When the introductions were up, the host moved on to the main portion seamlessly. Apparently, the questions would start out easy then gradually increase in difficulty as the day winds down. Facing Deku's side of the stage, Present Mic belted out the first question for the beach to hear. "What is your sweetheart's favourite food?"

Without thinking much on it, Deku scribbled down his answer then flipped over the board to indicate that he was done. Katsuki, much the same, finished first on his end as well because they were freaking awesome. Each pair took turns revealing their response in the same order as introductions.

Chad flipped over his board with no remorse. "Anything on my naked body."

Cherry medicine flipped over her board with no remorse. "Anything on my sweetie."

"Err-…INVALID! CENSOR IT, CENSOR!" Katsuki agreed. He didn't need to picture this shit.

Eventually, it came time for Deku to reveal his answer. The two of them opted to do it at the same time, both of their boards unveiled to say 'hot sauce' on Katsuki's and 'travel-size hot sauce' on Deku's.

"You hear that, listeners?! I get the hot sauce thing, that's SUPER hot! But why travel-size?"

Oh, fuck no.

The world's biggest shit-eating grin began forming on the nerd's face. And that was the second that Katsuki knew that he was screwed. "When Kacchan was five, his mother would sneak hot sauce into her make-up bag so he could drink from it throughout the day-"

"SHUT UP! WHO TOLD YOU THAT?! WAS IT FUCKING SNOT-FACE IN OUR CLASS? I KNEW HE COULDN'T BE TRUSTED!"

"There's nothing to be ashamed of, Kacchan." Deku smiled sweetly, and Katsuki officially wanted to set him on fire.

"OKAY, okay! I'll give you the points, eeehhhh." Present Mic backs off, looking for all intents and purposes like he's hosting a kindergarten backyard death match. He opted to move on to the girl next to Katsuki, a sleepy thing with perpetual black eyebags. And really, he could relate. "And what do our last couple on the end have to say?"

Sleepy girl's board read 'anything' in teetering drawl, while her supposed boyfriend had 'pink bunny marshmallows.'

"Okay, Marshmallow boy! Don't you think you're placing unrealistic expectations on this girl?" The crowd jeered like animals while Katsuki struggled to not give them all the middle finger. Predictably, staff would milk the heck out of the first couple to screw up in points today. The public loved this drama fuckery. Katsuki just wanted to get to the part where he and Deku won.

"Nonsense! My cute Isabelle would similarly love all the cutest things!"

The host grinned to the audience. "There appears to be a disconnect early on." Ringing the chime of the show, an outro was performed where Present Mic signal boosted some shitty perfume brand that looked better as the grim on someone's windshield before informing them of the next question. "If your significant other was lost in a foreign country, how would they react?"

This time, Bro-dude revealed a scrawl of an essay- the kind you saw in elementary school that started with enormous letters before shrinking in size as it went on, eventually running out of room on the page, and continuing on the margin. He was a fucking mess, in other words. Present Mic squinted his eyes, leaning forward before reading hesitantly. "Elope with mon cherry in the sickest getaway car, no matter the weather or time of day or where we are. If it's raining, past midnight, a dark alleyway, we will be invincible togethe- Oi! That sounds really shady!"

Only to nearly fall over when Cherry face had the exact same thing, word-for-word.

Katsuki narrowed his eyes. Maybe Thad and Cherry were bigger threats than he thought.

But they wouldn't lose that easily. Katsuki turned his answer over when the spotlight switched to him, showing the words 'I wouldn't get lost' on his board with a smug countenance. Deku, parallel to him, did the same thing:

'Claim he wouldn't get lose then blame me.'

Grape shorty whistled.

Katsuki sprung up from his seat. "YOU WANNA FIGHT, DEKU?"

The host grinned. "Oh gee, I think that answer deserves twice the points."

"I don't give a fuck!" Katsuki was getting sick of Deku's attitude here. "Hey, Microphone! When is it MY turn so I can shut this guy up?"

Present Mic artfully ignored him, the traitor. "And it looks like team Bakugou and Midoriya are in the lead with fifteen points!" Smaller voice. "Unfortunately."

