Chapter Text
Katsuki’s agent is the most important person in his life, bar a few old classmates he’s finally sort of admitted to liking. Those classmates do him the service of pretending they don’t know incriminating details about him, and he does them the service of agency team-ups, occasional catch-up drinks, and warning them in advance of the—now much less frequent—media blowups surrounding him.
If you ask him, his reputation as a troublemaker is undeserved. Half-and-Half is the worse media disaster, but the public let him get away with it because he doesn’t shout while delivering his sass. Katsuki can’t get away with shit compared to that two-tone tragedy.
Katsuki knows this, and he does his best to keep rumours from being true—so when he hasn’t set a foot wrong in the recent past and his agent sends him a video marked ‘don’t talk to anyone before we discuss this’, he expects Half-and-Half has finally fallen from his pedestal. It’s the only likely explanation. Half-and-Half has shit the bed, has come out and said something really unsayable, has sent even adjacent agents into a panic—
Katsuki can’t wait to see; he presses play.
“Welcome to the latest episode of Hero Cribs!” says a grinning Pinky, her face pressed close to a camera filming in selfie mode. A more normal beige cheek squishes against her bright pink one, and there’s some jostling before the reach of the camera lengthens to show Sparks-for-Brains beside her. The pair are in an anonymous city park, windblown and interesting in the foreground.
“You know the drill, you love the drill—but in case you’re new here, we’ll let you in on the secret,” Sparks-for-Brains says. “Every few months, we choose a victim…”
“Volunteer!” Pinky objects, and Sparks laughs.
“Right, right, they volunteered by going to school with us…”
“...and we show you, the viewers, how our top heroes live!”
Sparks turns to Pinky. “Don’t you think it’s kinda much, saying top heroes? We’ve never Cribbed a top three. It’s false advertising.”
“Hm,” says Pinky. “You know what? You’re right. I guess it’s time, huh?”
Sparks grins at the camera. “You know who we mean, don’t you? Mr. Edged-His-Way-Into-The-Top-Three-Last-January.”
“Edged? More like blasted!”
Huh, Katsuki thinks. He does know who they mean—but it’s Deku, not Half-and-Half. Almost against his will, Katsuki feels a tiny flutter of anxiety. Deku isn’t the kind of person who loses it on camera. He’s confirmed weird, sure, but that’s part of his shtick. The public love his overenthusiasm, sensing him as one of their own—a true fanboy.
Did he step on a lego during live filming and cuss someone out? Katsuki would pay to see that, but it doesn’t seem comment-worthy. He leans forward on the couch, the breakfast he prepared forgotten.
“We can’t show you the way to his place, cause of stuff,” Pinky says, “but if you promise to join us for part two of our livestream in half an hour, we’ll be back! No one tell him we’re coming, please. He had a late shift last night, and we want to know: are the rumours true?”
“Does the top three hero sleep in All Might merchandise?”
“Check back in half an hour!”
The screen of Katsuki’s phone goes black, text announcing that the rest of the video takes place half an hour later. There’s rustling and the sound of a doorbell, though a hand is being held over the camera’s lens.
After a long moment, a door opens offscreen.
“Mina? Denki?” comes Deku’s voice, rough with sleep. The camera emerges to show a sleep-rumpled Deku standing in an entryway, his hair messy and the T-shirt he’s wearing rucked up on one side. Overlarge pajama pants pool around his legs in yellow and blue All Might patterns. Katsuki finds himself staring at the visible bit of belly and the bare, scarred-up arms.
It’s spring. He hasn’t seen Deku in short sleeves since… well, last summer. Before he made top three.
“Guys?” Deku says, glancing between the camera and his friends, beginning to sound alarmed—but he’s too late. The disaster pair have barged in, and sickening camera movements ensue as they announce their show to Deku.
“It’s a mess! You can’t look!” Deku says desperately.
“That’s exactly what we want!” Pinky says. “Authenticity! A glimpse behind the veil!”
“You said your favourite episode was when we caught Eijirou by surprise,” Sparks adds.
“It’s different! He’d been asking you for months!”
Sparks is undeterred. “Come on, your place looked fine last fondue night.”
