Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

night before

Katsuki saw the color of Deku’s eyes change a week after Uraraka broke up with the nerd.

It wasn’t weird that he only saw it after a week. Winter break had been around the corner and that apparently gave U.A. the right to dump all work possible before cherry blossoms came and whisked away the third-years. 

How villains kept on maintaining the tradition of being jobless, bitter, and pain-in-the-asses during the end of the year season didn’t help either. Not when most (all, fucking all son of a—) of the grunt work fell to interns (read: Katsuki). 

Best Jeanist did a speech on the merits of starting at the bottom and Katsuki remembered mixing the agency’s hair gel stash with Loctite superglue.

So, no, it wasn’t a surprise that the news of the nerd’s breakup last week was something he didn’t mark ‘important.’

It wasn’t weird, either, that his nightly spars with Deku (also: I need to beat up something and your overthinking ass is right there) stopped three months ago, just a few weeks into September.

Things had been getting busier and busier (sometimes more than he could handle) and it was honestly a fucking relief that Deku shot him that harried text.

With the heavy U.A. workload (slave drivers #1) and the hero internship (slave drivers #2), it took a shitload of willpower to not just collapse on the dorm’s front steps.

Denki, Mineta, and the other weak idiots in the class (fucking babies he threw heat packs and blankets over) already occupied that pathetic sleeping spot.

It wasn’t weird, not really, when in those three months, Katsuki got nothing more than a few glimpses of Deku’s stupid head.

No. Nothing was weird.

What was weird and downright sacrilegious (blasphemous, a violation of the fucking natural order) was spotting that stupid mess of curls on the dorm rooftop.

Deku was sitting on the ledge, back to the rooftop door, and facing the gap that showed the floors’ glass-covered hallways.

It was late. Each floor showed nothing more than darkness reflecting darkness. No lines of light coming from any door.

Katsuki would know. He was the one who walked from the ground floor up and up until his hand was on the rooftop door, pushing.

He was also the only one supposed to be on the goddamned roof.

If Deku hadn’t turned at the door swinging open, Katsuki might’ve gotten a good hit to kick the trespasser off the ledge. Off his roof.

The door clicked shut behind him. 

Deku spoke first because of course he did, that little shit.

“Kacchan,” It was dark, but Katsuki could see the nerd’s awful (just terrible) attempt at a smile. “What are you, um, doing here? Can’t– can’t sleep?”

Deku’s legs kept swinging on the ledge, his body twisted to face Katsuki. The strain of the new position showed (a little too much, a little too drastically). 

Scars creeping out the edges of the nerd’s compression sleeves bulged. The sleeves creased and creaked, almost cracking. That mess Deku dared call hair was more all over the place than usual, curls battling the mid-winter wind.

It looked like Deku hadn’t moved until Katsuki came (if he just looked up through those dark glasses, would he have seen—?)

Katsuki scowled. “The fuck d’ya care De– Izuku? What, you got your name down on this place? Yeah– I fucking thought not.” 

It was the night before winter break. The aching muscles that had not appreciated his decision to climb five flights of stairs shuddered from every whipping slash of the cold wind. With the closed door cutting off the warmth from inside, it was fucking cold.

Katsuki didn’t know if Deku could see him shaking. If the creepy nerd could somehow sense with those weird-ass quirks how much he wanted to be face down on his pillow, buried under his electric blanket right now.

But no. Here he was, in the dead of night, having to deal with an annoying trespasser on his rooftop.

Katsuki grumbled and stomped over (his legs did not almost buckle at the first step), uncaringly nudging the nerd to move aside. He could’ve sat down anywhere else—the whole roof was his clam or whatever—but he was feeling petty… for some reason. 

A sensible person would protest. Or at least glare, be stubborn, and say some shit about being there first.

Deku just moved aside. The nerd had already been moving before Katsuki decided to be petty and shift his course.

Creepy ass nerd.

It was colder at the ledge. A cool breeze passed more often and the frosted concrete nipped at him through his ratty sweatpants. Katsuki slightly (just a bit) regretted not going for the thick, woolen ones Kōda gave him during a sewing-knitting phase (that coincided with a sudden wooly animal uprising).

His teeth chattered. He clamped them shut and breathed sharply through his nose (which, fucking ow, he was not repeating).

It was freezing as fuck.

Deku shifted closer. A breath forming white clouds brought away by the breeze. Another shift. The drag of fabric against concrete and whatever material made the dorm endure housing heroes-in-training.

Then Deku was right next to him, compression-wrapped legs and arms brushing against Katsuki. 

It was a chilly night but not even the return of another Ice Age would convince Katsuki to (ugh) cuddle or fucking hold hands to stop freezing to death. 

That’d be a death he’d understand (and forgive Past Katsuki for because it wasn’t an idiotic choice).

But Deku leaned against him, and Katsuki let the nerd. 

Deku’s shoulder dug into his arm because the trespasser was a midget, too. With the worn and torn hoodie he’d grabbed on the way up, it didn’t bother him much. It was just a pressure pushing on frayed cotton and reminding Katsuki that someone was there–

It was a bother. Deku being there as a shitty trespasser was a bother.

Katsuki didn’t move away. He watched his breath come out as white puffs, varying between thick clouds and streaming silver flickers in the dark.

It was cold but this clusterfuck of broken bones, blender mixed-muscles, and jagged scars beside him was probably (no, most likely) feeling it a hundred (thousand) times more. 

He didn’t want to spend the first day of winter break bringing back a nerd (with a very scary mother) from an idiot-induced freezing death.

That was why Katsuki leaned against Deku, too. Why he propped himself up on his arms, legs coming to swing absentmindedly on the ledge. Why, in hanging his head back, Deku followed, and it was… warm. 

Just a bit (enough for a lull to settle, content).

Ignoring the cold bite of rough concrete against his palms, Katsuki looked up.

The sky was clear tonight. Whatever thick winter clouds there’d been earlier, blocking the sun out, had dispersed. The remaining wisps and silver swirls were nothing to the stars burning into the night.

There was a power to them—these stars and the moon a waning crescent. A desperation to keep burning and burning before the winter sheet came over again.

Katsuki wouldn’t ever admit that he came up here as often as he could. That there’d always be this just one more step dammit c’mon to get up here. He wouldn’t admit that it was an annoying mix of want and need, when the heat wouldn’t go away (freezing was better than waking to a charred world).

But everyone in the shitty class fucking knew, anyway.

Those fuckers knew because, coincidentally, no one would come up when they’d see him pass on his floor to go further up. 

So Katsuki was always alone when he came up here.

Except when, with controlled explosions, he had to remind Eijirō what it was like to feel something. He was alone except sometimes Mina followed and he let her take large gulps of clean air (not acid fumes); her bandaged hands shakily pointing out stars and constellations. 

It was just him except when he’d take an entire night reminding Denki of things he forgot with every zap that fried nerves, working his friend through (“I am Kaminari Denki. Repeat it, shithead”) words.

Katsuki was always alone on the rooftop until when he couldn’t be—listening to Kyōka fiddle with her bass, sometimes her guitar, singing into the night just to make sure she can still hear; nudging Rikidō awake who’d be silent as Katsuki patched up wounds he didn’t notice getting, later admitting (“I’m scared, Katsuki”) his fear of never waking up; and stargazing with Hanta, the smell of ointment and creams filling the air on the bad days when he nursed dry, cracked skin.

Except those (there was more but he won’t fucking say–), Katsuki had been alone and he fucking liked it that way.

He liked how, alone, he didn’t have to pretend he didn’t enjoy stargazing. He could admit (easily, a guilty pleasure) how the dark speckled with the farewell flashes of dying stars grounded him. 

It shouldn’t’ve. It should’ve reminded him of the same darkness of black wisps and a suffocating slime that made him wake up, choking (feeling, fucking feeling four almost five fingers around his throat). Of a heavy oppression that made the air taste of leather straps that’d dig in and squeeze until something cracked—

The night sky didn’t remind of him that. 

As Katsuki tracked the constellations—Orion, Canis Major, Lepus, Caelum, Pyxis—and saw new old stars, he didn’t think of that kind of darkness.

This was just the sky. Just that. A sky he’d dragged his aching limbs up five flights of stairs to sit under for almost three years.

It was just the sky.

And it was… nice. Peaceful. A time for quiet. A time for the curdling explosions racing in his blood to lull. For him to look instead at explosions happening in the sky, years away since it started and years more before they’d end.

Sitting under the stars, at the mercy of the night, was Katsuki’s time to stop thinking and just be there.

Now if Deku would stop sniffling every few seconds, that’d be fucking great.

“Oi, De– Izuku.”

The nerd sniffled, shuffled, and shifted. “Kacchan?”

“If you don’t stop crying, I’m pushing you off this goddamned ledge and you’re gonna be a disgusting late-night snack for Tokoyami’s Plants From Hell.”

Deku laughed. 

Katsuki was pissed because, really, why were his threats not working anymore? And what the fuck was so funny—

Deku laughed again. It was wet and hoarse. 

It was the laugh someone made when they’ve been crying for far longer than they should be and because they couldn’t stop. Not even if they wanted to. 

Katsuki (regrettably) knew that laugh.

The choice to pretend it wasn’t what he’d heard every one of his shitty friends make when he dragged them up here mocked him (because there was never a choice, not really).

Katsuki looked at the sky wistfully and bid the solitary moment fucking goodbye before turning to Deku to see what the hell was the proble—

It was a weird feeling—to stop breathing. 

For words he never had a problem rolling out suddenly stop wanting to get out, blocking the rest.

