Chapter Text
I’ve always looked up to you!
I’m weak! Why am I still so weak?
In the way young Midoriya longed for young Bakugou’s strength and in the way that young Bakugou feared young Midoriya’s spirit…your feelings are all out in the open now and now…you both get it now don’t you?
If the two of you can recognize each other and honestly raise each other up…you can become the best heroes who both win and rescue.
Katsuki Bakugou awoke suddenly to the blaring of his alarm on Monday morning at 6 a.m. He shakes himself from the bizarre dream he had, rubbing absentmindedly at the bruises that still littered his skin from that fight. All Might’s appearance, Katsuki’s and Midoriya’s admittances…He had thought about them a lot in the days following his suspension.
Katsuki rubs the sleep from his eyes as he gets up, quickly dropping to the floor to perform a series of pushups followed by crunches. Exercising early in the morning gives his body a burst of adrenaline that helps him wake up. He then proceeds to grab the towel hanging off his bedroom door and stalks over to his personal bathroom. He doesn’t bother to try to stay quiet since even at this hour both his parents are awake and most likely eating breakfast.
Katsuki showers quickly, running over the homework in his mind that he did the previous night. UA is a top school for a reason, and they make certain their students never forget if the workload Katsuki has was anything to go by.
He stares at himself in the mirror, towel around his waist, still dripping water from his blonde hair. The moisture weighs down the usual untamed spikes.
He is happy to see how toned he’s looking—an indication that his hard work is paying off. He enjoys working out, and his pride won’t allow him to go a day without it, even just as a “break.”
He tries to ignore the stark black sign that is printed, like a tattoo, in the center of his chest, right over his sternum. A simple circle, with a spiraling flower in the center. He scoffs at the mark. It isn’t even cool enough to pass as a tattoo he would ever even consider getting. Instead, it serves as an ugly reminder of something that isn’t allowed. Not for him.
A soulmark.
Soulmarks aren’t all that uncommon in the world. They tend to appear when two people are together for a while, in which case they receive matching soulmarks indicating that they are now soulmates and should spend the rest of their lives together. Sometimes people dated for years without a soulmark ever appearing—it isn’t unheard of. Usually, relationships ended if they didn’t appear, with the two parties taking it as an indicator of failure or reluctance on their partner’s behalf. To love someone and never get a soulmark is an ugly thing.
Slightly more uncommon is the rare Love at First Sight soulmark. Those appear when you lay eyes on, talk to, or touch your soulmate. Katsuki’s parents were like that, where his mom had angrily grabbed his father when he bumped into her and their soulmarks had appeared. They are small, black-printed flames. His mother’s is on her fist. His father’s is on his neck.
Soulmarks don’t have to be on the same place, but they do have to match. They can be any size, any design, and anywhere. Studies have been done that claim that the significance of the design and location may indicate something about the soulmates’ relationship. However, a lot of people think that study was nonsense. Katsuki had read it for the hell of it, and had regretted it almost immediately. The study went on and on about the magic of having a soulmate and other nonsense of the like. He had made it explode for the irritation it had caused him.
The rarest form of soulmarks are destined soulmates. Those who, from birth, have the mark on their body. They go through life knowing there is someone perfect for them that they just had to find to be happy.
What a bunch of bullshit.
Katsuki scratches at his soulmark and continues brushing his teeth, red eyes squinting in irritation as the mark shows no indication of being affected by his ministrations.
On one of his darker days, Katsuki had considered pressing his palm to the mark and blowing it up. But he had long shook that idea and the heavy feeling that had accompanied it. Now the mark serves as a vague annoyance. It’s just an ugly tattoo.
Katsuki runs a hand through his hair, shaking out the remains of the water and proceeds to get dressed, forgoing his red tie as per usual. He stomps down the stairs to where his parents are sitting in the kitchen.
His mother glares at him from her position in front of the stove. Two pans sizzle, filling the air with the smell of breakfast food. “I heard you clanking around from all the way down here. Shut the fuck up, why don’t yah?” Mitsuki Bakugou resembles her son in many ways, including her sharp tongue.
