Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Izuku watches the sky break in half.

Cracked down the middle, chalk scratched on its starry backdrop to part the sky in brillant honey on the left and a shy aqua green on the right. The white cuts them clean to live close but never close enough, drawn by an artist's hand to arc through the sky so criminally breathtaking that looking away would be the world's greatest sin.

Colour bleeds on either side, blood orange where the sun sinks past the horizon, to the soft yellow of a tip of a flame where the white wall splits the sky. The hues reverbrate in circles of polyphonic energies, warped time and space like a circus mirror that made your head look eight times smaller than your body. They pull, twist and bend until the sky caught up.

Izuku's eyes lock on tight to the second sun drawing that white line. A meteor, he knows. He remembers learning about space stuff between tall, dusty bookshelves, leaning his overgrown curls into the rotting copy of Northern Lights wedged in the abandoned Space Sciences way back in the cornerstone library. Izuku loved curling the page corners of stock image Nebulas and big stars exploding in an array of sweet somethings. Those were his favourites. Supernovas. Loud and boisé.

The meteor burns as it falls. Izuku isn't the only one entranced. When something shines that brightly, who would dare look away?

He has half a mind to consider taking a picture. Chatter whistles as people begin to 'ooh' and 'aah' at the snapping entrance of a space rock. The two skies reflect on either of Izuku's eyes; maddeningly orange and a green that looks far more blue to warrant a solid answer. Izuku soaks it all in anyway. It's better than all those photographs with paper bunny ears, all the yearning after the moon's image, all this colour that fills Izuku top to toe with a thrilling sense of...acceptance.

That is when the meteor splits in two.

Izuku continues with his eyes to the sky, even when firm shoulders rush past to flee from fate's hand. Everything fell silent. The panic. The backed-up roads.

His fingers clutch red thread too short to fit his wrist, clasped with beads of yellow, blue, and white. And a name, on white circles and black letters, seven letters, despite rarely using it on his young tongue.

K A T S U K I.

Izuku hoped far away, in a city an expensive train journey away, and snuggled under a safe roof, that Katsuki was also watching the sky.

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

"Didn't I tell you? That when I woke up with your eyes, I finally loved the way the world looked."

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

The alarm rings.

Red eyes sluggishly squint to find a clean-white ceiling and a singular fan rotating its metal blades. The quiet 'brrr' fills the spectrum of his hearing. Sunlight kisses the opposite wall through a double-glazed window, and despite the spine-numbing silence in his room, the world outside is busy and moving.

The muscles of his back swoon on a clouded duvet. He sits up, cotton beige blanket pooling at his waist, and the room is something out of a textbook. Solid white desk adorning a sleek metal lamp wedged into the far left corner, black frame with thin shelves casing a myriad of books of different heights on the far right. The desk chair has a spine with four floor legs and wheels on the bottom, at least that's what he can see with all those clothes caked atop it.

Rings of a phone alarm continue from the bedside table.

The fan whirrs on. The warmth on his skin is heavy and humid.

He runs a hand through blonde tresses. They're soft and similarly spring back into place, that is, until he notices his arm is clean of scars and blemishes and, most importantly, built.

Izuku screams.

.

.

Breakfast fleshes out to be as terrifying an experience as anything else.

Urgency practically swells in the air as water vapour, always moving, always changing. As such, life in Tokyo, with feet far too quick to acknowledge the journey, and one-track minds that felt more robotic than human. Still, to live in the Grand Ol’ Tokyo… All that passion. That energy.

An auntie paces around veneer flooring with heavy steps and yells with a large mouth and angry eyes--she vaguely reminds him of a buried memory when he was 4, same volatile anger so unbearingly familiar. The blonde spikes on her head are just in disarray as her son, apparently, but Izuku knows how soft it felt under his fingertips. Auntie and Uncle had already eaten their respective bowls of lightly seasoned salmon and rice with a bright pop of broccoli on the side. Izuku doesn't have much of an appetite, but he eats, too. This must be a dream. Dreams conjure inspiration from memories, right?

Is that why he's eating breakfast with Auntie Mitsuki and Uncle Masurau? The last he saw of them was from the back window of a car, waving largely with sad, sad smiles. A scowling boy his age stood next to them like he was forced to be there. Izuku's mother cried for hours after the city's skyline disappeared.

This must be a dream. Izuku has always wondered how the Bakugou's were doing. How Kacchan was doing.

⏱︎ 

“Silly Kacchan! Our sticks are the same size!”

“Stupid Deku, mine’s clearly bigger. And that’s why I’ll defeat you, villain!”

“Villain? I thought we were heroes.”

“Heroes don’t fight each other, Deku. Why would heroes fight each other?”

“Oh… I guess so, Kacchan! That’s so smart!”

“I know. And you’re just dumb. Heroes fight villains, even my baby cousin knows that, and she’s way smaller than you. Are you dumber than a baby, Deku?”

“No, I’m not!”

“Ha! Makes sense since you’re such a crybaby!”

“Kacchan!”

“A crybaby villain!”

“That’s not fair!”

“What? Are you gonna cry about it?”

⏱︎ 

Warmth wraps the pad of its fingers around his chest at the memory, hazy filtered with shiny sparkles through the eyes of a young Izuku looking at a young Kacchan. Matured out of his koala-hugging, unfavourably dependent behaviour, Izuku sees his younger self for who he was: full of childlike wonder and innocent adoration.

Like pointing at a big tree at how cool it looks. Or dragging his mother’s hand to ride on the biggest rollercoaster in the whole world (Kacchan said so, so it must be true). Or perhaps smiling triumphantly as a poor copy of a certain No. 1 superhero from the All Might cartoons. Izuku was a vessel of immortal, sugar-crazed energy with an emotional range larger than how far Kacchan claimed he could throw his stick. Which sounded pretty far in theory and impossible in practice.

The majority of Izuku’s happier feelings were overwhelmed by solid red eyes, hair blonde like the pale core of the sun, and a pretentious, boyish cackle fit for a boy who supposedly knew it all. People like Kacchan were born with an edge to play society to their own game. Kacchan was bound to achieve.

To dream of the pudgy baby face into a sharp-eyed, objectively handsome young man clearly left a lot to be discovered about Izuku’s psyche. Maybe it was trying to tell him something.

The grey uniform of Kacchan’s supposed school is a snug fit, though Izuku remembers to sneakily ruffle the look to fit the brash boy. Does Kacchan wear his tie? Surely, he still adheres to the general principle of the school uniform, right?

Auntie Mitsuki continues looking at him weirdly.

"Stop picking at your food, brat! Eat what your father cooked you, you ungrateful shit."

The woman only wears a fifth of the aggression she spits on her face. That woman has not a wrinkle in sight. Izuku's mother aged all the faster with how she accumulated stress in her pores. Izuku tries to sound affirmative before digging in, but his voice lodges sharply in his throat. Auntie gives him a look.

"What's wrong with you?"

Izuku freezes like he's found out. Of course, though, it is just a dream. And Izuku doesn't want to break the illusion of a dream so good, so quickly. Not if there is much to uncover about Izuku’s inner fantasies. Instead, he musters every memory of a rabid chihuahua wedged into a 4-year-old body and stands up.

"I'm leaving."

Auntie looks at him even harder.

"....old hag."

Izuku doesn't wait for her interrogation and flees with a schoolbag in tow. He has half a mind to realise he has no idea where school is, where he is, or what the hell he was supposed to do.

-.--.-

"You feeling okay, dude? You're acting weird."

"Bakugou always acts weird."

"Kami, bro he's gonna kill-..."

"..."

"He didn't react."

"You're right. He is acting weird."

Izuku stares hopelessly at the fenced-off rooftop, a sight that feels like it will slip away if Izuku dares to divert the attention.

"Bakugou, bro. Bakubro."

Izuku jolts.

A boy with sharp red hair flinches when they meet eyes. Izuku gulps loudly.

"Whoa, okay. That is freaky." He says, sharp teeth wobbling into a nervous smile.

"Isn't it?" Another boy leans, shaking his gold locks adorning a black lightning stripe at the front. It looks edgy, cool. It looks like something Izuku would have never seen in his lifetime.

"You okay, dude?" Red hair asks.

Izuku blinks far too many times. He never considered he'd rouse so much suspicion in a dream.

"Do you..." Red hair continues hesitantly, "Do you know who we are?"

"O-Of course." Fuck, no. That's not how Kacchan would speak, right? He's supposed to act like Kacchan for the purpose of the dream. That makes sense, right? What the hell was even happening? "F-"

Kacchan was colourful in language when he was 4. Surely, that carries.

"-Fuck you, of course I'm alright. Why wouldn't I be?"

Nailed it.

"You sure? You look...lost."

"Ha?"

The boys exchange a look. Izuku sweats beneath the face of a childhood friend.

"You're sweating." Great.

The school circulates with smart-clad students in prestigious uniforms that Izuku was sure his dream recalled from one of those fancy Tokyo high schools from the library computers. Groups mingle, some swinging legs from atop tables, a white bud in each ear, which Izuku had only seen adverts of. Earphones, he thinks, maybe. He can't afford them himself, much less think every student in the vicinity could. Or they're some mind-controlling nanodevice imported by aliens after they replaced Izuku's sweet little town into... this. Anything is possible in dreamworld.

"Where's your lunch, dude?"

God, if only Izuku could crawl into a hole and wither away. Kacchan's lunch. Ugh! Panic nestled familiarly in his throat--it never left, really--inching the whites of his eyes bigger and rounder into something that felt more Izuku than Katsuki. It feels strange pulling sharp, angled facial features into Izuku's loosely reined-in dramatics, though Kacchan had his own range of dramatics in the form of vengeful scowls like someone shat in his cereal. His hand, pretty and pale with not a scar in sight, reaches up to touch his face, not for the first time during lunch break.

Humour it. It's just a dream, right?

Kacchan's skin was... soft. Smooth, unlike Izuku's dry baked cheeks under the village sun. And Kacchan was pale. Aunt Mitsuki was too but to see the milky undertones of his bare chest and legs whilst getting dressed this morning, almost landing Izuku face first into the metal bookshelf. They were so well defined, lean, packed muscles up his calves with solid thighs. And his shoulders (hello?) were an honour to roll into his dress shirt this morning. The country boy felt like he could lift a truck. Izuku had ogled at the limits of his imagination to paint him such an indulgent picture of his childhood best friend in his dream.

"I..." Izuku starts.

Red hair and yellow hair lean in.

"...forgot."

Red hair sighs, wearing as much suspicion on his face when Izuku first turned up at noon for school (because where the hell was school? And why was it not within walking distance? Surely, switching two trains is too far, right? And they're so busy! Izuku smooched as many suited backs and crisp shirted chests with his forehead for a lifetime). Izuku forcefully pulls his brows into an angered arch to make up for the pretence.

I'm Kacchan. Kacchan is me.

"It's fine. Tell us when you need to tell us, okay, Bakugou? Whatever's wrong with you, I mean."

Blondie nods, "Yeah, bro." He shuffles his bento and pulls out half a triangle sandwich, "I'll share some of mine, yeah? Can’t have you starving and being extra grumpy."

Despite the charged trepidation of Izuku's current situation, he can't help the bubbling warmth at seeing such touching support for the emotionally constipated chihuahua, even if it were nothing more than a warbled creation of a country boy's own mind. Even to his subconscious, does Izuku wish for Kacchan to surround himself with friends that love him, care for him in a way that pushes through all his defences. The only shame that soured the thought is that Izuku cannot sit beside him to cradle that bubble. Perhaps, even in Izuku's mind, there isn't a fantasy where Izuku would be part of something this precious.

That is what a distance of 300 miles does to two young best friends.

This is the closest Izuku will get to sitting in Kacchan's circle. The very thought lights up his chest so viscerally that he can't help the smile springing to his face.

Red hair and blondie pause their chopsticks and sandwich halfway to their hungry mouths.

"That is hella creepy."

"Should we call the ambulance?"

-.--.-

Apparently, in Izuku's incredibly indulgent dream about living as his childhood best friend, Kacchan waiters for nose-high customers for the extra change in his pocket. Sure, if Izuku remembers correctly, Mitsuki and Masaru Bakugou are a financially comfortable double-income household, with minimal worry indulging their child of all and anything he could ask for.

But even here (because this dream has lore, of course), Kacchan nurtures the idea of handling himself without the crutches of mommy and daddy's money. Izuku can feel it, the yearning in the spiky boy's chest, to stand on his own, to make a name for himself. Izuku respects that; if anything, his own morale has translated to the wonders of his imagination.

That doesn't make it easy.

"Get your ass moving!"

"Speak louder! Normally, I can't hear myself think with all your yelling! Why the hell are you so quiet?"

"Who pissed in his coffee this morning?" Izuku mutters, immediately gasping with a slap to his mouth. Potty mouth! Potty mouth!

The chef's passionate expletives echo past the doors of the kitchen.

"You normally," a tall black-haired coworker nudges with sharp elbows. Izuku hides a wince, "The two of you are louder than my girlfriend's ever been."

The grimace on Izuku's face sells true as Kacchan's reaction. The man elbows again, god, they hurt, drawling a laugh low.

"You smoking without me?" He asks, "You're so mellow."

Shit. "Mellow? I'm not-" Izuku tries with as much bite as he possibly can. He wonders how Kacchan's teeth haven't ground to the gums. Gritting them constantly was aching his jaw. "I'm not ...fucking mellow."

"Sure."

Izuku is pulled left, right and full-goddamn centre with the havoc of waitership; two decadent dishes of spaghetti meatballs, three strawberry mojitos with no ice–I don’t want you guys watering down my alcohol, fifteen relentless requests to send their dish back because it was the wrong goddamn one.

Izuku fumbles, and Izuku slips. His arms struggle with the dichotomy of balancing someone’s nice evening and the aftermath of dirty dishes. Izuku stumbles and sloshes the tall glasses of Coke with a litany of apologies until he realises just how wrong they sound on Kacchan’s lips.

“Hey, you!” A man lounging like he owned the goddamn chair he sat on calls Izuku with a snap of two fingers. He passes a hand through his hair. Izuku doesn’t need to work too hard to wear Kacchan’s scowl.

The man is not pleased, “Look at my food. This is unacceptable.”

Izuku barely passes a glance at the plate, “Is there a problem, sir?”

“Yes, there’s a problem.” The man did not have enough hair on his head to keep running his hands through it. “There’s a fucking toothpick in my dinner. I could choke on that and die right on the fucking floor, and it’d be on your hands. Is this the kinda service I’m payin’ for?”

“A toothpick.” Izuku twitches blonde brows in confusion, “I don’t believe we have toothpicks on the premises, sir.”

Another hair runs through a receding hairline, spitting louder in Kacchan’s face; Izuku flinches regrettably because it feels like Kacchan is having to deal with Izuku’s mistakes, “Are you calling me a fucking liar?! Get me your manager!”

What is actually happening?

