Chapter Text
Katsuki sits at his desk, dutifully filling out the paperwork he personally feels is fucking pointless, all while feeling like he wants to crawl right out of his skin – or, hell, maybe tear it completely off just to be done with it – wanting to be anywhere other than here. He was never one for being glad the day was over, really – there was always stuff to do, people to save, villains to conquer, and worst of all, paperwork to fill out. It’s only on days like these where he wishes the clock would turn a little bit quicker.
Because it’s a Saturday, and Saturdays mean he gets to fight.
He only gets a few days out of the week where he truly feels alive and free, tethered to reality. He’s been haunted by an itch since his second year of high school, constantly making him feel like he’s about to lose his mind, the urge to crawl out of his skin getting stronger and stronger the longer and longer he tries to ignore it. The only thing that helped was being able to well and truly fight these days, feeling the challenge and the freeing nature of going all out, oblivious to the consequences he may face.
Because ignoring it never worked.
It started with runs. He’d run until he could barely breathe, his lungs feeling as though they would collapse with a small tap to the chest, burning under the strain of over-exertion. And when that stopped working, he would run for hours and hours, right up until he lost consciousness, not once making it back to the dorms in time to pass out safely. He woke up in the middle of the street – or in the middle of a park, on really bad nights – more times than he could feasibly count.
Eventually, that stopped working too. So he started running through dangerous neighbourhoods known for harbouring deadly villains, pretending all the while that he was avoiding them like the plague. Pretending that he wasn’t itching for one of them to come out of hiding and attack him, so he could feel the thrill of the fight that he’d been craving since the war ended.
By third year, both of the above and even more coping mechanisms – trying to get his classmates to fight him as if he were dangerous, slamming his head into the wall, walking along the edge of ten story rooftops, to name a few – were useless to him. He started to actively seek out dangerous villains during work study patrols, ignoring his mentor and diving head first into the fight, always getting somewhat injured in the process. He never felt particularly bad for doing it, brushing off their concern and pretending he was fine, even if he did land himself back in the hospital a couple of times.
He did absolutely anything to feel alive. The adrenaline kept him sane, kept him tethered. He needed it, lest he fall into the headspace where he was only floating through time, unaware of reality around him, feeling like a manufactured robot in his own skin. He would end up angry and irritable for no reason, snapping at people for the smallest of things, all while knowing he’d all but become a passenger in his own brain, as if someone else had decided to drive his body for him.
He knew his first year was partly to blame. Constantly fighting villains, constantly having adrenaline coursing through his veins, the danger he was in on a daily basis, fighting for his life for what felt like every other week – he was addicted to it. The adrenaline, the challenge of a fight that didn’t bow down to protocols and policies and paperwork.
Sure, chasing an adrenaline high was not the healthiest coping mechanism he could’ve chosen. But he was alive. That had to count for something.
Work as a Pro Hero was…tedious, in a certain way. He loved being able to save people, able to go out and put his skills to use, able to subdue and conquer the villains that threatened livelihoods on a day to day basis. But it was never enough.
He knew his friends and classmates didn’t agree with him, no matter how much they jokingly griped about wanting to see some action for once. They never seemed to feel it like he did. They would laugh with each other about slow days while Katsuki stood behind them wanting to scratch at his skin until it bled. They would cheer when they got to leave early, while Katsuki simply nodded, changed at home, and ran for hours upon hours – doing anything in his power to stop that itch from pulling him down and under.
There were multiple times when he wasn’t strong enough to stay afloat, when he’d give in to the pull he felt and was dragged under, slipping into a dissociative daze that would last weeks, if not months. He would lose time, unaware of what reality was, simply going through the motions with a robotic ease that he could not control. He could never pull himself out of it, either, always violently ripped from his daze via a well-aimed kick to the rib from whatever villain of the week he was fighting at the time.
And nobody seemed to notice. They all thought he’d simply lost out on his beauty sleep, and was grumpy as a side-effect. He’d get irritable, snap at people for no reason, act rashly in fights when the fog subsided for brief moments in time, all while feeling like a passenger in his body, barely recalling what he’d done by the time the day came to an end.
He was drowning. At only twenty-two years old he had run out of coping mechanisms, and he had no idea how he was supposed to keep on living like this.
