The morning sun. A quiet neighborhood, power lines strung with birds, and beyond that, a schoolyard turned gold in the dawn. A second-story classroom with one occupant, eyes closed, faces the daylight with his chin in his hand. His sneakered feet stretch beneath his desk, half-shrouded by the cuffs of his uniform pants. In the new light, the room's shadows barely appear real, and his world is open, quiet, solitary, peaceful. Whatever the day might bring, Bakugo Katsuki has this moment to himself.
He has this moment to himself until the morning drops a stack of magazines on his desk. One of his grinning classmates looms over him - the first of many small shadows settling their shoes in their homes by the door and creeping through the halls.
There is nothing dramatic about it, not really, but Katsuki feels the pure morning light streaming into the classroom warping into the kind of day he'd had yesterday and the day before, and the day before that. The morning's quiet dream burst like a bubble he hadn't realized he'd been clinging onto, and he feels the sun like a stage light beating onto his face. The world is watching. He's on.
"What do you think of that, Bakugo?" his classmate asks.
Katsuki quirks an eyebrow and looks at the magazine. A glossy image of the week's most popular heroes gleams back at him under the early morning light alongside a mess of garishly colored headlines he could care less about.
"Gossip," said Katsuki. "Why the hell would I-?"
His classmate - his name isn't important - puts a hand on top of the magazine and shifts it so the corner reveals another magazine beneath it.
Katsuki's unamused glare quickly turns into a disgusted sneer. It's porn. He has been presented with a porn magazine before school - the kind nobody in class should be old enough to buy.
"Get this shit outta my-"
Izuku enters the classroom like this is a comedy and he was written in for the bit. It's predictably asinine.
"Good morning, Ka-!" Izuku says brightly, and then spots the magazine. "-uwah!"
His eyes grow huge, and his face changes color so quickly Katsuki wonders if he might explode.
"Here," says Katsuki, flatly, holding out both magazines to Izuku, who somehow accommodates an even brighter color across his face as the images grow closer.
"Hey!" splutters their original owner. "Those're mine!"
Katsuki grins like something is funny. It isn't. He's talking to a fucking degenerate and passing dirty magazines like a peace offering to get Izuku to leave him alone. It isn't funny, but it also is.
"Yeah? Well, it was my fuckin' desk you put 'em on, so I guess they aren't yours anymore, huh?"
Katsuki presses the magazines into Izuku's hands, and then reclines into his desk. He shoots a warning glare at their classmate when he reaches to intercept the magazines.
"And now, they're Deku's," Katsuki says. "So maybe think about where to put your shit before you start throwing it around."
Katsuki's commanding glare threatens explosive consequences. The extra in front of him trembles.
"God," says the other kid. "Fine," he spits, grinding his teeth and turning away to his own seat. He pulls out his chair with a scrape before throwing himself into it.
Katsuki rolls his eyes and stretches out his legs. Mornings are for contemplation and silence, he thinks, not bullshit hijinks and tired cliches. But the scene isn't over.
"K-Kacchan," interrupts Izuku, still holding the magazines with a weak-kneed, red-faced grimace, "I, I, I can't, uh, I can't-!"
Katsuki leers at him.
Izuku is tiny, and without presence. He is skin, bone, and comically oversized cheeks stuffed in his black middle school uniform and tucked under a mop of unruly hair. His massive eyes bug out of his head like the headlights of a compact European car. Besides his tiny stature, a mess of freckles and a pair of anachronistic red sneakers almost too large for his feet are the most outstanding things about him - and even that might be too generous. He is the sort of person for whom remembering to fold his laundry simultaneously to doing his homework is too much.
"Why not?" Katsuki interrupts, caught between a smile and a grimace, caught between merciful obtuseness and brutal honesty. "You're into that kind of thing, right? Hero gossip?"
"That's not what I-!"
Katsuki glares at Izuku, again, this time with more prejudice. He was a lion sizing up a rabbit, and he knew the scent of blood. He knew what Izuku was interested in - both the things he made obvious and those he did not. Bright eyes did not an innocent youth make.
Saying more than two words to a girl sends him into a fit of nerves. And saying more than two words to anyone who isn't Katsuki usually earns him worse.
