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Thirty finds Deku at odds with the life he’d expected and the one he received.
This isn’t news for him, and a day is just a day, an age merely a number in the face of one’s heart.
But sometimes Deku’s heart feels just as battered as his body.
Japan’s Number One Hero always gets a birthday bash thrown in their honor, year in and out. In the beginning, Deku had been over the moon, a part of the stars for which he’d striven. His face is a constellation above his country now, a sparkle of hope plastered across skyline billboards as he lofts from one building to another. The birds up there are the only things that don’t recognize him anymore, and there’s a comfort in the high-rise shriek of wind overpowering the sounds of the city below.
In one of those very towers, Deku rides the final hour of his birthday with heavy feet and shoulders, unlocking the door to his vast, empty apartment and slipping inside. The silence is a blessing and a curse. The party is over, the merriment settled like confetti stamped beneath hundreds of feet, and Deku doesn’t have to wear a tie anymore.
He stripes in the entryway of his home, nude and sighing as he rolls an aching arm in its socket, then the other as he steps to the cool wood floor and makes for the bedroom. The shadowed hallway has become a catacomb of the past, crisp white frame upon frame, filled with faces long gone. Friends, colleagues, a lover or two.
Turning eighteen had been a joy, twenty-one a rocket toward a bright future, twenty-five paused by a hero gone too soon, and every year after that is another hairline fracture in the piecemeal bones of his body.
Thirty is a number, Deku knows, and so are the amount of people he’s lost in that lifetime.
Deku doesn’t feel like this every night or day, or even every week. His life is vibrant and action-packed, lightning and thunder and sunshine skies from morning to night. His smile is real and his hope is intact, mostly.
But the parties are hard now. No one reminds a kid that being a hero means watching people die. People you love. Deku supposes he was told once or twice or thrice or, hell, a thousand times, but when you’re a child, all of that is white noise and coddling gauze.
Naked and worn, Deku pads into his bedroom, and screams like a little girl as he clutches at his crotch.
“Holy shit, Kacchan! A little warning!”
Kacchan scans Deku’s body with a bland eye, his own frame clad in black sweats and a stupid skull shirt that warms Deku’s heart just to see. His best friend is lying dead center in Deku’s unmade bed, fiddling with his phone. The white glow of the screen highlights the jagged scar climbing up his jaw as he grins and sits up.
“My shoes are at the front fuckin’ door. Don’t blame me for your shitty eyesight, nerd."
“Hello to you too,” Deku says flatly, flicking a look to his drawers across the room. He really wants clothes.
“The birthday idiot in his birthday suit, eh?” Kacchan can’t look more viciously gleeful at Deku’s discomfort. He checks his phone briefly and shrugs. “Thirty-seven minutes left. Made it in just under the wire.”
“I thought your contract in America wasn't getting renewed for half a year,” Deku says as he edges toward his drawers, dick and balls in hand, and aims a halfhearted glare at Kacchan, who is very purposely choosing not to look away just to fuck with him.
“I do what I want,” Kacchan says flippantly, a pale eyebrow arched high as he watches Deku rustle through his underwear draw with one hand covering himself. “Just came in from my flight. Coulda gone to that party, but that shit makes me sick.”
“Still a sore loser?” Deku snickers, more confident now as he turns away and slips his boxers over the curve of his ass. He peers over his shoulder, a sharp, bright shard of something embedded in his heart turning with pain when he sees Kacchan watching him without a smile.
Then the look is gone and he’s tossing his head back in a victory laugh.
“Please. I had number one before you and I left it for America. Everyone loves me.”
“I know it,” Deku says, not sure if he’s smiling, but he’s hoping he is.
“Hey.” Kacchan’s features shift so suddenly into a scowl that Deku wonders how he can ever forget how expressive the man is. Age looks good on him, as does the attitude adjustment over the years. “You look pathetic. Sit down, talk. The party was shit? I mean, they always are, but you love that bull anyway.”
