Chapter Text
MAY
Katsuki didn’t dream all that often.
Most times, when he did, they were about mundane, inconsequential things. Like sitting in class and writing down whatever bullshit Midnight was talking about, or having a heated argument with his mother on the phone. On rare occasions, he dreamt about being a hero - a real one, taking on the streets with a feral grin as he blasted himself towards some poor bastard who’d made the sore mistake of running away from him.
And then he’d wake up slowly, mind still trapped in whatever world he had subconsciously created for a couple of seconds, before he sat up and the dream fell lightly from his memory as though it had never happened. They were pointless things anyway - not worth wasting time thinking about it.
Which is why he noticed instantly that something was wrong in here.
His first thought was that he was paralysed, seeing that he was unable to move. As his eyes focused, he was met with his own face. It stared back at him from a watery reflection, the expression on his face distorted by ripples. Vaguely he registered the fact that he was in a river, in the way you understood what was happening in a dream despite how strange or random it might be.
Katsuki’s heartbeat quickened, hackles rising. He tried to think of the last thing he remembered. He was sparring with that Half and Half bastard, and then it was his and Sato’s turn to make dinner, and then he was crawling into bed by 8:30.
Maybe there was an attack while I was sleeping, his mind supplied, heart beating impossibly faster. He still couldn’t move. I’ve been hit by a quirk. I’m seeing things. It’s the League of Villains making me see shit and I need to get up right now!-
“Kacchan?"
Fuck. What is he doing here?
Instantly, the world came rushing in to assault him. The first thing he noted was the sound - the gentle flow of a moving river, birds chirping, wind rustling through trees. And then there was the smell of damp earth, and even the faintest trace of blood. A gentle breeze carded itself through his hair, bringing with it the heady scent of summer.
His limbs relaxed, the blood rushing to his head as he managed to pull his hands out of the water to examine them. There were scrapes on his elbows and palms. Why did they look so familiar? The world was spinning like mad, but when he looked towards the sound of the voice on his left, everything stilled all at once.
It felt wrong to see Deku standing over him with his hand outstretched, though he couldn’t exactly pinpoint why. He blinked at the hand reaching towards him, uncomprehending. His eyes flicked back up to meet Deku’s, who flinched away when he noticed his expression. Katsuki didn’t even know what he must’ve looked like at that moment.
“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t mean to uh- sorry. Um, this is really weird…” Deku pulled his hand away so quickly that it blurred between them. The green haired boy glanced away, and back again at the blond below him. Clearing his throat, he crouched down next to Katsuki and put his hands in the water, resolutely not looking at him. “Huh. Even the water feels so real! Geez, it’s so cold.”
Okay, so not a villain attack then. Katsuki was going to have to just go with his gut on this one.
“What are you fucking talking about?” Katsuki grumbled, shoulders drooping as the threat disappeared, and - oh. That’s what was wrong. He looked harder at Deku, realising that they both looked extremely eighteen years old instead of the tiny brats he was so used to in this memory. They looked suddenly too big in this narrow stream - their bodies now moulded into trained muscle thanks to their years at UA. Puberty had helped the process along too, obviously.
Deku blinked at him. “T-the water?” he said, eyes owlish. A bird cawed loudly above them, startling them both. They looked up at the sky, eyes tracking the creature as it flitted from one tree branch to another. Golden leaves plucked themselves free and fell into the river, flowing in between them.
The two of them have been on much better terms recently. Sure, it had only taken about two years of awkward communication and hesitant reaching out to truly understand each other, but at least they had gotten to this point. Their fight at Ground Beta and the following two and a half years of schooling together made sure of that.
But still. It was hard to train the reflex of snapping at Deku whenever he saw him, especially if he was trapped in some stupidly realistic dream where he’s practically forced to face his own thoughts and feelings.
Katsuki excelled at many things, but he had never fared very well in that department.
Taking a deep breath in, he steeled himself to be more civil as he realised that this was just a stupidly vivid dream. There was no reason to be worrying about keeping face if there was nobody there to be keeping face for .
“This all feels so real,” Katsuki murmured, seemingly to himself. He kept his eyes on the leaves floating in between them.
“Tell me about it,” Deku agreed. Katsuki rolled his eyes. Like a character in his dream had any right to talk. “I remember this place though. Isn’t this where you had fallen off that log up there and into the river? It seriously looked so much higher up when we were younger…” He huffed out a laugh. “Why are we even here? Dreams are so weird like that.”