Katsuki didn’t like it.

“Does it look ugly, Kacchan?” Deku’s lips were trembling as the idiot continued smiling. “Y-Yeah, it probably– no, definitely does. N-no one c-can look at me for too long. They… well, e-even I can’t and I get it. W-Why it’s hard to look.”

As Deku smiled and blinked (fuck, fuck, what the fuck—), there was a thought that slipped from the turbulent mess in his goddamned head. It tore through the whirling thoughts, merciless in screaming:

Deku was wrong.

The goddamned stupid nerd was wrong because no, it wasn’t ‘hard to look at.’ No, it wasn’t something people and other equally stupid extras couldn’t bring themselves to look at.

Deku was wrong.

That molten silver sheen of heartbreak wasn’t hard to look at.

It was something hard to stop looking at, even for Katsuki who’d seen the color only a few times. 

The first, on his late grandmother, who he used to visit on summer breaks in the countryside. 

He thought she was blind at first. It was hard to think she wasn’t with how her eyes looked—shining silver spreading its glaze from the inner depths of her pupils out to the irises, and filling (replacing, tearing apart—) the white of her eyes. 

When the light hit right, it looked like they were always filled with unshed tears.

Later, when she smacked him on the head for trying out rude gestures, Katsuki thought that was just her eye color.

But there was a photo album.

In the first half of pages with yellowing pictures, he saw her brilliant red eyes gleam with his late grandfather’s cool blue ones. 

In the latter half, when the photos lacked blue, the red was gone, too (a silver more eerie and mystic captured on camera).

The second time was on the old hag. 

Briefly. So brief he thought he imagined it (thought his eyes failed him) if he didn’t also see it on his old man.

He’d been only four years old then, and he didn’t fucking understand. 

All he knew was that the bump that’d taken his shitty parents’ attention—the one they crossed days off the calendar for—suddenly became something they cried over.

There’d been blood trailing from the kitchen to the genkan and out the gate when he got back from school and waited. His old man and the hold hag came home with that stinging smell of the hospital clinging to them. 

It was with the smell of burned sugar and flashing explosions (miracles) from his hands that made the hag stop fucking crying (and turn that silver back to red and brown again).

Silver heartbreak.

Katsuki didn’t like the shitty color. He didn’t like how it was looking up at him and had the fucking nerve to reflect the stars in the sky.

He wanted to pour bleach over Deku’s goddamned eyes that were too big, too silver, too open and not green, dammit.

He wanted to tell Deku that this was what nerds who feel too much got and that if you didn’t want everyone to avoid your eyes, then maybe you should have the common sense to wear shades or contact lenses, you idiot.

“If you don’t change it back, I’m jumping right fucking now to Uraraka’s room and blast her eyeballs through her head– don’t think I fucking won’t De– Izuku. The bitch lives on my floor and those glass windows are quirk-proof for shit.”

Well. 

That wasn’t exactly what Katsuki wanted to say, but he’d take what he could get. See? It stopped Deku’s self-depreciating rant and all.

The babbling panic and flailing arms were an unfortunate side-effect, though.

“Wha– no! N-no! Kacchan, you– why would you even– just– agh, no!” Deku sputtered, jerkily sitting up. “Ochako’s your friend! She’s… she did nothing wrong, Kacchan, because it’s my–”

Katsuki slapped a hand over Deku’s mouth. 

Even with the disconcerting (wrong, wrong, wrong) silver sheen, he wasn’t that sympathetic to endure a round of woe is me I am all that is wrong with the world crap.

Even if it was about something (read: a relationship, ugh) that he knew he was overstepping on, Katsuki didn’t give a shit about it now. Not even with knowing that if it was the other way around, Katsuki would turn villain before letting other people have a fucking say in how he handled his personal shit.

Things like boundaries and spaces didn’t mean crap when Deku’s goddamned eyes weren’t green anymore.

“Right,” Katsuki said, tightening his hold over Deku’s mouth. “I came up here for some me-time and not to babysit your crybaby, heartbroken ass. This entire conversation’s a shitshow I never wanted to be part of– understand that, nerd?”

“Mmph.”

“Yeah, yeah, go shove that it’s my issue not yours Kacchan speech up AFO’s dead ass, ‘cuz it ain’t gonna mean shit right now.”

Deku glared at him, but it wasn’t that effective with the nerd’s cheeks squished together, skin-torn lips (fuck that habit) jutting out like a stupid goldfish. 

The nerd did nothing else, though. Didn’t struggle to get out of the grip, just as Katsuki didn’t shake off the scarred hand gripping his arm.

Deku was just looking at Katsuki with those silver eyes, still reflecting (stealing) the light of the sky’s burning stars.

His fingers dug into the nerd’s tear-streaked cheeks.

“I don’t give a shit what went down with you and Uraraka,” He said. “Maybe it’s why you’ve been chasing after her like a pathetic mutt that knows it’s about to be put down. Or maybe it’s something else– I. Don’t. Care.”

Katsuki had snippets. Pieces of the fraying and unraveling story of the class’ highschool sweetheart couple. Just snippets.

But they were enough to understand it was Uraraka who started the breakup talk, and Deku was the stupid, stubborn nerd who gave it his all to stop it.

Anything more specific, Katsuki didn’t know.

“Remember that, De– Izuku— I don’t fucking care. You can mope around all your life for shit,” Katsuki leaned closer, snarling. “But this thing with your eyes? Fucking fix it ‘cuz I sure as hell won’t spend my goddamned life looking at that.”

It was a threat. Plain, with the promise of an explosion in the face.

But there’d been the war. The death and loss and the lying awake at night wondering if the world he’d wake up to was still the same or if it’d be rubble crashing down on him (suffocating; the one death he couldn’t—)

There’d been that and Katsuki pinned all the fucking blame on it for how his threats weren’t just threats anymore. Not to this shitty nerd who learned how to listen and have that spark of understanding in those eyes.

Katsuki didn’t know if it’d just because of the war. 

Maybe it wasn’t even a specific point that could be dumbed down to seconds, minutes, and hours. Maybe it was way before, and had been building up steadily right under his fucking nose.

He didn’t know.

He didn’t know why Deku’s justified frustration, irritation, and maybe some anger went away with the wind, dispersing and leaving… understanding. 

And there was something soft and fond on that stupid face that Katsuki had to release his hold on it.

Deku was smiling.

It wasn’t the pathetic imitation that wobbled from the strain. Not even the one that Katsuki had seen a glimpse (briefly gone in a blink)—the one full of an ache that the cold couldn’t shatter and something the stars couldn’t burn away.

It was just… Deku’s smile. 

The normal one. The one always preceding that chirpy, annoying as fuck exclamation of—

“Kacchan,” Deku said (see, there it was), squeezing Katsuki’s arm. “Thank you for caring, but I’ll– I’m gonna be okay. This is– it’s just one of those things, you know?”

Deku offered the smile (shaky, right there—) as he shuffled and shifted until he was leaning against Katsuki again. With both of them sitting up, Katsuki could feel the slight tremors—the line of tension that showed how much the shitty nerd was trying to not lean so much.

What an idiot.

Katsuki sighed, looking back up at the stars. It was weird seeing that they were still there. Exactly as they’d been—unmoving, unaffected—before he’d snapped, turned, and saw silver (not green).

“No, I don’t know,” He said. “And I told you I don’t care so stop pretending you cry silently ‘cuz it’s pathetic and it’s been three months since I’ve seen shit of you but I’m pretty fucking sure you haven’t changed that much, De– Izuku.”

Deku laughed, turned to bury his face in Katsuki’s shoulder, and cried.

Snot, tears, and garbled sobs of an indiscernible name made a mess on his hoodie, soaking through the worn thing. Deku’s hand wasn’t doing it any better, pulling, wrinkling, and stretching the faded design.

And Katsuki… stayed there, saying nothing and watching the stars.

winter break

The next morning, when he came to fetch the nerd for Auntie Inko, Deku’s eyes were still silver.

Already dressed, bags packed, and room fixed, Deku sat on his bed, staring at something in his hands. It was small. Something tucked into (hidden) the nerd’s small hands that Katsuki couldn’t see it from the doorway.

He had an inkling what it was, though.

The door creaked. Deku didn’t notice. The nerd kept staring down and even though Katsuki could see the idiot; he knew Deku wasn’t really there.

Not really. Not fully, with those eyes staring but not looking, growing heavier with the weight of silver still fucking there.

Deku had already drawn the curtains over the balcony doors, but in the fluttering gaps, light slipped through. They flared across the emptied closet and drawers, and in reaching the bed, found Deku.

The silver glowed and Katsuki could see the molten pool threaten to creep past the corners, spilling and marking cracks—

Katsuki stomped over.

Deku blinked. He shook his head slightly and slowly looked up into Katsuki’s red eyes.

“Get the fuck out of your room already, you hermit, before I make Auntie disown your pathetic ass.”

Towering over Deku like this, his shadow cast on Deku, Katsuki got a glimpse of gold in the nerd’s hands. It was small and swallowed by his shadow but he saw the smooth curve of a band (of a promise—)

Fingers closed around it and it was gone.

When he looked back at Deku, green eyes looked back. It was paler, an opaque sheet of frozen glass still carrying that damned silver.

But they were green (no creeping spills or cracks that’d leak silver through everything—) and Katsuki would take it.

Deku laughed, green eyes alight. “You can’t make my mom do anything, Kacchan. Not even you.”

“Wanna test that out, nerd?”

