Chapter Text
"My dad called," Kacchan says blankly.
Izuku looks up from his book to where Kacchan's framed in the doorway. He slowly puts the book down as he starts mentally restructuring today's schedule around Kacchan. Then he hastily runs through it again, rearranging it in the best manner to keep Kacchan oblivious to his intentions.
"...What did he say?" Izuku asks, wetting his lips.
Kacchan's silent for a while.
"I don't know," he says eventually. "I didn't pick up.
"It was still the same number." Kacchan sounds worryingly listless. His eyes are directed down at his phone, but they're unfocused. "I guess he kept it."
Kacchan lapses into another long silence before he speaks again, finally looking up.
"There's a message."
He's staring at Izuku like he wants to vivisect him, which in Kacchan's stunted emotional language usually means he wants Izuku to do something about it but doesn't want to actually ask him to do something about it.
Izuku feels a slight relief from the pall that's been pressing down thickly on them both. Kacchan wants to depend on him. Kacchan doesn't want to do this alone. Kacchan won't have to do this alone.
"Should we listen to it?" Izuku asks.
Once the "we" declares his willing involvement, some of the tightness holding Kacchan's body eerily still loosens, too. The tension splinters from the now-shared weight, slowly leaking from them both in careful increments.
"What the fuck else is there to do?" Kacchan says dubiously, looking down at his phone again. "Delete it?"
"We could do that," Izuku says. "That'd be all right, Kacchan."
Kacchan blinks at him owlishly, like seriously considering it hadn't even occurred to him.
You don't owe them anything is what Izuku wants to say, but it would make his own opinion on this matter too clear. He shuffles it into something more indirect. "There's nothing that you owe them."
Izuku himself can already feel his own hands itching from the urge to file a no contact restraining order. But it's not his role and it's not his place to influence Kacchan on something like this. Not one way or the other. Izuku's role is to support Kacchan through it, wherever Kacchan leads.
"I guess," is all Kacchan has to say. Then he leaves.
Izuku gives Kacchan five minutes before he gets up to follow.
They don't talk any more about it, that night.
Kacchan tends to process everything but his feelings snap-quick and his feelings over the course of several days, if not several weeks.
(that's if he attempts it at all, and izuku doesn't have to tug-of-war it out of him inch by agonizing inch.)
This time, it takes two days before it first spills over.
"One time I beat the hell out of a john who wouldn't leave off on making me call him "daddy"," Kacchan says evenly. "That's probably issues."
Kacchan's been sitting on their couch and staring into nothing at the wall for a good ten minutes. Izuku's been finding things in the room to pretend to do while he's been stalling and waiting for Kacchan to crack.
Izuku puts the pile of DVDs he'd been mindlessly stacking and re-stacking back down on the shelf. He picks his next words carefully.
"That does sound like issues," Izuku agrees.
(it also just sounds like kacchan, but kacchan and issues come hand in hand, for better and for worse.)
"So what'm I supposed to do?" Kacchan asks the wall.
Izuku pounces on that so fast he actually has to stop himself from vaulting over the back of the couch and physically tackling Kacchan in his eagerness. "Kacchan, therapy really can--"
"I'm not telling some therapist I'm a hooker with daddy issues," Kacchan immediately interrupts, turning so Izuku can see how his face's twisted in disgust. "For fuck's sake, Deku, I have dignity."
It's clearly not about dignity-- it's about shame.
(that's one of those things izuku learned to identify in and articulate through therapy. it really can help.)
But Izuku can already hear the ringing in his ears from even considering a hypothetical attempt to relate what Kacchan felt in any way to the word "shame", let alone a nuanced concept of it. Kacchan and issues come hand in hand, and some of them are just Kacchan and will possibly be part of him forever.
"It takes two people to make them, you know," Izuku says. "Daddy issues," he clarifies, when Kacchan only looks at him quizzically.
"Bullshit, Deku, the whole issue is that my dad isn't in my life," Kacchan says exasperatedly.
"My dad has never been in my life, Kacchan," Izuku says. "And I had daddy issues."
"Had," Kacchan says in thought. "So what'd you do?"
"Therapy, Kacchan," Izuku sighs, tiredly shutting his eyes. "I went to therapy."
Kacchan clearly decides to summarily ignore he's been out-maneuvered. "Don't say "daddy issues" anymore," he commands instead. "Out of your mouth it's like having to watch a toddler try to twerk."
"Then what should I call them, Kacchan?" Izuku asks.
Kacchan shoves himself violently up off the couch. "None of your damn business is what," he says, clipped, and stomps away.
Since he's gotten his pride and his shame tangled up in the wounds he's retreated to lick at, Izuku waits for ten minutes.
