Chapter Text
Another week passed, with the two of them spending a few hours every other day at Tengan’s before they managed to get the funds they needed.
Izuku, who had done the research on rope strength, ended up picking out a strong, thin rope that could more than easily hold his weight. He got a lot of it too, just in case it came in handy for a later project or they had to cut it for some reason. He carried the rope over his shoulder as they hiked up the familiar track to their private mountain clearing.
Getting set up for the day’s experiments was routine by this point. Katsuki got the camera ready, pointing it to the area they would be working in. Izuku would get whatever props they had for that day out, which was the rope today, and then get himself ready.
He took off his shoes and socks for this one, because it would make climbing the tree easier to do, but left the rest of his clothes on since this wasn’t going to be a messy experiment. He spent most of his prep time tying a noose, trying to get it perfect.
Katsuki came over and crouched beside him, watching him tie the knot. “Is that right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Izuku said, “I watched some videos and practiced with some string I have at home.” He finished the last loop and held it up to Katsuki to look at, “See? It’s right.”
Katsuki nodded and then stood up. “Which tree do you want to use?”
“It doesn’t matter which tree it is as long as it has a good branch. That’s all I need.”
“Okay,” he walked away then.
Holding the rope loosely in his hands, Izuku watched Katsuki look at some of the trees around. There was the big pine, of course, but it was thick with branches and not suitable. Some of the other trees around had long, strong branches, but they were really high up. One or two had lower ones and he saw Katsuki go check their height against himself and see how strong they were by pulling on them.
For some reason, he was reminded of what Shiroma had said to him while he watched Katsuki.
She had led him to a stairwell that was out of the way so they could talk. She had been so nervous that her quirk of camouflage had started to blend her into her uniform top now that she wasn’t against any other surface. Staring down at their feet, she had whispered her way through a confession of love. Or, well, she called it love.
Izuku wasn’t so sure that it was.
She had thought about him frequently, ever since the previous autumn when he’d stood up to some bullies for her and told her that her quirk was really cool. She had been too nervous to do more than greet him politely and too scared to help him with his own bullies, but she had wanted to.
In fact, she had wanted a lot of things. She had wanted to have lunch with him. She had wanted to talk to him every day. She had wanted to hold his hand. She had wanted to be close to him.
But what she had done was watch him from afar.
Like he had told the others, he understood what it was to want to be close to someone. He understood watching and hoping and wishing every day that that day would be different and he understood how crushing it was when things never really changed.
But what he didn’t understand was Shiroma’s fear.
Izuku was a nice person. He knew he was a nice person. His mother had always told him so. Even Katsuki had told him so, though usually, it had been a part of a taunt as if it would rile him up for a fight. Shiroma should have known that he was a nice person. He never would have been mean to her, even if he didn’t want to be around her. He would have happily been her friend months ago if she had asked. Yet instead Shiroma had watched him and had been so afraid of his reaction that she had ultimately stayed away from the person she said she wanted to be close to.
Every time they had been even sort of close to each other during the year it had been the result of someone else’s actions. The confession was that way as well with Amachi acting as the go-between to initiate that contact. For all that Shiroma had watched and wanted, she had done nothing.
And that, Izuku could not understand.
Because for Izuku, the person he wanted to be close to was Katsuki. He wanted the same things with Katsuki that Shiroma had said she wanted with him. He wanted to eat lunch with him. He wanted to talk to him every day. He wanted to hold his hand. He wanted to be around Katsuki as much as he possibly could.
He wanted more things too, things she hadn’t mentioned. He wanted Katsuki to hold him. He wanted Katsuki to give him gifts. He wanted Katsuki to cook for him. He wanted Katsuki to always be there when he woke up from death. He wanted to protect Katsuki. He wanted to train with him. He wanted to sleep in the same bed as him. He wanted as much of Katsuki’s attention and affection as he could possibly squeeze out of their relationship.
He wanted to be with Katsuki forever. And he wanted it so much that sometimes his mouth felt dry and his throat ached like someone’s hands were around it and squeezing until he couldn’t breathe.
