Chapter Text
Izuku, 02:56 am
The cold wind brushes his matted hair and dirty cape, it makes his eyes sting with tears, which he makes no effort to clean.
It had been two weeks since Izuku decided to leave UA. He thought it was for the best.
Now, hurt and bleeding out in an alley-way, he is giving that idea a second thought.
He knows he should have asked for help from his friends, as they are also hero students, but something told him that this was his responsibility, he was the one who had to do it.
Izuku clutches his abdomen, keeping pressure on the wound inflicted by a villain as blood escapes through his fingers onto the pavement and the rest of his clothes. He should have been more aware of his surroundings. He has a quirk called Danger Sense, for crying out loud!
But he hasn’t slept in almost two days and hasn’t eaten a full meal in almost three.
He is weak.
When he realized what Danger Sense was warning him about and he tried to react, it had already been too late. The villain had stabbed him with a knife in his abdomen, the cold metal blade tearing his skin as blood gushed from the opening, just to take it out and stab his leg. He couldn’t see if the knife had been inserted deep enough to manage to pierce an artery nor he cared.
He was bleeding out.
Every drop of blood slipping through his wounds, escaping faster than he could stop it.
On a normal day, he would have been able to get out of there, to get back to where he is staying or even to go to the hospital, but the boy feels as if he barely has enough strength to keep his heart beating. He hasn’t rested in hours, even days, and, before the attack, he was a blink away from falling asleep.
Izuku is laying on his left side, his head looking up at the foggy night and both his hands clutching his abdomen. More tears escape from his eyes, rolling to the side of his head and falling to the floor, next to his ears.
He can only hear his ragged breathing and the occasional distant sound of a car.
The cold pavement seeps through his torn hero suit and numbs his bones and the rest of his body. His teeth clack together, making him bite his tongue, drawing blood without realizing it.
02:58 am
Suddenly he remembers something.
Izuku slowly reaches for his pocket with his shaky left hand, where he knows his phone is resting. He can't manage to hold a gasp when he takes that hand away from his wound. He closes his eyes as his world starts spinning. His leg throbs in pain but he doesn’t have enough hands to put pressure on that injury. The one in his abdomen seems the most dangerous, so he is spending all his energy on trying to stop the bleeding with his right hand while his left one lies unmoving next to him.
He doesn’t know if he will be strong enough to reach for his pocket.
He can’t die.
His mom would never forgive him, and he still has to prove himself. He hasn’t done enough, not nearly enough. He wants to go home, to see his mother, to see…
Before he can finish thinking, Izuku feels bile reaching out his throat, he turns his head as quickly as he can to avoid choking. His eyes widen as he sees the remains of what he had consumed some time ago on the floor, which consisted of a protein bar and a bit of water.
He opens his eyes as he feels something in his mouth.
Blood.
He is puking blood. It slides from his bruised and dirty face and falls to the ground. He can smell it. His throat pulses as Izuku closes his eyes and holds his breath.
No.
Izuku had taken a few first-aid classes so finding out what was happening to him brought a cold sweat down his back.
He was going to die.
Not yet. No… Please He thinks.
He doesn’t want to die.
Kacchan… I need… I can’t…
His thoughts are all over the place. He can’t think straight. His brain feels mushed.
He isn’t used to that.
It scares him.
He takes his phone out with shaky hands, the screen is now covered in bloody fingerprints but Izuku can’t seem to care. He clenches his eyes for a second as he tries to make the world stop spinning.
03:01 am
The dark alley-way seems colder now than some minutes ago, he tries not to think about it. The garbage bags carelessly thrown everywhere stink the alley with a rotten smell.
Izuku isn’t supposed to die like this. Not in this filthy alley surrounded only by trash.
Silence fills the air. He can’t hear any cars in the distance nor any animals.
He is alone. Alone with mountains of trash.
He spits the blood in his mouth as he dials the familiar number. He isn’t sure if he is going to answer but it’s worth a try.
“Please…” He manages to whisper, as more tears fill his eyes.
It rings once.
Then twice.
Izuku’s eyelids flutter, too heavy to keep open. His limbs feel heavy, barely responsive as he tries to keep his phone near his head, his arm shaking as he bites his lip and uses all of his remaining strength to keep his arm in place. Each breath is a sharp reminder of his broken ribs. He flinches as a new stab of pain shots through his abdomen, his right hand instinctively tightening over the wound. He spits on the ground again, wincing as more blood comes out.