"What if he has cancer or something," Kacchan says. He's looking down at the magazine on his lap. He hasn't turned a page since he'd first opened it. "What if she has cancer. That's the shit you call about, right?"
"I can't say, Kacchan. Would you?"
Kacchan catches himself in a flinch before he muscles through it. "But they're-- older. Shit," he says, pushing a hand through his hair. "They're even older, now."
"Does that make a difference?"
"I guess," Kacchan says. "They could die."
Does that make a difference? Izuku feels the question on his tongue and swallows it down.
"They could," Izuku says levelly.
Kacchan gives him a dry look. "Right, 'cuz I'm supposed to believe you don't have an opinion."
"My opinion is that it should be yours," Izuku says, meeting Kacchan's eyes tranquilly. "Because it's your choice."
Kacchan stares at him for a moment, expression inscrutable. "You fucker," he says, yanking Izuku down to his level by a fist bunched in his shirt. Kacchan roughly cards his fingers through Izuku's hair, then uses the position to push his bangs over his eyes before shoving him back to standing.
Then he lets Izuku go and changes the subject. Izuku follows his lead.
"People sent them death threats," Kacchan says, stopping. It's in the middle of their walk, and it's so abruptly Izuku's several steps ahead before he realizes Kacchan's not. "When the trial was everywhere. Because of me."
The chilly winter air gives the words their own physical presence for all of a moment before the vapor of his breath dissipates. "They had to move-- somewhere." Kacchan keeps his eyes locked straight ahead of him. "I just got told they moved."
Izuku replies to the part of that he can actually find an answer to. "Do you want to find out where?"
Kacchan starts walking again, as suddenly as he stopped. Izuku spurs back to movement and has to catch up to Kacchan's new pace, a heavy-stepped march forward.
"Fuck off, Deku, I'll do it," Kacchan says tersely, as if he expects Izuku to force it if Kacchan doesn't.
"You don't have to, Kacchan," Izuku says as he draws even with him. It's what he can say to Kacchan, though Izuku can tell it's starting to annoy him.
(he knows kacchan likes to call him a broken record, but if kacchan started listening to the things izuku says he wouldn't have to tell them to kacchan repeatedly.)
Izuku's deep in the risky territory of letting his own feelings on all this slip out, but he searches for at least something further he can say.
"If it wasn't important enough to them to tell you the first time, well-- they don't find it important."
Kacchan gives him one of those looks that always pierces right to the core of him. "You already know where, don't you."
Izuku sighs. "I do," he admits, and squares off mentally for Kacchan's simmering silence and the upcoming explosion as soon as they're suitably no longer in public.
"That's fine, then," Kacchan turns his head to look away. "If I ever need to know you can just-- tell me then."
Izuku experiences a flip in emotions so total it leaves him dizzy. But that's Kacchan, Izuku thinks dazedly. No matter how many times they try to grab and keep hold of each other, Izuku doesn't think he'll ever be able to fully pin Kacchan down, not for the rest of their lives.
"I will, Kacchan," Izuku promises, with all of his being (--the rest of their lives--) behind it. "If you ask me, I will."
"Mn," is all Kacchan says in reply, but slows his steps back down to match Izuku in the meandering pace they'd started with.
"Everyone always used to say I was exactly like my mother." Kacchan frowns at the cutting board, knife poised but now completely still over the half-sliced cabbage leaves. He's been preparing the side dishes for dinner. Izuku, who's been pretending to read on his tablet while he's actually marveling over Kacchan's complete tactical mastery of his self-declared space in the kitchen (as usual), looks over. Kacchan's not looking back.
"I don't know," Kacchan says, staring down at his still-unmoving hands. "If I had a kid who'd really done all that shit, I don't know if I could love him."
It'd been deep in the public spectacle that was the first trial when it became clear the Bakugous had disavowed all responsibility and disowned their child.
Izuku had gone to his mother, unable to keep his tears in when he asked her if she'd do the same, if she really thought it was him who'd done something so awful. She'd hugged him to her chest, warm and comforting as it'd always been his whole life, and told him she loved him and that she'd always love him, no matter what he did.
That even if she thought he'd done something wrong, even if she thought he was guilty, she'd still love him, and she'd be there for him through whatever his consequences. That even if he had done something awful-- I'd never, Izuku had said, and she had shushed him-- her love for him would never change.
("you'll always be my baby boy, izuku. no matter what happens, no matter what you do, no matter how things for us change, that won't ever change.")
Izuku tries to find a way he can express this without-- making it so clear he has something Kacchan lacks. That Kacchan maybe never had at all.
"That's not something I can understand," he settles on.
"She told me she'd always known," Kacchan says quietly. "That I was a monster."
