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anjumstar · 1 year ago

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Sand Lines ch7, Monday

Read on AO3

rating: teen

pairing: bakudeku

word count: 40.6k/40.6k

summary: It wasn’t a vacation. It was only convenient that Katsuki’d managed to trick Miruko into thinking it was.

Katsuki doesn’t need a break. Post-war life has been peaceful. Too peaceful. So under the guise of a vacation, Katsuki heads to the American southwest, the only place where he can do the thing he wants to do the most: blow stuff up. Big time. And it’s all going to according to plan for about five minutes, until Deku comes along. They’ve barely seen each other since graduation last year and Katsuki could, should blow him up for getting in his business yet again. Instead, they learn about post-war life in the way they’ve done everything: together.

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They didn’t share beds again. It was too much, too soon.

A relationship should start with a strong foundation—that’s what idiots with unsolicited advice always said. The foundation came first and provided support for everything else, and nothing else could be built until the foundation was poured and hardened.

That wasn’t what Katsuki and Izuku were.

Their relationship was like sand.

There were fragments of it. Some strewn to the wind, some in the same place for a long time. But they were messy and shifting and by no means built with a solid foundation. But they say that with enough sand, eventually the weight from the top compresses the bottom most layer into something solid again. What once was sand would become stone. And the more stacked on top of it, the harder it would get.

And right now, the new granules were pouring like desert rain.

Their alarm went off while the sky was still as dark as it had been when they went to sleep. Their flight wasn’t a red-eye—little blessings—but they were still looking a good twenty-four hours of travel dead in the face. And that was if they experienced no delays. They’d lose a whole day traveling this way—it’d nearly be Wednesday by the time they arrived home.

They hadn’t packed the night before. The drive back to the motel after leaving White Sands was slow—Izuku had wanted to enjoy the starlight and Katsuki couldn’t blame him. And while it hadn’t been too late, the unholy hour that they’d have to wake up at had sent them both to bed, suitcases exposed and belongings spread throughout the room.

The only thing accomplished the night before had been dropping his cooler and umbrella outside a closed thrift shop. The rental car was empty of everything but sand.

Katsuki smacked around the nightstand to find his phone and shut it off before finally rolling out of bed. They had to pack, they had to eat breakfast, they had to check out of the room, and then they had to drive all the way back to Texas. Then sit in a couple tin cans in the sky for seventeen hours.

“Deku,” Katsuki grumbled, hurling a pillow in his general direction. “Get up and put your shitty super speed to decent use.”

A spark of teal lit up the room as Izuku caught the pillow with nary a drop of moonlight to see by.

“That do it for you?” he asked, cheeky before the lights were even on.

“I meant packing, shithead,” Katsuki said, flipping on the light. It revealed Izuku’s body to him, his bare chest and one thigh just beginning to poke out of the blanket, covered only by a thin set of boxer shorts. Attraction was a devil and Katsuki wasn’t ready for hell. Yet.

He looked away, walking to the sinks so he could brush his teeth and get his toiletries ready to pack. Maybe splash some cool water on his face and keep the blush at bay.

“It’s hard to use super speed in just a small room,” Izuku said, rustling behind Katsuki as he got out of bed.

“Sounds like a wimp who’s not up for a challenge.”

Izuku was beside Katsuki in a blue-green flash, hip-checking him as he reached for his own toothbrush. “How’s that?”

Katsuki gurgled around his toothpaste, some attempt at a growl, but the frothiness of his mouth stripped away the edge.

“Kacchan…” Izuku started, slowly putting a bead of toothpaste on his brush. “This wasn’t…just a vacation thing, right?”

“Wha?” Katsuki asked, taking his toothbrush out and talking around a mouthful of minty spit.

“Like…a vacation romance? That doesn’t follow us home?”

That was enough for Katsuki to spit out the toothpaste.

“Let me get this straight,” Katsuki said. “You think I’m gonna do this shit with you here, and commit to working with you full time, only to turn this shit into some G-rated fling?” Katsuki grabbed the hand in which Izuku held his toothbrush and shoved the brush into Izuku’s mouth. “Shut the fuck up.”

Izuku pulled the toothbrush out, a line of spit following it. “Well, you can’t blame me for wanting to make sure—you’re not really the easiest person to read.”

“We got ice cream together at a pink retro diner frozen custard palace,” Katsuki deadpanned. “If that ain’t clear, I’ll have to find whatever pride flag is appropriate, smack you with it, and then fly the blood-

soaked thing from my apartment.”

Izuku frowned. “You see how that might not be especially clear?”

The thing was, clear wasn’t what Katsuki had to offer right at this red-hot moment. Confused, sure. A little gay, fine. But clear just wasn’t in the cards, and judging by Izuku’s lack of words on the matter, the water he was wading through was just as murky as Katsuki’s.

Izuku had always looked to Katsuki for answers, but when they were young, every question had been simple. What’s this kanji? How’d you skip that rock? How’d you dribble that ball? Now they were both equally out of their depth and they’d both have to help each other figure things out in a way they’d only just begun to do.

Katsuki rinsed his toothbrush and put it down. Then he pressed a minty kiss to Izuku’s cheek. It was rough with little hints of morning stubble but plush and round with youth.

“Happy?”

Izuku’s face turned pink, almost orange in the yellowed artificial light. As Katsuki turned around to continue packing, he heard a squeaked little, “Yep!” and then the sound of a toothbrush vigorously going.

Without a hamper or a washing machine, the dirty clothes had ended up somewhat strewn around the room. They all had made it close to their respective suitcases, but not quite in and definitely not folded.

They’d all be going in the washer the moment Katsuki made it home, but everything would fit nicer folded, and he wouldn’t bring shame on his family if customs decided to open his suitcase and investigate.

Everything smelled of sweat and lingering deodorant. Wafts of the past week hit Katsuki as he folded every item until he got to a black shirt that was different.

It was the shirt Izuku had worn on Saturday. The shirt he’d been wearing when Katsuki lost his mind and kissed him. The shirt that had looked so funny on him but also staked Katsuki’s claim on him before he’d even known what he was doing.

It smelled like Izuku. His slightly more woodsy deodorant and multiple layers of sunscreen and sweat from a day in the sun. And it smelled like Katsuki too, his detergent, and his laundry all entangled. It was what they smelled like when they were intertwined, or if they did domestic things like laundry together. If they lived together.

Katsuki shoved the shirt in his bag. Too much too soon. No sleeping together and no imagining living together.

“I’ll wash that!” Izuku offered suddenly, obviously done with brushing his teeth. Katsuki tempered his surprise, hoping it didn’t show on his body.

Katsuki imagined the shirt coming back to him smelling like Izuku’s detergent. It was a nice thought. It’d be an easy excuse to see each other again soon.

But Katsuki didn’t need an excuse now. And if he wanted a shirt that smelled like Izuku, he could steal one any time he wanted.

“Nah, I got it,” he said. And then he came across a bag that he’d shoved in his case, underneath the layers of clothes and other bullshit. “Here, this belongs with your stuff.”

Katsuki lifted the bag behind him, over his shoulder, face blazing. Izuku muttered things about not knowing what the bag was, not remembering buying it, and there was the telltale rustling of the bag being opened. Then there was a gasp. Then, the next thing Katsuki knew, he was being glomped from behind by a minty-fresh nerd.

“All Might!” Izuku exclaimed.

“It’s Katsuki, actually,” Katsuki grumbled sarcastically.

“Kacchan!” Izuku cried. His hold was tight, unaware of his strength as he held the integrity of Katsuki’s ribs between his arms. “I love it, thank you!”

“Yeah, well,” Katsuki said. “Was a pretty good vacation. Should have some souvenirs.”

“Oh my gosh!” Izuku exclaimed, pulling back. Katsuki’s ribs were grateful, but a part of him missed the warmth of Izuku’s breath on his neck. “We need omiyage!”

Omiyage was a hassle when your friend group was twenty people strong. Between the two of them, there was no way they were bringing forty souvenirs total for their friends, not counting their parents and maybe some of their teachers and coworkers. Miruko, perhaps, if she deserved it after the shit she’d pulled. Then, suddenly, Katsuki had an idea.

“Finish packing and I know exactly what we can bring.”

Hours later, they’d made it through customs, both suitcases stuffed with the entirety of the motel’s continental breakfast, all wrapped in individual servings to give to their friends and give them the full experience of America. Honeybuns and breakfast cereals and, well, the fruit they’d actually eaten themselves. It made up for the week of breakfasts they’d skipped, or at least that was the logic Katsuki had given as he’d looked the checkout clerk dead in the eye and swept all the danishes into his bag. Fair was fair.

Since Izuku and Katsuki hadn’t bought their tickets together, their seats weren’t together either on the flight from Texas to Los Angeles or from Los Angeles to Japan. It’d be seventeen hours of horrible, mouth-breathing strangers, all making it even harder to sleep than it already was for Katsuki in a flying room full of people. Despite the jetlag and the early morning, Katsuki wasn’t convinced he’d sleep a wink.

“Boarding group D.”

Katsuki stepped forward to begin boarding the plane. Izuku had bought his ticket more last minute, maybe pulled strings to get on the same flight at all, so he probably had some shitty seat over the wing or right by the bathroom where the seats didn’t recline. Boarding group Z or something.

The domestic airlines were shit. Tiny seats, no televisions, and the only food offered were tiny cookies and tins of juice. But the flight was less than two hours, and that was all that was on Katsuki’s mind as he stomped to his seat in the middle of the plane. It all went wrong before he even sat down.

“Wow, you’re Dynamight!”

A whole week of blissful anonymity, gone in a moment. The plane broke out in quiet murmurs, and Katsuki caught a quiet, “Who’s that?” “Is that a hero?” He wanted to roll his eyes until they got lost in the hat that should have at least partially shrouded him from this nonsense.

And of course, the guy who he was seated next to was the one who’d started the whole thing.

He was some kind of bro. A deep tan on his arms, a faded baseball cap on his head. Maybe the same age as Katsuki himself. It was always so hard to tell—his class had aged so fast. Scars and lines of concern running all over their skin.

Katsuki sat down heavily, a grunt his only word of acknowledgement towards his row partner.

“So cool!” the guy continued, as though they were in conversation. “Were you on vacation?”

Training, Katsuki wanted to snap back, but that wasn’t quite how things had ended up, was it? “Yep,” he said shortly.

“Ah, that’s awesome,” the guy said, a bit of a drawl spilling out. He was probably from this dusty place. Maybe trying to do something bigger in Los Angeles. “You earned it.”

Katsuki wondered if that was the kind of platitude that all Americans said. If this guy just recognized Katsuki from an internet video he saw sometime or if he had a real idea of Katsuki’s stats, of what it had taken for him to get his license and go on to sit on this slow-boarding plane today. If he had any idea whether Katsuki had deserved it or if he was blowing off work because he was an asshole.

Maybe Katsuki was only wondering that because even after all of this, vacation still didn’t feel like a word meant to be spoken alongside Bakugou Katsuki.

“I love it when heroes chill,” the guy said, testing out the seat’s recline even though they hadn’t taken off yet. “Makes me feel like I’m not an idiot for, you know, not looking over my shoulder every minute and having pepper spray on hand at all times.”

Katsuki turned to the guy. His eyes were bright blue, like All Might’s. “What’re you talking about?”

The guy shrugged. “If you feel safe, I feel safe. If you can take a break, that’s a good sign, right? Even if you live on the other side of the planet. You been keeping up with what’s been happening in Japan?”

Shockingly, Katsuki hadn’t. He and Izuku hadn’t spent much time on their phones. Minimal texting, news updates, or social media. If something big had happened, he’d like to think he would have heard, but what else had he missed?

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” The guy shook his head with a small smile. “Seems like you haven’t missed much.”

At that point, Izuku finally made his slow way down the aisle, keeping his broad shoulders hunched in on himself so he didn’t bump into the seats on either side. He saw Katsuki immediately, because of course he did, and a big smile rose to his face, as though they hadn’t been in each other’s company every second of every minute of the last six days.

But somehow, Katsuki smiled back. Even as the guy next to him gasped, “Hero Deku!” Katsuki couldn’t push down the warm, sappy feeling that came with Izuku smiling at him.

“Kacchan!” Izuku exclaimed as he passed by. “See you soon!”

Katsuki could feel the flickering of the guy’s eyes between the back of his head and Izuku as he found his seat in the back of the plane.

“You traveling together?”

Katsuki grunted. A week ago, the answer was a hard no. Together implies some level of collaboration. Partnership.

“Yeah,” Katsuki said. “He’s…yeah.”

It took ages for the damn aircraft to take off. When it finally did, the tanned patchwork of the American southwest gave way to the rugged mountains which gave way to the smog and sprawl of Los Angeles. Less than two hours in the air.

As the plane taxied, Katsuki heard a voice hissing behind him. “Kacchan! Kacchan, I think we’re gonna have to run!”

Impossible. Their layover was supposed to be an hour and a half, which Katsuki had picked on purpose because he didn’t want to be stuck sitting in America for any longer than he had to be. But it was plenty of time to get from one gate to another, even in an airport as large as LAX.

Or it would be. If they ever found a place to dock the damn plane.

The time that it had taken them to take off in the first place had landed them behind schedule and now every moment spent driving around the airport ate into that hour-and-a-half time slot. Less than an hour now, actually.

When the plane finally docked, Katsuki was perfectly willing to elbow his way off the thing if it meant getting out faster. But it wouldn’t be worth his time if Izuku lollygagged in the back of the plane like Katsuki knew he would. Not because he wasn’t in a hurry, but because he’d let everyone go before him. No elbow throwing to be seen.

So that was how Katsuki came to stand just outside the plane, toe tapping impatiently, memorizing the map of the airport terminals on his phone, refreshing to make sure their location hadn’t changed at the last minute.

“Kacchan!” Izuku breathed when he finally escaped from the plane. “Let’s go!”

They took off. Izuku had the momentum, so he was a step ahead, but he was grabbing Katsuki’s wrist and dragging him right behind until the wheels of his carry-on sorted themselves out and Katsuki caught up.

A laugh escaped out of Katsuki’s mouth, and it almost made him miss Izuku’s twin sound. Both of their laughter echoing together through the jetway. It was such a special sound, one that didn’t come out when things were always so serious. When they were always saving the day or training themselves up to do so.

They laughed when they were safe. They laughed when their job was done. They laughed when they were together.

“To the shuttle!” Izuku instructed as they burst forth into the boarding area.

They ran through the airport as one oversized force. Two huge, hulking heroes, hands intertwined, with luggage flailing on either side. When they finally made it to their gate, it had only just started boarding.

“Where’d they stick you for this one?” Katsuki panted, reaching for his phone to pull out his boarding pass, brightening the screen to the point of blinding for the scanner to be able to read.

“Oh, um…”

Izuku flashed his boarding pass at Katsuki, and Katsuki only had to read the seat number to know that the boarding group was A. Somehow, this loser had decided to pay out the nose for a first class ticket. Well, if there was ever a time to do it, an overnight flight was that time.

“Fuck you,” Katsuki said simply, keeping his own pass to himself.

“It was the last seat available,” Izuku offered weakly.

“Whatever,” Katsuki snarked. “Hope you’re passed out the whole time.”

Izuku grinned. “Me too, honestly.”

Katsuki didn’t even realize that their hands were still locked together, warm and sweating from the run, until Izuku let go in order to move ahead in line. Meanwhile, Katsuki’s group hadn’t been called yet, so he had nothing to do but wait.

The plane boarded. This time he passed Izuku on his way in, the nerd already stacked high with blankets and pillows. Katsuki’s seat didn’t have either of those, but there was a small TV and the seats were more plush and spacious than on the previous plane. If he could sleep, none of it would matter anyway.

He went unrecognized this time. Or if any of the Japanese passengers recognized him, they were subtle enough not to say anything.

Then Izuku showed up again.

��Excuse me?” he said, and for a second, Katsuki thought he was talking to him. He was about to give him lip about being so formal when he realized that Izuku was looking over his shoulder to the woman sitting beside him. “Excuse me, miss?”

“Yes?” she said, taking out an earbud and looking at Izuku with confusion.

“Well, uh, I was wondering if I could trade seats with you?” Izuku asked. “See, this is my friend here, and, um, I’d like to share the flight with him, if that would be possible?”

The woman looked befuddled. Eyebrows cinched, nose turned up.

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience but, you understand, well, he’s…a very important person to me,” he blathered on. “And so I hope it’s not too much to ask.”

It was great that there were no eyes on Katsuki, as his cheek color burgeoned to a warm, bright pink. What did very important person mean anyway? What would Izuku call him if they weren’t in public?

Katsuki glanced back at his seatmate, still looking like she’d swallowed a piece of unripe bitter melon. He could sense her mouth about to open into a rejection when he butted in. “His seat is in first class.”

The woman’s face brightened. She was out of the window seat in five seconds, not even waiting for Katsuki to move his legs out of the way. Then Izuku was next to him and it was like they were back in the oversized SUV again, sitting side by side in surprisingly easy company.

“Hi,” Izuku said once he was settled. “I hope that was okay. I just figured…give it a shot, right?”

“Can’t stand a moment without me?” Katsuki asked, grinning. “What are we, brats again?”

“I could stand it,” Izuku disagreed. “I did for the last year. I just…don’t have to. And maybe I wanna make up for lost time.”