No. Not someone’s hands. Katsuki’s hands. No one else had ever choked Izuku.
He wanted to be with Katsuki so much he could sometimes still feel his hands on his skin.
And all of this, Izuku had discovered, was a problem.
Shiroma had wanted all that she’d said because she thought she really liked Izuku, because she wanted to be with him, romantically. She had confessed feelings of love for Izuku and that was the root of why she wanted what she wanted.
So if those feelings were love then what was it that he felt? They felt so much stronger than she had described, after all.
He didn’t think Shiroma had wanted him to be with her forever. But maybe she had and she just hadn’t said so. He kind of wanted to ask her about it some more, but it was far too late now. School had ended, summer had started, and besides, she had started crying a lot when he’d told her he didn’t feel that way for her at all.
He thought she was nice. He thought she had an interesting quirk. But he didn’t necessarily want to be any closer to her than he already was.
“Deku, what the fuck are you staring at now?” Katsuki demanded as he stomped over. He looked annoyed, but Izuku had spent a lot of time and attention reading Katsuki’s face and he knew he was actually worried.
Izuku blinked a few times and stood up, rope in hand. He hesitated. He bit his bottom lip.
Katsuki came to a stop in front of him. “Well? What is it? Is there a problem with the rope or something?”
Izuku shook his head, “No. No. I just. I was thinking about that girl.”
Katsuki stared at him blankly for a second and Izuku sighed. “You remember, right? I mean it just happened last week.” He shook his head again, “No, never mind, it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“What about that girl,” Katsuki asked, although it didn’t really sound like a question. He had his arms folded over his chest. “I thought you said you didn’t like her or some shit. Why are you fucking thinking about her right now?”
“I was just thinking about what she said about liking people,” he said, “And wanting to be close to them. It’s nothing. It’s just distracting me a little. Did you find a good branch?”
Katsuki gave him a narrowed look but instead of pursuing the topic of Shiroma, he said, “I guess. There are some low ones that look okay. I hung on them and they didn’t break, but they did bend a little bit.”
“Okay,” Izuku said. He gathered up the rope in his hands and said, “Show me which ones. It’s time to get started.”
The first test failed to work.
Izuku tied the knot right and slid it over his head. The branch they chose was high up off the ground and as big around as his calf, so Izuku thought it would be work. He had to climb up the tree to get to it, which he had expected to do. He tied the knot well on the tree branch but when he dropped off of it in order to hang, the branch itself had snapped loudly and sent him crashing to the ground.
He ended up spraining his wrist catching himself, but that wouldn’t bother him long.
They discussed their options of branches then and decided to go a little lower down in order to, hopefully, find a branch that would not break.
Technically, their second test worked.
Izuku climbed up a different tree. He tied the rope to the branch, double-checked the rope on his neck and then dropped. His head jerked back and the last sensations Izuku had were a sharp pain in his neck, a tightness that was unlike being choked by hand because the thin rope dug into his soft skin under his jaw, and the realization that his body was so much heavier than he’d realized when all of his weight was being supported by his neck.
Then he died.
And when he woke, he was already choking. The rope was still in place and he was spinning slightly. He kicked out one foot. He scratched at his throat. He dug his fingers underneath the rope and felt the sting of fresh cuts. Distantly he could hear Katsuki calling for him but that only added another layer to his increasingly frantic struggling.
Izuku had no idea how long he spent twisting, clawing at his throat. It wasn’t long enough to die, no, but the familiar sensation of suffocation had begun to darken his vision when there was a sudden popping sound and he dropped.
Izuku landed hard on the ground, feet first, and pain shot up his legs. The rope relaxed around his neck enough for him to suck in a breath and start to clear his vision. He looked up as he lay on the ground, pain keeping him immobile as he saw Katsuki make his way back down the tree. He jumped down and then ran over to Izuku.
“Oh fuck your leg is pretty fucked up,” Katsuki panted out. He pulled the rope free from Izuku’s neck.