Katsuki scoffed, opting not to answer Deku’s question. It’s probably some bullshit psychological ploy by his subconscious to get him to fess up to something. Well fuck that. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he spat out. “Dumbass,” he added, for good measure.
Deku’s lips thinned but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he let himself sit back on his bottom so that he was completely submerged in the water from the hip down.
“The hell are you doing?”
Deku looked up at him with a smile. “I just think it’s cool that this feels so real! And look - my clothes aren’t even getting wet. Try it! It is a little cold, though...”
He raised an eyebrow at him. As much as he hated being told what to do, Katsuki felt… light, somehow. Maybe a little more pliable than usual. The warmth of the sun, the constant sighing of the river, the leaves politely drifting past his knees… it was just adding to the peace. Katsuki couldn’t remember feeling this relaxed in his entire life.
Closing his eyes, the slow thrum of his heartbeat pulsed in his ears as he exhaled. It was strange, actually - this memory had never been a peaceful one for him. He supposed Deku’s presence here changed that, morphing the memory into some sort of simulated scenario of how they could have interacted if he hadn’t been such an asshole before.
Cracking one eye open, he stole a glance at Deku. The dumbass was still flexing his hands in the water, moving his feet this way and that as if trying to test something out. He was muttering something about a notebook and needing to document this, and Katsuki snorted. Of-fucking- course he’d dreamed up the most stereotypical Deku in existence.
Under normal circumstances, he might’ve been worried about the fact that he didn’t have his walls up. But there weren’t any stakes in this private dreamscape, and the knowledge that he didn’t have much to lose spurred him on.
So Katsuki actually sat down completely, much to Deku’s surprise. When green eyes widened at his unpredicted complicity, Katsuki smirked and splashed water into his dumb, nerd-ass face. Hah, that’d teach him for thinking he knew everything about him.
The boy yelped in surprise, hands flailing in front of him to block against the attack. When Deku brought his hands down to stare at him in ill-disguised wonder, a wide grin began to plaster itself on his face.
Katsuki’s scowl reemerged instantly. “Oi idiot don’t push your luck-”
Frigid river water splattered across his face immediately after. But Deku was right, the water seemed to slide right off. Katsuki screwed his eyes tight and fought between irritation and confusion, of which the latter won.
“The fuck?” he sputtered, dragging his hand over his face in bemusement. “That feels so weird.”
“Pfft.” Deku covered his mouth with his hands, snorting as his eyes crinkled up with laughter. When Katsuki continued to look at him with a confused furrow in his eyebrows, Deku gave up trying to contain himself and burst into a fit of giggles.
“What the fuck is so funny shithead?”
“Y-You look-” he wiped tears from his eyes, snorting and making himself laugh all over again. Instead of trying to finish what he was trying to say, he simply splashed water back at Katsuki with a cheeky grin so sunny it was blinding.
Katsuki recovered pretty quickly, his own grin turning wicked. “Oh, it’s on.”
“Nooo Kacchan, go easy on me!” Deku was grinning even as he started to scramble away.
Katsuki’s hands dunked into the water before coming up to douse Deku again. Locks of green hair curled and hung from the weight of the water, sticking onto his face.
“Kacchaan, noo!” He crawled backwards, feet kicking up water onto Katsuki’s face as the blond advanced toward him on his hands and knees. The hard press of the stony riverbed into his knees was a slight annoyance but the grin on the nerd’s face distracted him from the pain.
“What? What’re you so scared of, Deku?” he taunted, hands dragging through the river.
“Kacchan, I know what you’re gonna try to do- NOOO Kacchan please, oh my god don’t, like I’m actually being serious, you’re gonna make me-”
But it was too late by then. Katsuki’s hands had already shot up and had begun their assault on Deku’s stomach, sending the shorter boy into a mess of hysterics. Katsuki was well aware of Deku’s sensitive points. He had made it a point to learn it back when they were brats, when he had once challenged Deku to a tickling competition. It’s a wonder he hadn’t forgotten those memories after so many years of disuse. Instead, his fingers seemed to be working on muscle memory, pressing all the right buttons to get Deku out of breath.
“Kacch- AHAHA STOP!” Deku fell onto his back, shoulders submerged underneath the water. Still, Katsuki pressed on, drunk on the sound of his giggles. “NOO, please not - ahh! - not there, ohmygod stop! Wait, Kacchan I’m gonna actually peeee!”
