Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bakugou Katsuki could easily say that the very last thing he expected to see at his window was Midoriya Izuku.

The scenario was like something out of a fever dream. He could imagine All Might showing up long before the nerd. Add in that it was nearly midnight and pouring rain, and he was staring through the glass like a kicked soaking wet puppy? Yeah, it sounded like a scene straight out of bad romance manga.

Katsuki could leave the window shut. He could ignore Deku. Just roll back over and go to sleep and pretend this was just a weird nightmare.

…he could not ignore the incessant knocking and muffled “ Kacchans ”, however.

Severely pissed at having been woken up, Katsuki finally rolled out of bed, storming over and yanking up the window before angrily whispering, “What the fuck are you doing here, Deku?”

Arms wrapped tightly around him, shivering in the rain, Deku stuttered out, “I…I n-needed to see you.” He swallowed heavily, looking distraughtly up at the blond. “I d-didn’t know who e-else to t-talk to.”

He was half tempted to just slam the window shut and call it a night, but Katsuki could see the clear distress on the boy’s face. Thinking about the exams that had been going on that day combined with his mom mentioning that Deku’s mom was out of town till tomorrow, he reasoned that the nerd was likely distraught over how the test went.

It would serve him right, thinking he could take such a dangerous test with no quirk or training to defend himself.

But Katsuki wasn’t heartless , and flashbacks to what he said all those months ago bounced around his head…and he found himself reaching out into the rain and grabbing the shorter boy by the front of his shirt. Before Deku could question what he was doing, he was yanking the boy up and through the window before dropping him unceremoniously on the floor.

Deku, of course, let out a shout of surprise and yelped as he collapsed on the floor, and Katsuki was quick to shush him. “Be quiet ,” Katsuki ground out under his breath as he did his best not to slam the window back shut. “Do you want to wake the old hag?!”

“Sorry, Kacchan,” Deku whispered back as he rolled over to sit on the floor, shaking his soaked curls. “I know I didn’t think this through—“

“No you fucking didn’t,” Katsuki snarked back. “Now shut up and stay there while I get towels before you soak my entire room.”

“Ah, thank you, Kacchan!”

“I said shush !”

Five minutes later, Deku was curled up under a mountain of towels on the floor, sniffling to himself. Whether the nerd was crying or if it was from trekking here in the rain, Katsuki had no clue and quite frankly, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

But Deku was here now, and he deserved answers.

Sitting on his bed, arms crossed, Katsuki ordered, “Alright. Now explain why I shouldn’t explode your face off.”

Deku unfortunately quipped back, “Because it will wake your mom.”

Small crackles filled the room. “ Deku… ”

Deku threw up his hands in surrender, “Sorry, I’m sorry! I’m tired and stressed and not thinking straight, and I feel like my whole world was turned upside down. Like, I’m fifteen years old, and now I manifest my quirk? And not to mention I cracked my limited edition All Might Silver Age alarm clock—“

“What the fuck do you mean you manifested a quirk?!” Katsuki half shrieked. “That’s not possi— you broke an All Might Silver Age alarm clock?! ”

“I know , I’m a terrible, horrible person—!”

“ SHH! Forget the alarm clock, I’ll yell at you later for that!” Katsuki whisper shouted. “Back to you having a quirk? You expect me to believe that bullshi—“

Deku shoved his arm in front of Katsuki’s face, and tapping on a particular freckle that looked almost teal in color, a large digital holo screen flickered to life. Katsuki smothered a strangled shout in his throat as he watched in muted horror as the screen hovered in front of his face, though the words on the screen were what really hit home.

“… Deku .”

The boy in question suddenly looked nervous. “I know, Kacchan.”

“…this screen says—“

“I know , Kacchan!”

Before Deku could yank the arm away from him in shame, Katsuki snatched his wrist. “Tell me this: why the fuck does your quirk say ‘My Plus Ultra Romance’?!”

Deku looked utterly distraught. “Because apparently my quirk turns my life into a dating simulation!”

“… WHA —MMPTH! “

Before Katsuki could finish his shout, Deku had scrambled out from under his pile of towels and launched himself at Katsuki, managing to both pin him as well as slap his hands of Katsuki’s mouth. “ Shhhh !” Deku whispered urgently. “You’ll wake your mom!”

Desperately resisting the urge to blast Deku, Katsuki grabbed the hand over his mouth and shoved it away. “Get the fuck off of me, nerd!” He quietly shouted back. “Just—how the fuck did this happen to you ?!”

“I don’t know ,” Deku cried in distress, not realizing he was still straddling the blond. “This isn’t what I meant by wanting a quirk! I finally get a quirk that can help me be a hero, and then I also get stuck with this— “

“What do you mean by that?” Katsuki snapped, shoving Deku off him unceremoniously onto the floor. Deku let out an ‘oof!’ Of pain while Katsuki jabbed a finger in his face. “Are you trying to show up here and tell me you have two quirks?!”

Deku froze in place, looking slowly up at Katsuki. “I…”

Katsuki’s eyes narrowed. “You need to explain.”

“…any chance you could forget about that and focus on the dating quirk—“

“Fat chance in hell, now fucking tell me before I have to—!”

“Okay, okay, fine! ” Deku replied in a panic, scrambling back towards his blankets. “But just to let you know, I’m focusing on the dating sim one first! It’s more…urgent.”

Katsuki let out a tired sigh, resigning himself to no sleep tonight. “Fucking fine , just hurry it up, damn it—“

“Alright just—! Just give me a second!” Deku replied with a huff, rubbing his face with both his hands. “I just—I guess this quirk manifested when I got my first love interest.”

Katsuki’s brow quirked up. “You mean when you finally got attracted to someone?” Then, after freezing for a second, Katsuki slowly and dangerously asked, “ Deku . This isn’t me you're talking about, right ?”

Deku looked too tired to be upset at that. “Kacchan. You are objectively hot but you beat me up on a near daily basis for years . No, I am not romantically attracted to you.” Snorting, he mused, “I’m not that much of a masochist…”

“…I feel like I should be offended, but I’m more relieved than anything.”

Rolling his eyes, Deku quipped, “No, I think this started because I had the first person ever have romantic feelings towards me .” Laughing bitterly, he snarked, “Actually, make that two people.”

Katsuki blinked. “Wait. You mean—“

Deku tapped the freckle on his wrist, pulling the screen back up and tapping on the start menu. “Let me tell you about these two: Uraraka Ochako and Iida Tenya.”

Izuku didn’t think it was particularly conceited of him to say that he was smart. It wasn’t like he was a genius—he wasn’t winning science fairs or rediscovering the laws of thermonuclear dynamics or anything like that, but he got A’s on his exams. He did his homework. He knew a lot of stuff about quirks. He probably knew too much stuff about quirks.

All that being said, though, he thought it was incredibly fair to say that this was not his best moment. It certainly wasn’t his brightest moment, either. All Might would be disappointed in him. And if he wasn’t disappointed—because All Might was honestly a kind of weirdly relaxed guy—he definitely should be. Definitely.

“Well, shit,” Izuku said.

It wasn’t like All Might hadn’t warned him. He had, in fact, been very clear with the limb exploding metaphor. Beyond that, logically speaking here, there was really only one reason that he would wait until the last minute to give Izuku this quirk. That reason, of course, being that Izuku probably wasn’t ready for it. 

Yep, certainly not ready for it , Izuku thought, as he fell from several stories up, his broken limbs flapping in the wind like gore-painted flags. Seriously, they looked kind of gross actually—Izuku had never broken an arm before but he was pretty sure they were just supposed to swell up and turn a little purple with bruising, not go all burgundy and blood covered. He had the strangest urge to poke his arm with his other hand—which was kind of stupid and ridiculous on all accounts, because he was currently falling through the air at terminal velocity. 

He should do something about that. 

Who was he kidding—it wasn’t like he could do anything about his current situation. He had one working limb and three limb-shaped gore flags, what was he gonna do? Break his other arm?

…Wait a minute.

Izuku did his best to maneuver through the air, positioning himself so he could punch the ground. He wasn’t really sure what this was going to accomplish—he was smart (debatable, given his current predicament), but he was never exactly a physics expert. But he was pretty sure, having watched All Might fighting villains more times than he could remember (not true, Izuku never forgot All Might—he had seen at least one-hundred-and-forty-seven different fighting videos and had a total watch count of one-thousand-and-seventy-three amongst those one-hundred-forty-seven), that if he punched the ground really hard with All Might’s Quirk activated, he would probably go flying backwards the other way. Which was still very bad for human bodies, but definitely better than going splat all over the pavement. 

Well. Here's to hoping he got to live to see another day after all, he supposed. 

Izuku pulled his fist back, more than ready to punch the ground first and see what happened later—thinking things through was apparently still a concept he struggled with—when something connected with his face. Something turned out to be a hand that was attached to an arm that was attached to the girl that saved him from tripping outside of the testing center. Apparently this was a thing that she liked to do a lot, because Izuku was floating again instead of eating pavement. 

He should probably thank her, this time around. 

“Hey, I’m the one that’s supposed to be saving you,” he said instead.

“What?” she asked, startled.

“What?” Izuku agreed.

She laughed, a bright, happy sound. It was a nice laugh. 10/10 on the laughter scale. It suited her. He would listen to it again, if presented with the opportunity. He wasn’t sure why she was laughing, though. Maybe she was just delirious. Maybe he was delirious. Maybe he’d just fallen asleep while he was taking his written exam and this was all just some really complex fever dream on his part. 

He wouldn’t put it past himself. 

“Release,” she said, pressing her fingertips together. 

Izuku went splat on the ground, but from a much shorter distance than he would have gone splat initially. It was for that reason he could forgive the floating girl—the very pretty floating girl—for his aching ribs. It wasn’t like the rest of him wasn’t already aching anyway.

Well. He wasn’t dead. He might as well try to get more points. And by “more” he meant “any,” since he presently had exactly zero.

Izuku lifted his head and started army crawling with his one good arm. He was breathing, so he was going to get some points, god damn it . There was no other option here. It wouldn’t be very plus ultra of him to give up.

And then he looked up at the girl that had just saved him. She was looking back at him, but he wasn’t paying any attention to that. Instead he was looking at the bar floating over her head and glowing faintly. The glowing pink stuff only filled part of the bar actually, the rest was empty. It said: 9%.

It was nice of his fever dream delusions to clearly label themselves, at least. 

“Ha,” Izuku said, not sure why he was doing it other than half a theory that he was possibly in the midst of a mental breakdown. “Ha. Ha, ha.” And then, softer, but with no less feeling: “ What the fuck. ”

And then the sweet, sweet embrace of unconsciousness welcomed his tortured soul.