Apparently, the extent of Izuku’s dreams involved a flurry of fresh faces, including a pretty woman with periwinkle hair and bold blue eyes that sought beneath the surface. Her presence is bright as it is it authoritative, one that roped you in with childish charm but had you hanging onto every one of her requests. “Evening, sir. I am Manager Hadou on the floor.”

Almost immediately, Izuku prickles in unease at seeing the toothpick man’s salacious eyes rake over the woman. Hadou reaches over for his plate, the man ogles unapologetically, “I apologise for our carelessness. Let us compensate you with a full discount. Though I would love to get your opinion on the meal.”

The smile on her face radiates innocent curiosity, perfectly veiled in deescalating the man’s disruption before business tonight lands in the gutter. The man easily takes the bait and kisses the tips of his fingers at how fitting the cuisine was to his tastes. Izuku hesitates in leaving the manager alone with such a man.

It is only after closing that someone mentions the malicious tear in her skirt. Without thinking much about it, Izuku pulls the woman into the staff breakout room with a look of determination that could be either his own or Kacchan’s.

“Can you take off your skirt?”

Hadou exasperates, “Excuse me?”

Izuku fumbles, entirely unlike the hot-headed blonde he’s trying to impersonate, “I-no, I apologise. I will give you space. I have some practice sowing things together from my mother.”

Hadou, whether she is naively trusting or somehow bought the reason quicker than expected, agrees to let Izuku push a needle on either side of the tear to pull it together. He’s not particularly artistic with fashion trends, unlike Kacchan’s parents, but Izuku loves the doodles he fills his sketchbook with. It is via this inspiration that two long ears and a button nose are birthed on the black skirt, off-white and pink, respectively. The metal is cold between his fingertips, razor focus as if Izuku was actually here, fixing manager Hadou Nejire’s skirt rather than the dreaming alternative.

“I didn’t know you were skilled like this, Bakugou.”

Izuku meets Hadou with softer eyes than he intends if he wants to uphold the spunky facade. They feel as foreign as the day’s beginning, but acting like a short-fused time bomb with an insult written into every roll of his tongue is… exhausting. Kacchan sure would have a lot of energy if this were his daily norm. Izuku wanted to take a nap hours ago.

He sighs, dropping the built curve of Kacchan’s shoulders low. Kacchan’s manager has not a lick of expectation in her voice, just honest friendliness. Kacchan deserves it.

“I’m pretty clumsy,” Izuku huffs out with a voice deeper than his own, “A little accident-prone… well, a lot, actually.”

Hadou listens curiously.

“At first, my mom would spend hours fixing my uniform since we couldn’t afford a new one. Then, I taught myself by watching her. I didn’t want to worry her more than she already does. And it’s a handy trick. My friends have picked up a few tips too, you know. Teach a man how to fish and yada yada.”

Izuku pulls the needle through the sea of midnight fabric, thin thread breaking the deep colour like the white trails of a comet passing by. He loops two fingers to adjust the finishing knot.

“There. It’s a little odd, but…”

“It’s cute,” Hadou smiles, taking her skirt back with crinkles near her eyes. “I like it. Thank you, Bakugou.”

Izuku smiles shyly with Kacchan’s lips. His eyes fall to the foreign shape of Kacchan’s hands, clean straight lines to the bony mounds of his knuckles and picture-perfect cuticles. They’re the kind of hands made for the big screen, for the billboards and movie shows. Izuku twists them palms up, clenches and unclenches, lost in a trance.

Hadou sighs truthfully, “I didn’t expect this from you, Bakugou. I thought you were a little too…. brash and immature.”

Izuku snorts. He enjoys the sound made by Kacchan’s voice.

“But now, I feel like I can see you better. Like you’re showing me a different side of you.”

Sharp red eyes grow into ovals when they meet hers, cheeks slack into a gentle startle that is characteristically not a Bakugou thing, but Hadou Nejire finds allure in these hidden mannerisms. His spine is too rigid, too aware of his own arms and legs, but his insight into his surroundings is the same. He is the same Bakugou, but also different. Like the boy was learning things about himself at the same time as everyone else.

“I like this side of you.” She says. His blonde brows lift higher and pull his red eyes rounder.

Izuku doesn’t quite know what else to say, so he says nothing.

⏱︎ 

“But you call me mean names too, Kacchan.”

“That doesn’t count, stupid. I’m allowed to call you ‘Deku’. Didn’t you see me fight that third grader and win? Heroes always win, Deku. You want to be a hero too, don’t you?”

“I do! With you, Kacchan! I want us to be heroes together!”

“I’m not letting some weak Deku be my hero partner if he can’t even win against some extras.”

“I’ll fight, Kacchan! I’ll win! And I won’t even cry!”

“Liar! You always cry.”

“Do not!”

“Do to.”

⏱︎ 

Settling back into Kacchan’s heaven-sent mattress, Izuku finds the courage to surf through the boy’s phone. Thankfully, new tech doesn’t care for the soul behind the Face ID, so Kacchan’s phone slides open without issue.

The country boy hesitates. Despite the dreamlike reality of living as Kacchan, indulging in the secrets of Kacchan’s phone feels like crossing a line even he shouldn’t do. So, Izuku actively keeps away from private conversations and opens up a fresh note for a daily log.

Black letters pixelate into blurry masses as the day’s tiredness catches up with Izuku. His thumbs, Kacchan’s thumbs, circle over the field of kana on the keyboard. He writes and writes. He splurges the sentences too fast for his (Kacchan’s) tongue. It’s the only selfish Izuku thing he’s done in Kacchan’s body.

Besides relearning how to balance in a top-heavy body, gritting out enough curse words to blacken Izuku’s tongue for a whole year and staring too long in every glass reflection that mimicked Izuku’s movements in pale skin and ash blonde hair—Izuku finds he feels cold in Kacchan’s body.

Like he doesn’t fit right. That there are gaps where Izuku’s soul sits where Kacchan’s is supposed to be, and the breeze has found a way to whistle through them. Not that Izuku should think much on it. It’s a dream. Indulgent. An opportunity to see things he will never see.

I do hope I remember him when I wake up.

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

When Izuku wakes from his dream of a boy in Tokyo, the countryside sun smiles at his return like it knew of Izuku’s nighttime adventures. It’s warm. It feels right.

He eats breakfast with his mother. He slips on his uniform, without comparing how much firmer the blonde’s shoulders rolled into his plain school shirt. He meets Uraraka and Iida on his way to school. He does think about how busy trains in downtown Tokyo must be this early in the morning.

The day is just like any other; a film tape looping back to repeat the same events, same experiences, same faces from dawn to dusk. Or at least, it would be if Izuku ignored the eighth time someone said something cryptic.

“Are you feeling better, Midoriya? You were acting strange yesterday.”

“I knew you had a crazy side, Izuku, but I didn’t expect you to go all out. Did your mum say anything?”

Izuku tilts his head, brows scrunching in confusion, “What are you guys talking about?”

The class hollers at Izuku’s arrival. Instinctively, he expects the hyena cries of bullying from his middle school, but everyone seems to watch him with looks of either suspicion or admiration. He clutches the straps of his yellow backpack tighter.

“Good to you see you in proper uniform today, Mr Midoriya.” The teacher calls out. Izuku jolts the second he sits.

“I- Err, wh-, O-of course. Thank…you, sir?”

His surrounding seatmates chuckle endearingly.

“Seems like you didn’t forget your manners at home this time, too.” His teacher sighs whilst fingering through sheets of paper for the morning rollcall. Izuku frowns. What…? When has he ever been anything less than polite to one of authority, especially Aizawa-sensei? Or did he accidentally do something? Oh God, did he miraculously forget some super long homework set yesterday?

Izuku’s chair is kicked particularly hard for a sluggish schoolmate like Shinsou, so Izuku twists behind him with an even deeper frown.

The boy leans over his own desk, “You good?”

Green eyes blink, “Y-yes...?”

Shinsou’s morning rasp drawls into half a whisper, smirking (of all things) at Izuku, “You don’t sound so sure about that.”

“I don’t think I’m sure about anything at the moment.”

“Pfft. Didn’t sound like that yesterday.”

“I… really don’t.”

Shinsou hesitates, eyes narrowing, calculating, “It wasn’t so bad. Or did your mother rip you a new one?”

Why? Why would Mom rip me a new one? What did Mom have to say? What did I do???

Izuku all but whines, “No, she didn’t. I didn’t do anything… well, sometimes I do, but I didn’t do anything this time for her to tell me off.” Izuku tags on, “…Right?”

Shinsou leans back, “Hmm.”

What- what does that even mean?

Izuku turns back in frustration. Curiosity is an old friend to the country boy, familiar and addicting. Izuku runs on answering questions to feed the gears in his head, puffing smoke, clanging metal, but working without hesitation to rush for solutions if he can’t help himself. It’s his element. It feels as natural as saving a child falling from a high place.

But this? This feels like he’s been robbed of something, and everyone is making fun of him for it.

Izuku opens his textbook, finding yesterday’s lesson notes and hates the confusion that sinks in him more. He doesn’t remember writing them. It’s his handwriting, but off-kilter. Sharper at the edges that you’d get if you held the pen higher than the nub. The notes are in clean monotonous lines, unlike Izuku’s enthusiastic scrawl.

He flips to the next page.

He freezes, breath stilling. Clean text stares back at him.

[ Who are you? ]

Izuku believes he’s finally having some sort of psychotic break.

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

“Auntie Mitsuki looks like she hasn’t aged in a day. And she speaks the same way too, which I guess is kinda expected. I’d see her as I remember her, right? But I haven’t thought about Kacchan in years, and he’s grown so well. Dashing, I think is the word, Or handsome. You’ve grown up handsome, Kacchan. I should’ve expected it. And your friends are so so sweet and nice that I’m so glad you have them to care for you. I’m sure you care for them lots too. But God, the train was…”

Katsuki doesn’t read the whole thing. Whichever one of the assholes decided to plug in some yappery nonsense into his phone would hear it today. It was probably Kaminari. It's a Dunce Face thing to do. And who the hell calls him Kacchan?

Katsuki doesn’t remember dreams very well, but the one from the night prior stuck to him like a leech with haunting accuracy. The scent out of town. The people’s faces. Still, even in the comfort of his bedroom, sleek black mobile phone in his fingertips, does Katsuki recall the numerous times he threaded his hand through some country boy’s thick, messy hair as if it were his own.

"Everything okay with your hair, sweetie?" Katsuki flinches at the smooth, timid voice of a mother with similarly green hair. She has kind round eyes, a plump figure, and tickles some buried corner of Katsuki's mind in forgotten childhood memories.

Katsuki continues bouncing his hand on his own (well not really his own, was it?) head. 

They were unbearably soft as pulled cotton, with a subtle bounce opposing gravity despite their weight. There was a valid reason why Katsuki kept dragging a heavily scarred hand back into those green locks and basked in the dual enjoyment of touching it and scratching his scalp. It had been a strange dream.

Very unlike Katsuki. The village was wholly unrecognisable. But Katsuki takes things in stride and had enjoyed the lucidity to be himself with someone else’s face.

It was cathartic to put the snickers of his (??) schoolmates in their rightful place beneath him. 

It’s not like it exists anyway.

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

Red Hair, better known as Kirishima, had spent the day cornering Izuku with puppy concern. Kacchan is lucky to have someone who pays so much attention to the loud teenager. Or at least, he is lucky in the dream.

Manager Hadou threw him a wink at work today. A wink! Izuku felt his blush seep into Kacchan's pale cheeks.

“Who am I?” Izuku yawns with Kacchan’s hand. Playing Kacchan feeds a part of Izuku he didn't even know he was hungry for. The recurring dream itches a part of him hidden under the rubble many, many years ago. Though, Izuku mourns how far removed he feels from this fabricated life. Even if Izuku is not destined to fall in Kacchan's orbit, he wishes to make a space for himself regardless.

Izuku smiles small and writes on Kacchan’s hand with a marker. He falls asleep with an open palm near his face.

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

“What the hell is a… ‘Deku’?” Katsuki reads the smudged ink on the palm of his hand. Apart from dreams, Katsuki prides himself in his perfect memory, and he for sure does not remember writing on his palm last night.

The blonde pops his jaw hard. Who the hell thinks it’s funny to mess with him? Katsuki was going to have a conversation with his fists with Dunce Face for all those mindless notes in his phone. It must be him, or the combination of all of them. Screw it, they’re all hearing the worst of Katsuki today.

“Back to being a brat, huh?” The old hag has some fucking audacity to say. Katsuki scowls hard, flashing the whites of his teeth in agitation, because why test him when he’s already waking up with a bad day?

“HA! I ain’t no brat, ya old hag! Why you gotta start this early, huh? Can’t have breakfast in this damn house without ya damn hollering in my ear.”

“You better rope in that attitude, young man! That’s no way to speak to your mother, you hear me! And what’s with the hot and cold? You ran with your fucking tail between your legs during breakfast!”

“What?!”

“You shoulda kept up from yesterday, brat. Stopped yelling for the whole day, I could finally hear myself think. I thought you finally lost your voice after screaming the absolute lungs out.”

Katsuki twists in confusion. What the hell was she even saying? Why is she talking nonsense? Did she write the notes?

“It bothered you so much that you went out of your way to start writing shit on my hands! And what the hell is a Deku anyway?”

The hag uncharacteristically flinches, shock evident, quickly morphing to Katsuki’s perfect mirror of confusion. They're carbon copies, even if Katsuki would never admit it, “What the hell are you on about?”

He hates that look on her face when he shows her. The acknowledgement that there is something amiss and unresolved in Katsuki’s orbit. Expectant. Like he could do better. Work harder.

And then pity. It looks wrong on the woman's face, drags her eyes low, which immediately makes her look more her age than she usually does. Stupid, fucking pity. Katsuki would rather roll in his own dirt than be on the receiving end of it. It churns messily in his gut, catches on his organs and simmers them in boiling rage. Pity? Whatever it is, whoever the fuck is messing with him, does not mean he'll take that god awful look. He isn't weak. He isn't incompetent.

"Listen, boy. Back when you were a little brat, there was-"

Fuck this. His chair hideously screeches backwards, and Katsuki lunges for the front door. 

Confusion spreads like a disease as the clouds bask over. Shitty Hair texts him at work after Katuski stormed away from a fruitless one-sided argument. The concern is unwarranted and doubles the firm tension that something was wrong, and it was strange for Katsuki to not see it. It was strange for Katsuki to have not fixed it already.

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

Izuku firmly tugs his curls with two tight fists. Half of his notebook is designated for a period of time that is very much not his. The meticulous notes. The spiky doodles of miniature explosions in the margins. And there is a page disarray with names of those in the village paired with mildly insulting nicknames that Izuku would not dare think of in his lifetime.

And then, Izuku wakes two days later with cold black letters written on the foreground of his scarred arms.