“Kacchan,” Izuku reached for him. Everything would be okay if Katsuki was there. He knew Katsuki would take care of him. “It hurts.”
“Yeah, I’m not surprised,” Katsuki said. His hand was warm, so warm, when it curled around Izuku’s throat in that oh-so-familiar way. Izuku closed his eyes and felt his body relax.
“Kacchan,” Izuku mumbled, “Your hand is warm.”
“Duh,” Katsuki said, “I had to get you down somehow and we still don’t have a good fucking knife. My quirk was all I had. Now stop trying to talk and just reset already okay?” He increased the pressure on Izuku’s neck, his other hand joining the first in order to completely block off Izuku’s blood flow and air.
Izuku reached out and gripped Katsuki’s shirt as he let himself be choked.
He really didn’t understand Shiroma at all. If she wanted to be with him, she should have done something, anything. But she didn’t. She’d let her fear hold her back and then got her heart broken.
Izuku had done something and now he had Katsuki.
And he was never going to let him go again.
Third time’s a charm, Katsuki thought to himself as he watched Izuku climb up another tree. He hoped they had ironed out the problems now. They had picked a living branch, not a dead one. They had double and triple checked the knots so they weren’t going to slip. They had given Izuku extra rope, so instead of dangling ten or more feet off the ground, he would end up close enough for Katsuki to be able to interact with him after he died.
Above him, Izuku inched his way out onto the branch. He was tying the rope to it now, using a complicated knot he’d looked up online before all of this. He had his legs around the tree, his bare ankles hooked together while he worked.
When the rope was set, Izuku affixed the other end to his neck the way he had done before. Then he stuck out his thumb to Katsuki. “Ready!”
Katsuki stuck out his thumb in return, “Got it.”
Izuku unhooked his ankles and, slowly, started to slide to the side. He closed his eyes as he fell, his body looked surprisingly relaxed.
For a moment, he seemed to sort of hang there, not quite on the branch, not quite falling off of it. The sunlight through the trees flashed across his skin as he moved through its path and Katsuki unconsciously sucked in a sharp breath and held it.
Then the moment passed and Izuku plummeted towards the ground.
It looked like it was going to work perfectly, even though Izuku didn’t fall feet first. Then the rope suddenly went taut and Izuku’s body swung down with more force than Katsuki’s expected. There was a weird fleshy popping sound that accompanied the final drop and Katsuki instinctively flinched back as something went spinning wildly through the air and away from Izuku’s body.
At the same time, a splatter of something hit him in the face, even though he was twenty feet away.
Katsuki blinked, startled. The rope hung off the branch. It swung in a wide arc from side to side. It was empty.
Beneath the tree branch lay Izuku. Katsuki took a step forward and then another, mumbling numbers under his breath. Had he slipped the noose? Had Izuku died? He wasn’t sure yet, but he should keep track anyway. That was what they were doing all of this for after all.
As Katsuki walked over to him, he thought Izuku looked wrong somehow. The rope or the fall clearly must have injured him in some way because he hadn’t gotten back up to his feet. But Katsuki didn’t immediately—
He stopped. He stared.
Blood pooled out beneath Izuku. It came out of his neck in a gushing tide of red. Both of the significant arteries in his neck had torn open. In fact, everything had torn open. Katsuki could see the hole for his esophagus or trachea, he wasn’t exactly sure which, and he could see the end of the spine protruding from a torn, fleshy wound.
Izuku’s head was gone.
Katsuki clapped both hands over his mouth. He took a step back, then another. This was worse than when he’d blown off Izuku’s hand. This was worse than cutting open his leg or his stomach. His head was gone. It wasn’t fucking there. Where the hell had it gone?
That thing that spun off into the woods. It had moved so fast and caught him off guard he hadn’t really caught a good sight of it. But it had been dark and light, like Izuku’s hair and his skin—
Before he realized what he was doing, Katsuki staggered towards the woods, following both his memory and the splatters of blood he saw on some of the leaves nearby. He was still counting, though between each number he swore.