Finally, after ringing 5 times, a gruff voice talks.
“Who is this?”
Izuku can’t help but smile weakly at his childhood friend’s voice. He closes his eyes for a moment, his breathing shaky and making him groan quietly as a sharp pain hits his side.
“Is this a prank? Because if it is you-.” Katsuki starts.
Finally, Izuku manages to open his mouth and talk.
“Ka…” His voice cracks, barely a whisper. “Kacchan…” He cringes a bit at how his voice sounds. It’s croaky after so many days in disuse.
The boy at the other side of the line grows silent. Izuku’s heart quickens and his hand tightens over his wound.
The silence stretches for so long that Izuku starts to think Katsuki has hung out on him until, a few seconds later, the previously gruff voice of Bakugou makes his way through the line in a trembling manner.
“Deku? Deku, is that you?”
Izuku swallows and tries to cough to make his voice less wobbly, not managing to do so.
“He-” A wet cough makes its way up his throat. His chest throbs in pain and he winces, automatically closing his eyes and trying to curl into a ball.
No.
Please, no.
A sob escapes his chest.
“Deku! Where are you?! What’s going on?” He manages to hear from the blond boy.
The world is spinning. He isn’t going to last much longer. A chill creeps into his bones, each breath shaking in his chest, his body too numb to feel the blood slipping over it. He is cold.
It’s not supposed to be this cold.
Crimson liquid escapes from his cracked, slightly parted, pale lips. It hits the ground in a continuous river.
Izuku’s abdomen feels as if it is on fire. His ears ring loudly, isolating him from the rest of the world for a few seconds. His arms and legs are numb, he can hardly feel them over the throb of both his leg and his stomach.
“...ku! H.. awake… Don’t… I.. Please. IZUKU!” Words pierce his head.
Who’s talking to me?
He’s going to pass out.
Izuku.
Izuku.
Izuku.
What 's happening?
Where am I?
“K… Kacc-... an.”
Is that my voice?
I sound awful. Why am I calling Kacchan? He isn’t supposed to be here.
“Oh god. You… heart attack” Izuku manages to hear.
A shaky breath escapes his lips.
“Help’s c… Ok?”
He can’t understand a thing.
The world around him starts to blur, the fog in the alley thickening as his eyes threaten to close and black dots invade his vision.
The cold pavement beneath him feels distant, as if he’s floating away from his own body. The sound of the wind fades to a low hum, Katsuki’s voice on the phone distant, almost unreal.
The pain in his abdomen that had once been sharp now didn’t hurt anymore.
His cold body stops shivering, trying to save his energy.
He knows Katsuki is still talking to him but he is unable to listen.
His arm, which was previously holding his phone up, drops limp, causing his phone to slide across the floor, out of reach.
His head slumps to the side, eyelids too heavy to keep open. His hands, once clenched tightly against his wounds, slacken, slipping off his abdomen as if it no longer belongs to him. Each breath is a struggle, it feels as if his lungs are being crushed.
His world narrows to the sound of his slow heartbeat.
He can’t taste the blood in his mouth, he can’t feel the throb of his leg nor his abdomen.
I wants to live.
Izuku’s world goes quiet as he falls unconscious.
03:07 am
☆☆☆
Katsuki, 02:55 am
The moonlight creeps through the window, illuminating the room and Katsuki’s face.
He frowns and puts his hands on top of his eyes just to turn his body to be laying on his stomach as opposed to his back.
He is pissed.
He should’ve been asleep by now. He always is. But for the last two weeks, sleep wouldn't come and, if it did, was usually interrupted by strange dreams or his alarm clock. His mind just won’t settle.
He grits his teeth, cursing under his breath.
The room is silent, only broken by the noise of his clock and the sheets when he moves around.
Katsuki’s eyes land on his table. It’s carefully put together as the rest of his room.
His notebooks are one on top of the other at the center of his desk, next to his pens. The table is clean, free of dust like the rest of his room. The laminated floor shines slightly at being hit by the moonlight.
However, there was one thing that broke the tidiness room.
A piece of paper carelessly put together with tape on the edge of his study desk.
Katsuki frowns again, clenching his fists and biting the inside of his mouth.
He turns around again to face the wall and closes his eyes. The clock ticks steadily, each sound grating at his nerves. His sheets are stuck to his skin, damp with sweat, despite it being cold outside and in his room. He shoves them off, rolling over once again.
