Chapter Text
Careful, Izuku thinks. He can be careful. Right? Oh no. No! No. He can be careful.
Starting right here and right now by not visibly stiffening. He wants to, because he's just been entrusted with what feels like a gleaming and beautiful handful of spun glass. Only the slightest wrong point of pressure and all he'll have is a handful of needle-sharp shards.
And Izuku knows there's no way Kacchan would hesitate at all to take any hesitation as a rejection before it has a chance to get worse.
"I do like working with you," Izuku begins, as gently as he can. "And I consider you my friend."
"Are we friends?" Kacchan asks. He sounds almost curious, deep under his tightly re-leashed wariness.
"I think so, but it takes two. Are we?"
Kacchan thinks. With each second longer, something starts to curdle in Izuku's stomach. He's drafting up potential mitigations that will preserve both their prides when Kacchan finally speaks.
"I don't know," Kacchan says. "I never thought about it."
Izuku swallows and tries to smile. "That's all right, Bakugou-san–"
"Sure," Kacchan interrupts.
"Eh?"
"Sure," he repeats. "We're friends."
It feels incredible, until the doubt built in his stomach roils. That feeling that only ever goes dormant and never away that Izuku's only being brought equal to Kacchan like this because Kacchan's been pulled so far down.
Because Kacchan is incredible, and Izuku is ultimately, well.
(a hand on his jaw. "inferior genetics.")
"That was fast," Izuku starts cautiously.
"I'm not going to leave you hanging like that," Kacchan says, offended. "How shitty do you think I am, Deku?"
"Bakugou-san, if you answered because you feel like you–"
"Shut up," Kacchan snaps. "You want me to masturbate your fucking ego on why you're my friend it starts at five thousand dollars."
Izuku blinks for a long moment. "You've really raised your prices recently, Bakugou-san."
"You have accrued so much interest," Kacchan says crabbily, throwing himself back into his pile of supportive pillows. "Whatever. We're friends. Get over it. Ugh, your face," he says, the words thick with with his disgust. He firmly pulls his knees back up to hide back behind the barrier of his tablet.
Izuku's first and admittedly somewhat delirious instinct is to immediately send a mass text to his whole team and also his mother something along the general lines of "kacchan said we're friends!!! i'm friends with kacchan!!!".
In his maturity, however, he can recognize that would be perhaps the fastest path to having to then send an immediate retraction that Bakugou-san has informed him they are no longer friends. Thus, Izuku abstains. It takes some effort.
Kacchan peeks out from the side of his tablet before he ducks right back behind it with a huff. "You look like you unlocked a character from one of your stupid phone games, you fucking nerd," Kacchan grouses.
Izuku considers telling Kacchan that if so, Kacchan is surely his six-star special event SSR rare. He really is riding high if he's even in the state where he considers THAT a good idea.
"I'm just happy," Izuku says instead, because it's also true.
"Well you look gross," Kacchan insists, though he refuses to look up again to see.
"That doesn't make me less happy, Bakugou-san," Izuku hums. Kacchan scoffs in his feigned disgust.
It's a few moments after, Izuku still floating on his success, that Kacchan speaks. He's still behind his tablet, but the piercing emphasis in his quiet words sets Izuku back to immediate alert.
"I'm not gonna change shit about me," Kacchan says stolidly. "Not for you."
Izuku considers how he can stay true to himself and expand that for Kacchan.
"I'd- I've always considered the things I'd like you to change to be for your own sake, foremost," he says, his words careful.
"How do you manage to be humble when you're so fucking arrogant," Kacchan huffs out in a single, frustrated breath.
"It's not-" Izuku flushes. But if they're going to be real, proper friends, they'll need a bond that can withstand a little direct engagement, sometimes. "I'm not saying I know best, I'm just saying there are areas where I know more than you."
"Motherfucker there are books," Kacchan growls. Izuku can tell this is simply his engagement, not his lead-up to taking a kill.
"You could stand to be a little friendlier to others, especially in our office," Izuku responds levelly. (uraraka's voice echoes. "the rest of us have really tried, but he doesn't talk to us. he just talks back.") "Really talk to them. Some things can only get better with practice."
