Chapter Text
It's Katsuki's birthday, and he's standing in front of a statue at two in the fucking morning.
"C'mon bro, just touch it! It won't bite!"
Katsuki glares at his so-called friends and decides that maybe, murder's not beneath him.
"Fuck no."
"What'cha matter, Kacchan?" Denki throws an arm over his shoulder, his breath stinking of tequila and cheesy nachos. "You chicken?" He starts making clucking sounds and Katsuki promptly elbows him in the gut. He follows it up with a well-deserved punch to his stupid face, but the little weasel ducks out of the way in the nick of time, and Katsuki ends up hitting Eijirou right in the jaw instead.
The poor guy falls over, knocked out cold, but he tackles Denki on his way down, so Katsuki chalks that up to a win.
Somewhere, an owl hoots. A cat leaps out of a nearby bush, pausing for a second to stare at them judgingly before darting back to the shadows. The university quad is dark and deserted, which isn't at all surprising given the ungodly hour.
A cold breeze blows by, making Katsuki shiver unhappily. He wants to go home.
"Just take his hand, man," Hanta groans from where he's seated on the mowed grass, head tucked between his knees while Mina's body hangs limply from his back like a pink feathered boa. She's not moving. She might be dead. "It's UA tradition at this point. Pretty sure everyone's touched that thing at least once."
Katsuki makes a face. "Exactly." This whole night's already been a clusterfuck of bad decisions, starting with Mina's poorly-planned bar crawl to celebrate his 20th birthday. He's not interested in making another one. "Think of all the germs on that."
"I saw a janitor cleaning it earlier!" Denki warbles from where he's pinned under Eijirou's snoring form. "And I still can't believe you of all people, haven't touched it yet, Bakugou. You've been obsessed with this statue, for like, forever!"
"Am not!" Katsuki denies hotly.
"Dude, don't start, you've been popping boners over the damn thing since freshman year," Hanta scoffs, probably feeling brave because he's out of Katsuki's punching range.
"Look at its muscles! Look at its goddamn hands!" Denki mocks in a high-pitched voice that sounded nothing like Katsuki, his sense of self-preservation completely obliterated by the illegal amount of alcohol in his system. "That's what real art looks like, mothafuckers!"
Katsuki tries to kick his head, but gets a vicious bout of vertigo for his trouble.
"Fuck off," he seethes, sitting down on the cemented path leading up to the statue. He pinches his eyes shut. "Not my fault you heathens can't see a fucking masterpiece when it's staring you in the face!"
"Not everyone is an art major like you, Bakugou," Hanta says mildly. "The statue's nice n' all, but at the end of the day, it's just some guy in a dress."
Katsuki's eyes fly open. He turns around very slowly, very graciously giving his friend enough time to really think about what he'd just said and take it back before Katsuki commits a felony.
But Hanta the Moron continues his tirade, oblivious to the encroaching danger. "Would've been cooler if he had his dick out, we could've had a more fun type of UA tradition, if you know what I mean." He wags his eyebrows suggestively. "But all we got is this dude in a dress that looks like what my ugly cousin Kiki wore for her junior prom last year."
"It's not a fucking dress!" Katsuki bellows. A bird squawks from a nearby tree. "It's called a chiton you dumb fuck!"
"Chit-ten?" Denki slurs phonetically. "Wassat? Some type of chicken?"
"Like a duck?" Hanta asks.
Denki gasps. "Is a duck a type of chicken?"
"I'm pretty sure it is."
"Omg, I didn't know!"
Katsuki takes a very deep breath through his nose, pushing the homicidal urge down through willpower alone. His therapist would be so proud. She should give him a sticker for his rage journal. "Why do I even hang out with you losers?"
"Because we're the only ones who wanna hang out with you, Kacchan!" Denki sing-songs.
"And all the weed lowered our standards," Hanta adds helpfully.
Katsuki takes his boot off and hurls it at him. Thankfully, the alcohol had done little to his aim because he hit Hanta squarely in the face.
"Agh!" The guy flails, knocking Mina off his back. She rolls over on the grass and burps.
A cloud unblocks the moon, and the faint silver glow of polished marble catches Katsuki's attention.
Loathe as he is to admit it, some of what Hanta had said were true. The statue, as a whole, is unremarkable. Just a curly-haired guy wearing a traditional Greek chiton that stopped halfway down his thigh. He's even posed in a boring, cheesy way: leaning forward, with his right hand outstretched, as if asking somebody to take it.
But as an arts major worth his salt, Katsuki saw what none of these heathens did—the astounding craftsmanship that had gone into making this sculpture.
It has veins! And scars! And calluses on its goddamn hands! Even the surface was textured, something Katsuki has never seen done or thought possible to achieve on Pentelic marble before, with actual skin-like creases, and pores, and scars —so many scars, especially along its right arm—chiseled into its body. They married beautifully with the veins of quartz and mica running through the marble's surface, giving it a dimension of detail that not even Michaelangelo or any sculptor in history had ever achieved.
In fact, when Katsuki first saw the statue in the quad, he initially thought that some guy had painted himself gray and was pulling a prank on the incoming freshmen.
The realization that it was 100% marble had made Katsuki righteously angry.
Because what the fuck was UA thinking? This university, which boasted having the best liberal arts program in Japan, should've known better than to leave such an incredible piece of art at the mercy of the elements. The statue should be in a museum for fuck's sake, not propped up on a shitty pedestal in the middle of a quad where drunk frat boys streaked bi-weekly.
But his many complaints and strongly-worded emails to the admin were ignored, and the statue continued to suffer for it.