On their lunch out, Deku’s eyes were still green. Paler and a shitload of shades lighter, but it was still green. If Auntie noticed anything, she didn’t say a word.

She did shoot Katsuki a thankful look when he banged on their door that night, declaring he was sleeping over, so bring out your fluffiest futon or I fucking swear it ain’t gonna be my back that’s gonna break, nerd.

Deku’s eyes, before they closed in sleep, were a darker shade of green.

That repeated for the rest of winter break.

On the mornings Katsuki spent on Deku’s floor, he’d wait. He’d tinker with some of the nerd’s shit, rummage through stowed away boxes, creaking cabinets, and leaf through some All Might comics.

Then, the pile of blankets on the bed would move and he’d stop, waiting—watching. 

Deku would struggle with that cocoon mess of blankets until a head of (very) wild curls would pop out.

Katsuki would wait. 

Wait until Deku wormed out and scrunched his stupid face at the full blast of the sun from the curtains Katsuki already drew open. Watch as those freckles bloomed into existence, soaking in the light.

Sometimes Katsuki would be on Deku’s desk chair, legs propped up on the table. Other times, still on the futon and leaning against the nightstand or closet, he’d only have to tilt his head up (just a bit) to see.

Deku’s eyelids would flutter, rapidly blink, and–

Silver.

Unfocused silver eyes would stare blankly at the light-filled window. Like this, under sunlight, the dried tear streaks shone. 

Katsuki saw the exact moment, just like every morning, when Deku realized what was lost, broken, and gone. It wasn’t hard. Not with how those goddamned (wrong, wrong, wrong) eyes shone, silver threatening again and again to fill, spill, and—

It never stopped being annoying as fuck.

It was excellent motivation for Katsuki to keep throwing whatever shit was within reaching distance—a book, a pillow, an ostentatious All Might clock—at Deku’s stupid face.

That repeated for the entire winter break—him throwing shit at the nerd and Deku, when he’d finally see Katsuki, blink away the goddamned silver.

Katsuki didn’t know if it actually helped (not that this was helping because, ugh, no). Maybe it literally knocked sense into Deku who made him wake up early on winter break (ungrateful lil’ shit) just to see—to watch, wait, and check.

Silver, green, silver, green.

It was fucking annoying, so of course Katsuki banged on the Midoriya apartment door every night for three weeks. 

He aggressively complimented Auntie’s cooking, snarled at Deku who shouldn’t be twelve-feet near plates or I fucking swear I’ll make you eat detergent for dessert, and tripped the nerd when they’d do night run (races) around the neighborhood.

Katsuki slept over every night for three weeks, waking up, messing with Deku’s shit—

Waiting. Looking. Watching (forgetting, sometimes, to breathe).

Katsuki threw everything under the morning sun at Deku’s face until the silver wasn’t there with its shitty ephemeral threats. Until the silver, molten and swirling, receded—first from the corners, where it stopped short from spilling into cracks; then the return of the white, with its snaking, pulsing veins; the silver claws digging its hold on the iridescent green irises, before it’s dragged away; and its lasting fading (gone, gone) cry into black pupils.

Katsuki stayed in that nerdy room until there were no more dried tear streaks and Deku’s bright (right) green eyes looked at him in the morning.

Even then, he didn’t stop throwing shit at the nerd.

It did grow annoying when Deku began catching them, laughter dancing in his eyes as he’d say good morning to you too, Kacchan.

What a smartass.

the new year

Kaminari Denki was smiling, and Katsuki wanted it to stop.

“Either spit out whatever bullshit-of-the-day you got for me, Pikachu, or I’m making sure you never get to smile like a creep again.”

Denki gasped. “Like a creep? Excuse you, Kacchan, my smile is swoon-worthy!”

“Says who? Your old hag?”

“Says my already growing fanbase on their adorable blogs, actually. And some up-and-coming hero magazines.”

“‘Growing’ fanbase means you got like, ten or fifteen Pokémon fans, and ‘up-and-coming magazines’ means tabloids that grab at anything— good or bad clout,” Mina piped in, disgustingly speaking with her mouth full (and still chewing, ugh) of natto udon. 

Denki gasped again.

Katsuki barely (just fucking just) restrained the urge to turn that overdramatic gasp into a gasp for breath. A temptation he successfully thwarted (happy therapist, happy life and shit).

He did go to war and spent three years of high school together with the sparky little shit and the ‘Bakusquad’ (ugh). It (sadly) made him less bitchy against this (apparently his) pack of idiots.

Like, 1% less bitchy.

So Katsuki didn’t strangle Denki. Didn’t make his friend (ugh) eat their own finger that was dramatically pointing at Mina, shaking accusingly.

No.

Katsuki just held up a hand and began counting down.

It was a system Hanta devised. A compromise, really, for Katsuki to stop wasting his creative threats on the different ways he’d blow up their faces (blowing up like Anpanman was just—no) instead of on other productive crap.

So a system was born: Katsuki would kindly count down and whoever had bullshit-of-the-day needed to speak fast.

It was the first day back after winter break, and also Denki’s turn. But Katsuki did not like that creepy ass grin, so he (pettily) counted down from one.

He should’ve counted down from fucking negative twenty.

“AlittlebirdytoldmeMidoriya’seyesarebacktonormal’cuzyouspentthewholebreakwooinghimandkissinghisboo-booawaywhichis—wowyoumovefastKacchanbutasyourbro— nice.”

Katsuki opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again. His fingers twitched—the one that’d been counting down—clenching and unclenching, repeatedly snuffing the crackles jumping on hia palm.

Yeah… no.

“Uh-huh, no. I ain’t dealing with bullshit-for-the-day on the first day back, Pikachu,” Katsuki said. 

He righted his chopsticks back and picked up an ebi chili, his other hand finally picking up his bowl of steamed rice.

With a glistening piece of shrimp before his lips, Katsuki hesitated. 

For less than a second. Then he just went for it because it was practically a crime (he was a hero) to not say it.

Katsuki looked at Denki with a deadpan expression. “That bullshit rumor ‘bout Tokoyami and the Vantablack fucker from class B getting into some kinky stuff in janitor closets was better, Pikachu.”

Denki sputtered. “You told me it didn’t make sense ‘cuz of the power displacement!”

“Yeah, just like this one ‘bout me and the shitty nerd doesn’t make sense. Except that one had the possibility of being true,” Katsuki drawled. He popped the (now lukewarm, dammit) shrimp in his mouth, following with rice.

“But it is true! About Midoriya! Midoriya and you! Midoriya and Kacchan!”

Katsuki raised an unimpressed brow and kept chewing.

Maybe having some sympathy for the near-glitching sparky idiot (also: her boyfriend), Kyōka cut in. She, unlike the mess that was Ashido Mina with those stringy nattos, swallowed her grilled fish before speaking.

He always thought she belonged to the sensible side of the squad.

“Coming out of Denki’s mouth, yeah, it definitely sounds like bullshit-of-the-day—”

Denki gasped. Katsuki nodded.

Yup. He was right. She was definitely sensib—

“—but he’s right ‘bout how you spent the entire winter break sticking with Midoriya and then, what— he comes back, green eyes again?” Kyōka shrugged, spooning some tofu. She leveled Katsuki with a… look (the fuck?). “Looking at the situation like that, it’s… Well, it’s not complete bullshit to think you were— you know.”

Kyōka slurped up a tofu piece. Katsuki narrowed his eyes when he spotted her poorly hidden grin behind her bowl of miso soup.

Great. It turned out having the sparky idiot as a boyfriend lured her to the batshit-crazy-and-will-set-everything-they-touch-on-fire side of the squad.

Katsuki glared at her (and Denki, that smug-looking shit) before finally turning to look at his suspiciously quiet seatmate. 

Eijirō froze, the spoonful of chashu rice stuck in his mouth.

Katsuki tapped a finger around his bowl of rice. Eijirō swallowed the rice whole, eyes wide as he set down the spoon.

It didn’t take long for his best friend (the very, very dead idiot) to crack.

Eijirō clapped his hands together, bowing his head. “Katsuki! My man! I really, really didn’t mean to!”

Katsuki stared at his soon-to-be ex-best friend before setting down his chopsticks and bowl, fishing out his phone. He scrolled through his contacts, clicking ‘Shitty Hair Eiji.’

He looked back up at Eijirō.

“I’m blocking you.”

“What?! No, don’t— Katsuki, love of my life—”

“Hey!” Mina made some sort of… sound, her mouth still full of natto udon.

“—I really, really didn’t mean to! They just dropped by during break and I know you told me to change my passcode—”

“Yeah, ‘cuz your birthday’s on the fucking public hero database, idiot,” Katsuki said, thumb still hovering over the ‘block’ button.

“—but I keep forgetting, man! And then I stepped out to sign for my mom’s package and when I got back, they were just— just there,” Eijirō finished lamely. 

The idiot glanced at a still indignant Mina. “Uh, babe, I love you, but it took me three years, a leg and a half, and practically mixing our blood to get Katsuki to text back.”

Mina opened her mouth (still full of mashed udon, ugh) and closed it, nodding with a way too serious and understanding look. She patted his hand as if absolving Eijirō of a grave sin for the sake of the greater good or some shit.

Katsuki wasn’t entirely sure. He didn’t speak stupid.

He sighed and pocketed his phone, wondering what crap he did in his past life to get friends (ugh, ew) like these. 

Maybe passed a starving child on the side of the road? Didn’t help an old lady cross the street?