“I’m guessing that’s Uraraka Ochako?” Katsuki asked.

“I guess.” Deku flopped backwards on his towel nest. “We didn’t actually get to introductions, between all the puking and the going unconscious. And the percentage is different—it was 9% during the entrance exam, but it's been 6% ever since I woke up—but I figure it probably dropped after the incident. I mean, that makes sense, right?”

“You didn’t say you puked.”

Of course he would only focus on that. Of course.

“Oh, not me. Her. She puked.”

Katsuki narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the other boy, but he let this one go. “And Iida Tenya? Who the fuck is that?”

“I…honestly don’t know,” Deku said. “I couldn’t even guess if I wanted to, since no one stands out. I know Iida Tenya likes orange juice though. And his favorite hero is Ingenium—good taste in heroes, honestly, even if it’s not All Might… But see, that’s why I think it only works when the people are attracted to me? Because I can sit over here and look at you and think wow, Kacchan is really pretty —”

“Oi,” Katsuki said, in objection to being called pretty.

“—but nothing happens,” Deku continued, like Katsuki had not spoken at all. “And the quirk is going around calling itself a dating simulator, I mean…it has to be built on romantic interest. But apparently, it’s other people’s romantic interest in me, not mine in them . At least. I think. Wait . Wait, Kacchan—Kacchan, think romantic thoughts about me.”

“What? No,” Katsuki said immediately. “I’m not doing that.”

“It’s for science,” Deku said. “The pursuit of knowledge. The betterment of society, via the understanding of one unusual quirk at a time—”

“I’m not fucking doing it,” Katsuki repeated, more firmly. “The only thoughts I think about you are ones full of loathing.”

The nerd had the nerve to pout over that. 

It immediately set Katsuki off, his quirk crackling unbidden across his palms. “What the hell ?” he whisper-yelled—he did not want to wake the hag, really. “Why did you even come here? Why are you asking me for help? How am I even supposed to help you?”

“You could try to think romantic thoughts, for one thing.”

“ Deku. ”

Deku made a noise not unlike a tea kettle and brought up both arms to cover his entire head. “I didn’t mean it, I swear I’m just saying weird things lately—”

“I am going to punch you,” Katsuki announced, matter-of-factly.

“—the cold rain must have frozen my last remaining brain cell—”

“Deku!” Katsuki yelled—whisper yelled—before this devolved into one of his creepy mumble rants. “Just answer the fucking question! Why are you here ?”

Deku sniffled impressively, either from the cold or—was he fucking crying? Katsuki hoped he wasn’t. “I couldn’t get ahold of All Might in the rain storm.”

Everything froze. The world tilted on its axis. Katsuki’s quirk flared again, crackling across his palms angrily. 

“I probably shouldn’t have just said that,” Deku said faintly.

“Deku,” Katsuki growled, desperately trying to keep his voice down. “ Why were you trying to get ahold of All Might ?”

“So,” Deku said, tapping his pointer fingers together awkwardly. “About that other quirk of mine—”

Izuku slept for a very long time.

He wasn’t much of a sleeper, honestly—a lot of people tended to list sleep as one of their favorite hobbies, but Izuku was kind of terrible at it. Falling asleep, staying asleep, staying in beds once he was asleep, sleeping—all of it was a wash for him. 

So sleeping? Actually sleeping for more than five hours? That was weird.  

“Ah!” Izuku shouted, as he jolted awake with the same sense of urgency as a man that had just realized he was late for school. Bodies did that, when they had been sleeping for longer than they were used to. Or maybe Izuku’s body was the only one that did this, because it protested silence and always strove to make noise somehow . 

“Oh, dearie,” an elderly voice said next to him. “You finally woke up.”

Izuku looked to his left. He looked to his right. He looked to his left again. He looked down, and promptly jumped at least a foot into the air as he made eye contact with the old woman standing at knee height down there. And then he slapped himself mentally, because that wasn’t just any old woman, it was—

“Recovery Girl!” he shouted, because he doubted he would ever not be able to shout the names of heroes when he recognized them. It was the fanboy in him, and the fanboy could never die. No matter how many times embarrassment stabbed it with tiny knives.

She seemed to take that as her cue to start explaining everything to him, from the top down. 

“It seems you broke both your legs and one of your arms,” Recovery Girl said. “Is that your quirk that did that to you, dear?”

“Yes,” Izuku said slowly, his tongue feeling like wood in his mouth. Should he really be admitting that to people? Well, it wasn’t really like he could come up with a better explanation on short notice like this. What else was he going to say— sorry, my bones just do this sometimes. No, it’s not in my medical file. Don’t worry about it.   “It was my quirk, yes.”

“And pardon me, dear,” Recovery Girl said, “but weren’t you quirkless prior to having One for All?”

“Yes,” Izuku said immediately, before his brain caught up to his mouth and he realized that she should not know the name of his quirk. All Might’s quirk. The quirk that used to be All Might’s but that now was his, thanks to Izuku eating a strand of All Might’s hair. Wow, he still didn’t believe that actually worked, to be honest—actually, that wasn’t the point. “You’re not supposed to know about that.”

“All Might read me in on who he passed his quirk to,” Recovery Girl said, folding her hands over the top of her cane and squinting at him. He couldn’t tell if the squinting was born out of suspicion or old age. He didn’t really want to know, either. “It’s a good thing too, considering what happened to you, boy. That All Might…he’s never been good at thinking things through.”

As much as Izuku would love to sit here and collect stories about All Might when he was younger, he had more important questions to ask, like—actually, no. No, he always had time to collect stories about All Might when he was younger. “Did you know him when he was a student here?”

“Nevermind that,” Recovery Girl said, waving a hand at him. “I let myself get distracted again, silly me—I thought you said that you were quirkless before?”

Izuku frowned. “I was.”

“Then what’s that there, dear?”

“What’s what?”

Recovery Girl gestured at his wrist. He turned it over to better look at whatever she was gesturing at. Curiously enough, he found a single teal freckle on his wrist that hadn’t been there before. He jumped—letting out a rather embarrassing noise that he would like to not think or talk about as he did—and then did what anyone would do in his situation.

He poked it.

After he poked it, a screen burst to life over his wrist, hovering there like the teal freckle was actually a projector. Was it? It felt just like skin to him, actually—no, not a projector. This was magic, then. Quirk magic. Linked to a teal freckle. 

“Would you look at that,” Recovery Girl said, in that not very helpful way old people had of just kind of talking for no really good reason. 

“That’s a quirk,” Izuku said. “It has to be.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, dear—”

“It’s a quirk,” Izuku repeated, and then he promptly passed out again on his hospital bed.

“You have to be the world’s worst storyteller,” Katsuki said, folding his arms across his chest and glaring at the smaller boy still sitting on his floor in a puddle of towels. “Will you just get to the fucking point, or do you not have one?”

“Wow, Kacchan,” Deku said, somehow having the audacity to look offended. Him, offended, when he was the one that broke into Katsuki’s house and dripped all over his floor. “It’s about intrigue, you know! It’s not a good story if you don’t give all the details out one by one, set the stage for what’s going to come next, weave plots together like—”

“ Deku .”

“...You know what, I’ll just move onto the next part.”

As it turned out, the quirk screen actually had stuff written on it. It shouldn’t be as surprising as it was, and yet still Izuku was surprised, because it only made things worse, and more confusing. 

Namely—his quirk screen (he needed a better name for it, honestly) had names . Two of them. Two names, of which he did not know either. 

Uraraka Ochako. Iida Tenya. 

And their names had percentages next to them too. Both of the percentage values were fairly low—sitting at 6% and 3% respectively, but they were there. They were taunting him with forbidden knowledge. 

He wondered if it had something to do with the bar that had been hovering over the head of the girl that saved him. 

Or maybe—maybe this was actually some weird side effect of One for All. Maybe All Might also had a screen attached to a teal freckle that stored random people's names in it.

For now, he would ignore the fact that it said My Plus Ultra Romance at the top of the screen in blaring bold letters. If he just pretended like it wasn't there, he could pretend like he didn't have a dating sim quirk. Or what appeared to be a dating sim quirk.

He needed to call All Might.

It started to rain as Izuku dialed his number, pouring down on him in buckets and in droves. All Might didn't answer the phone.

"It's fine," Izuku said, out loud, because his body needed to be producing noise at all times. "Maybe he was just in the other room. I'll call him again." 

Izuku did just that. The phone rang in time with the rain pounding on the pavement. It rained and it rained. And it rained, and the phone rang, and All Might did not answer it.

Izuku called again. And again. And again.

He was about to call again when he stopped himself. "At some point I just have to accept that he's not going to answer the phone, right? Right. So…what are my other options, anyway?"

He had a quirk. He had two quirks. One of them was One for All, and the other was a dating simulator. Or maybe not! Sure, it definitely said romance on it, but that didn't have to mean it was a dating sim quirk.

And…his mom was out of town. With his mom out of town, and All Might not answering calls…

There was only one person he could talk to. Only one person that would get it. Only one person that knew he was applying to UA and would be able to help him break down the dating sim quirk.

Izuku gulped. Well…

At least he'd never forgotten the way to Kacchan's house.

"You ate All Might's hair," Katsuki surmised. "And somehow magically got his quirk from that. And then you also developed a different quirk. A dating sim quirk. And you came here. "

"All Might wasn't answering the phone!" Deku protested.

Katsuki gave him the flattest stare he could manage.

What were the fucking odds…

Years of trying to put the nerd in his place. Years of making sure he knew he could never surpass Katsuki, and All Might went and gave him his quirk. All Might.

"If you think about it," Deku said, "eating hair and creating babies work on a similar concept."

Katsuki couldn't help it—he gave him a horrified look. "No they do not ."

"No, think about it," Deku said. "Semen and hair both have DNA. And they go into someone else's body, and then—"

" Deku. Shut up . "

Deku's mouth clamped shut. "Okay, okay. But it's not that weird. Basic anime physics."

"This is not an anime!"

"Keep your voice down, you'll wake up your mom!"

"Holy fucking shit," Katsuki said, and then promptly flopped backwards with the last of his strength.

There was about one second of peace and quiet, before the damned nerd opened his mouth again. 

"So…will you help me?"

Katsuki sighed. As soon as he found whatever god was responsible for this whole thing, he was explodo killing their fucking face.

"Why not," he said.

“Morning,” Deku said through a yawn, as he wandered into Katsuki’s kitchen in the morning wearing one of his spare hoodies. 