Deku protests a little more before folding, just like Katsuki had expected. By contrast, Katsuki would have blasted them out of his apartment—which is one of the reasons he needs a good agent, and has one. With a professional in his corner he doesn’t have to pretend to be all goody-goody like a certain someone.
Pinky and Sparks-for-Brains storm into the apartment like a small tornado, taking turns presenting the various exhibits. Limited edition shoes and slippers in the entry—even though Deku only ever wears the red shoes out—posters from different eras of different heroes, a glass case filled with figurines… Katsuki swallows mild jealousy at the sight of an adjustable All Might figure he missed preorders on, and almost forgets this is meant to have something to do with him or with Deku’s fall from grace.
It’s odd that his agent sent this. Pinky and Sparks are just being themselves, and Deku’s apartment is disgustingly Deku-ish. There’s nothing to see there. Katsuki almost fast-forwards, but the glimpses of Deku keep him watching it at normal speed.
Deku doesn’t look like he’s on the edge of a breakdown. He’s obviously working to tame his hair minute to minute, and he’s pulled his shirt down over the exposed skin from earlier. His frantic explanation about how difficult it was to get a coveted Uravity action figure that hovers and spins on a platform is typically sweaty and typically him. There’s nothing to suggest he’s wasting away. In fact, he seems to have put on muscle since Katsuki last saw him, and while the pajama pants pool around his legs a back view of Deku shows they aren’t loose everywhere.
So it’s not a Deku fall from grace. What then? Did Deku leave something embarrassing out and blame Katsuki? Katsuki didn’t make it to fondue night; he knows for a fact he didn’t leave anything—
“Ah, no no no no no! That’s private!”
The camera shows Deku pulling Sparks away from a door, and as Deku contends with Sparks camerawoman Pinky dives past the two of them into Deku’s bedroom.
“I said glimpse behind the veil and I’ll provide a glimpse behind the veil!” Pinky yells. When the filming steadies to the sound of Deku’s pained whine, Katsuki covers his mouth.
His own face stares up out of the covers on Deku’s bed. Not actually his face, of course—he’s never been in Deku’s shitty bed—but a likeness. His likeness on a body pillow, to be exact.
He knows for a fact his agency does not sell officially licensed body pillows.
Pinky lets out something between a screech and a laugh. “Did I miss a sale? Deku! Where?” She scrambles to uncover the body pillow, and the pillow is revealed in full. Katsuki’s plush double is in partial undress, most of his clothes still on but a large section of stomach exposed to reveal abs. Pinky’s screeching increases in decibel as she films up and down Katsuki’s body.
“Stop screaming, people are going to stop watching!” Sparks says from behind the camera, followed by footsteps—and then he’s yelling too. His questions contain a lot of sounds, and a lot of laughter, but no discernable words.
It takes a long time for them to calm down.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Deku says into the eventual, gasp-laughter framed silence.
Katsuki is still trying to figure out what it looks like. He’d take any explanation and thank it for manifesting. There are no thoughts in his mind—not a one.
“I saw it at a street market in Taiwan while I was on a mission,” Deku says. “They just—the artist really nailed his glare, right? Doesn’t it look exactly like him? I had to have it. And then it seemed silly to have it and not use it.”
The camera moves to film a sheepish Deku, who finally looks awake. He’s scratching at the back of his head, the movement pulling his shirt tight across his pecs and biceps.
Impressive, hero-style muscles—which he’d been using to cuddle a Katsuki body pillow until the intrusion, apparently.
The weird sensation in Katsuki’s belly doesn’t fade as the tour goes on, punctuated by a lot more unprompted host giggles than before. Katsuki is embarrassed—but he’s not going to murder Deku over this or anything. He’s sure his agent was overcautious sending him the video. That’s what he pays her for, but he could have done without the early morning heart attack, thinking something terrible was about to happen to Deku’s reputation before he could beat him in the rankings fair and square. Katsuki leans back against the couch, blowing out a breath.
That’s when there’s a sound of something dropping against carpet—papers, or a magazine. There’s another flurry of activity from the host duo.
“Doujinshi, huh?” Sparks says knowledgeably, camera panning the front page of the first stack of papers he picks up—before yelling and dropping it. “Shit, dude, I’m sorry!”