Judging by Eijirō and Mina’s disgusting reassurances for each other, Denki’s fucking smug look while hiding behind Kyōka, and Hanta and Rikidō’s side snickering, he might’ve ended the world at some point.

Katsuki didn’t get to think more about it because there was that flash of… something in the corner of his eye. A flicker, nothing more, that should’ve been lost and ignored—a one among the many exploding shades of color filling up the cafeteria.

It should’ve been, anyway.

But Katsuki’s eyes were already looking past the sea of bustling students until he found it (that flicker of something he’d been seeing since—)

Deku was in the middle of an unstoppable stream of unrelated-to-the-topic chatter with Todoroki, his eyes a vibrant and bright (right) green.

Iida sat on the nerd’s other side, glasses reflecting the light as he sat ramrod straight (weirdos of the same feather). The two seats across the three had Tokoyami and Kōda.

It looked like Deku was back to usual (normal, Kyōka had said).

It was hard to say it didn’t look exactly like that. Big, shining green eyes, hands flailing all over the place, and a muttering stream taking over the table—everything looked like Deku’s ‘normal.’

Looked like, anyway, to nosy extras who were blind fucks and couldn’t see for crap. 

Because, even several tables away, Katsuki saw it (even if he didn’t want to dammit)—that light silver film mocking him with that pale (wrong, what the fuck was wrong—) green. 

Deku’s eyes were flitting here and there, scouring the room for something.

… Or someone with brown eyes that the nerd had said, just the once, he couldn’t stop looking at and Kacchan and I-I really think I lov—

Uraraka and Asui weren’t there. It was Tokoyami and Kōda staring intently at Iida’s quail eggs, their chopsticks menacingly clicking. It was Black Shadow debating with Iida, dragging Deku and Todoroki into it. 

Iida was robotically moving his arms, miming something. Todoroki responded with that stupidly impassive face, dunking his noodles in the sobawan all the while.

It looked like a normal lunch scene at the nerd table.

And Deku… kept talking. The nerd kept smiling, trying (failing because what was the fucking point—) not to show that with every flash of brown that’d pass, erupt, and end up not Uraraka Ochako, those green eyes paled a bit more.

Another film of that goddamned silver would cover Deku’s eyes. That cursed shitty color would have the audacity to come back as if it had the right after Katsuki had already—

He clicked his tongue.

It was illogical to think that Deku heard him. The cafeteria was full of teenagers who multitasked eating, drinking, and talking (like uncouth shits unfit for society). Lunch Rush was calling out orders, chairs and tables squeaked and screeched against the floor, and doors kept banging open and swinging close.

Maybe Deku hadn’t let go of those creepy stalker tendencies yet because there the nerd was, staring straight at him.

It wasn’t like Deku instigated something, but something started and Katsuki would not lose. Not to a staring competition. 

Not even when he had to stare at green eyes too pale, too shaky, and too fucking wrong and you better fucking fix it, nerd, before I throw a goddamn chair this time.

The corners of Deku’s lips twitched. He smiled and waved at Katsuki, those eyes brighter and less close to silver.

Katsuki looked away (only when the nerd did first, duh) and immediately regretted it.

The whole Bakusquad (that goddamned name was going to disappear some fucking day, dammit) was staring at him. 

He wanted to pluck out those eyes and shove it down their throats.

More so than usual because he didn’t know how they coordinated it, but apparently idiots had the same gossipy, nosy lilac shade. Six pairs of the mocking (annoying as shit) light purple colored-eyes stared at, with those creepy, clown-like grins.

“Just bullshit, huh?” Hanta said, his grin stretching more than the usual one did.

Katsuki wished it’d tear the asshole’s face (it didn’t, and that proved that this was a sad day for everyone).

“Yeah… bullshit,” Katsuki said with a blank face. “‘Cuz, for all the nights I spent fucking up my bedtime to take care of your asses, I did the same with the shitty nerd ‘cuz…”

Katsuki trailed off, looking pained and he really, really didn’t want to say it but—

“‘Cuz that’s what goddamn friends do, right?” He mumbled, ducking his head and trying (failing) to go back to his lunch. “Now fucking stop with the creepy clown smiles and turn off that shitty color or I’m blocking all of you. The color clashes, sucks, and hand over your goddamn phone already, Ei. Can’t trust your ass to change the passcode, dammit.”

Katsuki didn’t get to have another bite of his stir-fry shrimp. His chopsticks didn’t even get to nab one piece because the one thing his instincts failed at was alerting him to people trying to strangle him:

A group hug (read: wet and full-of-snot idiots piling on him and breaking another goddamned chair).

At one point Katsuki threatened to crush the one thing Kyōka tolerated Denki for. Then there was the promise he’d blow up Mina’s horns since I ain’t fucking kidding and it ain’t like you’re using them for anything.

All Katsuki got from that—even with one hand actually on Mina’s horns and the sole of his shoes bruising Denki’s thigh—was more bawling, cooing, hugging and oh fuck, this was how he was going to die, wasn’t it?

He spotted Deku laughing, eyes a vibrant green and brimming with mirth.

He flipped off the nerd.

It was a bullshit rumor that didn’t mean shit, but it was still a rumor. Denki’s reputation as a zappy gossip made sure that by the end of the day (the first fucking day back, fuck), the entire school knew.

Katsuki really, really didn’t give a shit. 

He would’ve if the rumors had a lick of truth which, to no surprise, had none (negative, nada, nyet, nein, eopseo).

Just like any of Denki’s rumors, it’d lose its momentum and tumble off into the pit of old news and irrelevant bullshit soon.

Yeah. It would.

It didn’t.

smuggling clothes

There was a lot of productive shit that Katsuki could’ve been doing on his first weekend free. 

According to Best Jeanist, who booted him out when the hours he clocked in were a bit (just a bit dammit) too much, it could be literally anything but work. 

He could be asleep, for one. Just face down in his bed and never waking until another war (nope, taking that back) shook him off the bed hard enough. 

Yeah, Katsuki should’ve been doing that.

Instead he was stomping down to the second floor (of-fucking-course Denki had to short-circuit the elevator again), a fuck-ugly ball of fabric squeezed under his arm. That ball also had the gall (son of a—) to collapse as soon as he stepped down to the second floor.

Maybe Katsuki should just burn it. He’d actually be doing Deku a favor (read: a life debt he’d lord over the nerd) in ridding the shame of owning these… clothes.

Could something that looked like they belonged to a (disrespectful and undignified) circus trope member even be called clothes? Katsuki and the nearest incinerator he could find said no.

But considering the possibility (99.9%) that Deku had Katsuki’s clothes just like he had the nerd’s, he needed collateral; a bargaining chip.

So (sadly) even if he’d like to test out his new heat-precision technique, Katsuki had a very comfortable (divine, really) pair of sweatpants and a tank top Deku was holding hostage. 

Unknowingly. That would turn knowingly once he called the shitty nerd out about it.

With the pile of All Might boxers (not even the good Age), Hawaiian-polka-dot-geometric patterned shorts, and some v-neck (oh fuck no) shirts bundled back into a ball, he stomped his way to Deku’s room.

It wasn’t a long walk. Definitely not long enough to sound like a menacing booming march of doom, but he did kick at Mineta’s door (just because).

Looking at Deku’s door was painful because of how fucking plain it was. It looked like the nerd didn’t get the go-crazy-with-customization memo or was peripherally blind, with Mineta’s door decked with a gravure model and Tokoyami’s pitch-black door that definitely oozed with a curse.

Or, well, that Deku still had no notable personality besides some small, already fading, inconspicuous All Might stickers on the door. 

Yeah, that sounded about right.

In hindsight, Katsuki should’ve (probably, definitely) sent a text that he was coming. He had Deku’s number (he didn’t know what bug Kyōka put so he couldn’t erase any contact) and the colorful brief exchange of Kacchan! and fuck off meant it wouldn’t be weird to send a quick give up my stuff or die.

He should’ve.

But then after emptying his bags and discovering he had minus several clothes, he sure as hell wouldn’t wait to text.

Katsuki would very much like to have access to that missed rationality right about now. Now with his fist in the air and Deku’s plain ass door not within banging distance anymore.

Because it was open. Was just swung open to reveal Uraraka Ochako with red-rimmed, shining eyes, and a vulnerable look he shouldn’t’ve seen.

That he shouldn’t still be looking at.

The decision to look past her (out of respect?) and into the room wasn’t… rational. 

Okay, Katsuki was already past rational, so fuck it, he was winging this.

Deku looked like shit. The nerd’s hair was all over the goddamned place (more than usual), some curls sticking up. He was sniffling, tears teetering the corner of his eyes that were—

Silver. 

A gleaming silver that greeted Katsuki last year (just a few weeks ago, dammit) on the fucking rooftop. He still remembered the cold, the stars, and the silver that stole it all. 

It was a goddamned color Katsuki had spent nights through mornings clearing up because it had no fucking business being on Deku’s face.

The nerd was leaning back against the desk, hands grasping at the edges, the scars and gnarled fingers bulging, spasming like it couldn’t hold on anymore—

Fuck.

Katsuki looked back at Uraraka and glared at her, and she was—already glaring at him. 

Which he understood. He probably ruined some heartfelt goodbye moment between her and the nerd. It also didn’t help that he was still taking up the only exit and, yeah, glaring at her.

But Katsuki was well-versed in glares. Practically a renowned expert at them.

So he knew Uraraka’s was different.

Her glare wasn’t the kind someone gave a person who stumbled into and interrupted a sensitive moment. Not one that just skimmed the anger.