What a pathetic show. Katsuki totally heard that. "We heard that!"

But this was a Christian Minecraft Channel. Katsuki was ushered by staff to sit the fuck down or be kicked out. What a load of bull. Deku was the one who started it. He'd give him a piece of his mind later. The last pair, Slumber girl was next. Unsurprisingly, a kid with 2-point IQ and zero social experience could've guessed it, she replied with 'sleep' as her solution. Evidently, her partner was much stupider than a kid with 2-point IQ and zero social experience for he wrote 'ask her animal friends for help.'

"There's something wrong with you." Present Mic looks to the man.

This time, three out of the ten pairs didn't get any points. The competition was heating up, obnoxious jingle in the background rising an octave as television crew scrambled to catch each and every one of the contestants' sweating faces on camera. "Here we go, this last question before we switch is a tough one. Let's change it up a bit and have the pairs answer in opposite order this time! Remember to rack your memories properly but not overthink if you want to be on the same wavelength as your sweetie."

To sum it up, the deep dark secret that all the ladies (and Katsuki) would be forced to reveal on international television was this: what is the most embarrassing birthday gift that your childhood friend ever received?

"Don't even think about lying if you want to win!"

Katsuki glared daggers at the host. "You have a problem with me or something, Microphone?"

"Bakugou, look into the camera like you would in The Office." Kaminari grinned from his seat in the audience. "I dare you!"

"I hate all of you."

And really, this wasn't fair at all. There's no way any of these people had birthday gifts half as embarrassing as Katsuki's yet here he was on a nice Friday afternoon that he could've spent napping being forced to give part of himself up for views. That coconut better be damn good because Katsuki was sacrificing his soul here for his pride. Deku better not have written on his board what he knew was the exact same as what he had on his-

"A kiss from his mother." Deku decided to read this one out loud with a fond tone.

And that was when Katsuki's life went to shit.

The entire audience, probably a group of fifteen-year-old extras jerking each other off on their head canons, devolved into a mess of aw's and coos about how absolutely adorable the angry blond boy was. How much he was secretly a softie who hid his insecurities through yelling and screeching at people but on the inside, just wanted someone to love him. How he just needed someone to tame his dark tragic (if his old hag of a mom was dark and tragic) past. How his image as a bad boy who actually fed kittens on the way home and rescued chicks from perverts on the subway was such a cliché but heart-stopping thought.

In reality, the old hag had simply given Katsuki a giant smooch on the forehead during his eleventh birthday party. Someone took a picture and it became the cover of their yearbook.

"Look what you did, Deku!"

The addressed smiled innocently. "I'm just following the rules, Kacchan. Besides, it's proven to not be bad for publicity when people know that the hero they're supporting can be really cute."

"Oh my god." This time it was Mineta who facepalmed.

Punctuating each word with a tiny explosion on his palms, "I'M. NOT. CUTE!"

The audience around seemed to think otherwise. What was once a relatively calm beachside filled with occasional chatter and rapt attention very quickly turned into a raid. Katsuki Bakugou and Izuku Midoriya were gaining approval from the crowd very suddenly. At the expense of Katsuki's own reputation, of course. This is balls.

The only reprieve he had was that he got to watch the other participants make a fool of themselves for free. Thad didn't disappoint, uncovering his answer with no shame at all. "Lacey granny panties!"

But alas, Cherry had 'lacey boxer briefs.' What a tragedy.

"CINNABUN! That was on Christmas, not my birthday!" She sounded like a kangaroo broke into her house and shot her grandma. Girl, calm the fuck down.

"AH, YOU'RE RIGHT!" Calm was not in their vocabulary.

"How could you?!"

"Please like, believe me, love! I'm way super sorry, how could I be so neglectful- I AM THE MAJORIST BUGGARY! I MUST COMMIT SETPOKE RIGHT HERE!"

"Uh." Deku raised his hand helpfully. "It's seppuku."

"No one is stabbing anyone here!" Present Mic finally decided to step in with a growing headache. Quickly trying to make a nice save in viewership, he turns back to the crowd with enthusiasm. "And that ends the first round! Bakugou and Midoriya are still in the lead with twenty-five points! Can anyone catch up? We know how well the right side knows their sweetheart, but now it's about time for us to switch attention to their partners!"

