogue" means though). Every big figure has their own sidekick after all.
Bakugou junior closes his eyes. He knows everything will be fine.
He knows that no matter what, he is going to be the best out of the best. Because he has an amazing life with amazing parents, amazing friend and amazing quirk. He will be a Hero one day, saving someone and making their lives as amazing as his is. Why wouldn't he? He wasn't raised greedy.
Night is serene. Soft blue moonlight comes from an opened window, curtains slightly sway on the cool wind. Branches of the zelkova tree from Midoriya's backyard cast a shadow on the house. A oy with green locks of messy hair stands in his own room and peers through leaves, trying to catch a glimpse of a blond head.
"Fuh... Who put this annoying tree h-here?..."– he mumbles unknowingly to himself.
His father did. The last thing he actually left behind besides monthly paychecks. But did he ask for it?
No.
. . .
Perhaps, he can "fall" from it, so his mom will chop this irritating issue down. For his safety.
"Sounds great..."– he thinks and gives the empty room a nervous, trembling smile.
Green eyes are still locked on the window of the opposite house.