Izuku can't think of anything he could possibly say to make that better. It just makes him feel more heartache about it all. Then even more so, because Kacchan must feel so much worse.
The only thing he can do is turn off the oven, gently pry Kacchan's nerveless fingers off the kitchen knife, set it aside, and lead his too-empty Kacchan by the hand to their couch so Izuku can curl around him.
Kacchan settles after a moment, wrapping his arms back around Izuku so he can rest his head on one of Izuku's shoulders. He can smell the sharp sting of the onion Kacchan had diced still on his hands, and Izuku doesn't need any further excuse to tear up. He turns his head slowly so he can press a kiss to Kacchan's ear without jarring him.
They stay like that for a long time and don't say anything at all.
Izuku knew the dam in Kacchan was going to break eventually, but as usual he has no warning or time to prepare. Kacchan had been left on his own for at most an hour, but it was enough to get him so deep in his own head he staggers wild-eyed into Izuku's home office and bodily forces him up against the wall.
"He told me he'd kill them. Told me someone else was already out there, and would-- he knew, he knew their work schedules, what damn gym the hag goes to-- went to, fuck-- the alarm code to our-- their, their fucking house. I really thought, if I got out, I didn't know it was just him-- I really, Deku, I thought--"
He's gripped white-knuckled onto Izuku's short shirtsleeves, staring at him with a dogged desperation like he thinks he actually needs to convince Izuku of any of this. "I really thought I had to, I had to do it first, I thought if I didn't, if I only got myself out, he'd--"
"I know, Kacchan," Izuku says. He rubs the sides of Kacchan's arms, his fists still twisted in Izuku's collar.
Interrupting Kacchan when he's in a frenzy risks tipping him to sublimate his haze of distress into concentrated rage, but Izuku just can't stand hearing Kacchan sound like this, pleading to no one he expects to hear him and so entirely buried under it he's completely blanked out that Izuku knows already.
Izuku does know, and in even more detail than this. It had been what Kacchan had told the police, every detail in near-perfect recall, a repetition more and more agitated until it'd become clear to him he was a suspect and he had immediately demanded a lawyer at all of thirteen years old.
Izuku knows interrogators are trained to spot the common hallmarks of a lie: having too much detail, giving the same answers, repeating the story exactly. They didn't know that was just Kacchan, snap-quick at almost everything.
Not when he's in being slowly rocked back and forth in Izuku's arms, his face pressed into Izuku's neck as he's dry-eyed and gasping.
After a moment he tries to wriggle himself out of it. Izuku allows just enough slack so they can see each other and meet each other's eyes.
"Izuku," Kacchan says, (for probably the first time ever but izuku can't spare the thought to confirm it because kacchan needs him here and needs him now) "Can you, will you-- listen to it, and-- tell me?" he looks wretched, the words stopped short between spilling over. "If you'll-- I'll--"
"Of course Kacchan!!" Izuku rushes out before Kacchan can finish that no doubt terrible sentence. It's no problem at all. I'd be happy to do it. I'll always be willing to help you with things like this, whenever you need it. Anything to make you most comfortable. I only ever want to do what's best for you, because I love you is also what Izuku wants to say and absolutely won't. Not with all of Kacchan's defenses shattered like this.
"Please," Kacchan spits. One day, Izuku hopes, he'll finally realize he doesn't ever need to say that, not for this.
"I will, Kacchan," Izuku swears. "I will."
Izuku waits until Kacchan's getting ready for bed to listen to the message, so Kacchan won't have the entire day to chew on it. It's brief and sparse. Izuku doesn't know if that's better or that's worse (or both, because that's kacchan) so prepares himself for both as he slides under the covers and Kacchan turns to face him.
Izuku tells Kacchan the truth. "It was your father. He invited you to contact him-- if Kacchan wants to--" that bit hadn't been in the message, but Izuku's going to keep being that broken record until Kacchan listens to him, "--and gave his contact information if you do so. The only other thing he had to say was that he and your mother are divorced."
Kacchan turns again, this time to lay flat on his back on the bed to stare at the ceiling. "My parents got divorced. Fuck. I didn't even know. Why would I know?"
Kacchan lifts an arm to scrub the back of his fist harshly over his eyes. "Why would I want to know-- why would I possibly ever want to go back--"
Kacchan wouldn't have nearly so much of a problem with his new penchant for crying if he didn't extend it endlessly by fighting it every time. Still, Izuku keeps silent, because as much as he wishes he could give Kacchan the answers he needs, these questions have answers Izuku can't give. Only Kacchan has them.