Katsuki rewinds with some effort. Pauses on the thing Sparks had dropped with such alarm.
Ground Zero x Deku, the front states, with a suggestive image of Katsuki and Deku in torn uniforms, and a circle in the corner stating R18.
Holy. Shit.
Katsuki sets down his phone before he can explode it by accident. He clutches his head, grabbing at his hair. The body pillow: quirky, in character.
Fan magazines exploring Deku’s sexual relationship with a fellow pro hero? With Katsuki, of all people?
Shit! What the fuck! What was Deku thinking? Why hadn’t he thrown Pinky and Sparks out, if he has these kinds of things hidden? And why does he have these things in the first place?
His hands shake as he presses play.
“Shit, dude, I’m sorry!” Sparks yells again, and this time the terrible video doesn’t get paused, so Katsuki isn’t spared from the rest—where Pinky picks up something else and goggles and exclaims and says, “I had no idea you felt this way!” like she doesn’t realise a camera is even there. Maybe she’s actually forgotten; Sparks is the one filming, and he seems to have thrust the device against some part of himself.
“Oh, what…” Deku starts, and then there’s a weird sound, and the video ends. There’s no part three where Sparks and Pinky explain that this was all a joke and actually they set the whole thing up, and information under the video says it was deleted immediately after the stream—but others have reuploaded it.
Katsuki never looks at comment sections, because they’re a fast way to end up wanting to explode the whole world, but he looks now:
OMG, are Ground Zero and Deku dating? says one comment, which has been upvoted and commented on with lots of conjecture and a harrowing amount of gifs. Katsuki agrees with all the people who say most couples don’t buy body pillows and porn of their partners.
Definitely a set-up, someone else says, and passels of people agree and disagree, giving different factors—and sometimes the same factors—as evidence.
Ground Zero is gonna kill him when he sees, a commenter with a skull head icon says. I can’t wait to see him bust Deku’s ass.
A joker has replied to this last comment: Can you elaborate on ‘bust his ass’? ;)
Katsuki throws his phone across the room. It bangs into the wall and drops like a brick, but doesn’t break. Katsuki clenches his teeth and screams through them, completely overwhelmed—completely unsure of how the fuck to deal with this.
All he knows is this:
He is really fucking glad he has an agent.
The news burst about Deku’s little… stash… frames the story in a positive light. A man’s random embarrassing collection—which may include any number of things he was curious about that involve himself—has been shown to the public, and the reason the stream was cut and deleted was because there had been no content warnings.
Ground Zero has been unavailable for comment. Ground Zero, in fact, wanted to call in sick. This wasn’t permitted by his agent, and he had to go out and patrol and avoid anyone with a camera. He falls back on a stock phrase whenever people won’t leave him alone.
The internet fills with ‘I’ll kill you’ memes, collected over a single day of Katsuki’s patrols post-Deku-episode. His agent has told him to be angry—but he has to be generically angry. Unconcerned with rumours, but annoyed to be bothered.
He wishes for many things. He wishes that livestream had been pre-recorded instead so those idiots could decide not to upload it. He wishes Deku had laughed before the end of the video and said something like—oh, who knows. ‘That old thing? Haha! I was curious!’
Anything that makes it seem less severe. The body pillow could be explained away. The magazines…
Katsuki isn’t sure how he’s meant to feel, but when he’s not filled with rage he’s filled with a weird prickling sensation all over his skin. His hands ache to grab at Deku and demand explanations, but he avoids his phone even when it’s classmates calling and messaging, because he’s been told not to talk to anyone. He fucking listens to that advice. Because in this one specific situation, he has no clue what to do, and he’s happy to give up control to someone else who knows better.
He’s closer to thirty than twenty, just. He’s learned what he’s good at, and interpersonal shit isn’t it. Being a media darling isn’t it.
Apparently, as messages pile up in his phone during a highly stressful, yet uneventful day of work, dealing with emotions isn’t one of those things either.
Well, he’d known that. But maybe not the degree. Words are splashed across his mind at all times in bold font, decorated with torn uniforms:
Ground Zero x Deku.
What the fuck? He enters his apartment with an angry bang of the door at the end of his patrol, and waits for his only unmuted contact to contact him. And waits.
