Chapter Text
Katsuki would have to be brought to a court of law to ever come close to admit it, but after Izuku’s hero license gets renewed for active work, and the data gathering is done, mechanic suit finally broken into, he tells his support crew back at the agency to set out a special alarm code for his wrist watch and let him know whenever Hero Deku steps out on an assigned mission. Repeat the alert in case he misses the first one, too. Send the information through ear-piece if he's still too busy to hear it.
He already knows his patrol routes, though Izuku is still on probation, technically, since he has refused to sign a contract with anyone but the official Hero Commission as he tries to accommodate hero work around his already overflowing nine to five. Still, patrolling is mandatory for every active hero. The city is particularly sectioned and distributed by zone just to fulfill this decree and leveled through density of population and crime rate, so there’s a very large network of people that provide the kind of communication between private agencies and public service officers to sustain this kind of work. Katsuki didn’t even have to talk to anybody to find the information he wanted. There’s a database he can access online with the code behind his plastic card of a credential, and after a little searching, bam! There you go. Hero Deku-0359997616A, state: Active, assigned to the west-side of downtown Shizuoka, radius of 55 miles to be covered by air patrol or on foot during the time period of his four-hour shifts, Thursday to Sunday.
Katsuki’s own patrol shifts are designed differently, as the now established head of an Agency. Brand new as the development still is. Since the papers went through and he’s been, ruefully, forced to delegate some of his hours to getting acquainted, he has paid a concerning amount of care to the advice of fellow heroes and followed the instruction not to disregard the networking aspect of the job, bearing the tip with him during the hours he’s commissioned to cover the suburban and quaint little neighbourhood of Eastside Shizuoka, and throughout the time he’s not on shift. The good side of that awful bad means, mostly, that he’s been focused on doing things by going the long and tiring way to ensure they’re done well. Even when it takes the form of unavoidable partnerships and collaborations and an exorbitable amount of, awful, joint planning.
It’s not just making connections with the other heroes working near him. Some war veterans like him don’t put up any fuss but it’s always difficult when someone decides to settle down or changes their home base to an area already so popular, and Shizuoka has become a sort of touristic centerfold over the past few years. The influx of international heroes that flew in after the war had been slow to leave, turning most sidekick experiences into an exchange studies campus. Sane competition has changed the dynamics, and consequently contract clauses, not only for those being formally hired in this zone, but between agencies and their correspondent basecamp. Katsuki hasn’t taken any sidekicks yet, though his mailbox is open and spilling, and he’s reluctant to pick up the learning curve regarding colleagues and partners considering he’s ticked off by the people he’s taken in that he doesn't even have to share his workload with.
He’s tired of socializing for the sake of a personal goal, but with crime rates going down and down, it seems branding and trademarking have taken the wheel behind the rising of every big hero name. He went to a lot of meetings with U.A. graduates to check proposals for a hallmark. He met with a lot of constructors to revise the floor plans for the building. He set partnership deals with engineering firms, and then with gym centers to officialise an affiliation. He asked All Might and Aizawa continuously for advice when he felt like pulling his hair out and throwing the towel, admitting defeat by going back to sidekicking for Jeanist. He spent the last two months pouring over contracts and proudly signing dotted line after dotted line with an official seal, all while arranging the entourage of office workers that support the building and himself when he leaves it, and also strengthening relations with digital marketing firms that are meant to sustain him in the public eye during the two-year gap he’ll be in debt over the Commission discharge –allowing him to operate independently without government interference–, and the building lease.
It’s a wonder he hasn’t killed himself.
It’s strangely reassuring that bureaucracy is still a nightmare, no matter the improvements Hawks has brought to some of the ancient laws of the ejected higher-ups. But maybe some things are meant to be hard, even just to make the results feel like a sweeter recompense. Now, Katsuki can barely recognize the three floors he bought all those months ago, and the nicks and details that adorn the corners are visible and material proof of the people living in it, conjoined to his beliefs and that will strive, day by day, to see him win. It’s an achievement that he can’t take the entirety of credit for. Two months ago, the Commission’s inspector shook the hand of his secretary on his way out the door from the last operational scrutiny, an approval pass in on itself. The report that came back to Katsuki later had “observation of solid structurality and interoffice communication” jotted down on it. He set out for his first patrolling shift right after it by breaking the first and only tacit rule to exist among heroes, lost in a fit of excitement: through the window of his office, in civilian clothes.
