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As any breaking point does, it starts with a snap.
When the wood cracks, it is loud and sharp and jolting, the type of noise that makes you flinch in surprise, because it was never expected to be that loud.
Katsuki just stares at the wreckage, the jagged splinters that he holds in both palms. His hands ache from the force that was released, yet somehow that still doesn’t seem to be enough, because frustration continues to bleed hotly from his chest. Rivers and floods of it, rising and boiling with no end in sight.
Great. So Katsuki can break a fucking pencil, but somehow he can’t even manage to–
“Bakugou,” Aizawa-sensei says from the front of the class. 21 pairs of eyes turn to stare at Katsuki, the origin and the epicenter of an unexpected disruption. “Is there something wrong?”
And now everyone is staring at him, probably expecting some sort of answer. But the reality is, he doesn’t think he has an answer. Not to any of this.
Aizawa-sensei is still looking at him with that look that he always uses with Katsuki: patient and expectant, all at the same time. He sighs when he sees what’s in Katsuki’s hands. “Do you need someone to lend you a p–“
But before he can even get the chance to finish, Katsuki is standing abruptly from his chair and making his way towards the door.
His footsteps are quick and angry. 21 pairs of surprised eyes just watch him go.
Don’t be mistaken: this is not called fleeing. It’s not. This is called making a quick and timely decision based on the cards at hand.
Because it’s simple: he’s fucking done. And with nothing but the smoke of frustration that lives in his lungs and two clenched fists, Katsuki storms out of class.
When the door is slammed shut behind him, quiet surrounds him, large and looming.
It's so much larger than him. Larger than everything.
His back is to the door and his head faces an ever expanding window, but for a second he makes no move. Not forward and not backwards; Katsuki just stands there for a second, stuck frozen in a silence that provides no relief. It just feels like too much to bear.
No–breathe. In and out. Recollect. Figure out how to fix things. Figure out how to make things right again.
Katsuki breathes in and he has no fucking clue what he’s doing. He breathes out, and he still has no idea. All he knows is that he is being eaten alive–a corruption of the worst kind. An unrelenting decay, chipping away at him until his grasp is too weak to do anything but slip.
Loss–it’s loss. Loss of the part that makes him fundamentally himself. Katsuki is losing.
The time is not ticking, but there’s an urgency to do something about it, so he decides that it can’t hurt to try again. Maybe the second time’s the charm.
Katsuki gathers the pieces of him that are left, and he leaves.
Okay, so he didn’t actually leave the school.
Katsuki sits on the front steps of UA, looking out towards the entrance and trying to count how many footsteps it took him to get where he is now, to the place of his dreams.
Probably a lot.
Wondering just how many footsteps it would take for him to leave this all behind.
Probably less. That’s how energy works, right? Something about entropy, something about enthalpy. Something about distribution, and something about weakness. The world yearns to exhale, so the rules are that it’s always easier to let go than to keep holding on.
Katsuki tries it out for himself. He exhales, a short puff of air that makes itself into an icy cloud of smoke before his eyes, spreading and dispersing until it becomes one with the atmosphere.
He doesn’t feel any fucking better.
For all his “quick and timely” decision making, sitting outside is probably the worst thing he could be doing right now. Winter is approaching and knows no mercy, so the only embrace it knows how to give just makes Katsuki’s hand all dry and achy. He looks down at it, watching the way it can’t help but tremble in the cold, asking for warmth or just some sort of relief.
Maybe this is what happens when you demand for too much. People would tell him to drop the ego, and he’d tell them right back that this is no ego, this is a damn promise. But here he sits, looking down at the hand that tried to grab hold of the red-hot sun. The hand that was burned by the rope Katsuki never thought he would let go of.
Fuck, he doesn’t want to let go. He doesn’t want to stop, he doesn’t want to give up. He doesn’t want to let go.
And then, amidst the quiet breeze and rustling leaves, footsteps.