This was a jump into the inferno’s depths. There was a deeper, simmering… thing there (with the shifting lights and shadows, he thought he was seeing hatred there).

Then it was gone, and it was just Katsuki straightening his back, crossing his arms over his chest, and glaring down at Uraraka.

It would’ve been an intimidating image (ish) if Deku’s stupid All Might boxers didn’t choose that moment to slip out from the bundled clothes, the fucking thing flopping to the floor.

They both looked at it for a (long) second before she let out a long-drawn sigh. Uraraka turned back to Deku, giving the nerd a strained smile.

“I’ll see you around, okay, Deku-kun? Don’t— don’t be a stranger, okay?”

Deku, the goddamned crybaby, looked like he was about to burst into tears. The silver swam and swam, going back to its shitty threats to break and crack.

They didn’t spill.

“Y-yeah,” Deku cleared his throat. His smile shook as he spoke, voice thick. “Of course, Ocha— Uraraka—san. We… we’re still… still friends.”

Uraraka’s breath hitched and Katsuki thought, for a moment, with how her shoulders shook and tensed, that she’d run back into the room (back to Deku).

She didn’t.

Uraraka let out a shaky breath, nodded, and turned away. She snatched up the All Might boxers, shoving it in Katsuki’s arms before shoving past him and she was… gone.

Katsuki didn’t know if Deku saw her sprint into a run down the hallway.

He knew that the sensible (common sense and all that was basic decency) thing to do was apologize for intruding (interrupting, whatever), leave Deku’s shitty ‘clothes’ by the door, and suffer through at least a day without his own. 

That was the rational course of action.

Katsuki balled up Deku’s clothes and threw it at the nerd’s stupid face.

Understandably, Deku sputtered and fumbled like a shitty loser with the clothes (collateral he just surrendered, damn).

“Wha— Kacchan? Since when were you—? W-what is this? Is this my…? I… did you s-see—”

Deku’s face was a disgusting mess of tears and snot, and Katsuki should’ve worn some gloves before he took a hold of it. 

The nerd looked more pathetic than he had back on the rooftop. The tear tracks were still fresh, shining under the lone room light. 

But Deku still looked like an idiot with his freckled cheeks squished together.

Fucking nerd.

Katsuki squeezed harder (as if it’d push the shitty silver intrusion out and fucking out to get the green back—)

“I—” He started. “—just wanted to get my clothes that your stupid ass mixed up at Auntie’s house and what’d I fucking get? An up-and-close exhibition of Uraraka beating your stupid heart around again and don’t give me that look, De— Izuku. I’m the one looking at your shitty eyes right now.”

With his other hand gripping Deku’s arm, holding the nerd in place, he was looking down at (still, still) silver eyes.

Something unpleasant writhed in his gut. Something bitter lodged in the back of his throat (the bitterness wouldn’t fucking stop, filling and filling, harder to breathe).

That something was probably annoyance. It made sense.

Why the hell wouldn’t he get fucking annoyed at getting all his goddamned work for three weeks (almost a month) seem so meaningless after one encounter? What else should he feel (there was an answer somewhere—) when Katsuki kept seeing the green that’d always been there be so fucking fragile to let that detestable silver overcome it?

Just. Like. That.

How fucking annoying.

Katsuki’s fingers were digging too hard into Deku’s face and arm. He was trembling (from frustration, yeah—that was it) and it was better to think that the nerd didn’t feel it.

But it was harder to pretend when Deku’s face… changed and Katsuki realized it hadn’t only been him who was looking (not for a long time, no).

Katsuki held on tighter and there was the chilly December wind nipping at his skin, constellations burning above, and Deku’s frustration and righteous anger just going away. Warm tears and cries soaked through his clothes, the unshed (but he saw and forgetting wasn’t an option) taken far and away by the wind.

Slowly, Deku smiled, and it didn’t make any fucking sense because Katsuki basically called the nerd a spineless little shit who would’ve crawled back to someone who broke their heart.

It made little sense, but it was happening anyway and he let go of Deku before… something. Before the lifting corners of that mouth that’d reach those softening eyes would touch him. 

Maybe.

Deku looked at him with soft, green (oh thank fuck) eyes. The nerd’s smile was still shaky. There were still tear tracks drying on that stupid face.

But Deku’s eyes were green and that something writhing in Katsuki’s gut settled. The something in the back of his throat let him breathe again (one breath and another to clear it up so fucking easily).

The December cold was gone and the new year was here.

The soft lights of the ceiling drew shadows over them, the whir of the the All-Might bedazzled room’s heater buzzing against his nape.

“It’s okay, Kacchan. I’m— I told you, right? I’m… I’m gonna be okay,” Deku offered him a wry smile. “Thanks for worrying. I know you don’t have to or even want to, but… thank you. Still… thank you for caring, Kacchan.”

Katsuki wasn’t stupid. 

He knew there’d be times when that (right) green would flicker, falter, and fall under the damning silver pressure. Sometimes he’d be there, with something in hand to throw at Deku’s face.

Sometimes he wouldn’t.

And that wouldn’t be okay, but Deku never broke his promises so Katsuki would just have to believe and trust (also glare since he couldn’t do anything else).

“Yeah, yeah, I know I don’t have to,” Katsuki rolled his eyes. He flicked Deku on the forehead (for good measure) and pushed the nerd away. “Just like how I don’t have to hear your auto-pilot thank yous when you could do better shit like— oh, I don’t know… How ‘bout giving me my fucking clothes back and burn up yours.”

It was weird when Deku laughed. 

It was fucking unnatural and unbefitting the whole situation Katsuki had (very, very rudely) stumbled into, and disregarded the significance of (that concept of goodbye; of letting go of something that—)

But it was better than the crying. Better to have Deku laugh while saying “Okay, Kacchan” and going over to where Katsuki was already zipping open the nerd’s still unpacked bags. 

As he emptied the last bag, he caught Deku’s eye (green, green, green) and the nerd’s smile widened. It softened under the light, shadows pulling at the curves and crinkles with warmth (not harsh, never not from Deku)

“Thanks… again, Kacchan,” Deku whispered, the words less sound and more air. Katsuki could’ve missed it easily. Easy.

He didn’t.

Deku laughed when Katsuki threw the empty bag at the idiot.

The next day, he immediately shoved a corn dog in Denki’s mouth as he took his seat. Katsuki glared at his squad’s (calling it that never stopped being lame as fuck) shit-eating clown grins.

“I hate you all and I’m blocking everyone,” He said as he took a bite of his curry.

When Denki finished the corn dog and was opening his mouth again, Katsuki didn’t bat an eye in stealing a big slice of daikon from Hanta’s oden and shoving it down his sparky ex-friend’s throat.

At least his squad’s clown grins stopped when Denki choked for real on the radish.

february 14

Katsuki shut the door as fast as he could, but Deku sneaked in anyway. 

He must be more exhausted than he realized, and he was blaming Past Katsuki for going to a goddamned spartan school.

Katsuki pinched the bridge of his nose (what was that stupid mantra again), closed his eyes, and took some (two, three) deep breaths.

When he opened his eyes, Deku was already sitting on his zabuton, notebook open and books piled on his chabudai.

Katsuki tried blinking. Maybe it’d make the nerd conveniently disappear because yes, this was obviously an exhaustion-fueled hallucination. Or maybe the recent villain round-ups from the past weeks got him hit with some trippy quirk.

The possibility that he was dead, and that Deku took over his goddamned room was too infuriating to consider (because, bitch, what?)

“Kacchan? Are you okay? You— is there something in your eye? Ah, don’t worry, Kacchan! Just stay still and I’ll blow it awa—”

“Uh-huh, no. You ain’t doing shit to me, De– Izuku. Not to my eye— and shut up, I know you’re an ass, but stop assuming, shitnerd.”

Deku gave him a disbelieving look that Katsuki (sadly) didn’t think his therapist would consider a (decent) reason for exploding the nerd’s face.  

He could kick the small table and make Deku’s books topple over and crush the nerd’s toes. 

Which he did (with absolute relish).

“Right,” Katsuki said, amidst the yelping, etc etc. “If you’re done fucking moaning like a weak lil’ shit from stubbing your toe—”

“It was the books, Kacchan! Very heavy history books!”

“—then you can move on to your excuse-of-the-day on why the fuck you’re in my room again, De— Izuku.” 

Katsuki glared down at the pathetic human being who’ve been (uninvitingly) making a place for himself in his room. 

He watched Deku glance down at his toes, open his mouth and—nope.

“Don’t even try using your ‘injured toes’ as an excuse, idiot. I made that happen after your trespass.”

Deku shut his mouth at that. But Katsuki was sure (he wished he wasn’t) that Deku was already thinking up excuses. 

Fuck, he could literally see those half-assed (well, sometimes ingenious) excuses rapidly flit through Deku’s eyes, churning into pieces of bullshit that’d come out of the nerd’s mouth.

“Um… Kirishima-kun told me you needed notes from Cementoss– Ishiyama-sensei’s lessons from the past weeks since you, uh,” Deku cleared his throat at Katsuki’s narrowed eyes. “Dozed off.”

While Eijirō was a rare specimen who was probably the only person Katsuki could really (warts and all) call his best friend, the shitty hair idiot wasn’t one-of-a-kind.

“Which I, uh… understand! I mean, he also told me ‘bout how Best Jeanist’s jurisdiction’s being overrun recently and you’re so overworked, too, that you didn’t even resist when some of your seniors slicked your hair back with gel, Kacchan!”

Yeah… he was going to kill Eijirō. 

