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The first sign that Deku teaches him is easy.
It's just "Hello."
Deku signs it slowly, with a patient smile, hand moving gently and fluidly through the air. His years of experience are obvious.
And Katsuki, who has only started learning five minutes ago, signs back at him with fingers that feel clumsy, in motions that stick and fail to flow the way they should.
He wants to scream.
"Don't treat me like I'm a stupid toddler, Deku," he growls.
Deku takes a moment to read his lips. "I'm not, Kacchan," he answers, in words that blur together at the edges.
He doesn't ever say very much when he's without his hearing aids. Just keeps his sentences to two or three words that are easy to pronounce. Or words he knows the shape of by heart.
Katsuki knows that "Kacchan" is one of those words.
"Yes you are!" Katsuki snaps. "You're signing too damn slow! You think I can't handle this?"
His own hands tremble in his lap.
Deku frowns, and signs something new at him.
"The hell did you just say?"
"Sorry."
Katsuki slams the door behind him as forcefully as he can when he leaves the room. He hopes Deku feels the vibrations through the floor.
The next word Deku teaches him is a little bit more advanced, but somehow still just as laughably simple.
"Itadakimasu," Deku mouths, as his hands once again twist and turn, dancing around each other to a tune Katsuki can't hear.
He can't hear much of anything these days.
"This is useless," Katsuki says. "Why the hell would I need to sign this? I can still just say it out loud."
Deku shrugs. He has his hearing aids in, so when he responds, his words are crisp and clear. "I dunno, I think it's nice knowing there's ways to say almost everything."
Katsuki frowns, feeling irritable but aware he has no real reason for it.
When Deku isn’t looking, because he’s too busy stuffing his face with rice and noodles, Katsuki secretly repeats the sign to himself under the table, and then he digs in.
Deku lends him a few books about signing.
They’re old, the edges of the pages soft in the way a stone is after having water run over it for years.
“I know there’s better courses online, but I liked having these to look at whenever I wanted,” Deku says, smiling fondly at the books, almost as if they’re treasured friends. “They’re definitely nice for if you’re trying to sleep, and don’t want to be looking at a bright screen.”
Katsuki is all too aware of how stiff he is when he takes the books.
His jaw, tense and tight, creaks when he opens his mouth. "What makes you think I want your charity?” he spits in disgust.
But he still takes the books with him. Even though he just drops them on his desk and doesn’t touch them for days.
When Katsuki’s curiosity finally gets the better of him, and he cracks open the thickest of the books, it's to see written in green crayon on the inside: Property of Izuku :D
He blinks at the characters and the goofy little smiley face a few times, letting it sink in. It’s all written in clumsy hiragana, no kanji. Deku had been young.
His mom probably gave him these books.
Why Deku would trust Katsuki with them is a mystery. Maybe Deku has finally taken one too many hits to the head.
Still, Katsuki turns the pages with more care than he’ll ever admit.
He can tell from worn, curling corners where Deku spent the most time, and can tell from the rough edges where Deku got frustrated. Halfway through, in a section on how to restructure sentences, there’s a chunk of pages with ugly creases in them.
As if the book was thrown, and landed badly.
But on the very next page, there are small pieces of clear tape, smoothed down apologetically over the places where the paper tore.
Some kind of emotion, hot and scalding, slides down Katsuki’s throat. He closes the book. Puts it back on his desk.
He tries to leave it there with the others, tries to ignore it, but finds himself sitting on his bed with it the very next night, smoothing pages down to see the illustrated signs more clearly, and copying them with his own hands.
When Deku asks if he’s been reading the books, Katsuki says he hasn’t.
In return, Deku just gives him one of his stupid little knowing smiles that Katsuki hates.
"How can you stand it?!" Katsuki demands, on a day he knows Deku is having trouble. On a day Deku has been wincing and holding his head whenever someone is too loud. On a day with rain pelting the windows in a merciless and cruel drumbeat. "How can you stand this weakness?"