"Fucking finally." Katsuki muttered.

"Okay, here's the fourth question to turn the competition around! What would your partner say is the ideal date?" The host waggled an eyebrow much to the disgust of the crowd. "All right, ladies (and Bakugou)! Time for you to guess what your sweetheart wants!"

Katsuki, pausing for just a second, writes his answer down before flipping his board over.

When it's Cherry's turn to guess her love's ideal date, she is positively beaming with a dreamy look. "Anywhere, anytime, at any place as long as I'm with my googly flakes-"

"OKAY, WE GET IT ALREADY-" Present Mic is just in the middle of screaming when, to his shock, Thad had a completely different answer. Blinking several times to reset his vision, he even took off those tacky sunglasses that Katsuki had the urge to blow off at least twice a day, Present Mic confirmed that the contrasting responses didn't change. "It seems to say: by the pond where we first met."

This time, Thad wails. "My sweet poodle-kins! Don't you remember that zoo where we made so many rad memories?!"

The girl twitched, nervous for the first time. "O-Oh, I assumed you didn't want to return after what happened with the frogs-"

"NO~! Absolutely wrong!" He wasn't letting up, smacking his marker against the counter top so hard that it flipped off the edge, flew in the air, and landed on the ground in the loudest breaking-the-tension-in-this-awkward-family-dinner sound.

"W-Well you thought my worst birthday present was panties! If either of us doesn't understand the other, it's you!"

That seems to be the breaking point for Thad. Running off the stage in complete tears, the lights were sure to catch the contours of his sweaty bro body before he bounded down the beach.

"Wait, my darling, I'M SORRY!" Cherry wasn't far behind, her own sun-tanned limbs dashing down the sand dramatically.

"Um, okay." Mic supplies. "Moving on."

What a bunch of newbies, honestly. Many of the pairs after them presented with varying results. But Katsuki knew deep down that no one was going to blow this question out of the park as thoroughly as he will. Just to prove this, when the attention was turned to him, he flipped his board over without another thought.

Present Mic deadpanned. "July fourth."

"Yeah," Katsuki rose a brow. "The nerd's ideal date."

"I see, yes." The other blond nodded in understanding, some part of him feeling bad for the situation that the wonder duo found themselves in. "It seems that team Midoriya and Bakugou may have finally hit a stumbling block. Bakugou Katsuki has completely misinterpreted the question. There's a limit to how oblivious one can be before it backfires! Perhaps he is the inconsiderate type of boyfr-"

"Sensei," Deku cut in politely. The saint. If he had something to say, he should've just said it. The nerd unveiled his own board, the words making Katsuki smirk. "I have the same thing."

Present Mic really does fall over this time.

He gets back up, hair frazzled. "Oi, what's with you two? Does that even count?"

Almost as soon as he uttered that, the crowd dissolved into protests. Staff ran on stage to consult with Present Mic while the camera feed was cut off to prevent the stray ice cream cups being thrown their way from showing up on screen. One teen with the most emo hair cut Katsuki's ever seen, and he's seen half-and-half, screamed from the front. "Give spikey broccoli a chance!"

"W-Why are they calling us a vegetable?!" If it was part of a new training regime, it sounded very healthy.

Before Katsuki could grace Deku's confusion with a well-timed insult for trying to talk to him and lose points, he had no fucking clue either by the way, Charging Pack joined the fray. "WOOO! My new OTP, spikey broccoli!"

"SHUT UP, PIKACHU!"

Eventually, through the chaos, Present Mic managed to silence the crowd again but only on the promise that Katsuki would get a second chance and prove himself. And the fuck? Since when did this quiz show start sounding less like a quiz show and more like harassment?

"I'm going to need for you to explain your reason for choosing July fourth, Bakugou."

On second thought, if they were going to harass him, they should've conjured up the balls to go all out with it. What a dumbass easy question. "I've seen Deku apologize to a mannequin before so not to hurt its fucking feelings. He once jumped off a bridge to retrieve a brat's bag of pork rinds that she dropped in the river. He's such a sacrificial moron that his favourite date would be his own mom's birthday."