[ Who the hell are you? ]

[ Better yet, what the hell even are you? ]

[ What the actual fuck is a Deku? ]

[ Your fashion sense is irredeemable. Why the fuck do you have bright yellow sneakers? Throw that shit away before I shred it in the local landfill, dumbass. ]

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

⏱︎ 

“Kacchan! Wait for me!”

“Hurry the hell up, Deku!”

“Slow down!”

“No! Speed up, short legs!”

“K-Kacchan! Watch out!"

Katsuki narrowly avoids slipping from the perched log above the gentle stream. Izuku sighs loudly in relief.

“You thought I was going to trip, huh? I’m not clumsy like you, Deku. I can move really fast!”

“Kacchan sugoi!”

⏱︎ 

Katsuki vigorously scrolls through the mysterious accounts in his notes app.

Izuku shrieks at ambiguous comments in his notebook about life in the village outskirts.

Katsuki grows tenser at people’s weird looks.

Izuku shamefully hides behind his hands in class.

Katsuki dreams and writes to Deku.

Izuku dreams and rambles to Kacchan.

Katsuki shakes his head with tight brows, “There’s no way.”

Izuku clutches his head with crazed urgency, “This- how is this possible?”

“This cannot be fucking happening.”

“How-? How?”

“There’s no way Deku and I-“

“Does that mean Kacchan and I-“

“-are switching places?”

Chapter Text

“Your name, Deku!”

Breaths pant, steps hurried, and the sun is sinking farewell.

“Write it! Write your name!” A pen! Yes, he has a pen!

Orange bleeds past the peaks of distant mountains and glitters the corners of the country boy’s hair like honey on dewy leaves. There are tears in his eyes, “…Kacchan”

His scarred, angular fingers squeeze tightly near the nub of the pen. The city boy gasps, pats largely at empty pockets. Fuck. Paper! He needs paper.

The sky sings its last song, and the golden shine smiles a gentle kiss before it tucks away. Scarred hands find pale ones. The country boy opens his palm.

“You know my name,” the boy says, breathy, certain.

Red eyes widen. He has always known his name. Since between the sandpits in his childhood park, between the wooden stick swords and young, carefree laughter. From since Katsuki first spent a minute too long matching the colour of his best friend’s eyes with the forest trees surrounding them.

“Iz-”

The pen slips as the sun leaves. Katsuki knew his name, once.

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

There was no point in denying it. As the weeks pass, Izuku understands the absurdity of his predicament. One morning, he wakes in the comfort of his own room, hugs his mother with his own hands, and the next, he wakes in a body no short of 300 miles away. In Kacchan’s body.

Two to three times a day, Katsuki switches with Deku and spends the day as a country boy with unruly hair and a whiny voice. Turns out, it wasn’t Dunce Face, nor the hag, but a third mystical force that decided to play out Katsuki’s worst nightmare, except he’s awake and Deku is doing God knows what with his body.

Izuku blindly uses the toilet with incantations to never look down.

Katsuki spends his quota of curse words during the morning showers.

People around them have started noticing their odd behaviours, so (not without protest) the pair decide to shake metaphorical hands and try to surf the strangeness by embodying the other’s persona. Notes are exchanged on either phone, daily logs if you will, and a strict criterion on what or what not to do. Katsuki isn’t impressed by the turn of events, Izuku even less so.

Case point number one:

>> They have names, Kacchan! Please use them, they're my friends! I’m sure they don’t appreciate me calling them your rude nicknames!

Katsuki scoffs and ignores the comment.

>> Stop skipping class, Deku! You're fucking up my attendance rapport!

Izuku huffs. It’s not his fault that the public loves ejecting him from trains!

>> I’ve organised all my notebooks. Please don’t mess them up. And don’t read them either.

Katsuki does read them. Lo and behold, Deku’s a nerd.

>> Wear what I leave out. I ain’t walking around in your shitty fashion sense

Izuku begrudgingly complies. His fashion sense is not shitty.

>> And don't you fucking dare perv out on me, Deku! Or else I'll fucking kick you hard enough to shoot your soul back into your dumbass body.

>> I'm not a pervert, Kacchan! And don't do anything with my body, too!

>> Like I fucking want to, idiot.

>> I don't either!!!

Katsuki pops a vessel and reaches for the Shitty Nerd's display shelves.

>> Deku! That's my money you're mooching off of!

Izuku regrets nothing. He works Kacchan's job too, so the net outcome is technically zero.

Two weeks pass, ink-ridden and wholly frustrated. Katsuki leaves messages on Izuku’s dumb fucking face with the entire range of his vulgar thesaurus, and Izuku marks Katsuki with angry variations with [Stop being a jerk!], [Arrogant!], [I’m living your life as much as you’re living mine!].

Weekends are the easiest. No extras trying to shovel poorly veiled concern for Katsuki’s inconspicuous behaviour, no sorrowful faces to try mediating during Izuku’s walks home.

Still, problems manifest anyway.

>> Where did you put my Bronze Age All Might figurine, Kacchan? You know it’s my favourite. This isn’t funny!

Katsuki smirks. That figurine is staying well hidden in the nerd’s closet. Serves him right.

>> I swear to God, Deku, if you don't stop setting me up with that Manager chick, I'm gonna shave your fucking head and feed it to yourself.

Izuku shudders at the very real possibility.

>> You turned down Kirishima's invitation. I said yes because it will be good if you go!

>> Stop telling me how to live my life, Deku! I ain’t nor do I want to go watch a shitty movie with those punk-ass idiots!

Izuku groans comically loud and kicks back his head on the sofa. Kacchan is insufferable. The will and want to throttle that stubborn blonde until he drops the pretence of a nonchalant, cussing-the-world-until-it-withers-in-his grip façade is unbearably violent. Perhaps Kacchan is growing on him.

>> Why not??? Don’t be stubborn, Kacchan!!

Ha?! Who the fuck does Deku think he is?! Katsuki fumes with the swelting heat of the village, scrunching up the nerd’s freckles until they overlap. Anger still sits pleasantly in the crevices of his palms, granted they are not his, but it is one of the only things Katsuki can wear on Deku’s person as his own.

Not without great reluctance, does Katsuki do good on his word and entertains the country life with too-nice extras, weird hilly paths and a mother who looked close to tears if he forgot her morning hug.

But amid the unfavourable circumstances, the village life… wasn't what he expected.

“Midoriya-kun!” Glasses announces a street away, his arm solidly high in a poor imitation of a traffic warden. Katsuki blames Deku’s weird warm innards for not finding the gesture irrevocably annoying anymore.

Glasses overshoots his impressive speed and lets the pedals spin to smooth into Katsuki’s pace. If Katsuki were a younger brat, he would have imploded at the show of skill, but Katsuki knows better that Glasses is as clear-cut as a straight arrow. The moron wouldn’t know how to gloat if it were his last day on Earth.

“You’re early, Midoriya-kun! Perhaps, we can ride together if this fits your new schedule!”

Katsuki winces at his volume, “I’m always early.”

Katsuki is. Deku isn't.

“Your punctuality could do with some work, Midoriya-kun.”

Blends of green brushstroke out of focus as Katsuki speeds down the dirt road.

“I am working on it.”

“This will do well in turning over your rapport with Aizawa-sensei. I suppose your strange behaviour these past few weeks has left quite the impression on him.” Glasses remains robotically affixed on the road ahead.

Katsuki huffs. He avoids using the nerd’s voice if he can help himself. It helps dissociate from his sordid fortune.

They ride in surprisingly easy silence until the road curves into the small town’s descent, opening a rather pacifying view of the townsfolk walking their toddlers off right to the youth centre, and the morning mart selling fresh pickings from the local farms bears left.

Chains spin monotonously, the bicycle gently rattles, and Katsuki feels the vibrations ease up his back and soothe a domestic sort of quiet. He feels young, at least younger than the city makes him feel. Embodying Tokyo to its core requires the constant urge to come out on top, and suppressing that impulse to work harder and walk faster is like squeezing an ocean into a water bottle.

At first, Katsuki complained. The unexhausted energy left in his fingers typed out complaint after complaint to the dumb nerd, but in a few short weeks of switching lives with a country boy, Katsuki started seeing things a little differently.

It gives the fire in his heels a break, sets the fuel down to take a step away and rest his engines.

“Morning, boys!”

“Study good today!”

“Thank you!” Glasses smiles, nodding with a polite gesture without turning his head.

Katsuki can’t quite bring himself to hate it as much as he would like.

⏱︎ 

Birds chirped from tree to tree whilst a young blonde boy marched with a flag in his hand. Another followed, loudly cheering him on. Katsuki looked over his shoulder with not a lick of humility.

“Forward march and here we go-”

Giggles filled the space before the boy behind him finished, “No one can beat Bakugou!”

“Damn right, you nerd!”

Katsuki smugly placed his hands on his hips, puffing out his chest. The other boy gleamed bright enough for a real, lopsided smile to replace the smug one. Katsuki placed the pole firmly to claim the ground.

“Do me! Do me!” The other boy hopped. Katsuki tilted his head to think.

Katsuki smirked evilly.

“You forgot to tie your shoe,

And you can’t beat me, Izu-”

⏱︎

The classroom is of a mundane sort with rickety single desks and wide windows framed with peeling paint. Rough drawings from the first grade are pressed into the walls as décor alongside the wide world map faded in the corners. Countries split into separate colours with a large drop pin north of Nagoya, Japan. It must be where the village is, not that Katsuki had ever heard of the local area before. He distantly considers how far Tokyo is from here.

The floorboards creak loudest near the teacher’s desk when they languidly pass before the lesson. Four ceiling fans spin with major effort, all out of sync. Yet, every student looks content and natural in a classroom unlike his own. Katsuki strangely misses the clean, white walls, laminated flooring, and the iPads hooked onto every table back in Tokyo.

His steps are wide and sluggish, back hunched over as he reaches Deku’s desk. Katsuki would rather forget about the embarrassment of acting like an amnesiac fool the first time they switched, and Katsuki stood stupidly, unaware of what to do. He hates not knowing. This miracle is nothing short of a mystery.

“Hey.”

Eyebags greets with the lilt of a smirk, framing his purple eyes with half-lids and too many secrets. Katsuki would never entertain some loser trying to talk to him this early in the morning (hell, even Shitty Hair fought tooth and nail for that privilege), but this was Deku, and a compromise was a compromise.

“Morning.” Katsuki loosely bows before settling in his/Deku’s/whatever seat.

Eyebags leans closer, stating knowingly, “Something’s going on with you.”

Katsuki manages to hide his reaction, “Yeah?”

“More than usual.”

“Hmm.”

“You’ve been acting weird, sure, but you know more than you’re letting on.”

It takes all forms of willpower to not scowl at the purple-haired freak and hammer his pencil into that purple gaze of his. Instead, Katsuki pushes Deku’s voice higher to play the role of an annoyingly anxious teen. It feels easy as Deku’s body takes the reins in muscle memory, chuckling nervously.

“I haven’t been sleeping that well. I think it’s all catching up to me.”

Fuck, it feels so wrong to act so soft, speak in full polite sentences. Katsuki is rough and sharp and prickly enough to keep prying eyes at arm’s length. He feels how his soul sits offset in the nerd’s body, forcing himself in the mould that is distantly not the shape of Katsuki. He shifts awkwardly, but no amount of repositioning will fit him into Deku. He wonders if his presence in a space not meant for him would harm the nerd as some sick universal karma for Katsuki’s past misdeeds to catch up as bruising guilt.

“Sure, Midoriya, and I’m not an insomniac.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

The loser huffs dryly, “Something believable.”

Katsuki clicks his teeth and immediately hopes it wasn’t loud enough to warrant any attention.

“It’s like…”  Eyebags continues, “you’re you, but also not you.”

Katsuki needed to up his game. He cries out in what he believes to fit the dramatics of Deku’s mom, like mother, like son, right? “Seriously, it’s nothing. Why are you interrogating me?”

“This is what I mean, you even speak differently. You have been since you went berserk on Monoma. You gonna look at me and tell me it’s because you’re sleepy?”

What was this guy’s problem? Katsuki throws a bothered look at the weirdo and meets a gaze that peers rather viscerally, investigative, but Katsuki strangely doesn’t feel invaded. As if stalkerish tendencies were frequent enough for Deku’s body to get used to it. Just how often does this freak stare at Deku and act so natural with it?

“I am. I am tired. There’s… a lot going on.”

Much to Katsuki’s surprise, which said a lot because he does not get surprised even if the circumstances where nothing but surprising recently, it’s Glasses who butts in, “Shinsou-kun! Midoriya-kun is working diligently as a model student, and it is unprofessional to disregard his efforts. This is not the behaviour of a fellow classmate.”

“I don’t need you to-” Katsuki bites the instinctive retort and pushes out with firm, hard teeth, “Thank you, Iida-kun.”

Kill him. Just kill him. Katsuki gags internally. Iida-kun?! It tastes so bad. Katsuki must consume copious amounts of bleach to get out the taste.

Glasses shoots him a grateful nod and a small smile. Gag! Gag! Ew, get away!

“Whatever,” Eyebags sighs disappointingly, rolling his eyes, someone ought to shove that look up his fucking ass, “You coming over, then?”

>> Shinsou asked to do the geography project together. He wants to go to his place tomorrow.

Katsuki does not want to, especially not after that. Sleepy fuck and his freaky staring. Deku’s plans were Deku’s plans. Katsuki wants to finish up the day uneventfully and return with hopes that Deku didn’t fuck up his life. “I…I’m not sure.”

“Don’t tell me you’re busy, Midoriya.” The sleepy fucker kicks his chair. Katsuki boils with nostalgic anger.

The purple freak leans closer once again, practically lying on his table to reach up to the nerd’s ear. Warmth of his person simmers in the space between. Katsuki doesn’t feel his breath, but the proximity is far too close to his liking. Rough rasps spill from Izuku's classmate's tongue into smooth intonations that border on sultry: “You making promises you can’t keep? You wound me, Midoriya. I'm hurt.”

Katsuki slaps Deku’s ear and feels Deku’s cheeks warm. What was there to be flustered about? Curse Deku for making Katsuki look (?) like some virgin maiden beat red at flashing her ankles for the public.

Also, what the fuck? Did Deku set this up? What’s with the promise? Why risk making plans when they’re switching every other day? Katsuki wasn’t dumb enough to do that, but clearly, Deku is. Did the nerd get off on fucking up his day more than it already was? And why the fuck is this dark-circle looking freak so casual with the nerd?

Rabbit thumps of his heart willfully relax with each of Katsuki's tense breaths. Damn fucking nerd. Ruining everything without even being here.

Katsuki squeezes out, “I ain’t- I need to check with mom. We’ve got this… family thing.”

And then, with much effort:

“Sorry.”

A few beats pass. Eyebags shrugs. “Tomorrow then.”

Good. It’ll be Deku’s problem. “That’ll work.”

“Can’t wait.”