"Just take it," Katsuki says. "Go put 'em away before the teacher gets here, and it'll be fine."
"B-but they're not-!"
"Okay, then give 'em back like the spineless shithead you are. See if I care. I gave them to you, so do whatever you want. Go be a creep in the bathroom, if that's what you think'll be best. Just leave me out of it."
Izuku looks like he might sink into the floor right then and there, or dissolve into a puddle of sweat and embarrassment to drain away along with the strips of morning sun streaming across the classroom's polished desks and floor. But he doesn't do any of that. Instead, he takes one bow-legged step deeper into the row of desks, and then another and another until he could hold out the magazines to their original owner with shaking, spindly arms. They are quickly wrenched from his hands, though Izuku follows in the same direction when a fist tightened around his collar.
"Fuckin' idiot," growls Katsuki, peeling himself from his chair to play hero.
Izuku winces and grits his teeth in preparation for the other boy's fist. Katsuki stops it with a still, threatening hand on his shoulder.
"Hey," says Katsuki. "Some attitude you got there. Thought you wanted those back?"
A livid snarl scrawls across the other boy's face, but five seconds of a red-eyed glare and a click of Katsuki's flinty teeth, and Izuku reunites with the ground.
"You and your pet! Your fucking quirkless pet," the boy hisses, sequestering himself in his seat, arms around his magazines, elbows out. "You don't want the stupid magazines because you're too busy letting Deku suck your—!"
Perhaps now is a good time to mention that Katsuki is a human explosive. His sweat is volatile, and he can blow things up with his hands. The other boy can breathe out a stream of gaseous green bubbles on command. This does not help him in the slightest, especially when he practically wets himself once Katsuki grabs him by the collar and the smell of burning fabric fills his nose.
Izuku watches, useless. He can't do anything except stare stupidly at his classmates with his big, wet eyes as he stutters over the only name he has ever used - and will ever use - for Katsuki.
"K-Kacchan," he says, stumbling to unsteady feet with the audacity to go off-script even as he's being cut. "Kacchan, stop before you get in-!"
"S-sorry," surrenders the boy in Katsuki's hands, stupidly, and the smell of burning dissipates in the classroom's morning air.
Well, mostly. But nobody will say anything about it.
Katsuki returns to his seat without so much as a glance at Izuku, but he straightens his shoulders beneath the pressure of the bitten lip and focused, smothering, green stare fixed on him.
Where Katsuki goes, Izuku follows, and Katsuki pretends not to notice. When Izuku smiles at him, he tells himself he doesn't see it. In those rare moments they must look at one another, like when their hands brush as Katsuki passes out papers from last week's quiz, he pretends he doesn't see the gratitude marred by humiliation or feel the condescending envy oozing from his freckled body like pus from an infected wound.
The day is one of many in the saga of a slow suffocation: it's Katsuki's hand over Izuku's mouth, since he knows he cannot simply beat him up and let that be the end of it. He knows, because when they were younger, he tried.
The rest of the day, Katsuki is in character. His classmates step into their roles, sharing his spotlight when he allows them and stepping aside when it is not their time. This is his stage to command, and he commands it like his life depends on it. In a way, it does. If he wants to make a career of being the lead, then by God he'd better lead. Indecisive action makes an unforgiving audience, and he won't suffer their insipid criticism.
When Katsuki slides on his shoes and steps out the door, he doesn't turn to thank the crew; doesn't give an opening to go to the afterparty; doesn't give anyone a chance to meet him backstage after the show.
His admirer finds him anyway. Izuku steps into his path, struggling to fit the lip of his shoe over his heel before Katsuki gets too far ahead of him.
"Kacchan," he says.
Katsuki doesn't stop, but the half-moons his nails dig into his white palms prove he is listening.
"Kacchan, do you want to, um," Izuku's shy eyes glance from Katsuki to the sidewalk to the thin power lines strung above their heads.
Izuku doesn't manage to say anything else. Instead, he falls in step behind Katsuki, clutching his backpack and sticking close like a lovesick shadow until they make it to the split in the road separating Katsuki's house from Izuku's apartment.