Katsuki wanted to kill something. As violently as possible, with as many explosions as it took. Not something alive, because that would be wrong and land him in jail, but something inanimate. Something made for destruction. Maybe he would go to the quirk gym down the block later today. 

“What are you doing?” Deku asked, popping over Katsuki’s shoulder to look at the stove. The hoodie he was wearing was slightly too big on him so he had rolled the sleeves up to compensate for that, and Katsuki hated it. 

He hated it so much that he decided to elbow Deku violently in the ribs, knocking him out of his space. Deku let out a violent, “Hrrk!” and Katsuki paused to consider something. 

“Muscles?” he asked.

“ Fucking —” Deku said, clutching at his abdomen. 

Katsuki considered something else. “You swear?”

Deku shot him a petulant look. Frankly, his baby face was too prevalent for it to make him look any more threatening than a kitten. But, he loved the sound of his own voice more than anything else in the world, so he answered Katsuki regardless. “Yes and yes. First of all, I had to work out to get All Might’s quirk. Second of all, I’m fifteen, Kacchan. Fifteen . You don’t make it to fifteen without swearing. Also, why did you hit me?”

“Because black clothing with stylized skulls printed on it is supposed to look cool, not cute. It pissed me off.”

Deku looked down at his chest, then up at Katsuki, affronted. “You’re the one that gave me this!”

“Because you were soaking wet and your clothes were missing one of the arms! How did that even happen , anyway?”

“Anime physics,” Deku said. “Some quirks are just so powerful they remove your clothes when you use them, I guess.”

Katsuki gave him a long look. Within the span of time that look took place in, he considered everything about his life that had led to him being at this point. Maybe having to deal with all of this was some sort of karmic justice for telling the nerd to take a swan dive off of the roof all those months ago…

Katsuki shook the thought from his head. It wasn’t the time or place to think about that. And the nerd was still creepy, regardless. And a lot weirder than he remembered him being. Probably a result of his lack of socialization.

And apparently…there was something in him that All Might thought was valuable. 

Katsuki wondered if it was the way Deku ran headlong into danger to save people when nobody else was moving.

No, that was ridiculous. Katsuki had never needed saving in the first place. 

Katsuki poked the fish he was grilling, looking over at Deku. “How did you end up with All Might’s quirk, anyway?”

“He held out a strand of his hair and said, Eat this! ”

Katsuki rolled his eyes at the absolutely ridiculous All Might impersonation. “No, dumbass. Why did he offer it to you in the first place?”

“Oh, that,” Deku said, his voice about ten shades less bright. “You know, I’ve never really understood that, actually. I’m kind of a loser.”

At this, Katsuki did a mental double take. He thought he was a loser ? He thought he was a loser, and still he always tried to stand up for people. He tried to get into UA. 

It made no sense. Only the strong had any business trying to be the best. Deku needed to learn —

Katsuki clenched his chopsticks tighter in his hand. Deku needed to learn, what? His place? If he belonged at the bottom, then the Number One Hero wouldn’t have chosen him. And unless Deku was so batshit insane he’d hallucinated eating All Might’s hair to get his powers, he wasn’t making that up. The nerd had always been a kind of shit liar. Great at talking circles around the truth, but terrible at actually telling lies. 

“Was it after the sludge villain?” he asked. 

Deku sounded surprised when he answered. “Yeah, actually. He found me as I was heading home…come to think of it, it wasn’t long after you left me that day.”

Katsuki swore softly. 

Why? If it had been the same day, why him? Why had he chosen Deku , when Katsuki had been fighting too, when Katsuki had been strong too—

“He probably liked your stupid stunt where you ran into the fight half-cocked,” Katsuki said. “I can’t say I know what he saw in you either, but what-fucking-ever. I guess he trained you, hah?”

“Oh! Yeah,” Deku said. “Remember Dagobah Beach?”

“The dump?”

“He had me clean it up.”

Katsuki waited for more, but for once, the nerd apparently didn’t have anything to say. Katsuki raised his eyebrows, transferring the fish to a plate with rice and bowls of miso soup. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Katsuki groaned as he sat the two plates he’d made down, but as far away from each other as they could possibly get on the dining room table. He sat down in front of his own. “ Shit . No wonder your goddamn quirk broke your arms and stuff—you can’t just use a quirk for the first time and expect everything to go fine. Unless it’s a lame quirk, like a dating simulator.”

Deku grabbed the other plate and scooted it down until it was directly across from Katsuki and sat himself down there. 

Katsuki contemplated murder. 

“Thanks for, uh, cooking for me,” Deku said, choosing to be sheepish now . “I wasn’t expecting that and it’s really nice, so…”

Katsuki remained silent as he continued to contemplate murder. 

“We—uh, we should probably talk about what we’re going to do next,” Deku said. “Next steps. Quirk testing. Figuring out exactly how the dating simulator quirk works and all of that, so it’s not so—”

“Just shut up and eat.”

Deku cleared his throat. “Ah, yes. Shut up. Eat. I’ll do that.”

He did, Katsuki watching with barely contained anticipation as Deku took a bite. Come on, come on —

Deku hummed contemplatively. “Oh, that’s good. You really like spicy stuff, huh?”

And then the bastard took another bite with absolutely no problem whatsoever. 

“You shithead,” Katsuki snarled. 

Deku blinked at him. “What?”

Behind them, there was an exaggerated, feminine gasp. Katsuki wasn’t usually one for terror and yet it flooded his system now regardless, seeping all the way down to the tips of his toes as he slowly turned around to look at the hag in the flesh, standing in the doorway in her morning robe and her pajama pants, hands held over her mouth and eyes gleaming with unshed tears. 

Fuck. 

“Izuku-kun?” she asked, lowering her hands to reveal that she was smiling. His mom smiled like him—which was to say her smile always looked a touch deranged, and therefore, was more than a little bit unsettling in this particular scenario. “Is that really you?”

“Haha,” Deku said, panic clear on his face as he dropped his spoon in his miso soup. “Uhhhhhhh—”

“I can’t believe it!” Mitsuki shouted, and suddenly Deku was enveloped in a tight hug, his expression alternating rapidly between bewildered and alarmed as he looked at Katsuki for help. “Katsuki, you brat , how come you didn’t tell me you and Izuku-kun had made up? Don’t you think this is important?”

“Don’t tell me what to do, hag!”

“Don’t call me a hag!”

“Um—” Deku said, voice faint. 

“Wait!” Mitsuki gasped, finally releasing Deku. “I have to go tell Masaru. And call Inko. You stay right there, Izuku-kun. No running off for a decade again, you hear?”

She left with all the force of a hurricane, swirling around and chattering and shouting as she headed back to her bedroom to drag his dad out of bed too. As soon as she was gone, Katsuki slowly turned back towards Deku, murderous intent certainly glowing in his eyes. 

Deku shriveled up on himself. “Sorry…”

“You shithead ,” Katsuki angry-whispered at him. 

“I’m sorry!” Deku repeated, throwing his hands up in the air. “I swear I didn’t mean for this to happen!”

“Fuck you,” Katsuki told him, for good measure. 

Deku made a soft keening noise, slapping both hands over his eyes. “We should probably go somewhere else to finish talking about this stuff.”

“Fuck you!” Katsuki said again, because this situation was already bad enough without adding in more chat time to the mix. But…he’d already come this far. “Fuck. Fine. I know of somewhere we can go. After you tolerate a reasonable amount of smothering from the old hag, for making me help you with all this bullshit.”

As if on cue, Mitsuki reappeared behind them with Masaru in tow. 

“ Shit, ” Deku said, softly. 

Katsuki laughed. 

“A vending machine cafe is a really good idea, actually,” Izuku said, as he followed Kacchan into said vending machine cafe. Well, it wasn’t really fair to call what Izuku was doing following . More accurately, he was fluttering nervously behind Kacchan in the vague direction of the vending machine cafe. 

This was so strange.

“Of course it’s a good idea,” Kacchan said with a scoff. “I’m not you , dumbass.”

Oh, ouch. Pain, pain and suffering— “I have good ideas sometimes.”

“Like what? Accepting quirks from strange men?”

“All Might is not a strange man!”

“Leaping directly into the air and falling several stories with no plan?”

“I had a plan! It might not have been a good one but I had one, at least!”

“Walking for several miles in the rain with a tracksuit missing sleeves?”

“...Okay, that was admittedly not a good idea,” Izuku said, because truthfully, he was beat there. “But it’s fine. I’m fine. I don’t even have a cold!” 

And then, because the universe had hated him for probably every step of his life and therefore wasn’t going to do him any favors now, he sneezed.

Kacchan paused as he was opening the door to the vending machine cafe, his expression flat and lifeless. He didn’t say anything, but Izuku could still hear the unimpressed “wow” in his mind. There was nothing Izuku could say to that, so instead he hung his head in shame, making to go into the cafe.

Kacchan went in and let the door swing closed behind him, nearly causing Izuku to walk directly into it. He caught himself, arms pinwheeling and blood pressure spiking, and then calmly opened the door again and followed after Kacchan. 

It was fine . It was cool . He was not thinking murderous thoughts about his former childhood friend. He was not .

“So,” Izuku said, smile bright and voice chipper. “I think I’ll have some ramune. Anything for you?”

“Fuck off,” Kacchan said. 

It was a shame, really. Izuku had spotted one of those lukewarm corn soup drinks that kind of tasted weird to everybody but that everyone drank anyway. He would have loved to subject Kacchan to it. Or a box of spiders. Or both. 

Izuku pulled out his (still) slightly damp wallet, fishing money out of it and getting his drink of choice out of the vending machine. He took his time with it, making sure to take several long breaths to calm himself down while he did, and then joined Kacchan at the table he’d chosen. The place was dead, other than them, but that was to be expected. These places didn’t get a lot of traffic, and the traffic they did get certainly didn’t stay there for long. 

“So, next steps,” Izuku said, aggressively popping the marble on his soda. “What should we do?”

“Well, first of all, we should train your damn quirk,” Kacchan said. 

Izuku resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time. We need to figure out what parameters it works on, run tests to figure out what counts as a love interest—”

“Not that quirk,” Kacchan said. He didn’t have the courtesy to resist rolling his eyes at Izuku though. “No, we need to work on your other one. The one from All Might, that explodes your limbs.”

Izuku drew his eyebrows together. “Look, Kacchan, I don’t disagree, but this quirk literally breaks my arms and legs when I use it. I can’t just use it, not without—”

“How do you expect to stop breaking your bones then, hah?” Kacchan asked, his posture combative. “You apparently have the quirk of the nation’s top hero. You can’t just magically master it. You have to do something .”