From his spot, he didn't notice Deku's smile bleeding onto warm cheeks.

"That…" Oh, Present Mic was touched. He brought a hand to his heart in tears. "That was surprisingly sweet. Okay! Points for team Midoriya and Bakugou!" The audience erupted into cheers. It was like a freaking scene from a BTS concert if Jin washed out his hair dye then kissed Jungkook in the middle of the rain.

Katsuki inwardly cursed Deku a million times over for ever making him have that thought. How was it Deku's fault? Fuck all, it just was.

It quieted down instantly when the screen changed to Sand Woman. To everyone's surprise, her answer which was 'in bed' matched perfectly with her delusional boyfriend. Present Mic himself didn't seem impressed. Neither was Katsuki. "You got the points, but I get the feeling your intents are still totally out of synch."

The second question for their round was when they finally got into the juicy content that he was waiting for. Katsuki Bakugou would no longer be Deku's little butt monkey, he swore. "How much money did your sweetheart pay at their most expensive visit to the hair parlor?"

The blond's face warped into a menacing sneer.

"Kacchan, no."

"Kacchan, yes!"

Deku groaned. Well, it was only fair. Contrary to the hero duo, the rest of the left-hand-side of the stage began fidgeting nervously in their seats. This type of question was usually expected to be asked of the boyfriend, but the competition had structured the inquiry so the opposite would happen. They had boosted about the questions getting more difficult and they weren't kidding about it.

As expected, a large majority of the pairs flubbed their answers badly.

"I figured my honey buns would answer zero anyway so I wrote it down!"

"EEE, ee!" Present Mic crossed his arms. "If we went by that logic, we could just have one of the couples put circles on their boards all day and win. No points for you!"

"Where did you get a number like 729 yen from?!" A male with a balding spot screeched.

"I-I don't know! It's the price of a pair of scissors added on top of tax then with garbage disposal considered and divided evenly by weight ratio of your hair to our trash for after you're done. I rounded it to the closest whole number for the sake of significant digits-"

"HOW IS THAT 'NOT KNOWING'?!" The crowd and contestants alike were growing rambunctious with each incorrect answer. They had to be shushed by security guards stalking the premises with iced water to cool everyone down. But this was a fucking K-pop raid, okay. No one was surprised when the water station was sent flying not a minute later straight into security's van. It was nice knowing them. Katsuki would forever remember the heroic feats of faceless guard number 544.

"Another one of our ladies guesses zero?!" Present Mic jeered, shocked. He leaned back with a frown, giving his own hair a nice runover with a comb. "To keep up this styling do? They're delusional. It appears that none of our lovely pairs today are getting this one right. We may have hit a winning question here!"

That was until of course, Katsuki graced all of these extras with his wisdom. Fully armed with his weapon, he unsheathed the piece of plastic to show the world Deku's darkest secret, even darker than One For All if Katsuki were to be completely unbiased, of 50,000 yen. At the bottom, he ensured to add in 'to removed pink hair dye' for maximum embarrassment effect.

Deku, with ears steaming, reveals the same. Almost instantly, he deteriorated to mumbling in face of the need to explain himself. "I-It was an accident, Present Mic-sensei! A new villain with an inhibitor-deleting quirk terrorized a bakery close to my house while I was out buying bread in middle school and then there was this incident with a person outside with a pink mohawk and-"

"Oh sure, Deku. Blame your shitty life decisions on a quirk."

From his spot, Battery Boy burst out laughing, choking on his drink in a genius act of intelligence. Oh, he has to get Bakugou to tell that story to the class when all of this was over. His purple companion rushed to help his suffocating lungs only to find Kaminari falling to the floor in a literal ROFLMAO.

The contestants on stage weren't nearly as pleased as the audience. "Pft, figures that blasty blond over there who insults his partner every second chance would know but my own sugar cakes wouldn't."

"I already apologized!" A teen in a silver dress exclaimed.