Like a stone dropped in a pool, ripples of a person approaching travel and replace Katuski’s short lasting solitude. He doesn’t know if his heart sinks with dread or if it starts to flip with some sort of wimpy, pathetic joy. Maybe it does both. But the point is, he’d know the shape of these footsteps long after his hearing had finally faded away. Long after sound had no meaning, because Katsuki can tell from just the echoes on the ground who the hell that is.
The footsteps stop a foot or two behind him. Katsuki is being watched, the owner is always watching. Some things never change.
“What?” Katsuki asks harshly, not bothering to glance back.
No answer, just hesitation. Just a silence that could only be stretched out by uncertainty, the sound of someone who is working up the courage.
“I’m not up for any bullshit right now, Izuku,” Katsuki says, staring hard into the ground. “So either spit it out or go away.”
Said Izuku lets out a shaky exhale from behind him.
“It’s just,” he starts, hesitant and careful. “Y-you left your backpack in class.”
“Yeah, and?”
“And…”
A pause.
“Kacchan, you left pretty abruptly,” Izuku breathes out.
Katsuki works his jaw, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Yeah,” he mutters.
“And…” Izuku continues. Katsuki doesn’t need to turn around, he can practically see the way he wrings his hands nervously. “Well, the whole class was pretty worried about you. But…no one really knew how to…no one knew if they should…go after you, I guess. So I just…I-I don’t know. I thought I should…I mean, I thought I could …you know…”
Katsuki sighs. He wishes he were strong enough, but while many things have stayed the same, much more are different. There’s no way this situation ends with Katsuki telling Izuku to go now that he’s already here and trying.
So he turns his head to the side, looking at the empty space beside him on the steps.
“If you’re gonna stay,” he says, as begrudgingly as possible, “then stay. I don’t give a shit.”
Izuku doesn’t hesitate to take his chance, and some small relief exudes from him as he makes his way towards Katsuki’s side. That was probably the hardest part for him–reaching out. Asking to stay. They are both trying to figure that part out nowadays.
Izuku sits himself down on the steps, leaving a few inches between them. Unlike Katsuki, he has always known mercy, so it is a grace when he only spares one fleeting–concerned–glance at Katsuki before he turns to gaze at the view in front of them.
For a quiet moment, they both watch auburn leaves dance on the stones in front of them, moving freely as though nothing had ever gone wrong.
Katsuki has never been one for wishing, but for wanting he has. Maybe he wants too much. Maybe that’s why he’s here now, watching the leaves mock him, looking out at the entrance and wondering if it’s time to put these first draft dreams to bed.
Izuku probably spent this time trying to find the right words in the air, in the ease of the leaves. He apparently succeeded, because he is the first to break the somber quiet.
He asks, quiet and simple, “Is it your hand?”
And something devastating simmers in Katsuki’s throat. It burns and it wants to lash out, it wants to scream what the hell do you think? And above all, it wants to show no mercy.
But fortunately or unfortunately (it depends on who you’re asking) Katsuki doesn’t want to be that person anymore. So instead, he closes his eyes, and with a voice that tries not to shake he says, “It’s the whole fucking arm.”
Izuku just hums at this. Katsuki can’t find it in himself to be pissed off by him, because at the core Izuku is simply kind. He really does just care.
“What…happened?” Izuku asks carefully.
And danger danger danger. Because the hard part about this new thing with Izuku is that everything feels too real when it’s with him. Everything–it’s the walls breaking, it’s the wood breaking. It’s the snap of a pencil, the snap of a bone. Foot tapping harshly on stone, leaves rustling against the whole entire world. Resolve and composure probably already shattered to no return.
“I couldn’t write my fucking name,” Katsuki snaps frantically, “that’s what happened.”
He exhales shakily. More icy smoke, the thing that burns. He wants to name it all anger, because anything else would be fatal. It would be the last blow.
“It just…” he adds, albeit a bit weak sounding to his own ears, “it looked too messy. It’s annoying writing with my left, and my right can’t…it can’t handle small details like that right now.”
