Chapter Text
TW: Mentions of suicide baiting, bullying, violence against children. Katsuki chained to the podium, Katsuki being an asshole.
Actions have consequences. It’s a basic fact of life.
For example, you can’t kick a soccer ball as hard as you can and expect it not to go flying.
You can’t insult someone’s hair and expect them to want to hang around you anymore.
You can’t shove someone face-first into their locker and act surprised when they arrive the next day with dark purple splotches on their cheeks and an equally dark gaze leveled at you for the next few weeks.
You can’t be expected to accept a first place medal if you won on a technicality.
You can’t say “You’ll have to chain me to the fucking podium” and then act surprised when pink smoke starts to fill the locker room. One moment you’re treating the frostbite on your arm and the next thing you know you’re in the center of UA’s stadium, arms pulled taught in front of you and encased in quirk-canceling metal shackles. All Might puts a gold medal around your neck. It’s heavy. You can’t move, can’t speak. They fucking muzzled him.
Katsuki gets home that day later than everyone else, only being unlocked once Midnight, Present Mic, Cementoss, Vlad King, and Aizawa-sensei were present. Cementoss starts on the restraints, and Katsuki lets him. The shackles clatter to the floor and all the adults all straighten up, they eye him, air tense as if they expected him to lash out at them guns blazing. Revenge for the spectacle they forced him to partake in.
But Katsuki just rolls his shoulders and straightens his back, finally standing straight after hours forced to remain partially hunched over. He keeps his eyes trained down and lifts his hands to the back of his head and manages to remove the muzzle, which was only secured with a simple buckle in the back.
Only then does he look at his teachers. They look back at him. A part of Katsuki, the one keeping him awake, wants to break something, wants to scream at them for chaining him up for all of Japan to gawk at like he was some sort of villain instead of a student.
Another part of him wants to wait, wants to know, out of morbid curiosity, what they could possibly say in a situation like this. But the teachers’ silence says enough. Guess there’s Katsuki’s answer. He walks around them to get to the exit, leaving a wide berth between him and them. They let him.
His parents are away on a business trip and due to return in a few days so Katsuki comes home to an empty house. He eats leftover curry and absently opens up twitter.
The first thing he sees are the GIFs. He’s thrashing, brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, face contorted and body tense. He zooms into a few of them. The sheen on his cheeks looks like it was from sweat. Nothing else. Good.
Next are the comments. Some people laugh at him, call him passionate. Some say he should have just sucked it up and accepted the win. Others wonder how they let “someone like him” into the most prestigious hero school in the country.
“I went to the same junior high as him. He was a total bully.”
It’s just one comment out of several thousands, but it makes all the blood drain from his face. “Fuck.” He lets out under his breath. Katsuki’s eyes move from the text to the icons below. The tweet has a few hundred retweets but the number is steadily increasing.
Despite what many might think, Katsuki isn’t dumb, and he’s not so self-unaware as to think that the way he treats people can be considered anything other than mean. He knows he’s aggressive, a narcissist on his better days. It’s just how it is, how it always has been. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Bakugo Katsuki is a Grade-A Asshole.
And he knows that how he treats Deku is especially…
He grips the notebook in his hand with enough force to crumple the pages and rip the binding at the edges. He lets it smoke in his hand and turns back to look at Deku, who is frozen like a deer in headlights.
But Katsuki is a glutton when it comes to power. That gaze, the fear they held. It wasn’t enough, he wanted more. He wanted to see something break .
The words escaped him before he could stop and think.
“If you want a quirk so badly, why don’t you take a swan dive off a roof and pray for one in your next life?”
…yeah. He knows. He knows and he doesn’t give a flying fuck about it. It all happened and he’s not a goddamn wuss who refuses to stand by the shit they let happen, the shit they make happen. Besides, it’s not like Deku would be stupid enough to even-
The curry goes cold. Katsuki puts his phone away and sets to doing the pile of dishes in the sink from the past week before heading to bed. He all but belly-flops on top of his covers and is out like a light in a few minutes, hoping that all of this will just blow over, hopefully before work-studies start.
It doesn’t blow over.
The tweet goes viral. Someone posts some text screenshots. Deku gets implicated, and within the week #BakugoKatsukiIsABully is trending. Katsuki wants to put away his phone. He tries to leave it in another room, but within minutes he’s scrambling for it like a lifeline. He feels like he’s always on the verge of being sick. Sleep has started dancing away from his grasp at night. He’s grumpier than usual in class. The looks his classmates give him last a beat too long. (Or maybe that’s in his head, he hopes it’s just in his head.)
