Chapter 2: Motive
Pitbull sprung forward, knowing that he had to be the one to make the first move or he'd never recover the match after that. He faked a right hook, knowing that the rugged, experienced fighter in front of him would read that, expect it from what she knew about him, and that he could use that against her. Pulling back at the last opportunity, even though it would have landed, he switched it up for a left uppercut instead, slamming his fist into her jaw like he might not get another chance.
Hell, he might not.
With the way she laughed, snarled, spit blood on the floor at his feet as she staggered to her feet.
She was beautiful, feral, dangerous, disastrous.
He wanted to be all of those things, too.
So, he let go, and he let her take him there, to the edge where sanity and absolute insanity teetered as their fists collided against skin that gave way, bruising and pulsing with heat and pain that would feel much worse in the morning.
He was broken out of that delicious trance by that fucking nerd.
It was always him.
It was always going to be him.
Pitbull thought he heard his voice and dared a glance over, earning a punch right against his cheekbone for it, the warmth blooming from that spot immediately. The glance was enough for him to confirm the green curls and dark freckles, even though there were healing bruises covering the moron's face. Was he a fucking fighter? That almost made too much sense, and Pitbull couldn't think about that right now, in the middle of a fucking fight, damn it.
When Jupiter staggered on her feet and finally fell, the referee held out a hand to ward him off. Pitbull held up his hands in surrender, showing that he would cooperate with the directive as the referee checked on the fallen fighter.
The boos and jeers that echoed throughout the arena when Pitbull was announced the winner were staggering.
He ignored them, just as he ignored them the first time he won against the gravity-quirked girl, and he wandered over to Ochako, looking down at her as she blinked up at him against the harsh lights, scrunching her nose in pain as she came back to consciousness. She sighed and took a long moment to consider his offered hand before accepting it as he pulled her to her feet.
"Fucking hell," she muttered under her breath as she stormed out ahead of him, leading the way toward the exit and away from the angry yells demanding an immediate rematch. Katsuki only heard her because he stayed in step, just a half a step behind and slightly to her right, allowing her to lead the way. "Go ahead," she demanded.
"What?" Katsuki asked as they made their way out of the ring, keeping an instinctive eye on her in case she fell, but not hovering.
"You gonna' rub it in?" she asked, thoroughly drained of energy.
"Would that make you feel better?" Katsuki bit back.
She snarled as she spun on him in the narrow hallway, stopping him dead in his tracks. At least his reflexes were still on point, so maybe the hit to the face didn't mess him up too much, though he could feel his cheek throbbing and gathering heat by the minute. His vision wasn't holding, either, which was concerning. The edges were darkening, his vision tunneling slowly, but enough for him to take notice.
"You absolute dick! I'm not some fragile glass!" Ochako snapped, leaning up onto her toes to snarl in his face.
"Who the fuck is calling you fragile? Huh?" Katsuki barked back, making her squint her eyes, but not back off, trying to determine if he was being genuine or not, Katsuki determined. "You weren't then and you're not now. Now let's get to the healer, yeah?" he continued, a little softer.
She laughed, though no humor was in her voice. "You can't say I'm not fragile then shuffle me along to the healer!" Her hands clenched tightly into fists. "You—"
"Uraraka," Katsuki interrupted.
She looked like she was going to go off on him all over again for interrupting, but then she seemed to notice that he was swaying on his feet, and he was looking awfully pale.
"I'm saying that I need to get to the healer because you absolutely kicked my ass. Will you show me the way or not? Goddamn. What do I have to do to get some help around here?!"
She laughed, then, this time full of humor, the tension seeming to flow right out of her at his admission as she slotted herself under his arm to give him some stability as they walked.
"I should let you fall and leave you here to bleed," she threatened lightly, but didn't move to loosen her hold on him.
"You wouldn't do that to your favorite hero," he said, but didn't sound completely sure.
Ochako shrugged under the weight of Katsuki's arm. "Of course, I'd never do that to Hawks. You, on the other hand…"
Katsuki snorted. "You're the worst." Then, in the next breath, "We've missed you, you know."