Katsuki scowls at her, grabbing some breakfast food and checking the time.
“Now, now, not so early in the morning.” His father coughs several times. Other than his explosive quirk, he didn’t have much in common with his abrasive son. Masaru Bakugou had been sick for a few days now, staying home from work to try to fight off whatever infection he had caught. “What do you have on the schedule today, son?”
“School,” Katsuki grunts, chewing his toast as he eyes his father’s cough. He had come home for the weekend during his four-day suspension, gaining special permission from Aizawa since his father was ill. But now his suspension was over and he would return to living in the dorms. Aizawa had fought him on returning home, but Katsuki had argued that he had finished cleaning the entire dormitory in just two days, so there was no need for him to sit around and rot. Aizawa had eventually given in.
“Fuck, I gotta go,” Katsuki intones, glancing once more at the clock. “I’ll see you guys later.”
“What sorta goodbye is that?” His mother shouts after him. “I love you, you little turd!”
Katsuki waves over his shoulder without turning around, slamming the front door behind him.
Katsuki isn’t late to class—he rarely is. He makes his way to his desk at the far end of the classroom by the windows, glancing around as he does to see which of his classmates were already there. Class 1-A is currently mostly empty desks. Only Oijiro with his fucking weird-ass tail and the raven Tokoyami are present. Katsuki ignores them, going to his seat. He drops his bag loudly, and then gets out his things, throwing them haphazardly onto his desk.
Jiro strolls in, snapping a “Good morning!” to the room in general, quickly followed by Ashido and Hagakure. Katsuki turns his attention to his notebook, which he flips through in a bored manner. He starts doodling on a blank page.
It starts out as a drawing of an explosion (most of his drawings usually do) but then it starts to look more like a tree. Katsuki quickly adds some leaves, drawing more lines to highlight the trunk. He was paying so much attention to his drawing that he actually jumped a little when Kirishima practically shouts, “Wassup?” right next to his ear.
It’s too goddamn early for that.
“Bakugou! My man!” The hardass fucker walks over, grinning as he plops himself in front of Katsuki.
“Why the fuck are you so loud?” Katsuki growls, quickly closing his notebook. He didn’t think Kirishima saw what he was drawing, but he feels self-consciousness rising anyways, making his anger rise as well.
“It’s a beautiful day!” Kirishima explains, red hair blocking Katsuki’s view as he leans closer. Katsuki carefully leans back in return, uncomfortable with the other being so close. “Plus it’s super hot out so we might see some people sweat through their shirts…”
“Get the fuck out of my face you fucking pervert,” Katsuki snarls, little explosions going off unbidden in his hands and he swiftly aims a kick at Kirishima from under the table. Expecting it, Kirishima hardens his leg to granite, and Katsuki grits his teeth in irritation, pretending like that didn’t hurt like a bitch.
The redhead laughs. “‘Well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed’ is what I would say if you weren’t like this all the fucking time.” He sighs. “Always such a tough guy.”
“Dipshit,” Katsuki says in reply.
Kaminari arrives, throwing a casual arm around Kirishima. Katsuki hides a snort as Kirishima turns almost as red as his hair. “Hey guys! Good morning!”
“Ah, morning!” Kirishima gains some control of his face and returns the greeting. The two start blathering on about some homework assignment they both forgot about. Idiots.
Katsuki turns his attention back out the window. The trees outside are bright green. It’s a fucking niceass color. Katsuki finds himself contemplating the way the sun hits the leaves and turns the green a brilliant yellow.
“G-good morning.”
Katsuki closes his eyes and breathes once through his nose. Stay calm.
“Midoriya! Good morning!”
“Good morning!”
Katsuki remains still as the figure moves across the room, stopping at several desks to strike up conversations with the owners, before moving in front of Katsuki. Katsuki hears the chair scratch slightly against the floor as it’s moved. And then—
“M-morning, Kacchan.”