Time was something that the two of them kept losing. Through the bulbs of an hourglass were years of their adolescence, months lost in the war through comas and self isolation, and the last year of not knowing what they were doing. Sands lost to stupidity and circumstance.

“Good,” Katsuki said, and as the captain began speaking over the intercom, Katsuki leaned his head on Izuku’s shoulder. He was tired, and his body was still sore from all the training. Izuku was warm and his shoulder was broad and padded with muscle.

Katsuki didn’t even remember taking off.

Tuesday

The flight was long but getting through customs was short. The wait for their luggage was long but the ride to their apartments was short. Too short as they split their separate ways to separate parts of the city, the farthest apart they’d ever lived. Then, in the early evening in Japan and early morning in America, Katsuki went to sleep alone.

Wednesday

The sound of the buzzer ringing pierced Katsuki from consciousness, and he was up and out of bed before he even knew what he was doing. Some Pavlovian impulse to open the door for whoever was downstairs, he supposed, but as he marched to the door and the morning fog lifted from his mind, it seemed more than likely that he would let them in only to blast their face when they made it to his door. The sun wasn’t even up yet.

It was too early for breakfast, but someone was getting cooked.

Of course, when he saw the grainy black-and-white security camera footage of an idiot lifting a plastic bag up and waving, he rolled his eyes and buzzed said idiot in. He’d decide whether to cook him or not when he got to Katsuki’s door.

Idly, Katsuki thought maybe he should just give the guy a key.

He hadn’t moved from the door by the time the knock came, and Katsuki whipped it open to reveal Izuku’s face shift from surprise to happiness. “Kacchan!” he exclaimed. “I brought breakfast!”

Breakfast had no smell and the rustle of convenience store plastic, but Katsuki couldn’t complain since he hadn’t eaten anything since about the time they’d been flying over the International Date Line. When Katsuki peeked in the bag, he saw rice balls, drinkable yogurt, miso soup, porridge, and fruit. And that was just what was visible on top.

Izuku shrugged. “I didn’t know what you wanted? Kacchan needs his protein!”

Katsuki snatched the bag and brought it to the kitchen. He may have emptied out the fridge before leaving for his trip, but he still had hot water and could heat and reconstitute everything in minutes.

“I know I’m going into the office this morning,” Katsuki said as he started opening packages and Izuku leaned against the counter. “Last I checked, you don’t work till tonight. Why’re you awake?”

“Actually, I changed my schedule,” Izuku said, munching on a rice ball. “Not from now on or anything, just for today. Early shift.”

“Following me again?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been able to help it.”

It was shockingly domestic. The meals shared and carpooling and partnering up had been one thing—it had been bonding—but this was different. This was in Katsuki’s home when his teeth were not yet brushed, about to go to work and do what he did every day. It was integration. It was what they should have been doing the whole time.

“Soup,” Katsuki said, putting down a small, steaming bowl of miso soup and a set of chopsticks on the counter. Then, almost as an afterthought, he pressed a kiss to the side of Izuku’s cheek. It was rougher than yesterday with stubble from the day of travel, rushing over to Katsuki’s apartment without even looking at himself in the mirror.

They were both efficient eaters, always scarfing down food quickly before getting back to school or work, so it wasn’t long before they were heading out and taking the train together to headquarters. Their bodies were pressed together on the train, everyone stuffed tight with morning rush hour.

It would be so easy to pull Izuku close, wrap his arms around his waist, rest his chin on his shoulder. But they weren’t there yet. They weren’t public—even if they were public, they didn’t have a label—and as it was, Katsuki didn’t know what to do with his hands. So he kept them at his side and focused on staying balanced on the train so that he didn’t go crashing into Izuku the next time the train stopped.

Although, maybe that didn’t sound so bad. It’d probably be easier.

“Thought you were slick, huh?”

Miruko kicked her legs on top of her desk, making a loud thump thump that sent paperwork and the packaged honeybun they’d just given her to the floor. Thump.

“Hope you’ve learned not to pull one over on me, blasty.”

Katsuki scowled. “Learned not to trust you farther than I can throw you.”

“So you must trust me quite a bit,” Miruko retorted. “I expect you’re stronger than ever after what you tried to pull.”

Miruko grinned and Katsuki bit his tongue. He couldn’t go against a compliment.

Izuku laughed and that drew Miruko’s attention back to him. “And you, changing your schedule at the last second so you could come in this morning?”

It felt like they were back in high school, sitting on a couch together with All Might sitting across from them. Once again, they were a fledgling team with hardly a clue about how to move forward together. They’d figured it out on the fly back then, and they could do it again now.

“Kacchan and I have some proposals that we wanted to talk about as soon as possible.”

Miruko put her arms out towards them. “Please.”

“Japan has been fine this last week,” Izuku started. “I looked up the incident reports and arrests, and I could show them to you but I already know that you know that Japan didn’t fall apart without us. So it would also be fine if we worked together, instead of spreading out our power. Other heroes will rise to the task, and we’d be happy to mentor sidekicks for just that reason.”

Izuku sounded a little stilted and stiff, like he might have typed the speech and memorized it before bringing it into the room, but it was all sound enough. Basically what they had talked about just a couple days ago.

Miruko looked to Katsuki. “Do you want to be hero partners with Deku?”

Katsuki nodded. “We should at least be given the chance to try it out.”

“I agree.”

Katsuki blinked. He’d expected at least some kind of a fight. Maybe a kick to the solar plexus.

“Look, we’re still settling after the war,” Miruko explained. “Our numbers are still down, and I think most of us are paranoid. We’ve been painting with broad strokes, trying to figure out how we can do things differently from last time, how we can set ourselves up for success. We tried separating power, but hey, if you boys want to try something different, let’s see if that works. Saving the world shoulda earned you both some kind of cache.”

“So…that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Miruko confirmed. “Well, I mean, you will have to fill out new paperwork, and the two of you definitely have to figure out how to make a new schedule work with this lineup, ‘cause I’m sure as hell not doing it, and so I guess that’s what you’ll spend the rest of the day doing instead of boom boom smash smash on the streets. Oh well!”

Katsuki rolled his eyes, scooching his chair back and letting it screech against the floor. Whatever, it’d probably be best to rest up more before hitting the streets anyway. He was about to reach for the door when Miruko’s voice, sickly sweet, came from the desk.

“Oh, and Deku? How was your vacation?”

Katsuki and Izuku exchanged a glance. “You mean mission?”

“I mean vacation,” Miruko said smugly. “You think I really sent you to America to look after Katsuki? I thought you were smarter than that, sucker.”

“Wha—” Izuku looked back and forth between Miruko and Katsuki, bewildered, “What do you mean?”

“I mean that yeah, you were supposed to make Katsuki take a chill pill for once in his life, but to do that, you’d have to take a chill pill too. If you made him vacation, that’d mean that you’d have to do it too.”

It was so obvious Katsuki wanted to smack his head against the wall. Maybe through the wall. They’d both been severely played. And the proof of it spread across Miruko’s face from ear to longass ear.

Miruko grinned. “Bye now!”

The two of them left, and Katsuki made no effort not to slam the door on his way out. Ears that big, let them ring from the noise.

As they walked down the hallway to the elevator, their knuckles brushed against each other, and Katsuki’s fingers twitched in Izuku’s direction. But he kept them to himself, whispering to Izuku instead, “We can’t let her find out we’re together, or she’ll be even more smug.”

“Insufferable,” Izuku agreed.

“Are we…telling anyone?”

Anyone in their lives had a chance of being equally as insufferable, honestly, it was just a matter of duration. Most of their friends were annoying enough to cling onto it for a long, long time.

“I don’t think we have to?” Izuku said. “We’re still figuring it out. Here. We’re still figuring everything out.”

“Yeah,” Katsuki agreed. “We can’t let them see us be amateurs at this.”

“Number one only,” Izuku agreed.

They’d have to work for a few hours, fill out that paperwork and figure out the scheduling nonsense and whatever else Miruko tried to kick their way. But there was no reason why they had to stay at the office to do that. And after that, the rest of their day was free.

“Y’know, the weather looked clear today,” Katsuki said as they stepped into the elevator. “I bet we could go on a hike.”

“I dunno, Kacchan, there’s no food in my fridge,” Izuku said. “I need to go grocery shopping.”

“Actually, I do too,” Katsuki remembered, thinking about the sad condiments languishing in his fridge with no meat or vegetables. “You know what, we’ve gotta find out what that jam tastes like on pork.”

Izuku groaned hungrily. “Yes, Kacchan, please. If you do, I’ll make the rice.”

“Ugh, it feels like forever since I’ve eaten regular rice.”

“I know, I miss it.”

“Okay, rice, pork, we need a vegetable.”

“Chiles? They tasted so good.”

“The spice will come from the pork, so let’s do shishitos. I have the shit for a glaze in my fridge.”

The elevator popped open and in a few steps they were out on the streets, back in the humidity and rainy season of Japan, time zone still recalibrating, mentally unpacking. Their hands continued to brush together, swish swish with every step they took.

Another grain of sand through the hourglass. And the glass became one speck clearer.

#anjum writes #bkdk #bakudeku #dkbk #dekubaku #bakudekubaku #bkdkbk #dkbkdk #dekubakudeku #ktdk #katsudeku

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anjumstar · 1 year ago

Text

Sand Lines Ch2, Wednesday

Read on AO3

rating: teen

pairing: bakudeku

word count: 11.5k/40.6k

summary: It wasn’t a vacation. It was only convenient that Katsuki’d managed to trick Miruko into thinking it was.

first chapter - next chapter

master list

Alamogordo, New Mexico

“Hnngh.”

Katsuki grunted as consciousness walked up to him, slow and heavy and unpleasant. It felt like someone was sitting on his arms, two someones. Two power-up villains. Probably D-listers, like everyone else, but they must be somewhat decent to have pinned him.

He’d been pinned.

A gasp escaped Katsuki’s dry throat as his eyes shot open, and his body shot up. And then the pain came crashing down on him. His arms felt like deadweights, fat dumbbells taped to his wrists and dragging them down, straining the muscles as they did. That was enough for him to remember where he was, despite the fact that he couldn’t see anything.

The room had one red light shining from a television, and the red digits of an alarm clock proving that it was just after twelve am, but they did nothing to illuminate the room. And out the windows was pure darkness.

“Kacchan?”

Izuku’s voice was quiet and crackly—definitely just roused from sleep.

“Shuddup,” Katsuki groaned, trying to remember if they’d brought in his water from the car or if there was water in the room. He was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to drink from the tap.

“I bough’ you a cheeseburguh,” Izuku mumbled, and even without seeing him, Katsuki could tell that his face was at least half pressed into his pillow from how garbled his speech was. He wondered how late Izuku had stayed up after Katsuki passed out.

“Don’t want it,” Katsuki grumbled as he rolled off the bed. He’d never managed to get under the covers, evidently, and they were still tucked military-style underneath him. There probably wasn’t a single wrinkle on the comforter. He remembered that there had been a filtering pitcher next to the coffee maker, and despite its proximity to the toilet, Katsuki was going to make use of it.

Katsuki crackled a couple explosions in his hand to provide enough light to find the pull for the lamp on his bedside table. Even just that action awakened a new aching in his hands, but it wasn’t so different from what he’d felt any time he had to use his quirk a lot. The pain wasn’t all that bad, but they were stiff as hell.

The lamp barely illuminated past his bed, but it did light up the wrapped burger resting on his bedside table, cold and paper stained translucent with grease.

“It’s just McDonald’s, but they have a special chile burger here,” Izuku claimed, sounding a bit more awake. “I had one and thought it was pretty spicy.”

“Fine,” Katsuki said as he shuffled over to the water. A drink and a meal wasn’t a bad idea, since he’d completely missed dinner. But despite his best efforts to rehydrate, all that sweating and the dry, dry air had left him parched.

It felt amazing on his throat. Even with the filter, the water still tasted different from home, but damn, it had rarely been more ambrosial. Katsuki poured a cup for Izuku and placed it on Izuku’s side table. Izuku was sitting half up, looking at Katsuki as he circled back over to the burger. He snatched it, his room key, and then a pair of shoes from his bag.

“Where’re you going?” Izuku asked.

“Gonna let you sleep,” Katsuki answered, toeing on his slides at the door before stepping back out into the desert.

And shit.

It was dark out in a way that it never was in Musutafu. In the city, any door you stepped out of had a wall just a few meters away. Oftentimes, that wall had some kind of illuminated sign, and it almost always had a streetlamp or two just in front of it.

Well, there were streetlights here, though fewer. There were neon signs, but more spaced out, though perhaps a bit larger. But there was so. Much. Sky.

And it was dark. In Japan, the sky was murky, like miso soup in a black pot. Slightly brown with only a few specks otherwise. Back at UA, there had hardly been a decent square of sky through all the trees.

But here. The sky was as dark as unconsciousness. The stars, plentiful as dreams. And brighter than Katsuki had ever seen.

“Damn,” Katsuki said, perhaps a little irreverently as the greasy paper in his hands crinkled.

The burger was small, and cold, but now that Katsuki was standing, slightly more awake, he grimaced at the rumbling of his stomach.

It would have been better fresh. And warm. But damn. The tingle on his tongue wasn’t anything to write the curry places home about, but it was sudden and it was decent. And even a wimpy little burger was delicious when you hadn’t eaten since breakfast in the airport.

“Wow, it’s beautiful.”

A door squeaked closed behind him, and Izuku appeared beside Katsuki on the balcony. The wind swept his bed head and brought a chill to Katsuki’s arms. The temperature had sunk with the sun. Now it was pleasant out, if even a little chilly.

No one was out. Every once in a while a car would pass by, but there wasn’t a person to be seen outside but for the two of them. Not so much as a hero patrolling. It seemed this wasn’t much of a walking town.

“Gonna wait till the afternoon to go back to the Missile Range?” Izuku asked.

Katsuki clenched his hands on the railing. They were still creaky, but another day of training wouldn’t damage them. They’d just continue to ache a bit.

“Midday, yeah.”

“Maybe we could go somewhere in the morning? Before it gets too hot?” Izuku suggested.

“Ain’t nowhere to go here.”

“No, there are definitely places to go,” Izuku insisted. “There were lots of places on Google Maps.”

“Places worth going to,” Katsuki corrected. He’d be happy to eat a bite at some of Izuku’s Google Maps pins—a place this boring was bound to have some tasty food. The people didn’t have anything better to do.

“Someplace we can walk,” Izuku added. “Maybe someplace with hiking. There are mountains, right? There’s gotta be hiking.”

That wouldn’t be horrible. It’d be a leg workout before his arm and quirk workout.

“Maybe,” Katsuki said. “Pretty sure this isn’t your vacation, though.”

“I didn’t think it was yours either.” Izuku’s grinning teeth glinted in the starlight.

“Shithead,” Katsuki grumbled, pushing Izuku’s head away as he turned back inside. “Go to sleep.”

Alamogordo, New Mexico

The rest of the night had been fitful. Katsuki and his body were both men of routine, and his circadian rhythm didn’t like the time change any more than his bones liked the thick springs poking up against the supposed pillow-top mattress he rested on. He turned over, springs squeaking, only for Izuku’s voice to cut through the morning.

“I figured out how to add us to the register!”

Katsuki’s face was pressed flat into the motel pillow that smelled of the same dust that made up the rest of this dry, dead world. The room had blackout curtains, but the damn things weren’t flat against the wall and Izuku had already turned on a lamp. He had to lift his neck to grumble out: “What?”

“To the roaming hero register,” Izuku chirped, coming over to Katsuki’s bed and sitting on it, presumably to show Katsuki his phone. “Obviously neither of us can teleport, but we’re both really fast, so if anything happens in town, we’ll get the alert, and maybe we’ll get to handle the case. Or, at the very least, we’ll get to meet the local heroes!”

“Great,” Katsuki mumbled, rolling over and knocking Izuku off the bed.

“Oof—Kacchan!” Izuku groused as he got back on the bed, forcing the phone in Katsuki’s nose. “I signed you up too, you just have to download this app and then you’ll get the notifications.”

“Why do I need the app when you’re stuck to my hip like a barnacle?”

“Well, I guess that works too, but you know…”

Izuku trailed off as he got a notification on his phone. A text reading Miruko: How’s it going?

Katsuki would have thought it was nothing. An annoying text by an annoying person, were it not for how Izuku immediately turned the phone away, the tips of his ears going redder than they already were from sunburn.

“Deku,” Katsuki said. Just that. And Izuku crumbled like a D-list villain.

“I’m so sorry, Kacchan, Miruko didn’t send me here just to catch you in the lie. She wanted me to make sure that you actually did take some time off, and didn’t just work the whole time, so it’s been my mission to make sure that you properly vacation, at least a little bit. I know I shouldn’t have lied, please, Kacchan, I’m sorry.”

Katsuki blinked. Izuku sniffled.

Katsuki laughed.

Here Izuku was, practically on his knees begging forgiveness for something that wasn’t half as bad as what Katsuki had done in the past. Not a fraction. Not close to the worst either of them had done, really.

“Kacchan?” Izuku asked, looking up at Katsuki with those wide, stupid eyes.

“Honestly, I’m the idiot for not guessing that shit,” Katsuki cackled. “Call my bluff? If Bugs Bunny wanted to do that, she woulda done it herself just to laugh in my face.”