Deku blinks at him, and Katsuki can practically see the way the words filter slowly through his ears, to his brain, to his heart.
The moment the words are fully processed and click into place, something in the air shifts. Deku's green eyes crystallize to jade, their edges sharp.
"I don't see it as a weakness, for starters," Deku says, voice hard. "And neither should you."
Then, in a stunning display of obstinacy that has Katsuki frozen with his mouth gaping in shock, Deku very pointedly takes out his hearing aids, turns around, and walks away.
Katsuki lets him leave.
"When did it start?" Katsuki asks.
Deku tilts his head at him in question.
"Your hearing. When did you start to lose it?"
"When I was little."
Katsuki works his jaw for a moment. He feels like a broken machine, missing too many pieces.
"Did anything cause it?"
Deku stiffens, turns away in the way he does when he's going to lie and doesn't want Katsuki to see it on his face. He brings a hand to his right ear and cups the soft edge of it, like that can hide the ghostly shadows of burn scars beneath his hair that line the curve of his skull.
"No."
"Want to know my sign name for you?" Deku asks eagerly one morning.
"Not really," Katsuki replies half-heartedly, knowing Deku will show him regardless.
"It's this," and Deku forms a short series of motions with his hands.
They're all signs Katsuki knows by now.
Little
Explosion
Victory
Something uncomfortable swells in his chest, chokes him viciously from inside his throat.
He drowns it with red.
"Want to know my sign name for you?" Katsuki snarls, feeling raw and exposed, desperate to lash out and force Deku’s stupidly kind hands away from him.
He sharply signs the words " Useless" and "Empty" at the other boy.
Deku's expression drains of excitement. Settles into something more resigned.
He sighs, nods, and gives Katsuki a thin smile. Like he didn't expect anything different.
Katsuki hates how walking away from Deku feels like he's running from something.
"We have to put you on probation for a while," Aizawa says, in a dry tone, like he isn't taking a hammer to Katsuki's entire world. "It'd be illogical of the school to allow you to continue participating in dangerous exercises or use your quirk. You’ll only exacerbate your hearing loss.”
Katsuki doesn't know how to respond, not at first. Rage fills him slowly, like water pouring into a cup.
Aizawa takes his silence as acquiescence. “It will only last until Support can figure out how to make hearing aids that can survive the concussive force of your explosions,” he says, already geturing for Katsuki to sit on the sidelines. “They’ve been making a lot of progress, I’m sure it’ll be any day now.”
“No,” is all Katsuki can say.
There’s a pregnant pause.
“No?” Aizawa repeats, giving Katsuki a chance to change his answer.
“No, I’m not–” Katsuki stumbles on his words, something he never does. Damnit, he’s becoming more and more like Deku by the day. “I’m not letting you fuckin’–”
“Language,” Aizawa interjects flatly.
“–keep me from training! I’m not!”
“You don’t have a choice,” Aizawa says. He holds up a hand, and begins to tick off everything Katsuki has done wrong to get him to this point. “You haven’t adjusted to your changing equilibrium, you can’t hear instructions or warnings if they’re too far from you, and you haven’t been working with Present Mic or Midoriya on your sign language,” he lowers his hand, and fixes Katsuki with a firm, no-nonsense look. “So until you have hearing aids that work, you’ll be training incorrectly, and that, Bakugou, is worse than not training at all.”
Katsuki growls, gritting his teeth together so hard the scrape is audible. Small explosions pop off in his hands.
But he finds he has no argument, no leg to stand on.
Everything Aizawa said was right.
“Fuck. You.”
He turns on his heel and stomps aggressively away.
Later that day, when the class is back in the dorms and everyone is going about their business, he grabs Deku by the collar and yanks him out the door.
“Kacchan, not again!” is the first thing Deku yelps, waving his arms around pathetically as he stumbles, failing each time he tries to get his feet under him while Katsuki is pulling him along.
“It’s not after curfew yet,” Katsuki snaps. “Get a hold of yourself, nerd.”