He can’t sleep.
He had made some mistakes in training that day, which might have seemed insignificant or nonexistent to everyone else, but for Katsuki Bakugou any mistake was noticeable, and that made him more annoyed than usual.
Stupid Deku, it’s his fault. When I catch him…
Katsuki’s eyes snap open, rage buzzing under his skin.
His chest tightens, each breath coming out hot and sharp. He sits up abruptly, yanking the bedsheets off and hurling them to the floor with a snarl. His hands twitches, and tiny explosions crackle from his palms, the consequence of his sweat fueling them.
He couldn’t care less.
Stop thinking about that stupid nerd.
His hands clench into fists, the heat under his skin intensifying. He turns his head so fast his neck cracks. His eyes lock onto the piece of paper taped to his desk. The paper holds Deku’s stupid handwriting, now barely legible because of it having to be put together. It was the only thing the boy had left Katsuki to remember him. His room had been closed to class 1A as soon as Deku had left by his teachers, making it so none of the students could enter. Not that Katsuki had found out the hard way by trying to get inside and almost blowing up the door before being interrupted by Aizawa. Definitely not.
He sprints towards his desk, his muscles stiff with anger.
Katsuki grabs the piece of paper furiously. His fingers crumble around it, the sound filling the previously silent room.
His forehead creases as he clenches his teeth, his jaw aching from the tension.
Another explosion comes out of his hand, the crumbled paper starts emitting some smoke as his whole body vibrates with fury. His mind screams, and his muscles tremble, the urge to blow it to pieces overwhelming him.
He closes his eyes, ready to tear it and set it on fire.
The ring of his phone fills the room.
Katsuki stops.
He opens his eyes, the piece of paper laying in his fist. The edges tinted black, a sign of the heat coming from his hands and his intention to destroy the paper.
What the hell am I doing?
The phone rings again.
He looks at the clock, confusion taking over his anger.
“Who the hell is calling me at 03:01 am?” He mumbles.
Katsuki looks at the piece of paper, its contents now barely legible, and places it carefully on top of his desk.
He knits his eyebrows together and takes the phone from where it was charging, anger still pulsating through his body as he squeezes it harder than necessary.He thinks of declining the call or just shouting at whoever is calling him at that unholy hour.
His finger hovers over the “Decline” button.
Katsuki sighs, as he clicks “Accept” and brings the phone to his ear.
“Who is this?” He asks, his voice flat.
The line at the other side falls silent, he can only hear what he identifies as someone breathing.
It has to be a joke.
Who in their right mind would call Katsuki of all people at three in the morning? Maybe it was some weird bot from those mobile phone companies.
“Is this a prank? Because if it is you-.” He starts, his voice growing angrier. His hand squeezes the phone again as he begins to take it away from his ear, ready to end the call.
Just when he’s about to do it, a voice interrupts him.
“Ka…Kacchan…” A voice barely over a whisper says.
He feels as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on his head.
No.
There’s only one boy in the entire world that calls him that.
It can’t be.
A breath catches itself in Katsuki’s throat, his heart skipping a beat as he opens his mouth with a horrified expression.
He’s frozen in place.
His hands tremble as a slow, creeping sensation takes over his limbs. The heat that had once filled him had disappeared, leaving a cold space in its place. His breaths becomes faster, more aggressive. He swallows hard. He doesn’t feel anger anymore.
He feels something worse.
Fear.
The line grows silent once more.
His heart skips a beat, a breath catching in his throat. He takes the phone, and smashes it against his ear, hands shaking too much to keep it steady.
“Deku? Deku, is that you?” He shouts with urgency in his voice.
He brings his free hand to his hair, pulling it to keep himself grounded. His hands are shaking.
His mind is racing, millions thought making his way in. His wide eyes scan the room automatically, looking for the threat that’s making him feel as if he’s dying .
There has to be a threat. Katsuki can’t have this intense fear over Deku of all people.
“He-” Deku’s weak voice interrupts his thought. The freckled boy only manages to say a word before he is cut short.
Katsuki hears something coming from the other line. A cough. A wet cough. The type of coughs hurt people make. The type of cough people who are going to die made.
Then, a sob . His body freezes in place as his hand tightens its grip on the phone.
Words shoot out of his mouth without him meaning to.