“So…you’re not upset?”

“The White Rabbit should be the one upset,” Katsuki continued. “Aside from maybe my parents, you’ve always been my worst enabler. She’s late, she’s very, very late.”

“Okay, I’m glad you feel that way, because,” guiltily, Izuku held up the car keys, “I’ve stolen these. We’re not going to the Missile Range today.”

Now that was a different matter entirely.

“The fuck?” Katsuki finally got out of bed, leaping up and making a lunge for the keys. Izuku easily sidestepped him.

“If you managed to get these from me, I’m not even sure you could hold them in your hands, Kacchan,” Izuku said, slipping them into his pocket. He’d already changed out of his pajamas and was wearing an oversized pair of cargo shorts where the deep pockets alone were probably a quarter of his height. “I’m happy to train with you, but just because this is a good opportunity doesn’t mean I’ll help you overuse your quirk.”

“You’re one to talk, hypocrite,” Katsuki snarked, lunging again for the pants. If Izuku thought putting them there meant they were safe, he had another thing coming. “My hands are fine.”

And they were. They were stiff and sore, but they were fine.

“I know it’s hypocritical, and that’s exactly why I’m the person who should be saying it,” Izuku said, sidestepping again. If he really thought Katsuki was a threat, he’d bind him with Blackwhip, but he wasn’t even doing that. Bastard.

“Okay, if you’re the big man in charge, then what’s your brilliant idea?” Katsuki asked.

“I want to take a day trip,” he offered, holding both hands up in the air, like a criminal claiming giving himself up for surrender.

“Where?” Katsuki punched into his suitcase, searching for a tank top to tear over his head.

“Up in the mountains,” Izuku said. “Not hiking, we drive up there. It’s cooler, not so much sun, there are shops and food. It’ll be a break from the desert for a minute.”

Katsuki narrowed his eyes. Not being in the desert for even a moment seemed appealing.

“Fine. But if it sucks, I’m blowing you off the mountain and that will be my training for the day.”

Route US-82, Otero County, New Mexico

It was like he’d blinked and been sent to Hokkaido.

Obviously he hadn’t been, because he was still in an oversized SUV with an animal head hood ornament, and damn Izuku was driving in the left seat. But being dropped onto this steep hill of conifer trees after having been in the desert not one moment ago was disorienting in its own way.

They were on a winding road up a mountain, one of the many they could see clearly from anywhere in the Tularosa Basin, but everything that wasn’t a house or a cow farm or the road itself was filled with pine trees. Dark, viridian evergreens that provided the first speck of natural color that wasn’t brown or the damn sky that Katsuki had seen since his arrival on this side of the world.

“It doesn’t feel any better on this side,” Izuku said, white-knuckling it as the road corkscrewed up the mountain

“I don’t care, if you skid off the road here, you’d better be ready to whip out One For All to save us, otherwise I’m gonna kick your ass.”

“I would, Kacchan.” Izuku declared. “But it won’t come to that.”

“I’m serious. I remember learning with you, and of all our bad memories, that one’s definitely up there.”

Since the legal driving age was eighteen, it had been a part of the UA curriculum in their third year. It was an important skill for heroes, especially any who would be sent abroad. And Izuku—and most of their classmates—had been a nightmare at it. Katsuki, of course, had gotten top marks. Well, second behind Glasses, who drove the exact speed limit and nothing else.

“I’m keeping my skills sharp,” Izuku promised, narrowing his eyes with fresh determination, flicking his eyes between his speed gauge, mirrors, and back at the road. It was the same look he got when he was getting ready to spar, or planning a villain takedown, or anytime Katsuki punted a challenge his way. If he wasn’t punting it right back, he was swallowing it down, determined to do his best with it.

Katsuki looked away, that expression making his fingers tingle more than they already were.

“You better be, or else I’m taking those keys back.”

Izuku was never the best at something the first time he did it—as a kid that had always surprised Katsuki, who often was the best at something the first time out. But in high school, it became rare that Izuku failed at anything. There was no way he’d ever steer this car off the road, especially with Katsuki in it with him.

“Oh no, there’s a tunnel ahead. Check and make sure there aren’t any turns, Kacchan. I don’t wanna lose signal,” Izuku said as he white-knuckled the steering wheel.

“Turn where?” Katsuki grumbled as he checked the map anyway. The highway was winding, alright, but it wasn’t turning. It was more or less one road all the way up. “No turns.”

After Katsuki steadied the phone back in its holder, he stretched out his fingers, popping the knuckles, hoping to feel some relief in between, but it didn’t come.

It was only a short tunnel. The signal on his phone did dip, but that could have been from the altitude as much as the dinky tunnel. The town they were going to was apparently a good two-and-a-half kilometers above sea level. Katsuki’s ears had already popped once.

“Ooh, it looks like there’s an artisanal shop ahead!” Izuku said, catching sight of a weathered, handmade sign off the side of the road. It had a mascot with a giant apple for a head. “We should turn off!”

“Well, you’re the one who’s basically kidnapped me, so I guess we have to.”

Even as Izuku looked out the windshield, the constant array of pine making his eyes that much greener, Katsuki could see them soften into sadness.

“Not your funniest joke, Kacchan.”

Izuku’s foot must have fallen off the gas pedal, because their speed suddenly began decreasing rapidly up the incline. The car might not have been in neutral, but Katsuki wasn’t convinced it wouldn’t just decide to start going the way gravity intended anyway.

“If you really don’t wanna do any of this, I’ll take you back to the hotel, even back to the Missile Range,” Izuku continued, his voice low. It always fell so deep when he was serious, bright and high as bells when he was excited. “I know I’m supposed to be making you vacation, but I won’t make you do anything. I wouldn’t assume that I could.”

“You can’t,” Katsuki emphasized, putting a hand on Izuku’s knee and pressing it hard, trying to get him to depress the pedal. “Just hit the gas and keep going, and we’ll go to the apple frenzy, okay?”

“Are you sure?”

Katsuki pressed down harder. “Don’t make me say it again.”

Izuku put his foot back on the gas and the car revved underneath them, engine working overtime to get back up to the modest speed they’d been going.

“Okay, Kacchan.”

Katsuki took his hand back and settled back in his seat, arm crossed. He mumbled, “Next time you’re driving, I get explicit veto so that you don’t go and get confused.”

It only took a few more minutes and one hell of a sudden turn off to reach the shop that resembled an oversized cabin more than anything. It was made of wood, like it had been built from the very land it stood on. Perhaps it had been, for all Katsuki knew.

“Ooh, apple cider, pie, fudge!” Izuku exclaimed, reading the signage aloud like Katsuki was blind. “I’ve never had fudge before!”

“Yeah, sugar that sticks to your teeth,” Katsuki said, kicking the car door closed. “Great.”

“C’mon, it’s worth a try!”

They hiked up wooden steps and a wooden wraparound deck to the wooden shop, and when Katsuki stepped in, he was immediately disoriented. The smell was sweet. Auntie Inko’s hot chocolate sweet, first bite of birthday cake sweet. But in a land that wanted for everything but space, the shop was packed tighter than the smallest corner conbini Katsuki had ever seen. There were barrels—yes, barrels—of tchotchkes, collectibles, and novelty items. Somehow the middle of nowhere had sprouted a tourist trap. And worse than a tiny conbini, this place was packed with tourists.

“Deku,” Katsuki hissed, but Izuku was already on the move, following the sweet smell as doggedly as he’d followed Katsuki to this dried-out county.

The food area was the most crowded, so Katsuki walked the other way, looping between the racks of socks illustrated with chiles and aliens, the keychains with all the hundred most popular American names. The closest to Katsuki was Katelyn. He passed them right by, trying not to brush anything off their given racks and shelves with his broad shoulders. He’d never be able to find where to put them back.

There was so much red, white, and blue in the shop that he almost missed it. But there, among the American flag bandanas and American flag sunglasses and American flag beer koozies was a series of hero figurines. Mostly Americans, he assumed, but amongst the assault of capitalistic patriotism was a single All Might. In a cowboy hat. It was a good twenty-five centimeters and well painted. The hair wasn’t overly defined and the iconic smile wasn’t overdrawn or creepy. It was the good stuff.

Hell.

Katsuki looked back at Izuku, who was holding up a number on both hands as he ordered at the front of the food line. The checkout for the tchotchkes was on the other side of the store.

Fucking hell.

Katsuki snatched up the All Might, the feeling of gripping him by his tiny hat-clad head somewhat rewarding as he remembered being thrown into a building by the guy back at UA. And if there was a jar of pickled chiles that he snatched up on the way to the register, well, who could blame him?

“Kacchan, I got the fudge! Ooh, did you get something too?”

“I got my business, and the receipt said that it’s none of yours,” Katsuki said, trying to force down the heat rushing to his ears. He distracted Izuku with a swipe towards his pocket, managing to fit his fist into the gaping cargo shorts opening and snag the car keys. “My turn to drive.”

Izuku must not have seen any use in fighting, because he didn’t even try for keys. Even though Blackwhip would have been easy, even in the crowded shop. Not that Katsuki would have made it easy for him, but still, any fight Izuku wanted to have, he had.

Katsuki questioned his decision as soon as he turned the key in the ignition. Just that little bit of grip and fine motor control set off a twinge in his hand that was definitely ignorable, but not exactly good news either. Before he was even backing out of the parking space, Izuku was opening his paper box of treasures, and soon the car took on the scent of the shop. It followed them just like the sand and the dust and everything else in this town.

When they were pulled back on the main road and the GPS was set back up, the caramel scent grew even stronger as a cube of brown suddenly appeared in front of Katsuki’s mouth.

“Eat, Kacchan!”

Katsuki recoiled, knocking his head against the headrest. “Hey, I’m not eating anything I don’t know!”

“It’s fudge!” Izuku repeated, as though that held hardly any of the relevant info. Ingredients, nutrition info, flavor for Pete’s sake. Though, even out the corners of his eyes, Katsuki could see it was chocolate. “C’mon, Kacchan, it’s vacation. The point is to try new things. You not brave enough to try strange American food?”

Katsuki gripped the wheel until his joints creaked. He was being played. Izuku wasn’t above it, and he’d used it enough on Katsuki for him to have caught on ages ago.

But damn if knowing the trap’s right in front of him was the same as avoiding the trap.

“Good luck using Air Force again when I bite your fingers off with it.”

“A risk I’m willing to take,” Izuku said as he held up the chocolate to Katsuki’s lips.

Izuku was nothing if not devilishly fast, so Katsuki didn't get more than a graze of his teeth against Izuku’s thumb and forefinger as they quickly retracted from his mouth. And then his teeth sunk into the thick, rich, sticky fudge.

“It’s horrible,” Katsuki said immediately. “Like an American movie in a mouthful.”

“Impossible to choke down with how sweet it is?” Izuku asked, popping his own piece in his mouth.

“Exactly.”

“Mm, it’s not very good,” Izuku agreed. “It needs pop rocks or chili flakes to be like the movies you like.”

“Or some TNT,” Katsuki said, doing his best to swallow. Honestly, some cayenne probably would make it better. Some matcha, coffee, charcoal, anything to make it a little less sweet. If Katsuki could get his hands on that kitchen, he could make it fan-fucking-tastic for anyone who had a more complex palate than an American child. “Gimme some water.”

Izuku grabbed Katsuki’s bottle—the cooler was still in the back, full as if they were going to train—and opened it for Katsuki before handing it over. Even just gripping the bottle didn’t feel great, so Katsuki kept the third knuckles of his fingers from wrapping completely around the body. When the sickly sweet taste was mostly washed from his mouth, he thrust the bottle back at Izuku and scraped his tongue against his teeth to clear the last of the flavor away.

“Kacchan, give me your hand.”

“Hah?”

Katsuki turned away from the road to catch Izuku looking at Katsuki firmly, one of his own hands outstretched. Izuku reaching out. He fell straight into the well-worn memory that image provided.

He stared at Izuku long enough that the car’s right tires hit the rumble strips on the side of the road, saving Katsuki from running off into the mountain’s cliff face as he fisted both hands on the wheel. But it didn’t matter, because Izuku reached further anyway, wrapping his index and middle fingers under Katsuki’s wrist.

“Loosen your grip,” Izuku instructed as he began pressing into the tendons, rubbing in a small circle.

“I’ll loosen the grip your neck has on your skull.”

“Kacchan,” Izuku said patiently. “Your hands are overworked. It’s obvious. I’m just trying to massage the tension out of the muscles a bit.”

Slowly, silently, Katsuki slipped his right hand off the wheel, resting on the console between the two of them. Izuku’s went with it, his thumb creeping up and pressing into the heel of Katsuki’s palm like he was inking his thumb print firmly for a crime.

It took more than a little control for Katsuki to keep his groan behind his teeth. It tasted torturously sweet with the hint of fudge still resting on the back of his tongue. The ache that worked under Izuku’s thumb was too strong for such a small muscle.

As Izuku continued, Katsuki’s hand warmed up in his. No sweat, no threat of ignition of course, just the warmth that built between two bodies out of nothing. The skin-on-skin contact that saved lives in the cold, even with no other heat source. It ran a flush up Katsuki’s neck, steaming out the top of his ears. When he had to pull his hand away for a hairpin turn, Izuku let go, and the warmth went with him.

And the new cold followed Katsuki to the tip of the mountain. When they parked and Katsuki stepped out of the car, he shivered.

“It’s fifteen degrees,” Izuku said, tossing Katsuki a flannel from the back of the car.

Fifteen was nearly half what it had been in the valley, and though that wasn’t especially cold at all, the temperature difference was a shock. The cloud cover overhead was thick and dark, exerting its oppression over the town that had dared build up so close to it.

“What’s there to do here?” Katsuki asked as he eyeballed the wooden buildings forming a row of establishments. It looked like a strip mall that the second little pig might have built just before the big bad wolf blew it down. Or maybe just after.

“Shopping, I guess,” Izuku said, swinging on his own jacket. “There are supposedly a lot of artisans up here.”

Once UA had returned to something resembling normal after the fall of All For One, and the place was no longer locked down or being used as a shelter, Class A had been encouraged to go on outings. To return to teenagedom by going to the movies, out for lunch, to the mall. Unless a really good food place had been on the itinerary, Katsuki had skipped them all, and never once regretted it.

His apartment had no art in it. He didn’t want any. There wasn’t any room in his suitcase for it, and he damn well wouldn’t be doubling the price of any art piece by having to pay for a second suitcase to lug it to his 1DR apartment.

“Um, those windchimes look nice?”

Katsuki followed Izuku’s gaze and he couldn’t have stopped the scoff from escaping his lips if Izuku had slapped his lips shut with One For All 100%. Trust Izuku to find the most garish thing and match it to his aesthetic. One of the log cabins claiming to be a shop had giant copper windchimes hanging out the front with huge panes of stained glass dressing them like costume jewelry.

“Your taste is as stupid as your inability to keep a damn secret,” Katsuki said. “If you wanna go back to the March Hare and tell her you vacationed the shit outta me, it’ll behoove you not to let me blow my brains out in a crafts shop.”

“Okay, noted,” Izuku said, looking around in a circle. “There’s supposed to be good barbeque here, but it’s too early for lunch…”

He completed a full circle and then began walking a couple steps forward, squinting at the shops labeled The Bear Print and Old Stump Mall. If they’d been dropped in the middle of a paddy field in the Japanese mountains, it would have felt less rural than this place.

“There’s, uh, hiking?” Izuku finally offered.

“Thank God,” Katsuki said, opening the car door again to grab a hat and his water bottle. “Let’s go.”

There were a number of paths offered around the town, and none of them were crawling with people, at least not yet. It didn’t seem as though people necessarily had to get out early to beat the heat in this town. So they chose one equally as pine-filled as the rest, and after only a few meters into the woods, they’d left the neighborhood behind entirely.

The air was crisp up there. Not quite as dry as down in the valley, and Katsuki wasn’t thirsting for water every second. But where it was cold and pleasant, it was also thin. The kind of thin that made your chest as heavy as it made your head light. But the plodding thump of his heart made him feel good, like he was working harder than he was.

“I can almost imagine I’m back in Japan,” Izuku mused as he touched his hand to a tree. “It’s not so different here.”

“You didn’t have to come out here if you were just gonna get homesick,” Katsuki said.

“I’m not homesick,” Izuku protested. “And besides, I wanted to come.”

“Not just trying to score points with Bunnicula?”

“No,” Izuku replied, quick and sharp as a branch snapping underfoot. “No, I just…haven’t spent time with you in so long. And if I could also play a part in you having a good time while you were here, yeah, I wanted that too.”

There was no memory that stuck out in Katsuki’s mind as the moment that spending time with Izuku had changed from an annoyance to innocuous. Maybe even something to look forward to. Perhaps when a year of your time together is spent preparing for and battling in a war, it simply stops mattering. It cleans the slate.

“But I think I overestimated myself,” Izuku continued, looking at the rocks, at the canopy of needles above them. His eyes nowhere near Katsuki. “I don’t know what to do here. Or at home. What do you do with just…time?”

Katsuki said nothing. Began breathing a little harder out of his mouth as they continued forward, Izuku’s pace increasing with each step.

“I don’t shop. I don’t play video games. I don’t do sports or garden or fish. I’m a hero!” Izuku exclaimed, his voice an ax against the trees.