Izuku nods silently from beside him. Just a simple nod, but somehow it is a permission. It becomes space to be filled.
Izuku just waits patiently. Katsuki bites the inside of his cheek, looking at how effortless those leaves seem to make everything be.
So easy. They don’t even want that much.
“My quirk is simple,” Katsuki says abruptly, the words flying sharply from his mouth. “It’s simple, and it takes so much technique to make it something more than that. That’s what I’ve spent my whole life doing, that’s the whole damn point of me. It’s the whole point of all of this. I…I worked so fuckin’ hard for that, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” Izuku says gently from beside him.
Katsuki throws his hands up in exasperation. “And so now it’s just…I mean really ? That’s all gone? Just like that? All those years gone in a single fucking day?”
Izukku sighs in sympathy. “It’s not gone, Kacchan.” When Katsuki shoots him an exasperated glare, Izuku winces and adjusts. “It’s not gone forever. It’s not gone entirely. You’ll get it back.”
“Yeah, well what if I don’t?” Katsuki pushes stubbornly. “What if this is all that’s left? What if there’s no going back to how it used to be?”
There is no immediate response to this. Izuku just studies him closely, curiously. A little furrow of his brow, slight purse of his lips.
“That,” he says slowly, searching Katsuki’s face, “sounds a lot like giving up.”
Katsuki clenches his jaw, teeth creaking under the pressure of the vice. Izuku isn’t to blame for just telling it how it sounds, so with furrowed brows, he turns away. Katsuki has no answer to this, but maybe for someone like him, silence is answer enough.
Izuku’s words are gentle, yet unrelenting. He’s always been so stubborn.
“You aren’t going to give up, Kacchan,” he says, leaning forwards and reaching for Katsuki’s gaze. “Not you. Not for this. I already told you once, remember? You can’t say you’re fine with failing. Anyone but you.”
Katsuki could say that those words were the very thing that led him–by the hand–to the brink of death. He could say that they were also his breath of life, that when he resurrected, he thought of it as a promise fulfilled.
Instead, the gates beckon him.
Staring ahead, Katsuki feels his glare melt into something weary, because there’s a weight on his shoulders, and the entrance might just be the bittersweet promise of relief. He can feel the exhaustion in his own eyes, the way they droop, the way they just want to close. If just for a second.
He says, “I’m tired, Izuku.”
A long pause.
“You’re tired,” Izuku repeats slowly, tasting the words in his mouth like they are from an entirely different language.
Katsuki bites the inside of his cheek, before saying, “Yes.”
And…shit. Maybe Izuku isn’t fluent in the vulnerability that is Katsuki. Maybe Katsuki shouldn’t have just admitted that, but he always ends up blurting stuff out with him.
“What are you…tired of, exactly?” Izuku asks, genuine and serious, always eager to understand.
After a second of reluctance and contemplation, a decision is made. “I’m fucking…tired of this shit,” Katsuki exasperates, waving his hands around in the air.
He furrows his brows, staring down at the floor. “This is… hard. I knew it was going to be hard, and I was fine with that, but—fuck it doesn’t even feel like healing. There’s no moving forward, there’s no progress, it's just…it's just this.” He grasps his right hand by the wrist, shaking it a bit. “And I’m tired of it.”
“I…”
Ragged, weak, weary. “I’m tired.”
Katsuki doesn’t look at Izuku, because his eyes are probably round and wide and screaming I’m sorry, and that’s the last thing he wants right now. It would make him pitiful–he doesn’t want pity.
But Izuku is always unexpected, always so surprising when you give him the silence to simmer. Katsuki finds that Izuku doesn’t give him an empty apology.
Instead, leaning into Katsuki’s space, he opens his sweet, dumb mouth and says firmly:
“You can be tired, Kacchan.”