There is no single reason why the days pass like this. There is no single schism in this staged, repetitive story of this relationship's slow death. It is in the small things. The tiny things. The mundane crimes that pass by as almost unnoticeable and inconsequential, but never stop coming. A jaywalker on a quiet road. A wad of spit in the drink of an angry patron. Thoughtless sympathy whispered to a child in need of encouragement, or fear inflicted upon a heart too young to temper it. Empty compliments given in place of real, true love, and the slow, spiraling heartbreak that comes after. The fear of intimacy when someone can't understand it, can't express it, can't accept it. The red-hot pain of a wound nobody else can see, and the acidic taste of fury when something deeply personal is stolen before the words to express what exactly went missing have even been invented.
Or, for a more specific example, take the scene unfolding in the softly lit second-story window overlooking this quiet twilight street.
The evening finds Katsuki yelling in retaliation at his mother. It's expected because he is disrespectful. It's expected because he's loud and crass, and utterly driven to drive everyone away from him in a desperate outburst of exemplary individuality. He has been screaming so long for someone to see him rather than the expectations placed on his potential that his voice is hoarse and argumentative with every word. He has been screaming for so long that he doesn't know if anyone will hear him if he did otherwise. He has been screaming for so long that he doesn't know how to stop.
Katsuki's mother - her name is Mitsuki - strikes him on the back of the head not because she hates him, but because it works; he's stunned into silence, if only for an instant, and she tears it apart with her own opposing bombardment. She is his original in every way, including their shared dull, bleached lightness and texture of hair.
"You don't get to talk like a big shot until you are one!" roars Mitsuki. "So take that shitty attitude and cram it up your ass, you little punk! Maybe when you prove you're more than a massive degenerate and shithead to everyone around you, you can talk to your mother like that!"
"Oh, whatever, you hag! The apple doesn't fall far, you know that?!"
The conversation began as a discussion of the less-than-perfect score Katsuki received on his quiz, or something, but that was never the real issue.
The two of them fail to communicate in the chorus of disastrous, confused intensity that only they can stand. This is their native language, but unfortunately, the root of their disagreement involves a concept that doesn't exist in their culture. They can't figure this out if they tried - and they have both tried. It's the same conversation they have had for years, and it's gone on for so long that neither of them could pinpoint the spark that started the fire anymore. So they scream at each other instead.
Katsuki bites out the last word before slamming his door in his mother's face. The few framed photos on his bedroom walls quake in the wake, and he turns to face his window, fingers pulling at his sweat-bleached hair.
And he realizes that he has an audience - or rather, his audience never actually left.
A timid shadow stands wide-eyed on the street, staring up at the window while clutching the straps of his backpack. He's like a wilted sunflower angling his head towards the light in Katsuki's window, and at Katsuki himself. His mouth hangs open in an ambiguous circle, like he couldn't decide if he should scream, cry, or nervously laugh at what he'd just witnessed.
Of course, it is Izuku, family name Midoriya - motherfucking Deku - who didn't go directly home when he should have. He is a dandelion growing from the sidewalk. He is a fly on the wall. He is a pebble that's been stuck in Katsuki's shoe for so long, he doesn't remember a moment he wasn't there. He is a jagged wound running through Katsuki's side that never healed correctly. He is a shadow waiting in the wings.
Izuku is totally inseparable from the conversation Katsuki and his mother were failing to have not a moment ago, and not one of the three of them even know it. Yet.
When middle school is over, when the show is finally over, Katsuki will walk away from him forever, and he will forget he ever knew Izuku. He will forget about the boy who was and wasn't his friend, who knew more about Katsuki than anyone else, but wouldn't stop to consider Katsuki's feelings even after he'd screamed them in his face point-blank like an angry cannon.
And yet.
And yet, Katsuki stares at Izuku, blank, helpless, open, stunned, no better than Izuku's unintelligently hanging mouth. For a moment, Katsuki's front of anger is blown back like clouds carried out on a gust of wind, and they stare at one another.
They stare at one another with the full knowledge that neither of them intended for the other to see what they just saw. Izuku breaks the stalemate first when the streetlight above his head clicks on. He closes his mouth. But his teeth have barely clacked against one another when Katsuki rips the blinds closed like he's throwing up an impregnable wall between the two of them that can never be crossed.
Impregnable, except for the crack where the curtains meet.