"Yeah, well, I found more lucrative opportunities elsewhere," Ochako responded.
Katsuki hissed as he shifted too far to the right, leaning back to the left again to compensate and breathe through the pain. "Too hot shit to visit, huh?"
"There'd've been too many questions if I'd've shown up looking like this," Ochako muttered, letting go of Katsuki's wrist for a brief second to wave at the damage done to her face by none other than Katsuki himself, so Katsuki didn't really feel like he could argue. She also wasn't wrong. "You look like you're doing well for yourself," Ochako said. She paused then and snorted, shaking her head as she led him in through a nondescript door that he would have passed right by if she wasn't directing him. "Well, until you showed up here. The fuck you thinkin'?"
"Been getting a little too rough with the villains and even some civilians," Katsuki reluctantly admitted accompanied with an eye roll and a grunt as he was unceremoniously dumped onto a cot to wait for the healer's attention. Ochako dropped down next to him, not bothering to take up a whole cot for herself, pulling her legs up onto the cot and leaning back against the brick wall. "Agency told me to find a way to get it out of my system before it hurts my rankings," Katsuki explained, running his tongue over blood-reddened teeth as he sneered at the memory.
"I'm surprised they let you in," Ochako said.
"Me too," Katsuki agreed. "I'm not exactly…" he moved his hands in front of him, searching for the word.
"Agreeable?" Ochako offered. "Pleasant? Charismatic? Friendly? Sociable? Approachable? Cheerf—?"
"Discreet," Katsuki settled on, faux offense tinging his voice. "But thanks for trying to help."
"Anytime," Ochako chimed, patting him on the back with a sharp smile and shake of the head that was full of condensation that had Katsuki laughing even as he rolled his eyes and shook his aching head at her new and improved attitude and confidence.
"You know, considering this is an illegal underground fighting ring and all," Katsuki continued like they were discussing the weather.
Ochako snorted. "Oh, come on! Is that really why you're here? Iida's done worse!"
"Hey!" Katsuki barked, offended. "I already told you why I'm here! You weren't listening or some shit?!"
"I was listening. I just didn't believe you."
Katsuki balked and opened his mouth to retort, but that's when a flash of purple and green walked in, the green being the right shade to immediately catch his attention. And for the first time in years, it wasn't a false alarm.
"Deku," he snarled, tensing to jump into action and immediately regretting his decision as his injuries protested. He settled back onto the cot but didn't let his glare leave the nerd's face as he hesitated in the doorway.
"Uh, hey there, Kacchan. Long time, no see?" Izuku attempted.
Hitoshi and Ochako looked between the two, trying to decipher what exactly was happening.
"You know each other?" Ochako asked.
"We go way back," Izuku said vaguely.
Katsuki ignored everything and everyone else, eyes laser focused in on Izuku, target locked. Hell, the tunnel vision even helped him keep his attention solely on the nerd, acting as blinders to everything else that might act as a distraction. If only his body was in the condition to respond.
Izuku watched Katsuki, even as the healer made quiet conversation as they worked through the room. Izuku noticed that Katsuki was as reactive as always.
Some things never changed.
Some things just couldn't be helped.
Aldera
"Whatever," Katsuki snarled. "What do those extras know anyway?! I'll be the youngest number one hero, and you'll just have to be the first quirkless hero, Izuku. We'll both make history!"
Izuku's eyes watered, and his lip quivered. "You mean it, Kacchan?"
"Hah? When do I say things I don't mean?!" he snapped, pushing Izuku out of the way as he forced his way past him.
Some things never changed.
"What a freak!" the other kids would say.
"Geneless!"
"Null!"
"Useless!"
"Stupid idiot! You can't be a hero, dummy! You need a quirk for that!" they would say, like they were doing him a favor by telling him something that he must not have thought of before.
How many times would Kacchan defend him before he cut his losses and deemed Izuku a lost cause? When would he realize that he would never make it as number one hero with a quirkless nobody as his hero partner?