“Still, that doesn't mean we should get into a habit of–”
“Will you shut the hell up?”
He tosses Deku into the gym when they get there; it’s a smaller one that’s close to their dorm building, but isn’t used often due to the lack of space in comparison to UA’s other training facilities on campus.
So the gym is empty. It’s just the two of them.
As always.
Katsuki fires an explosion at Deku’s head before he can think to stop himself. Doesn’t even try to aim.
The sound of it, that deep boom and crackle he’d found familiar and empowering before, burns inside his skull.
He screams furiously, and lets loose another explosion.
“Kacchan, sto–!”
One after another, explosion after explosion. They ravage the air, tearing space and sound apart with their harsh light and heat.
Katsuki just wants to hear something other than the ringing that has burrowed so deep inside of his ears.
A hand suddenly breaks through the fires of the hell Katsuki has trapped himself inside of, out of the wall of smoke. Scarred and thick skinned, it clamps down unshakably on one of Katsuki’s hands, closing his palm and cutting off his quirk.
Another hand reaches forwards and does the same for Katsuki’s other hand, and then he and Deku are standing there, facing each other, singed and panting at the epicenter of the wreckage.
“You have to stop,” Deku says, eyes wet and voice wavering. Katsuki can barely hear him, every word sounding distant as if filtered through an ocean between them. “Kacchan, you have to stop.”
When Katsuki doesn't move, doesn't make any sign that he's registering what's being said to him, Deku moves both of Katsuki’s hands to just one of his own, and uses the other to sign along with what he’s saying as best he can.
“It’s okay, it’ll be okay.”
The touch is warm, Deku’s rough skin against his own a soothing balm on Katsuki’s soul.
Katsuki wrenches his hands away.
"Nothing will ever be okay again," he hisses. "So don't lie to me and say it will be."
Deku frowns at him. He holds his hands awkwardly at his sides, like he isn’t sure what to do with them now. “You’re acting like it’s the end of the world.”
Katsuki barks out a bitter, painful laugh. “Isn’t it?”
“It isn’t,” Deku says. “And I’d know. So why are you giving up? The Kacchan I know wouldn’t be–”
This time, when Katsuki lunges for Deku with sparks lighting up his palm, he aims.
Predictably, they’re put under house arrest again.
But instead of being told to clean the dorms this time, Aizawa takes one look at the two of them – soot-smeared and each bubbling over with their own brand of anger – and says, “Catch up on the sign language lessons.”
Katsuki decides that he hates the man, but not as much as he hates Deku, who is sitting in front of him and once again trying to get Katsuki to follow along through the motions of different signs.
Though Katsuki can’t help but notice that there’s something off about Deku right now… He’s lacking the same enthusiasm and warmth he had at the beginning of their lessons, what feels like a lifetime ago. The Deku he’s sitting with now is stiff, and his hands and fingers move without the fluidity of familiarity.
And he refuses to look Katsuki in the eyes.
“You too good to teach me now, huh Deku?” Katsuki grumbles.
Deku scowls and opens his mouth to respond, but breaks off into a wince of pain.
Katsuki hones in on the motion like a shark on blood in the water.
“What the fuck, are you actually injured?”
Deku’s shoulders tighten, like a spring being wound with every word Katsuki says. “No,” he says. “Now anyways, back to the–”
A dark thought enters Katsuki’s mind, and he slams his hands down, leaning aggressively across the table into Deku’s space.
“Did you let me get a hit in, because you pity me now?”
“It’s nothing to do with you, Kacchan,” Deku says firmly. “Now please get your hand off the book.”
Katsuki looks down at the book, the same old book of signs that he knows has Deku’s name inscribed in crayon on the first page.
For a moment, he imagines what it would look like if he were to blow it up; scraps of paper flying through the air like confetti at the world’s shittiest party, the illustrations and those childish crayon lines burning away.
He would be destroying something Deku obviously cares about. Something Deku has worked hard to keep in good condition. Something Deku trusted him with.