Katsuki watches Izuku stand bewilderedly in the street, half in and half out of a nearby streetlamp like an amateur without enough sense to understand if they are lead player or stagehand. Half of his hair shines in the light like he could be wearing a jagged halo. The other half of his face is nothing but a shadow with an opinion all its own - perhaps a smirk hidden like a dagger in the night, or a judgemental frown, or something that Katsuki couldn't comprehend even if someone explained it to him.
"Fucker," says Katsuki, but his eyes don't move from the sliver in the curtains until Izuku finally steps out of the streetlight and on the path to his own home.
They are neighbors. They are from completely different worlds. They are growing apart. They are victims to something they don't have the words for yet. They are.
Katsuki wants to be a hero. Katsuki has the gift. Izuku wants to be a hero. Izuku does not have any gifts. Katsuki cannot fix this.
Izuku is quirkless, and helpless, and useless, and Katsuki is trying, and straining, and failing to be benevolent. There is nothing he can do, or has done, that is untainted by the ugly condescension of a power play neither of them asked for. Charity towards Izuku sours when it comes from his hands. Compliments to Katsuki wound like retaliatory stones when they come from Izuku.
Still, Izuku wants to be wherever Katsuki is. And he can, while the world is middle school small and still calculating test scores over ability; when the stage is miniature and the talent pool shallow. What Katsuki wants is…
Something stirs in the darkness beyond the spotlight in Katsuki's mind. Behind the set, or somewhere in the wings, a phantom waits. It hides its face. Katsuki refuses to believe it exists, and if he looks too closely, he knows he will have to change his mind. So he doesn't go looking. He doesn't stop performing. He cannot change his mind - not now. Not after so long. Not when the precipice of the rest of his life is so close.
Katsuki tells himself he wants Izuku to go away forever. That's what he wants.
But for now, Katsuki can endure this thing they do every day, because what are a few more months before the curtain falls for good on this chapter of their lives? He can let his anger take a hold of him like a shadow wrapping around his chest, and keep himself steady and calm until the day the ties between them fall off forever and ever and ever.
Katsuki can be kind for a few more months, he supposes. He can give Izuku that grace.
Besides - there is no kind way to tell someone their dreams are not going to come true when yours might. There is no kind way to tell someone that you never want to see them again, especially when you are lying, and there is no kind way to make them listen when they refuse it. There is no kind way to reject someone who has one hand around your neck and another gripping your heart, and there is no good way to do it when you know that you won't succeed without them tearing out one or the other. There is no good way to scream when someone has you by the throat, no good way to breathe when someone's hand is thrust in your chest and clenched at the center, and no good excuse when the only person who can see it happening is you.
There is no good way to tell someone, with the most authentic part of yourself, that they are killing you as surely as poison flowing through your veins even though you know they did not mean to do so. There is no kind way to tell someone that you are going to kill them, too, if only because you cannot both keep going like this.
This is the culmination of ten years of mundane crimes. These are the final spasms in a slow death. Katsuki tells himself he is the main character. Katsuki tells himself he is the hero. And it is true that Katsuki is the protagonist of his own life. But Katsuki is also the victim and villain, and the phantom is waiting in the wings whether he believes in it or not.
Author's Note: Hello and welcome to a deep dive and deconstruction-reconstruction into Bakugo Katsuki within the ever-scaling scope of the BNHA world. Thanks for reading! Appreciate you stopping by and dropping a note. I have another chapter written already, but I think I'll sit on it for at least a week so it has time to settle (and get, you know, views and feedback for this first chapter.)
This piece is primarily a character study but will, hopefully, link directly to something with a canon-diverging plot (that will be posted as a separate story.) "Wait. Is this a BKDK/DKBK story?" You may be asking. "Like, is it ship fic?" No, but... kind of? But also no. There's not going to be, like, kissing (are you kidding? Have you read the manga? Over 300 chapters in and holding hands is too much for them! Why would I write them kissing?!) The only thing I can really say is that it's impossible to talk about Katsuki without talking about Izuku and his very turbulent relationship to him, so we'll be seeing a lot of... whatever you want to call that situation. You can call it a love story if you want, but it can also be argued as a horror story - or both at the same time.
Anyway, thank you for reading and reviewing!