“Deku! Where are you?! What’s going on?” He feels as if his heart was going to shoot out of his body. His legs are shaking, he doesn’t know why. Katsuki manages to hold onto his desk to try to ground himself, his knuckles growing white in the process.
This can’t be happening.
The universe is playing a prank on him. He wants to believe that he’s sleeping but the way the desk feels under his touch and his phone hurts his hand from squeezing so hard prevents him from doing so.
“Deku, talk to me.”
Silence.
“Deku. Deku!” He shouts. His body shakes violently, little explosions popping out of his hand and burning the desk. His lip trembled.
He takes his hand from the desk and brings it to his phone, making both of them grip the phone. Sweat drips from his body, his quick breathing making him dizzy as his heart accelerates. He feels he’s going to faint. Thoughts fill his head, worse than the ones from before.
“Hey, stay awake!”
No response.
“Deku, damn it, don’t you dare die on me! I’ll kill you if you-” His voice breaks, the empty threat lingering in the air.
He swallows.
“Please. Please don’t do this. Deku, stay awake. Izuku!... Please.” Katsuki sobs , his wide eyes searching the room for something he could do.
The unfamiliar name rolls out of his tongue without him meaning to. It’s weird but it didn’t make him feel bad. His knees give out below him, making him fall to the floor on his knees with a thud. He doesn’t care if anyone can hear him, which is possible thanks to the paper thin walls installed by UA. No one’s more pissed at them for that than Katsuki.
“Please.” He whispers.
He can’t breathe. He has to do something.
Katsuki gets up, the room swaying as he did so more quickly than he should have. He was about to sprint out of the building to get Aizawa when a shaky voice made its way to his ear once more.
“K… Kacc-... an.” Deku. He’s talking to him.
He feels as if life had come back to him.
Deku is still alive.
He ignores how the ‘still’ revolves his stomach.
“Oh god Deku, you almost gave me a heart attack.” Katsuki looks to the door, his mind making a plan in seconds.
He opens his mouth to ask him if he’s okay, even though he already knows what he’s going to say. The fucker will tell him he’s fine, as he always does. But, something feels different this time. Deku is too quiet, too still.
Katsuki hears a sob. It squeezes his heart and makes him want to cry as well.
“Deku,” He corrects himself. He can’t be calling him Izuku, he can’t . “Help’s coming. Please hang on a bit longer. Please.”
He ignores the way his throat tightens when he delivers this.
No response.
He hears the phone having been dropped.
03:07 am
Before he can think, he’s sprinting out of his room and out of the building.
Thankfully, there’s no one downstairs to see him covered in sweat (and tears, but he will never admit that), without any shoes and only with a short sleeve T-shirt and some pajama pants on running out of the dorms as if it was on fire.
The cold wind of the night hits his wet face.
He runs as fast as he can, his arms swinging violently. He thinks about trying to contact Deku again, the call is still going, but, somewhere in his chest, he knows the boy won’t answer.
It feels like hours when he finally arrives at the teachers' building. Each of them have their own little house not too far away from their students’. Luckily, Aizawa’s is the first one.
Katsuki brings a hand to his face, cleaning his tears without even realizing. He pants heavily as he knocks at the door with enough strength to kick it down.
No answer.
He knocks again, explosions popping from his hands once more. The phone in his left hand feels hot.
No answer.
His breath catches in his throat. He can’t breathe.
Where the fuck is Aizawa? That fucker doesn’t sleep!
He is going to puke. He feels bile travel up his throat but, before he can let it out, the door opens and an angry Aizawa pops through the door.
“What now? I swear if it-.” His words die in his mouth as soon as he sees Katsuki. The man stares at him with a confused look.
“Bakugou, what-?” He is interrupted by Katsuki.
“It 's Deku. I- He called me and-. He is-... He-!” The boy tries to explain, looking at Aizawa. Katsuki is still panting, he is slightly hunched down. He can see black dots invading his vision, he is going to pass out.
“Bakugou, hey kid. Breathe. Come on, follow my breathing.”
He hears the distant voice of Aizawa as the man puts both his hands on Katsuki’s shoulders. He breathes in slowly, trying to get Katsuki to follow. Any other day the boy would have slapped his hands away and refused to do the exercise but that day he couldn’t afford that.
He can’t afford to lose any more time.