"Oh YEAH?" Baldy piped up, taking his brethren's side. "Does an apology erase the years I spent questioning my appearance and inadequacy as my self-esteem damaged itself into nothingness? Does it make up for the grief, every time I took a shower and saw my sanity wash down the drain strand by freaking strand as did my hair?! Do you understand REAL PAIN?!"

Katsuki blinked. Fuck. These people had no chill. And coming from him, that was saying a lot.

"You only have less than a foot of hair to work with!" The lady on the other side of Katsuki from the Eye-bag girl joined in on the debate from hell. Her screaming had the blond lean back and cover his ear all while shooting the bitch a deadly glare. Is this what the press called "young people" worried about nowadays? How about he scorch every single person's hair here in a millisecond so no one could complain? "We have to worry about much more than you do!"

It didn't take long for the rest of the stage to become a battlefront but with bitchy teen prom queens and their whiny boyfriends in place of bitchy nine-year-olds performing one-eighty no scopes. The entire panel minus Katsuki, Deku, Thad, Cherry, Snoring girl who had long passed out, and her partner was fucking dead to Katsuki. A waste of air, water, and renewable resources.

Present Mic, forced to listen and growing agitated by the second, snapped when he turned his quirk on. "hEEEEEeeEYYYYYYYYYYY!" Apparently not caring that doing so would render half the beach deaf. "This just in. If we have another disturbance then we're ending this contest right now! I have the majooooor authority to do so!"

This, thank fuck, had the stage silent in a mere second. Minus one idiotic Pikachu still dying on the ground of course. But everyone ignored him. Satisfied, Present Mic grunted with an accentuated pout and continued on. "To prevent any further disturbances, I was informed by staff to change the difficulty of the next question! You hear that, listeners? This next one is going to be a breeze!"

Katsuki frowned. He was hoping this easy-ass competition would get harder, not easier. But now he had to sit here and win with little to no effort like he almost always did. While that was enough back when he was little, it no longer excited him much to beat down a horse that had already fallen on its ass and couldn't fight back. Deku and him were supposed to be the number one hero duo. There's no point if they weren't continuously challenged, if they weren't continuously improving-

"Describe your partner's best memory from middle school prom!"

What. "What?"

The host repeated, even louder this time. "You heard me, folks. We want our contestants to share with us their best memory from middle school prom."

Katsuki blinked, nerves frayed.

He… He didn't know.

The timer started, and yet Katsuki still didn't know. He gripped his marker tightly, drawing up a blank as he stared at the abused whiteboard. Fuck. Focus. What was Deku's best memory from middle school prom? There had to be something. Something stupid like dancing with his loser friends. Or stuffing himself with cheap snacks until the night wore down.

Except Deku didn't have any friends in middle school. It wasn't Katsuki's idea. It would've happened regardless of if he was there or not. But the entire student body had come together in second year and before the sludge incident to prank the quirk less nobody in their class into thinking it was a Halloween party.

And Deku didn't get to eat anything. The second he walked through those doors in his All Might costume, he had made a laughing stock of himself. He didn't want to worry his mother, fooling her into thinking he had a good time when in reality, he locked himself in the bathroom the entire night. All to avoid the jabs at his pride. All to avoid being found.

The beep of the bell indicating that they only had thirty seconds left to write down their answer rocked Katsuki's core. But he still wrote nothing.

The two of them had barely seen each other at prom. The exception was when he had bumped into Deku in the hallway that night, finding the boy in embarrassed tears. Realizing that his old friend was looking for some comfort, younger asshole Katsuki had done everything in his power to do the exact opposite. The blond, done up in the best suit of the night and the center of attention, turned his nose away with a sneer, calling him a quirk less loser.

And all of a sudden, it made sense why Katsuki couldn't conjure up a single word to write. He was pretty sure that Deku had no best memory.

Swallowing his pride, Katsuki capped his marker and flipped the board over.

He didn't deserve this point.

What was he thinking? Assuming that he and Deku would blow the competition away as the best childhood friends when Katsuki was the absolute worst childhood friend in history. The challenges and tests that they'd have to go through together to win this thing would be too much. They'd break, lose with their tail between their legs. And it would be all fucking Katsuki Bakugou's, the kid with his ego too far up his ass, fault.