Katsuki doesn’t turn or acknowledge the greeting. He doesn’t even open his eyes. He pretends like he is unaffected, all up until the class starts and Aizawa hops in, cocooned in his sleeping bag.
Even if on the inside his heart is pounding, he waits until the whole classes’ attention is focused firmly elsewhere.
Only then do crimson eyes open, taking in the lean back of the green-haired boy sitting directly in front of him. Only then does Katsuki breathe deeply, taking in the earthy yet sweet scent that only belonged to one person.
Class passes as usual. In his four day suspension, Katsuki finds himself easily able to keep up and maintain pace. It’s a little frustrating, but he has faith in his abilities. Later, Katsuki follows the other boys into the locker room to change for their gym class. Katsuki changes at the rear of the room, making sure to keep his bare back to the rest of his class, so they don’t see the dark imprint on his chest. The action comes second nature to him at this point. A secret that he is so used to keeping that it is as automatic as breathing.
Kirishima wasn’t kidding when he said it was hot. Outside, Aizawa has the class lineup to perform some jumping exercises to get them warmed up. Katsuki shouts, “DIE” to motivate himself when it’s his turn, launching into the air and getting the farthest jumping distance in the class (without quirks). He’s mildly surprised Deku manages to go so far. His calves have been looking more toned—
With a violent head motion and a random, “Fuck!” Katsuki stops that thought dead in it’s tracks.
Kirishima glances at his companion, wiping sweat with the neck of his uniform. “Are you okay, dude?”
“None of your fucking business.”
“Okay, chill.”
Frustrated, Katsuki tugs at his hair. Has he mentioned how damn hot it is today? As the pervert Kirishima has predicted, he is practically sweating through his gym uniform. The blue color with geometric white squares isn’t made out of the most breathable material.
Aizawa orders them to break out into groups to do more quirk specific exercises. Katsuki gets to focus on making small explosions in his palms to break blocks of wood as perfectly in half as he can. He almost immediately feels himself quickly growing frustrated with the shitty blocks of wood that fucking refused to break perfectly in half. “Goddamn it,” he growls, chucking the wood on the ground where it proceeded to disintegrate. His palms are producing more nitroglycerin than usual since it’s so hot and he is sweating profusely. He knows Aizawa told him to do this technique out in this heat for that fucking reason but damnit, it is so hot.
“Alright!” Aizawa seems to sense that everyone is starting to tire in the face of the beating sun. “Let’s wrap it up! Everyone, head in and wash up!”
Katsuki is happy to drop his blocks of wood and follows after the class, wincing when Kirishima whoops in delight at getting out early. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouts, right over Iida reprimanding Kirishima.
Katsuki wipes his hands on his pants when he gets back inside, ducking around Koda and Sato who are in a heated debate over something Katsuki couldn’t care less about. He heads towards where he stores his school uniform.
Turning his back to the other boys in his class, Katsuki starts to strip, pulling his arms out of his jumpsuit-like gym uniform.
The perverted little ball kid is talking again. “Did you see Yaoyorozu jump! Her breasts went up and down like…like…” Mineta rips two balls from his head and mimics the action Yaoyorozu’s chest made. Several of the other boys start laughing.
Katsuki’s mind, for some reason, goes back to the dream that woke him up this morning. Since the fight, Katsuki and Midoriya hadn’t spoken much. Both of them had realized that there was a misunderstanding on both their parts for why they didn’t get along. Katsuki grimaces, thinking on how he had confessed to feeling inferior to Deku.
I’m a piece of garbage, Katsuki thinks. Letting Deku rile me up like that. What the hell?
He remembers how oddly relieved he felt when All Might showed up. He might have continued saying things he’d only come to regret later.
Iida sounds obviously bothered by Mineta’s joke. “I must ask you not to be disrespectful to Yaoyorozu! She is a fellow classmate and would not appreciate this humor!”
“Come on, Iida, we’re all men here! You can’t say that’s not funny,” Sero laughs, a wide smile pulling at his face. Katsuki doesn’t really like him, he gives off too much of a “background character” vibe.