“That seems dangerous.”

“Whatever,” Kacchan said. “We’re training it regardless. I want to see what you’re made of.”

“What?” Izuku asked, blinking at him. He was mildly terrified, if he was honest—a fight with Kacchan? Not exactly his ideal way of spending his weekend. “Why?”

Kacchan smirked, his teeth bared and his expression confident. “Nothing like proving how incredible you are like testing yourself with the best quirk in the world.”

“ What ?!” Izuku exclaimed, with considerably more alarm. “I can’t even use it!”

Kacchan rolled his eyes even harder. “ That is what the training is for, you damn idiot.”

Izuku had very many thoughts about this and none of them were very pleasant. It was time to deflect—he hadn’t come here to talk about One for All and he definitely hadn’t come here to end up fighting Kacchan. He was here to talk about the dating simulator quirk.

“Anyway,” Izuku said, glancing around the cafe to make sure that it really was empty before he spoke. “I want to get All Might’s opinion on that first. If he ever starts answering his calls, anyway…”

“He’s probably decided you’re good for nothing and he wants his quirk back,” Kacchan said, sitting back with a smug look on his face. 

“Don’t be mean ,” Izuku said immediately, resisting the urge to start throwing things at Kacchan like a petulant child. “He doesn’t even know about the entrance exam! For all he knows, it went great, I used his quirk perfectly, and there is nothing at all to worry about.”

“All the more reason to train the damn quirk then, don’t you think?” Kacchan asked, leaning forward.

“Ah,” Izuku said, because, actually…that was a good point. “Hm.”

“You gonna finally bite, then?” Kacchan asked, his smirk sharpening, his eyes gaining a predatory gleam. “Come on, Deku, you know you want to.”

“Please stop that,” Izuku said, huddling up to protect his ramune because he suddenly felt like it—and him, but the ramune was more important—was in danger. “You are freaking me out. Okay, fine —I don’t know why you’re so intent about it but I will admit that training that quirk too is a good idea. But, uh…I have no idea how you actually plan on being helpful.”

Kacchan scowled, and Izuku suddenly remembered he had a ramune to protect.

“Not that I don’t think you could do it,” Izuku said, immediately backtracking. “Because you are Kacchan, after all, and Kacchan has always been so amazing and talented and good at everything and—”

Kacchan’s palms crackled with small explosions. “Shut the hell up!”

“I am shutting up now.”

“And anyway,” Kacchan said, his scowl deepening as he folded his arms once more, “I have a quirk, don’t I? A quirk is a quirk. Your dumbass probably just doesn’t know how to use it because you—” He cut off abruptly, like he wasn’t sure how to follow up that thought. It was understandable, really. Izuku wasn’t sure anymore either.

“I used to not have one,” Izuku concluded, nodding decisively, like it was all settled. “And now I have two.” And with that he pressed the single teal freckle on his arm again, and brought up the screen to the dating simulator quirk. 

Kacchan groaned. “If you start talking about that stupid ass quirk again, I swear I will—”

“I was wondering,” Izuku said, quivering with fear but bulldozing over him all the same, “about something. Do you see this part here? There are several blank spots underneath the love interest slots. Do you think they’re—”

“I can’t see shit.”

“What?”

“I guess you have your screen pulled up again, because I can use context clues,” Kacchan grumbled, leaning back in his chair. “I can’t see shit though.”

“You can’t?”

“No.”

Kacchan looked dangerously close to exploding things, so Izuku decided to believe him, humming contemplatively as he looked at the screen. Maybe it let him choose who saw his screen and who didn’t? That would be pretty neat. Especially if he ever acquired a love interest he actually knew who was. 

He wiggled his fingers at the screen. “By the powers that be, show Kacchan the screen,” he told it. 

“What the fuck ,” Kacchan said, almost immediately, sitting up and squinting angrily at the area above Izuku’s wrist. Izuku could tell by the dramatic flare of his nostrils that he could see the screen again. 

“Huh,” Izuku said gleefully. “Quirk magic.”

“This quirk is so fucking stupid,” Kacchan said, sounding like a tired old man. 

There was a soft ding, and then a message popped up on the screen. Izuku read it at the speed of lightning, his eyes glancing off of the words and over to Kacchan across from him. 

Would you like to add Bakugou Katsuki as a wingman? 

Oh, this was terrible. Kacchan would hate this. Izuku didn’t even know what a wingman was—well, no. He knew what a wingman was. He didn’t know what a wingman was in the context of this quirk though. It would probably require spending lots and lots of time with Kacchan, which would just be…torture…for Kacchan …

It was like a flashback sequence in a manga. There was a drawing of his face, and then behind him, were the tiny renditions of the panels in which Kacchan acted like he was going to hold the door open for him and then instead let it fall closed in his face. Extra time together, huh, Izuku thought, looking back at the screen now. Kacchan would hate that, huh.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a finger, reaching for the screen, bracing to press the button that said, in all caps, NO . Izuku acted quickly, knocking Kacchan’s hand aside and mashing the YES button all in one fluid motion. It was like slow motion in a comedy movie, one person watching in horror as their entire life fell apart before their eyes, and then it was done. 

Congratulations! Izuku’s quirk said, just so it could mock Kacchan more. Bakugou Katsuki is now your wingman! 

“Deku!” Kacchan growled. That was in slow motion too.

“My finger slipped!” 

Slipped all over that spite this decision was steeped in, maybe. 

“ Deku .”

“I swear, I didn’t mean to, I’m so sorry, I’ll make it up to you somehow—”

Izuku cut himself off as he noticed something odd on the wrist that he’d just knocked away from his screen. Kacchan noticed it too, his eyes widening first and then narrowing into two suspicious red slits. 

“Uh—” Izuku supplied, very helpfully.

“This better not be what I think it is,” Katsuki said, as he pressed the teal freckle that had just developed on his wrist.

Sure enough, a screen exactly like Izuku’s popped up over his wrist. 

My Plus Ultra Romance, the screen proudly proclaimed. Support Edition: Wingman.

“ DEKU .”

In hindsight, maybe he should not make important life decisions on spite alone.

“Why are you following me? Go home .”

“I can’t go home,” Deku protested, trudging behind him like some petulant lost puppy. “I need to get my stuff.”

“What stuff?” Katsuki demanded, stuffing his hands in his pockets and shoving his shoulders up to his ears to try to make himself feel better. If he couldn’t see the teal freckle, he could pretend like it wasn’t there. “Your tracksuit is fucking trashed. You’d be better off just throwing that shit away.”

“The point still stands that I need to collect it first,” Deku said.

He didn’t used to be so sassy. Katsuki didn’t like it. 

Katsuki didn’t really like any of this. He should have never let Deku into his room last night. He shouldn’t have talked to him about his stupid quirk. He shouldn’t have continued to help him. Maybe if he hadn’t done any one of those things, he wouldn’t be stuck as a goddamn wingman now . 

What was he even supposed to do? Who would want to date Deku ? Well, technically, there were two people that wanted to date Deku, but they didn’t actually know him. They’d just seen him and thought he was cute, for some fucking reason. They would change their minds about it if they actually spent a day with him, definitely. 

Shitty fucking nerd and his shitty fucking nerd problems. 

There was nothing Katsuki could do about it now. Whether he liked it or not (not, he didn’t like it, he definitely didn’t like it), he was stuck with Deku. He was stuck as Deku’s wingman . And his personal trainer, since Deku was useless at everything, apparently. 

And Katsuki had never been one to half ass anything. 

He arrived at his front door and flung it open, not bothering to look behind him to check on the nerd’s whereabouts. If he got hit in the face with a door because he expected someone to hold it open for him, that was his own problem, not Katsuki’s. 

“Oi!” Katsuki shouted. “I’m home!”

The response, as per usual, came almost immediately. “Is Izuku-kun with you?”

Katsuki scowled. 

“I’m here!” Deku responded, his voice thin as he slid off his shoes in the entryway. 

“Oh, good,” Mitsuki said, her voice sharp and a little bit mischievous. “You can both come in here then.”

Katsuki stiffened, his back going ramrod straight and his muscles clenching. Oh, that was not good. That stank of schemes. Terrible schemes, that only got worse with each word spoken.

Apparently, Deku felt the same way, considering he gave Katsuki a wide-eyed glance, like a deer caught in the headlights. 

“Proceed with caution,” Katsuki mouthed to him, as he kicked his shoes the rest of the way off. “This is a warzone.”

Deku nodded mutely—funny, Katsuki didn’t think he could be quiet—and followed him out of the entryway and into the kitchen hesitantly. Katsuki found his parents there—both of them—dressed now instead of in their pajamas. That was not suspicious in and of itself, but the fact that Mitsuki was holding a phone in her hand like it was an object of reverence was . There was someone on that phone. Katsuki didn’t know who, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like it, based off of the look in her eyes. 

“I just wanted to say,” Masaru said, as soft spoken as ever as he held a finger up in the air, “that I am very pleased that you two are finally making an effort to get along again.”

Katsuki felt Deku’s eyes on him but ignored him. He opened his mouth to say something sharp and cutting, like, “ We’re not friends and you’re just senile old people if that’s what you think, ” but before he could, Mitsuki started talking too, reaching out to grab Masaru’s hand. 

“We were just so happy to see you together again this morning that we felt like we shouldn’t keep it from you anymore, so we talked about it—”

“Who is we ?” Katsuki asked, with a sinking feeling, as Mitsuki flipped the phone around to show him who had been on the other end of it this whole time. 

Green eyes and hair, familiar for their roundness and their darkness, looked back at him. Inko was already crying, eyes puffed up and red, but she was smiling. 

Oh, fuck, Katsuki thought. 

Beside him, Deku started to say something and then slapped a hand over his mouth quickly to muffle it, his eyes as wide as saucers. For once, Katsuki felt the exact same. 

“Well, here goes,” Mitsuki said. “Should we tell them together?”

Please don’t , Katsuki thought, but the words would not come. 

“Let’s do it together,” Inko said on the phone, her voice already distorted through the tears and then distorted again through the shitty speakers. “Let’s do it in 3…2…1…”

And then simultaneously:

“We’re all romantically involved!” 

“I have a wife and a girlfriend.” 

“We’re dating, bitches !” 

Katsuki turned slowly, making eye contact with Deku. 

This was it. This was the end, and the last thing he was going to see was fucking Deku .

“ Fuck ,” Deku said. 

All three adults gasped dramatically. 

Katsuki couldn’t agree more with the sentiment, though.

Chapter Text

“Wow, that was easier than I thought it would be!”

Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Kacchan drawled, “Yeah, imagine that. Figuring out how to use your quirk with advice other than ‘clench your buttcheeks’ makes learning easier.”

Izuku looked like he wanted to argue for a second as he paused on the stairs, but then he slumped over in defeat. “Yeah…All Might was really good at workout and diet plans, not so much on the quirk advice part…”

“You think ?” Then, Kacchan shoved Izuku forward, ignoring his squawks of protest. “Hurry the fuck up and get into the apartment, I’m tired as hell from dealing with you.”

“Rude!” Izuku called out while still letting Kacchan shove him into the hall towards his apartment. It still amazed him that Kacchan remembered where his apartment was at all, but then again, Auntie and Uncle had been dragging him along to dinners for years.

They knew why they did that now…unfortunately. 

Izuku shook off the thought, resisting the urge to shudder. The less he thought about his mom’s dating life, the better. “If you are so tired of dealing with me, then why come over?”

With a dark scowl, Kacchan ground out, “Because, our parents are having another date night at my house.”

Izuku paused. Then, he finally shuddered. There was no escape, apparently. “When I said I wanted my mom to move on from my sperm donor, I don’t think this is what I had in mind.”

“You and me both.” Another rough shove came from the blonde. “Now, move .”

“Ah! I’m moving, I’m moving !”

Kacchan continued to practically shove Izuku all the way to his apartment, ignoring the smaller boy's squawks of protest. Technically , Izuku could stop him if he wanted, given he was basically a walking slab of solid muscle nowadays, but he knew better than to poke the bear. Especially the bear with hands that were basically reloading sticks of dynamite.

Speaking of—

“What happens when you use your quirk when dehydrated?”

Giving the boy one final shove at the door to the apartment, Kacchan growled out, “How the fuck should I know? I’m not stupid enough to risk it.”

Izuku nodded thoughtfully. “Ah, of course you would be cautious about that.” As he unlocked the door, he added, “We’ll just have to study it later—“

“The fuck we are, I ain’t letting you do your creepy nerd experiments on—“

“So the great and powerful King Explosion Murder does not want to test his limits? Are you afraid that you won’t be able to last very long?”

The blank look paired with the slight eye twitch made Izuku a little concerned.

“…I’m just going to get this door open.”

“Yeah. You do that.”

Frantically twisting the key, Izuku shoved the door open and stepped inside—

Only to feel himself step on something and hear a distinctive crack .

He paused, looked down at the ground just within the doorway. “Ah…I stepped on some mail…” Stooping down to pick up whatever poor letter he just emblazoned with his shoe print, he squinted at it…only to immediately shriek .

“The fuck is wrong with you?!” Kacchan shouted, trying to shove past him into the apartment to get in. Izuku stopped him by spinning around and practically shoving the letter in his face. “The hell— “

“Kacchan! The letter!” He smacked Kacchan in the face again with the letter, ignoring all self preservation instincts. “I stepped on the letter!”

Looking two seconds from blowing his face off, Kacchan snapped, “Why the hell does that matter?!”

“ Kacchan . It’s the letter. The letter from UA!”

“… And you fucking stepped on it?! ”

“This is a sign,” Izuku stated in a panicked tone, spinning around and unintentionally smacking Kacchan in the face again with the letter. “Stepping on it was a sign, Kacchan, I think I heard it crack —“

“Give me the fucking thing!” Kacchan snapped, snatching it from Izuku before he could protest. “Since when do letters fucking crack ?!”

“Since I was sent a sign . It must be a bad sign—“

Suddenly, Izuku found himself whacked on the back of the head with the letter. “Stop panicking and let’s just open the damn thing!”

“Kacchan, don’t hit me with it! You will only make the sign worse !” Snatching the letter back, Izuku made a pained face as heard what sounded like loose bits of metal. “Oh that is not good.”

Eye twitching, Katsuki set about shoving Izuku towards the table, ignoring all protests as he ordered, “Sit down and open the damn thing before I turn this sign into an excuse to strangle you —“

“Okay, okay!” Izuku squawked, nearly flipping back in the chair. “I’m opening it!”

Then, he held the letter in front of him and stared. 

“… Deku —“

“Right!” And immediately, Izuku was ripping the letter in half, ignoring Katsuki’s shouts about how that was not the right way to open a letter. Out came a mechanical flat disc that likely should have been mailed in something far more sturdy than an envelope, and it fell to the table with a loud thunk .

Before either could comment on what the disc was nor the giant crack through the center of it, the device seemed to kick to life, and a projector appeared in front of them. Grinning brightly, Izuku called out, “All Might!”

“He can’t hear you idiot.”

“I know that—“

And then, the screen began to distort and glitch just as All Might began to speak…producing the most ear piercing screeching sound imaginable.

Katsuki jumped back while Izuku let out a panicked yelp, chair tilting back and landing him on the floor as the device suddenly cut to a normal display. 

“—earned sixty rescue points!”

“The fuck are rescue points?!” Katsuki snapped while Izuku struggled to sit up from where he had fallen. 

“This landed you in—“ More unholy demonic screeching as All Might’s image proceeded to twist and warp into the stuff of nightmare fuel, causing Katsuki to jolt while Izuku yelped and fell to the floor once more.

The screen righted itself, displaying All Might next to a list of the top ten scores with Katsuki’s name clearly listed in the top spot, Izuku not far behind. “Welcome to your Hero Academia!”

The screen proceeded to switch off as Katsuki triumphantly shouted. “Fuck yes! I knew I was better than all you extras!”

Izuku, sitting up on the floor, ignored Katsuki’s cheers and simply stated, “I…got in. I got in. ” 

Katsuki let out a snort. “Apparently. Still don’t know how the fuck you managed that.”

Then, still in a bit of disbelief, Izuku quietly commented, “So I guess it wasn’t too bad of a sign…I wonder if it would play better if I restarted it—”

The disc promptly caught on fire.

“…nevermind.”

All Might looked…confused. “Young Midoriya…I did not think this needed emphasizing, but One For All is supposed to be a secret .”

Izuku did not back down. “You left me unattended.”

“Well—“

“For a whole week .”

“I didn’t want to—“

“I ramble when panicked and have enough anxiety to nerf God, and you thought it was a good idea to leave me on radio silence unannounced for a full week and expect me not to have a breakdown over my quirk turning my bones to literal soup —“

“Okay, okay, I get your point!” All Might then turned his attention to the surly blonde at his side. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Young Kacchan—!”

“My name is not fucking Kacchan !”

“Oh dear, he’s an angry one,” All Might quietly mumbled.

Izuku patted his mentor’s shoulder, having to stretch up on his toes to just barely reach. “Kacchan is just stressed.”

“Don’t fucking speak for me, you damn nerd!”

“Was he really your only option to talk to this week?” All Might asked in concern.

“ Yep ,” Izuku chirped back, emphasizing the p sound as the mentor and mentee stared at the quietly growling blonde. “But Kacchan is smart and levelheaded, and I was too cold to think up any other options.”

“…levelheaded?…“

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, you damn twig?!”

“Nothing! Nothing at all!”

With a hesitant laugh, Izuku chimed in, “Besides, One For All was not the real reason I went to Kacchan…”

At this, All Might perked up. “Oh? Then why—“

Izuku stuck his arm out in front of All Might’s face and pressed the blue freckle. The screen flashed to life, and he watched the utter confusion on All Might’s face twist to horror as he read the title screen. “What—“

“Surprise!” Izuku called out in the most nervously fake enthusiastic voice. “Guess who just found out they aren’t quirkless and their quirk is a dating simulator!”

All Might looked at the screen. Then at Izuku. Then the screen.

And then he hacked up an alarming amount of blood and fainted backwards into the sand.

Both Izuku and Katsuki stared. Then Katsuki bluntly remarked. “Huh. So you just killed All Might—“ 

Izuku flailed his arms in a panic and accidentally smacked Katsuki in the face repeatedly. “OH MY GOD, I KILLED ALL MIGHT—“

Ten minutes and some calming breaths later, and they realized that Izuku did not, in fact, kill All Might.

Sitting on a random beach chair that Katsuki “acquired”, All Might stared intently at the blue freckle on Izuku’s arm, brows knitted in concern. “So…this quirk is designed to help you…date…people?”

Izuku grimaced. “I guess?” Tapping the freckle, the screen flickered to life, All Might blinking tiredly at the screen. “It shows me whoever is romantically interested in me, which was apparently how the quirk activated because no one had ever had that kind of interest before, and then it gives me…tips? Suggestions? On how to date them.”

Tapping the button that said LOVE INTERESTS in big and bold letters, a scroll menu appeared with the two love interests displayed. He tapped on Iida Tenya , and a profile popped up, showing basic info. “Like for Iida, it gives me hints that his favorite hero is Ingenium, and that he likes oranges…” He tapped off the screen and selected Uraraka Ochako . “And Uraraka likes Thirteen and mochi.” Frowning, he pointed at the slots below mochi that were denoted with ??? . “I’m assuming these are likes that I can unlock later…”

Katsuki pointed towards another category that had nothing listed below it but was titled Dislikes . “This is probably more information you can unlock as well.” Snorting, he drawled, “If you end up having to deal with the extras, you can just spam them with dislikes to not have to date them.”

“Kacchan! That’s mean .”

“So you want to date them?!”

Izuku looked distressed. “No! But I can’t just spam with bad gifts! What if it’s something like bees? What if they are allergic? I don’t want them to hate me—“

“So you are not interested in dating then?”

Both boys snapped their attention to All Might, who had a concerned, almost… desperate look to his face as he asked. They both shared a look before Izuku hesitantly replied with a laugh. “Ah…no. No, I do not want to date right now. Like—with school and One For All and anxiety, I don’t think I could even consider dating right now!”

All Might looked immensely relieved. “Ah, good, that’s good! You should certainly focus on school! And One For All! And anything that is not dating!”

Katsuki narrowed his eyes. “Oh really?”

Nodding vehemently, All Might reiterated in a rushed and slightly panicked tone, “Yes! No dating is a wonderful idea! At least until you graduated! Or even later!” With a very tight smile, he added, “Even no dating ever is fine! Finding someone good enough for Izuku would be very difficult anyway.”

“Considering I didn’t even know that finding someone interested in me was possible until last week, my standards are fairly low,” Izuku commented, not noticing the pained expression on All Might’s face. “But yeah…I don’t want to deal with this. Not now. It’s an older Izuku’s problem.”

All Might looked relieved once more, and Katsuki’s eyes just became more squinty.