This, at long last, seemed to finally earn a bark of laughter out of Katsuki. He stopped tickling Deku in favour of pushing his head away with one hand, the laugh still in his mouth as he said, “Eww Deku, that’s gross as fuck. Get off me.”
“But you’re the one on top of me right now Kacchan,” Deku laughed, finally opening his eyes to look at Katsuki now that he could get his wits about again.
When those green eyes stared up at him silently, lips slightly parted as whatever he was going to say died on his lips, Katsuki belatedly realised their compromising position. Him, sat between Deku’s thighs, with one hand dug into the riverbed by Deku’s head and the other splayed over his chest.
Fuck. A blush seared itself across his cheeks as he scrambled away, creating as much distance between them as he could without seeming guilty of something. There was nothing weird about this, right? He sat back in the stream, heart pounding. Did he just make it weird? Wait. This is a dream. This is his dream . Which means that Deku knows how he feels about-
Deku sat up, and the soft smile on his face as he tried to smooth out his hair set Katsuki at ease. The nerd didn’t seem fazed at all.
He must be overthinking it. So what if Dream Deku might know how he feels about him in here? It’s his fucking personal thoughts. Shit. Why was he so riled up about this?
“You know Kacchan,” Deku said, the smile on his lips colouring the words with mirth, “I haven’t laughed that hard in a really long time.”
Katsuki was silent for a second, unsure of what to say. “Me neither,” he admitted. And then he regretted it immediately after, because damn it this felt too intimate.
Deku, at least, just hummed in response and didn’t pay much heed to it. Tiny shadows scattered across his cheekbones as his eyelids fluttered closed. “S’peaceful here,” Deku sighed, the sun apparently shining brighter as he did so. “I’m glad.”
Resting an arm on his knee, Katsuki allowed himself to look at him without feeling the usual desire to tear his eyes away. The nerd doesn’t always look this regal in real life, does he? They sat together in silence for a while, enjoying the moment together. Deku scooted closer to Katsuki until they were nearly shoulder to shoulder by the riverbank.
Katsuki turned his head to look at him when a glimmer of something silvery caught his attention. It glinted up at him from Deku’s waist, and he squinted his eyes to catch what it was.
And then his eyes opened.
Pale yellow light squeezed their way through the curtains, casting long shadows across the ceiling. Katsuki lay still in bed, watching them flit across the ceiling. His head felt like static, unable to comprehend one feeling at a time, so he tried to just focus on his breathing.
He was unsurprised to find that the most overwhelming emotion in his maelstrom of thoughts was... discomfort. Not anger. Just… the feeling that something was very incredibly off.
“I’m glad.”
Katsuki shot up in bed as his heartbeat picked up, swinging his legs over the mattress.
Whelp. Time to forget that ever happened.
Dreams don’t mean anything. They’re just a bunch of nonsense produced and directed by some shitty aspiring filmmaker on crack who lives inside people’s brains and has absolutely no idea what they’re doing. Once you wake up, that hot garbage should be forgotten immediately. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
But this one had been so vivid, so real, that it took some time for Katsuki to become convinced that this was the real world. He dressed, brushed his teeth and walked down the stairs in a daze, his brain swimming in memories and feelings that didn’t quite line up with reality. He’d nearly stumbled down the stairs when he was overcome by sudden vertigo.
He grit his teeth all the way through it, frustrated beyond belief that his muscles were still in that awful state of relaxation. He needed to feel that familiar prickle of fire beneath his skin, just - anything to shake him awake.
Luckily, all it took to return to normalcy were two scatterbrained idiots.
“Yo, Kacchan!” Kaminari bounded towards Katsuki’s desk, one hand stretched above him in an exaggerated wave. Sero was right at his heels wearing a wide, goofy grin.
The instant irritation at the sight of them was kind of comforting, and he found himself a little grateful for it.
After two and a half years of hanging around the self-proclaimed Bakusquad, Katsuki could at least admit that his friends weren’t half as bad as he had initially thought.
Kirishima had grown on him the fastest out of all of them after wearing him down in first year - something he had come to respect because holy shit was he a handful in first year. Ashido could be thoughtful and understanding sometimes, and was never one to mince words. In fact, she was probably the only one apart from Kirishima that he could turn to for advice if he ever needed it. Even Kaminari and Sero had proved to be capable friends, fiercely loyal and unafraid to take him head-on.