“I will have no ‘locker room talk’ on my watch!’”
“Oui, we should just talk about me instead!” Aoyama says, striking a pose.
Katsuki continues searching through his locker for the towel he brought. He had to get some of this extra nitroglycerin off his skin or he definitely was going to explode these bastards.
As Katsuki searched, the locker room slowly cleared as the boys head back to the classroom to continue with regular classes.
Checking that he is alone, Katsuki relaxes slightly, shifting his stiff shoulders and turning to face the empty room. He locates his towel under the bench that runs between the lockers.
“Fucking shitrag,” Katsuki swears at the towel, whipping it against the lockers as punishment. He sits down on the bench, wiping his hands and retrieving his water bottle from his bag. Taking a long sip, Katsuki sighs.
He thinks about Deku’s determined expression, the glower in those green eyes that pierced through Katsuki and left him feeling like a unhealed wound.
Rivals, huh?
“Ah, Bakugou, why you hanging back? I forgot my—“
Katsuki turns in surprise to see Kirishima standing at the entrance to the locker room staring at him.
“The fuck do you want?” Katsuki sniffs, glaring. He glances around. Kirishima’s bag is still on the floor. He must have forgotten it.
“Bakugou…you…”
Katsuki blinks, looking at Kirishima’s face in confusion, his ire growing. “Spit it out, hair-for-brains.”
“You have a soulmark.”
Katsuki freezes. He looks down realizing that he still has his jumpsuit half-way undone, revealing his chest and the black mark that scarred it to the world.
Covering his soulmark was like breathing. But leave it to getting caught up thinking about Izuku to make Katsuki forget to breathe.
He jumps to his feet, grabbing his white button-up uniform shirt and doing it up as fast as he can. His hands are not shaking, damnit. “I fucking do not. It’s a fucking tattoo.” He changes faster than he has ever changed in his life, before shooting over to the still frozen Kirishima and shoving him against the lockers. He feels the other’s skin harden with the automatic activation of his quirk. “And you didn’t fucking see anything other than a tattoo.”
Kirishima raises his hands, slowly coming back to the present. “Whoa! I’m sorry, no need to get grabby! It’s okay if you have a soulmark—“
“IT’S NOT A SOULMARK!”
“Shit—it’s okay, I have one too!”
Katsuki releases the redhead in shock. “What?”
“I have one too!”
“We are not fucking soulmates, Kirishima.”
“No—it’s a different mark, but you have a destined soulmate like me, right? Unless…” Kirishima frowns, rubbing his neck from where Katsuki grabbed him. “…you already met her?”
Katsuki carefully schools his face. “Of-fucking-course not.”
“Okay. Then see, we’re in the same boat.”
“We are not.”
“Can’t you just—forget it. Look, I won’t tell anyone.” Kirishima stares at him, eyebrows narrowing into a serious expression.
Katsuki is madder at himself than anything. He has gone years without letting a single other living soul learn about his soulmark. Only a select, unavoidable few know. And Katsuki would have rather kept it that way.
“I can’t wait to find my soulmate. I’ve been searching for them all my life.” He’s still watching Katsuki with those serious eyes.
“What a waste of time.” Katsuki turns. Kirishima looked so serious in that moment, that Katsuki is actually pretty confident that Kirishima won’t tell. He finishes packing his bag and slams his locker shut. “That shit will just let you down.”
“How do you know that? You have to give the person a chance at least.” Kirshima grabs his forgotten bag and follows Katsuki out the door.
“I don’t have to do anything. Where the fuck is your soulmark anyways? I’ve never seen it. Is it on your ass or something?”
“Hey! I never saw yours and it’s in the middle of your fucking chest,” Kirishima seems to be in high spirits now. “It’s on my thigh. It’s small enough that I cover it with that soulmark tape you can get…”
Katsuki had tried that stuff. He found that his soulmark was bigger than most of the sizes the tape came in. Plus it made his skin itch.
“…They’re special, you know? Plus, I kinda wanna get to know the person I like before I reveal I have a destined soulmark.”