Whatever the freaks did in their own time was not Katsuki’s business, even if the thought made him remotely uncomfortable. That proximity, the look on Eyebags was not just plain camaraderie. At the end of the day, or multiple days, it was Katsuki who reaped half the consequences with the body of a village boy. Deku is a fucking asshole. Stupid fucking nerd. Can’t he think about Katsuki for once?

The classes are easy. Is this seriously what they’re teaching in the small towns of Japan? Katsuki spends the lunch avoiding as many people as he can. Too many conversations. Katsuki wasn’t made for conversations.

School finishes without a hitch despite the hiccup in the morning. Katsuki leaves with a loud collective “Get home safe” to keep from giving farewell to the losers individually. He’s never bid farewell as such before, but he supposes doing a few firsts in his dire circumstances can be overlooked. There’s a first for everything, right?

The bike tracks to the local mart as the sun starts to set. It is the best time to come, in his opinion. The crowds are fewer, and the prices would make Tokyo royally fucked in bankruptcy if they were this cheap.

“150 for a bag, sonny.” One of the produce vendors, an older man with a salt and pepper beard, informs with a smile, “Let me throw something a little extra for you and your mother. Give her my regards, ay?”

The bag of cherries and two freshly ripened mangoes swing back and forth as Katsuki rides home silently. The greatest difference between downtown Tokyo and the small cliffside village tucked away from the maps is the intimidating expanse of sky. There’s so much of it. Katsuki could pick a spot and take forever to reach the horizon. Egg yolk yellow paints just behind the distant mountains, blending into petal pink and deep aqua. It looks unreal. Katsuki would have never dreamed of seeing such a sight in his lifetime.

Everything about his life has been tall skyscrapers and blaring cars, the hustle of the city far too distracting to ever search for a pretty sight like this.

He supposes there might be one thing not to resent Deku for.

The air kisses coolly to the pockets in his chest. Deku’s chest. But for as long as Katsuki is using it, it is Katsuki’s.

>> The cherries are my favourite. My mom loves them too. Please pick them up on Wednesday if you’re there instead. They’re fresh on Wednesday.

>> I ain't your errand boy, shithead.

Katsuki tries the cherries. They’re good. Deku’s mom drawls out happy moans as she indulges in them. Katsuki doesn't immediately hate making the stop to grab them.

And if he freezes at the passing sight of Deku’s lips on the mirror, stained in burgundy, and finds the same colour on the nerd’s tongue, it is nobody’s business. Not his moment of hesitation. Not his angry eyebrows'. Especially not Deku’s.

⏱︎

“I’m scared, Kacchan.”

The little boy quakes until his clothes jostle with him. The moon poorly lights their path in the forest.

A young hand is outstretched, barely catching the pale glow of the night, but the scared boy sees it clear as if it were the only thing of importance. Tears well up. Their shine is strangely happy.

“I’ll let you hold my hand so you stop being a scaredy cat!”

The little boy is no longer scared as long as the other boy’s firm hands are in his.

“You’re the best, Kacchan!”

⏱︎

If anything, what he told Shitty Eyebags was a partial truth. Katsuki did have trouble sleeping, as one would if one were thrown into an environment so unfamiliar.

He sits with his legs propped up, elbows resting on his knees, eyes affixed in a direct line of sight to the field of stars that flourish on its midnight backdrop. Occasionally, the wind whistles and whines against the thin walls, lifting sheer curtains in a strangely hypnotising way. The movement is graceful, elegant, akin to white robes on a dancer pulled on the trails of artful limbs. It’s just so quiet here.

Katsuki hooks his fingers together loosely. Despite the maddening occurrence of finding himself living a double life with some country nerd, he can’t seem to rile up the frustration he expects himself to feel. Is it because it’s Deku’s body? Is Katsuki’s volatile behaviour a symptom of his body and not his soul? Does his mellow attitude (far mellower than usual) mean this is how he truly feels if he didn’t live his normal life in Tokyo?

Katsuki feels how thoroughly compartmented his emotions are boxed, insofar he could almost name them if he tried. It’s never been like before. Usually, they’re so far interconnected that Katsuki couldn’t tell where one emotion ended and the other began.

It leaves him in a weird place. Prone to thinking himself into a spiral. Or perhaps that was a consequence of living in a village far too quiet for his liking. He can, quite literally, hear himself think, and he does not like it.

Deku’s life is a simple one, even if it includes more people than Katsuki would ever want to interact with. But, strangely, Katsuki doesn’t mind the predictability of seeing how clear his next day fleshes out without the chaos of Tokyo’s madness. It’s expectant. It’s… freeing.

He looks between his parted knees to the straw mats below Deku’s rumpled bedding. Then, he tracks up the nerd’s arm atop his knee, littered with faint scars, easily missed in the darkness if Katsuki didn’t know they were there. There are so many. Clumsy injuries too random to be intentional. And Deku’s hands, stiffer than Katsuki’s own, as if the nerd spent his leisure time in laborious activities around the village.

Though they’re still smaller than Katsuki is used to seeing on himself. Deku is all throughout smaller, even in places Katsuki begrudgingly exposed to himself with the excuse of personal hygiene. Their heights aren’t too drastically different, thankfully. Katsuki didn’t know how he would manage if he were stuck in the body of a midget.

He turns to the floor-length mirror Deku keeps in his room and watches the form of the country boy copy his actions. Katsuki still can't believe it. He raises a hand, and the boy beyond the mirror passes his fingers through messy green curls. They spring back invitingly as they did the first time he touched them.

The distance between Katsuki and that boy feels like miles. It is. Whether parted by hundreds of them in different cities or the crude level of understanding they have barely been able to explore, this boy is no more than a stranger Katsuki wouldn't give two shits about if he passed him on the street.

Yet, maybe it's the bodyswitching, but therein belies an intimate sense of familiarity. Katsuki knows this boy. Has no choice but to entrust the boy with the old hag and old man at home, with the shitty bunch of idiots that follow him around school, with note-taking classwork and disciplined work hours.

He should be worried, shouldn't he? Practically plating his life over for a boy who hadn't even set foot in Tokyo.

Katsuki looks at the reflection as if Deku had answers. The boy was always thinking, copious amounts of thinking, if the diary entries on their shared phones were anything to go by, but Katsuki feels like he hasn't been thinking enough.

He wants to ride it out. It's a hiccup in the grand universe. It will right itself soon, right? Miracles like these were ephemeral.

Even in the dark bedroom, bold green eyes watch back. The scowl on his face is lessened. Katsuki imagines Deku to look a little more like this than whatever the hell he's been doing with the boy’s face.

Barely there, Katsuki catches the healed line scar under the reflection's right eye, marginally brighter as if the moonlight found its residence in the imperfection. He leans closer to inspect it, unsure if it always belonged on the nerd's face or if it was Katsuki's doing. He shuffles closer to the mirror. The boy in it does too, sitting cross-legged, large dark irises staring back. If Katsuki removes the metaphysical state of their situation, he can imagine sitting across from the boy just so without the mirror as parting.

Deku is all round cheeks and young face. His features are much too big for how unimpressionable the rest of him is, but it suits him. Eyes grown into ovals despite Katsuki’s uncontrollable squinting at the world, and bright, so bright that starlight finds itself on a deep shade of green no matter how much light there was to supply it.

It’s a face to be animated. A face to express and converse with other expressions. A face that laughs loudly and quivers his lips when he cries. It’s a face that wears everything and gives and shares, and so unlike anything Katsuki’s has ever been.

Fingers mindlessly pull towards the scar; the boy in the mirror looks afraid to touch it. 

No more than three days into Katsuki's transcendental torment, Katsuki had given Deku a swollen cheekbone, two bloodied knuckles and one hell of a social suicide with not a chance of regret. Granted, Katsuki took those injuries in a throwdown with some punk ass arrogant wuss in the class next door, but it was Deku who now wore Katsuki's battle scars. 

Looking at Deku's reflection was the least of Katsuki's worries back then. The green-haired boy who now stares back wears Katsuki's lifelong consequences. 

The city boy cannot commit to the waiting hand, hovers aimlessly above Deku's scar as if seeking whether the village boy himself will lean into it. It's a stupid thought. Deku isn't here. They do not sit without a mirror to part them. 

Never has Katsuki considered that his actions would physically mar someone else's life, but it has, and that reality is a strange thing to sit with. 

Katsuki doesn't intend to harm, not now anyway. He's abrasive and rude and kicks away what impedes his space, but he isn't cruel. Don't get him wrong, Katsuki isn't a soft guy, but living with Deku's body for a few weeks naturally swelled the dormant seed of goodwill and watered it til it half-bloomed.

"Thank you, my sweet. I am the luckiest to have you, aren't I?" Deku's mother had said with a cherry coloured smile. For something Katsuki had done. Katsuki. For a praise written for Deku, it was Katsuki who rightfully received it. There are traces of good in Katsuki, even if he long since convinced himself it tasted revolting in his mouth. Care, affection, warmth were all flavours unbeknownst to his palate, stale and sour, but they existed.

Beneath the snark and rage, good existed.

Deku's reflection stares back. The city boy within can imagine those round green eyes softening in the corners, lips spread affectionately to part for a delicate little: 

Kacchan sugoi.

Moonlight touches the peak of the boy's nose and pulls half of his face into the shadows—splits their lives as one true to the face and one who lives underneath. The village boy’s freckles look dull in the dark of the bedroom, but Katsuki knows how boldly they stand on sunbaked skin. He’s still pale, but warmed out to a shade closer to the wheat fields under the setting sun, like something sweet and spent in the daylight rather than under the turbulence of the big city’s changing weather. The boy beyond the mirror still looks washed out with nothing but the moonlight, but Katsuki has spent a few weeks passing glances at any surface that caught Deku’s reflection.

And he has come to an understanding.

Deku glows. With joy. With sadness. He glows.

He’s not quite sure if it’s the trick of the moonlight or if it’s how the boy behind the body sees it.

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

The bunny on Manager Hadou’s skirt is yet to become a thing of the past. Izuku wishes some gaping sinkhole manifested itself in Tokyo, as well as one conveniently placed wherever Kacchan was with Izuku’s person; it would be better to take out witnesses whilst he’s at it.

“Holding out on me, huh, Bakugou? Didn’t know you had a cute side to ya.”

“It’s not- I’m not cute.”

For as well as Izuku played Kacchan, the retorts fall naturally as if bred by himself.

“Better yet,” Sero pulls the new cardboard box of napkins from the top shelf, “Didn’t know you moved so fast. You got the Manager stripping off her skirt before the others got her saying their names.”

Izuku doesn’t turn to the taller coworker, plus Kacchan’s school friend, but can practically feel the sharp stretch of his smirk.

“It’s not my fault they don’t know how to hold a conversation with a woman.”

The box rips open with a staggered sound, “Oh, ho, ho. Cold Bakugou.”

Izuku sighs. “You all make a big deal out of everything.”

“Yeah? Pot. Kettle.”

It’s not the first time the thought has festered in Izuku’s mind, but the longer Izuku blinks with eyes that are not his, uses a voice that belongs to someone else, Kacchan’s temperament looks increasingly justified.

Frenzied energy buzzes for both cycles of the clock, a city that truly does not settle when the sun sinks to signal the rest people should be complying. The action sifts between thick halo rings of neon lights, between full buses and jam-packed off-peak trains. The buzz is felt when breathing in deep. Live wires. Endless spirit.

The sounds are loud and the sights are bright. A country boy who knows nada about keeping pace with crowds and chasing life’s wagging tail before it slipped from his fingers; Izuku is barely keeping up with Kacchan’s routine.

Early rise. Light morning workout. School. Assignment. Work. Groceries. Come home. Finish homework. Clean. Fifteen sets before bed. Early sleep. Surely, there aren’t that many hours in the day. Izuku, in the few weeks he should’ve spent perfecting said routine, has yet to figure out how to finish schoolwork fast enough to not mess up the rest of the day.

Every hour has practical benefit in Kacchan’s life, catered to progress with admirable discipline with foreshore results in his near future. Kacchan has figured out his pathway to success and is chasing it with all want and will the human body could encompass.

Izuku is no doubt a roadblock in the works.

With so much to do and little pause of wonder, Izuku truly, truly understands why everyone around Kacchan insists his brash and blunt attitude. Determination of the sort feels good to Izuku, even if the feeling is second-hand. Kacchan knows what he wants, and Kacchan will do whatever he needs to get there.

So, Izuku shares the irritation when Kacchan’s coworkers press for how he managed the Manager’s attention, shares the indignation when Chef blows up in Kacchan’s face for something that matters little in the long run.

Kacchan is simple. A life of a city boy is anything but, but Kacchan makes it simple.

“The fact you all care so much about her attention speaks volumes. I’m working.” Though Izuku would never dare arrange such words back in his cliffside village, he still assumes Kacchan would have better bite with it. That said, Izuku is starting to mean some of the retorts that colour his tongue.

Sero alternates plate and napkin into a stack whilst Izuku runs the numbers into paper. “Whoa! Don’t lump me with them, Bakugou. I’m a happily taken man. Plus, you know how it’s like…”

“How what’s like?” Red eyes flicker in Sero’s direction.

“Oh, you know, hot Manager, high school boys… it’s like, part of the experience growing up.”

Izuku halts his pen on his clipboard. What, like puberty?

Sero diverts, or rather, indulges, “Not always a chick. The Manager can be a dude too. I’m all supportive, bro.”

Huh?

“What does that mean?”

“Fine, fine. Not your thing. You gotta learn to loosen up, bro. Explore a little.”

That, Izuku agrees with. The routine is all parts admirable, but Kacchan doesn’t seem like someone who indulges in anything else. Things that slow his life down, that cater relationships with friends and lovers.

Sero shrugs half heartedly, “Maybe doing something a little different will help you understand yourself.”

The evening chill colours Kacchan's cheeks and nose a pretty pink; though Izuku’s desire to appreciate the look, the need to warm him up wins over. He wraps Kacchan's scarf thickly until it sits as a collar of green. Izuku sinks Kacchan’s nose into the wooly warmth.

It had been a long night. Manager Hadou initiated in light conversation, to which the younger coworkers spent the night grumpily looking over in Izuku’s direction. Kirishima popped by for a quick hello with another one from Kacchan’s circle, Mina if he remembers correctly. Izuku heavily appreciates the supporting company that Kacchan has.

The train softly shakes whilst Izuku stands by the opposite doors, hopelessly caught on watching the skyline. It's not a dream. This is Kacchan’s life. Kacchan is in Tokyo, actually. Izuku could visit and see the boy for himself.

God, what would Kacchan think? He would think Izuku was weird and creepy more than usual, right?

The moon paints its surrounding clouds in the colour of snow. The image flits in and out as the train passes a bridge. Izuku gasps at Kacchan's reflection.

Nose buried in wool, sharp eyes find him.

Between the blades of grass, blinding red light reflexes from the hulking form of a predator in waiting. Exuding fire from nothing but the sheer will of the hunt, of passion and strength and surety that everything is prey if in his hands.