"Go away!" Katsuki screamed at the top of his lungs, voice cracking along with his quirk at the effort. "Die! I'll kill you all!"
Izuku laughed through his tears as his bullies ran away crying.
Some things never changed.
"Now, Katsuki," the teacher scolded. "That's not a good way to make friends. Maybe you should go apologize."
"Izuku's the only friend I need!" Katsuki insisted. "And they're the ones who are bad at making friends. They should apologize to Izuku! They're the dumb ones! They don't know anything!"
Izuku watched on in fascination. He would never talk back to an adult; he didn't know how Katsuki was brave enough to try, let alone how he always got away with it.
"We're going to be top heroes together. I'll be number one, of course. But Izuku is going to be number two."
Izuku smiled and nodded, but his nodding quickly lost momentum and he curled in on himself and tried to look smaller when he saw the look on his teacher's face.
"You're such a bad influence," his teachers would tell him when Katsuki wasn't in earshot. "Why do you feel the need to drag Katsuki down to your level? He has such great potential."
Izuku would try to calm Katsuki down and tell him it was no big deal when Katsuki would miss a day of school only to come to class and find Izuku covered in bruises and abrasions. He would yell and scream and demand to know who had hurt him, explosions firing from his palms. Izuku would cry, not because he was afraid of Katsuki or his explosions, but because he was emotional that Katsuki cared so much and didn't want him to risk getting in trouble over Izuku. Katsuki never got in trouble for any of his antics before, he would argue. The idiot still wouldn't tell him who did it, though.
Because that was just the rule of the world, and rules were rules.
Some things just couldn't be helped.
Katsuki overheard the suicide baiting once, and Izuku begged him with his eyes to just ignore it like he was as he walked right past the instigator without a glance in the kid's direction, like he hadn't heard a whisper of the suggestion to tie cinder blocks to his red shoes and take a long walk off a short pier.
Katsuki and Izuku walked into class together the next day and found a red spider lily on Izuku's desk.
Katsuki wore that fucking flower in his own hair for the rest of the fucking week.
"Please remove the flower from your hair, Bakugou," his teacher requested on the first day.
"Why?" Katsuki asked, feigning innocence. "Someone left it on Izuku's desk, but I think it was actually meant for me because it looks like my explosions and matches my eyes. The color clashes with Izuku's colors. Besides, no one actually has a crush on Izuku, right?" he asked threateningly, looking around the room to see if anyone would volunteer to either admit to having a crush on the quirkless kid or admit that it was suicide baiting and not an act of confession. Everyone could tell that the innocence in his voice was entirely fake, and Katsuki basked in the glory of everyone having no room to call him out on it.
The teacher didn't call on Katsuki to answer a single question that week, despite Katsuki volunteering to go up to the board to show off his pretty flower tucked behind his ear. The teacher avoided looking in Katsuki's general direction entirely. The entire left-front area of the classroom was ignored.
He was infinitely disappointed when the flower wilted. He kept his eyes sharp, waiting for someone to try such a stupid stunt again.
Some things couldn't be helped, but Katsuki would die trying, it seemed. Some things never changed.
Katsuki was great at school, going toe to toe with Izuku in primary school, pulling ahead in some classes and fighting tooth and nail against Izuku to be ahead in others. Until their quirk status became apparent. Then, by middle school, Katsuki was the unopposed champion of all of his classes, and Izuku was near the bottom. And, well, that was no fun.
No matter what their grades suggested, though, Katsuki knew that Izuku would always be better than him, faster than him at pattern recognition. Katsuki wasn't blind, though. When he saw it, he knew what he had to do.
Katsuki always sat at the desk in front of Izuku. He always peeked at his best friend's score to see how he measured up before passing the rest of the stack of papers back, staying turned in his seat to watch his friend take in the score scrawled on the top of the paper he had thrown his heart and soul into. Every single time. Sometimes, when Katsuki would not be there to protect him in the days before, Izuku's bruised face from the physical bullying would lighten with delighted surprise at the unexpected high score, right before the anxiety took over as he wondered if he would be pulled aside after school to be accused of cheating, even though that specific teacher had never taken that route before. Sometimes, when Katsuki's attendance had been consistent, Izuku's unblemished face would fall, knowing that he should have scored better, that he had definitely earned a better grade than that, but that there was no use in fighting about the score he was given.