He’d have to deal with a couple months of his therapist giving him disappointed looks, but, eh, he could handle that (ish).

When it looked like Deku wouldn’t say anything more (the nerd better than fucking not), Katsuki pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. 

“So… that your bullshit excuse for today?”

“… Yes?”

Katsuki looked at his balcony’s drawn curtains, then back at Deku who was sitting cross-legged on his zabuton, scarred hands cradling the ‘injured’ foot.

If his calculations were correct, he had a rough 85.4% chance of kicking Deku out of his room through the balcony. The numbers dropped if it turned out he did remember to close the glass doors (that were pretty durable as fuck).

Katsuki sighed.

He walked over to the cabinet by his desk (conveniently stepping on Deku’s fingers), popping open a water bottle and dumping the contents in a kettle.

He scowled at Deku’s stupid confused expression as he opened a tea canister.

“Don’t you fucking complain that I don’t have that shitty jasmine tea your uncultured ass likes, De– Izuku.”

The first time Deku showed up before his room, Katsuki had just come back from some after-school sparring with Rikidō. 

His hair had still been dripping all over the elevator floor when he rode up from the showers. He’d also been seriously considering chopping it all off (Kyōka rocked the look, damn) when he saw the nerd.

It was impossible, he knew, to see sounds. Plus, his room was the farthest from the elevator but that was definitely Deku’s muttering literally bouncing around the hallway. Even Tokoyami’s (obviously, probably) cursed door cowed from the whole spectacle.

Which was… actually concerning and Deku better not be fucking cursing his goddamned room.

There was a lot of shit that happened after Katsuki did the booming march of doom, let off a few small (not weak because he was not tired) explosions, and gave Deku three counts before there’d be a nerd-shaped hole on the floor.

It’d been having Iida see a hole in the ceiling right outside his room that got Deku talking fast.

There’d been some… explanation about Eijirō and Denki borrowing Deku’s room to test out a DIY bungee jumping project they found on YouTube. Of course, when Deku had expressed his (overly hysteric) concerns about that, the idiots said they’d start from the rooftop and come on Midoriya, man, Mina and the others will be at every floor and it’s kinda like a trust fall, trust jump thing, yeah? Manly team building!

The only unbelievable part of that story was how Deku’s friends were too busy to accommodate the nerd—Todoroki was video-calling Yoarashi (ugh), Iida was in the middle of his (weird) polyphasic sleep schedule, and Asui was with… Uraraka.

The other parts, yeah, Katsuki could believe. Mostly because Mina and Kyōka had texted him on the documents (read: the idiots’ last wills) Eijirō and Denki signed in the event of ‘death by stupidity.’

With as much care as he could, Katsuki had told Deku that if your nerdy ass could spend a decade being alone, you can do it for another night so step the fuck aside.

Deku had, predictably (that little shit), not stepped aside. There’d been rambling, begging, some litany of please please, and then the clincher (or the truth)—

I can’t exactly repaint my All Might Silver Age figurines— a task that takes immense, undisturbed concentration to get all those details right— in the lounge, Kacchan!

Katsuki still believed (will continue believing) that Deku didn’t bribe him. Nope. Because heroes didn’t take bribes.

Despite it initially being a one time entry ticket (at the price of snapping at Deku to watch those fucking lines, are you a fucking novice or what), the nerd added a neat little infinity footnote to it.

The first couple of times after, Katsuki seriously slammed the door close on Deku’s face. 

He succeeded.

For like a minute. Then Deku weaseled his way in whenever someone from the squad (or the entire entourage of idiots) came in.

It took a week before it became a pattern—Katsuki slamming the door (half-heartedly because why bother), Deku slipping in, and both of them having to suffer through a bullshit excuse before he stopped trying to kick out the trespasser. 

Instead of breaking the pattern—cornering Deku and shaking him to get an actual answer—Katsuki just let it be.

At least it reassured him (like in the night when explosions lighted up the dark to know it was still there and his and not gone—), with every time Deku turned back to say goodnight and see you tomorrow Kacchan at the door, it’d be green eyes he’d see.

It was easy to notice when Deku’s muttering stopped. Even with the scratching of Katsuki’s pen on paper (mechanical pencils were for mistakes) and the fluttering curtains over the open balcony door, Katsuki noticed.

Deku was looking at the curtains, a hand keeping the book on Quirk History from the Last Century left open.

They were still a few months from Spring but the worst of Winter was already going away. Only the nights remained cold. The black curtain speckled with miniature orange, yellow, and red explosions fluttered from the passing breeze. In the gaps, sunset pinks and violets slipped through, reaching out to the chabudai (but not reaching, just the tips, brushing).

Katsuki couldn’t see Deku’s eyes.

There was just the setting sun of February 14th reflected in them (encompassing and swallowing up everything to the last seconds, minutes—).

Deku’s hand was splayed out, deep and light-streaked scars mixing with lines of texts. Katsuki could see a multi-colored eye on one page, peeking out from between those gnarled fingers and snaking scars.

Maybe it was that which gave him the hint of what Deku was going to say. Maybe it was how Katsuki knew exactly what day it was and why the nerd had stopped that shitty, grating stream of muttering (annoying, so fucking annoying, but it’d always been there and when gone it was—)

It must’ve been that. Observation, inference, and guesswork.

Maybe (but he knew, when sunset colors continued eclipsing Deku’s eyes, it was—instinct).

Katsuki wished he’d been wrong.

“You know, Kacchan. Sometimes… just— sometimes I wish my eyes weren’t— aren’t green.”

Deku was still looking out through the gap in the fluttering curtains. Katsuki still couldn’t see the nerd’s eyes with dark green curls falling over and hiding (protecting who—?) them. 

The scarred hand splayed out on the book moved. Shifted just a fraction. More of a twitch and it was nothing except enough (to see, know, and confirm that he’d been fucking right, fuck).

And Katsuki… stared at Deku. Just… kept sitting across the nerd on his own cushion, legs crossed, and still held his pen over his shitty notebook.

Deku’s voice trembled when he spoke again.

“That’s something— the one thing we kept fighting about, you know? Me and Ocha— me and Uraraka-san,” Deku said, smiling. Even from the side, Katsuki didn’t like it. The hand on the page shook. “My… my eyes. How— they’ve been just one color since I can remember and I—” Deku laughed (wrong, wrong, fucking wrong, dammit). “What was I supposed to say, Kacchan? What— how— w-why did it seem like m-my fault for something I c-can’t control? Like I somehow wished for this and now I can’t wish it away when she asked me for just this one thing?”

Deku was trembling. His shoulders shook, and the crack in his voice clawed at the silence because Katsuki still hadn’t said a fucking thing (not a goddamned word).

Not since Deku had spoken. Not after, when that twitch—that shift that meant nothing—showed words on a page that the nerd still hasn’t let go of.

Eyes. Permanent. Soulmates. Choice and decisions. Personal associations.

The Eye Color Mutation Theory.

Gnarled fingers—a mixed swathe of dark-deep and white-light scars—and crumpled, tearing paper covered the rest.

Katsuki didn’t think Deku knew what he was doing with the pages. 

He knew if he pointed it out right now, at this moment, the nerd would snap out of… this. Deku would shakily laugh and apologize while trying to smoothen out the page, ignoring the tears.

Katsuki said nothing.

He bore the brunt of Deku’s cracking voice because when he said he didn’t care about the nerd’s relationship with Uraraka, he meant it. 

He really didn’t give a shit when they got together (a week after the war when the air was still full of the fallen’s decayed remains), the hows of it (Deku asked in the hospital, both of them banged up but alive and what better than to choose to live together), and any other insignificant specifics.

It was Deku’s life, and Katsuki didn’t give a shit (because the nerd was happy, smiling, and that was all that mattered, really).

Then green turned into silver.

“Kacchan,” Deku said. 

Katsuki wasn’t entirely sure the nerd spoke at all. If there’d been an actual sound that came with the movement of lips he’d forced himself to look at only that.

Katsuki wasn’t sure but he looked up, anyway. Stomped on that voice hissing in his ear to no no don’t look and let himself finally (really because he hadn’t been trying) look up at—

Deku was no longer looking to the side, at the covered window. The dark green curtain of curls were no longer draped over half the nerd’s face.

There was just…

Deku, who looked at him with two different eyes.

“Do you think I’m—” Deku choked, his shimmering silver and gleaming green eyes filling with tears. “That I’m— wrong? That when Garaki— when Ujiko made me quirkless, something… I-I don’t know. Th-that something made me so wrong that I can’t even—”

In the first fall of tears from Deku’s green and silver eyes, it looked hauntingly beautiful. 

Tears, the peak of emotional manifestation, fell from an eye that people killed for, and an eye that people died from. 

Green and silver eyes kept filling up with every shaky breath, just one hitch away from a sob. It made the iridescent green shine with shades he couldn’t (could never, not in all these years) catch or constrain. 

And the silver… threatened. With every tear, it started again—taking over the blown black pupil, spreading out over the remnant stragglers of pale green in the iris, and replacing what it had no fucking right to even touch (to stain and mar what wasn’t anyone’s right—)

Katsuki wanted to burn up that goddamned book.

It’d also be so easy to take several steps to the other wing and blast Uraraka’s door open to exchange some words. 

Fuck, Katsuki wanted to hit something.

He did.

Cuffing Deku on the side of the head stopped the tears.

It wasn’t a hard hit, but it wasn’t a light tap either. It needed to be jarring enough that it’d knock off those goddamned thoughts (that Katsuki had spent, continued to spend, and will forever spend seconds, minutes, hours, and days to cull off) from Deku’s shitty head. 