"Kacchan-" Deku broke the silence.

Almost immediately, the staff standing behind the green boy tapped his shoulder in warning. There were still ten seconds left and any communication was strictly forbidden. But of course, tenacious, shitty, beautiful Deku didn't give up. In a single burst of some emotion that Katsuki could never hope to understand, he scribbled something indignantly before throwing his board over in a huff.

What an idiot. Knowing that his Kacchan didn't write anything, he still opted to do so himself. Their answers wouldn't match, yet Katsuki couldn't bring himself to care.

Present Mic rung the buzzer. "And time's upppp! Let's see what our wonderful couples have in store for us next!"

The rest of the round passed by in a blur for him. Some really stupid part of his chest that he didn't want to think about felt heavy. As if half-and-half had come in like the little shit he was and mysteriously frozen him in a place that no one could see. Feeling his own frustration at whatever-this-was overtake him, Katsuki tapped the table impatiently to rid himself of the desire to explode.

At some point or another, it could've been seconds or days for how well everything was registering to Katsuki right now, one of the boyfriends brought up the expenses they had to go through to pay for dresses and make-up. One girl then complained at how their other didn't even look at her all night. That somehow brought in a whole can of metaphorical worms high on helium when someone to the left of Katsuki, he didn't fucking care, mentioned hair again.

"I'm just saying. If you wanted to pay over a hundred dollars to look like a beehive, I could've just went into my yard and gotten one for you!"

And that seemed to trigger everyone, minus Katsuki and Deku, into a renewed battle of the tumblr posts. The crowd threw airplanes at them. Even Eyebags-Mcgee snapped at this point, something about a comment on her sleeping bag on prom night mixed in with an insult to her pet lizard. Katsuki would give you more detail if he bothered to listen. But surprise, looks like he fucked up in that too.

What finally jolted Katsuki out of his thoughts was nothing short of Present Mic turning on his quirk again to scream into the microphone in utter exasperation. "OKAY, QUIZ SHOW'S OVER!" Such a statement was made right before the spotlight was turned to the blond.

Wait. No.

"Pack up your bags and get off the stage!"

Katsuki didn't even take responsibility for his messed-up actions yet. If the entire world didn't know how much of an asshole he was, what was the point? "We aren't done here, Microphone!" He protested.

However, he was stopped by the host himself coming in to press a finger into the blond's forehead repeatedly. "There was a hidden score for compatibility and quality of reasoning added on to the ones displayed on the screen. You and Midoriya are so ahead of everyone else that there's no point in continuing."

At this point, Phone Charger who was already busting a gut on the sand started choking. "I-I'm dying, Mineta! Bakugou has all the shook."

Not gracing the student with any more of an explanation, Present Mic turns to clap at the now thoroughly-ruined stage. "Aside from that, results for the top five pairs in each group that will be moving on to tomorrow's round will be unveiled later today. I need a drink…" Seemingly channeling his inner Aizawa, Katsuki couldn't blame him. Supervising such a hellish event would do that to anyone.

"Damn you, Bakugou!" Grape balls screeched as soon as the crowd began to disperse and he was dragged off the platform. "You broke Kaminari, you bastard!"

Not acknowledging the pervy toddler with a single glance, Katsuki walked straight up to Pikachu, dipped a finger in the other's smoothie, and shoved it into his ear.

Kaminari shrieked, flinching five feet away. "Dude!"

"Yeah, I know. Now I have to spend a fortune to disinfect my hand." Katsuki glared at the offending finger in disgust. "You owe me lunch."

"Only if I get to shove breadsticks into my purse."

"Deal."

They commented about getting everyone in the class gathered around the television that night to watch the episode filmed today. To which Deku responded with a distracted nod. Short-circuit and Shorty left soon after, claiming to have a beach volleyball match with some ladies scheduled in a few minutes. A big fucking white lie, in other words. Probably a shady business looking to kidnap two perverted teenage boys and force them to spin sausages for the rest of their lives.