Some things never changed.
Some things did, though.
Between the constant stream of harassment from the other children and constant pressure from the teachers, maybe it was just easier to give in and join in the natural rule of the world. To show Izuku his place, to help him adjust to his true place before he grew up and really got hurt by trying too hard to be something he couldn't be.
Maybe Katsuki tried his best. He tried his best to be the hero Izuku needed, but maybe he just wasn't strong enough. Or maybe he was just what Izuku needed.
To be put in his place.
"Your quirk is so cool, Bakugou!" one of the kids from the group crowding around the two long-time friends said.
School had just let out. It was still their first year of middle school. There was plenty of time to catch up if he adjusted right then.
He turned to face Izuku head-on, taking a step forward to invade his space suddenly, causing Izuku to stumble back and look up at him with wide, confused eyes.
"Kacchan?"
"Kacchan?" Katsuki mocked. "It's always Kacchan this and Kacchan that." He smirked, his eyes guarded and mean and directed right at Izuku for once. "All you do is cling to me and drag me down, like some quirkless, useless nobody—" Katsuki grunted then, his face alighting with a mean thought that Izuku wished would just stay behind his vermillion eyes. "You know… your name can also be read as Deku…" Katsuki's smile grew crueler. "Like dekunobou. Kinda fitting, isn't it, Deku?"
Izuku's eyes widened, jaw dropping in horrible shock at the behavior of his best friend. When Katsuki left with the group of boys, all jumping around him, telling him how cool he was, Izuku numbly noticed the tears streaming down his face. He looked over to see his teacher cleaning up the playground and knew that he probably had witnessed the whole pitiful thing and was going to do absolutely nothing about it.
He nodded to himself, steeled himself for what his future was going to look like, and started his walk home.
At first, Inko noticed that Izuku was withdrawn more, but he waved it off as having to study and focus harder than everyone else.
"If I want to get into UA, I really have to give it my all. Plus Ultra!" he would yell, putting energy he didn't have into his voice before running to his room as if to study, only to drop onto his bed and pass out, thoroughly mentally exhausted.
It was almost a relief when the beatings started. At least it took his mind off of things.
Before then, at least his grades had been fine. His teacher had been grading his exams and work fairly. It was nice while it lasted. If he didn't have any friends, at least he could count on consistent grades. Eventually, though, his teacher switched back to some other grading system that he liked to use for Izuku exclusively, and he started to get failing marks again.
"Maybe you aren't completely useless, Deku," Katsuki spat, cornering him after school.
Izuku was surrounded by his lackeys that he quickly picked up. It didn't matter that he had spent years protecting the quirkless loser; now that Katsuki was ready to move on and be friends with literally anybody else, their peers were jumping at the opportunity. Izuku couldn't blame them, really. He would, too.
Izuku whipped his head around, trying to find a break in their ranks to escape. He saw his teacher further back in the school yard, but because the group was just off of school property, the teacher pointedly carried on with his afterschool closing duties rather than intervening. Izuku knew that any intervention would be telling them to take it off of school property, anyway, and he would get no help from that man.
"You're a good size for target practice," Katsuki continued, making a show of looking Izuku up and down, small pops of his quirk sounding from his clenched fists, letting Izuku know what was about to come.
Katsuki's new friends rushed forward to grab Izuku before he could try to shove his way through, to make an opening if there wasn't already one to take advantage of.
Katsuki's quirk hurt. It was sharp and quick and biting, but the pain just didn't go away. It lasted long after his hands were removed from smoldering skin, dulled, but throbbing and hot.
Inko questioned Izuku about his new injuries after he had been injury-free for so long. "Are the bullies getting bad again?" she asked gently. "I thought you said that Katsuki was protecting you." He heard the unspoken question, is Katsuki okay?