“The party was fine,” Deku says, exhaustion heavy in his voice as he forgoes clothes and flops back on the bead, arms splayed. His cheek ends up pressed to Kacchan’s knee as he stares at the ceiling. “I’m old.”
“You ain’t old, dipshit.” Fingers find Deku’s hair, dig in and rests there. “But you feel it now, don’t ya? I do. My doctor says I’m goin’ deaf, y’know. From the explosions. What the fuck does he know?”
“Well, you already have tinnitus in one ear,” Deku adds, happy to rub it in right now. It’s what they do.
“Yeah, and your bad hand can barely make a fist. Bet you can’t even jack off with it no more.”
“If I need help I’ll be sure to let you know,” Deku says dryly, smiling in earnest at the ceiling now. “How long will you be staying this time?”
Kacchan doesn’t answer, his hand tightening in Deku’s hair before releasing. Deku rolls to his side, head propped up on his palm as he looks up to meet Kacchan's intent stare.
“Kacchan?”
“I’m staying, actually.”
Time doesn’t stop, but Deku swears his heart does.
“I’m sorry?” he whispers, his heart bottoming out, his chest impacting in on itself.
“You deaf too? Said I’m stayin’, now. My dad’s health is shit these days and I should help at home, plus I - well, I -” Kacchan’s lips press tightly together, but Deku can’t look away from his eyes, red gaze cast aside, unwavering on the plaid patterned bedspread.
Deku sees his twentieth birthday like a tattoo on the inside of his eyelids. Sees Kacchan naked, wrapped up in him, brow to his own, saying, I ain’t gonna be with nobody while I’m away, but I can’t be with you either.
Deku sees Kacchan’s face break like it did that first day in front of the doors of UA. Sees his own hand on Kacchan’s cheek, thumbing away the tears as Deku ignores his own and says, Okay, shhh, okay.You’ll never lose my friendship.
“Are you -” Deku swallows the crack in his voice, can’t trust himself but doesn’t care. He can’t move, can’t look away, can’t breath. “Do you -”
“Can I?” Kacchan says, the change in his demeanor like whiplash, his words a raw croak from somewhere deeper than his voice box. His gaze shifts to Deku in the darkness, glinting and unsure in ways only Deku ever saw back when they were stupid kids playing heroes in nice, clean UA uniforms. "Could we still?"
Deku doesn’t pretend not to know. Doesn’t insult either of them with games.
“Of course,” Deku whispers, hoarse, overwhelmed as he scrambles to sit up, hands grabbing at anything and everything, finding Kacchan’s face like the old days. “Of course, yes, yes yes -”
“Then shut up so I can kiss you,” Kacchan murmurs before he follows through, hard and desperate and hungry, an edge of a whimper at the back of his mouth, so familiar but somehow foreign after so many years apart. As friends, as a listening ear, a venting board, as visiting heroes popping into town for a holiday here and there.
They barely part, breathing too hard for a single series of kisses long overdue and under-practiced, but there they are, and Deku is over the moon for the first time in so many birthdays and years and funerals and fights.
“You know,” Deku says into Kacchan’s mouth, too terrified to move any further than entirely encompassed by him, “I had the worst feeling about today.”
“Me too,” Kacchan muffles into Deku’s bare shoulder and inhales, shameless and deep.
“What?” Deku laughs, perplexed as he leans back enough to catch Kacchan’s wandering attention. “You didn’t really think I’d ever stop waiting, did you?”
“It’s not that,” Kacchan says with an eye roll. “I was just pissed off with how long it’d take me to undress you. Turns out, you’d done all the work for me.”
Despite himself, Deku feels his face burn and thanks the deep night for maybe hiding it as he squirms in Kacchan’s arms.
“Yeah, well, birthday suit and all.”
“My favorite way to have you,” Kacchan says, drawing Deku in with a distracted smile, gaze lingering on Deku’s pouting mouth. “Happy Birthday, me - er, I mean, Deku.”
Deku bursts into a laugh and decides maybe thirty won’t be so bad after all.
“Happy Birthday, me.”