When Katsuki makes an incredulous face at him, Izuku continues with more vehemence, saying, “You can. No one said that you’re not allowed to be tired. You can be tired. You can take your time. There’s no...rules for how this is supposed to go. I mean, take it from me,” he says with a huff. “Healing is hard. And it’s…really long, sometimes. But that doesn’t mean you’re done. You’re not, Kacchan. Do you think you’re done?”
“I don’t want to be done. But–”
“Then don’t be done,” Izuku says firmly.
The leaves swirl in front of them, free and light.
“It’s…not that easy,” Katsuki argues.
“Nothing about this is easy,” Izuku says. “I don’t think what you’re doing is easy. But what if this is the simplest part about all of this? That you get to decide when you’re done, nothing else.”
Katsuki finds that his mouth is not opening to give a heated rebuttal. Instead, he just sits with this, quiet and pensive as he tastes the words keep going in his mouth, trying to decide if it feels as right as it usually does.
Beside him, Izuku grows quiet, too. He leans back, and from the corner of his eye, Katsuki can see his brow furrow in contemplation. The damn nerd always wants to be useful.
Intensity and hesitation seem to radiate off of him, interfering waves that melt and mix together. One of the two must have been stronger than the other, because all of a sudden, Katsuki feels a hand ever so lightly graze his forearm.
Then Izuku gently presses, his hand squeezing Katsuki's arm. What must be anticipation makes Katsuki’s heart rate spike.
“Kacchan,” Izuku says, voice full of both sincerity and reserve. He makes his tone quieter, like these words are only for Katsuki’s ears to hear, like if it’s too loud he’ll be too scared to say it. That alone makes it feels like it would be too much to actually look at him, so Katsuki doesn’t.
Maybe this is mercy for both of them, because Izuku continues, words leaving his mouth like treading on ice. “I don’t blame you for being tired of…healing,” he says. “I don’t think it makes you weak or whatever–that it’s…that it’s difficult for you right now. I actually think that…”
Hesitation. Izuku takes a deep breath and tightens his grip, working up the courage. He says, “I think it makes you strong. That you can admit when things are tough. That’s…I think that’s really hard to do, but you’ve never shied away from hard things. And I know that right now you don’t want to give up. I see it, Kacchan. You’ve never had that look in your eyes. You don’t have it now, and you probably never will.”
Katsuki purses his lips, his brow furrowed.
Izuku sighs. “You probably aren’t used to…starting from ‘nothing’,” he says. “But if anyone can do it, it’s you. You can make something from nothing. You’ve always had more of a chance than anyone else in the room, but the best part about you is that you’ve taken all you’ve been given and made it into something…amazing. You’re just…y-you’re amazing.”
The tiniest bit of tension is relieved from his chest, and Katsuki huffs, looking down at Izuku’s hand on his arm. “You always say that,” he mutters.
“W-well,” Izuku gets out, “I say it because it’s true. I don’t just…say it just to say it, it’s just what I believe. That’s how I’ve always seen you, and I don’t think anything is going to change that. I don’t think anything can, especially not this.”
The weight of Izuku's hand on his arm suddenly feels heavy. It feels like an expectation he doesn't know if he can meet anymore. And with this, he feels like a failure–because the truth is that no matter what Izuku says, Katsuki has changed.
Katsuki is cold. He has always hated the cold, but now things are different. Now he has fundamentally changed, and now he can’t stand it.
The cold air doesn’t feel the same on scarred skin; beaten lungs and a patchwork heart can barely endure the winter; the limits of what he can do feel so much closer now. So the question is: how far can Katsuki really take himself, with the way he is now? How long can he keep going before the what if’s start to feel strangling? What if this never happened, what if he never did this or that? Where would he be? What if there’s no more pushing onwards, what if this is where the story ends?
Apparently, Izuku has a question of his own to add to the mix, because all of a sudden he says, “Answer me this, then: do you think it’s over for me?”
Katsuki turns then, because it’s the most ridiculous shit he has ever heard. “What? What the fuck is wrong with you, of course not.”