Until he found the ring.
He’d found it during a recon mission for work, done late at night, and for a completely different thing – and completely different people, too – they were supposed to be tracking. He’d seen people walk in, looking ready for a fight, and walk out in one of two ways: bruised and bloody, looking dejected, or bruised and bloody, looking overtly pleased with themselves. It didn’t take him very long to figure out what the hell he was looking at.
An underground, very illegal fighting ring that he later found out only had one rule: There are no rules. Generally accepted that they would not try to kill each other, the owner would pit two fighters against each other as the crowd cheered and drank and took bets, watching two strangers beat the ever loving shit out of each other as they put on a show to entertain.
Katsuki watched one night, telling himself he was just staking the place out, ready to report it to his higher ups in the morning. He was in the ring fighting within the hour, a grin adorning his face, cracking his knuckles as he got ready for the fight – a man, half a foot taller than he, built like a shit brick house, and giddy at the prospect of fresh meat.
He had never felt so fucking alive. He’d grabbed a mask and something to hide his hair from the break room, a one-time offer from the owner who understood he needed his identity hidden, and all but skipped into the ring with the energy levels of a chihuahua on crack, a manic grin splitting his face wide open as he taunted the man before him.
He’d left that night with a split lip, bruises all over his chest and back, scratches that ran from his shoulder to his hip, and a grin that never left his face, even as he got ready for bed that night.
That first week, he focused on how to hide his identity. He quickly learnt what his defining features were in his incredibly public career: His eyes, his quirk, and his hair.
He wouldn’t use his quirk in the ring. He’d get caught in an instant, and he valued his secrecy more than he valued his own wellbeing by now. He also wouldn’t have his hair down: instead, tied back, making it look shorter than it was, and he would wear coloured contacts to hide the bright red of his eyes.
The first time he’d adorned his disguise, he was left feeling shell-shocked. He looked like his fucking grandfather, only he wasn’t met with that familiar red staring back at him, a trait that had been passed down his family tree for generations. He didn’t look like himself at all. And looking in the mirror that day cemented his decision – he couldn’t tell work about this. There was no way. They’d raid it in days and he would be back at square one, with nothing keeping him tethered and alive.
This was the best he had felt in years, and it was all due to this chance discovery of a fighting ring that changed locations every month, to avoid as much suspicion as possible. There was no way he could give that up. Not now, not ever.
He savoured the thrill. He couldn’t let that go.
Finally leaving work with a dismissive wave to his friends asking if he’d like a drink – alcohol never helped. Alcohol always made the itch worse – he made his way home to do what he needed to do in order to be fully prepared for the night ahead of him. Change, eat, restock his first aid kit. Get into his disguise.
At eleven at night, he headed out the front door with a grin on his face, already feeling the adrenaline for the night's events coursing through him, already making him feel alive, for the first time that week.
He was lucky that the ring’s location this month really wasn’t too far from his place. A twenty minute run to warm up, and he was at the door, ready to fight.
“Hey! People are thrilled you’ve become a regular, man!” the owner cheered, waving Katsuki over with an almost predatory grin on his face. “Are you sure you don’t want to collect your winnings from the fights? You’d be making good money if you did.”
“Nah,” Katsuki grinned, shaking his head. “Thanks for the offer and all, but I’m not here for the money.”
“Ah, well,” he grinned, “that’s good for me, at any rate. This place has gotten better booze and more customers since you arrived. Don’t leave me hanging, man. You’ve got another three fights lined up for tonight, your final one as the last one before we close up shop for the night. Get in there!”
“As you wish,” Katsuki grinned, casual and relaxed.
Yeah, he couldn’t wait.
***
He spent the next day at work brushing off his friends once again, ignoring the stories of their drunken escapades. He didn’t care what they did when they got hammered, nor did he give a fuck about what media attention they were getting that week after being caught by paps at the pub. Again.
Honestly, did they ever learn?
He was instead focused on feeling the bruises adorning his ribs, feeling how they kept him sane and alive, feeling more at ease than he had in months. He’d fought three people last night, each of them more insane than the last, and he’d had a good fucking night. Not only had he made several people who didn’t know any better lose their bets, he’d been able to win his fights in less than fifteen minutes each, with quick dodges and even quicker blows.