He powers through anyway. Katsuki is like a bullet train. Never touching the ground, moving too fast for anything around him to be anything more than a nonsensical blur. All in pursuit of one singular goal. Heroes get into controversies all the time. Maybe it would bother him if he was someone else, but he’s Bakugo motherfucking Katsuki. He’s in a whole other league compared to all these other extras he shares a homeroom with. This bullshit is nothing.
It’s Deku who approaches him first, after class.
“Hey, um. Kacchan.” Deku starts, shifting from side to side when Katsuki meets his eyes, like he’s not sure whether he wants to keep talking or run away. “I dunno if you’ve seen what’s being… said about you online but— Not that I’m calling you ignorant or anything! I’m sure you’re totally—“
“Deku.” Katsuki cuts him off. It’s clearly a warning, but also missing its usual bite. Katsuki attributes it to a lack of sleep, but mentally kicks himself for the slip-up nonetheless.
Deku straightens, it takes him a second to reply. “Are…Are you okay?”
Deku wears his emotions on his face and nowhere else. It makes him a shit liar. On the flip side, when he’s sincere it's painfully obvious, like right now. The thought makes Katsuki physically recoil. Deku notices and his face falls. Good. Let this be a lesson. Katsuki doesn’t need pity from anyone, and coming from the Nerd it’s downright insulting. And it makes something in Katsuki curl up in disgust, and Katsuki is reminded that Deku existing here literally goes against everything he stands for.
Because Deku is a pest. He was deluded, naïve, a hero fanboy who talks big and then folds like wet toilet paper. Deku fucks up royally left and right when it matters most and still somehow, despite his overwhelming incompetence, manages to yank win after win out of his ass and people fall to their knees to worship the ground this shitstain walks on for it.
And that’s not even touching on the fact that Deku got the biggest goddamn handout the universe could give him.
And suddenly this kid who Katsuki barely spared a second glance at is gunning for Number 1 and actually might do it.
Katsuki knew the day he got his quirk that if he wanted to seriously be a hero, he would have to bust his ass every single day. And he did it without complaint. Faint outlines of burn scars smatter across his limbs, barely noticeable unless scrutinized up close thanks to good genes from his mother. His right shoulder twinges sometimes from being dislocated one too many times. He sucks it all up, and then keeps going at Mach 5, because that’s what it takes to go Pro.
So sharing the same spot with a whiny nerd who, less than a year ago couldn’t run one lap during PE and had no motivation to improve is like a Detroit Smash to the gut. And then worse, this chucklefuck has the gall to come up to Katsuki and ask if Katsuki is okay, as if Katsuki would ever want “help” from Deku.
The anger starts as twang, like someone played a sour note on a harp. But then instead of fading out, the sound persists, a buzzing getting louder and louder in Katsuki’s brain until it’s redredhot and his palms are sweaty and his fingers start twitching with the urge to break something.
“What the fuck? What kind of question is that Deku?” The name comes out as a snarl. He wants to make sure the Deku knows exactly what he means when he says it. Deku shrinks back, but it’s more-so in resignation than fear like it used to be. As if something changed between them after the whole world learned that Deku could level a building with a flick of his pinky finger.
And isn’t that a sickening thought.
Katsuki wants to scream, to lash out at Deku, at anyone who comes close. But fighting is prohibited, and Katsuki worked hard to get here and he’s not gonna let Shitty Deku ruin this for him by baiting him into a brawl. he’d have to be more of an idiot than the idiot in front of him to fall for that trick. He doesn’t stick around. He turns on his heel and stalks home, palms sparking off the sweat threatening to drip onto the ground.
————
A few articles about him start circulating online. He glances at the headlines but doesn’t give them much thought outside of that. Everything else is normal. Nobody is saying anything, not even his parents.
It's all fine until it's not. The week before they're set to get their internship offers, both Katsuki and Izuku are called into Principal Nezu’s office. The principal is seated at his desk, but that’s not what catches Katsuki’s attention. Aizawa-sensei is waiting inside, along with Auntie Inko. Both his parents are there as well, and Katsuki almost does a double take, because they weren’t scheduled to come back for a few more days.
“Midoriya-kun, Bakugo-kun, please have a seat.” Nezu says, tone polite to the point of dispassion. They both sit next to their respective parent(s), sinking into the plush sofas.
“As you are all likely aware, there are several accusations being thrown around about Bakugo-kun’s conduct in junior high. Normally, we would not pay these much attention, however given the traction this particular incident has gained, we feel it is necessary to publish an official statement. However, before we do that, I would like to gather an official statement from both of you.” The principal explains, leveling both of the children with an unsettling gaze that would have been polite had it come from anyone else.