Those thoughts were tangled up in that mess the nerd called ‘hair’—dark, writhing and griping things that needed a good shake to get rid of.

Deku was staring at him in shock. A hand was absentmindedly (more like disbelieving) going up to the spot, when he spoke.

Katsuki didn’t say sappy shit like no, nothing’s wrong with you, there never was, and if there is, then that’s just your stupid brain thinking you are.

That wasn’t Deku needed here. Not what the goddamned idiot, who was still staring at him with wide split-colored eyes, needed.

It was reality that Midoriya Izuku needed.

“Auntie’s eyes are green, Deku,” Katsuki said, and the nerd just… stopped. “I know her eyes have been fucking green since your nerdy ass was born— I’ve seen the photo album.”

He had.

It was a worn down thing that Midoriya Inko had showed him when he knocked on her door, kneeled, and bowed until the cool ground of the genkan pit scraped against his forehead. 

She said nothing throughout his apology then. No word interrupting his admissions or the litany of promises and convictions (“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry”) he laid at her feet.

Auntie Inko just pulled him up, sat them down on the couch, and narrated every picture in the photo album that started with a pregnant, black-eyed woman, and continued with a green-eyed mother and son.

Katsuki still felt the weathered pages under his fingers. Could feel the gentle (something he shouldn’t’ve deserved) slide of hard-worn fingers through his air, wiping the tears he didn’t realize were there.

He looked at Deku and saw Auntie Inko’s green (but not quite not really because it’d always been different).

“You’ve taken every hurt I gave you,” Katsuki said. “But you’ve only ever returned that hurt when someone brought up Auntie’s eyes and your deadbeat asshole of an old man who ‘wasn’t’ her— soulmate.”

He spat the word out, and Deku let out a wrangled sound. A whine. A pained whimper that someone like the nerd shouldn’t be making.

Not Deku. Not Midoriya Izuku, who had always beamed when an extra who didn’t think out of their ass would tell the nerd it was nice you have your mother’s eyes.

Deku was still shaking. 

Katsuki felt the slight tremors where he held tight on Deku’s wrist. Since the first crack and scratch, he hadn’t stopped pulling, tugging, and stopping those gnarled fingers to claw at green and silver eyes.

A couple of tears fell on his hand.

Katsuki squeezed harder, feeling the grind of shattered and healed bone through skin, muscle, and blood.

“So fucking what if your eyes don’t change, De— Izuku?” Katsuki snarled. “So fucking what if they’re always green when you’re happy, sad, angry, and all that disgusting emotional shit, ha?” His voice cracked. Deku sobbed, the wrist in his hold spasming—writhing and resisting (but fat chance he’d let go, fuck no). 

He tightened his grip, squeezed harder (just as something wrapped around his throat, trying to stop him to say anything more—)

“So fucking what?” Katsuki said (something broke, rolling out and he couldn’t stop it—) “I’m the same, aren’t I? I’m the fucking same as you and I sure as hell don’t think I’m wrong, you shitty nerd.”

It was an irrevocable fact. Something as true as the explosive miracles he could make, the oxygen he breathed in and carbon dioxide he breathed out, and the basic colors—

The sky was blue. Darkness was black. And Bakugō Katsuki’s eyes had always been red, just as Midoriya Izuku’s eyes had been green.

There’d be times when it’d be darker—too much anger, fear, joy—and when it’d be lighter; too much sorrow, guilt, despair. 

But always—always, his and Deku’s eyes would still be red and green.

So fuck if he was going to let that shitty silver of heartbreak stay. Fuck if Katsuki was going to stand back and let that shimmering veil cover, conceal, and control him with threats (that he wasn’t scared of).

Not while he was at Deku’s side. 

He won’t fucking let it.

If Katsuki couldn’t stop it from coming (but he would fucking try), then he’d make sure it went running.

“Oi, De— Izuku.”

The tears, choked sobs, and bitten down whimpers didn’t stop. In that cold admission, Deku had shifted Katsuki’s hand—the one that pulled, pulled, and stopped—between his own, burying his face in it. 

Like asking for forgiveness, Deku’s hands shook as it held Katsuki’s, scarred fingers digging in and holding on.

Katsuki felt every tear. They dropped heavily on his fingers, a mix of cold and warm dragging themselves down to his palm and wrist. One after another, Deku’s tears fell, slid, and fell again on everything—the crumpled pages, the wooden finish of the chabudai, and on the zabuton Katsuki had already set aside as the nerd’s.

Really. 

What a crybaby.

Katsuki clicked his tongue. “Oi. Nerd. You listening?”

A second passed. Pathetic sounds still filled the room. His tea had definitely gone cold and Deku’s was already probably drying on the carpet.

Katsuki didn’t look at any of that. 

He watched (felt the move and grind of muscle against rushing blood and bone, that winding spring) Deku take in a shuddering breath and, after a moment, nodded.

“Fucking great,” Katsuki said, sounding hoarse (for some reason). “‘Cuz if you didn’t hear me over your disgusting dying whale crying, I’m stuffing one of Eiji’s socks in your mouth before repeating all that, De— Izuku.”

Deku was still crying and there was still an icy grip around Katsuki’s throat and in his chest, but the nerd laughed anyway. 

It was too wet and croaky, but it was a laugh.

It was a laugh Katsuki felt. From that sputtering, inconsistent breath blowing warmth on the icy grip, he (finally) could—

Breathe.

Deku’s eyes were still half-green, half-silver when lay on the futon that night, facing Katsuki.

There was no moon out. He’d slid shut the balcony doors and drew the curtains close, so there wasn’t much light. Nothing more than the soft red glow of the digital clock’s numbers on Katsuki’s nightstand.

He didn’t need much light, anyway (never did).

From his bed, Katsuki watched Deku’s eyes turn green when he whispered, softly, 

“Green’s not so bad.”

He slept on his side, a hand hanging off the bed, with the color green (Deku’s) greeting him in dreams. 

matter of trust

Katsuki didn’t get to talk to Uraraka until graduation.

It took the self-declared Bakusquad (he still wanted Murder Squad) holding him back and down, several teachers’ interference (Aizawa’s evil eye was… unpleasant), and Deku himself to stop Katsuki from dragging Uraraka out to the training grounds for a… chat.

Just a simple exchange of words that may or may not include explosions that’d render Uraraka in a (way, way) worse state than their Sports Festival in First Year.

Like Katsuki said, when they took the goddamned muzzle off him—it’d just be a chat.

A conversation that’d start with who the hell d’ya think you are, barrel towards you don’t fucking know how hard I’ve kept that idiot from thinking he’s still wrong when he never was, and end with a clipped you told me you’ll take care of him, Uraraka, you fucking told me you loved him but you made him want to tear his own goddamned eyes out.

So no, Katsuki didn’t get to talk to Uraraka until graduation, which was another shitshow altogether.

He didn’t like using metaphors for the occasion. He wouldn’t describe how graduation was the moment the baby proofing went off (which Katsuki thought had already happened three years ago) or when restless birds were finally pushed to fly from the nest or whatever else Momo threw in her speech.

Katsuki didn’t think much of the whole thing. Just as he begrudgingly attended the moving up ceremonies in kindergarten and Aldera’s middle school graduation, he didn’t give much of a shit about U.A.’s graduation.

Nedzu’s words on carrying U.A.’s name or we taught you how to save yourselves— now save others but never forget your own didn’t change his attitude.

Graduation was just… that. The next step. 

And after that would be another step, and another, then another. Until the end, it’d always just be the next step because lives weren’t saved and lost if no one moved to take that step (and that was what they were for, right?).

Katsuki was chill about the whole thing which was why he did not fucking cry after Momo’s speech. Officially couldn’t since he was the one in charge of shutting up the (unfortunately his) squad’s bawling halfway into Momo’s and the other teachers’ speeches.

Iida and Todoroki were the ones responsible for managing the watergates during Aizawa’s speech and those nerds did a fucking horrible job. Feeling petty, he wrenched out half the amount of tissue in the boxes Momo was handing out, and that was why she was their representative.

No one called him out when he split his (stolen and hoarded) tissues with Deku, the nerd crying enough for the both of them. 

Then again, anyone who would’ve bothered being a dick (read: that fucker Monoma) was too busy flooding the fucking gym with tears and snot.

There’d been the whole trademark chaos of U.A.—Nedzu’s nihilistic jokes (?), an embarrassing slideshow (courtesy of their traitor parents) of baby pictures, cringe childhood reels, and a wet roar of PLUS ULTRA. The gym’s roof had slid open, showering them in swathes of white, pink, and red petals, with some full blossoms.

The fireworks went off in the clear mid-April sky and they were heroes.

It was a bit after everything—the excited babble, parents chattering with teachers, students crying—that Katsuki saw Uraraka slip away. 

No one else noticed. He saw her parents going through the line of teachers, tears in their eyes as they bowed and shook hands.

He saw Asui looking straight at him.

She was with her family, wrapped in a tight hug that not even she could slither out from. It was a short moment of staring with those deep black eyes before she nodded, mouth pursed in grim determination.

Katsuki didn’t need to look twice. No questioning glares thrown back or a petty move to ignore and pretend (and leave a heartbreaking bitch waiting for fucking nothing).

It’d been (very, very) tempting, though. Very much.

It was a good thing the stupidly named Bakusquad was nearby and served as a good enough smokescreen to slip from the old hag’s choking arms and his old man’s (kind, proud) hand.