He was their anonymous fighter, and undefeated.
He’d never felt so alive.
And because of this, patrol went from tedious and mind-numbing, to an enjoyable breeze. He was alongside Best Jeanist today, which the man had personally requested with the excuse of nostalgia, or whatever the fuck, something he did so often that the agency had started scheduling their patrols together, just to get the man to stop asking. Edgeshot, too, though he was working solo today. He didn’t really care about the reason. Jeanist was a hero that, against his better judgement, really, he looked up to. They worked well together – well, that only happened after they’d sorted through the shit from first year – and his agency knew it.
“You know, Dynamight, you’re seemingly more at ease today,” he commented, leaning against the railing of the rooftop they’d taken their break on. “You haven’t followed instructions this easily in a while.”
He hadn’t, Katsuki knew. Because the itch he felt following all the policies and rules of heroics had disappeared for the time being, not suffocating him with the feeling he wasn’t doing enough, all because everything was too easy, too dictated, too focused.
“I actually slept more than three hours last night, so that might be why,” Katsuki admitted with a shrug, forgoing the knowledge that it was because he got to beat the shit out of people in the middle of the night, rather than how many hours he’d slept.
“You’re still having trouble sleeping?”
“I have since I was a kid,” Katsuki sighed. “I’ve gotten used to it, at this point. It’s one of the reasons I actually go to bed at a decent time unlike the idiots I call my friends – because I keep waking up in the middle of the night, and it usually takes about an hour to get back to sleep again.”
“Shit, kid, you need to get on melatonin, or something,” Jeanist sighed.
“I tried that already. Doesn’t work.”
“Tried going for runs?”
“I feel like running for five hours without stopping in the middle of the night is generally frowned upon,” Katsuki mumbled, taking a sip of his drink.
“Five hours?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “It’s fine. I’m handling it.”
If joining an illegal fighting ring as a Pro Hero was ‘handling it,’ that is. He knew it wasn’t, but it was also the only thing stopping himself from generally losing his mind, losing his job, and losing whatever shred of sanity he had left in him.
“Whatever you’re doing to sleep, it’s working,” Jeanist commented, nodding his head towards him. “You’re not as tense as you used to be.”
Internally, Katsuki scoffed, knowing that Jeanist would bench him – or have him committed, probably – if he ever found out why. He remembered the final fight from last night, where he’d gotten his shit absolutely rocked at the start, until he’d finally been able to get up and under the guy, twisting him around and landing a blow of his own.
He’d also bitten a chunk of the guy’s ear off in the process, but hey, the only rule was that there were no rules. He didn’t do anything illegal, apart from fighting there in the first place.
“Yeah, I guess it is. I don’t know, though. It’s nice, and all, but…”
“Weird?” Jeanist guessed, looking imploringly at him. “You went through shit in first year, so I’m not surprised. But you deserve to be able to relax, for once. Even though this job of ours isn’t the most relaxing of choices we could have made.”
“Something like that,” he scoffed, looking at the city below him. “I guess I’m just not used to it – not being in mortal danger all the time, I mean. Being able to let my guard down. I don’t think any of us did until at least third year. I still sometimes have to force myself to relax.”
“That’s not surprising,” Jeanist nodded. “It’s hard to come to terms with safety after an entire year of keeping your guards up for an attack. It took us Pro Heroes about a year, too, I think. Aizawa especially.”
“Yeah…fuck, he went out with a bang, didn’t he?” Katsuki mentioned, shaking his head with a smirk. “What a fuckin’ raid to finish off his career.”
“Fifty-seven people were saved in one raid. There’s a good reason he’s still considered one of the greatest Underground Heroes of our generation, despite having retired three years ago now.”
“Damn right,” he grinned.
“Alright, break’s over. There’s a fight breaking out literally right there,” Jeanist sighed, pointing down to the street.
“Honestly,” Katsuki scoffed, standing up and wiping the dust from his hands. “Can they not see us standing here?”
“People are dumb,” Jeanist deadpanned. “Get used to it.”
***
Katsuki was feeling it, truly. He’d been fighting for only ten minutes, his heart beating way too fast for what was probably safe considering he had a pace maker, but he was feeling free, and he was feeling alive.