When he meets Deku’s eyes, sees the wariness there, he can tell Deku knows what he’s thinking.
Keeping that eye contact, Katsuki slowly, deliberately, takes his hand away.
He pretends not to hear Deku’s relieved breath, as Deku pulls the book closer to himself.
“If you’re not injured, what was with that wimpy-ass wince?” Katsuki asks, sitting back heavily in his chair and crossing his arms.
Deku hesitates, rolls his shoulders subtly, examines Katsuki up and down for something.
“Nothing,” he says at length, voice soft. He looks away again. “Let’s keep studying, okay?”
Katsuki grits his teeth, but he lets it go.
Until he descends the stairs to the kitchen after waking from a restless sleep, the night after their house arrest had been lifted, and finds Deku standing there in the dark. He has his back to the doorway, and his hands held in the plugged sink beneath water so hot it’s steaming.
“What the fuck?” Katsuki blurts as he turns on the light. Deku startles, turning so quickly that he sends an arc of hot water droplets splattering upon the ground.
They both speak at the same time, words crashing into each other.
“K-Kacchan? What are you doing up?”
“The hell are you doing to yourself?”
Deku takes a minute to read his lips and respond, ears empty of his hearing aids.
“I was just washing my hands,” he lies, his smile so easy to see through.
Deku’s hands tremble, the skin a bright, angry red that ends in a clean slanted line part way up his wrist, where healthy tanned skin continues on from.
“In the kitchen, in the dark, at fuckin’–” Katsuki glances to the clock over the stove “–3AM?”
“Oh, is this the kitchen?” Deku says, with a laugh that trembles. “My bad, thought it was the bathroom. Must have walked here in my sleep.”
He’s rambling the way he does when nervous. Not even the fact that he can’t hear himself is able to stop the compulsive habit.
“What’s wrong with your hands?” Katsuki asks, not mincing words.
Deku twitches.
“And don’t say ‘nothing’ this time,” Katsuki says, taking an aggressive step closer, cutting Deku off before his mouth can even open.
“They just cramp up sometimes,” Deku blurts. His wide eyes stand out frighteningly in the low light, making him look like a cornered rabbit. One who thinks that being honest will save him from the vicious beast bearing down on him. “Especially after signing a lot. Heat helps.”
Katsuki looks again at Deku’s hands, and this time the tight pink scars wrapped around his knuckles are thrown into stark relief.
Katsuki has never thought about Deku's injuries before, but those scars... They look painful. Really painful.
Painful enough that Deku had been burning himself with scalding water, just to feel a drop of relief.
After he pushed his hands over the edge… for Katsuki.
Katsuki can’t even remember why he had come down to the kitchen now. His mind half-heartedly conjures up faded thoughts of his protein shake in the fridge, but he pushes them aside.
Deku leaps out of the way when Katsuki plunges his hand into the hot water and frees the drain.
“Next time your hands hurt, don’t do this shit,” Katsuki snarls. He reaches out and grabs one of Deku’s hands to pull it up, the motion dangerously close to how Deku had grabbed Katsuki’s hands when they had fought.
“Wh–”
“You’re just fucking yourself up even more, shitty nerd.”
Deku stares at him like he’s gone insane. Maybe he has. Katsuki isn’t sure what he’s even doing anymore. Isn’t sure what is coming out of his mouth.
“Just come to me,” Katsuki feels his grip tighten on Deku’s fingers against his will. “I’ll take care of it.”
Neither of them say anything when Deku shows up at Katsuki’s dorm a week later, after a heavy day of training and then signing lessons.
Katsuki had expected it. He had watched the way Deku’s hands had failed to form certain more complicated signs. Anything that needed the fingers to twist over each other, Deku had ground his teeth together before forcing his own crooked fingers to conform.