"What's there to even fucking talk about?" Kacchan grouses up at the ceiling.
"I don't know," Izuku says, "Common ground?"
"On what, how much you've annoyed us lately?"
"They've probably got some real anecdotes at this point," Izuku concedes ruefully.
"Really convincing me of your friendship expertise going forward, Deku." Kacchan's delivery is desert dry.
"We're all still friends, even when we annoy each other," Izuku insists. "That's just necessary to a lasting friendship."
"Thank fuck for us, then," Kacchan says.
"Definitely," Izuku replies. Before Kacchan gets too smug about it, he adds "For the both of us."
Kacchan rears to finally look at him, mouth twisted in affront. Izuku regards him serenely, secure in the knowledge that Kacchan can't shoot back without first acknowledging Izuku's made a hit.
"They're all good people, Bakugou-san," Izuku continues softly. "Just as much as- (-you are-) "-I am," Izuku finishes.
"M'not gonna change shit for them, either," Kacchan says. He's risen enough to watch Izuku's face when he says it."
"I'm not saying you have to get along with them, Bakugou-san," Izuku assures. "But I'd like you to try."
Kacchan leans back, shifting his weight. "I think I might be friends with your website manager," he says consideringly.
"Eh? Jirou-san?" Izuku asks, surprised. He knows her cordially, but mostly that amounts to remembering her distinct fashion sense and impressive gauges and that she's quite good at the job. As she can work remotely, she only ever comes to the office itself on occasion.
"I dunno," Kacchan says, with a shrug that's intended to look bored. "We talk. I went to one of her shows."
"Her shows?" Izuku asks, mystified.
Kacchan doesn't seem to realize Izuku doesn't even know what kind of show she possibly could have performed. It makes him distinctly self-conscious about how little he knows about an employee from the organization he (at least nominally) inherited.
Kacchan shrugs again. "It was close by. They're only scoring the dives right now."
"They are?" Izuku asks, in again the search of any sort of context or solid ground.
"They could go somewhere, Deku," Kacchan says, almost defensively. "They're just underground, it's not like they're bad."
Izuku is both personally discouraged by the fact Kacchan would feel the need to be defensive to him about it and broadly encouraged that Kacchan's found something not vital to him he still values enough to defend.
"They- no!! I'm glad, Bakugou-san, I'm really glad for you. I guess I just didn't expect it. You never said."
"Did it seriously never occur to you this whole time that I have my own life," Kacchan summarizes unerringly with a thoroughly judgmental raise of his eyebrow to punctuate.
"It-" Izuku feels himself floundering. "I- Uraraka-san said–"
"Oh, well if it comes from the puffball," Kacchan drawls, settling back. "No better expert."
"I just didn't know," Izuku says somewhat helplessly.
Kacchan shifts his entire attention back to his tablet so suddenly and completely Izuku's almost surprised he didn't hear the snap. "I said I don't know, Deku," Kacchan stresses. "I said maybe. Ask her."
"Do you want to be friends with her?" Izuku asks before he can help himself and arrange into something less direct.
Then he has to hold his breath through Kacchan's long, contemplative silence.
"Why do you want to be friends with me?" Kacchan finally asks.
"You're amazing," spills out of Izuku immediately, with the sort of relief of a finally opened valve. He's only ever had more and more things he wishes he could tell Kacchan about himself. "You're so-- immediate, every time, in a way no one else even comes close. And you're the sharpest person I've ever met, in every way. You're always moving forward and you push me forward with you even just when I'm following behind. Meeting you in person, after all those years, was-- just incredible, more than I'd ever imagined. But more than that, you've changed my world, Bakugou-san. The way you see things is so different from me and so interesting every time–"
"Fucking- stop. fuck's sake, I used to charge johns for blowing me," Kacchan interrupts harshly. It doesn't come off as the dry he was aiming for, when it sounds more parched and the words crack in his throat. He looks like he's been punched in the stomach.
Izuku stops and tries to think of a way to say it again, this time in Kacchan's language. "I don't mind paying off some interest there, Bakugou-san," Izuku says. "I suppose what I mean most is- you've earned that. More than that, you've earned that just as who you are, not just from how this has all-" Izuku can only wave towards his evidence board and hope the meaning reads true.