Those gaping molten-hot eyes are caught in the train's dark windows, littered with firefly city lights captivating in their own right. But in the presence of Kacchan’s eyes staring back, Izuku cannot think of anything else.

Izuku has never once seen his reflection and considered the eyes he wears as glorious. Not until Kacchan.

Never until Kacchan.

For the poorly veiled supportive (and incredibly endearing) company Kacchan keeps, Izuku finds his life as a city boy is best spent in the Bakugou household. It's the nostalgia, he's well aware. Auntie Mitsuki has an incredibly unique way of sharing interest and Izuku decides he rather likes it.

“You look different, brat. You finally got something interesting going on in your life?”

Izuku swallows most of his smile, “My life is interesting.”

She huffs. Uncle Masaru chuckles under his breath. “Is that what you call it? Lord, help my poor sod of a son. When will you learn to live a little?”

“It's busy, sure. But I fucking like it.” Izuku winces at the swearing from his own/Kacchan’s lips and subconsciously compensates with a mutter of his own doing, “Things have been different lately.”

“Yeah?” She raises to look at him, “You finally sorted out that 'Deku' problem you had?”

Izuku’s blood halts, “Huh?”

Auntie Mitsuki watches him a moment before replying, “When you woke up all cranky a few weeks ago. Screaming about me writing about that friend of yours back in Musutafu. I didn't think you remembered him.”

Fuck. Fuck, what? Did- does Kacchan know then? Surely, he didn't. Kacchan would've mentioned it. But then, Izuku hadn't either. Oh no. What does this mean?

Auntie continues, ignorant to Izuku’s internal panic, “You ran out before I could sit you down.”

Izuku hums, unsure of what to say to fill the awkward pauses.

Uncle Masaru turns away from the kitchen sink and joins his wife by the island she's leaning on. Her expression dips into one achingly familiar that Izuku sees on his own mother; worrisome.

“I didn't tell you about the Midoriya’s because- well…” her hesitance is uncharacteristic, “I wasn't sure how you'd react, brat.”

This. Izuku shouldn't be here for this. If Kacchan ever finds out that they used to be childhood friends, Izuku would rather prefer it be from Izuku himself. Not like this. Not from Auntie Mitsuki’s mouth to her son’s face without her son’s consciousness.

“No, it's fine. It's done. I sorted it out.” Izuku rushes out.

“...Oh?”

“Yeah.”

 And in a very Kacchan sort of way, Izuku leaves the room to announce he was done with the conversation. It sits ugly on Izuku’s chest, to be so rude to an Auntie he used to brighten at seeing. She looks so much like Kacchan. How could young Izuku ever pass up the opportunity to not look at the reminder?

Izuku, yet again, breaks another one of Kacchan’s regulations and stares at the rotating ceiling fan long after 11PM.

Is it so bad to want to meet him? They used to play together as children in Musutafu. It's not so strange. Besides, Izuku feels far more comfortable travelling between trains as he did a few weeks ago.

>> Don't fuck up my life, Deku.

Kacchan would never indulge such a request. Kacchan sees too much of Izuku’s face as it is. He'd never agree to stepping away from his straight cut life and adding Izuku into it willingly.

How much were tickets to Tokyo anyway?

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

The next time they switch, Katsuki thanks the heavens for finally hammering into the fucking idiot to stop making plans or else he’d unabashedly fuck up his prissy perfect friendships by shoving curry down their shirts. Deku listens, finally. Not without whiny requests as a desperate plea to meet in the middle. The fucking ass.

>> The festival of the comet is next week and mom wants to arrange a few things. It’s just a few tasks, Kacchan. Just this, please??

Katsuki complies, only after Deku practically smacks his metaphorical forehead on the floor and promises to work extra shifts for more pocket change. In Katsuki’s pocket, that is. If that ass touched another Yen with his greedy little fingers…

“Izuku, baby, are you ready?”

“Yeah. Yeah, gimme a minute!” Not quite how the nerd likes it—she’s my mother, Kacchan, I’m always nice to her—but Katsuki ignores the fumble with a scramble to Deku’s dark slacks hanging off the wall.

“Oh, baby. You're in your uniform.” Deku’s mom passes him an up and down, hands paused mid-air from clicking shut her handbag. Katsuki freezes.

Stupid fucking green shits and their soft eyes, Deku’s mom practically melts into a sad smile. Katsuki hates it. God, he's so uneasy he doesn't even know what to do with himself.

Pity. So much pity. Katsuki, in the rare occurrence of someone else's body, shivers familiarly at the receiving end of it.

“It's your father’s anniversary. No school today, remember?”

Katsuki remains solid with the floorboards. Tasks? Couldn't Deku have been specific? Is Deku this fucking forgetful, or has Katsuki been wrong about him being a wholly condensed bundle of annoying sunshine this whole time? Who the fuck forgets…

“Be quick. We can't miss this bus, Izuku.”

Katsuki ain't a quitter, so he changes to deep blue jeans and a plain tee, donning anything besides those god-awful red sneakers by the front door as the mother watches.

“Sorry I'm late,” he mumbles, instinctively taking a few steps ahead–not leading, but protecting, as one would if taking an older woman out in public. Tokyo can be a rough place. Muggings were unpredictable, if otherwise inevitable. He shoves scarred hands into his/Deku’s pockets, “Will we make the bus?”

They do make the bus. The hike up the mountain is stagnant as the older woman pauses for shaky breaths, her tired hands finding thick trees to lean against before she ventures up again.

“Would you like me to carry you?” Katsuki suggests. Between the hubble-bubble of the bodyswitching, Katsuki can appreciate being in company of Inko’s kindness over someone who’s not. She makes it easy, smiles at Katsuki with more motherly compassion than his own mother shares in a year. She wears her heart on her sleeve and regrets nothing. Katsuki can’t help the softened gaze when he looks in her direction.

Deku’s body is really fucking up with his emotions.

“I’m okay, dear. It’s good exercise for me. My, it feels like more trouble than last year.” Her eyes crinkle into half-moons. Katsuki can tell where Deku gets his glow from.

The shrine is tucked away in a wet, sloppy shed, adorned with red rivulets of blessings and gold lanterns hanging in the front porch. Moss tracks the cobblestone path amongst small puddles from light rainfall Katsuki doesn’t remember happening. It must’ve been whilst he was back in Tokyo.

Inside is just as damp as the outside sells; marble blocks of names below symbolic figurines, and an incense stick long dried out, sticking off the bases. The mother leans forward to replace them, thumbing her handheld lighter until it flares orange licks of fire and burns the tips until they smoke. Next, she pulls out two rags, hands one to Katsuki, and sets to polishing the namesakes of the shrine.

The care and attention to such a ritual is characteristic of Inko’s softness. It feels like a Midoriya thing, to wipe the delicate Hanja with honour, to respect the name that mouths off his lips when he reads it. The movements are rhythmic. It gives Katsuki something to do without thinking about how his uninvited presence could anger the restless souls of the Midoriya shrine.

Deku’s mom sits silently in front of one on the right. Katsuki reads that one as ‘Midoriya Hizashi’. He assumes that one's Deku’s dad. Katsuki decides to pause with her, sitting knees folded to pay respects to a man he had never met, hands clasped to mimic the mother. Katsuki may be critical, but he isn’t an asshole. Well, sometimes.

“He used to love talking about how big and strong you’d get.” Deku’s mom sniffles. Katsuki isn’t quite sure what to say.

Inko continues, “He hoped to get you into Tokyo so you can go to school there. He knew you’d be smart. And look at you,” she does, “You’ve grown up so smart, baby.”

Katsuki feels helplessly wrong under her gaze. This wasn’t his. This was Deku’s. He feels like he’s stolen something he wasn’t even dared to touch.

“He’d be so proud of you, Izuku.”

Yeah, maybe this was a wrong idea. How wrong of the universe to send Deku hundreds of miles away on his very own father’s death anniversary. Katsuki should’ve faked an illness to keep from stealing this moment. This day is supposed to be Deku’s. Personal, intimate, to him and his mother. Katsuki shouldn’t be here. This is so wrong on so many levels.

“He’d be proud of you, too.”

Inko passes him a wet smile, morphing that of one sad to one honest and new. Her hands remain clasped, but her motherly gaze extends body and blood, right behind Deku’s eyes and into Katsuki’s hidden beneath them. Katsuki feels feverishly cold.

Shock must wear well on his face as Inko laughs softly, “I was a little older than you. Hizashi lived here in the village. That is how I came to know it before we moved here after his death.”

Katsuki barely croaks, “How-”

“I know my Izuku, dear. I know him better than he does himself. My boy is too timid to provoke a fistfight at school, even though he does have quite a tongue on him sometimes. The better question, yet, is…” She turns back to the smoke trails of burning incense, “…who are you?”

Spending half his days without indulging his anger makes it hard for Katsuki to erupt into his defence. Not to this woman at least. Katsuki can’t seem to find his words.

“Barring the first few days, I have seen you take care of my Izuku. I’m sure you’ve had your ups and downs. Hizashi and I didn’t get along at first.” Inko tilts her head longingly at the name of her beloved, “But he gave me strength as I gave him peace. I believe it must be the same for you two.”

Though he cannot give it voice, Inko reads his silence just the same, ‘It happened to you?’

“Quite the phenomenon, isn’t it? We fought a lot. He was a strapping young man, but not quite the brightest for college exams. We understood each other unlike anything. I’m sure you can relate. There’s nothing quite like placing your life in someone else’s hands.”

There isn’t. Is four weeks enough for that kind of trust? The switching isn’t by all means favourable, but it isn’t the worst. Is it normal to not entirely mind Deku playing around with his face when he can easily reap the consequences?

Did Deku not mind Katsuki doing the same?

“I…” Katsuki swallows, exhales, cannot meet her eyes so he looks at Deku’s father and really tries, “Bakugou Katsuki.”

That makes the woman snap back at her son, or rather, the soul that wears him. She brightens immediately, “Oh my! Is it really?”

Katsuki nods, furrowed brows.

“Oh, what a lovely surprise, Katsuki-san! How is your mother doing?”

He feels himself drop the mask, an ugly influx of rage and suspicion returning like an old friend. Deku’s natural pitch drops to the register Katsuki is comfortable with.

“How do you know me?”

Inko pauses, “I suppose you were rather young. You and Izuku used to play together back in Musutafu. My, you two were the cutest bunch! My Izuku would not stop talking about you!”

Katsuki feels like he’s left out on a joke again. He knew Deku? He would think he’d remember someone like Deku. Deku fucking glows. Did Deku fucking know? He feels belittled and bites back, “I don’t remember any of that.”

Inko smiles, “It has been a long while. Mitsuki and I went to college together. Oh, how terrible of me! I should’ve kept in contact. The move was so hectic, and I had my number changed. Do give my regards when you see her, Katsuki-san. Though, I suppose it’d be rather difficult to explain.”

Katsuki huffs. The rambling is hereditary. “So, me and… Deku used to know each other?”

Her face winces at the name-calling of her son, “Are you sure you don’t remember?”

“What?”

“That nickname of yours never changes, does it?”

What?

She softens once more, shaking her head with the warmest nudge to his shoulder. It’s Deku’s body, but this time, the gesture is solely for the city body who looked at her from within, “Still, if it were anyone, I’m glad it’s you.”

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

Playing Kacchan in the high city doesn’t pose as difficult of a challenge as Izuku once assumed.

“Thank you again, Bakugou. You don’t need to walk me to the station so often, you know?” Kacchan’s manager passes him a warm smile. The cool evening dulls her hair into darker blues with silver highlights, bright knowing eyes framed with long lashes that looked rather affixed in Kacchan’s direction. Izuku knows Kacchan doesn’t want anything to do with her, but the woman seems to enjoy the blonde’s company.

>> She likes you, Kacchan.

>> And I don’t, fuckhead. Nor do I give a fuck.

So, Izuku bows respectfully as dismissal and leaves without reciprocating Hadou’s offer of companionship. Izuku knows he’s crossed boundaries the second he’s woken in a bed that’s not his, far more when he keeps suggesting to the city boy to branch out, so this time, he’ll drop it.

The walk back is serene between buildings too big and people too loud. There are so many of them. Laughs and giggles. Fields of public thumbing on their phone. Tourists snapping shots at the alluring buzz that Izuku no doubt understands with his whole heart. It’s a little much, stirs anxious energy that pushes Kacchan’s legs faster.

Kacchan wouldn’t get nervous. Kacchan would stroll with the confidence of a leading wolf. Izuku can’t quite replicate that.

>> You used to live in Musutafu with me. Why didn't you tell me?

Izuku remembers the message from his phone the day prior. He couldn’t bring himself to reveal it to the city boy. How do you tell a childhood friend that some of your best memories are ones they forgot? It felt like a dirty secret.

Golden light peers over the big city in a magical afterglow, like the syrupy glaze of honey spread lightly on warm baked goods. It is a gift to watch the colour wash over prettily on people’s faces, to follow the bright shine pinging off tall glass buildings when he pulls his neck back.

The life of the public is built for art. Mothers with their babies in strollers. Promises kept in held hands. Wonderous energy swims between coffee cups and ear-clad headphones. Each passing face is unique and human and theirs.

White buses with wide windows pass by noisily and offer Izuku the fleeting sight of Kacchan’s reflection. The setting sun haloes around the blonde hair, colours red irises into molten garnets, flaring hotly with flickers of orange. Like two pieces of glass under the flame, they shine back in Izuku’s direction. The boy from within gasps. For as wild and charismatic the big city is, Kacchan looks like the centrepiece.  

This face, reflection long lost as the bus turns the corner, is not Izuku’s.

Not for the first time, does Izuku rile in misplaced guilt for wearing it and using it. Kacchan is wearing Izuku’s as much as Izuku is wearing Kacchan’s, yet it doesn’t settle his gut with ease. Izuku has spent his moments with Kacchan for this lifetime, granted they still bore baby weight and ran with little legs, but they had loved and lived for as fleeting as the figure of Kacchan’s reflection on the bus’s windows stared back.

Their paths once crossed in the sandpits in their local park and pulled away to opposite sides of the country. Izuku wouldn’t have gone to Tokyo. Kacchan wouldn’t have visited his cliffside village.

But for some other force to tie the red threads back together…

⏱︎ Beads of white, blue and yellow fit snugly around their names, looped to a sliding knot fit for young wrists. ⏱︎

Perhaps they were fated to cross again.

Izuku thinks it’s absurd. Izuku and Kacchan weren’t destined to meet again. It if weren’t for that first switch, the memories of young boys playing heroes would have faded as buried backstories.

Though, by force and will of the universe, Izuku now stands with the face of a childhood friend he long since forgot about. Izuku wears the built frame of a city boy and watches the sun set like it was his first.

He pulls Kacchan’s phone to meet his ethereal reflection once again. Tears line between blonde lashes of his lower lash line. Izuku dials.