Izuku, for some god forsaken reason, has the nerve to look caught off guard by the vehemence in Katsuki’s answer.
He blinks rapidly. ‘W-well,” he says. “Then let’s say that I manage to become a pro. What are we supposed to do then?”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“I mean…” he raises his shoulders slightly, “All Might told us once, right? Win to save, and…save to win. You can’t really have one without the other. And I mean, come on, Kacchan. It’s All Might. I-I don’t know about you, but I felt really…motivated after he said that, and sometimes when I get down I try to think about what he said. And I was…really happy when you…I mean it just seemed like you…too, so I just...thought…that...that we’d…” Izuku’s face gets all desperate when he starts floundering with his words, and he ends up groaning into his hands.
This can’t be good for his heart. Katsuki's heart is racing, because to his ears, this is starting to sound like a conf-
“Take your time, nerd,” Katsuki says hoarsely, composure definitely not in shambles, “we got all day.”
Izuku makes another desperate noise, nodding his head.
Then he huffs. He raises his head, and looking at Katsuki with the bravest, reddest, most hell-bent face he has ever seen, he says, “All I know is that I’m moving forward with my part of that promise. I’m going to try my best, a-and I don’t know how it’s going to end, but I’m going to see where that takes me, because I’ve done too much to give up now.”
He asks firmly, “What about you?”
Izuku’s face, despite the flusteredness, is earnest and stupidly determined and–God, he always so fucking stubborn. The more Katsuki starts to think about how Izuku left literal fucking class just to run after him and say this shit, the more ridiculous this all gets.
Who does this? Who puts so much effort into someone else’s dreams like that? Who the fuck comforts a person by saying that they aren't allowed to give up?
Katsuki hates this.
Who the hell is he kidding–he loves this. He never wants it to end. For the rest of their lives, Izuku will keep pushing. He just might never give up on Katsuki.
“Y-your so,” Katsuki tries, looking at Izuku incredulously. “Why are you like this, huh? You’re a fucking idiot-always doing this shit, even when no one asked you to.”
Izuku just continues to stare at him, expectant and unrelenting.
And it is somehow the last push he needed. Something in Katsuki finally relents. Or maybe, in better words, it refuses to do that. Was it really this simple the whole time?
He shakes his head in tired, exasperated humor, before turning to stare straight ahead at the entrance.
The gates are wide open, but something in Katsuki knows that there is no running. The road is long and difficult, but maybe that’s the best part: that the growing and the changing and the competing won’t end so quickly. It’s long, but nothing is ever impossible. Not for him.
So he takes a deep breath.
“I’m not gonna give up,” Katsuki says, slow and resolute. “I’m not gonna fail.”
He turns back to Izuku, determined. His mouth takes the shape of a promise.
“And there’s no way in hell I’m letting you get ahead of me this early in the game.”
Izuku’s smile is warm and bright and relieved, and Katsuki has a lot of regrets in his life but meeting Izuku will never be one of them. It’s always a commitment with him. Katsuki would have it no other way.
“Okay,” Izuku says, smiling. “Good.”
Katsuki looks away with a slight smile of his own, bumping his shoulder against Izuku’s.
“Thanks,” he mutters quietly.
Izuku just hums contentedly. The wind is so strong now that the leaves are practically lifting off the ground.
After a simple, easy second, Izuku stands up from where he was sitting.
“We should probably head back,” he says, outstretching his hand. “Aizawa-sensei didn’t actually give me permission to leave in the middle of class, so…” he winces. “I think we’re kind of in trouble.
Katsuki’s face drops. “Oh shit.”
“Yeah…”
Katsuki huffs, grabbing onto Izuku’s hand and pulling himself up. “Well, whatever. Let’s just hope he doesn’t make us scrape gum from the desks, that shit is nasty. And give me a pencil when we get back, yeah? Mine’s all fucked.”
“Sure, Kacchan,” Izuku says, laughing a bit.
And then they are off, the leaves behind them left to their dancing.