His opponent tonight was truly testing all of his abilities, actually able to catch him off guard in a way that he could never hope for while working on raids, or out on patrol. He was actually having to calculate attacks and defences, dodging the man's punches and kicks, all while grinning from ear to ear. It was absolutely invigorating.
He couldn’t stop, couldn’t wait to keep going. He had one more fight planned for the night if he left the ring without a concussion, which wasn’t looking super likely this time around, but he was holding out hope. Here, he was undefeated, and watching his opponent flag in his moves despite being taller, wider, and an absolute beast, he knew he was going to win.
So, needless to say, Katsuki was having the time of his fucking life.
He felt the man’s teeth bite into his shoulder, and Katsuki let out a feral growl. He was able to get a punch to his opponent’s head, knocking the both of them off course as the man stumbled, grinning with a predatory look in his eyes.
“That's all you got?” Katsuki laughed, stalking the man in a circle around the ring, thriving through the sting in his shoulder. “Come on! I was told you were better than this. Show me what you can do, asshole!”
The man grinned and charged. Katsuki lost himself in the punches and kicks, the dodges and the ducks, the feeling of his fists hitting his opponent’s jaw. The feeling of bone cracking as he aimed a well-timed punch against his nose. Feeling his own nose crack under a punch, and grinning as blood trickled down into his teeth.
He looked feral, and he felt it, too. But more importantly, the itch was long gone. All he felt was freedom and adrenaline, the thrill of a challenge that he hadn't had in such a long time. He’d fight this man again, for sure. There was no way he wouldn’t. He put up a good fight.
Katsuki knocked the man out of the ring with a hefty kick to the ribs, laughing as the man groaned, slid out of bounds, and the fight was called. He helped the man up – he was sportsmanlike, okay, not an asshole – and clapped him on the back, looking around at the crowd.
That’s when he spotted it – or rather, him.
Katsuki felt his heart drop to his fucking feet as he made eye contact with the last person he’d ever wanted to see here.
Aizawa.
“For fucks sake,” he muttered, shaking his head and breaking eye contact, turning around to leave the ring.
“You know him?” his opponent asked, nodding towards Aizawa as he walked out alongside him.
“Yeah, he taught me in high school,” Katsuki sighed, “and he’s going to be fucking pissed that I’m here.”
“Your funeral,” the man laughed. “Just make sure you come back. I want a rematch.”
“Oh, you’re so on,” Katsuki grinned, shaking his head. “Good fight.”
“See you later! Don’t get murdered by your teacher.”
“Whatever,” Katsuki muttered, shoving his opponent away with a laugh.
He made his way to the changing rooms, his hands shaking from something other than adrenaline for the first time in a long time. Something he couldn’t examine – no, wouldn’t examine – here.
He’d have to find somewhere else to go, something else to do to get rid of the itch. Sure, the man had retired from hero work three years ago now, but he’d made it known in the right circles that he was open to doing recon missions in place of more recognisable heroes, especially since he’d retired. He was less noticeable, and always had been, really, and that level of stealth he had learnt had only doubled now that people weren’t expecting him to show up in places he shouldn’t be.
He didn’t bother speeding up, trying to run before Aizawa could catch him. There was no use. He could move to New Zealand, of all places, and the man would find him within the week. Aizawa was skilled, if a little insane. Katsuki was no match for him.
It was something all of his classmates, and especially himself, had learnt within the first month of high school.
You can never run from Aizawa, so don’t even bother trying.
He pulls out his medicine bag with dutiful care, laying everything out as he stood in front of a mirror, looking at the injuries he garnered from both of his fights, knowing he’d have to cancel his final fight for the night. The owner might be a little disappointed at the loss of bet money, but he’d understand. The man was good if you ignored the incredibly illegal ring he ran and organised – he made sure each and every fighter was prioritising their safety, and he would call a fight if it looked to be getting too lethal.
Katsuki respected him in that regard.
Shaking himself out of his thoughts, he counted his injuries. Bite wound on the shoulder. Scratches across his chest, reaching down to his hip, still bleeding. His nose wasn't bleeding anymore, and it didn’t feel broken, either, so he pulled out his disinfectant and began to work on the chest wound.