He'd never thought that he would enjoy the community. Sharing a class with other aspiring heroes was one thing, but actually establishing himself in the throes of an active and everchanging world has opened the door to an incredible amount of realizations. Katsuki’s not an easy person, but he’s a great hero: truths that coexist without invalidating each other. People have been proven able to digest the force of his bluntness, and even when they aren’t obligated to like him, respect has to be bred in order to yield recognition. At this point of his life, it would be idiotic not to lean into the whole ordeal. He needs a strong background, and people generally need something to strive for in order to put effort into their jobs. Its symbiotic relations all around. He wants people’s support as much as he wants the win. He needs them keeping up base if he ever wants to amount to something honest. It's an extra upgrade to remember he won’t fight alone ever again.
He'd gotten used to the noise by now, though he often wonders if this is what the past users of One for All felt like inside Izuku’s head, when he was still carrying All Might’s quirk. Comparable to a Greek chorus announcing bad omens and trailing after every step, the mic on his ear those first missions hit him like an unshakeable coat that weighted on him like it was fitting ten little kids under it, all fighting to shove their head through the neck. It was maddening, and their voices were something that Katsuki could turn off. He couldn’t imagine having Yun from the Geolocalisation area inside his head.
Katsuki felt like asking Izuku if he ever missed the chatter, during that first terrible run trial. But they’ve never mastered the deal of talking honestly and it was a conversation that bore more ill than good. It was asking for trouble, maybe, digging vicious nails into the wound. Izuku had spent most of the post-war period scattered to the winds, flocking between friends and teachers with wunderkind enlightenment and avoiding heartfelt conversations that didn’t enclose the speech of acceptance and growth he sputtered whenever the topic of OFA was brought up. When he wasn't posing, his face got drawn and forlorn, and he was still too out of reach. Maybe further from view.
The suit had been the first glimpse through the haze of a blurry landscape. First shift back on the job Izuku had sent the Class-A group chat a blurry selfie from atop one windy roof, and Katsuki’s hand had shaken with the need to trespass the screen and touch him, elation injected straight into his veins. Finally, finally. The suit fit like a dream. “Don’t crash it” he’d sent back, covering his mouth in case someone was around to see him grinning at the screen.
He´d hooked the news report the next morning and the section had been filled with testimonies of people celebrating Izuku’s unexpected return, a wave of bittersweet welcome greets that tiptoed into flashbacks of the war before turning the wheel abruptly in the other direction, to tone-deaf compliments on how good he moved for a quirkless hero. By now, on the three month mark of his debut as a Pro, the novelty has slowly but surely started to fade, and, as Izuku proves himself to be resilient and unstoppable, the suit is nothing but an afterthought, a marvel for the technicians that built it and an accomplishment for Katsuki and the classmates that pitched in and made it happen, but Izuku’s nonetheless, always meant as an aid and not the miracle cure striving towards salvation. Izuku never needed someone telling him what he could do, just that it was meant to be him.
U.A. has gotten him in its clutch, though. Katsuki was a steady presence during Izuku’s first testings for the suit, given that he’d coordinated most of the general mobility and quirk usage aids to be as familiar to him as One for All had been. His input had played a big role behind the design of the fighting tactics based on the months of high-pressure training done before the last battle, because while All Might knew more about the past users, Katsuki had faced Izuku at his most powerful, his most ruthless. The finished transition was flawless; If Izuku thought of it then the suit did it, slipping on like a second skin and slick and shiny like a sports car. It pained Katsuki that it would fold and sit untouched for days on as Izuku ranted to ignorant teenagers that would never amount to the same as him, dressed down to a suit and tie like he was dismissing his childhood ambition to a second-string gig that didn’t even pay that well. Giving it his free hours, being calculating and underwhelmingly enthusiastic in regards to the future and the fan of options it opened to him, the amount of possibilities that were now at arm reach.