That left Katsuki alone with Deku, again. If he gave enough steaming fucks to the other pairs, he would've already noticed that they had already migrated to the pier on the other side of the beach. Several gathered up pieces of paper to start taking notes on the other in preparation for tomorrow's competition. The crew cleaned the stage with grumbles, ignorant to the remaining childhood friends who had yet to leave.

"Kacchan."

He knew that look anywhere. Nowadays, neither of them could ever hide anything from each other. It started with the way the other cried. Frustration, anger, sadness at grating on each other's nerves until it birthed tears. Then it extrapolated to the way they wouldn't cry. Compassion, fascination, and bliss at finally clicking together to create something amazing. Like gum stuck to the bottom of Deku's bright red hideous shoes, what would've been a look sent his way spoke way too much. "What a bunch of idiots." Katsuki chose to comment instead.

Deku blinked, bewildered for a moment before understanding dawned on him. He turned to face the other pairs scattered about the beach. "Don't be mean."

"You know I'm not wrong."

"Hmmm, I mean. It is a waste of time." Deku finally dropped the whole gross sugary act to agree while flicking sand off his shoulder. "What's more likely than the organizer challenging us on the same thing twice is that the contents of tomorrow's event has a nine out of ten chance to be something completely unrelated. It'd be different if they gave us a vague hint or activity to complete within this time but they left us to mingle right when everyone is still high off lingering frustration from the previous competition and susceptible to tunneling into mistakes they made today. Lying by omission is a common manipulation tactic-"

The boy squeaked when miffed, Katsuki leaned over to pinch his nose shut. Sometimes he doubted Deku's existence as anymore than a whistle that needed a plug to finally stop making noise. Fingers wasted no time in pulling the nerd forward as Deku could do little else than whine. "What do you know. I can still hear your mumbling even when you have your mouth shut."

And, contrary to what he should've done, what any sane person would've done being stuck with someone like Katsuki, Deku smiled warmly.

Katsuki let go immediately, burned. Fuck. No. Stop smiling.

And that did the trick. Deku stopped smiling almost instantly. The lull of the ocean beside them reflecting off his stupidly big eyes didn't look as good anymore. He peered at him with confusion. "Kacchan?"

No response. Maybe if Katsuki didn't say anything, Deku would adopt some semblance of his middle school self and assume that meant that nothing was wrong. It worked a lot with his parents. It worked a lot with many people. But Deku wasn't simply many people.

Fighting a battle that he already lost, it's always like that with Deku, the freckled hero picked up on what was wrong easily. Still, he didn't look angry at all. What should've been rage, directed straight through Katsuki for potentially costing them the contest, was instead empathy. And nothing pissed him off more than that. Let alone the words that were thrown at him next: "It's impossible to know everything about each other. It's okay."

"No, it's not, you useless Deku! Stop saying that!"

Silence again. Those green eyes staring at him in shock.

Katsuki brought a hand up to press against his face, annoyed with himself. "Deku. Shit. I didn't mean that." He breathed, feeling calmness leaving him at the possibility of what his partner would say next. But when he kept quiet instead, waited for Katsuki like he learned to do all those years ago, Katsuki found that he could think again. "It's just… going back and remembering all those things I've done to you never ends."

"Before you say anything, shut up." Deku looked like he wanted to refute that for a second, but thought better of it. The nerd was just too good for him. Too good for this dirt that Katsuki was dragging him through. "I know you forgave me already. You're still an idiot for doing that, by the way. I believe that more and more each time I dig up some other memory from the shit pile of bigotry that was who I am."

"That's the god damn thing too! I realized something today, fucking hell- when I couldn't answer that question, I mean." Feeling a stray cup hitting his heels, Katsuki picked it up in frustration. Crushed it in the sheer force of his hands added with sparks until it was nothing but ash. He watched, all the dust blowing away in the wind before he could gather up his thoughts enough to continue. "I figured that we might not win this because of me."

Deku breathed, not speaking.

Then, promptly pushed his partner into the ocean.