Parts of its eyes and nose had been chipped and weathered down by exposure, making its facial features unrecognizable. Fortunately, its smile remained intact, dimples flanking the wide curl of its lips, and on rare days when Katsuki felt less than spectacular, he'd plant himself at the base of the pedestal and pretend that smile was directed at him.
Okay, so maybe he is a teeny-tiny itty-bitty obsessed with the statue. What, it's not a crime to appreciate beautiful things, and as an artist that is literally in his job description. But just because Katsuki has a sketchbook dedicated to the statue's delicious thighs does not mean he's onboard with the real reason his friends brought him out there tonight.
"Penis!" Mina suddenly yells, startling Katsuki out of his thoughts.
"Bitch, what the fuck?"
She sits up, blinking owlishly at them for ten seconds before lying back on the ground with a groan. "We're still here?" She drags a hand over her eyes. "Did Kats do the thing yet?"
"Nope."
Mina squints at him through her fingers. "Coward."
"I'm not a coward!" Katsuki roars, his voice echoing down the quad and back to him. "I just don't believe in this stupid shit!"
"It's not stupid, it's romantic!" She yells back. "Legend says that only the touch of his soulmate can bring him back to life! Like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White—"
"—or Shrek!" Denki adds.
Hanta shakes his head. "Shrek doesn't count, man."
"Yes it does!"
"Nah, it's not Disney though—"
"—Fuck that soulless capitalist machine! Vive le Shrek! Vive la révolution!"
Mina throws Katsuki's boot at Denki and hits his groin with frightening accuracy.
"Anyway!" She says, ignoring the other blond's pained whimpers. "Just 'cause ya got a lump of coal for a heart, doesn't mean it's the same for the rest of us, Blasty!" She points a manicured finger at him. "True love exists! Soulmates are real! Whether you believe it or not, Fate will grab you by the balls and kick your ass!"
Katsuki scowls. Well, fuck that.
In his less-than-humble opinion, the concept of "fate" and "soulmates" should've died out with the plague. What ever happened to free will, ha? And shit, Katsuki can only hope that the statue's still-unknown artist had died long before this dumb urban legend picked up steam. He's not sure what he would do if it had been his work that's being treated with such disrespect.
(Probably kill himself and take everyone in this shitty school with him.)
"Just touch the damn thing so we can go home, Bakugou!" Hanta groans. "We'll boil your hand in antiseptic later!"
"Don't tell me what to do," Katsuki snarls, but it comes out a lot less threatening than he intended. When he tries to flip them off next, he shockingly can't remember which one his middle finger is. Crap, those half dozen fireballs did more damage than he thought.
Grumbling, Katsuki picks his shoe off the ground and puts it back on haphazardly. "M' outta here, fuckers. Hope y'all fall in a ditch and die."
But Denki, the little bitch, suddenly grabs his leg when he tries to walk away.
"Wait, Kacchan, don't go!"
"Shit—!"
With his inner steering totally fucked by the tequila and whatever else were in those shots the bartender kept sliding his way, Katsuki inevitably falls.
The whole world tips over. On instinct, his hands fly out to grab anything that would keep him from face-planting on the pavement, and it so happens that the closest thing within his reach is his beloved statue and its infamously outstretched hand.
A split-second is all it takes. The moment Katsuki touched the cool, hard marble, it transformed into something warm and pliable against his fingertips.
Scarred fingers wrap around his hand, and the next thing Katsuki knows, he's staring up at the greenest eyes he's ever seen.
A pin-drop silence follows.
Katsuki stares at the scarred hand now holding his own, then up at the guy's face, before looking back at their linked hands and shakily concluding that, yes, he's hallucinating and yes, he probably needs to lie down.
But his hopes are quickly dashed when he looks over his shoulder and finds his idiot friends sitting upright with their jaws on the ground, and identical looks of shock and disbelief on their dumb faces.
Katsuki's heart falls through his stomach.
No, no, nope, no, no fucking way, he thinks, as he slowly turns around, hoping, no, praying to see pure, solid marble again.
Instead, all Katsuki sees is a solid man, moonlight glancing over tanned skin, and the muscles of those glorious thighs ripple obscenely when he jumps from the pedestal and lands right in front of him.
He towers over Katsuki by a full head, that wild mop of dark curls swaying under a passing breeze.
"Oh, hello," the man greets, freckles shifting as he smiles down at Katsuki. His eyes are soft and beguiling, colored with a palette of woodland greens and deep ocean blues, and speckled with spots of mint and gold. It's so hauntingly complex that Katsuki feels fire igniting along his fingertips, hands twitching with the familiar frantic need to paint and paint and paint.
"I'm Izuku. It's nice to meet you!"
He shakes Katsuki's hand enthusiastically, but Katsuki doesn't reciprocate, doesn't do anything besides stare at the impossible person standing before him.
After a long minute of no one moving or talking, the man's face melts into confusion. He looks between Katsuki and his hand before realization dawns over his features.
"Ah!" He gives Katsuki another breathtaking smile. "I see."
Without warning, the man steps forward, cups his cheeks, and plants a kiss on Katsuki's cheek, right at the corner of his mouth.
Katsuki's heart skids to a stop.
The world fades into the background, their surroundings receding into white, and it's a shoujo moment if he's ever seen one. Their faces are close, so close Katsuki can feel the guy's warm breath ghosting over his lips, and though it was quiet before, it's even quieter now, everyone seemingly holding their breath.
Then Denki sneezes, and the spell-like dome shatters around them.
It's then that Katsuki's struck by two important realizations all at once—
One: His favorite statue is now an actual living breathing person;
And two: that said person had kissed him without his consent.
So Katsuki reacts to these important realizations the way anyone in his situation would:
He punches the guy in the face.