“And what do you do when you’re a hero and no one needs saving,” Katsuki finished for him.

“I volunteer,” Izuku replied, as though it had been an actual question. “I watch the news, I analyze other heroes. I follow up with the people I’ve saved, and I follow up with the villains too, but…none of that is here.”

They came to a clearing. A cliff’s edge where none of the trees below had grown tall enough to block the view. Yet there were still eyefulls of sky, all that blue from the valley replaced with thick clouds full of the water the mountain stole from the desert below. It was the side of a hill with endless hills beyond, dappled with endless trees on endless land. The desert was nowhere in sight.

“That’s where you’ve disappeared to all year?”

“I haven’t disappeared, have I?” Izuku asked, sparing Katsuki a glance. “Maybe I have. I’ve been trying so hard not to disappear.”

“Yeah, well, you did.”

Maybe Katsuki had disappeared a bit too. Eijirou was always nagging him about being more social, but that had been the case even when they’d all lived together. Besides, if there weren’t more jobs to do, there was always more training. Time in the gym and in sims and working other minutiae like reflexes, cognition, attention, memory. To be number one, he couldn’t let any of that slide.

But what did it even mean to be number one in a world that was safe?

“I don’t know either,” Katsuki offered, voice falling off the cliff. “It’s like my arm is always wound back for a punch, but there’s nothing to hit.”

Izuku chuckled, the sound magnified in the open air. “Never thought I’d find something Kacchan doesn’t know.”

Nobody teaches you how to take a vacation. How to have time off. Maybe more than not wanting a vacation, Katsuki just didn’t know how to have one.

“Don’t get smug about it,” Katsuki retorted. “Not like you know either.”

“I’m gonna learn,” Izuku said, and suddenly, he was sitting down on the rock, legs dangling over the sheer edge. “Come. Kacchan, sit.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Katsuki said, walking to Izuku’s side but remaining on his feet, arms crossed.

“Does your hand feel a little better?”

Katsuki stretched both hands out, feeling a bit more creaking in his left than his right. He popped a couple light explosions with his right. Any louder and in this country, someone would think he had a gun. The explosions were easy, natural as ever. But they still stung between his knuckles, deep in the bones, even with the massage.

“Right’s my dominant. Might just be handling it better.”

“Kacchan.”

Izuku’s hand was out again. Katsuki didn’t even have to look at him to know.

“It’ll be easier to train tomorrow if you do.”

Reluctantly, Katsuki let his hand slip from his ribs and dangle by his side. He didn’t sit, didn’t even look down at Izuku, but the warmth that came when Izuku took his hand contrasted against the rest of his body and sent a shiver down his back. There was a panicked voice in the back of his head shouting this wasn’t what they did, this wasn’t what they did. But Katsuki stomped it down and focused on the physical sensations. His muscles loosening and coming back home to him.

“You said we were hiking,” Katsuki grumbled as Izuku grasped each finger one by one and pulled it firmly. His ring finger gave a delicious pop at the base joint and felt more open than it had since before the flight.

“We’re doing nothing for a minute,” Izuku said. A glance down showed his brows furrowed in concentration, as though it took most of his focus to remember.

“I didn’t agree to that.”

But he stayed anyway.

#anjum writes #bkdk #bakudeku #dkbk #dekubaku #bkdkbk #bakudekubaku #dkbkdk #dekubakudeku #ktdk #katsudeku

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anjumstar · 1 year ago

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Sand Lines, Ch1: Tuesday

Read on AO3

rating: teen

pairing: bakudeku

word count: 5.7k/40.6k

summary: It wasn’t a vacation. It was only convenient that Katsuki’d managed to trick Miruko into thinking it was.

Katsuki doesn't need a break. Post-war life has been peaceful. Too peaceful. So under the guise of a vacation, Katsuki heads to the American southwest, the only place where he can do the thing he wants to do the most: blow stuff up. Big time. And it's all going to according to plan for about five minutes, until Deku comes along. They've barely seen each other since graduation last year and Katsuki could, should blow him up for getting in his business yet again. Instead, they learn about post-war life in the way they've done everything: together.

a/n: Thank you to Ice, Genevieve, Wolfie, and most especially Lin for reading this fic and reassuring me that it's not total garbage. I really appreciate it ❤

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Tuesday

White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico

A sunburn was coming on.

It was midday on the missile range in the middle of the desert and the sun shone hell’s helmet right on Katsuki’s head. Despite the gallons of sweat and the light breeze, his soaked hair was hot to the touch and the skin on the tops of his ears pulled tight with forthcoming blistering. But he carried on.

The heat pried perspiration from Katsuki’s skin, dripping from his nose, his chin to soak into the sand below. When Katsuki stepped on those sweat-hardened discs of gypsum, they crunched underfoot, dissolving back immediately into the fine grains of sand they’d been before.

His grenade launchers were heavy with fuel, only the good stuff from his quirk as he stretched one arm out in front of him. There were a number of metal sensors out in the distance, even the closest one nearly too far to see in the blinding sunlight. Katsuki squinted, narrowed his vision on it, and rolled his shoulder back before jumping in the air and firing the explosion straight out.

Katsuki’s body blew back, the sweat burning from his skin immediately as the explosion burst forth over the White Sands Missile Range. Katsuki tucked his body in, landing on the ground in a backwards somersault to avoid the sand burn he’d gotten skating across his back during his first attempt.

Katsuki’s grin split, the corners of his mouth tight and chapped from the unexpected lack of humidity. But he didn’t mind as the remnants of the explosion effervesced into the air, lingering only in the tingling from his pecs to his fingertips. A blast like that would have shattered his arms, Deku-style, without protection. But with his bracers, they were just rattled. He still had a couple blasts left in him.

He hauled himself up, even his legs a bit shaky as he walked towards the sensors. The closer ones would measure the damage of the attack, how far back he could blow a foe. Ones off to the side would measure just how big the blast had been.

This was nothing like what Katsuki was limited to in a gym. There, every explosion had to be contained; he had to constantly calculate how to reduce damage to nearby people and infrastructure. This was maybe the one place on Earth where Katsuki could discover the ceiling of his capabilities.

Katsuki circled both arms in wide circumferences as he made the long walk across the sand to his sensors. The pain was good and his quirk was performing perfectly in the summer heat. The dryness of the New Mexico desert made his sweat evaporate much faster than it did in Japan, but that didn’t matter when it was stored in his gauntlets.

When Katsuki found his sensors, he let out a whoop. Meters and meters of distance, kilotons and kilotons of damage. With that kind of firepower, he could level buildings, blast out a cave in a mountain bigger than his city apartment and live there. He was half-tempted to run a victory lap just for the hell of it. Usually, he had someone’s eyes on him when he managed something truly impressive with his quirk. But today he’d have to celebrate on his own.

He gathered the sensors up, metal practically sizzling against the dampness of his gloves. They’d be a bitch to measure and reset, but it would give him time to stock up more sweat and go again. In weather like this, he didn’t need more than a brisk walk in the sun to soak his gauntlets, and he had the half-empty ten-gallon water cooler to prove it.

He returned to that bright-orange beacon and his bulk-sized sunscreen pack, all resting under a wide patio umbrella along with a camping chair he’d bought from the Walmart Supercenter in town. Most important were the materials loaned from the range. It was like his own private beach, sans water, plus pressure gauges and sensors. He tossed his gloves under the wide shadow that the tall sun allowed his umbrella to cast, sat, and stretched his shoulders, feeling the reverberation of his collarbone clicking back into place right up to his ear. Then he sighed and leaned back.

Now this, this, was a vacation.

It wasn’t a vacation. It was only convenient that Katsuki’d managed to trick Miruko into thinking it was.

This past year had been a vacation. Graduation was supposed to mean the big leagues, but when you’d already defeated the world’s biggest bad at seventeen, getting emergency calls for petty thieves who wet themselves as you tackled them outside the shop they’d just held up was pretty embarrassing.

It had started earlier than that, though. After being nearly disintegrated to ashes finer than this damn sand by a real villain, flitting around Ground Alpha, Beta, Gamma as classmates pretended to be villains was no grander than playing cops ‘n robbers. A third-year final exam was as good as napkin math.

Nah. He didn’t need a vacation, not while chasing D-listers under the Energizer Bunny. What he needed was a good shake up. Japan was boring. Tired. Training in isolation in the desert? That was what would get him closer to number one than ever.

He’d just moved from his shoulders up to his neck, stretching out his traps with easy neck rolls when he spotted it. A blight in the distance among the vast blanket of white dunes. There was a plume of gray overtop this relatively flat part of the missile range. But Katsuki’s explosions didn’t make that kind of smoke, the stuff that could suffocate you if you breathed it in long enough. All his smoke had dissipated before he’d sat down.

“What the fuck?” Katsuki murmured, his tongue dry in his mouth. He wasn’t drinking enough water.

There wasn’t hardly any wind to speak of at the moment, but the cloud was either growing or coming Katsuki’s way. Katsuki stood and crouched low, shook out his hands, trying to get the feeling back in them. That last move had drained him, but his gloves were at least partially saturated as he picked them up from the dusty ground. He was never totally dry of his quirk, and any villain would find that out quickly.

But no idiot would try to get the jump on Katsuki with nothing better than a Smokescreen quirk. At least, not if that was their only quirk.

Katsuki shook away the thought, even as the adrenaline in his veins melted away and his posture slacked against his will. Because if this was a quirk, and not a fire—and it couldn’t be a fire, because there was absolutely nothing that could catch anywhere around—then it was a quirk he knew well.

But…it couldn’t be that, could it? Katsuki was in the middle of the desert, the sandy toe jam of America. It had to be a mirage—those happened in the desert, right? He’d thought that mirages were usually characterized by water, desert oases for doomed travelers, but maybe his mind had conjured up something else. Something more familiar.

But as he tried to blink it away, rub his eyes and erase the mirage, it continued to grow, and Katsuki couldn’t deny what it was. There was no fire, and there was no attack. No, it wasn’t a surprise—it was a signal. A goddamn stormy portent from a stalker idiot.

Katsuki relaxed his pose, slouching as he threw the gloves back to the ground. He went for the orange jug and drank like he’d been trapped in this desert for days instead of only a couple hours. His flight had landed only that morning. Izuku must have been in the sky at the same damn time to have tailed him so fast. He wondered how many flights flew from Los Angeles to El Paso every day.

“Kacchan!” Katsuki heard mid-drink. He continued to swallow his fill before moving on to the sunscreen. It was as warm and runny as bath water.

“Kacchan!” Izuku called again as he jogged into view. He had an impressive pace, running on the sand with no evidence of One For All doing teal-toned tricks around his body.

Katsuki spread the sunscreen over his face, taking extra care to cover his ears and then running the excess through the roots of his hair. He wasn’t wearing his jagged fins—no need for aesthetics in the middle of the desert—but dammit, he should have worn a hat. His scalp was gonna be as pink as Raccoon Eyes’.

“Hey, Kacchan!” Izuku said again, barely panting as he slowed to a stop in front of Katsuki’s meager set-up.

It figured that the moment he tried to do something new with his quirk, this nerd would show up. It was practically its own kind of smoke signal to someone like Izuku. Katsuki couldn’t even be surprised.

“Funny, thought I just heard Deku,” Katsuki said, slathering his arms, taking care to work his fingers just a little bit under the sleeves of his costume so he wouldn’t wake up with any surprise red, peeling patches tomorrow. “Maybe he got a quirk that throws his voice ten thousand kilometers. Sounds like the kind of shitty quirk one of the past holders woulda left him with.”

Katsuki grinned, keeping it mostly to himself as he faced away from Izuku.

“Kacchan,” Izuku whined, and if it weren’t for the jet lag and the aggressively dry heat, Katsuki would think he was back in Musutafu. “I’m here to help!”

Katsuki’s lip curled up. “Who asked you for help?”

“Miruko,” Izuku said, and it was all Katsuki could do not to curse at being caught out. “What, you thought you could petition the U.S. military for months to use a missile launching site for training and no one would find out?”

Maybe.

He’d thought that using All Might’s pull instead of Miruko’s might lead to some discretion. All Might was the king of secrets, and Katsuki might have expected the same of the U.S. military. Apparently not.

“If it took me months to be able to set foot on this site then how are you here?” Katsuki asked.

“I said I would help control your quirk,” Izuku said with a shrug.

“Contr—Deku,” Katsuki spat. “You can’t even control your own quirk.”

Katsuki stared over Izuku’s shoulder at the smoke still sticking to the air, the only thing intersecting the wavering heatwave lines on all sides.

“I was actually trying to be visible,” Izuku countered, but he still turned back towards the smoke. “One sec.”

Izuku put a hand out and took off in a blur. Shots of Air Force blasted from his fingers, clearing the smoke out faster than it had arrived. Spots where his quirk flared over his body were brighter even than the near-white sand in the shimmering heat, but they blurred as Izuku ran. Seconds later, he was back by Katsuki’s side, barely sweating.

“You got lost,” Katsuki said. “You were supposed to keep running back to the airport.”

The words came out less convincingly than Katsuki had intended. Must have been another dehydration symptom.

“Look, Kacchan, I’m already here,” Izuku said, like he was being the reasonable one. Like he was ever the reasonable one. “My flight back isn’t till next week, like yours, so you’re stuck with me.”

“Story of our lives,” Katsuki mumbled, picking up his glove again, now coated on both sides with fine gypsum. He smacked it twice against Izuku’s side to bat off the worst of it, earning himself a frown. “I’m sure the Easter Bunny didn’t send you to keep us out of trouble. So what gives?”

“No, not that,” Izuku chuckled as Katsuki thrust his sensors at his chest. Izuku grabbed them, reflexes tight as ever. His biceps were barely flexing under the weight while Katsuki could still feel that lactic acid burn receding from his. “Well, not that we’ve gotten into trouble in a while, anyway. I, uh, think she just wanted to catch you in the lie, honestly, and well.” Izuku held up the equipment. “Point one for the boss.”

“Well, mission accomplished,” Katsuki said, stalking out of the shade of the umbrella. He was rehydrated, relubricated, and recalibrated. Even if his right hand was still tingling a tad, his left was good to go. “Now that you’re through with that rot, you can make yourself useful.”

“Measuring the strength of your attacks?”

“Yep, and you’re my caddy,” Katsuki said as he bounced in place, allowing his sweat glands to dilate. “Have fun being ball boy on my vacation, Deku.”

Izuku grinned, unzipping one of the pockets on his costume. He was wearing the whole damn thing, down to the hood that was plastering itself to his dampening back. “That’s not all I’ll be, Kacchan.”

He dipped a hand into the pocket to pull out a dinky little notebook and miniature pencil. It’d be filled before the day was done, guaranteed. It was Katsuki’s quirk, and this was Izuku.

“Bring it on.”

The thing was, this was the first time Katsuki had seen Izuku in weeks. He’d only seen him a handful of times in the last year.

They’d both decided to sign under the Trix Rabbit upon graduation. She had the physical prowess with an emphasis on legs that Izuku needed, and the brash, make-your-enemy-your-punching-bag attitude that Katsuki wanted. He definitely wouldn’t have clocked her as someone to send a babysitter after him on his not-vacation vacation, but then, he wouldn’t have expected her to force him to take a vacation anyway.

And why make Izuku that babysitter when they were never put on patrol together and only partnered up for occasional busts?

Both of them were powerful heroes with big reputations, even as first-year rookies. And things were calm enough in Japan now that their combined manpower would be overkill for nearly any villain or incident. So the last time Katsuki had seen Izuku was a Class A social hour a few weeks ago, and before that it had been for an emergency call that they’d both taken, that had only taken ten minutes to wrap up and toss the perp into the paddy wagon.

This last hour one-on-one was more cumulative time than they’d spent together in months.

And it was…okay. Not what Katsuki had planned, but if Izuku wasn’t going to get in the way, then Katsuki wasn’t mad that he was there. Really, it just felt like One For All training again, except this time it was about Katsuki. And instead of Katsuki being there because he was making up for being an asshole, they were there because, well, they wanted to be. Or, well, Katsuki had wanted to be and Izuku had horned in on it.

“The pressure wave was really impressive in that second blast, and you reached the autoignition temperature way too quickly for me to measure. I wonder if it happens faster when it’s this hot outside? Obviously, you’re producing more sweat, but if you’re also able to ignite it faster, that’d be amazing to know. Not that a few milliseconds here or there makes much of a difference, but reflexes are important and Kacchan’s have always been amazing. And the temperature of the blast! It was over five thousand degr—wait, is this fahrenheit? No, it’s not! Very impressive!”

Izuku’s knees were an inch deep in sand as he looked back and forth between the gauges and his notebook, using one of his knee pads to keep the damn thing open as he scribbled. He was either already getting a sunburn on the whorl in the back of his head, or all his nerdy excitement was making the blood rush up there. But dammit if his nerdy excitement wasn’t helpful. If it wasn’t something Katsuki had been missing.

“Deku,” Katsuki blurted out. “Learn any new quirks in the last year?”

Izuku looked up from his notebook and chuckled, letting the sardonic tone roll off him as it always did. “Pretty sure I’m maxed out on quirks, but I’ve been trying some new things. I’ve gotten a handle on using Blackwhip as a propeller for Float, which can help some with speed, but not as much with control as you’d think. I’m still working One For All’s percentage up, and you’ll notice I haven’t been to the hospital once! The infirmary, yes, but not the hospital!”