And then he can’t take it anymore, and he goes online. Like some kind of idiot.
Top Three Hero Deku Laughs Off Porn Collection, an article states, accompanied by a picture of Deku looking flushed as he throws his head back in laughter. It’s not a recent picture; Katsuki knows that because he recognises the interview it’s from. It was about All Might, not porn. Deku had been flustered but happy as he geeked out.
Katsuki stares at Deku’s image, teeth clenched. He wants to pin him and demand answers. Nothing gentle. He wants it to be how it used to be, when he was rough and angry and couldn’t keep that red-hot anger down even if it was going to cost him sponsorships. He wants to straddle Deku and put a nitroglycerin-weeping hand to his throat, threaten Deku into answers. He doesn’t want to be reasonable.
He doesn’t want to be friends.
It’s too late not to be friends. He and Deku—well, they get along. Ish. They understand each other, more to the point. Deku is an annoyance, but he’s fucking good at shit, and Katsuki respects that. He wants to pass Deku in the rankings. He’s working towards a future where he’s better than Deku in measurable ways. Where there’s no doubt or ambiguity, and certainly no sense of anyone playing favourites or letting someone else win.
He thinks of torn uniforms, and wants to explode.
Izuku is not having a good day.
He is, in fact, having a bad day. And yesterday was a bad day. And the day before that was a bad day. Before that—well, that was a perfectly good and normal day. In fact, it was the day before the world found out he’s a deviant who collects fanworks about himself and a childhood friend slash colleague he’s meant to have normal companionly feelings for.
It’s not that he’s gross about Kacchan. He just likes…
His thoughts stall out. Even in his own mind, he can’t justify it. Not now the secret’s out. Fame makes you curious about how you’re perceived, sure, but there’s a reason he collects stuff of him and Kacchan that has nothing to do with public image.
“It’s not as bad as it seems,” Uraraka says, sitting on his couch next to him, and he appreciates her, he really does, but she’s lying.
“Okay, fine,” she says. “It’s bad. But—you’re weird! That’s what you’re meant to be. People love you for it. Just keep saying you’ve collected all the other fan-stuff too and you appreciate every one. No matter who you’re paired with.”
“I said that,” Izuku says. “No one is gonna believe it.”
“ Everyone believes it. It’s part of your image. I’m sure all the people who draw that stuff are super excited. You’re one of their own! A pro hero is supporting their pro hero hobby.”
Izuku leans forward, wishing his nails weren’t bitten to the quick so he could bite them down some more. He’s in a blanket cocoon on the couch next to Uraraka, which was comforting up until a moment ago, but now nerves warm him until he’s burning up.
“It doesn’t matter what everyone thinks if…” He can’t complete the sentence. Kacchan has been… uncommunicative. He isn’t answering Izuku’s calls or messages. In fact, he isn’t answering anyone’s anything.
“Bakugou is fine. It would take something much worse than this for him to not be fine.”
Izuku hides his face in his arms, curling up. “It was just a guilty pleasure! It was never meant to…”
“To get back to him?”
Izuku nods miserably. No one gets to choose what does it for them. He’s known for a while now that Kacchan’s violence and his raspy voice just… clicks. In that way. For him. He wanted to see what people thought about it. He likes to think about it himself. But he’d never… he wasn’t ever planning on…
“He thinks I’m disgusting,” Izuku says. “We were over all of that and I’ve put us right back in it.”
“He thinks having half an emotion is disgusting,” Uraraka says, sounding very reasonable. Then her voice gentles: “Don’t worry too much.”
Izuku surfaces to level her with a look; she shrugs.
“Are you going to keep hiding like a guilty person?” she asks.
Again he bemoans his lack of disposable nails. He wants to chew at them, but he wraps around himself instead. “Yes.”
There’s a phone ding, and Uraraka stops calmly gazing at him to check it. She smiles at the little screen.
“What?” he asks.
“Shouto admitted to collecting ‘something he wouldn’t want publicised either’. He’s pulling the attention away from you. Everyone’s trying to guess what he collects.”
It makes Izuku feel a little better—but he still can’t accept it. “He works at our agency. He’s meant to do that.”