Not noticing the exchange, Izuku then perked up. “Oh! But Kacchan helped me some with One For All!” Jumping up and green lightning crackling along his skin, he chirped, “Look! No bone soup!”

All Might began to hack up blood. “Bone what —“

“Christ you are both morons,” Katsuki muttered while Izuku began to panic fuss over the still hacking All Might.

“You need to calm the fuck down,” Kacchan said. 

Izuku, who was not calm, who had no sense of calm, who had never been calm once in his life and was not going to be calm now, flitted nervously at Kacchan’s side. He was looking at his quirk screen with the kind of intensity only a man in great distress could manage, and he had been doing this for the entire walk to UA ( UA! ) after they’d gotten off the train. 

Kacchan had saved him from walking into three poles already. Most likely, he would save him from walking into three more. 

“They dropped ,” Izuku said. 

“So? I thought you didn't want to date them.”

“One whole percentage point,” Izuku emphasized, gesturing one-handedly at Kacchan in a vague but distressed way. 

“Oi, fuckhead—”

Kacchan grabbed his uniform, yanked him to the side, and subsequently saved him from the fourth pole that day. 

“What does it mean ?” Izuku wailed, as they kept walking to school. “I mean, I know what it probably means—they’ve probably lost interest, or whatever, which is understandable! Really, it’s definitely understandable—it’s been, like, a while. It’s been weeks. I would probably lose interest in someone if I had romantic interest in in the first place if I hadn’t seen them in weeks either—”

“Deku—”

“—but listen what if that’s not what it means? What if the percentages are for something else? Ah! Kacchan! What if —”

“Deku!” Kacchan yelled angrily. “I’ve been trying to tell you that we’re here .”

“Here?” Izuku asked, finally pulling his head out of his quirk and looking around him instead. UA’s gates towered over him, intimidating and bold. Wow, they were here. They were here . 

“ Yes ,” Kacchan grumbled. “ This is what you should be worrying about. Get your head in the game. Stop thinking about the dumb extras you’re probably never going to see again anyway, and focus on yourself.”

“Kacchan,” Izuku said, feeling overwhelmingly touched. “Is this—are you—am I getting a pep talk? From you? Is that what’s happening right now?”

Kacchan stared at him for several long moments.

“Oh my fucking god,” he said, and then promptly turned around and walked through the gates. 

Izuku laughed, but not loud enough for Kacchan to hear him, and pressed the teal freckle that activated his quirk to turn it off. Maybe it was true that he and Kacchan hadn’t been legitimate friends in years. Maybe it was also true that this was because Kacchan was absolutely terrible—

No, actually, that part was definitely true. Kacchan was terrible. 

But now that Izuku was used to him again, he wasn’t so bad. A lot of bark. Not a lot of bite. The fact that their parents were apparently dating probably helped with that.After a moment to process reality, Izuku allowed himself the customary shudder at the thought. Dating. Parents. Gross . He was never going to get used to it.

Well, at least they hadn’t asked them if they could all move in together yet. He had to count his blessings where he could. 

And Kacchan was probably right, anyway. He was probably never going to see Uraraka Ochako or Iida Tenya ever again, their interest in him would fade, nobody else would ever take their place, he could buy a cat, he could maybe even buy two cats, and maybe build a catio? Why limit himself to just cats, anyway? Granted, they were the staple pet of spinsters everywhere but why not be the kind of spinster that had…birds? He would put a pin in it, actually, because the catio did sound nice, but birds also sounded nice, but the point—

Iida Tenya. Uraraka Ochako. Two names he would never have to think about ever again. And then he wouldn’t have to worry about his dating sim quirk because he wouldn’t have options for his dating sim quirk, and life would be peaceful again. 

“Are you coming or not, you damn nerd? Hah?!”

…Mostly peaceful, anyway. 

Izuku should have known . 

Nay, peace was not for him. He didn’t even have peace when he slept, considering he kicked and shouted and woke up on the floor more often than the mattress. Why would he get peace now? 

2% , the floating pink bar above the lecturing guy from the entrance exam said. He hadn’t noticed Izuku yet, which was good, because Izuku was very busy staring dismally at the floating, pixelated bar over his head. 

2%. Which was the exact same percentage Iida Tenya was at, as of ten minutes ago. Which meant that this was Iida Tenya. This guy. The guy that had lectured him for muttering during the exam. And then lectured him for trying to distract classmates. This guy , him, of all people, had somehow developed romantic feelings for Izuku. 

“Deku…” Kacchan said lowly, from somewhere behind and to the left of him, where they’d walked into the classroom together. 

“Does that mean you see it too or does it mean you’re about to shove me because I’m in your way?” Izuku asked.

“It means your quirk sucks, and I hate you!” 

“Good to know,” Izuku said, still staring at the floating pink bar in shock. “I like to think I’m getting good at translating your ominous Dekus . Sometimes they mean I’m in physical danger. Sometimes they mean my ramune is in physical danger. Sometimes, both me and the ramune are in physical danger. But I thought this one was more of a ramune danger, you know? Like, I’m not getting damaged, but something is.”

“ What are you talking about?”

Izuku supposed it was a testament to how stressed Kacchan was that he didn’t even swear that time. 

In front of him, Iida Tenya slowly turned around. Izuku watched in horror as they made eye contact and the bar above his head climbed from 2% to 5%, just like that, as he perked up—literally, perked up , like a puppy —and turned towards them. 

“Please don’t come over here,” Izuku whispered, but only Kacchan and God were attending to him now, and neither cared very much about his problems. 

Iida Tenya started walking towards him, brisk and efficient, shoulders square and expression severe. Izuku was tempted to hide behind Kacchan for all of two seconds before he remembered Kacchan was more likely to explode than to help, and thus ended up standing there and sweating awkwardly. 

“Ah, it’s you!” Iida Tenya said.

“It’s me!” Izuku agreed, with the most obviously forced laugh he’d ever heard come from his own mouth.

“I should have known I would see you here!” Iida continued, sounding way too happy for someone smiling so little. “Your performance at the entrance exam was indeed admirable. To save another so selflessly…honestly, I am quite impressed that you managed to discern the true criteria of the test so easily!”

“Wait,” Izuku said, because it was starting to come together. Strict glasses guy—Iida Tenya—had been in his zone. Had he seen Izuku take on the zero pointer? Had he seen Izuku take on the zero pointer and developed romantic feelings then, of all times? “True…criteria?”

“Indeed!” Iida said, chopping one hand at Izuku enthusiastically now. This was familiar too, because this was also how he had lectured Izuku previously. Flight attendant hands. He should get a job landing planes. “I saw you risk yourself to save your fellow competitor, and I was moved beyond words.”

Oh, he was— That was— Yep, yep, he was forward . He was moved beyond words . Who just said that to another person— Why was he even moved beyond words when all Izuku had done was do his darndest to explode all of his limbs and possibly die when he could have just pulled Uraraka out of the rubble instead—

His bar had gone up to 6%. His bar had gone up to 6%, and he was giving Izuku a look , deep blue eyes sparkling with something Izuku only dared to call fondness because he was watching as the pink bar climbed from 6% to 7% now. What was going on, why was this his life—

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Kacchan said, groaning impressively, and the spell was broken. The bar dropped back down to 6%, and Izuku clutched at his chest like he’d just made his way out of a haunted maze instead of witnessing the mortifying progression of someone else’s attraction to him . 

“Oh,” Iida said, straightening himself (and he was already very straight). “ Oh . That was terribly improper of me, my apologies. I should have introduced myself first. My name is Iida Tenya. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance! Both of you!”

“Uh-huh,” Kacchan said, rolling his eyes. “Sure, both of us. You were just making googly eyes at me too a second ago, right?”

“I—” Iida said, his face flushing entirely pink. “I beg your pardon?”

“You beg my pardon ,” Kacchan sneered, and Izuku sensed this was going to go very poorly. “So, were you born with that stick up your ass or did someone else—”

“Ah!” Izuku said, as loudly as possible, just so he could drown out Kacchan’s voice in the time it took for him to slap a hand over his mouth. “Kacchan, no . Be nice.”

Kacchan bit him.

“Mother fu —uh—ah!” Izuku said, as he shook out his hand. He’d forgotten he was in a school. Knowing his luck, their teacher would show up right as he finished saying that word, and he would be doomed. Detention on the first day, kind of doomed. 

“I think it’s time for us to go,” Izuku told Iida, grabbing Kacchan by the shoulders and steering him towards two empty desks by the windows. “It was, uh—Kacchan, will you stop —nice to meet you, though!”

Iida Tenya. Iida Tenya in his class . He was going to see Izuku do all kinds of embarrassing things. Izuku was going to have to literally watch his crush fade before his eyes. This was so much easier to swallow when Izuku thought he would never have to do anything, but now, the only thing that would make it worse was if—

“Hey, I know that mop of hair!”

Oh, no, Izuku thought, as he slowly looked over his shoulder at the person that had just spoken. Kacchan, who had been adamantly digging in his heels when Izuku started pushing him, floundered angrily when Izuku stopped applying force, but caught himself before he fell. 

Behind him, with her short brown hair and her round face and her extremely pink cheeks was the girl. The floating girl. Puking girl. Girl that saved him from falling twice, girl. 

And the bar above her head read 5%, just like it had when he’d read it this morning on his way in. 

Both of them. Both of them in his class. 

“Fuck my life,” Kacchan said. “ Another one.”

“What?” Uraraka asked, blinking at Kacchan curiously now. 

“What?” Izuku agreed awkwardly.

Kacchan decided to grab his head and turn it so he was looking not at Uraraka, but instead at one of their other classmates, apparently. This one was blond with gold eyes and a black streak in his hair, and he was watching the horror movie that was Izuku’s life unfold with unmasked curiosity. When Izuku made eye contact with him, he blushed and looked away. 

There was a pink bar over his head. A pink bar that said 8%. 

“ Fuck ,” Izuku agreed.

And because nothing had ever gone well for him, ever, in his entire life, it was at that exact moment that a new voice, deep and adult, chimed in from the doorway. “A language warning on the first day, huh?” 

There was a rustling sound, and Uraraka moved to the side to reveal a man in a yellow sleeping bag laying in the doorway to the classroom. As Izuku stared at him, he wiggled enough to produce a hand and a jelly packet, which he held to his lips and slurped loudly on while they stared at him. He finished his jelly packet, sighed enormously, and then wiggled and shifted until suddenly he was a man instead of a man in a sleeping bag. For some reason, Izuku’s brain removed the process of him actually unzipping the sleeping bag from his memory. 