This place was unsanitary on the best of days, and he knew it. And who knows what his opponents were doing before he fought them. He had to disinfect everything – if he showed up to work with an infection, he wouldn’t be able to explain himself.
He hears Aizawa quietly walk into the changing room, letting the door fall closed behind him with an audible click. Katsuki doesn’t let himself flinch. He continues to disinfect the wound with the utmost care, not wanting to actually deal with an infection, even if he ignored the fact he had work in two days, and wouldn’t be able to explain it. His health was more important than work, really. All they would be able to do was send him to a hospital for antibiotics and raid this place – both things were terrible, but the admission that he was a moron and didn’t disinfect clearly unsanitary wounds was more embarrassing than anything.
“At least you’re not being a total moron,” Aizawa quipped, nodding at the disinfectant as Katsuki looked over his shoulder for a moment.
“I know how to disinfect wounds, Sensei,” Katsuki griped, plastering a bandage over and around it, making sure to cover all of the scratches as best as he could, and moving on to the bite mark on his shoulder. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Really?” Aizawa asked, taking a step forward. “Because you’re here, fighting in an underground – and illegal, might I add – fighting ring, as an incredibly public Pro Hero, instead of…I don’t know, reporting it? Kid, what the hell are you doing?”
“None of your fucking business,” Katsuki snapped. “It’s not like I’m going to get caught.”
“Your only disguise is tying up your hair and fucking contacts,” Aizawa hissed, “Not to mention how dangerous this is! What on earth do you think is going to happen if you end up so injured you can’t go to work? Or, god forbid, dead?”
Katsuki, for once, was able to keep his mouth shut. He sighs, places a bandage on the bite wound, chucks his shirt on, and finally turns around to face his former teacher.
He was almost thrown back with the look in the man's eyes. He expected the anger he could see written all over his face clear as day, but the tense posture of concern was what threw him for a loop. There wasn’t actually anything to be that concerned about. He was alive, and he was treating his injuries. He was fine.
“I’m fine,” Katsuki murmured. “No need to worry about me – last I checked, I wasn’t one of your students anymore.”
“Then stop calling me Sensei, kid.”
“As long as you stop calling me a fucking kid, Aizawa,” he growled back.
“I’ll treat you like an adult when you start fucking acting like one,” Aizawa hissed. “You can’t throw your life away like this!”
“I’m not,” Katsuki snapped, glaring at his former teacher, feeling his skin crawl as the man’s anger washed over him. He hated it, the feeling of his anger. He hated how, under everything, the itch wasn’t even coming back – but all the complicated feelings he had for the man were. He pushes them down, shakes his head, and makes out to leave.
Aizawa blocks the door.
“Bakugou, you really, really are. I…Jesus, you can’t do this! There are better places to go than this dump – a fucking gym, for one. There are so many gyms made for Pro Heroes. Go spar with your mates, for fucks sake. You don’t need to turn to being injured by strangers!”
“Hah, you should see the other guy,” Katsuki smirked. “Broke his fuckin’ nose earlier.”
“You should not be proud of that,” Aizawa growled.
“I don’t care,” Katsuki quipped. “And I don’t go to hero gyms for a fucking reason.”
It’s silent for a moment, the tenseness in the room reaching almost unbearable levels. And still, the itch never quite made its way back to the surface. Katsuki’s body is still thrumming with adrenaline, and lies content – at least for now.
He knew he’d have to avoid this place for a few weeks, just in case. The man wasn’t acting like he was here on a raid – but, as Jeanist had said earlier that week, he was the best Underground Hero Japan has seen in a generation. Who knows what the man was doing here.
He’d just have to deal with the itch, and the unbearable feeling of being unable to escape from his own skin. He’d have to focus on staying tethered, on being able to stay present enough that he didn’t lose any time. He didn’t want to slip back into a dissociative state. Not this time. Not when he’d finally found something to actually live for.
“I’m not letting you come back,” Aizawa finally murmured, shaking his head. “There are better ways to deal with stress.”
“Ha! I’d like to see you fucking try,” Katsuki snapped. “You can’t fucking stop me. I wouldn’t bother, if I were you.”
He walked out the door with only one thought in his head: ‘Fuck.’