What if he couldn’t find Izuku’s head? What if decapitation was the thing that would actually kill him? What if Izuku came back but different? What if he forgot who he was? What if both the head and the body grew back and there were two Izukus? What if he found the head but some wild animal had found it first? What if he couldn’t get Izuku’s head back to his body soon enough? What if it just disintegrated before he found it?
Okay, maybe that last one was a bit absurd, he’d admit that to himself, but he didn’t know for sure that it wouldn’t happen.
They had cut open Izuku’s body and pulled out organs and he regrew them when he died, but that didn’t mean that the same would happen to his head. The rules that Izuku’s quirk followed were still mysterious to them. That’s why they were doing all of this testing in the first place.
Katsuki stumbled over a root and nearly fell.
He was breathing heavily. His vision was getting kind of blurry. His mind was whirling with frantic thoughts and he was starting to feel sick to his stomach. He couldn’t calm down. All he could do was stagger around, looking through the underbrush for Izuku’s head.
It had to be out here. Somewhere. He’d seen it go in this direction.
Or had he? He didn’t track its movement. Not really. He’d been paying attention to Izuku’s body, not his fucking head as it whirled away and—
He stopped.
There, resting on some moss, under a broken fern plant of some sort that had clearly caught the brunt of the landing, was Izuku’s head. It was turned slightly towards him, cheek resting on the greenery like the moss was a pillow. Lips parted, eyes opened wide, Izuku’s dead face looked caught off guard. Surprised by his death; not that it happened of course, but how it happened.
Katsuki slowly eased forward. He knew there was no reason to approach the head like a wounded wild animal but he couldn’t help it.
What if Izuku was still in there? What if he could see him? What if he came back to life, head separate from the body? What if—
Katsuki crouched down. He gingerly touched Izuku’s cheek. His skin was smooth and warm. He’d touched it before, when he’d been excited in gym class or when he was teasing Izuku on their own; he’d pinched Izuku’s cheek before and it had usually made him grin.
But when Katsuki pinched it now, the rest of Izuku’s face didn’t move at all.
He gingerly picked up the head. It was heavier than he expected. Blood dripped from the open wound of his neck. Katsuki just looked down at Izuku’s face, running his thumbs over his cheeks, feeling the texture of his thick, curly hair.
“Don’t worry, Deku,” Katsuki murmured, “I’ll get you back to your body and everything will be fine. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”
Izuku, of course, didn’t respond.
Not that Katsuki really expected him to. Of course not. This was just Izuku’s head. Even if he was somehow still alive, he wouldn’t be able to breathe or speak or anything. He’d just look at Katsuki with those big empty eyes of his.
Katsuki shivered. Even in death, Izuku stared at him and it made him feel so weird. “You gotta stop looking at me like that all the time,” he whispered to him, “It’s fucking weird.”
“Kacchan!”
Katsuki flinched hard. He stood and turned in the same motion, clutching the head tightly. He stared back the way that he came, heart beating wildly in his chest.
“Kacchan?” Izuku’s voice called out again, “Where did you go?”
There was a faint tremor in his voice. He sounded like he was close to crying.
Katsuki found himself moving before he thought about it, still holding the damn head, still freaking out because Izuku was calling out to him. There was no way. There was no fucking way—
He burst out into the clearing and came to a stop.
Izuku stood near where he’d fallen. Blood soaked the entire front of his shirt and some of the front of his pants. There was a smear of it around his neck, too, and some of it on his cheek. Just one cheek, though. Like he’d woken up with his head resting in a pool of blood.
When Izuku saw him, he smiled, “Kacchan! There you are. Where were you? Why did—” Then he stopped too and his eyes were locked on Katsuki’s hands.
Wordlessly, Katsuki held out the head.
Izuku walked over to him, still staring at it. When he was close enough that Katsuki could smell the blood coming off of him, he reached for the head. Not to take it from Katsuki, no, but to gently poke it. “That’s my head,” he said, pointing out the obvious.