Colours wash the sky out of its blue and replaces it with a night with few stars. Izuku learns to slow and loves things that are beautiful for Katsuki deserves that love back when the miracle comes to an end. Izuku learns that keeping people at arm’s length appreciates their joy from the outside; he experiences that thick skin and short sentences are the norm and that there is something delicate in brief exchanges; beyond that, Izuku yearns hard.

Izuku thinks, that the world looks belonging if seen by blood-red eyes.

.

.

The call does not go through.

Chapter Text

The sky breaks in half.

A cruel twist of the cosmos, to split the stars in flurries of orange and green just as they bore half of each other’s lives. But truly, the greatest irony is the white line that parts the colours, drawn by fate’s unforgiving hand to keep them close but never touching.

Cruel indeed, to remind them how easy they can exist together, but never allow it.

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

Unsent letter between the pages of Notebook #13.

For Izuku, there is not a moment that passes that doesn’t belong to a city boy with ash-blonde spikes and a sharp, rouge gaze. His thoughts flesh and form as his own but inevitably fall in orbit with ‘Kacchan’ as both the melodic echo and the weighted centrepiece that pulls the rest of Izuku into it.

Even as he watches his mother tie the golden ends of her kimono around her waist and drape prettily down her pale arms and legs, Izuku thinks to snap a picture in hopes Kacchan will see it the next morning. Rivulets of silk in the colour of pine frame her delicately, dotted in Sakura pink petals gathered mostly where the fabric cinches at her waist. She looks beautiful.

Izuku is dressed similarly; green yukuta sloping off his shoulders into wide arms that invite the chill of the festival evening. Though he looks nowhere near pretty as his mother, he mildly wishes Kacchan had the chance to see him all dressed up like this. Would it be weird to snap a mirror photo? Kacchan’s going to laugh at him, he’s sure.

Izuku's chest squeezes. Kacchan couldn't even be bothered to recognise him—vacant understanding with white earphones drowning out Izuku's soft pleas. 

⏱︎ 

"Kacchan?"

His breath hiccups when ruby meets his gaze without the parting of a reflection. The train shakes them softly. These were truly Kacchan's eyes as his own, sharpening at the corners without Izuku's will..

"Kacchan? It's me."

⏱︎

His heart is solemn when the day passes quickly. They visit the Midoriya shrine as per his mother's request, and Izuku secretly thanks her, considering he missed his father's anniversary. Despite bowing to his father's name, all he thinks about is Kacchan. What an indigent excuse to place their extraordinary reality as the reason. First, it really was the switching, of course, his thoughts would be filled with the life he half-lives.

But then, it was less about how to live as Kacchan and more about how Kacchan lives. Passionate. Driven. Goal-oriented. Honest. The last of such wavered the more Izuku noted how those around the city boy treated him behind a thick wall of his own making, with reservations.

Izuku wondered why Kacchan denied himself the pleasures of companionship wholeheartedly, why he veered away from emotional intimacy. Why is Kacchan lonely?

And then, Izuku understood for how Izuku lived Kacchan's loneliness was similar to his own, even if to a degree. Izuku desired a connection. Izuku thrives on it. You could learn so much from people.

Kacchan was yet to find someone he yearned to learn from. Izuku met his fulfilment by learning all things Kacchan.

Perhaps that is why the stars aligned to cast such a reality on the two boys.

The sun begins to set and the festival is grand and giving, with a late energy that buzzes closer to Tokyo’s night adventures than for a hick town like this one, but Izuku thinks to see it here is still plenty different. Here, between neighbours pulling each other in an embrace, between children up late past their bedtimes with their parents in tow, between fuchsia that breathes than burns, here it is intimate.

Vendors place extra portions of Takoyaki despite the run of their business, lovers publicly slot into each other’s sides in a night for themselves, there is not a face unrecognised nor unhappy.

Two young girls twist between the pillars between the stalls, sparklers in one hand and holding each other’s with the other. They sift in and out of the villagers with merry laughter. The elders are bundled up to their noses, sipping heartily on chicken soup given freely down the street, and pass their gloved hands to ruffle the children that pass. Conversation starts and end easily, some wide and animated, some gentle and gestured. The energy is one that invites and not intimidates.

Izuku wishes Kacchan were here to see this, whether by whatever divine force interchanges their souls or as his person himself. Would Kacchan also dress up for the festival? He’d rather bite Izuku’s head off, right?

Lanterns line the roof edges and embark an orange spotlight to passing crowds, briefly showcasing their pointed fingers, their easy joy and their stuffed cheeks. Izuku hasn’t seen this many village people in one place, but he supposes it's only giving how the cosmic sighting was the talk of the town for the past week. The day of the comet festival was one for the books.

⏱︎

Passengers push them apart before Kacchan gets a word in. Their fingers just short of brushing. Even if Kacchan frowned in question at Izuku's audacious presence, he still reached out.

He still extended his hand.

"Kacchan!"

⏱︎

Izuku pulls out his phone and hits record. The warm colours of the evening dance beautifully on his screen, both of the setting sun and the festival's spirit, snapping candid families and friends’ shots for a city boy over 300 miles away.

“I wanted you to see it.” He hushes to the phone, heart thundering unbearably loud as he realises he is directly talking to Kacchan, even after the painful lack of acknowledgement no more than two days prior. He doesn’t sound weird, does he? Will Kacchan think he’s weird? He’ll have to hear it back later.

He pans the phone to the stalls, “It’s pretty busy.” He speaks low, shyly. Mild pink colours his cheeks and he hopes no one notes it. “Everyone’s been out for an hour or two. I think we’ll be here a while.”

A loud holler whoops from the left side of the street. Izuku pans the camera to the gathering crowd of young adults, with one in the middle chugging a pint of beer. Izuku chuckles gently, chock-full of endearment.

“Auntie Nako is serving spicy tteokbokki,” Izuku points at the stall in the far right. Ochako waves largely from behind the counter whilst her mother serves a group of teenagers with dangerously red rice cakes. Izuku shudders without thinking about it, “I’m sure that’s your kind of thing, Kacchan. Though I will never understand why.”

Next, he slowly records from the hanging lanterns to the spiral streamers that rustle in the wind below them, “You’ll see it tomorrow but it looks… pretty tonight.” His phone catches the distant figure of his mother walking towards him. He zooms in on her attire.

“Hey, baby. You taking pictures?” She tucks a fallen green lock behind her ear.

He shakes his head. “It’s a video.”

His mother wears all parts of adoration in her smile, one that pulls back into a knowing one. She then poses this way and that, “Well, how do I look, Izuku?”

“You look amazing, Mom.”

She giggles softly. Izuku loves her so much he could cry.

“Okay, now, give me the phone. It’s your turn.” She steps towards him.

“Oh! No, no, it’s okay. I don’t really-”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You look so pretty in your yukuta, ‘Zuku. I need photos for your photo album.” She stretches for the arm that pulls Izuku’s phone further away.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll take some later.”

Inko leans in, “Don’t you want to show Katsuki how handsome you look?” And plucks his phone from startled fingers with a bright grin.

Izuku gapes like a fish out of water. “Huh?”

“Oh, baby.” She records him, “Doesn’t he look handsome? Look at my little boy! The green really suits you.”

Izuku doesn’t even have the space to crumple under the attention of the camera. His bones turn to lead, blood to ice, body to stone. How did she-? Did Kacchan tell her? Why would Kacchan-? How long-? What-?!

“What?! Wait- When?”

“He knows, baby. I told him on your father’s anniversary. Confirmed it when he used that silly nickname from back in Musutafu.” Inko pulls a face.

Kacchan? Kacchan, you-!

“Oh! You should get back at him and call him that adorable little name!”

Izuku shields his face with his hands, if only to cover up the creeping blush across his cheeks. He wonders if the divine universe decided to back him into an embarrassing corner just for its entertainment, because it surely felt like it.

“Oh, come on, Izuku! There’s nothing wrong with a little teasing. I’m sure he can give you a free pass!” His mother pushes.

“Mom.” It comes out muffled.

“I can’t see you under there. Let me record you.”

“Mom,” he knows his cheeks are flushed. He’ll so have to delete the entire second half of this later. Kacchan can never see it. “Mom, please. I’ll have to record another video for Kacchan now.”

Much to his dismay, his mother perks up, “Oh my, so casual. Aren’t you two close?”

Izuku lunges for his phone.

“You better take care of him, Katsuki! He is as much your responsibility as you are his. Understood?” She grips the phone incredibly tight for a woman so small, “And thank you for being there for my Izuku.”

Kacchan will never see any of that.

“You better not delete that, Izuku.”

Never.

Crowds gather with happy bellies, affixed to the glitter trails of the comet. Hours pass as the comet slices further with white condensation lines on a sky that looks near black. They settle on picnic blankets and folding chairs. All eyes, including Izuku’s, watch as the spectacle breaks into a smaller piece of rock, erupting in all sounds of wonder. It’s utterly gorgeous, how many colours follow the smaller piece, hypnotic, where many hadn’t realised it was growing bigger in size.

It grows. And grows. Chatter idles out. Tension sinks. Izuku thinks of his friends and his mother. He thinks of beautiful red eyes and the red thread of the little friendship bracelet they made when they were kids. He thinks those beads in All Might's colours and that name in seven letters mean everything to him right now.

He thanks the universe for showing him Kacchan again.

The sky breaks in half.

 Izuku hoped far away, in a city an expensive train journey away, and snuggled under a safe roof, that Katsuki was also watching the sky.

∘₊✧──────₊ ∘·₊˚☄∘ ₊──────✧₊∘

>> It was a really long time ago. I'm surprised you forgot. We were 4. Wait I'll show you something the next time we switch.

Katsuki exhales heavily between his legs. It’s strange that over the four short weeks of sharing lives, Katsuki no longer simmers in rage at seeing Deku’s little notes, even if they sound hushed than usual.

Katsuki feels it too and finds himself pulling his annoyance far enough that he forgets it took place in his system.

“Would you guess what that bitch said to me? Guess, go on.”

“No clue, dear.” His dad’s wearing an ugly pink apron with letters bold in cursive ‘Housewife’ whilst he plates an egg for Katsuki’s breakfast. He throws an amused smile to Katsuki before turning back to his wife.

Behind his glasses, the man gazes at her lovingly. Katsuki watches.

“She said the inseams were sloppy. Sloppy? When the fuck has anyone ever said I’m sloppy? The fit was to the fucking T, Masaru. I carved that two-piece with my blood, sweat and tears!”

Katsuki chews a forkful, “Gross.”

His mom shakes her head, “Don’t let those stick-up-their-asses fool you, Katsuki. They’ll kiss your ass to get in your business and then act like they own the place.”

“Noted.”

“Give you a run for your money, them thieving pretentious assholes. The summer line is perfect, I tell you. It's gonna wipe the floor with their faces.”

Katsuki knows well that his dire urge to surpass and win is hereditary, written in his genes as strongly as his mother birthed him with blonde hair and red eyes. He's taken her young skin and loud voice, too. Katsuki is so definitively like his mother that he can no longer reason his flippant comebacks with her. It's how they communicate.

Resilient effort will pay off. Katsuki’s determination scales the same as the woman who gave him his name, unabashedly similar to her own.

He wonders why he resents their similarities so much, why he fights, why he yells rather than talks.

His father plates the last of his eggs onto his own plate and walks behind Katsuki to settle in his chair, not without fluffing a hand into Katsuki’s head with all of his unashamed affection.

Ever since the switch, Katsuki has begun to feel he has developed traits akin to his father.

The old man is softer, pliable. He listens intently to the sounds of conversation, even if he is not a part of them. He functions slower, efficient still, but without the urgency to fulfil at the latest convenience. His father knows how to acknowledge the world without deterring from his own goals. To bear either skill without causing the other to lax was… admirable.

Katsuki used to think his father was too kind to erupt to anything worthwhile. As much as he loved the man, he did not respect his way of living as much. It looked useless. Unnecessary. Stupid, to distract yourself from ramming head-first to where you wanted to be.

Three and a half weeks of alternating days with Midoriya Izuku briskly changed that outlook.

“Not hungry, son?” The old man asks with sudden concern behind his glasses.

Katsuki chooses to sit at the table for longer. Deku's mother practically glees when Katsuki formally stays at the dining table until she finishes her dinner. Katsuki doesn’t have to try so hard to become a part of dinner rather than a reluctant addition.

Katsuki eats well. Though his palate is fine-tuned and meticulous, he no longer grimaces at the smallest of imperfections.

Yolk butters with a crude kick of black pepper in his mouth, simple in taste and texture, but becoming so much more the longer he focuses on it. It is these deep-rooted changes that have Katsuki looking so odd to his parents.

Sourdough crunches meet on the other side of the table. Katsuki pays it no mind. Because in this spot, taking each decadent flavour in stride, is something Deku did in his body. These are experiences only he can understand.

Perhaps that is what it was. An unmistakable reality that there exists a soul that will understand what it means to breathe deep into your lungs, will know how it feels to walk in your legs. Just as Katsuki does to the country boy, Deku knows what it means to live as Katsuki. How can someone be more known than that?

Does Deku also pat down Katsuki’s stubborn rouge hairs when he wakes up to a busy world outside? Does Deku roll his shoulders largely when changing into Katsuki’s uniform? Does Deku live Katsuki’s life better than Katsuki? Fucking nerd. He bets the fucker thinks he does. All sappy and shit, suggesting stupid hangouts with a couple of extras for the sake of building relationships. Fucking dumbass.

With the violent, ever-changing pace of downtown Tokyo, Katsuki finds himself irritated by the energy. It's not the countryside. It's not the soft smiles of fruit vendors and small-town families. It's not zoning out to the rattle of bike pedals with Deku’s friends. It's not letting himself become a part of the silence and truly, truly living for the first time in a long time.

Is it selfish to take a piece of the quiet life and make it his own?

Is it selfish to close his eyes at night and eagerly wait to be woken by Deku’s blaring alarm clocks?

Katsuki has considered voicing the nerd’s name to his parents and their supposed childhood history in Musutafu’s neighbourhood, but his tongue falls short given his metaphysical circumstances. He and Deku are soul-switching. A creation of the universe that was never to be, but forged under stars. Katsuki’s reality is greater than those childhood stories he yearns to hear. A strange part of him wonders if mentioning the green-haired family would be the catalyst that splits them apart again.

Deku’s life freakishly feels like his own, even if only in part. He doesn't want it taken away.

Instead, Katsuki spends his first weekend deviating from his norm. His morning jogs ease into walks. His gaze lingers to people’s faces, thoughts flitting to sweet song of bussing streets rather than how fast he can run around the block.

Having the space and time to revel in your thoughts is addictive. Katsuki scowls at himself for giving in so easily.

It's the nerd’s fault. Of course it is. Deku took the fire under Katsuki’s heels and pushed him into a garden chair to watch the skies instead.