And before you ask, no. It wasn't a little sissy push that you'd give your dad into the backyard pool while he was cooking steak or some other middle-aged-beer-belly disgrace in the middle of the night. Any sissy push would've been countered in the face of Katsuki Bakugou, thank you very much. But Deku, the little fucker, actually turned on All Might's quirk in a flash of green lightning. Add that to the fact that Katsuki was freaking emotionally compromised here, and one second he was standing perfectly on the sand while the next, his back kissed the waters in a mighty splash.

Katsuki emerged, frazzled and pissed. "WHAT THE FUCK, DEKU?!"

"IDIOT KACCHAN!"

"HAAAAH?" He slammed a soggy fist into the ground, bringing up another fountain of water from the limb. His hero brand shirt was ruined. His hair was sagging. And his day was officially looking more like a hunt-down for the green blob's life.

"You are! You're really stupid!" Deku went on, seemingly unfazed by the looming expression of danger and death bleeding into Katsuki's rotten soul. "Why didn't you defend me back at prom? A real friend would've told me that the others were lying so I wouldn't embarrass myself when I showed up but you just watched!"

That stopped the blond in his tracks. What?

"And that suit you were wearing was really dumb. No one wanted to tell you that boutonnières had been out-of-style since a first year at our school puked on his dance partner who wore one months ago, but they were too scared to say anything! You intimidated everyone, Kacchan!" To bring home the point, Deku reached into the sea to unroot another giant splash of water right into his target's face. "Then when I was crying in the bathroom, you just said that I was a loser instead of trying to comfort me. Stupid, STUPID KACCHAN!"

Holy shit.

Katsuki watched, speechless on his throne in the water, as Deku rushed to catch his breath. The adrenaline left him bent over and spent. But eventually, finally, the hero collected himself enough to look at his friend again with a determined glance. "There. I did what I should've done back then. Now you can't be upset about it anymore."

Deku,

Deku was really something else.

But kind of dumb at the same time. He choked, swallowing back the overflow of what he knew were tears trying to come up for air. "Y-You can't just decide that for me."

"Stop being stubborn, Kacchan." Oh and as if Deku wasn't the one being stubborn. The sun began to set, giving his crouched form and face red from exertion a strange ethereal glow that Katsuki couldn't bring himself to decipher right now. Only admire. "Besides, you're wrong. I did have a good memory from middle school prom."

It's then that the nerd stepped away from the water the slightest bit to retrieve a tattered face-down whiteboard that was discarded in the sand during their hassle. Carefully waiting for his friend to wipe his hands dry, Katsuki could do little else than accept the board with shaky palms.

And out of all things, what was written on it was quite possibly the cheesiest but Deku-ist (which was a word now) thing that existed in space and time. Because when Deku showed up in his All Might costume at prom all those years ago, he noticed something brought on by their memories of when they were little. Dressed as All Might together and running between tables and chairs at Deku's home, having sleepovers while posing as heroes; the image hit younger asshole Katsuki so hard that he couldn't stop the genuine smile that crossed his face for half a second.

Damn, these tears. "You're such a sap."

"I don't think being happy at seeing your best friend smile at you for the first time in years makes me a sap."

Katsuki squinted, holding the board closer as he hastily wiped away any evidence of his emotions from his face. "Fuck. That's it. We're going to win this dumb thing and get you that shitty ring." He breathed harshly, abandoning any doubts that wanted to escape. He couldn't guarantee that their rocky past might not fucking cost them the contest again, but Katsuki would try his damnedest to make sure that it doesn't.

Deku stepped forward to help Katsuki out of the water, no longer hesitant in doing so. His own expression was beaming. "Thanks, for helping me out."

"I'm not helping you out." Katsuki went to shrug him off but in the end, accepted the help by taking the other's hand and lifting himself out. Even after they were long on solid land and away from the ocean, their grip on the other's palm didn't let up. Katsuki wasn't a sap. But the pressure against his fingers felt way too nice for him to lie about it. "You blathered shit last year about us being a hero duo from now on and have to take fucking responsibility. I'd slip laxatives into your drink for an entire year if you spread your stupid freckly face all over the news and I'm not there too."

If possible, the smile on Deku- Izuku's face grew warmer. "I wouldn't dream of it."