He closes his eyes, his whole body trembling as he lets his head fall and starts breathing like Aizawa was instructing him to. Once he has calmed down, Katsuki straightens his back, the black dots on his vision appearing for a second which causes him to have to grab Aizawa’s arm. As soon as he realizes, the boy lets it go as if he had been burned.
Aizawa locks eyes with him, his emotionless face is illuminated by the moon and Katsuki manages to pick the way his teacher’s eyebrows are slightly frowned.
“Aizawa, Deku called. He is hurt. Badly . If we don’t get there now he-.” His throat closes, and a choked sob makes his way up his throat. His teacher picks on the message, running inside his home to grab his mobile phone and his capture weapon. He puts on his shoes in a matter of seconds as Katsuki waits outside, cleaning his face and breathing with his eyes closed.
Why do I care so much? Why am I acting this way? Stupid Deku. Stupid nerd.
His train of thought is cut short when Aizawa sprintest out of his house, closing the door with a slam and running towards the door to exit UA while making a phone call Katsuki assumes is for any teacher still awake.
Bare feet follow Aizawa's and clash with the grassy paths of the school. The campus was completely dark, the only light coming from the moon and from Aizawa’s phone as he finished the call.
Katsuki thinks of all the nights Deku and him had gotten out of bed to run.
When he reaches the door something holds him back. Cold ropes stop him from moving. He grunts in anger, ready to set off an explosion and destroy whatever is preventing him from getting out of the school to get to Deku.
“Bakugou, you are staying here. It 's not safe.” Aizawa says firmly, pursuing his lips into a thin line and glaring at him with his tired eyes. The boy hadn’t realized his teacher had stopped a few meters back until it was too late.
Katsuki turns around, his face red with anger.
“Like hell I am! Deku called me , I’m fucking going.”
Why do I care? I’m supposed to hate Deku. Why am I so fucking worried? No. I’m not worried.
Aizawa narrows his eyes, glaring at Katsuki. The boy doesn’t back down and continues staring. The wind brushes their hair, it hits Katsuki’s face softly and dries his wet cheeks. Katsuki is not going to let his teacher order him around.
He isn’t going to let them save Deku without him.
He tightens his fists and his jaw once again.
Finally, after what seems like hours, Aizawa closes his eyes and sights. His shoulders relax slightly. He bites the inside of his cheek as Katsuki looks at him with anticipation in his eyes.
“Fine, you can come. But,” Aizawa holds a finger up, looking at the boy with a serious expression. Wrinkles form in his forehead as his brows furrow together, “,if there is a fight, you won’t participate and you’ll get away as fast as you can. Understood?”
Katsuki scoffs, he moves his head up and looks at the sky for a second, clenching his fists.
“Understood? ” Aizawa presses, looking at him as he furrows his brows once again, glaring at him with intensity.
“Fine.” Katsuki spits. “Can we go now?” He crosses his arms and clenches his teeth together. Aizawa analyzes the expression on his face for a second, taking into account the way the boy seems to be a second away from blowing his teacher’s face up if they don’t get going.
Aizawa takes his phone and writes a message explaining to the teachers that Katsuki is accompanying them. The silence was deafening as neither of them spoke after the ‘argument’.
“Let 's get going. Every minute counts.” The man spits, running out of the gates in order to get to the van that was now at the edge of the hill where UA was situated.
That was fast.
Katsuki ignores the way his fists tighten as he glares at the back of the man's head.
“We could have already gotten there if he had just let me follow him.” He mutters.
He could have already gotten to Deku if I hadn’t insisted on starting a fight with my teacher.
Katsuki shakes his head and lowers his hands, making small explosions pop off of them to impulse himself.
You better not die Deku.
* * *
The van jolts forward, tires skidding as it swerves around a corner violently and runs through the almost empty road. Katsuki looks down, his crimson eyes piercing the gray of the floor of the van. His mind travels back to before the war.
He remembers the day he had started to spar with Deku. The gray sky filled with clouds, similar to the color of the van’s floor, had brought a frown to his face that morning.
I hate the cold. He had thought, standing in the outdoors training grounds looking up, glaring at the clouds as if he could scare them away.
Deku had been in front of him a few meters back, bending his knees ready to start fighting as soon as Katsuki was ready. He had been moving around and looking at Katsuki with a determined smile, his brows slightly furrowed. Katsuki had looked at him and glared back. The blond had decided to train with Deku because Kirishima had been unavailable that day.