"He is!" Izuku rushed to say, to ease his mother's worries. "We were actually just practicing some hero moves and got a little too carried away. I'm not hurt, though, mom. I'm fine! It's all in a day's work of becoming a hero after all!" Izuku said reassuringly with a bright smile on his face, striking one of the hero poses he was sure was going to be on one of his feature posters when he debuts in the future.
Then, on Valentine's Day, Izuku resigned himself to not receiving any flowers from anyone. Usually he and Katsuki would have gifted flowers to each other, but he knew that wasn't going to happen.
Then, he wished that was what happened, because receiving no flowers was better than seeing a bouquet of red spider lilies on his desk, waiting for him.
He froze in the doorway.
"What's wrong, Deku?"
Oh, thank gods. Kacchan will put an end to this, just like last time.
"Don't like the flowers I got you?"
Or maybe not.
"Uh… I- I- I love them, Kacchan. Thank you," he managed to mumble before taking his seat, ignoring the class's gleeful laughter at his expense, hands clenching in the air over the bouquet, but not able to bring himself to actually touch them.
What would he do with them after actually grabbing them, anyway?
He ended up taking them home.
Maybe a bouquet meant to tempt him into committing suicide was better than no bouquet, after all. He could explain this to his mother. He couldn't explain no flowers to his mother when it had been tradition for so long.
"Oh, Izuku!" she gasped when she saw them. "Who gave you these?!" she demanded.
He smiled brightly, not giving away that he heard any distress in her voice. "Kacchan! He upgraded from a single flower to a bouquet this year without telling me, so I'll have to outdo him next year!"
Inko seemed taken aback. "Oh? But, why these? Doesn't he usually just stick to daisies or roses?"
"His mom usually makes him get a rose with her when she goes shopping, or he picks a random flower he sees on the way to school, but he went out and got these on his own this time. He told me it's so that they remind me of his eyes, because of the color, and his explosions, because of the shape," Izuku said, smiling gently down at the bouquet, repeating Kacchan's words from when he had put the same kind of flower in his hair to defend Izuku instead of gifting them to him to taunt him in front of their peers.
Inko smiled widely. "Well, then. All that thought going into it, and a whole bouquet instead of just a single flower? Sounds like someone has a crush!"
Izuku choked on his spit, and then choked and coughed harder when Inko suggested they go out and choose a bouquet for Katsuki when his family comes over to join the Midoriyas for dinner that night.
Izuku couldn't tell her no.
"What about green hydrangeas?" Inko suggested, looking at the flower in question while tugging gently on a strand of Izuku's hair.
Izuku laughed and asked the florist what the symbolism of the flower was.
The older gentleman smiled softly and answered, "it represents gratitude, grace, and beauty."
Izuku nodded, looking up at Inko. "These are perfect." He turned toward the florist. "A bouquet of 18, please."
"Why 18?" Inko asked lightly. "Trying to outdo Katsuki already?"
Izuku just smiled at his mother in a vague non-answer. Izuku proudly handed over his own money from helping some of his neighbors with various odd jobs. He beamed the whole way home, face buried into the blooms, breathing deeply to smell the fragrant petals before he'd hand the oversized bouquet over to his best friend.
Katsuki wasn't stupid. He had the top marks in every class, but he knew that Izuku was better than him at literature. The nerd could pick out symbolism and explain it so flawlessly when all Katsuki could see were that the curtains were blue because the author said so, god damnit. What did the curtains being blue have to do with a character's emotions? Curtains didn't change color based on someone's mood, so it didn't make any goddamn sense!
"These are for you, Kacchan," Izuku had said, almost shyly, as he presented the bouquet, their parents huddling in the kitchen and making random clanking noises of cutlery against the table but not talking, pretending not to listen in. "The ones you got for me are red like your eyes, and shaped like your explosions, so these ones are green and big and bushy, to remind you of my hair."