In the past, Izuku and Katsuki had done that kind of training together. Even after everyone had found out about One For All, Izuku and Katsuki had still been training partners. It might have even made sense for them to be hero partners. Now Katsuki didn’t get to see any of it.

But Izuku was seeing it. Now. His eyes were on Katsuki again.

“Congrats on keeping your bones together, idiot,” Katsuki said. “Where have you been then? I know Cottontail ain’t kept you that busy. So what gives? You haven’t yammered my ear off like this in months.”

Izuku frowned. “It’s not like you’ve reached out to me either, Kacchan,” he replied, and evasively so, if Katsuki had anything to say about it. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing either.”

Well, fine, Katsuki didn’t care. He made eye contact with his fingers as he flexed and unflexed them in his gloves. He’d have to take a longer break after that one, since his right side was still tingling and his left had just nearly been blown clean off.

He never had to wait like this during his regular training—he never used moves that took this much juice out of him. But he could still stretch. Definitely manage an ab workout. Technically, he could jog, but the desert sun would probably slap him flat against the hot sand if he tried. And if Izuku thought he could get ahead with whatever post- or pre-shift bullshit he’d managed to find instead of training with Katsuki, he had another thing coming.

While Izuku sank deeper in the sand, Katsuki walked back to his water and took another big swig. It was cold—he’d filled the thing half with ice from the get-go. The temperature difference fisted at the back of his throat, tightening his soft palate with every swallow, but it was worth it for just a speck of relief on this summer day. Then he sat himself on his tailbone in the shade and began a rep of v-sits.

“Kacchan, what are you doing?”

“Keeping from getting soft like you with your dogshit posture,” Katsuki grunted as he balanced through his crunches.

“You already look good,” Izuku said. “You must have bulked up this year, haven’t you?”

He had. The general lack of villains, or at least interesting ones, had allowed him to devote more time to training than when he’d been in school for it. Frequent spars with Shitty Hair—since Izuku hadn’t been around—and regular trips to the gym had served him well. Going to a place like this was the only way he could surpass himself and get to an even higher level.

Of course, calling Izuku soft was an obvious lie—he’d clearly kept up some kind of a routine in the last year too. The only soft things about him were his chubby cheeks and, presumably, his hair. Not that Katsuki had ever checked. And it showed as Izuku tilted his head at him, smile falling all slant on one side, like it was swung down by gravity. In the silence of the desert, he could still barely hear the little exhale that usually passed as a laugh for Izuku. Katsuki kept his lips firmly downturned.

Katsuki finished his set, abs tight and new sweat already forming when Izuku’s shadow disappeared with his own under the umbrella. His feet were inching up into Katsuki’s space, but Katsuki ignored him in favor of continuing counting before beginning his next set.

“I didn’t rent a car.”

Katsuki huffed. “Guess One For All will get a good workout on your run back to town, then.”

This Missile Range had its own town name. Probably its own zip code too, in this sparse country. It was miles to get anywhere that had a real hotel, or even a McDonald’s. But Izuku could probably charge up Fa Jin and make it there in three or four jumps, if he really put his back into it.

“I also didn’t reserve a hotel room.”

Katsuki began his v-sits again, and his words came out as a grunt. “Then do that, Deku. It’s not like anyplace here will run out of rooms.”

“…I don’t have any currency.”

Katsuki broke his balance, slapping his hands down in the cool sand. The granules stuck to his sweat immediately. “What’re you telling me, Deku?”

“I’m gonna need a ride back to your hotel…at the very least.”

“Well, enjoy waiting a few hours then.”

“Kacchan.”

Katsuki didn’t stop his set, though he’d lost count. He spared Izuku a glance, solely because gypsum could only be so interesting.

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough for the day?”

“Fuck off.”

He sped his crunches up a bit, returning his hands back to form, parallel to the ground, alongside his legs. Done enough for the day? The sun would still be up for hours. His day didn’t usually stop until nine or ten pm, and, jet lagged or not, he was going to stick to that.

“I’m serious, Kacchan,” Izuku urged, having the nerve to squat down to Katsuki’s level. Katsuki’s bangs were plastered to his face, laden with sweat and sunscreen, so he could only make Izuku out through a flaxen blur anyway. It blended him right in with the white sand. “You can’t pull off another explosion like what you just did, not today. Not for a while, at least. So we might as well get out of the sun and go back into town. Take a shower.”

The word can’t set the burn rising in Katsuki’s muscles to a familiar fire of contrarian spite. It was reflexive, a well-worn groove that he couldn’t help but slip into, especially with Izuku. Even though he could see the groove and all the paths around it by now, he’d still tumble in and feel those fanned flames of resentment.

He dug deep and filled them with sand.

“Tch, since when are you the voice of reason?”

Izuku grinned. “Maybe I’ve gotten better in the last year.”

Katsuki scoffed. “Fat fucking chance.”

Truthfully, Katsuki hadn’t put much thought into an itinerary for this trip. Not even which hours would be at the Missile Range and which would be in the hotel. He’d been given free range to this plot of land during business hours, and he intended to squeeze every minute out of it that he could. But it wasn’t the best place to recharge after pulling off an explosion impressive enough to make Izuku monologue into his diary for ten minutes straight.

“You carry the water jug,” Katsuki said, standing up and grabbing the arms of the camping chair to collapse it. “Don’t track any sand into the car.”

Izuku glanced at the sand that coated both of Katsuki’s hands up to the wrist, and then around to the patch that was surely still stuck to his pants. As he’d stood up, some had fallen from there and was now beaded into his leg hair, and sticking to the sweat there. Meanwhile, Izuku only had his shoes and knees to contend with, and Air Force to blow it off with.

“Haha, alright, Kacchan.”

Route US-70, Otero County, New Mexico

“Eep!” Izuku winced, plastering himself to the passenger door as a pickup truck zoomed by on Katsuki’s left down the two-lane highway. “Gosh, every time, it looks like it’s gonna hit you.”

“You’re just confused by the side of the road,” Katsuki said, putting extra effort into minding the lanes himself. Switching from the right to the left side of the car was fucking ridiculous. “ ‘Sides, these lanes are crazy wide. And it’s not like you couldn’t hop outta the car and stop another one with your bare hands. Or Blackwhip it and drop it on a cactus somewhere.”

“I’d rather not, though.”

It was only the fifth car they’d seen since leaving the military base anyway. Seriously, no one lived here. It felt like it was just him and Izuku for miles.

Which, after not seeing each other in so long, was kind of weird.

A year ago, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to have Izuku pop up mere hours into his vacation abroad—hell, Katsuki hadn’t even been able to feel shocked when Izuku had shown up, presumably quirkless, to the first day of class at UA. But now? It filled Katsuki with some kind of pit in the bottom of his stomach. Maybe it was just an after-effect of the long flight or the dehydration or the massive attempts at rehydration. Water sloshed in his belly along with an unease at the nerd’s appearance, and he had to table it immediately. They were good. They’d left school on good terms. Things were fine on the brief occasions where they’d seen each other recently. It was chill. It was fine.

“Wonder if there are any heroes here,” Katsuki mused, turning to the topic that had always been safe for them. “Maybe one who gets more powerful the less people he sees and the more loose dirt he inhales.”

There was a small twister way out in the distance. Some dirt and debris making a tornado not much taller than All Might himself, and dissipating into nothing before Katsuki’s eyes. It might have been miles away for how far Katsuki could see in any direction. There was the dinky town of Alamogordo in the distance, but on every other side was nothing but dirt, shrubbery short enough to trip over, and then mountains flanking every side. In between were dozens of kilometers Katsuki could see radially. North, south, east, and west. Even Izuku wouldn’t be able to run end to end without getting exhausted.

“There are bands of traveling heroes in this region,” Izuku stated, peeling himself away from the door. “Agencies that capitalize on speed, usually having one member with some kind of teleportation quirk, so that they can hit alarm calls all over the rural regions of the state without having to waste too much manpower on each small town.”

That made enough sense. Katsuki, for one, would hate to be cooped up in this lame town where the only crimes were probably paying the rent late or maybe some minor trespassing. Almost as much as he hated teleportation quirks.

They finally started seeing a few more cars as an overpass came into view with a few intersections under it. Katsuki flipped on the turn signal and headed into the hero-forsaken town.

“Wow, it’s nothing like the movies.”

America had wormed its way into Katsuki’s consciousness the same way it had Izuku’s—All Might. Between living in Los Angeles and all of his movies being shot there, Katsuki wasn’t sure if Izuku had ever seen a glimpse of America that wasn’t tinsel town. Maybe New York City in some other sappy American export movie.

But this was not that. There were no skyscrapers—the tallest building appeared to be a Holiday Inn, of all of three stories in height. Tallest in the valley at least; some of the buildings working their way up the mountain were higher up, Katsuki supposed. And the houses weren’t sprawling mansions, or even the metropolitan apartment complexes that weren’t so different from Musutafu. No, they were all orange and brown. Terracotta roofs and stucco walls with lawns of gravel and dirt and the occasional wizened desert tree. And the cactuses, of course.

“It’s nothing like a real place,” Katsuki corrected.

It was another long, straight road, now flanked by dusty strip malls and pistachio fields. And when the GPS signaled a left turn, he thought that the mountains must have thrown it off. Or perhaps this town had no internet.

“This can’t be it.”

His GPS turned him into a brown parking lot of a brown building with a brown sign reading Motel. And, judging by the doors dotting the building’s facade like windows, all rooms led directly outside. Bed to parking lot.

“This is definitely it,” Izuku said, double checking the address. “But it looks fine.”

“Tch, you also think your hair looks fine.”

“I don’t think about it much at all,” Izuku said with a grin as Katsuki pulled into a spot. They unclicked their seatbelts and stepped out of the air-conditioned car and were immediately blasted by heat and the dry smell of dirt. The earth had the smell of having been toasted to nutmeg brown, dried and hardened in the skillet of this basin for millenia.

Heat radiated off the asphalt, pale and dusty though it was. It warmed Katsuki up to his knees just on the brief walk to the front door.

“Checking in,” Katsuki said in English the moment his foot stepped in the lobby. “I need to change my room from a one bed to a two. Bakugou. Katsuki.”

Katsuki sounded his name out slowly to the receptionist before laying an arm on the desk, staring the woman down.

“O-Okay. No problem, that just increases the room fee.”

“Done.”

It only took a moment for her to hand him the keys, Katsuki balking at the described continental breakfast. The remnants of child-sized boxes of Fruitloops and Cheerios, and cellophaned honeybuns and danishes were still cluttering a card table to the side. Izuku called a thanks back to the clerk as Katsuki dragged him outside to grab their bags and find their accommodations.

Sharing a room was an easy calculation. It was cheaper and, if Katsuki had his druthers, they wouldn’t be spending much time in the room beyond laying down their heads at night. And besides, it looked as though this town offered its people very little besides space. Motel rooms presumably provided the same.

They climbed a rickety staircase up to the second floor balcony, Katsuki calling: “Don’t jump, Deku, or you’ll take us down with it,” before coming up to their door.

Inside was a sight unto itself. The floor was carpeted with a wall-to-wall carpet that, charitably, could be described as smart for being a similar shade to the rusty brown dirt that Americans tracked in with their shoes. The beds—across the room from each other—were covered with a quilted faux-satin in a vague tarnished gold color, and the walls were questionably off-white. The nicest feature was the photographs of the desert. Decent shots that highlighted the White Sands Park, the flora, and the mountains. And if that wasn’t the best part, then the slim lamps that barely illuminated the uglier parts of the room were.

“This is great!” Izuku beamed as he slipped off his shoes and dropped his duffle. “Thanks for the room, Kacchan! Why don’t you shower and I’ll see where we can go for lunch? Or dinner—I have no idea what meal we’re on.”

A glance around told Katsuki that there wasn’t any kitchenette to speak of in the room. The closest it seemed they had was a coffee maker sitting on the sinks next to the water closet. Not much hope of making a potable coffee, much less anything else.

The most Katsuki could say was that at least the room was clean. The dusty smell from outside followed them into the hotel room, but at least it was pleasantly chilled and humidified and, as Katsuki stepped into the shower, he didn’t spot so much as a speck of mold. As a place to bathe and sleep, this would do.

Now, Katsuki needed to fight the hot desert off of him with its opposite. He set the water to cold, and it tasted heavy with minerals as it dripped into his mouth. As it tore the sweat off of him, the exhaustion from the flight and the training and the heat began to sink in. His arms weren’t too stiff to wash himself, but lifting his hands up to his hair pulled unpleasantly from his armpits to his pectorals, and articulating his fingers was slow work, like they were frozen in the winter.

When he stepped out, Izuku had already claimed a bed and was lost in his phone. As he heard Katsuki step out, door opening, wet feet slapping against retro yellow tile, he grinned.

“Kacchan, there’s so much Mexican food! Everything looks amazing!”

“Yeah, yeah, just choose one,” Katsuki mumbled as he toweled off his hair, another towel wrapped around his hips.

It wasn’t weird to be wearing nothing but a towel in front of Izuku. They’d bathed in communal showers countless times before. But it had never been in a shared bedroom. Katsuki’s stomach tightened suddenly, probably just the abdominal workout doing tricks on his core, so he shoved it away, putting extra rigor into toweling off. He could probably step outside and have it dry in five minutes, but the thought of facing the sun again now that he could see the pink of his ears in the mirror was discouraging. He needed some aloe.

“Well, I don’t know if we wanna choose the one with the highest rating, or maybe the closest one?” Izuku mused. “Also, we might have to stop by a bank, because I don’t want you to pay for everything. Gosh, I wish the exchange rate were better right now. But none of these places look too expensive. And aside from the fast food, they all look locally owned.”

Katsuki flopped onto his bed to unzip his suitcase and root through it to find an outfit. He’d have to ask the front clerk about laundry service to take care of his costume elements. He debated taking a pain reliever as he grunted through pulling on his t-shirt, but decided against it for now. Even if it would do some of the work of loosening his muscles for him, he needed to know if he’d overworked them without medication. Once his shorts were on, he lay back on the bed and stretched one arm over his chest, his shoulder popping encouragingly.

“You know what? We’ll be here a week and there aren’t too many establishments. Maybe we’ll just start with the closest and then hit them one by one?”

Katsuki hummed his agreement, eyes falling closed as he switched to the other arm. This one didn’t pop, but his fingers did begin to tingle as the stretch cut off just a bit of his circulation. He’d hold it for just thirty more seconds and then…

Rest.

#anjum writes #bkdk #bakudeku #dkbk #dekubaku #bkdkbk #bakudekubaku #dkbkdk #dekubakudeku #katsudeku #ktdk

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anjumstar · 2 years ago

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anjum’s bkdk recs #18

10 more complete nsfw fics–minors dni. Mostly dkbk, mostly pwps, straight ahead!

Legend

hyperlinked title by author | word count

Genre (bakudeku for top!Bakugou, bottom!Deku; dekubaku for top!Deku, bottom!Bakugou; vers for when both are present; dom! and sub! for when bdsm dynamics are present) warning: where relevant Summary/review

💚🧡 = fave

Recs are under the cut, organized by word count, low to high.

61. crybaby by orphan_account | 1k

smut (dekubaku) warning: spitting Fun characterization in this piece with a crybaby Deku and a Baku who absolutely can’t stand it. Leans away a bit from the sexiness in exchange for some fun silliness instead.

62. Capitulation by Hazel_Witch | 1.4k

smut, fluff (dekubaku, dom!Deku, sub!Baku, implied switching) warning: light bdsm Just a really sweet take on Bakugou needing to let go and Deku being right there to get him where he needs to be.

63. Reverse Psychology by nikkiRA | 2.3k

smut (dekubaku) Again, almost leaning into some light bdsm territory, but really, it’s just Baku being competitive and getting what he wants. An exploration of difficulties with orgasming that, imo, is done super duper well.

64. Don’t fucking touch me (or maybe do, it feels different to be held by you) by The_Ghost_King | 3.8k

smut, drama, fluff (dekubaku, dom!Deku, sub!Baku) warnings: bdsm, degradation, begging Flashes between a smutty scene the night before, and the morning after where Bakugou grapples with having submissive urges. Deku’s there for him through it all <3

65. re-gifting by heartsinhay | 3.9k

romance, comedy, (no smut) This fic is somehow both silly and grounded. Deku keeps giving Baku OFA after Heroes Rising, and Baku is characterized so well and then Deku gives us a sweet bit of tenderness at the end. A really nice emotional balance.

66. Heaven in Hiding by Fangirl_on_fire | 4.3k

(dekubaku) smut, fluff warning: Bakugou’s pretty…mean? He’s just being a butthead for the sake of it—just stick with it to the end unless it’s too much for you Deku is just the world’s most emotional top, and Baku is not quite bratty, not quite mean, but definitely a bit antagonistic. The guy’s just got intimacy issues and he’s overflowing with Deku’s love! It’s interesting, straddling the line between sexy and unsexy, even the slightest bit crackish, but idk, I think it really nailed aspects of their dynamic!