“Everyone knows Shouto only does and says what he wants to do and say. You’re being ridiculous. Compare and contrast: Tenya, also at our agency, pretty much shouted down a reporter when asked about your stash and then ran away. Literally!”
Izuku laughs woodenly. Tenya was… not very good in that interview. Izuku looks at Uraraka gratefully, remembering her own response. She’d laughed and laughed, despite all the people asking what she thought of her past boyfriend collecting gay porn of himself. When she stopped laughing, she simply said Deku was Deku. That he was a collector ofeverything.
She’s a hero in a way that has nothing to do with quirks, and he loves her with the fire of at least three suns.
“He won’t hate you for this, you know,” she says. She says it kindly, sympathetically. Her hand presses against Izuku’s wrist in a reassuring gesture.
“I don’t know that at all.”
Katsuki hates Deku.
In a way, he’s always hated Deku. There has always been… something. Something not quite right. Something that got under Katsuki’s skin. For a long time Katsuki thought it was Deku’s intrinsic goodness—that certain something that made Deku a good person and Katsuki the opposite, someone people wanted to avoid. Now Katsuki knows differently.
It’s Deku’s hapless idiocy that does it. His willingness to be stepped on where necessary—the fact that he hadn’t thrown their friends out when they knocked on his door with a camera. He should have known. He should have…
“You’re doing very well,” Nonaka tells Katsuki through the phone. His agent’s voice is clipped yet soothing. “This will go away. My research suggests you shouldn’t respond officially.”
“You don’t want a response because you think I’ll be shit at it,” Katsuki bites off. He’s tired after another patrol; today he nearly lost a high-speed chase because he was thinking about stupid shit. His agent is soothing, but he can’t be soothed.
“Not really,” she says. “There seems to be an even split between people who want you to respond maturely and people who want you to explode—pardon the pun. In the absence of a favourite, ignoring it all is best. It keeps people interested to see what you really think.”
Katsuki hates this. He hates being analysed, and knowing there’s a right answer that might not align with what he wants to do. He’s learned patience, but it doesn’t come to him naturally. His hands ache for Deku’s collar; his throat is filled with angry questions.
“Can I go and talk to him?” he asks.
There’s a long silence on the line. “Can you promise me it won’t end in an extremely public fight?”
“Yes,” Katsuki says. He isn’t fifteen anymore—unlike some people who collect dirty mags and just leave them about their bedrooms—
“Then you can,” Nonaka says. “If it goes well, maybe you can talk to him about being seen in public together.”
“What?”
“Some harmless gossip can do wonders for a brand. You might see a boost in merchandise sales.”
“I don’t want a boost in merchandise sa—”
“The charitable arm of our agency can always use the extra funding.”
Katsuki loves his agent. He loves her—but he hates her too. He suspects that means she’s good at her job. She’s good at forcing him to do whatever needs to be done to be the best. That was one of the questions he asked her in the interview, whether she was prepared for that. She hasn’t backed off for a single second since she said yes and accepted his immediate offer.
He owes her his best attempt too.
“I’ll see if it comes up,” he says, and cuts the call.
Izuku’s stomach drops when he opens the door and sees Kacchan outside instead of the hero pizza delivery guy. Kacchan is holding the scheduled pizza box on one lifted hand, like he’s the delivery man, but he’s not had a sudden career change. A disappearing uniformed blur on the street points to the person who was meant to bring the box having been dealt with and sent away.
Delivery-snatching Kacchan is in one of his off-day black shirts paired with slim-fit chinos. It’s a departure from his previous cargo pants look, which was retired two years ago when a prominent magazine named Shouto ‘the hero world’s best-dressed babe’, even though Shouto pays even less attention to fashion than most of them do. Kacchan’s ever-so-slightly more mature look is a concession to fashion without being a concession to his resented mentor, Best Jeanist.
Izuku doesn’t know what expression Kacchan is wearing to go with the T-shirt and trousers, because he can’t meet Kacchan’s eyes. He stares at Kacchan’s chest and feels his cheeks flush painfully.