“It took all of you eight seconds to quiet down after I spoke,” he said, scratching at a bit of a dark scruffy beard. “That’s just irrational. I’m Aizawa Shouta. I’ll be your homeroom teacher.” There was another strange, awkwardly long silence, and then he looked at Izuku. “Language, by the way.”

“Um,” Izuku said, feeling all eyes settling on him. “Yes, Sensei?”

The man—who looked more like a hobo than a teacher—nodded in acknowledgement, and fished something out of his sleeping bag which he held up for the class. A moment of scrutiny revealed it was a training uniform, made recognizable thanks to the UA Sports Festival and the uniform order forms Izuku had to fill out. “Change into these,” he told them, “and meet me on the field.”

“Um, sir,” Uraraka began hesitantly. “What about orientation?”

He gave her a look. It was an awkwardly long look. 

And then, with no further adieu, he turned around and left. 

Izuku melted into a puddle—or he would have, if Kacchan wasn’t holding him up by the back of his uniform for some reason—in distress as soon as the teacher was gone.

Three people. He hadn’t even done anything more than look at one of them! And they were in a class with him. 

“I hate your quirk,” Kacchan informed him, as the others started to move around and get ready.

Izuku could not agree with the sentiment more.

Chapter Text

“You listen up, shithead,” Kacchan said in an exceedingly angry undertone as they changed next to each other in the locker rooms. Well, Izuku was changing. Kacchan was standing guard while he pretended like he was very interested in his watch. In reality, he had My Plus Ultra Romance: Support Edition - Wingman pulled up and was researching Izuku’s latest crushee.

“I’m listening,” Izuku said, as he took an unnaturally long time to zip up his jacket. 

“The new extra is Kaminari Denki. He likes…girls. And hamburgers. I’m so fucking confused.”

“I am neither a girl nor a hamburger,” Izuku mused, glancing Kaminari’s direction. The bar over his head said 2% on it, which was low. Blissfully low. “Maybe he’s bi or something? Like, you can be bi with a slight preference for one gender, right?”

Kaminari caught Izuku’s eye and smiled. Izuku blushed inadvertently—having access to the knowledge that people liked you tended to do that to a person—and the bar not so much climbed to a higher percentage as it shot suddenly up to 10% like a dog that had just spotted a squirrel. 

Kacchan whipped his head around as quickly as Kaminari’s percentage had just climbed. He shot the foulest look he could manage at the blond, teeth bared in a snarl, and Kaminari’s smile took on an edge. He also held up both hands in the universal sign of surrender, cheeks bright pink.

“Kacchan ,” Izuku warned, grabbing Kacchan’s shirt and yanking him closer. Kacchan slapped his hand away, so Izuku slapped him back, so Kacchan bared his teeth in a way that seemed to indicate biting was imminent and Izuku backed off. “Stop being so weird .”

“Me? I’m being weird? You’re the one that said you didn’t want to date and then immediately started flirting with everyone around.”

“I wasn’t flirting— !”

“Explain the bar , then—”

“Shhhhhh, Kacchan, we’re being suspicious. ”

Izuku glanced warily over his shoulder. Sure enough, half the locker room was giving them weird looks. They were definitely warranted, but still. 

Kacchan glanced over his shoulder too, then bared his teeth at Izuku. “No more fucking flirting. We’re just going to go out there, and do this stupid test. You’re going to make yourself seem as unattractive as possible—not that it should be hard—”

“ Wow, Kacchan. I have feelings, you know.”

“—and you’re going to stop flirting. Clear?”

“Crystal.”

“From here on out, I’m your anti-wingman,” Kacchan said, still speaking in a whisper shout. “You said you don’t want to date, so I’m going to make sure you don’t fucking date and then wash my hands of this stupid quirk entirely. Got it?”

“Yes, sir!”

Kacchan gave him a flat look, and Izuku immediately backtracked. 

“Not that I think you’re a sir ,” Izuku said. “Or old. Or anything like that. I was just being, you know, uh…stupid.”

A sufficiently awkward silence passed.

“Just do what I say. These morons are apparently going to get crushes on you no matter what we do, so we have to stamp them out at the source. This,” he said, “is a motherfucking warzone.”

“That seems like it’s taking it pretty far, I mean—oh, you’re walking away from me. Okay, hey, wait—Kacchan. Kacchan. I am trying to tie my shoe—Kacchan!”

Uraraka’s first impression of Midoriya Izuku was that he was… odd .

Not in a bad way! But in a way that suggested he wasn’t very good with people. And beyond the green hair and eyes, he was not really someone that would stand out in a crowd. That might have been also because he was short, but she was also short, so she did not have much room to argue about that.

There was also the matter of him being…oddly endearing? Like sure, he was awkward, but in a way that made you want to “Awww!” Instead of “Uhhh…” Part of her wanted to pick him up and put him in her pocket, but once again, he wasn’t that short.

But then he took down the zero pointer in one punch to save her, and the “Awww!” turned swiftly into an “ Oh .” 

She was not quite sure what to make of this change, but she assumed it was positive. She was at the very least curious about him. Like, why didn’t he use his quirk earlier in the exam? Was it panic, or does it break his limbs every time? She had questions and she wanted answers, and were it not for Present Mic’s assurances that he did fine with his scores, she would have assumed that she likely would never have seen him again with his supposed zero points.

Yet here he was. In her class. With his odd mannerisms and stupidly busy hair…and a friend in tow that had a bit of an attitude.

Speaking of that friend, he and Midoriya were arguing a little ways away from the rest of the students waiting to start the test. Again. They seemed to argue a lot. She guessed it was a guy best friend thing. They seemed really close, regardless. Not that she was watching them! Or, well, not watching them that much.

Midoriya stretched his arms up into the air, and she could see very defined muscles. 

Oh dear . 

Midoriya seemed to startle as if he heard something, his gaze snapping over towards her. They made eye contact, him still mid stretch. Her cheeks felt warm. 

Oh no . 

She snapped her head away, now feeling like the odd one for staring at him. Was that odd? Of course it was odd! She glanced in Midoriya’s direction again. He seemed panicked, hands flailing as he talked to the other boy. She thinks Midoriya called him Kacchan? She needed to learn his name, she only knew Midoriya’s because of that Iida guy asking—

Kacchan was glaring at her now.

Oh fuck.

She needed to get a hold of herself. She never acts this way, but there was something about Midoriya, something that made her feel off balance, like her stomach was flipping. Not like after she used her quirk too much and…well…puked…but more in the way like butterflies were eating her stomach.

She thinks that’s how the phrase works—

“Uraraka, are you paying attention?”

She let out an audible “ Eep! ” as she realized that Aizawa’s glare was pointedly fixed on her. Okay, so no more inner dialogue. She needed to focus .

Midoriya had this determined look plastered on his face as Aizawa issued an expulsion laden challenge to the class.

Oh, the butterflies were eating her intestines now.

This was a mistake.

What the exact mistake was had yet to be determined, but Katsuki thought it was probably the day Auntie decided she wanted a child. While he believed that Auntie was a very kind woman and should have whatever she wanted, conceiving Deku has to be the one mistake she made in her lifetime.

And if she wanted a child so badly, apparently all she had to do was give it a few years and she would have ended up with Katsuki as a kid. 

Pausing that particular train of thought that he refused to think about without a therapist and interrogation techniques banned by the Geneva Conventions, Katsuki focused on the issue at hand. Particularly, the issue being Deku.

Deku and their lovesick classmates.

Scowling darkly at Pink Cheeks who’s bar had been ever so carefully creeping up with each glance at Deku, he bit back any thoughts of homicide. Killing Deku would save him so many issues. But a murder charge would likely damage his hero career, and he didn’t have the time to plot out a way to do so without getting caught.

And it would make Auntie Inko sad. 

So, Katsuki was stuck. Snatching Izuku by the ear, he pulled the protesting boy closer and angrily whispered, “Stop attracting the idiots.”

“Ah! Kacchan!” Izuku whined, flailing against his hold. “I’m not doing it on purpose!”

Scoffing, Katsuki let go of his ear, watching as the boy stumbled. “I hate that I know you’re not lying.” Taking a fortifying breath, he muttered, “Let’s just get this test done and get out of here. Don’t attract any more attention.”

“Trust me, I am trying my best!”

His best ended up with Deku placing forth in the tests overall, just behind Katsuki.

It also ended with the three idiots with higher percentage scores, plus an eerie 1% gauge next to some new asshole named Todoroki Shouto.

Katsuki was considering the murder option again.

Despite trying her best, Uraraka didn’t get an opportunity to talk to Midoriya until the end of the day when everyone was leaving. 

And if she was honest, she only got that chance because she sprinted out of the locker room with her backpack half unzipped in order to get to him as he left with Kacchan. 

“Midoriya!” she shouted, as she ran. “Kacchan! Wait up!”

At the exact same time, she heard someone else—someone with a much deeper voice—shout, “Midoriya! Could I walk with you?”

Uraraka turned her head to look at the other speaker. He also turned his head, their gazes crossing awkwardly. It turned out to be Iida, and Uraraka slowly raised her eyebrows. She had a sneaking suspicion that she just might not be the only one with a little bit of a crush on Midoriya. 

Iida nodded, solemn and serious, and just like that, they were united. 

It was peaceful for all of three seconds, before something loud and blond and distinctly pomeranian-esque disrupted it. 

“Oi!” Kacchan shouted, as his palms crackled with cute little fireworks. “What the fuck did you just call me?”

“Kacchan!” Midoriya shouted, leaping onto Kacchan’s back. The leaping was clearly an attempt to stop Kacchan from prowling forward—though it wasn’t working very well, as Midoriya was short and Kacchan was determined—but it seemed almost…cute. Charming. 

I wish he would jump on my back like that, Uraraka thought.

“I wish he would jump on my back like that,” Iida said. 

Uraraka stared at him. 

Iida stiffened, then slowly turned his head to look at her, his cheeks pinkening slightly. “Did I—pardon me for asking, but did I just say that out loud?”

“Get the fuck off, you feral fucking spidermonkey!”

“Me?! Feral?! You bit me earlier!”

“And that girl with the round face just called me fucking Kacchan!”

“Ahhhh!”

Uraraka laughed, shooting Iida an encouraging thumbs up. “No sweat. You’re lucky they’re too loud to hear you, though, Iida!”

He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Yes, I suppose that I am.”

And with that, Uraraka returned to her original mission. She skipped forward a few steps—this put her firmly in fireworks range, but she decided she didn’t care very much—and leaned forward so she could look Kacchan in the eyes when she smiled. “So…if your name isn’t Kacchan, what is it?”