Admission to UA High School is notoriously difficult, not only because of its insane entrance exams, but also for what it demands of applicants outside of those tests. Specifically, the admissions committee looks evaluations of personal conduct in addition to academic performance. Even one significant demerit, like academic dishonesty or voluntary misconduct, and an applicant can kiss any chance of an acceptance goodbye.
Voluntary misconduct, like, harassment and bullying.
Katsuki’s limbs feel like they’re locked in place. He can hardly manage to crane his neck to face Nezu. He doesn’t dare sneak even a glance at the Midoriya’s, or his own parents. He settles on Aizawa-sensei. The man is looking at Katsuki with an unreadable expression.
“So, to cut to the chase: Midoriya-kun, Bakugo-kun, do these allegations have any truth to them?”
“No. They’re false.” Deku says without missing a beat.
Katsuki grits his teeth and resists the urge to whip his head around, instead, turning his head slowly to look at Deku and give him a look that said What the ever-loving fuck do you think you’re doing?”
But Deku just stares straight back at him, chin up and jaw taught. His normal nervous ticks are nowhere to be seen. The look in Deku’s eyes is the same one he wore when he fought Half-n-Half in the sports festival. The one that said “You need saving. I’m not stopping until I save you.” It makes bile rise to Katsuki’s throat. Who the fuck did the Shitty Nerd think he was?!
Aizawa-sensei narrows his eyes, but it’s so slight that Katsuki almost thinks he imagined it. His homeroom teacher nods at Deku, and then turns to look at Katsuki. “Well, Bakugo?” And Katsuki’s throat goes dry. His shoulders hunch forward. It’s still a foreign feeling, having everyone’s attention on him and yet wanting to be anywhere except here.
He must have taken too long to speak, because Aizawa adds on, “As you all are aware, UA has a strict zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying, even if it happened in past institutions. However,” Aizawa looks pointedly at Katsuki and Katsuki wonders just how much his homeroom teacher suspects. “UA is also no stranger to how eager the media can be to distort narratives when profitable to do so. Which is why, first and foremost, we give our students the benefit of the doubt. If you say that the allegations are false, we will believe you.” He speaks slowly and carefully, as if each word conveyed a thousand different messages.
The longer the silence stretches the more Katsuki feels like he’s suffocating. He glances at the others in the room. Deku’s pleading silently, as if saying “Please, go along with it.” with his dumb eyes. Auntie Inko’s face is like ice, the stare she’s giving Katsuki is a far cry from the warm smiles he received when he came over for playdates when he was younger.
If the elephant in the room were real, Katsuki thinks, it would be brightly colored in red blue and yellow, and stomping all around, knocking over Nezu’s bookcases and yelling “I am here! I am here!”
He wonders, how many of them know. How many of them truly know.
The clock is ticking on the wall behind the principal. Katsuki knows he’s been quiet for too long. Katsuki isn't stupid, he knows about Aldera's blatant favoritism towards him is how his behavior flew under the radar for so long. He's brash, he's combatitve, and everybody knows it. But beyond the aggression and the anger, Bakugo Katsuki is greedy and selfish. He has an opportunity to put this whole ordeal to rest and it's fallen right into his lap. He should just deny the allegations and be done with it. He should just agree with Deku's testimony, he should—
His heart is thrumming so hard it feels like he will burst. With a word, everything he’d been working towards his entire life could end, right here, right now. It feels almost like a test. But with tests, there’s always a clear right answer. And in this case, when Katsuki runs through possible scenarios on how this ends, for the first time he comes up empty handed.
There is no right answer.
Of course, he knew in theory that right and wrong were subjective at best. But still, the realization makes him a little woozy, like the world has shifted slightly to the left, just enough to make everything feel off.
There is no right answer.
But there is a way out.
Am I really gonna do it? Katsuki thinks. He thinks about seeing Deku every day, being forced to interact in class or running into each other in their neighborhood, all the while acting as if Aldera never happened. It’s sick, and cruel, and twisted. Am I really gonna do it? And Katsuki is no stranger to those three things but somehow this is different. And suddenly the decision is simple. It’s simple, but he still can’t believe he’s going to fucking do it.
What he wouldn’t do for a glass of water right now.
“Yeah,” Katsuki rasps, “It’s all true.”
Bakugo Katsuki is aggressive. He’s vulgar; a narcissistic asshole on his better days. He’s egotistical, selfish, and greedy.
But he’s not a goddamn liar.