“They get tense,” Deku says, already making excuses for himself, as he sits down on Katsuki’s bed while kneading circles into the palm of his right hand with the thumb of his left. “I’ll be out of your hair in no time Kacchan, but you said to come to you. Although I still don’t know what you’re even going to do–”
Katsuki takes Deku’s hands, and doesn’t think about how easy it’s getting to just reach out and do that.
Then, with his palms lined up against Deku’s, he activates his quirk.
It’s just the sparks, small and quiet, the very base level of what he can do, but it’s enough.
Deku flinches, almost pulls away, before the gentle popping warmth against his skin registers, and he looks at Katsuki with so much childish wonder Katsuki starts feeling sick.
Nostalgia from seeing that expression on Deku’s face is trying to strangle him, and it has every right to do so.
“You better buy a heat pack,” he says gruffly, trying to make it sound like a threat. “I’m not gonna do this for you forever. It’s just because I owe you for these goddamn lessons, and I hate owing people.”
“Of course, Kacchan,” Deku says in a soft sigh. He slowly shuts his eyes, and leans forward into Katsuki.
They stay like that for a while. For longer than Katsuki expected.
But Katsuki finds he doesn’t mind feeling the solid weight of Deku leaning against him as much as he thought he would.
They don’t talk about it. Just like they don’t talk about most things.
Charged silences and misunderstandings are the language that Midoriya Izuku and Bakugou Katsuki speak with each other, and Katsuki knows that nothing is going to change that overnight.
But they start exchanging a word or two in sign language every so often, when they brush shoulders, neither looking at the other, and, well, that’s a new development.
It’s still not an actual conversation, but it’s a step. Motions and body language have always been easier for Katsuki to translate his thoughts into anyways.
He accepts the hearing aids when they’re ready. Not stupid or deluded enough to think he can get by without them anymore. Aizawa looks surprised when Katsuki demands he hand them over, and even more surprised when Katsuki tells him Deku’s hearing aids could use an upgrade too.
Later that night, he puts them on, and then sits back to listen to the comfortable, idle chatter coming from the common room. The idiots in there are laughing about something. A video game? Katsuki doesn’t care.
The hearing aids help.
He ignores Deku’s quiet and ever watchful gaze.
“I lied when I told you my sign name for you,” Katsuki says.
They’re in the middle of a class training exercise, both of them suited up and perched on a high rooftop of Ground Gamma. Deku doesn’t turn away from vigilantly watching the sea of pipes that snake around beneath them.
It’s less of a reaction than Katsuki expected. He grinds his teeth, forces himself to not lose his nerve. “You have to fuckin’ look at me to see it, nerd.”
“I don’t want to risk us getting caught,” Deku says.
“We’re not gonna– just look at me.”
Katsuki grabs Deku’s shoulder, turns him around forcefully.
He starts by signing “Useless.”
Deku’s expression, which had been held tight in curious expectation, drops.
“That’s the same, why are you just–”
Then Katsuki signs “Hero.”
Deku’s breath catches in his throat.
Slowly, a wide, overjoyed smile, like a fruit ripening with both disbelief and hope, grows on Deku’s face.
“Tell no one,” Katsuki demands, head feeling hot.
“Anyone who knows JSL is going to know,” Deku informs him, but it doesn’t wipe the smile away.
Katsuki puts a hand over his face and shoves him. Deku just laughs.
A year ago, Deku would have cowered away, would have begged Katsuki through snot and tears to leave his face alone, to let him go.
Although Deku’s laugh is annoying, Katsuki thinks he prefers this instead.
“Go back to paying attention to the exercise like you’re supposed to.”
“I was paying attention! You were the one who distracted me by actually being kinda nice.”
“And no one will ever believe you.”
Another stretch of silence passes after Deku’s laugh dies down. They both watch for their classmates and hold themselves battle ready.
But then…
“... Can I see it one more time?”
Katsuki looks over to see that Deku’s scarred hands are moving as he asks, simply signing, “Please?”
He huffs, hesitates, but eventually gives in. It’s not like those two signs take much effort.
He practiced them a lot, and signing them is as easy as breathing now.