67. Cactus by 1candyangle | 5.4k

(dekubaku) This fic is filthy. Literally filthy. It’s all about Deku having the biggest scent kink for Baku, so this fic won’t be for everyone. It’s sweat and dirty clothes and armpits. And it’s written wonderfully and, you know, a kink like this doesn’t feel far off for Deku 😂 It’s really well-suited and an unusual read.

68. covering the bases by nicc | 5.6k

smut, romance (bakudeku) This is a lovely progression through bkdk’s relationship. There were lovely bits of characterization and I loved how the boys had real vibes of being beginners in their physical relationship. Plus the writing was great.

69. Delphinium by Tabs1326 | 6.3k

smut (dekubaku) warning: the dubcon that comes with sex pollen but more mixed feelings A sex pollen fic with less of a focus on the filthy and more of the turmoil that could come from the scenario. Baku definitely experiences some tough feelings, but, as a demisexual person, I felt that it was a very real take, and that difference was interesting within the trope.

70. 1 Thru 5 by SapphicPandaBear | 26.5k

smut, fluff (vers) I honestly love a fic that claims to have roughish sex, and even that is still so sweet and vanilla, lol. The boys are pretty soft in this one, despite it starting off as a fwb, and I love that it has negotiations and conversations about what they want, but who’s topping and bottoming doesn’t impact the boys personalities at all. Feels properly vers.

more recs can be found here 💚🧡

nsfw recs can be found in my ao3 collection 💚🧡

#anjum recs #bkdk #bakudeku #not/sfw #dkbk #dekubaku #bkdkbk #bakudekubaku #dkbkdk #dekubakudeku #ktdk #katsudeku

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anjumstar · 1 year ago

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Sand Lines ch5, Saturday

Read on AO3

rating: teen

pairing: bakudeku

word count: 28.3k/40.6k

summary: It wasn’t a vacation. It was only convenient that Katsuki’d managed to trick Miruko into thinking it was.

first chapter - previous chapter - next chapter

master list

Alamogordo, New Mexico

Katsuki had decided. He was gonna beat not just Izuku, but also Tap ‘n Go and Water Foul at this time off business. He was going to be number one.

“Wake up!” Katsuki shouted, throwing a shirt at Izuku’s face, hitting his sleeping target squarely even with the lights still off.

“Ngh!” Izuku sputtered as he shot up in bed, the shirt falling from his face and plopping innocently in his lap as Izuku looked at Katsuki with sleep-heavy eyes. “Kacchan, what the hell?”

“Rise and shine, nerd, today we learn how to take a vacation.”

“Now?” Izuku asked, groaning as Katsuki flicked the lights on. “Why?”

“Because you’re not gonna say, wow, I thought Kacchan knew everything to me again,” Katsuki said, grabbing up his stuff from around the room. Wallet, phone, keys. “Bullshit. I do know everything.”

Katsuki was slathering on some sunscreen when Izuku said, “Um, Kacchan, isn’t this your shirt?”

“Black is better against UV. You might as well not be wearing anything in your shitty pastels,” Katsuki stated. “Put it on or look even more like a shitty lychee.”

Izuku’s freckles had come out in the desert sun. They hid well under his burgeoning sunburn-turned-tan, but in that stark light, Katsuki witnessed how they bloomed on his shoulders down to his forearms. He was pink and brown all over.

“Fine,” Izuku said, tugging the black tee on and popping out the neck hole with a bad case of bedhead.

“Pfft,” Katsuki laughed, the sound no more than a medium gust of air. “You look like a thirteen year old going to his first emo concert.”

“Hey, you’re making me wear it!”

“And you’re making me laugh!”

“A price I’m willing to pay.” Izuku grinned as he tugged on a pair of cargo shorts. Also pale, but at least the fabric was thicker. “Where are we going?”

“You’re gonna have to hold your piss for at least an hour.”

“That doesn’t remotely answer the question.”

“You’re a nerd, interpret that as you will.”

It seemed as though, aside from hiking, there wasn’t much to do in this region. Lots of cliffs and caves and mountains, sprinkled with museums, eateries, and ranches. Coming from a town so close to Tokyo made it seem like there’d be more to do if their flights had just dropped them off smack-dab in the middle of the ocean.

Katsuki was satisfied with hiking. It was one of the things he did in his time off even back home, because it still felt productive. But that was what the vacation was supposed to disrupt, wasn’t it?

So they were going out of town.

Katsuki lifted up the car keys and gave them a jingle. “I’m getting old here.”

“You’re not even five minutes older yet,” Izuku quibbled, going over to the sinks to brush his teeth. “Just gimme a minute.”

They were out to the car in three, Izuku’s blessed lack of vanity making him easy enough to shove out the door. He just needed a brush, a whizz, and a protein bar chipmunked away in one chubby cheek and he was good to go.

They were soon on the interstate, pointed in the direction of the Missile Range. Even with the windows up and the air set to recirculate, the dusty smell of terracotta earth crept in, mingling with the dry gypsum that had managed to speckle the car’s black interior. Despite the rain last night, the scent was still wrung out, like dry dirt but more, like a dust storm you could drink.

And somehow, overnight, the land had turned green. Not like Japan with its plenty of trees and bushes and grass, but greener than Katsuki had ever seen this place. The yucca stood taller, the prickly pears were plumper. And the little clumps of grass, brown enough to blend in with the desert as Katsuki tripped over them a couple days ago, now cast a verdancy over the land that stretched for miles.

When they passed right by the Missile Range, Izuku’s head whipped back, then he looked towards Katsuki with wide eyes. He had to know better than to ask if Katsuki had missed a turn, but the question of where rested on his face. But like in the hotel, Katsuki wasn’t going to answer. Instead, he took his right hand and put it on the center console.

“You gonna sit there or are you gonna do something useful?”

“Oh!” Izuku said, the surprise unable to be hidden. But he didn’t say anything as he took Katsuki’s right hand in both of his and began massaging the muscles, stretching the joints, warming the skin against the air conditioning.

Katsuki was still getting used to this. When his and Izuku’s hands met, it was in combat—on both sides of their friendship. Exchanged blows in enmity or camaraderie, and very little else. But now Izuku was taking Katsuki’s hand in his, was holding his arm gently as he removed cactus needles, was close all the time. Izuku could easily pause and rest his hand in Katsuki’s, thread their fingers together, draw Katsuki’s hand further into his lap. And maybe Katuski would let him.

Which was a weird thought as Katsuki clenched his left hand against the wheel, only to shoot a twinge of pain up his forearm. He nearly snatched his other hand away, but that would have stood out, it would have beckoned questions, or at least made Izuku think things that maybe he was wise enough not to ask aloud.

They blurred past a sign marked 75 mph. Katsuki’s eyes slid over to the dash as the smaller kilometer dial crept up over 100 kph, 110, 120… But even at the speed limit, traffic blew by them, cars hopping over to the fast lane just to pass them. So the dial moved further, 130, approaching 140 before they were running in parallel with the cars around them. It was fast, way faster than they ever got in Japan. It was All Might-fast, Deku-fast. Staring at Izuku’s lightning-clad back as he ran ahead and disappeared for a year-fast.

“Other hand, Kacchan.”

It was slightly uncomfortable, reaching his left arm underneath his right as he switched driving hands. But the road was long and straight and wide, so Katsuki just kept his eyes between the lines as Izuku began working, his fingers now brushing Katsuki’s hip occasionally as he worked up the wrist.

“This is kind of doing it, right?” Izuku asked. “Yeah, we’re going somewhere, and maybe that’s productive, but it’s quiet. We’re just sitting together. Not much is happening. And it’s okay.”

Maybe Izuku had a point, but there was something different about this than even the meal they’d shared yesterday. In the car, Katsuki had to look forward, had to focus on something that wasn’t Izuku. There was a separation that cleared Katsuki’s mind, at least a bit. When it was just him and Izuku, no focus point to filter some of Izuku out with, there was something that was too much. Something that he couldn’t figure out.

“Failing grade, Deku.”

They were coming to a scenic overpass, the crest of the mountain that hugged the far west end of the valley. The car chugged up a sharper incline, and Katsuki pulled his warm, limber hand back to control the wheel. He kept his eyes on the road, curling a smile under his frown as Izuku oohed and ahhed over the view as they crept higher and higher.

Unlike the drive from the day before, this one wasn’t blocked by evergreens. The regular brush, slightly greener from the rain, stalked them up the mountain, dotting the sharp hills like freckles. Behind them, in the rear-view mirror, Katsuki could make out the whole valley: the blanched strip of White Sands and the darker smudge of Alamogordo.

Coming down the other side of the mountain, there were towns. Patches of fast food joints and squat houses and water towers painted with scenes of the American west bordered the whole highway. No building more than a story high, no town extending longer than a city block. There probably wasn’t any crime, because everyone had to know each other in a place so small. The criminal would be found out before even the fastest hero teleported.

They were back on flat land, the mountains once again tall behind them when Katsuki pulled off the highway. Izuku was staring out the window, probably thirsty for hints about Katsuki’s plan, because goodness knew there wasn’t much to look at besides Mexican restaurants and American chain establishments.

When they turned into a parking lot, every spot with so much as a twig’s worth of shade was taken, but one spot was all Katsuki needed as he cut it close to the cars on either side with the monstrosity of an SUV he was driving.

“What is this place?” Izuku asked, looking at what was very clearly the back of a building with zero signage.

“Dunno,” Katsuki said, hopping out of the car and slamming his door closed. “Not going there. C’mon.”

The sun walloped them hard once the last of the air conditioning wicked off their skin, reminding them that outside of the oasis of the car, this was the desert. Despite it still being early morning, the sun was high already, running up to its peak.

There were more people around than Katsuki had seen since he’d left the airport. Car doors slammed around him to reveal people in broad-brimmed hats all walking the same way that the GPS had told him to go. Katsuki melded in with the crowd, Izuku right on his heels.

And here, Katsuki could blend in with the crowd. Without any efforts towards disguise, he and Izuku were invisible, as good as civilians in this country. Surely they were famous enough that if they mentioned their hero names, both the more hero fanatical and the news buffs would turn their heads. But as they were, doing nothing to draw attention to themselves, not so much as lick of merch tagging their clothes, they were unknown in a way they hadn’t been since Katsuki was fourteen.

They could do anything and no one would know. No one would have phones facing toward them or be firing off texts with the news of a Deku and Dynamight sighting. They were anonymous.

“Oh, wow!”

“This is it,” Katsuki said, waving an arm out to the street before them.

It was a block full of tents and carts, artisans hawking their wares and food vendors fanning the scents of their food toward the passersby. There were endless colors in the forms of flowers and jewelry and painted terracotta pots. And when Katsuki looked from one end of the street to the other, the end of the street fair was nowhere in sight. It wasn’t nearly as packed as a Japanese street lined with food vendors, but it was probably just as big, just stretched over the plentiful land of the region.

“A glorified farmer’s market,” Katsuki declared. “The most boring thing imaginable.”

Izuku barked out a laugh, and it took Katsuki aback. It was brief, over as soon as it started. But it wasn’t a sound Katsuki heard often from Izuku, and it was…nice. He had to frown away his own burgeoning smile as Izuku turned to look at him, grin on his face. “Then why are we here?”

“If we can figure out why all these people are here, why this mind-numbing activity is at the top of this wasteland’s expendable tourist board,” Katsuki laid out, “then we’ll be number one at this vacation shit.”

The warm, bright look on Izuku’s face narrowed into sharp eyes and furrowed brows as he turned his attention to the crowd. He was active, curious, analyzing. Katsuki might have liked that expression even better.

“Challenge accepted,” Izuku said. “Plus ultra.”

“Okay, this way,” Katsuki said, choosing a direction at random and snagging Izuku by the shoulder to follow.

They stepped into the fray and observed the obvious things. The smells were intoxicating—so different from Japanese cuisine. Too sweet, too oily, but alluring. It didn’t take Izuku long to buy a bag of kettle corn and begin devouring it with the sticky hands of the toddler Katsuki had once known.

“People like going out for food they don’t have to cook,” Izuku observed, offering Katsuki a piece of the strangely round popcorn.

It was alright. A little overly sweet but with decent salt. Katsuki could understand the appeal. Besides, food was one of the few things that Katsuki already put some effort into in his free time. Another productive hobby, just like hiking or working out.

“That’s appeal number one,” Katsuki agreed.

“People like shopping,” Izuku pointed out next. Canvas totes and reused grocery bags were bulging with jars and collectables and artwork. Cash was flowing and, briefly, Katsuki wondered if he had enough currency left for the day, but then he remembered he wasn’t buying any of this shit.

“Pass,” Katsuki said, avoiding eye contact with the tie dye vendor they were passing. Like he hadn’t been able to make tie dye shirts when he was five years old.

“I dunno,” Izuku mused. “Sometimes clothes shopping can be fun.”

“That’s only because you have the sense of humor of a middle-aged dad and your t-shirts reflect that.”

“Well, yeah, that can be fun!”

Aguas frescas were next, because they’d only been out fifteen minutes, and already beads of sweat were forming along Katsuki’s brow. The pink drink that was in his hand a few minutes later dripped cold condensation down his arm as the ice began its rapid melt.

“I can drink sugary shit at home,” Katsuki complained as the floral taste of hibiscus hit his tongue. It wasn’t as overly sweet as he’d assumed, but he kept that to himself as he slurped it down. “In the AC. What makes this special?”

“I dunno,” Izuku said, sucking down on an horchata, reduced to pouring the kettle corn directly into his mouth with his other available hand. “People watching? Seeing stuff you don’t usually see?”

“The only reason I need to watch people is to be able to describe their dumb faces in a crime report,” Katsuki said. “And I don’t need any of this shit.” They were passing a vendor selling clocks whittled into ornate wooden cutouts. Nothing Katsuki needed to lug back to Japan when he had a smartwatch on his wrist at all times.

“Wait, wait, an All Might stall!”

Katsuki followed Izuku’s gaze, expecting to see a stall of red, blue, and yellow, but instead saw Izuku running towards a stall glutted with unofficial merch for heroes and comic books alike. But Izuku zeroed in on a selection of mini All Mights dangling from a jewelry stand and was already halfway done leafing through them by the time Katsuki meandered over.

“Kacchan, how do I pick?” Izuku asked as he picked up two off-brand All Mights. Both were flying, but one was in his silver age and one in his bronze age and, despite being homemade, Katsuki had to admit they looked pretty damn good.

“What are they?”

“Phone charms,” Izuku explained, showing how the little black string looped into the corner of his smart phone. “It only makes sense for him to be flying since he’s dangling, you know, he shouldn’t be standing.

“Obviously,” Katsuki agreed sarcastically. Though he couldn’t refute the nerd’s logic.

“So which one?” Izuku asked. “It should be these ones with the cape instead of golden age so that it’s extra clear that he’s flying, but the costume colors are so different there’s just no way to possibly choose—Kacchan, help!”

“Buy both.”

Izuku looked relieved and Katsuki almost laughed. This damn peaceful climate and Izuku’s greatest moment of distress was not being able to choose between different versions of All Might.

While Izuku eagerly paid, Katsuki took the bronze age All Might—an era he’d always been partial to with its dark red and black color scheme—and looped it around the corner of his phone. It looked dorky as hell.

“Kacchan?” Izuku asked when he was done with the cashier. “What are you doing?”

“I paid for the rental car and the room,” Katsuki reasoned with a shrug. “You paid for this—now we’re even.”

Izuku laughed again, This one twice as long as the earlier laugh Katsuki had earned. It made his stomach squeeze. “Now we match!”

Both of their phones were adorned with little dangling All Mights, making them a matched set like friendship bracelets or the All Might cards they’d both pulled in childhood. It was too darling for Katsuki to bear, and he had half a mind to take his and Izuku’s phones both and blow them up between his hands. It also made him want to take Izuku’s hand and lift it in the air declaring that they were a pair and always had been and no one had better separate them again. Instead, he shoved his phone back in his pocket and let the little All Might charm dangle from his hip.

“Okay, I get it now,” Izuku said grinning. “Shopping has its benefits.”

Their shoulders bumped together as the crowd bottlenecked around a food truck. Izuku was so damn warm to the touch already, and the dark shirt wasn’t helping, even if it would stave off the burning. The thing was beginning to saturate with sweat, becoming skin tight around Izuku’s ab muscles, reminding Katsuki of how he’d looked shirtless and sweaty the day before. Just the brief touch shoulder to shoulder made Katsuki sweat even more.

“Oh, Kacchan, over there!”

Izuku put his hand on Katsuki’s shoulder and that was even warmer. He could feel the damp of Izuku’s palm through his shirt sleeve, and the touch felt heavy. Every new touch between them was surprising and rawly sensory. Like the smack of salt the first time he’d tasted miso plain or a day after training waking up to a muscle he hadn’t known about screaming out in pain. It was just a hand, so why did it feel like so much?

“Chile jam!” Izuku exclaimed, coming to a stop in front of a stand, dropping his hand in order to point at the glass jars of yellow, orange, and red.

“The fuck?” Katsuki blurted, earning a head tilt and furrowed brow from the vendor.

“What’s this?” Izuku asked, pointing to the peculiarly labeled jars. There were other strange jellies and jams on the table: garlic and onion and ginger, but Izuku’s attention was squarely on the one with the magic word. Chile.