Fuck that dumbass nerd. Still trying to control his life. Forcing him to hmpf bitterly at another one of Shitty Hair’s stupid propositions despite his urge to bite a refusal. Fuck Deku, for making Katsuki sit with brainless punks whilst they playfully bite at each other and talk loudly in the back row of the cinema.

Fuck Deku for not making it an unbearable experience.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Katsuki isn't supposed to be like this. Katsuki doesn’t enjoy outings like these. Katsuki doesn’t harshly shove Dunce Face and pay for his dumbass monster of a burger. Katsuki doesn’t indulge in picking fun at Earphones’ shy confession in kickstarting a music channel, nor does he keep an ear open when she eventually gives them a sneak peek of her latest upload.

Katsuki is here. Clicking his teeth when Shitty Hair nudges his shoulder as thanks for joining. Calling them idiots in a voice rough and low but hushed, as if the insult wore off and left behind something tender. Something that would give way if looked at directly.

Fuck.

Fuck Deku. Fuck him six ways to Sunday.

Pinky snakes her arms broadly across the boys’ shoulders, pushing her wild pink curls into Katsuki and Kirishima’s faces purposefully. Both boys minutely flinch, Kirishima flushed the same red to his hair, and Katsuki noted how similarly soft they feel to Deku’s hair. Deku’s short. Would Deku come up to the same height as Mina?

They tuck themselves into a restaurant for some grilled meat as to be adults, Pikachu and Pinky, far too excited as a child would be if they were told they were allowed to eat big people's spicy food. Tongs clack twice between Katsuki’s fingers before he sizzles strips of meat on either side. The loudass group hurrah’s when perfectly cooked beef meets their plates.

It isn't him. But it is. If the universe threatened everything he could ever care for at gunpoint, Katsuki would admit with gritted teeth that he wouldn't be anywhere but here.

“You’re the best, bro.” Shitty Hair lightly kicks him from under the table. Katsuki scoffs without a response to give voice.

Bright orange pulls into a yellow vortex on the hot plate. On top of it, charred seasonings smoke up pleasantly from the grill as Katsuki refocuses on it. The thin grey trails remind him of burning sticks and prayers to the dead and Deku’s mother’s knowing smile.

“Blasty’s the best!”

“You’re like the dad I never had!”

“Last I checked, pretty sure you’ve got a dad, Kaminari.”

“It’s the vibe, Jirou. We’re the kids, and Bakugou’s the dad who doesn’t remember our birthdays!” Dunce Face throws his arms as if his revelation changed the course of history.

“More like the dad who yells at you over Maths homework.” Soy-Sauce Face nasally interjects.

“Nah,” Pinky plops her head on her hand and looks at Katsuki analytically, “Blasty is more like… the grumpy uncle who hates family gatherings but secretly shows up for his nieces and nephews.”

“Oh fuck… yeah. He is.” Earphones looks at the blonde too in a new light.

“And Kaminari’s the bratty toddler that cries in the toy aisle in stores.” Sero nudges on.

“Bratty? What the hell do you take me for?”

“I ain’t wrong, bro. It’s the consensus.”

All, except Katsuki, nod at the very accurate deduction.

Chatter merges into the quiet pop tune of the restaurant. It's an aimless weekend for many, it seems, with tables crowded in families and friends, lovers and children, and happy hums of good food. Katsuki knows the place to sell its service well. There are more on this street that live up to their reviews.

Two stores over, there's an elderly couple who whip up the best Katsudon that Katsuki withheld recommending to Deku. That idiot spent enough of his money as it is. Deku would like it, he's sure. Deku would rattle on and on about the taste and texture, take pictures from fifty different angles, and then practically lay down his life just to go there again.

God, he would beg, wouldn't he? Tagging those ‘please, Kacchan’s like an annoying little brat. Katsuki can imagine it even without ever hearing the nerd utilise his own voice.

Deku would be so remarkably different and intimately familiar if Katsuki were to see the nerd with his own eyes.

Dumb fucking Deku.

“It’s good for you. Whatever it is you’ve been doing recently.” Kirishima says unprompted.

Katsuki is glad he swallowed the flinch.

“What?”

“You’re… just a little different, bro. You don’t have to tell me what’s been going on, but whatever it is, it’s doing you good.”

Sharp teeth flash behind his bright smile. Katsuki cannot find himself wanting to smite it clean off.

“Yeah?” Katsuki says instead.

“Hell, yeah. I mean, look at you.” Shitty Hair pokes his chopsticks between the spread of cooking beef. Katsuki smacks it away with the prongs. He does not want it fucking contaminated in slob. Kirishima continues smiling warmly, “You’re happier.”

The circumstances of the bodyswitching were a headache if anything. Placing everything you know and everything you care for in someone else’s care isn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows. There aren’t enough fingers in Japan to count how many times Katsuki wanted to smother Deku’s dumbass face with a pillow.

Is he? Happier?

“Yeah.” Succulent juices drip onto hot metal before he places the perfectly seared beef strip onto the idiot’s plate, “I think I am.”

The evening comes sooner than he expected. His shitty, dumbass friends wave at him like dorks before parting ways. Katsuki is left alone under the darkening sky, and for the first time, warm in his chest that slots in the hollowness.

Stupid Deku.

He pulls out his phone. The nerd is probably busy with the festival. After stealing Deku’s father's anniversary visit, Katsuki is glad the nerd at least has this to experience for himself. The village looked beautiful in preparation for it, and Katsuki has no doubt the sappy shit will be all bright smiles under the comet sighting.

Maybe one call. Just the one. Deku wouldn't even pick up.

The dial drops before it has a chance to come to.

Hmm. Bet the nerd’s got no signal. Stupid ass.

He dials again.

It drops.

Katsuki dials again an hour later.

Still out of range, huh?

Again, he presses the dumbass country boy's call button, watching the night sky. Would he be able to see the comet sighting, too?

Katsuki falls asleep. The call never goes through.

.

.

.

Three days pass and Katsuki has yet to wake in a bed that isn't his own. He should be elated. He should be celebrating the sudden reins he has to have more of his life back and not in some idiot country boy’s hands who couldn't even make school in time.

He should.

“No lunch today?” Shitty Hair pushes his face into Katsuki’s field of vision. The question incites familiar bouts of irritation; however, it is easily squashed by his straying thoughts.

Three days isn't many. Tomorrow, Katsuki will scroll through the nerd’s pictures, which will no doubt be full of the alluring mass of constellations with the bright streak of a passing comet. Tomorrow, he will hear the town talk about it as the most interesting thing that's ever happened in their small lives.

“Dude.”

“Is he being freaky again? Thought he stopped doing that.” Dunce Face invites himself. It breaks Katsuki out of his stupor.

“Course I've got my fucking lunch. I'm not a fucking idiot.”

Dunce Face has the nerve to huff, “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Wanna say that again, punk?”

.

The alarm rings. Katsuki opens his eyes to his rotating ceiling fan. His duvet pools to his hips as he sits up, checks his phone, and frowns. He hasn't miraculously missed a day.

Deku must be having the time of his life, having his days Katsuki-free. Fifteen calls and not one goes through.

.

Five days turn to seven. A week isn't much, but neither was the paranormal phenomenon of their body switching. Four weeks sharing lives and one of having it back.

Katsuki zips through their notes back and forth. They turn up empty.

.

By day eight, Katsuki cannot describe the prickled trepidation that follows his form as he attempts his normal routine. Morning jog. What the hell was going on? Breakfast. Is it over now? School. The notes were gone. Work. The calls won't go through. Homework. Will they not switch anymore? Dinner. The notes were gone. Exercise. The notes were gone.

The notes were gone.

His chest nestles with a scratchy sort of discomfort, where his breaths feel cold and make his blood run colder still. His palms clench around his phone, scroll stiffly through Deku’s contact, then again at the notes, scroll through the camera roll and see none of the countless pictures Deku flooded Katsuki’s gallery.

Their notes. Their conversations, albeit broken in time and some unbeknownst magical force, were thinned out of existence. If Katsuki stares long enough, he can imagine them never existing in the first place.

Whatever driving force that catapulted the two into each other’s lives had come to an abrupt stop and jolted Katsuki with inexplicable whiplash. His nerves are uneasy. His eyes catch on every reflection and lurch his body closer to it to check he wasn't in Deku’s body. His stomach drops when all he sees are blonde tresses atop his hair and a distinguishable lack of bright green eyes staring back.

Is… is it actually over?

Surely, the next appropriate thing to do would be to touch base, right? The switching wasn't exactly an event to brush over. They needed to actually talk to each other so Katsuki wouldn't think he made the whole thing up in some cobwebbed, lonely corner of his mind.

Deku was real. Deku's mother was real. Glasses, Round Face, heck, even Eyebags was real.

“Katsuki, son, are you alright?” His father comes up behind him in the mirror, hand hovering before meeting Katsuki’s shoulder.

No. No, Katsuki wasn't alright.

.

By day nine, Deku’s contact doesn’t exist. Neither do the names of the nerd’s friends, the nerd’s mother, nor worst of all, not even the nerd himself.

Deku.

His name wasn't… Deku, was it?

Why did Katsuki call him that?

⏱︎

Katsuki flips his bucket full of sand upside down and smiles triumphantly at the best sandcastle the park has ever seen. He's proud of himself. It's taller than Katsuki’s own house, he thinks. He wants to make it even bigger so he can live in it and stake claim on the sandpit so no other extra tries to build one bigger than his.

Shoes crunch behind the structure. Katsuki peeks to see a little boy staring at the castle. Katsuki almost yells at the stupid boy getting too close.

“This is the biggest sandcastle I've ever seen!” The high-pitched voice exclaims, not noticing the blonde.

The stupid boy doesn’t have a bucket. Katsuki doesn’t think the stupid boy would try to make one out of Katsuki’s sandpit.

Green eyes find Katsuki’s. They crinkle as the boy smiles blindingly.

Katsuki yells anyway, “Pfft. This is nothing. I'm going to make the biggest one ever.”

The stupid boy bounces closer, “Really?”

“It's gonna be bigger than All Might!”

“All Might? You watch All Might too?!”

Katsuki huffs, “I'm not dumb. All Might is the coolest ever.”

Awe fills the other boy’s eyes, “Yeah! Yeah! He saves everyone!” And then raises a pudgy fist thematically to the TV show, “I wanna be a hero just like him! He's my favourite!”

The green dork may look stupid, but it seemed like he didn't have dumb taste.

“No way! I've watched all the episodes five times! And I know all the All Might dance off by heart!”

“Me too!”

“No, you don't.”

“I do! Watch!”

⏱︎

Stars are few and far between, dots sparse and wide as if to press Katsuki’s slurring sense of time between them. Unseen unless looked at directly, masters of stealth, despite lying on the infinite horizon with not a cloud to hide behind. They exist in short, like moles on long pale skin. For what draws the eye if not the imperfections on everything seamless?

Katsuki desires the torrent of stars to freckle the vast night instead, speckled with a dry paintbrush; it looked like space was brought closer simply for Katsuki to gawk at.

It is as such, when the boy sits in front of his floor-length mirror and raises a hand to trace the plain skin atop his nose and cheeks. Katsuki doesn’t have freckles.

Once upon a time, he did.

⏱︎

“Mom says we're moving.”

Sniffles fill the bedroom.

“Moving where?”

“Somewhere far away. I won’t be able to play with you anymore. I- I-“

Hiccups hitch wetly. The boy’s tears are painful for both of them.

“How far away? How far away are you going?”

“I- I don't know, Kacchan. I don't want to go! If I leave, then we won't be friends anymore.”

Katsuki grabs the little boy’s arm. His voice wavers, “We're not done playing yet, idiot. Even if you move really far away. We're going to be heroes, Deku. Heroes never quit.”

“Heroes?”

Behind the small ball of the boy’s fist, sunlight catches green eyes in a glimmer of faith. Katsuki will always deny it, but the look makes him feel even better than winning a race against the older grade schoolers.

“Partners,” Katsuki promises.

No one believes in him like Deku does.

⏱︎

As per routine not crafted by himself, Katsuki walks Hadou Nejire to the station under the dipping sun. The weather is forgiving, as is the lack of conversation until they meet at the bridge, where Katsuki dictates he has done his part of a gentleman. He isn’t sure why he does it, but he knows he must. Someone expects him to. Katsuki isn’t at all bothered by releasing the tight leash on his life as he normally would be.

“I’m aware you’ve turned me down, Bakugou, but if you keep acting so chivalrous, I might start getting the wrong idea.” Manager Hadou smiles sweetly. Her features are rounded and feminine. She’s a pretty woman. Katsuki pointedly feels nothing towards her but respect for his boss.

“I appreciate it, Manager. But my answer hasn’t changed.”

“Thought so.” She blinks at the bleed of yellow into blue at the horizon. “Now I think about it, it is rather obvious.”

“Hmm.”

“She must be a lucky girl.”

Katsuki, for how sharp-witted and articulate he thinks he is, says dumbly, “Girl?”

Manager Hadou tilts her head teasingly, “Or a boy then.”

Forest-green and constellation freckles flash in his mind before the features conform a face. The blonde is stunted.

“I hope he loves you just as much as you do them.”

Love. Is it really love? When Katsuki can feel the image of someone slip from his grasp and leave him with a gaping sense of incompletion. Does love claw in his chest and rip away the warmth he grew used to at their mere thought?

Why does he feel like he’s lost it before even giving it a name?

It clicks in him madly when he spots the white and pink thread embroidered on his Manager's skirt, because Katsuki would never create that with hands solely purposed for labour and study.

Katsuki didn't make it. But the two syllables that burn the tip of his tongue are especially hot when looking at it. Katsuki did not thread the bunny, but he is strangely sure they were born from his hands.

Which means there is something unbearably wrong.

He lunges with crazed eyes, close enough for his manager to tilt her head at him, confused until she follows his gaze to the colourful threads.

She blushes mildly, “Oh, I quite like it. I hope it’s not too weird that I keep wearing it.”

But the moment she meets his face again, her flush draws straight out of her cheeks and melds her expression into one of hapless concern. Katsuki cannot take his eyes off the bunny ears.

“Are you… okay, Bakugou?”

He remembers the frustration at reaping the consequences of making that dumb little embroider, he remembers tapping away to a faraway boy how fucking embarrassing it was whenever someone brought it up. He remembers berating and cursing and chanting ‘Stupid, fucking Deku’.

Deku!

Where was Deku?

Katsuki pats his pockets for his phone. The black screen captures his wide eyes. Katsuki opens the front-facing camera just to be sure he isn’t in Deku’s body.

Why isn’t he in Deku’s body?

But it happened. They did switch. Deku stitched bunny ears on the Manager’s skirt, and Katsuki learned to breathe in the country air. That firm, unshakable trust existed. They shared lives in a way Katsuki would never allow with someone else. They split themselves in half and wore the other’s arms and legs, spoke in opposing rhythms, saw flaws as endearing little quirks that drew their souls closer and closer until their colours overlapped.