Kacchan drags himself up against the back of their bed and throws his arm over his face. Izuku shifts over to join them there. "It's because of me, isn't it? Hah, again-- what else could it be? They were-- they always were so in, in love with each other--"
Kacchan cuts himself off with a sharp intake and lifts his forearm from his eyes to stare without focus at the ceiling again. "Were they? Fuck, I can't even remember. I never even thought of them for-- until he--
"Why would I ever look into them after? After they, after th-they," Kacchan furiously scrubs his eyes with the back of his forearm, now. Then he lowers it and sinks his teeth into the muscle with a sudden vicious intensity, hard enough for his canines to break the skin.
(izuku doesn't want to think too deeply about how kacchan's finding physical pain an easier deterrent over facing this emotional one, because kacchan needs him here and needs him now and needs him to stop kacchan from biting himself.)
"They did it first," Kacchan tells him, when Izuku's coaxed his bleeding forearm out of his teeth and tugged it away. "They left me first."
Izuku nods and pushes Kacchan by a gentle grip on the back of his head face-first into Izuku's chest. Kacchan curls his fingers in Izuku's pyjama top. "It's not my fault they-- they did it first."
"I know," Izuku says, desperately trying to not be desperate about it and keep his breaths slow and even in the hopes Kacchan will match him. "None of it was your fault, Kacchan."
"It never was my fault," Kacchan says, the hot then quick-cooled wetness of Kacchan's tears finally spilling over and seeping through the thin material of Izuku's shirt.
"It wasn't," Izuku says. "None of it."
Izuku doesn't stop saying it, even as it makes the first sobs break out, even as it makes Kacchan sob harder every time. He knows by now for Kacchan it's a matter of draining a wound that's no longer numbed over. Something Kacchan had stored away in the deepest parts of him and never intended to take out again, now raw and exposed as it bleeds out in the harsh glare of sunlight.
"You don't owe them anything, Kacchan," Izuku tells him, pressing his face in Kacchan's hair as he shakes through it. "You don't owe them anything."
After it peters out, Izuku gives Kacchan the moment he needs, rising from the bed to fetch an ice pack he makes Kacchan put over his swollen eyes. When they're resettled in bed again and Kacchan's eyes are covered, he speaks.
"M'not gonna answer. I just-- maybe. With my dad-- maybe. But someday. And maybe."
"That's fine," Izuku says.
Kacchan presses the ice pack down over his eyes with his palms. "Is it? He's my dad."
"And he owes you thirteen years of waiting for you to even think about him again. At least," Izuku says. "He doesn't have to forgive you for what you did. He doesn't have to forgive you for not believing you. He doesn't have to forgive you for abandoning you."
Izuku can't keep the anger he has at all of it (--an old, old anger he hadn't realized had only ever been put to a seethe until kacchan got that call--) inside him, not when he's been put through the wringer by having to watch Kacchan put through a worse one.
"I thought you were actually mad about this," Kacchan observes idly, raising the ice pack to look at Izuku. "You kept getting those eyes."
Izuku sighs. "Yes," he admits. There's never any point to trying to hide these things from Kacchan after he's spotted them. "I-- well, I don't really respect your parents."
"I thought I didn't," Kacchan murmurs. "Fuck," he groans, "Fuck. I don't want to think about this anymore."
"Then don't," Izuku says, reaching out to pull Kacchan in closer. "I really mean that, Kacchan. You can never think about it again and that'd still be fine, because you don't owe them anything. You don't. They made their choice, Kacchan. The one who gets to change his mind about that-- if you ever want to-- is you."
Kacchan snickers, butting gently at Izuku's chin with the top of his head. "I can't believe you're lecturing me on being more independent," he says, sharp with his dark amusement.
"I want you to be able to depend on having support, Kacchan," Izuku says fiercely. "That's entirely different."
"...yeah, I guess," Kacchan concedes quietly.
Kacchan shuffles them around until he's halfway draped over Izuku and laying his head on Izuku's chest. It feels cold on his shirt, from the patch of drying tears and the residual chill of the ice pack from Kacchan's skin. Neither of them mind it enough to move.
"Talk to me about something." Kacchan's order is muffled.
It's not the first time he's asked, but it's still a fairly rare occurrence Izuku gets the invitation from Kacchan to do something he's so uniquely skilled at.
"Well, I've been reading up on a new forensic breakthrough in detecting fingerprints that really could change the way to corroborate alibis. The most fingerprints have ever indicated is a presence there previously, not when they were present, but a research scientist recently found that by measuring the natural travel of palmitic acid away from the print ridges you can calculate an estimate--"
Izuku strokes through Kacchan's hair and narrates all the things he's learned today about imaging mass spectrometry until Kacchan sighs softly once and melts into Izuku in the way he only ever relaxes when he's asleep or blissed out.
Izuku keeps petting his hair as he reaches out and turns both their phones off. Then he closes his eyes and follows Kacchan into sleep.