“It’s one of our specialties,” the woman answered from her folding lawn chair. Everything at the stand was made of the same canvas-like polyester, from the chair to the tablecloth to the tent providing brief relief from the sun, drawing shoppers under its brim. “Jam reduced down with tomatoes and different peppers. It’s got a real kick, I swear to hither and yon.”

“I can take more than a little kick.”

“Oh, can ya?”

The woman used the edge of the table to push herself up, shaking all the jars of jam as she looked up to face Katsuki. Her face was as weathered as the land itself with the same kinds of crags and ridges and sun-roasted tan.

From a cup of doll-sized spoons, the woman took one, and untwisted a loose jar lid with her other hand. Without breaking eye contact with Katsuki, she dipped the spoon in the jar and then placed the red sauce in her mouth. Before even swallowing, she grabbed another, filled it with jam, and held it out towards Katsuki. A challenge.

He took it immediately, and placed the spoon facedown on his tongue, licking the spoon clean in one swift motion while the woman’s spoon dangled from her mouth like a loose cigarette.

It was sweet. It was jam. The sugar glided over his tongue, reminding him of that horrid fudge for a moment before the tangy hit of acid from the tomato kicked in. Not so different from a ketchup from a button-up only, cloth napkin restaurant.

Also…It was hot.

It crept up from behind like a little stalker villain that Katsuki would usually be ready to whip around and knock out with one blow from his quirk. But this vendor lady hadn’t so much as blinked at the spice, and so Katsuki wouldn’t either. He had a lifetime of controlling the sweat glands in his hands, but he’d never had to pay attention to the pores on his face. His sideburns were soaked and his bangs stuck to his forehead like a bad alpaca fur beanie. But that was just the sweat from the day, right? This old bat wouldn’t think he was bowing under the pressure—he’d rather take some of this lava jam to the eye than that.

“Good, huh?” the lady asked.

Katsuki swallowed. “Great,” he rasped.

And that was the kicker, wasn’t it? Even as it made all his taste buds stand erect like good little child soldiers in a war, he thought damn if it wouldn’t taste good slathered on a piece of roast pork.

He slapped down the eight bucks that crazy lady was charging for it and left before she could see his face go red.

“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” Izuku asked, a wide grin on his face. “Not boring?”

“It was grocery shopping,” Katsuki retorted. “And a bother for customs.”

But…he was having a little bit of fun. A smidgeon. And he still didn’t understand why, because his mind should be half numbed with sugar and heat and boredom, but it wasn’t. He wasn’t. Instead, he had half a mind to point Izuku towards the All Might bottle cap charms across the way or the aloe plants one tent down that would help soothe their burns.

Izuku had to take the jar, since it fit into one of his massive pockets, making it look like he had one and a half hip bones. But of course, the idiot was happy to do it, thrilled even. Like in this dearth of distressed civilians and villains to take down, being able to save Katsuki the grief of carrying both a jam jar and a drink was gonna push him up a score in the hero rankings.

“I think you’d rather be grocery shopping,” Izuku said—and it was a fair assumption. The supermarket was air conditioned and efficient and didn’t have random ladies squaring up like he wouldn’t push her out of the way for the last tin of wasabi peas.

But he’d also be alone at the supermarket. And go back to his empty apartment alone. He’d put most of the groceries away and cook dinner for one like he always did.

“Whaddyou know?” Katsuki said instead, frowning.

“You. Pretty well,” Izuku retorted. “I thought maybe I’d forgotten some about you in the past year but no, you’re always up here.”

He gestured towards his head with his shoulder, which Katsuki caught out the corner of his eye as they continued walking forward. A dog was peeing on the sidewalk shockingly close to some macramé merchandise. A kid dropped an ice cream cone on the ground and burst out crying. This end of the street fest was drawing near.

Katsuki wasn’t even sure how well he knew himself. If he did, wouldn’t the shit those old fart heroes had been talking about on Thursday be his reality already? Sometimes it seemed impossible to tell who he was beyond fists and explosions and sweat. But Izuku had always known things that Katsuki hadn’t, and it in equal measure made him want to go back to the car and leave Izuku in a fit of red dust, and pry the answers out of Izuku with his nails, with his teeth.

“No,” Katsuki said. “This feels different.”

They were approaching a barricade of orange cones at the end of the street, nothing but one food truck left between them and the end of this side of the fair.

“Different than what?”

“Like this is so boring my brain should melt out of my ears, but you’re distracting it from that.”

“Which is a…good thing?”

Katsuki walked ahead. Straight past the food truck and past the orange cones so they were back in the normal town, cars passing by at a quick clip. Everyone drove fast here, like there was actually somewhere to go. “It’s an annoying thing.”

“Oh…?”

Izuku was confused. Even not looking at the guy, still facing the street, Katsuki could all but see the cocked head, the wide eyes, the hand drooping in the air in front of him as it tried to draw a real answer out of Katsuki.

But Katsuki had none to give. This wasn’t a regular feeling. It was a new one, no more relatable to his regular rolodex of feelings than it was to a swarm of bees storming his stomach. Really, actually, it was more like the bees.

“I thought I’d be alone this week,” Katsuki said, allowing the cars to swallow up his words. He didn’t give a damn if Izuku heard or not. “Had been looking forward to it. Then your ass blows in near immediately and well. Thought I’d punch your lights out, but I haven’t.”

Katsuki was sure that’d stir a response. Not throwing a punch was as good as taking one yourself. That’s why he’d always struck first in a fight. Set the tone. Don’t give yourself a chance to be thrown off right at the top. But somehow Izuku had gotten the upper hand without making the first move while Katsuki sat back on his heels. No, actually, he’d been doing something, but it hadn’t been fighting. And when it wasn’t fighting, Katsuki couldn’t figure it out.

But Izuku didn’t say anything. Mind was surely working a kilometer a minute, but what else was new.

“You’re the best to train with. You’re not even horrible to share a room with. Lousy at vacationing with,” Katsuki continued. “You used to get on my nerves just being around. But you being fucking absent for a year threw everything off, and I can’t shake it.”

“I wasn’t gone—you were busy too!”

“Shut up.”

It hadn’t been important. Nothing besides scattered flashes of their work shifts had ever been an emergency or desperate or immediately necessary in any way. They’d just been making busy because they didn’t know how to do anything else. Because they didn’t know how to just be with themselves. That was what UA had never taught them.

“We don’t know how to be friends!” Katsuki exclaimed. “Maybe we never did!”

However loud Katsuki's words were, the silence was louder. It was fraught with humming vehicles and excited voices making their way through the street fair, but none of that was the deafening part. The space between him and Izuku was what screamed at Katsuki.

“K-Kacchan…”

Izuku was upset now. Great. And by God, some horrible yanking behind Katsuki’s lungs made him want to do something about it. It was like his upper chest had been speared by a fishhook and was pulling him back to where Izuku stood behind him, potentially blubbering because Katsuki couldn’t hold his tongue, yet again.

But when Katsuki turned around, Izuku wasn’t weeping. He was frowning, but his eyes were only glistening, no more than the sweat on his forehead or down the column of his neck. He was shiny all over and it was captivating. He’d always drawn Katsuki’s gaze like this, but it had never before filled him with such fresh vexation.

It pushed him to take a step forward. Then another. And another. He was close enough to Izuku to smell the heady mix of sweat intermingled with sunscreen and exhaust puffing out of that food truck. It was acrid and hot and it smelled a little like battle but they were safe but if they were safe then why was Katsuki’s heart pounding like a villain was on his tail, like something was catching up to him, like—

He had to do something. He had to.

He leaned in. He heard Izuku say: “Oh.” Actually, he felt it more than he heard it. Soft, puffing against his mouth. And then, because he couldn’t allow Izuku to figure it out first, took one last step forward, and closed the gap.

Their lips touched. And Katsuki had no idea what he was doing, he was only aware of what was next. Next: him grabbing Izuku’s sweaty hair and fisting it in his sweaty palm. Next: them slotting their lips to the side so that they actually fit, and dammit, they did fit. Next: a touch of tongue that tasted like hibiscus and cinnamon and caramel. Next: they broke apart and stared at each other with wide eyes.

It was a line in the sand, crossed. A line they hadn’t even known about, blown to scattered waste.

Next. Katsuki took two big steps backwards and blasted himself right over traffic and ran.

Las Cruces, New Mexico

Running was hard in this country. The air was thin. The sun was hot. Katsuki had spilled his hibiscus drink on his hand before he’d dropped it and it looked like he’d murdered a Jigglypuff. He had no idea where he was or where he was going, but that was a problem for later. Everything was a problem for later. Right now, the only problem was running.

Of course, running wasn’t a problem when you wielded the most powerful quirk in the world. So Katsuki had only cleared one, maybe one-and-a-half blurry blocks before a flash of teal lit up in front of him and forced him to stop or else make more of a coward of himself.

“Kacchan!” Izuku exclaimed, and it wasn’t so different from his arrival just a few days ago. Skidding to a stop, just a little out of breath, and with Katsuki more than a little dumbfounded. “Kacchan, what the…what?”

And fuck, running hadn’t made his heart rate go down at all. Hadn’t stopped the nervous sweat or the sweat from the heat certainly or even the sweat from his quirk, which could probably send him straight to the stratosphere with one wrong thought just about now. “I don’t know!”

“Kacchan, you can’t just kiss someone and run!”

“You don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!”

“Well then, what—why? Why did you do it?” Those little aspirated puffs coming off the W questions betrayed that Izuku actually might have been a bit out of breath. Maybe his heart was beating as fast as Katsuki’s. He’d lost his drink too, and the popcorn, but his shorts were still hanging heavy with the fucking jam.

“I had to do something!” Katsuki shouted.

“Something?” Izuku asked. “Or that thing?”

“What’s it to you!” Katsuki rebutted, weak as anything. Weak in a way that made sweat sting his eyes and he had to blink it away fast lest any idiot think it was something else.

“It’s everything!” Izuku shouted back. “What’s it to you?”

It was…something. It was confusing. It was surprising. It was a mystery and maybe it was obvious but it was also good and maybe really bad and it was done but it wasn’t over.

Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe it should have already happened.

“I wanted to,” he said simply. “And so I did.”

“You wanted to…? Since when?” Izuku asked.

“Just now!”

Izuku shook his head, as though that was wrong, as though Katsuki had just lied to him, as though that was something that Katsuki would ever do. “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know!” Katsuki exclaimed. He didn’t know. He hadn’t thought that far. His mind was racing in an effort to catch up and figure that out, but every thought was too fast and shadowed by the next to decipher. “Whaddyou know?”

Katsuki asked it again. As though Izuku was hiding information from him. It was inside of him—of that Katsuki was sure. He wanted to crawl down Izuku’s throat and claw it out, figure out what bloody truth lay between them that neither of them had words for. That was the only way he could think to do it, the only thing that even began to make sense.

“I-I…” Izuku stuttered, his head shaking slightly, his eyes wide and confused, but he didn’t take a single step back from Katsuki. He couldn’t. “I don’t know. I… What now?”

Now had run away when Katsuki had. Now was back by those traffic cones and here, Katsuki had no idea. Of anything.

He sighed, the first breath he’d managed to get even halfway under him. It tasted like both of them. “Car. That’s what. Let’s get outta here.”

#anjum writes #bkdk #bakudeku #bkdkbk #bakudekubaku #dkbk #dekubaku #dkbkdk #dekubakudeku #ktdk #katsudeku

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anjumstar · 1 year ago

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Sand Lines ch4, Friday

Read on AO3

rating: teen

pairing: bakudeku

word count: 22.8k/40.6k

summary: It wasn’t a vacation. It was only convenient that Katsuki’d managed to trick Miruko into thinking it was.

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Dog Canyon, Alamogordo, New Mexico

If things had gone according to plan, they would have been hero partners. But things never had gone according to plan, had they?

If the landscape of Japan in their first year had continued, Katsuki and Izuku most certainly would have been hero partners. But they’d made the mistake of being too good for a Japan in peacetime. And Katsuki hated to wish for a war, especially when he’d almost been killed in one, but it was against his nature not to push to be stronger. That’s what he’d always strived for. And being stuck working without the person who made him better, who made him stronger, who shone light on his weak and blind spots was like walking with one eye closed. He could see, but where was his depth perception?

So they weren’t partners. If they ever would be, it’d be because something went terribly wrong. That the hard-earned peace after the war hadn’t lasted.

But here Izuku was, pointing out turns as Katsuki’s rental rattled along a dirt road to a supposed canyon while the sun rose in front of him. And he wasn’t Katsuki’s second eye or right hand or brief investigation team-up member. He was the friend Katsuki had barely seen in a year. Who he’d just spent the last seventy-two hours with. And, surprisingly, it…hadn’t been bad at all.

“What’s that noise?” Izuku asked suddenly.

In an attempt to follow a bit of what Water Foul and Tap ‘n Go had talked about yesterday, Katsuki and Izuku had decided to do another hike. Well, Izuku decided that they should do something fun and the only thing Katuski would agree to was a hike. Katsuki found it a bit ironic that they had to drive to go on a hike, but now a little irony was the least of his worries.

A flapping sound had been following them for a couple minutes, nearly blending in with the general rattle and bounce of driving on a dirt road. Because the road wasn’t dirt, wasn’t flat and even like the bulldozed dirt of a construction zone. It was dirt and gravel and rocks and tumbleweeds and one roadrunner that had kept pace with them for a solid ten seconds before darting into the thin brush. But now that Katsuki thought about it, that flapping was too regular to be anything natural. And when he realized what it was, he groaned and stopped the car.

“Get out,” Katsuki commanded, hopping out of his side and slamming the door behind him.

It was too early in the morning to be hit by a true wall of heat, but Katsuki could already feel his pores waking up, ready to start sweating the moment the chill of the car’s AC burned off. And this was going to be a sweaty, greasy task.

“Shoot, flat tire,” Izuku said, drawing around the back and seeing the limp thing sitting low in the dirt. Probably punctured by one of the rocks or a particularly strong cactus needle.

“Obviously,” Katsuki said, pocketing the keys as he went around the back of the truck. There was an extra tire mounted to the back, but he had no idea where the jack was, or the wrench. Katsuki opened the back door and it swung to the side, nearly nailing Izuku from his face to his torso, but his hero reflexes got him out of the way in time. Katsuki chuckled as he rooted around the back, finding the wrench, but unable to locate anything that looked like it would get that flat tire up off the ground.

“Fuck,” Katsuki said, jumping out of the back and racking his mind. The car was a rental, and he didn’t have car insurance, obviously. Wasn’t even sure if they had cell signal way out on a dirt road.

“Got the tire off!” Izuku shared, holding the spare upright at his side and giving a thumbs up.

“Yeah, well, we don’t have a jack, so unless you wanna roll on it back to town, it’s not gonna do us much good.”

“I can jack up the car.”

Katsuki was about to argue, say no, idiot, this thing’s gotta be two or three thousand kilos, but then he remembered just who he was stranded here with. So he shrugged and stepped out of the way as Izuku kneeled down at the back of the SUV.

He first used his rough hands to clear the ground under him of the worst gravel and pebbles before trying to kneel. When he did, he grimaced, lifting his knees up again before taking off his shirt. Already his skin was gleaming with sunblock and sweat glinting off the tops of his collarbones, his pectorals, his rows of abs. Katsuki couldn’t help but stare for a moment, catalog the muscles, the scars before looking away purposefully. Nothing he hadn’t seen before.

“Lemme take off the front first,” Katsuki said, kneeling down beside him. He’d never changed a tire in his life—there wasn’t nearly enough driving in Japan for him to have ever had to. But it wasn’t more than a little unscrewing and rescrewing, and he was a quick learner.

He attached the wrench to the lug nuts and began tugging. Luckily, the car was fairly new, so there was no rust inhibiting the process and the first one came off nice and smooth. The rest followed and the hubcap all but fell off in a puff of dry dirt, like the earth exhaling.

“Okay, my turn,” Izuku said as Katsuki backed away.

Izuku felt around underneath the car for a hand hold, presumably something that wouldn’t cut into his already battered and bruised hands as they held up literal tons of weight. “Here it goes,” he said, and with a muffled groan, the car creaked up.

Katsuki turned back to the wheel, knowing he had to move fast. He worked the tire off, tempted to throw the sucker into the brush with its spiky friends but knew that Izuku would never let him get away with it. Then he slotted the new one on and began work on returning the hubcap.

“Thanks for coming with me,” Izuku grunted, head cocked sideways, his topmost eye squinting against either sweat, sunlight, or the strain of holding the car. Wisps of One For All whipped around Izuku, but not nearly as many as Katsuki might have expected. Izuku was using mostly his own strength, and the thought made Katsuki dry in the mouth. He needed some water.

“What’re you talking about? I’m the one who likes hiking. And you’re stuck under a car right now.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure you’d want to come,” Izuku replied. “I know you’re just here to work and I’ve already distracted you quite a bit.”

His voice was strained and it made Katsuki want to grab Izuku by the throat, wring the rest of his voice out. Or maybe make it even hoarser, show the real exertion that this task should be taking out of him. As it was, Izuku’s traps were flexed to high heaven, taut and pronounced up against his shimmering neck. Every muscle, vein, sinew, and scar was jutting from his wrists up to his neck, but he wasn’t shaking, the circulation in his legs wasn’t cutting off, making his calves dark with pulsing blood as his knees whited out.