“It came off,” Katsuki said, doing the same. He was tempted to shove the head into Izuku’s hands and force him to hold it, but he restrained himself. He had a feeling that as soon as he did that he would want to hold the actually alive Izuku’s head in his hands and that made his stomach turn in interesting ways.
“My head came off,” Izuku mumbled. He poked his attached head on the cheek where he’d just poked his detached head. “My head grew back.”
Then he looked up at Katsuki, eyes wide. “I didn’t even notice it was different. I didn’t— I just regrew my head and I didn’t even notice it was gone.”
“Are you still you?” Katsuki asked.
Izuku nodded slightly, “I think so. I feel the same.”
“Are you sure?” Katsuki demanded, leaning in towards him. “How do you know? Do you remember what you had for breakfast?”
“Yes. Mom made an omelet.”
“Fine but do you remember what we did yesterday afternoon?”
“We went on a run together and then to the store for the rope.”
“What’s your name?”
“Midoriya Izuku,” he then flashed a smile, “But you call me Deku.”
“How old are you?”
“Twelve, almost thirteen.”
Katsuki narrowed his eyes. “When did we first meet?”
Izuku opened his mouth, then stopped. He frowned and then said, “I’m not sure. I’ve always known you, Kacchan.”
“Well yeah,” Katsuki said, “Our parents had us doing playdates before we could fucking talk. But what’s your first memory of me?”
Izuku rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He mumbled under his breath while he considered. After a minute or so, he brightened up. “I think I remember the earliest one. We were still really little and I don’t think I really had words for who you were, but I remember being in a doctor’s office with you. We were in the examination room together, sitting on the exam bed thing. My dad was there and the doctor was there and I remember the doctor gave us both a treat. We had bandages on our arms because of a shot or something? I don’t remember that part well.
“You kept pushing your foot against my leg while we ate our treat. I think they were cookies? Maybe. I’m not sure. But you pushed my foot against me and I remember that because you’d taken your shoe off so it was your sock and it had All Might’s face on it.”
Katsuki frowned at him.
Izuku looked uncertainly at him, “Why? Is that wrong, Kacchan?”
Katsuki shook his head. He remembered that pretty much the same way. “No. That’s right. I took off my shoes and then your shoes, I think.”
It was the memory itself that troubled him. He’d totally forgotten about that happening. Where had his parents been during that? He was still little enough that his dad probably was around. Why was it just Izuku’s dad and the doctor? What had been going on?
“I think I’m still me,” Izuku said, “I remember school and our plans for the summer and everything we did this morning and yesterday and, well, everything I should remember.”
Katsuki shook himself. He lifted the head in his hands, “All right, then what the fuck do we do with this?”
Izuku looked at it, then he looked at Katsuki and shrugged. “I guess we bury it with the other bits.”
Katsuki grimaced. The ‘bits’ were all in a hole they had dug and buried and were probably pretty rotten by now. “We should dig a new hole,” he said, “And put a rock on top of it. Something heavy so that it will crush it. We can’t just let someone find your whole fucking head just sitting in a hole, Deku.”
“Okay,” Izuku said. “Let’s do that and then we can get back to the experiment. I think I have an idea to make it work right this time.” He turned to walk over to their bags and pull out the trowel they used to dig holes with.
Katsuki stood there for a moment, watching him silently. Then he looked down at the head in his hands again. The eyes had half shut from all the movement. The mouth hung open a little more. He wondered if Izuku’s living head felt this heavy or not.
He wondered what the hell had been up with Izuku’s dad and that doctor. And why his mom wanted him to stay away from him so much. He didn’t remember him doing anything bad. He didn’t remember being hurt or even scared.
Did his mom even know he’d been at the doctor's? That had been almost ten years ago. Should he ask her about it?
“Kacchan, over here!” Izuku called, gesturing him over with the trowel.
Katsuki shook himself to push those thoughts away and then trotted over to follow Izuku.
He could worry about that stuff later. For now, he was just going to focus on Izuku and their work. That’s what really mattered.
To Be Continued...