"You think she'll-" Kacchan says suddenly, and cuts off just as sudden.
"I think the start to any good friendship is taking the risk," Izuku says. "Not... trying to change yourself to fit them perfectly. Even if everything else fits, there'll always be something about you they'll find- trying, I guess."
Kacchan swallows. He doesn't sound any less gruff when when he says "Ladies and gentlemen, your One for All–"
Izuku heads off that redirection as gently as he can. "Making a friendship means that you both have to take part. If it can't withstand that, well, it can't withstand that. People are different.
"But you both have to take the risk, Bakugou-san," Izuku finishes. "You shouldn't just leave it up to her, not if it's something you want, too."
But what if she says no rings through the air, though Kacchan has no giveaway Izuku could reliably identify.
Izuku answers anyway. "There's no friendship that starts without any effort at all. If you try and it doesn't work- well, that's risk. Not loss. We learn from it and we try again."
"All right," Kacchan says.
He pulls out his phone.
Izuku pauses. "Um, are you…?"
"Texting her," Kacchan says as his thumbs tap rapidly on the screen. "I'm asking."
"That's- very direct," Izuku says.
Kacchan shrugs one shoulder distractedly. "She doesn't fuck around."
He presses send with a final tap so hard it's audible and then sets his phone to the side.
He's clearly nervous, but he's Kacchan-nervous. Izuku can practically see the air simmering around him as he radiates what Izuku's only been able to summarize as "fuck off vibes".
Izuku twiddles his fingers and tries to think of something to say that isn't just a slightly petulant you never text ME first.
(but they're friends, aren't they?)
"You never text me first," Izuku says, slightly petulant.
"Because whenever I tried you sent me back a fucking essay, shitnerd," Kacchan dismisses easily, attention returned to the tablet re-migrated to his lap. "I'm not doing your damn book report every time."
That's... a fair point. "Sorry," Izuku offers sheepishly. "I get excited."
"Yes, Deku," Kacchan says with a glance up and a lopsided smirk. "I could tell."
Kacchan's phone vibrates once. Both Izuku and Kacchan startle at it.
Kacchan meets his eyes for a moment. It's one of those rare glimpses past his defenses when he's vulnerable. He's in a position where he doesn't know most everything already. It's not one he finds himself in often very much by his own design.
Kacchan has been very, very careful over the years to never take risks on what matters.
Izuku meets Kacchan's eyes back steadily and nods to him once. Not matter what happens, he's here.
Kacchan intakes a sharp breath and unlocks his phone.
Kacchan looks down, and it takes everything in Izuku to not crowd in and try reading over his shoulder. Enough so Izuku doesn't have anything left to hold in the breathless "...Well?" that bubbles out of him.
"Yeah," Kacchan says. "We're good."
Izuku can feel himself buzzing in his chair excitedly from the rush of excess energy in his vicarious relief and following exhilaration. He's simply too thrilled to care. "And? What'd she say?"
Kacchan gives him a flat look. "She said 'yeah, we're good'," he repeats.
"–and that's it?"
"What'd I say? She doesn't fuck around," Kacchan says, staring down at his phone. Under it all, he's very clearly just as pleased.
"Still! I'm so happy for you!"
Kacchan sets his phone back on the table while rolling his eyes disdainfully. "What, for being a grown-ass adult with two whole friends?"
"For taking the risk," Izuku replies. "You haven't had a reason to try for a long time, Bakugou-san. Taking your time with it now is nothing to be- nothing to be bothered about," he hastily amends halfway through. 'Ashamed' is not a word he thinks will go over well with Kacchan, no matter the provided context.
"I wasn't fucking bothered," Kacchan grouches at his lap.
"Right, you shouldn't be," Izuku assures.
"Whatever." Kacchan looks away. "All right. Me and her. You and me. We're friends."
"We're friends," Izuku agrees giddily.
"Your face," Kacchan says, but the disgust is almost fond. "Ugh. Whatever. Get back to work, you utterly unbearable puddle of sap."
Izuku does. He still doesn't stop smiling.