“Fucking hell!” Kacchan roared, before grabbing Midoriya by the back of his uniform and flinging him off of him. Uraraka was worried for all of one second before Midoriya stuck the landing like a pro, one leg out and fingers splayed in the grass. 

It was a very flattering angle for that leg, actually. It was a leg for a guy that didn’t skip leg day, that was for sure. Or arm day. 

I bet he has great abs, too, Uraraka thought, too quickly to truly experience shame, and then Midoriya was leaping up and dusting himself off and hiding his blush behind his hands. 

Cute. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Kacchan said, pressing his fingers into his temples like he had a terrible migraine. “My name is Bakugou Katsuki. Ba-ku-gou. Not Kacchan. Got it?”

“Got it!” Uraraka said, giving him a thumbs up, before quickly turning towards Midoriya, who seemed, in general, a far superior human being. “You were really impressive during the Quirk Test thing today, Midoriya!”

“Ahhh—” he said, looking anywhere but at her. “Thanks. Thank you. Yes. Infinity…wow! Yep.”

“Christ,” Kacchan—or Bakugou, she supposed, since he was no fun—muttered. He pressed his fingers into his temples hard enough that she almost wondered if he was trying to use them to drill holes into his skull. 

Uraraka giggled, though, finding his awkwardness really endearing once again. It sort of made her want to friend-adopt Midoriya as soon as possible. Or better yet, date him…?

Too soon, her brain reminded her helpfully. If you go too fast you might scare him off. 

Right. Friend adopt it was. 

For now.

“I thought for sure that Aizawa-sensei was going to make me throw it again,” she said in response to Midoriya’s infinity comment.

“The fucking hobo? Why? That guy is about as disinterested in treating everyone equally as Cinderella’s stepmom is.”

“Did you just make a Cinderella reference?” Midoriya asked, squinting at Bakugou. “You?”

“Yeah, what about it?” Bakugou asked, raising an argumentative eyebrow. “I have culture.”

“Huh.”

It was at that time that Iida apparently decided to join in himself. “Apologies for the intrusion!” he said, while gesturing. “Midoriya, your performance today was impeccable. I barely recognized how you were moving!”

Midoriya started turning very pink, very fast, once again. “Thank you,” he said, the words awkwardly stilted. “Very kind. Yes. Fast—wow! Yep.”

Iida laughed, though he did his best to hide it behind a hand. Bakugou, however, cast his eyes to the sky, his lips moving but no sound coming out like he was saying a prayer. 

“I quit,” Bakugou said out loud, with an affirming nod. “Yeah. I quit. I’ve had enough of this shit for one day, thank you.”

And then to punctuate his words, he turned on his heel and started marching away. 

“I’m incredibly sorry,” Iida said, one hand coming down in a chop. “I didn’t upset him, did I?” 

“No, no,” Midoriya said, waving his hands frantically. Uraraka suddenly felt like she might need to take a step back due to all the arms moving everywhere all of a sudden. But stepping back also felt a little bit like admitting defeat to Iida, so she would risk a black eye or two instead. “Kacchan’s like a plant, really! You can give him all the water and sunlight he needs but he’ll refuse to grow anyway! Ha! Haha! Wait. Kacchan!”

“Leave me alone!” Bakugou shouted, as he continued to walk away. 

“Kacchan, don’t go home!” Midoriya shouted back. 

“Fuck you!” Bakugou said.

Midoriya flapped, like a very fluffy, very stressed bird. “Wait, it’s a—you know what! I’ll just come too!”

He turned back to Uraraka and Iida, bowing quickly to both of them, and then bowing again like once wasn’t enough. “I have to go save him from a terrible fate. It was nice you—I mean to talk to you—to meet you—to meet you again! It was nice. Yep. I have to go!” 

And then he turned away and sprinted after Bakugou as fast as he could go, possibly, leaving Uraraka and Iida standing in the blowback zone. 

Uraraka felt like maybe she should be slightly insulted…? He was clearly choosing to spend time with Bakugou over them, but then again, they didn’t know him very well and Bakugou clearly did. And it was hard to feel insulted, when she got such a good view of his butt when he ran, standing behind him like this. 

Uraraka’s cheeks suddenly felt very warm. 

“Ahem,” Iida said, jolting Uraraka out of her own mortification. 

“Ahh—yes?” she asked, looking up at him. She found that he was holding a phone out, a contacts page already pulled up, her first and last name already written in the appropriate slots. “Oh?”

“I’ve examined the situation,” Iida said, with another throat clear. “It seems like our biggest obstacle right now is Bakugou. Strategically, our individual odds later will probably be better if we work together now… ”

“Oh!” Uraraka said, as she excitedly snatched his phone out of his hand. “Plus! We can gush about Midoriya to each other!”

“...That too.”

“No hard feelings though, right?” Uraraka asked, as she handed Iida’s phone back to him, her number now safely stored in his contact list. “Like…whoever wins Midoriya’s heart wins and that’s that, kind of thing?”

“Of course!” Iida said, both hands coming up in a square shape like he was refereeing for a game. “I would never dream of letting a romantic rivalry come between a friendship!” 

“Great!” Uraraka said. “I would never dream of it either!”

“Good,” Iida said, smiling at her. “I must say, I’m very glad to have you as a friend, Uraraka.”

“Me too!” Uraraka agreed, smiling just as widely. “Though I mean I’m glad to have you as a friend, not myself, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Iida agreed seriously. “Good luck in your endeavors.”

“May the best person win?”

“May the best person win.”

Kacchan slammed his prepackaged bowl of ramen on the table, a bit of steam from the boiling water seeping out from under the film as he just as aggressively slammed himself down into the chair. Somehow, Izuku felt bad for both the table and the chair. And the ramen. They didn’t deserve that.

He sat his ramune on the table much more gently as he sat near Kacchan.

Then he looked at Kacchan’s face and cautiously slid over a few seats till he was not within easy firing range of the blonde. His face was still twisted up into a sneer, but it wasn’t quite as bad. 

With slow movements to prevent Kacchan from lashing out, he began to set about opening his bottle. “See, this is what I meant by reading your faces. Moving only a few seats switched you out of ‘Izuku is in danger’ to just ‘a random item is in danger and it's probably my ramune.’” He popped the cap of his drink, the bead falling down into the little gap in the glass jar. “Please be nice to my ramune.”

Kacchan’s face twisted up again.

“Ah, and now I’m in danger again.”

Slamming his hands on the table, Kacchan snapped, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Would you like a list?” Izuku replied with ease, taking a long drink of the ramune. “It’s starts with my father leaving compounded with ten years of bulllying from my childhood best friend—“

“God, you’re dramatic,” Kacchan said in a way that was clearly trying to deflect from that particular conversation. Which was good for Izuku because he wasn’t quite ready for that either.

At this point, they heard muffled cursing in the back corner of the cafe, and both turned to look at the older teen with a reptile mutation quirk currently scowling at his handheld game device. Izuku thought it was called a Sitch? A Nitch? Whatever it was, it was old and had only seen it in passing on some YouTube collector’s videos that showed off their old gaming collections of pre-quirk heroes from comics. They apparently weren’t worth much due to being mass produced, but the sentimental value was enough for these collectors—

The guy swore again, and Izuku turned his attention back to Kacchan before the teen could catch him staring. He doubted that the teen would be paying attention to anything but his game for a while now, anyway, especially with the earbuds he wore. 

“So,” Izuku began cautiously, taking a long sip of his Ramune. “…today did not go to plan—“

“Yeah, no shit , Sherlock,” Kacchan snapped, jabbing an accusing finger at Izuku. “Not only did you make the percentage worse , but you added more idiots to the roster—“

“It’s not like I planned this!”

Katsuki just growled at him, holding up his arm and aggressively tapping at the teal freckle to look at the charts. Then, he frowned. “The fuck—the blonde was at twenty one percent when we left school!”

Izuku looked wary as he moved to open his own screen. “ Please tell me it didn’t go up—“

“It’s down to three percent.”

“… WHAT— “

“Oi! Keep it the fuck down, you weirdo!” Kacchan snapped, reaching across the table and smacking Izuku on the head. “We’re in public!”

Izuku frowned, rubbing his head. “You’re telling me to keep it down—“

“ Oi! ”

“But seriously,” Izuku interrupted with a frown, staring at the screen. “What did I do ?”

Deciding that trying to persue the argument was pointless and that he just wanted to get this over with, Kacchan huffed, “I don’t fucking know, maybe he finally came to his senses and realized you look like a nerd—“

“ Hey!— “

“All that matters is that we need to just let it die,” Kacchan continued, not caring if he insulted Izuku. Which, rude .

“ Rude ,” Izuku muttered, feeling the need to voice his opinion.

Kacchan just gave him a blank stare. “According to the old hag, I literally bit you within five minutes of meeting you as a baby. My hatred of you has not improved since then. Are you seriously going on about me being rude— “

“Fine! I get your point!” Izuku snapped, waving his arms in the air and nearly knocking over his Ramune, which he barely caught before it fell over. With a pout, he asked, “So, what now?”

“Now?” Kacchan pointed to the screen. “At this rate, the electric idiot should be over you by tomorrow, so just don’t…look at him? I don’t fucking know, we’ll see if it was a one off fluke. For right now, we make a game plan to get these two other idiots hate you as much as I do—“

“I don’t want our classmates to hate me!—“

“ Fine , to see you as undateable!”

Izuku settled with that option. “That shouldn’t be too hard.” Then, after a pause, Izuku asked, “Don’t you mean three? The Todoroki guy—“

“Is at one percent,” Kacchan cut in, waving his hand. “I don’t think he’s really a priority versus a literal twelve and sixteen percent— “

“Okay, okay! I get your point!” Sighing, Izuku took another long sip of his drink. “So, how are we going to do this?”

Kacchan shrugged. “Fuck if I know.”

“…you are the world’s worst anti-wingman—“

“ Oi! I didn’t sign up for this shit—!”

“You could at least be a little helpful!—“

“You literally chose the one person in your life who is both asexual and Aromantic to be your wingman, how the fuck am I supposed to help? ”

Izuku stopped mid reply, brain buffering as he processed this new information. “…shit.”

Kacchan simply laughed at his suffering, like the unhelpful asshole he was. 

Then he knocked over his Ramune.

Izuku wanted to go home.

“Mom? Why are you calling?”

“ Surprise! ” His mom cheerfully cried over the video call at what appeared to be the Bakugou’s house, Auntie Mitsuki and Uncle Masaru grinning and moving boxes in the background. “ We’re all moving in together! ”

Kacchan, mid bite of ramen across the table, choked on his food.

Izuku no longer wanted to go home.