It was a pipe dream to think that Izuku would drop the feeble facade of his actual life and scramble to the streets. He was in the thick of the school year when All Might came back to Japan with the suit in a package, and he went on and on about his students’ trajectories and the unfinished syllabus, the upcoming provisional license exam waiting for them around the corner. He gave his weekends as a peace offering, but the process was still slow-going and had to be picked up with renewed energy every week, like Izuku had forgotten the advances in the matter of his school hours. He was still, of course, infuriatingly good.
Katsuki had forgotten what fighting Deku in his prime was like. The last two years of high school were spent in slow-going rehabilitation for his arm, and while Deku had a freeway to work his embers as he pleased, everyone knew he was hoping to hold onto them at least until he got a pro license after graduation. Shelf life hopes, Izuku called them, smiling big so his cheeks pushed his eyes closed. They were careful sparring partners because of it, hated it, and got pissed off about it. They wouldn't pair off during class, under tacit agreement to save everyone from a trip down memory lane, but whenever a night would toss them together, fighting the insomnia or shaken by nightmares, it was too easy to confuse new pains under all their historic sore spots. They would circle each other on a training mat, barefoot, and find new ways to hurt. They had trained together after school, met up regularly in the gym downtown where everyone was in the business, but never like that.
Katsuki enjoyed the training for the suit more than he expected, given how much he would make his presence fade into the background. Pressed to the blinded glass, he’d look down to Izuku in the start line of the obstacle race. Then it was clear to see that for him it all was merely a heaven-sent excuse to test himself, a new motive to fight, the truth hidden behind the dangerous glint in Izuku’s eyes, like he was a collared dog being told to run as fast as he could.
“What’d you think, Kacchan?” Izuku would ask after, through his mic, clutching his water bottle and taking gulp after gulp. Out of breath, his eyes would squint up to where he knew he was being observed, and fixate there, though the glass was see-through only from the inside. Then before Katsuki would answer, he was already scrambling to the starting position once more. “I can do it faster! Time for me again, please.”
All or nothing. That was Deku at his core.
He was always succeeding his own expectations. Katsuki’d been there for Izuku’s university graduation, despite his invitation getting lost in the mail, and he’d clutched his shoulder with tight fingers, and shaken him and his shiny diploma with slightly contained pride. He’d been there for the school ceremony for his first batch of graduates, as Izuku presented the lineup of students that were now shaped up and shoved to the real world, some of which Katsuki had gotten acquainted with during his surprise practical and theoretical classes. He’d been there for his last birthday, the big twenty-five, in some lousy drinking place that had more people in it than the local laws should allow, leaving early only because he’d gotten tired of watching from afar. He’d been there, for the suit delivery. For the first wear, the first mobility test, the first spar. Katsuki had been there, for Todoroki’s congratulatory party, white-knuckling the wheel and forcing his eyes away from the rearview mirror, as he saw a mirage turn into a deserted land once and for all.
Katsuki doesn’t like to feel out of the loop, and he forces himself to maintain boundaries, don’t overstep. Don't resent the world for what he can’t change by himself, either. When he feels the need to intrude on someone's business, he reasons with the tug of his chain and forces his heart to obey.
So when he steps out for his usual zone coverage and his alarm beeps, he tries not to feel too underwhelmed to see it flaring up not with a mission report, but a link to the Hero Commission news page. As he blasts himself to the nearest roof, he’s blinking sweat out of his eyes, and the midday sun finds him and beams him straight on, making him grunt and curse. His watch has a more practical screen for reading criminal profiles and he unlocks it now with a shake of his wrist, hounding onto the shadow created by his own head to see the words splayed in it, then trying, fiercely, not to feel like he's being purposefully misled as he reads that Izuku’s changed his patrolling turf to Katsuki’s district.
It takes him a minute to make sense of the information. He hasn’t really heard from Izuku since that last social appearance he did at the school, a few days after Todoroki’s jump to number 2 on the rankings. Izuku had been quieter than usual, then, moving aimlessly between his desk and the chair he had placed next to the door to observe, missing his cues to speak. Katsuki had planned to commit some indifference after the whole fiasco that was his turned down job offer, but found himself inexplicably mad to have the opportunity taken away from him. It was like Izuku had forgotten how he usually behaved around him, and his eyes routinely snapped from the floor to Katsuki’s face, startled, like he was an extra puzzle piece found laying around after he had completed the picture. The class had ended on the one-hour mark, and while Katsuki had at least been curt to leave, cutting Izuku’s senseless babble short, the unease had followed him back to the Agency, into a sleepless night. Lingering, like a sense of dread that has now bred a whole new catalog of problems.