Katsuki snorts. “And what if it’s a fucking letdown and they’re not your soulmate.”
Kirishima shrugs. “I would try to make it work anyways. But I think the person I fall for will have my soulmark. Sometimes you just have to have faith in the system, you know?”
“No,” Katsuki monotones. He knows from experience the only one you can have faith in is yourself. And hell if he was going to let something as whimsical as soulmarks dictate his life.
“They say by the time you reach sixteen, seventy percent of destined soulmates have already met their other half. I wonder if that’s true…”
“Probably,” Katsuki speaks without thinking. He puts his hands behind his head and continues when he feels Kirishima’s gaze. “Well, research shows it or whatever. And you like the shocky guy, right? You think he’s your soulmate or some shit?”
“You—“
Katsuki frowns, turning when Kirishima stops in his tracks. Kirishima is staring at him, eyes wide, much like when he had discovered that Katsuki has a soulmark. “What?”
“You know I like…Kaminari?”
“Obviously. You turn as fucking red as a stop sign every time he touches you.”
“Oohh…” Kirishima hides his face in his hands. “Shit…”
Katsuki snorts and continues walking. Kirishima follows after a moment.
“So it doesn’t bother you?”
Katsuki rolls his eyes at the vague words. “What is it this time, fucker?”
“That I’m gay?”
Katsuki snorts. “I don’t care if you would fuck a dolphin. Just keep it to yourself.”
Kirishima hums happily (and annoyingly). “I’m really glad we’re friends, Kacchan.”
Katsuki moves without thought. He slams Kirishima hard against the wall, the thud echoing around the empty hallway. “Don’t fucking call me that.”
“What? But you let Midoriya call you that and he’s your friend—“
“Deku and I—! We’re not—“ Katsuki is suddenly at a loss for words. His mind is there again—Ground Beta. Green eyes completely focused and free of fear. Rippling green energy coming from clenched hands. Fists meeting flesh and angry words and truthful words…
“You were always looking at me from above with those damn eyes of yours…looking down at me with disdain and truly aiming to surpass me because you knew you could!”
“Your sheer amazingness at everything you do was so brilliant to me, it was blinding!”
All Might, Katsuki’s hero, standing before him, thin and broken, apologizing. Words that arose, that he had managed to restrain before:
“But I’m weak…even though all I wanted to do was become strong like you—but ‘cuz I’m weak…now you’re like this!”
Hands on his neck and arm as the broken hero embraced him. He quickly pushes them away.
The intense shame of being called lacking by Katsuki’s hero.
“—your feelings are all out in the open now and now….If the two of you can recognize each other and honestly raise each other up…you can become the best heroes who both win and rescue—“
Together….with….Deku…?
And then a different scene rushes into Katsuki’s mind. Of standing in a small elementary classroom. Izuku illuminated by the setting sun.
“Ne, Kacchan? We don’t really have to be soulmates, right? You don’t want that anyways—“
“Bakugou?”
Katsuki blinks and realizing he is still holding Kirishima by the neck against the wall. The other boy is staring down at him in confusion and worry.
“You went really pale there? Are you okay?”
“Fine! I’m fine.” He quickly releases the redhead, clenching his now empty fist. “Don’t call me that.”
“You don’t tell off Midoriya though.”
“I do!” Katsuki insists, though at this moment he can’t remember if he has ever told Deku off for that. “Anyways, we’re fucking late for class thanks to you.”
Kirishima grumbles but doesn’t say anything in return as they finally get to the classroom.
Katsuki can’t help but feel that something has changed for him. Especially when it comes to Izuku.
Soulmates…the word rings in his ear long after they get to class, Aizawa reprimands them, and Katsuki is back in his desk, staring out at the green trees.
There are a thousand things that Katsuki thought about over his suspension. A lot of it made him hate himself.
Katsuki clutches at his pencil, nearly snapping it in half. He caught himself before that happened, forcefully putting his pencil down.
Bullshit, he tries to convince himself. Nothing has changed.
Wrong, his brain replies, everything has changed.