Halfway out the crack in the gym door, Katsuki looked back. 

Deku was crying in Auntie’s arms. 

The wild hair Katsuki had wrangled into submission with Best Jeanist’s (borrowed-ish) gel was already falling apart, curls falling over the nerd’s tear-streaked face. Even the tie (that he threatened to choke Deku with if he fucking dared to show up in that mess) was skewed again, already threatening to burst.

Auntie didn’t look like she minded as she held Deku like he was four years old again. He watched two pairs of green eyes glisten with tears. Saw the shaky, radiant smiles on their faces and the mouthed, soundless words only for each other.

When Katsuki slipped away, he kept seeing that shade of green turning silver and back (a broken film, shuttering, repeating like a goddamned nightmare).

He found Uraraka along the pathway to the dorms, sitting—no, waiting, just like he had then. 

Except the upgraded U.A. barrier was back to their normal, unimposing heights. Then, the night before their bridging classes, the lush grounds were still razed, stumps and bare earth jutting out among growing sprouts.

Two years later and it was the other way around, with the clear blue sky hiding nothing and showing everything.

Uraraka was sitting on one of two park benches. The bots had clearly slammed the benches together, leaving only an armrest dividing them. The two lamplights on either side were decorated with a hanging cartoon-esque ape wearing a graduation cap, a U.A. banner hanging from its tail and fluttering in the breeze. 

Katsuki sat on the other bench.

They were facing away from the Main Building. Katsuki’s eyes scoured over the vast expanse of the school, fitting in memories that he wasn’t sentimental about.

Nightly spars in Gym Gamma, the place always fixed up by the next day. Stupid class team-building exercises Iida and Momo found on outdated blogs in the foresty expanse of Ground Omega. The class standing before the rehabilitated USJ before he swore and walked away, his classmates following (because some things took time). Better speeches by better people in the Sports Festival Stadium, where silence hung heavily as a montage of fallen heroes, civilians, and villains was projected.

The early spring breeze passed, rustling sakura branches and bringing along the colors of the season. 

A bright pink petal fluttered down by his foot.

Katsuki took a breath.

He wasn’t the one who spoke first.

“I still love him, you know. Deku-kun— Izuku,” Uraraka said. “I-I— you don’t know how much, how— you don’t know, Bakugō.”

Katsuki tightened his grip around his diploma. The tube casing creaked, the embossed U.A. logo shining blue, white, and red under the sun.

He didn’t look at her. The petal by his foot flew off the pavement, writhing and dancing in the air until he couldn’t find it anymore.

Katsuki said nothing. Uraraka continued.

“And I… I know how much you don’t care about what I’m saying now. Not after… I know. You—” Uraraka laughed. It was a hollow sound. A far echo from the laughter coming out of an open-roof gym where explosions of colors went off in every corner (in every hug and cry because they were here and they made it). 

He hated how it tore through the light air of the day.

Katsuki turned and looked just as Uraraka’s mouth twisted into a pained, resigned smile. 

“You… have never cared about anything else but him, after all. It’s— I knew but I still… I thought and I hoped but—” Uraraka choked and he watched as muddy brown eyes turned into silver, streaks of purples, blues, and reds flickering through the film. 

Uraraka was standing. She was breathing hard, hand clenched around her diploma, knuckles white (and Katsuki remembered that glint of gold cupped in Deku’s hands).

He said nothing. 

Nothing when her tears came, the silver dealing its cracks with no one (not him) there to stop it.

Uraraka laughed. Or maybe she sobbed. Choked on her tears. 

Katsuki wasn’t sure of anything but of what she said, still with that goddamned smile.

“It’s always been Kacchan and Deku, hasn’t it?” She said. “Always. Forever. And I— should’ve known that I couldn’t change that when even when I said yes, I love you and Izuku said I love you too, his eyes were still… are still yours.”

Uraraka Ochako was still crying. But despite the tears, the trembling, and the cracks in her voice, she looked at Katsuki and hated him. 

Neither of them closed the distance. Him, still seated and looking up at purple, blue, silver eyes, that snapped into—

A burning red, almost mirroring his own. 

Almost. 

There’d never been a shade of red that ever matched Katsuki’s eyes. Not the old hag’s burgundy, his grandmother’s carmine, or anyone else’s eyes who associated the color with… something—anything.

Not a single one came close.

… Just like there’d never been a shade of green that matched (couldn’t even compare—) Deku’s eyes.

Looking into that shade (that tried, it tried) reminded Katsuki, too, that he wasn’t heartless. 

He remembered it’d been sympathy and empathy that got him making sure those (his) idiots wouldn’t drown under their (always overwhelming, but he was there) emotions.

Looking at Uraraka’s eyes was how Katsuki knew he felt sorry for her. 

After all, Uravity was an ally—a hero he trusted and would trust with his back. A person just as deserving of whatever heart and respect he could give.

But the person who broke Midoriya Izuku’s heart was Uraraka Ochako; not the hero.

Katsuki’s eyes hardened (if there was ever a cold red, then there it was).

He felt sorry, but there’d been a night beneath the stars filled with Deku’s cries, tears and sobs burning through his ratty hoodie. For three weeks, he held his breath every fucking morning to wait and see if Deku’s eyes stopped spilling silver (wonder, wondering if it’d be better if morning never fucking came—).

Katsuki felt sorry, but he still heard the quiet sobs of a goddamned shitty nerd who, after all these years, still thought he was wrong.

For those—for Deku, it turned out it wasn’t hard to be heartless.

“You love him,” Katsuki started, his diploma creaking in his grip. “But you based everything on a goddamned fairytale. You loved, no— you say you still love that shitty nerd, but you didn’t fucking listen to whatever he had to say. No, Uraraka… you based everything on a shitty myth— on a goddamn story and that’s on you.”

Katsuki remembered waiting for Uraraka that night. The both of them standing under the lamplight, the wind of a new age howling in their ears. He remembered she glowed, happiness (maybe already lov—) on her face.

He’s a shitty crybaby and I don’t want to face a fucking flood right after a war. Got that, Uraraka?

She had laughed, smiled, and promised she wouldn’t do anything that hurt Midoriya Izuku.

Katsuki couldn’t remember why he had grinned back (why he trusted—)

“Yeah, I don’t fucking know how much you loved— love him, Uraraka— and I don’t fucking care,” Katsuki continued even as she flinched, wrapped an arm around herself, trying to curl into something small (shameful). 

Deku had been smaller (should’ve never been, not anymore). 

“I just know that Deku loved you and he fucking broke apart enough that you finally got what you wanted.”

Katsuki smiled. 

It wasn’t nice.

He didn’t need to say anything more. He could see the curdling mix of yellows and greens (putrid, muddy) of her eyes from what he implied—from the truth he slammed out in the open.

How Uraraka had broken up with Deku because she couldn’t keep seeing the nerd’s eyes. How she couldn’t (despite that glint of fucking gold—) keep being there and Deku’s because of something that couldn’t change no matter what happened or whatever love was professed and promised; of a constant eye color.

She had wanted to mean something (she did, she fucking did), wanting to see a change in Deku as a proof of a fairytale; a myth, urban legend, and story of soulmates.

Uraraka had asked and received the silver sheen of heartbreak, erasing the green.

Katsuki couldn’t even laugh at the irony because it was him who scrubbed that disgusting color off Deku’s eyes (from one night to the next morning and again, again, again). 

There was no reveling in sick satisfaction because he’d been too busy stopping the nerd from waking up with dried tear tracks, red-rimmed and swollen eyes.

With shattered pieces of Deku falling from the heights Uraraka pushed the nerd from, Katsuki couldn’t be bothered to even snort at the irony, too occupied (careful, carefully and as gently as he could) in picking the pieces.

Uraraka said nothing. Not a thing, as Katsuki stood and began walking away.

But he stopped after a couple of steps. He still had a white-knuckled grip around his diploma, already feeling the metal indentation in the shape of callused fingers. 

If he tried—if he wanted to, he could see the (his) shitty Bakusquad shouting for him. Could definitely hear the shrill voice of the old hag, the gentle but deep call of his old man, and—

Kacchan!

Katsuki took in a breath.

And breathed out with the whisper of spring wind.

“I’ve told that shitty nerd so many fucking times he was— wrong because he was quirkless,” Katsuki said. “Every fucking time, he’d look at me. Glare. Puff out his chest and do all this crap to prove that he wasn’t— and he isn’t. Not then, not now, and not fucking ever.”

His diploma tube cracked under his hand. He heard the whistling rush of air going in and coming out through the cracks, carrying the scent of burned sugar and smoke.

Katsuki looked back at Uraraka.

Tears poured silently from her silver eyes, but they didn’t fall. Every drop—small and big—remained suspended in the surrounding air, defying gravity. 

With the sun shining high, they looked like stars—explosions contained in liquid (another irony, even if he didn’t want it connected with his).

He was angry and, still, the sight was hauntingly beautiful.

“I trusted you,” Katsuki said, and the suspended tears trembled. “And you gave Deku back, thinking he’s wrong because the person he loves— loved made him feel he is.”

Another rush of wind came and the flurry of pink, white, red sakura petals landed, gently, on her tears.

“That… was you, Uraraka,” Katsuki said. And, in a whisper, added, “Was. And I fucking hope you don’t get to be that again.”

Katsuki walked away when the first tear fell. 

He didn’t hear her sobs when he left. Saw nothing but the whistling rise of fireworks and their booming explosions over U.A.

It was easy, when he tried, to have that call of his shitty nickname guide him back.