“This is still work,” Katsuki said. “A good workout.”

Izuku chuckled, somehow. “Seems like…”

A still-cool breeze swooped across the road and ruffled their hair as Katsuki screwed the last lug nut back on. It chilled the drying sweat on his skin while the sun began to creep overhead.

“I hope it’s not too much of a bother that I’m here,” Izuku continued, his top eye closed to the sweat drawing near it. Katsuki thought about reaching up and wiping it away, but refrained. “I understand if it is, but it’s been a while since we’ve gotten to hang out together. So I’ve been enjoying it.”

“Put the car down, you idiot.”

“Oh good,” Izuku sighed, slowly lowering the car with the kind of restraint and control that only existed when you weren’t at your limit. Your limit was something you dropped like a hot pan. Izuku was able to lower the car like it was a simple bench press. Katsuki swallowed dryly. Where the hell had he put his water?

It was back in the car, he’d get it in a minute. In the meantime, he screwed the lug nuts again for good measure, watching as the car rolled just slightly with his efforts where Izuku had held it nearly still. Damn.

“We were gonna be partners,” Katsuki reasoned quietly as he stood up, kicking the tire for good measure. Seemed properly attached. “ ‘Course it’s fine.”

Izuku scooped his shirt off the ground and flapped it once in the air to get the worst of the dirt out. When he put it on, the pastel blue was brown on one side and already turning dark with fresh sweat—filthy, but Izuku didn’t seem much to care or notice. In fact, he flopped down on his seat and looked up at Katsuki with wide knees and a wider smile.

“It’s nice to be a team again,” he pronounced, thumping the tire with his fist. He probably had the strength to flatten the thing all over again doing that. Shoot, he definitely did.

“Yeah, for one week and one week only,” Katsuki replied, picking up the flat and mounting it where the spare had gone. He wasn’t so clean himself anymore either.

“Yeah, I guess,” Izuku said, hoisting himself up. “I’m gonna make the most of it, though.”

The warmth from the rising sun hit Katsuki’s skin and pooled in his belly. “Yeah, yeah, get back in the car. We’ve still got a hike to do.”

Not partners, but still a team.

Whatever that meant.

Dog Canyon, Alamogordo, New Mexico

“Slow down, Kacchan!”

“Not on your life,” Katsuki called back. “Put a little One For All into it if you can’t handle it.”

He didn’t want to slow down while they were still outpacing the sun. The mountain had blocked it out thus far, but the air was already growing warm. Sweat was collecting in Katsuki’s sideburns and dripping down his neck. There’d be no slowing down till they reached the top.

“But Kacchan, the view!”

Katsuki whipped around to face Izuku, but stopped short when he saw over Izuku’s shoulder. Or in any direction, really.

Because all around, were miles and miles of view.

The first thing Katsuki noticed were the many splotches of dark that now marked the ground of the Tularosa Basin. It only took a moment to piece together that they were the shadows of the enormous clouds that dappled the sky. He could see the whole shadows of all those cumulus clouds as they stretched over blocks and blocks of land. Past those, he could make out nearly the entire ring of mountains encasing the basin. If he put his thumb on this part of the map, he could probably see every kilometer of land his finger touched.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“ ‘S not bad.”

“Kacchan.” Izuku nudged him with his shoulder. Katsuki caught a whiff of Izuku’s deodorant, the notes of amber and musk extra sharp in the dry air.

“It’s nice,” Katsuki acquiesced.

“It’s like flying without flying,” Izuku said. “All the view, no quirk needed.”

Even with their quirks, the views flying in Japan were never anything like this. There was always another building, another skyscraper, or at least a tall hill blocking things out. Here, it was endless.

When they made it to the top, the sun had caught up with them. Katsuki had drenched his tank top and drained half his water bottle. From all the way up there, they could make out his rental car as a little dot on the ground. The White Sands National Park was a pale paint stroke swiped across the land to the north. It went on and on, much larger than anything else they could make out besides the mountains.

“Sunscreen?” Izuku offered, slathering himself down again whilst holding out the coconut-scented tube.

“Nah,” Katsuki said, taking out his own and getting to work. He’d probably sweat off the first round he’d put on already.

Katsuki lathered up his arms and legs and even pet his palms through his hair just to keep his scalp from going pink. Izuku had done just about the same and was capping his sunscreen when Katsuki stopped him.

“Idiot, your shirt was practically white already and is practically see-through with all your smelly sweat,” Katsuki berated. “You gotta do underneath.”

“Fine, I’ll do the front,” Izuku agreed, squeezing another dollop into his hand, “but I can’t reach the back.”

“I’ll do the back.”

Katsuki spurt his own sunscreen into his hand and snaked it up Izuku’s shirt until his fingertips reached Izuku’s freckled neck. His shirt really was soaked through with sweat, but Katsuki couldn’t mind, not when they all sweat through their costumes on every patrol, every gym run. This was Izuku at his best, at his strongest.

His skin was so warm, especially his neck and shoulders. Katsuki was already hot from the hike, from the sun, but Izuku’s warmth heated Katsuki through his chest to his cheeks. His sensitive fingertips took in every ripple of muscle as Izuku stretched to cover his whole front with sunblock, bulging and contracting with the same strength Katsuki had seen back in class. The guy was so strong now, it was hard to reconcile him with the dweeb Katsuki had known five years ago at all.

There were still little pink marks on Katsuki’s arms from where Izuku had treated him the day before. And now here he was, more or less returning the favor. And it was okay to be together like this, making contact like this. Good, even. It was only strange because they had so many shared years of not doing this together, but that didn’t mean they shouldn’t have been doing it all along.

“That’s it,” Katsuki said, retracting his hand and wiping away the fresh sweat he’d gotten on his brow. “Time to go back down. I’m ready to train”

“Wait, I wanna take a picture first!” Izuku decided, reaching for his pocket to take out his phone.

“Sending Thumper an update?”

“No, I just want this for me,” Izuku said, facing the camera towards himself. “Get in here, Kacchan.”

“Tch, I don’t do that.”

“C’mon, we’ll probably never be here again,” Izuku insisted. “Don’t you wanna remember?”

“Shut up, my memory is perfect,” Katsuki said, but he slouched into frame anyway, stepping up right next to Izuku so he wouldn’t be small in the background. “Go.”

In the screen, they were both blown out by the sharp sunlight, but when Katsuki looked past that, he could see the sheer drop to the flatlands below and the endless sky above. And in between, Katsuki and Izuku had matching pink cheeks, a little too bright from the sun, and eyes a little too hidden by the sun’s glare and their sweat-heavy bangs.

And for the life of him, Katsuki couldn’t read what was in Izuku’s eyes or his own.

White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico

“Okay, give it a good hit!” Katsuki shouted. “No pussyfooting!”

“Alright, stand back!”

“Don’t tell me to stand back!”

Katsuki was out of range, the same spot that Izuku had been standing on day one as he’d been measuring Katsuki’s explosions. Now Izuku was in the middle of the action, a metal sheet hanging from one of Blackwhip’s tendrils as he readied to throw it.

“Now!” Izuku shouted, flinging the piece of metal before using Fa Jin to leap away.

The explosion that followed from the impact was huge, and it made Katsuki’s eyes dance as he kept his eyes peeled for that sheet of metal, readying himself to duck. But it flew harmlessly out to the side leaving Katsuki blinking as he blindly held on to the sensor with the hand no longer weighed down by a gauntlet.

It had been Izuku’s idea, of course. Nitroglycerin didn’t just react from heat-based ignition, but from any physical impact. That was what made it so volatile. And while Katsuki’s sweat wasn’t exactly the same, it stood to reason that it might react the same way to pressure. Enter: Izuku flinging a sheet of metal at a sand-drenched puddle formed from emptying one of his gauntlets.

And as the explosion dissipated, the evidence was obvious.

Training with Izuku was better than training with anyone else.

Katsuki walked forward, shoes quickly crunching upturned chunks of sand that had been thrown from the hole that had cratered the ground. It was sizable, big enough for Katsuki and Izuku to lie down lengthwise and still not reach the edge. Nearly deep enough to fit coffins for both of them.

“Do you think we’ll have to fill that in?” Izuku asked, jogging up to the scene. He seemed no worse for wear—just as sweaty as Katsuki was, and bare of most sand shrapnel.

“I think you have to.” Katsuki grinned. “Mr. I’m here to regulate your quirk.”

“Fine,” Izuku said, not falling for the teasing for a moment before he was turning back to the scene and mumbling to himself. “What’s the best way to go about this? Probably more of the sand will go in the hole than out with Air Force, but it’s not especially effective. Ah, okay, I got it.”

Katsuki walked back, grabbing his gauntlet to reattach and begin to refill it when Izuku released a few long tendrils of Blackwhip. His only support materials were his gloves, and the strands grew out of the wrists, stretching out away from each other like pinwheels. Then, he lowered them to the ground, and began pushing them like snowplows back toward the hole. It didn’t take too long for the sand to build up higher than the tendrils, spilling out behind, but Izuku just released more to contain all of it that he could, scooping it back into the hole.

It was nothing like how the ground had been before the explosion, even with Izuku’s attempts to tamp it down with his shoes, but it was no longer an enormous hole by the time he was done with it. And he turned back to Katsuki, pleased as punch.

“Now we just need to think about applications! I think I’d like to try it again with Air Force to see if I can make the explosion from a distance. That way, if there’s time to plant the nitro beforehand, we could pull off an explosion from an even longer range than you can currently. Oh gosh, we really should just look up all the practical uses for nitroglycerin as an explosive and see which apply to us. Too bad we can’t use our phones out here, ‘cause I’d really like to look it up, but I guess we can just look it up for tomorrow—”

“Deku.”

Izuku blinked up. “Kacchan?”

Who else talked that much? Who else had so much to say that was all so interesting and relevant and fresh? It was like he’d spent the last year in silence and just heard the crackle of the radio coming back on and it was almost too much for his lonely ears.

“Let’s do this again.”

Izuku cocked his head. “Well, yeah, we can just spar a little while you refill your gaunt—”

“No, I mean back home,” Katsuki clarified. “We should be sparring and stuff. Training together. Again.”

Izuku’s eyes lit up and it squeezed Katsuki’s stomach. Like he’d offered more than he thought he had. Like he’d promised something maybe he wasn’t ready to. “I’d love that, Kacchan!”

“It’s not a big deal.” Katsuki shrugged. “And if you don’t bring your A-game, I’m renegging.”

Izuku clenched his fist and tugged it towards his chest. “Nothing to worry about there.”

Katsuki wasn’t worried. But if he wasn’t worried, then what was that fluttering in his stomach?

“Whatever,” Katsuki said, putting his gauntlet back on. “My turn this time.”

Route US-70, Otero County, New Mexico

Katsuki’s hands hurt. Enough so that, after hauling their shit back to the car, Katsuki had tossed Izuku the keys, claiming that he needed to learn how to drive better if he wanted to be useful. But really, just the idea of gripping the steering wheel made his joints ache.

Keeping up training like this would be a challenge. He had physical therapy exercises for strengthening and stretching his hands and wrists, but overuse and misuse weren’t easy to come back from. But Katsuki wouldn’t have traveled to this scorched plain if not for this opportunity and so why would he waste it piddling around, waiting for his hands to cooperate? It wasn’t like there wouldn’t be time to rest at home. He could probably challenge himself to take down his next five villains fully quirkless, make things a little interesting. Izuku would probably go wild for that.

But now he just needed to leave the damn Missile Range.

“Just turn! That car is dozens of meters away!”

“But it’s going so fast!”

They’d been sitting at the turn off of the base and onto the main road for only a few minutes, but it seemed like forever to Katsuki. He was worn out, dehydrated, hungry, and furthermore, only a couple cars had passed them by, but no matter how far away they were, Izuku wouldn’t turn while one was in sight. And in this land, sight went pretty far.

“Now!” Katsuki shouted as soon as the last car passed them, and Izuku yelled as he spun the wheel and hit the gas.

Katsuki clung to the door’s handle, plastering his back against the seat as the car nearly fishtailed in its effort to make a left turn. Once again, Katsuki was reminded that SUV’s rolled.

“If we end up in the ditch, I’m burying you in it!” Katsuki howled as Izuku spun the wheel the other way in an effort to straighten out in the lane.

Somehow, despite this country being as flat as Izuku’s humor, the road managed to have ditches on both sides, just before the wire fencing that was supposedly enough to keep anyone who wanted to offroad off. Though they’d learned just the other day that that last part was as wishful as a mirage.

“I got it, I got it!” Izuku cried, finding the lines and fitting the enormous car between them.

“You better, or you’ll remember what I said about dragging this tin can back to Texas yourself.”

“I got it,” Izuku huffed and, so long as there wasn’t another left turn, he probably did.

Katsuki watched as Izuku’s hands relaxed slightly on the wheel, clearly having an easier time than he’d had up the winding mountain the other day. The skin tone around his scars evened out and Katsuki had to look closer to see them. Izuku’s hands were more visibly bruised than Katsuki’s were, and it was possible that they hurt just as much behind the wheel now as Katsuki’s would. It would be just like Izuku not to say anything, to be happy to spare Katsuki the pain and take it himself.

“Hey, idiot,” Katsuki said. “Do your hands hurt?”

“Hmm?” Izuku’s eyes darted quickly over to Katsuki before quickly minding his mirrors and then the road in front of him again. “No, not usually. Every once in a while.”

“Well, you should say when they do,” Katsuki said. “I could do the same shit you did.”

“A massage?”

“Yeah, that.”

Izuku smiled. From the side, it made his cheek look extra round and freckled. “Okay, Kacchan.”

The air conditioning was finally cooling a bit of the sweat off of Katsuki’s skin. Honestly, if the sand didn’t ruin this rental car, then the layers of sweat in the front seat for Izuku’s and Katsuki’s backs would force the rental company to retire the car. The desert was unforgiving.

They’d probably gotten burned again too. Despite Katsuki’s best efforts, the skin on the tops of his ears and shoulders just felt a little too tight, too warm, even with the air conditioning. He’d have to bathe in aloe back at the motel. The motel, which—

“Where’re you going?” Katsuki asked when Izuku missed the turn off for their motel. “I said turn left—I know you’re not that bad.”

“We’re going to the Mexican place!” Izuku answered, turning into a parking lot just a couple intersections later. “After all that training, I’m starving.”

It was possible that they were both a bit too sweaty and stinky to be allowed into a restaurant, and Katsuki could easily demand they go home to shower off before they did anything else. But, like it or not, Katsuki was hungry, and certainly couldn’t subsist off of the vending machine and horror breakfasts at the motel.

“Fine,” Katsuki said as Izuku managed to find a shady spot to park in, and do a decent job of it. “Let’s see what this is all about.”

When they were seated at their table, it became clear that it was mainly about one thing: chiles.

“Red or green?”

Katsuki stared blankly at the waitress, who was smiling, though perhaps equally blank. Before Katsuki’s eyes could burn holes through the woman, Izuku asked, “Um, what exactly? Is red or green?”

“The salsa,” the woman spoke with a lilting accent. “Every dish comes with red or green chile or Christmas for both.”

“Which is spicier?” Izuku asked.

“The green.”

“I’ll take that,” Katsuki said, stepping in before Izuku could flat out order for him.

Izuku then placed his order, going with Christmas, probably just because the damn nerd was curious enough to want to try both, and then their menus were taken and they waited.

Waited alone. With no mountain to climb, no training to do, no villain to defeat.

Sitting across from each other. At a table for two. With nothing to do but look at each other.

Izuku took a chip from the basket in the center of the table, and the crunch was ear-shatteringly loud.

This was what Tap ‘n Go and Water Foul had been talking about. This quiet side was the stuff that made a life. But if it was that important, if it was that universal, then why did Katsuki have to think so hard to do it? He was the best at so many challenging things, why should this be the thing that tripped him up?

“We’re gonna have to train,” Katsuki decided, taking a chip of his own and dipping it in the table salsa. Medium spicy at best.

“Yeah?” Izuku said through his chip. “Didn’t we just decide that?”

“No, at this shit,” Katsuki said, unscrewing the wooden cap of the table hot sauce. He drizzled a bit of it on a chip and ate it like that. Not bad. Improvement. “Doing nothing.”

“Oh,” Izuku mused. “Yeah. Well. We can definitely study. I guess we can watch TV and see what the characters do. Plus, watching TV is what a lot of people do when they’re not working, so it’s kind of a two-for-one.”

“I don’t wanna study the fake drama that dumbass TV characters get into,” Katsuki retorted. “The second my life becomes like a k-drama, you’ll be very busy with being a hero, because that’s my villain origin story.”

Izuku laughed. “Well, that would solve my problem at least!”

Katsuki scoffed. “Idiot.”

It was clear Katsuki would have to do the planning. Izuku had always been good at following his lead—too good. In fact, if he was honest, Izuku would be the one to carry it over the finish line after Katsuki laid the groundwork. Katsuki just had to figure out what that shit was.

He was given a reprieve when the sound of sizzling came from around the corner, and two hot plates appeared in front of them.

“Chile relleno? Chicken enchilada?”

Well, sure enough. The chile was delicious.

#anjum writes #bkdk #bakudeku #dkbk #dekubaku #bkdkbk #bakudekubaku #dkbkdk #dekubakudeku #katsudeku #ktdk

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