With the red-haired boy, sparring was the time of day Katsuki could inflate his ego with winning over and over, which had been fun at first but then started to bore him.
He appreciated the boy, but sparring with him wasn't helping Katsuki improve.
When Kirishima told him he wouldn’t be able to spar with him that day, Katsuki decided on finding someone whom he could fight with, not just win.
So, the moment a particularly freckled boy entered the common room where Katsuki was sitting, the blond didn’t hesitate.
Katsuki remembered the thrill of fighting with someone that was near his level. The way Deku moved was mesmerizing. The combination of turns and flips that made it hard to guess his next movement were so similar yet so different to the aggressive and straight-forward tactics of Katsuki and the defensive-based fighting style of Kirishima.
The blond can remember Deku’s concentrated grin, his eyes slightly squinted and his pink lips pursued in concentration. His red and sweaty cheeks standing out from the boy’s pale skin and, somehow, accentuating his freckles even more.
He remembers the way Deku smiled whenever he managed to hit Katsuki. The way his body moved with a speed Katsuki had seen few people achieve. The way Deku’s curls bounced everytime the boy landed a kick. His panting after having been fighting for several hours. The way his body felt when he was pinning him to the floor-.
Stop.
Ok that 's enough.
Katsuki frowns and brings his hands to his hair, pulling at his spikes softly to try to calm himself.
He thinks about Deku once more. His cracked voice calling his name, his sobs being so loud they could be heard through the phone…
Katsuki finds himself wishing he could go back to what he was thinking before.
The van pulls to a stop, he figures it’s near where Deku had called from. He doesn’t question himself how the teachers could have found his location in minutes, he’s too focused on being the first person out of the van and the first person to find that self-sacrificial idiot.
Just as the doors of the van open, he finds himself running. Katsuki hears his teachers let out a surprised gasp and he can feel Aizawa running behind him but he doesn't care.
He’s going to find Deku.
Katsuki runs through every alley-way in his path. He peeks in every single one of them. They are full of trash. He feels his heart jump every time he sees something on an alleyway. Katsuki rushes inside it only to find more trash bags, broken metal pieces and, on one occasion, a cat rummaging through the trash.
Sweat sticks his bangs to his forehead. His feet pulse from inside the shoes his teachers had given him in the van, probably so he wouldn’t be barefoot in glass-infected dirty alley-ways.
His brain is quiet, only thinking about Izuk- Deku.
What if he is bleeding out? What if whoever had done this to him had come back to finish what they had started?
No sign of him.
What if he is dead?
He can hear his teachers searching around him, having given up on trying to control Katsuki. He finds himself thinking about a life without Deku.
Katsuki knows they are not as close as they were when they were kids, and probably would never be thanks to himself. They aren’t as close as Deku is with Uraraka and Iida, but they have been on better terms and they can have a conversation and train together without having to be separated by Aizawa, which is an improvement.
A life without random hero facts every morning when they walked to class.
His breathing picks up.
A life without Deku’s laugh.
He feels his fist tighten.
A life without Deku’s dumb freckles.
He bites his lip with enough strength to draw blood.
A life without Deku’s big green eyes looking at him not in fear, but in… in…
Katsuki doesn’t know.
That’s not going to happen. He won’t allow it.
The blond paused. He looks to his left to see a not too big alley-way. It’s covered in trash. At first sight it looks like there’s nothing more than that but, when he squints his eyes he manages to make up something on the ground. It looks like another trash bag, not uncommon in that place, surrounded by them. His body relaxes for a second.
Katsuki sights and looks up. The stars are hardly visible thanks to the contamination, especially in that part of the city, and the clouds. The sky is a grayish color. It’s darker than the floor of the van but it still made Katsuki’s stomach churn.
Where is he?
He wants him back. He has grown to-... appreciate the boy more. That 's it. Katsuki has learnt that Deku isn’t totally useless and he has started to enjoy- No, scratch that. He has started to tolerate talking to him.
Nothing more, nothing less.
He recalls his words. Had he been about to say that he likes being with Deku ?! Had he hit his head or something? There 's no way he-.
From the corner of his eyes a stain catches his attention. It contrasts with the dark gray walls. When Katsuki turns his head to try to identify what it is, his body feels cold.
Blood.
Crimson eyes lock in with the now brown-ish liquid stamped on the wall. It wasn’t much, but it still revolves his stomach and pinches his heart. His eyes slowly follow the trail down the wall.