No, seriously. They didn’t have any self-preservation around him anymore.
Katsuki had never had anything like it before. He should thank them some day.
“Piss off to hell morons,” he spat out, plopping his bag onto his desk.
“Well, someone’s in a good mood,” Sero said sincerely, swinging an arm over Katsuki’s shoulders even as his palms started crackling.
Katsuki extinguished the sparks and crossed his hands over his chest, opting not to say anything. He was in a good mood, but it’s not like he needed these airheads to figure that out and start interrogating the hell out of him. It was way too early for this shit.
“Woah, you look like you slept well!” a new voice piped up from behind Kaminari. Pink hair flooded his vision as Ashido came closer to inspect his face. Kirishima followed close behind, hands tucked into his pockets. “Your skin looks so smooth! Drop your skincare routine, king!”
“Now now babe,” Kirishima tried to subdue his girlfriend, “remember what happened the last time you tried to take advantage of Bakugou’s good mood?”
Ashido froze, eyes darting away from Katsuki’s face as she rocked back on her heels and sighed. “I got my horns-”
“Stuck in the fence,” Kaminari, Sero and Kirishima lamented simultaneously. They shook their heads at the memory, mourning the singed hair and Ashido’s cries for help together.
“That happened two years ago,” Katsuki protested. “And you were really pushing it that time, Pinky-” he cut himself off when he registered the sound of a certain someone’s voice as they walked into class.
Deku clutched his backpack with one hand as he animatedly talked to Aoyama by his side, the latter who was listening very intently as he nodded along to whatever the nerd was saying. As if sensing his gaze, Deku’s wide green eyes met with his and he stopped mid-ramble to stare at him.
The fuck. Since when did those dumb, wide eyes sparkle like that? And why was Deku looking at him like a startled deer? Katsuki was sure he wasn’t glaring, so why did the nerd look kind of … nervous?
He tore his eyes away, tightening the arms over his chest. He didn’t need to see the looks on his friends’ faces to know that they were smirking at him knowingly.
“Not a word out of any of you,” he growled.
Sero laughed, elbowing Kirishima as he ignored the threat. “Whipped.” When the rest of the group broke into snickers, he simply rolled his eyes and managed to shrug Sero’s arm off his shoulder without blowing it up. He wasn’t really in the mood to fight.
“This is why I don’t tell you fuckers anything. You never know when to quit making - fuck. Everybody shut the hell up, he’s coming over.”
Despite all of them being diagnosed with Incurable Idiot Syndrome, all four of his friends were actually quite professional about some things. Their expressions smoothed over into something neutral, Sero’s arm returned to its place on Katsuki’s shoulder, and Ashido expertly crafted her next words with her signature wingman voice.
The first thing Deku heard as he made his way to the group huddling around Katsuki was Ashido’s exaggerated voice: “Hey, your time at the gym really has been paying off Kats! I need to get bulked up like this so I can match with Eiji!”
Katsuki’s eyes were inevitably drawn to Deku’s, who hovered hesitantly at the edge of the group. The pink flush of his cheeks at Ashido’s comment almost made Katsuki Howitzer impact that pink bastard’s face because holy shit she was not being subtle and what if Deku caught on-
“Yo, Midoriya!” Kirishima and Kaminari stepped aside to bring the green haired boy closer.
Katsuki breathed a sigh of relief. Kirishima had always been good at diffusing a situation.
“What’s your opinion on Kacchan’s muscles?” Kaminari asked, wiggling his eyebrows in a way that was unnecessarily exaggerated.
Katsuki delegated ‘Kaminari Denki ’ to Number 1 on his mental To Kill List. His eyes latched on to Kirishima, a silent plea in his eyes. Kirishima, his bro, his best pal, his rock.
The red haired son-of-a-jackass himbo didn’t even notice the cry for help. “They’re so manly, huh? His muscles, I mean,” he grinned cheekily, elbowing Deku in the ribs. Deku rubbed at the spot with a slight grimace, that awkward smile still hovering on his lips.
Katsuki scratched out Kaminari’s name furiously, replacing it with ‘Kirishima ‘The Traitor’ Eijirou.’
Deku was blushing at the attention as he scratched his neck and avoided Katsuki’s eyes. “I think Kacchan is training and working very hard to be a great hero, and my opinion is that I think that’s amazing.”