It was later, when Katsuki and Izuku heard the murmuring chatter of their parents in the other room and knew that they weren't being listened to that Izuku continued to explain in a low voice, eyes not quite able to meet Katsuki's, "They mean gratitude, grace, and beauty." He shifted the bouquet's weight from one hand to the other, the complementing, plain brown paper crinkling pleasantly under his fingers as he did so. "I made sure to get 18 of them. One for each student you've protected me from, and one for the teacher, too."
He held out the bouquet to Katsuki, holding his breath, wondering what the reaction might be.
Katsuki snatched it from him, burying his face in the petals to inhale, much like Izuku had been on his walk home hours earlier. "You damn nerd," he snarled quietly, not wanting to alert their parents about their discourse, red eyes burning into Izuku's from above the blooms his face was buried in. "You damn nerd with your damn symbolism."
Izuku smiled.
He wondered if it had been a mistake as he entered school the next day, but neither Katsuki nor his lackeys ever brought up the topic of his bouquet (or the physical remains of the bouquet itself, a horrifying thought) into the bullying.
The bullying didn't let up.
But it waxed and waned.
Some days he'd be ignored completely. Other days, he'd be tormented from the time he stepped onto school grounds until he shut the door behind him, panting after running the whole way home.
And Katsuki was the leader of it all.
One day, on a day that Izuku was apparently to be blissfully ignored, one of Katsuki's friends got it into his mind that Izuku didn't deserve a break and went after him on his own.
"Hey, Deku!" the kid had yelled.
His name was Imataki Oriko, Izuku knew, but he also knew that Katsuki had deemed him with the unfortunate moniker 'Candelabra.' It wasn't very original, looking at the shape of the mutant quirk user's head, which indeed mimicked the top of a melted candle. There was a wick and everything. Izuku tried not to stare at it; it was bad manners.
It was also bad manners to push a quirkless kid down, call him useless, and tell him to kill himself, though, so Izuku tended to give himself some leeway where Imataki was concerned.
Izuku tried to bolt, to get away. That day was supposed to be lived in blissful invisibility, so Izuku didn't understand why Imataki was after him unless Katsuki changed his mind halfway through the day, but that had never happened before. Katsuki was nothing if not consistent. If it was an ignoring day, it was an ignoring day the whole day through. If it was a brutal day, it was brutal from start to finish. If it was middle ground, it stayed about average strength bullying the whole day. So, this didn't make any sense to Izuku, and he got a slow start because he wasn't expecting it.
He'd gotten faster at running. He'd had to. But he'd been caught off guard this time. Imataki caught up to him, pushed and tripped him, causing him to stumble. He regained his footing only to have Imataki push him down once again, and there was no hope for Izuku to save himself after that, so he put his hands out in front of him to cushion his fall, immediately feeling the burning sting of the gravel scraping against his palms, making him cry out in pain.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Katsuki barked.
Izuku flipped himself over as to not keep his back to his bullies and ignored his screaming palms as he used them to force himself back and away in some desperate crab walk, shaking his head and sputtering excuses and platitudes toward Katsuki, anything to reduce the beating he was about to receive, unsure of what to expect, treading new, uncertain territory.
But Katsuki wasn't looking at him.
"Hah?" he snarled, getting into Imataki's face, grabbing his collar so he couldn't retreat. "I'm talking to you, Candelabra! Fucking answer me!"
"It's just Deku! I—" he tried.
"Deku is mine," Katsuki hissed, throwing Imataki away from him, causing him to stumble and fall on the ground, next to Izuku.
Imataki didn't spare Izuku a glance, though, too busy looking up at Katsuki with wide, terrified, awe-filled eyes.
"I'm in charge. You follow my lead, and today, he's not worth my time, so you leave him the fuck alone, too. You keep this up and he'll be going and getting a big head, thinking he's important or some shit."
"Oh—Oh, yeah. Okay. Right," Imataki agreed easily, shakily standing up. "That's so smart, Bakugou. I didn't even think of that."
"Of course, you didn't, wax-for-brains. That's why you have me to do all of the thinking for you," Katsuki said, throwing an arm around Imataki as he led him away, Imataki slightly relaxing now that he was back in the volatile Katsuki's good graces.
Katsuki didn't look in Izuku's direction once.