“I wasn’t—ah—expecting you…”
Kacchan pushes him back against a wall with the fingers of one hand, and moves past him. Izuku is being kept—quite literally—at arm’s length as Kacchan enters. Izuku’s body is strong as a tank, but he feels it weaken pathetically; his stomach is a roiling mess.
Ochako was wrong. Kacchan definitely hates him now.
“You shouldn’t be having pizza at all, but pizza for lunch is an even worse idea,” Kacchan says. He steps out of his shoes and into the house, letting go of Izuku. The points where his fingers pressed scorch with afterburn on Izuku’s chest.
Izuku rubs at the burn before following Kacchan. “I’ve been on night shifts all this week. Technically this is breakfast.”
“Night shifts—convenient. You don’t have to show your face in public after that idiotic stunt.”
A wave of embarrassed heat travels through Izuku. So Kacchan has seen the video. He hasn’t been living under a rock devoid of WiFi, like Izuku had secretly hoped when no one could contact him over the phone. Izuku watches Kacchan place the pizza on the table, his mouth resisting words. Maybe it knows he’ll babble.
“Why haven’t you told reporters just what you think?” Izuku asks once he can wrangle himself into coherent speech. Kacchan turns to face him, arms crossed. “It’s not like you to hold back.”
“Do you want me to call you a creep on TV?”
The embarrassed heat makes way for mortified cold, like ice water in Izuku’s veins. “I expected something along those lines, yes.”
“I haven’t talked about it because I don’t know what the fuck to say about it. Or what to think. What the fuck, Deku?”
“I know it looks pretty damning.” Sweat pricks Izuku’s skin. It doesn’t look damning; it is damning. He has a weird crush on his childhood friend slash bully slash coworker, and he lives in a world where people make merchandise that allows him to see himself have a relationship with the object of his affections—not to mention the body pillow. That reallywas an impulse buy, and he doesn’t regret it even if it makes the whole thing look worse.
“ Do you just collect dirty shit of yourself? Any dirty shit?”
“No! I was just—curious.”
“You’ve always been a fucking weirdo. I can live with that. But why the fuck didn’t you throw those idiots out when they arrived at your doorstep?”
The incessant pace of Izuku’s heart stutters in confusion for just a moment. “Huh? That’s your problem?”
“You made it my problem by having that shit! Everyone’s got secrets, Deku! Not everyone just lets two idiots root through them for all the world to see!”
“I thought it would make me look guilty,” Izuku says, twisting his hands together.
“Yeah, because you look squeaky-clean now.”
Izuku can’t bear Kacchan’s stare. He feels every square centimetre of his comic collection weigh against his conscience, with Kacchan looking at him and knowing. Kacchan hasn’t ripped Izuku’s head off—but his hands are tied. He can’t exactly murder a fellow hero.
Kacchan’s arms drop out of their tense hold, and he sighs. “Why am I even angry? Knowing your fans, they’ll probably just like you even more for this. So what do you want me to tell people? My agent wants me to stay quiet on the subject.”
“I don’t want you to say anything!” Izuku says. What does it matter what Kacchan says to the public? What matters is that he doesn’t hate Deku to the point of utter disgust now. “I mean, you can say whatever you want. I can take it.”
“Okay. Then let’s go out to eat somewhere healthy.” Kacchan indicates the pizza with a grimace. “Don’t eat this shit. You’re meant to care about your body.”
“Uh?”
“You heard me. It’s bad for you.”
Izuku didn’t mean the thing about pizza, but—well, this works for him. He mentally promises the pizza he’ll eat it later and goes to his bedroom to change. His bookcase is like a furnace of guilt, red hot against one side of his body as he picks out an outfit composed—like most of his outfits—entirely of fan merchandise: wrapped Jet-Black Hero combat pants, fitted at the calves, and a limited edition Red Riot shirt that goes well with his shoes and terribly with his hair. Maybe the reminder that they have too many mutual friends to kill each other will help his case.
He’d expected Kacchan to leave and wait outside, not wanting to stay in Izuku’s midden of deviancy for a second longer, but Kacchan is still waiting in his living room when Izuku steps out.
Kacchan’s eyes scan him up and down. He doesn’t comment on the clothing picks, just shifts his weight and looks for a moment longer—then back up to his face. His jaw is tight.
“Let’s go.”