Katsuki rolled his eyes at the group’s collective ‘awww’ before he shoved them out of the way. “Yeah, yeah tell me something I don’t know. Move outta the way assholes, I wanna speak to the nerd.”
Obediently, the group scattered - only to gather behind Deku. Sero and Kaminari were making obscene gestures with their hands, while Kirishima and Ashido made obnoxious kissy faces at one another. Katsuki wondered, briefly, how the fuck the urge to not destroy was somehow so much harder than the urge to destroy.
(On the other side of the room, unknown to Katsuki, Uraraka and Tsuyu exchanged a look of amusement).
It was already hard enough for Katsuki to fight his blush without those idiots making everything so much worse for him, but he was good at everything which meant that he was also good at ignoring the shit out of them. “You seem awfully excited, Deku,” he said as evenly as he could muster, eyes flicking back down to those startling green ones.
Deku smiled at him, brighter than usual. “I’m in a good mood today! I had the best sleep I’ve ever had in my life and I’m feeling really well rested now. It’s, um, kind of concerning, actually. Come to think of it, when was the last time I had eight hours of sleep...?”
A beat of silence. “Deku, what the fuck is wrong with you-”
“Ah! Anyway, guess what I found when I checked the news this morning?”
The nerd actually paused, as if expecting Katsuki to continue his train of thought.
“Are you serious?” Katsuki frowned. “No. I hate guessing. Just tell me.”
“Guueess, Kacchan!”
Katsuki snapped his fingers, letting out a mock sound of enlightenment. “Oh! Right, a local film agency put out an ad for ugly nerds for their upcoming movie and you’re thinking of applying! What happened to being a hero? Oi, what’s with that look? Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to take the number one spot. For your sake.”
Deku had the nerve to look offended. “Really, Kacchan?”
“You’re the one who asked me to guess,” Katsuki shrugged, struggling not to smile at the way Deku was pouting. “What were you expecting?” There was nothing he wanted to do more than just take that face in his hands and give it a squeeze, but he stomped that thought to the ground with both of his feet and a couple of explosions.
“I was expecting you to be up to date with news on the Lotus Villain,” Deku huffed, still looking annoyed. “You remember her right? The one who can sprout a giant lotus around her body, effectively turning it into this completely impenetrable shield? I was reading this article that was explaining how her quirk worked since that information was released to the public last night. Did you know it’s actually poisonous? And even though it’s mostly defense, it can actually-”
Katsuki drowned everything else out as his mind wandered again, his body going into autopilot as he grunted every so often at whatever Deku was babbling about.
Deku’s smile was an exact replica of what he’d seen in his dream, and the shock of how similar the two versions of him was kind of worrying. The pattern of freckles on both cheeks was identical in every way. The tiny scar by his left eyebrow, the glimmer in his eyes, the exact curve of his upper lip. Did he really spend so much of his time tracking Deku’s every single detail? Was he really in that deep?
God, that’s too embarrassing. It’s a good thing that dreams are personal, private matters. Absolutely nobody else apart from himself needed to know about this.
Katsuki felt like banging his head against the wall for still thinking about it. It wasn’t even real , but it had felt so real. What he hated the most was the fact that he actually longed to go back to it, too, just to get another taste of peace. The tranquility of that fantasy world was … unmatched. And with everything going on - the internships, the increasingly breakneck pace of U.A schooling, the ever-present danger of yet another villain attack, fuckin’ graduation around the corner - maybe it wasn’t such a ridiculous idea that Katsuki craved for a moment of stillness in between it all.
And that dream was… It was hard to explain. Katsuki had never been very well acquainted with his own feelings, so it was difficult to put a finger to it. All he knew is that he longed to be alone in there with Deku, both of them silent and comfortable and warm in each other’s presence.
That night, he unlocked his phone and tried not to feel stupid as he googled possible causes for vivid dreams. Snorting at the ridiculous results he got (for a guy who went to bed at 8pm everyday, he was definitely not sleep deprived) he turned the damn thing off and placed it face down on his desk.
As he stared at the ceiling with his blanket tucked up to his chin, he willed himself to stop thinking about it. There really weren't any reasons for getting real-as-fuck dreams. Whatever happened last night was just a fluke, and it was never going to happen again.
Hah, good riddance. He didn’t need another burden on his mind.
The next morning, he ignored the fact that he was severely disappointed to not have even dreamt at all.