Deku tied the first footprint of his presence by fixing the Manager’s torn skirt. Deku left behind memories upon memories, and better yet, with a small piece of Katsuki’s sanity because Katsuki didn’t make it all up.

By God, does he yearn to pass crooked fingers through cotton green locks, or if his fantasies will it, touch it with his own scarless hands.

They know each other in ways that sync their breaths into one. The intimacy of disassembling the different shades that mar their skin. The closeness of cold air in deep breaths. Where Katsuki existed, Deku was close behind. Where Deku existed, Katsuki followed.

Was it Deku’s care that widened Katsuki’s lens, that carved the scenic route without deterring from his drive and passion? Deku cares, doesn’t he? Deku wants what is best for him. Deku has only done what was best for him. Only Deku could. To love is to be known, right? Who better than the very person who knows how it feels to live in the space of Bakugou Katsuki?

Deku cares, cares, cares.

“He does.” Katsuki breaths. “He loves me.”

.

Seven hours by train ride leaves a seven-hour radius around Tokyo. It’s not much, but it surely narrows down his search from majority of the islands. Deku’s classroom’s world map had a drop pin amid the Gifu prefecture. The village lies on the downhill of a nearby mountain amongst many, so considering the terrain, Katsuki has a handful of local stations to ask around for a nameless village to find Deku.

Fuck, why didn’t he think harder on it? He should’ve looked at the map properly. He should’ve asked Deku how to get there from the big city. He should’ve known.

No matter. Katsuki can’t change what’s happened, so he’ll do everything he can to find it himself. Nosing the collar of his jacket, he swerves to the platform departing from Tokyo central.

“What the hell are you two doing here?”

Shitty Hair puffs up his chest with a bright grin. Beside him, Hadou giggles quietly.

“You think you can go off for an adventure without me? Bro, I’m gutted.” Dumbass fucking Red Hair feigns his heartbreak with a hand over his left chest. Katsuki huffs loudly.

“Sero told me about your shift change. I suppose he’s still making matchmaker since he told me where to find you.” She bounces with her arms stretched behind her.

Fucking great. Now he has to lug two morons with him. He is not introducing them to Deku, not that the boy needs an introduction in the first place.

“This is none of your business.” The blonde puffs out in indignation.

“If this is about a special someone, as the Manager kindly informed me, then I’d say it is very much about my business. How could you not tell your best bro?”

“There’s nothing to tell!”

Hadou hides her smile behind her hand, “Sure doesn’t look like that to me.”

Professional etiquette be damned if his manager decided to be a little shit.

“Fine.” Katsuki pushes past to hop onto the train. Two shitheads follow him, smugly. “I ain’t taking responsibility if you two get lost on the way.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Kirishima beams, and Katsuki is sure his boss shares the same sentiment.

-

“And what, you’re going off vibes? Can you not just call him and ask?”

“I tried, genius.” Katsuki clicks his teeth, “Nothing’s going through.”

“That’s strange.” Hadou chimes in, “No calls or texts. You don’t even know where he lives. Are you sure you’re not getting catfished?”

“Ha!?”

“You sure this is safe, dude?” Shitty Hair has the nerve to take the chick’s side.

“Fuck you. I know what I’m doing.”

Katsuki, blame Deku’s inevitable self-awareness that just had to infect the blonde too, honestly had know idea what he was doing. The chances were slim to none without name or person, either of the country boy himself or the village Katsuki ached to find. But Katsuki ain’t no bitch. Katsuki doesn’t quit. He’ll surf all of Japan for that freckly little asshole. Fuck him for going radio silent. Stupid shit.

Small town stations give him nothing of the sort. Manager chick and Shitty Hair pounce from vending machines to small stores for food and trinkets like it was some fucking vacation. Katsuki grits his teeth if only to bite the words from tainting their energy; it undeniably helped Katsuki push through when things started looking grim.

“What’s his name?” Shitty Hair asks.

Hurt whirls sharply in his chest and keeps his lack of an answer in the back of his throat.

“Tell us,” Manager Chick encourages, “We need the name of whoever softened you out. I need to thank him personally.”

Katsuki doesn’t have a name. Only Deku.

- 

Bus rides leer into unanswered questions. From one local train sluggishly moving from village to village, Katsuki grows more anxious. He does his best to describe where Deku lives; the name of the school, the large lake behind the nerd’s family shrine, the fuzzy descriptions of local parks and dying food stalls. He wishes he had a picture, or a drawing, but his memories feel like they’re getting snatched the more he talks about it.

“Look Bakugou, it’s so cute!” Hadou dresses her hair with a rubber duck headband.

Kirishima snaps pictures, adorning one of a fluffy black labrador. They’re fitting, not that Katsuki would ever admit it.

“This one is so you, bro!”

He’s handed a headpiece with not an animal, but a three-legged hybrid creature bearing vicious fangs, claws of a dragon and a spiky tail. “What the fuck, Shitty Hair.”

“Oh look, he’s making the same face!”

Snap! Snap!

Katsuki scoffs. He is not wearing that. Nope. He doesn’t need Deku pulling jokes on him too. No doubt the nerd would commit to the bit until the end of time.

Hadou swings through weird looking headwear until one catches Katsuki’s eye. On it sits the spongiest looking sun with the goofiest smile, sown poorly with eyes off kilter and just borderline uncanny. It is the stupidest thing on there. Katsuki buys it without indulging the dumbass’s questions.

“That’s for him, isn’t it? Oh, sweet, sweet love.”

Manager Chick has stars in her eyes. Shitty Fucking Hair agrees, “That’s so corny, Bakugou. Such an old married couple thing to do.”

“He’s gonna love it!”

 Midday passes to late afternoon. His manager’s steps slow, as do Kirishima’s. The day is endless.

“Sorry, dear. I haven’t a clue where you’re talking about.”

“Yuuei High School? Doesn’t ring a bell. Good luck, son.”

“How come you kids are all the way out these parts?” The station’s restaurant is eerily empty as Katsuki and the two leeches settle in their chairs. The old woman smiles warm enough to part her grandmotherly affection in a simple gesture, greying hair frizzling out of her hairnet like the dust clogged in a vacuum.

“Searching for a little something, ma'am.” Shitty Hair nods politely. “Haven't had much luck unfortunately.”

“What a shame. What can I get you lovely city folk?”

The food is good. Such praise from Katsuki means a lot. It's lightly seasoned just how his dad makes it, simmered in meaty broth and dewy ramen. The perfected kick of spring onions practically swoons the blonde’s tastebuds. It's simple, but homely. A recipe of generations. Across from him, the pair share the effect of good fucking food.

“Me and my husband know a lot about these parts. Anything we can help you with?” The old woman offers. Her thin eyes and soft presence makes it look like she’s always smiling, or perhaps it is her petal pink blouse and teardrop studs slotted in each stretched earlobe that makes her approachable.

Shitty Hair leaves the response to Katsuki. The boy huffs in exhaustion. It's the same conversation twice over.

“I'm looking for a village. I don't know the name of it but it's just off the cliff side in Gifu. Their town has a large lake out back just over the mountain.”

The old woman hums thoughtfully, “Large lake. There's quite a few that fit your description, son. Are you looking for anyone in particular?”

“Oh yes, he is.” Hadou teases.

Katsuki flashes her a scowl before continuing, “All I know is he goes to Yuuei High. Dumbass didn't leave me with much.”

Not that it's Deku’s fault. No, no scratch that. It is. Least he could do is pick up the phone.

Katsuki doesn’t quite catch the look on the woman's face but does register her excusing herself to grab her husband. The elderly couple speak amongst themselves before slowly returning.

“This is my husband, dearies. He's got quite the memory, don't you, dear?” She pats his shoulder tenderly. Her husband is a grumpy-looking old man with deep age lines marring his life spent in frowns and a permanent etch between his brows. His hair recedes under his plaid flat cap, broad shoulders and a beer belly.

“Heard you're looking for Yuuei.” The man gruffs out, swinging his hand towel over his shoulder.

Katsuki nods.

“He grew up around Itomori. That was your own school, right, dear?”

“Name changed since I was a brat, but it sounds about right. The lake you're talking about, too.”

Holy fuck. “Where?” He jumps. God, fuck he's so close. Deku is practically in his fingertips. His mind whirrs a mile a minute. All thoughts circulate back to the smack of his tongue and the kick of his breath merging the syllables of ‘Deku, Deku, Deku.’

His palms sweat. He’s not insane. His life with Deku, as Deku, was real.

“Where can I find it?”

It must be it. It must be. The sun had seen his efforts, and surely it must pay off.

The old man hesitates before sighing, “I suppose city folk love their sightseeing. Not many have come to see its aftermath in the last few months.”

“Aftermath?” Blonde brow furrow in confusion.

“Oh, wait. Itomori. Isn't that where the comet chipped and landed in Japan?” Hadou pouts up in question.

Comet? Comet.

“Yeah, I remember that from last year.” Shitty Hair nods between mouthfuls.

Comet.

Chipped and landed.

Last year?

“Where is it?” Katsuki repeats with conviction. The old man reads the blonde's renewed vigour and sighs again. There’s nothing he’s willing to process if not from the lips from a freckled country boy himself.

“I'll drive you kids.”

.

.

Not one, but two lakes crater the sheer volume to drown a city in its wake, bright blue in colour with soft daylight catching on its reflection to laser into Katsuki’s trance. Like cupped water in frail hands, Katsuki expects it to trickle through gaps underground and reveal the cliffside life once again.

The craters meet their edges until they form a figure of eight, the smaller pooled familiarly close to the Midoriya shrine and the other, much larger, hollowing out the Earth with the lives that lived on it. The cliffside has been pressed to lesser terrain; there are no more roads to bike down, no more farmland and rusty cars. The worst of all, Katsuki notes the sheer absence of greenery, in all sense of the word.

Forest life withered under rock. Cotton green locks taken from Katsuki before it was truly his. Literally. Before it could ever be his.

"Over 500 people died. It was all over the news a year ago. Some people still rave about how slow the council responded."

His legs can’t stress fast enough, yet he keeps going. Keeps going, past the base of the mountain he visited just over a week ago to send prayers to a country boy’s father. His thighs burn and breath stunts in exertion, but he follows the trail where the view of the lack thereof, small town, sinks behind the shrub. Here, it is familiar. He knows this place. Even if nothing else besides it in another’s life no longer exists.

Katsuki’s knees land painfully at the sight of cobblestone overturned by moss trailing to a wooden shack. Life around it is still, with gentle décor, colourless under layers of dust, sitting on the roof of the shrine. The Midoriya shrine.

It exists.

“It can’t be this place. There’s a city that looks just like it. You’ve got your facts wrong, old man. Yuuei High can’t be here.”

“I don’t know what to tell ya, kid, but it was.”

Nails dig soil first, parting languidly for the bony crux of the first of his knuckles. The Earth sinks pale skin into its flesh, what can only be suffocating for what is living buried beneath it, but Katsuki feels his fingers held into an embrace. Padded against the crevices of his fingertips, even the dirt sees how he mourns.

He pulls his hands out to scratch at the ground again, imploring small pebbles to carve into his nail beds as if to take what is left of the village and merge it with himself. Or perhaps coat them with his blood to plant life in the dirt once again.

Does that mean- Deku-?

It sounds downright comical in retrospect to have assumed Deku was the same age as him, only hardened once he heard of their shared childhood history. But Deku…

Deku was living behind his time. An entire twelve months behind. Katsuki, for every switch where he visited another place in another body, was also visiting another time.

The shrine stands tall, not having seen the two greenheads with doeful eyes and a cleaning rag for the statues within. Katsuki’s feet find unbridled strength and lurch him towards the cobblestone to trail up the shack.

It’s empty. Quiet. Only Katsuki lives and breathes amidst the spirits of beyond. Only Katsuki. Not Deku.

No incense burns in silence. No prayers mumbled behind clasped fingers. Only Katsuki.

He finds Deku’s father easily, not because he’d sat here in just short of two weeks, but because there are two new nameplates carved in stone underneath it. Two yet to be seen by Katsuki.

[ Midoriya Hizashi. Loving father and husband. “We will meet again in twilight.” ]

[ Midoriya Inko ], says the nameplate beside her husband. Katsuki dreads the one written below.

“I don’t really understand, Bakugou. Why did that boy of yours say he was from here?”

“That is a little strange. Maybe… it’s a misunderstanding.”

“Try calling him again, huh? He’s gotta pick up some- Yo! Where-? Wait, Bakugou! Where are you going?”

“Stop, wait. Let him be. I think he needs space.”

[ Midoriya Izuku ]

The onslaught of his crushing reality leaves the blonde in an inexplicable state of nothing. In which the wind whistles through his hollow heart, where his feet stand without feeling the wooden planks beneath, where his eyes bleed colour from his surroundings until he is moving amongst static.

Phantom movement of a once known country boy, with constellation freckles and a caring heart, phase through him as he tries to lift on two numbed feet. Katsuki has never heard the boy speak outside of puppeteering the nerd’s body, has never seen how he walked, how he smiled, how he loved and lived. Never seen what that Shitty nerd looked like rambling like a dumbass beyond the dumb fucking shitty notes of their phones.

Katsuki, living a year ahead of time, would never have seen it.

He could laugh, but he cried instead. Wet lines prickle his skin with unease, cheek untouched by such that they redden in shame, but the wails that snap and snarl in his throat take centre stage for the minor details. From where he falls back to his knees, the echoes of the small town and bright green eyes watch him back.

[ We will meet again in twilight ]

Izuku. Did he ever call him Izuku? Stupid fucking Izuku with a cute fucking name. How could he not ever call him Izuku? Izuku, Izuku, Izuku. It’s a name fit to weld between his brain matter, sit as cartilage that keeps his bones joined, a name he wishes to sear in each blood cell so it echoes in each of his heartbeats around his body.

His name is Izuku.

.

.

∘₊ ✧ ────── ₊ ∘ · ₊ ˚ ☄∘ ₊ ────── ✧₊ ∘

Katsuki blinks to the collective bustle of the village packed on one street, adorned colourfully with reds and greens and orange just shy of bleeding into pink. The sun is setting. In his hands, is a phone.

“You better not delete that, Izuku.”

[ Midoriya Inko ]

Izuku. He’s…

He’s Izuku.

Tears well as a meagre consequence of how they fell at the shrine. He meets Inko’s eyes.

“Izuku?”

They string off Deku’s cheeks. Katsuki cannot find the will to look away from the concerned mother. Slowly, he shakes his head.

Inko narrows confusingly, before inhaling realisation. Her dark brows rise and offer the small consolation of a recognised soul amongst unrecognisable, “Katsuki?”

Tears fall harder. Katsuki clutches the green yukuta in his fist above his heart if only to keep from touching her face to check if she were real. Instead, Katsuki flares in bold determination with the knowledge of the future, with the comet yet to cut the second half of the sky, with the town still standing.

Katsuki, if it is the last thing he will do, will keep it that way.