Changing districts. Like that doesn’t change everything.
It’s been a while since he’s been thrown a curveball of this magnitude, especially since Izuku has been a sort of unmovable object for so much of his recent life. Out of hands-reach, untouchable by normal things like extreme sadness or happiness. Set on possible landmarks, and free of burdens. Katsuki can at least resent him for this: his latest suit of appeasing condescendence, his taste for keeping slates clean. They’re not easy people, and it’s stupid to pretend otherwise. Violence, the lot of it, the lack of it, it’s like an unspooled ball of wool stitched through everything they do. They’re good at it, it’s the thing. Anger is body fuel in a fight, air runs thin with the amount of energy outputted from their charged up bodies, their unwavering fists-up, chin-up, piercing battle-ready body that doesn’t relent even on the brink of death, and even then gears up to go out with a bang. Total victories, and raided fields, and devastation like a price to pay for a merciful ending. Katsuki always knew he’d end up dealing in warfare; after all, there’s no greatest honor for a hero. His own mind, on the other hand, is a bloody and stubborn guerrilla he’d thought he could fight into submission, could coerce into playing second-string. In the end, when he’s worn down and frantic, exhausted after a whole day of being his greatest self, he’s still viciously miserable and burdened with his own mind, surrounded by silent rooms and rooftop views, big-ass bed in an apartment he barely sees during the day.
It doesn’t help that introspection has always been different for both of them: Izuku is evasive, insecure, and prone to spiraling. Katsuki is guarded, isolated and punishing. Their honesty can withstand mutual betrayal but it won’t hold them together. Understanding each other has never been a goal, but life has thrown them together so many times to learn to rely on it when it counts. They’re not seventeen, and they haven’t been for a long time, and nothing is new or easy, or as exciting as they thought it would be. Where’s the fucking punchline? Katsuki’s shed the anger, he’s pushed his way out of the labyrinth, and now he’s hungry for something soft that will willingly choose him back. His heart is a hunting dog, mean and instinctive, locked in this endless pursuit that will never see the light of day. Izuku can pretend to have gone soft all he wants, to be a man without appetites. Katsuki knows him enough to begrudge him for this absurd training of the self that’s locked him in a circle of guilt and regret, that has rendered him as strange as a stranger’s face.
Why moving now? What’s changed? Izuku’s noble, good down to his very core, but Katsuki was nothing except thorough all his life and the old pretense of antagonism now feels like a crafted castle of excuses and poorly executed jokes that have turned on him. Asking for more feels like testing the limits of his own existence. He never expected his own teeth to come and bite him in the ass, and certainly not when he’s been begging for scraps, a cohesive thread to guide his good intentions home, tables turned on all his vain expectations. Time has made it easier. He has come to digest kindness in small doses, to stop counting in favors and debts, to deter anger from holding him by the throat, to tread lightly on the gray areas where he’s still overcompensating and feeling the aftereffects of a brash and foolish upbringing. But it seems like the deadline for absolution has passed them by, and there’s no space for retakes. They’re both just two old wounds, scabbed over, but they’ve gotten over the worst of it. Is it absurd to imagine that Katsuki has earned himself, at least, the honor to be informed of his most important life-updates? This can’t come off as anything other than the fact that he’s being deliberately left out. Izuku can’t still act under the belief that his decisions don’t impact anyone but himself, so this must be a purposeful decision. This must be him, following some tacit plan.
Katsuki doesn’t know how independent heroes work, and he waits until after his shift is done to look it up. He has to undergo an extensive cool-down process anyway, so as to not upset his heart with unnecessary stress, and he finds himself with ice up to his neck, leaning over the edge of the bathtub and typing on the Hero News digital magazine frontpage on a beaten-down tablet he squirreled inside the cold-box with him, a damp towel over his head. The page spits out a frontline without further search, and he stills barely a second on the picture they chose of Izuku, clinging to the railing of some building and smiling to the cameras, before locking into the text under it.