He can’t move.
What he thought was a trash bag came into view after what felt like hours.
Katsuki looks at the figure.
His ears start to ring as he sees green mixed with red.
No.
No.
No.
No.
NO.
He runs, his mind thinking of millions of things at the same time. It can’t be him. It can not be him. As he approaches the figure on the ground he feels his heart stop. A river of blood flows from the corpse -.
No, It isn’t a corpse. It can’t be a corpse.
Katsuki stops on his feet. He is in front of the figure. It seems as if he has been running towards it for minutes but it has hardly been 2 seconds.
Wind brushes his face. It’s different from the way it had brushed his face back at UA, when he believed everything would be alright. This wind is making his eyes sting. It 's mocking him. Laughing at his face for losing Izuku .
His mind can’t even form the thought that he is supposed to hate him as he recognises from where he was standing a green set of curls. The figure is quiet. It 's still. Blood is still rushing out of his body but it’s almost unnoticeable, his uniform being more red than green as well as the ground.
Katsuki’s knees start to get drenched with blood. His blood.
The blond brings a shaky hand towards Izuku, it brushes the boy’s cheeks. His freckles peak from under dried blood.
He is cold.
He is so cold.
What made bile crawl up his throat were his eyes. They were slightly opened, looking at nothing. He looked dead .
He is dead.
He is dead.
He is dead.
Katsuki lets that word sink in.
Every single thought he had had came back to him.
No more chats after running.
No more sparrs.
No more smiles with stupid dimples.
No more “Kacchan”.
No more Izuku .
Finally, a scream tore from his throat. He lets himself shrink into a ball, his knees still on the ground, next to Izuku’s body.
That can’t be happening.
This isn’t fucking happening.
Deku’s body lies limply on his side. It’s covered in dirt and blood. So much blood.
Katsuki doesn’t realize he’s hyperventilating until someone grabs him by his shoulders and pries him away from the boy on the ground.
“Stop! Let me go! STOP!” He claws at the hands that are taking him away. His eyes water and his throat feels as if it’s sandpaper.
Another set of callused hands take him by his arms as the first takes their own away. He wants them gone. The feeling of being touched makes him want to peel his skin off.
“Don’t touch me! Deku!” He screams. He only managed to be held with more strength, it was going to leave a mark.
“Bakugou, calm down.” Katsuki could hear a voice. It was distant, almost imperceptible as the ringing in his ears intensifies. Sweat pours down his back and hands, making him shoot small explosions from them.
“I- I have to be with him. Let me go now!” He squirms under whoever is touching him ’s grasp. Katsuki is now notably weaker, his strength leaving his body as fast as it came.
The edges of his vision are black. He manages to see two men hovering around Deku, who is laying there without moving.
This isn’t right.
Deku is a fidgety fucker who struggles not to talk and move around for five seconds.
He 's too still.
His breathing picks up again. His whole body shivers and trembles. Katsuki bites his lip so hard he draws blood.
His vision swims.
Before he falls into unconsciousness he finds himself thinking about Deku. Somehow he’s always thinking about him.
He thinks about him during class, as he feels him seated right behind him. If he tries hard enough he can listen to Izuku’s quick muttering of whatever he’s writing in his notebook.
He thinks about him when he’s eating in the cafeteria. Katsuki usually lays back on his chair slightly, so he is able to see the boy eating, surrounded by his friends. But that moment is always short-lived, as one of Katsuki’s stupid friends repeatedly asks him what he’s looking at, making him snap at whoever is talking with a “Non of your fucking bussines.” , usually followed by one of the nicknames the blond has given them.
He thinks about him when they are training. Katsuki always glances at Izuku. The boy always looks so happy running around and fighting his classmates. He looks in his element. Katsuki can’t imagine him doing something else.
Izuku also does something the blond thinks he will never understand. He gives their classmates tips on how to improve based on the notes he takes.
“So stupid” , Katsuki usually says. Because, who would give his future competition tips?!
He realized some time ago Izuku doesn’t care about them being competition. He would stay up late perfecting notes about different uses for his classmates' quirk, new gadgets that would help them and so much more. But he’s like that. He was like that. Izuku was so selfless he always put himself dead last on his priority list. That was why he was dying just a few feets away.
The world tilted, and all Katsuki could make out was a shout and a voice calling his name as he toppled over before everything went black.