I know a lot of people don’t like the idea of Katsuki calling Izuku “Deku” even after they’ve made up or when they are in a hypothetical relationship. Even though Izuku has technically reclaimed the name, it makes sense to me why some people don’t like it.
This name, even as Izuku has reclaimed it, stands for years of bullying and the notion that he was useless which followed him for most of his life. By becoming a hero, Izuku proves the nickname, Katsuki, his mom, his teachers and everyone else in his life pre-OFA wrong. He is NOT useless BUT the nickname still stands as a reminder that he can do anything and to show us that Izuku doesn’t forget where he came from. “Deku” is the emotional baggage that he carried for all of his life and which made him who he is.
So, yeah I get why people don’t want Katsuki, who gave him that nickname as an insult, to keep calling him that, even without the insulting meaning. However I have some thoughts.
“Deku” is supposed to be insulting, to remind Izuku that he is useless and inconsequential, despite him being clearly important enough for Katsuki to still go out of his way to bully him. We’ve all noticed this. How Katsuki still gravitates towards Izuku and cares about what he does despite belittling his entire existence for like 10 years.
However I think that “Deku” is a great symbol of how Katsuki feels about Izuku because it is absolutely unique.
1) If Izuku really was inconsequential in Bakugou’s life story, he could have just called him “extra”. He does this to everyone all the time. But Deku is not an extra, he exists enough to deserve a mean nickname.
2) Other characters also graduate from “extra” to a nickname during the manga: Half and Half, Shitty Hair, Round Face, Dunceface (and I forget which ones are canon and fanon but I think those are the canon English ones). However, most of these are a comment on these characters’ physical appearance. Izuku’s nickname is NOT based on his appearance which sets him aside immediately.
3) Not only is Izuku not “brocoli hair” or “freckles”, it required effort to find. It’s not an easy jab at his hair, it’s fully fledged insult hitting right where it hurts. It’s even a pun. Compared to the other’s nicknames, “Deku” is more evolved, it has history, just like their relationship: it’s complex and painful.
4) It’s pretty clear that Katsuki knows his classmates names but chooses to pretend like he doesn’t for reasons (”teen angst bullshit” to quote Heathers). Contrary to the other’s nicknames, “Deku” is not anonymizing. It’s literally based on his first name.
In conclusion, “Deku” is a great metaphor for the way Katsuki sees Izuku. Even as he hates him, he hold significant power over him. Deku is his ultimate rival. He is the only non-extra in his life. (For now. As Katsuki matures, he starts calling the others by their names which is, you know, progress however slow it may be.)
In return, I think “Kacchan” is the metaphoric hand that Izuku has been extending all theses years.
It’s pretty clearly a “I still see you as a childhood friend” thing on Izuku’s part. No matter how much he might dislike Katsuki at a given time, he always remembers wanting to be friends with him. All he wants from Katsuki is recognition and respect and he clings to that.
HOWEVER, and that’s what’s kinda funny to me, can you imagine how infuriating this name must be for Katsuki. Like, yea sure, he might be used to it to a certain degree, but if you think about it this nickname is kinda condescending.
Think about how Oikawa call everyone “-chan”, especially “Tobio-chan” and “chibi-chan” but “Iwa-chan” as well. It’s meant to be playful and clearly a little mocking as well. It’s smug.
So imagine how it must have felt for Katsuki, who already felt like Izuku was looking down on him, to be called “lil’ Katsu” in front of everyone for YEARS.
So yeah, it’s just like Izuku extending his hand to Katsuki. It comes form a good place but Katsuki sees it as infantilizing and condescending.
Anyway, make your own conclusions, I’m going to bed.
just like how izuku never sees the soft longing gazes that katsuki gives to him, katsuki never sees the sharp possessive stares that izuku gives whenever anyone got too close to him
Midoriya starting the series breaking all his bones every time he uses his power while trying to reach his goal (Bakugou) vs Bakugou ending the series tearing his body apart every time he uses his power in an attempt to reach his goal (Midoriya)
Katsuki counts his steps as they echo against the cobblestone that paves the way to a familiar destination. He takes this trek every evening, to the centuries-old cathedral in the millennia-old city. It’s become something of a ritual now, the only ritual left that he’s kept in his entire existence—the length of eternity.
Katsuki waves his hand over the entrance of the cathedral and he hears the click of the doors unlocking for him, and him alone. The doors creak loudly as they allow entry to him. Despite his banishment from heaven, he was still a child of God, and no house of his Father’s would deny entry to him. The locks on the doors click behind him as he enters the cathedral and his steps echo out across the wide space and high ceilings. He makes the familiar path toward the back of the cathedral where a great gold-encrusted glass encasement sits covered in every gem imaginable. Katsuki walks up to the glass and places his hand on it. His ever-harsh features soften as a smile takes over his face.
“Hello, Deku,” he says to the emerald-covered bones trapped within.
Katsuki looks at war-torn fields scanning for his charge. There is gore and stench as far as the eye can see and he sighs in disgust. Of course, now would be the time his father would choose a prophet. He hated coming down to the mortal plane. How his father loved man so much despite their endless sin and depravity, he had no idea. And yet, it was not for him to understand his father but to enact his will. Katsuki was an excellent angel and an obedient son, despite his constant bickering.
He senses the soul his father aims to lay claim to and flies over to him. The man lies face down in a puddle of blood, whether it’s his own or others from the battle, Katsuki has no idea. Katsuki lands and walks over to the man, grumbling about the detritus he walks through as he kneels next to his mark. Katsuki flips the man over and he feels his heart stop for a moment. Katsuki doesn’t understand the buzzing feeling that starts in his gut and works its way up to his chest, but what he does know, is that this man is unlike any other he had ever witnessed. His hair is deep and lush like the forests surrounding the fields upon which he stands. His face is round and freckled, almost borderline cherubic. His body is strong, tanned and scarred; the man had not lived an easy life. Most of all though, is the quality of the man’s soul he can feel where he touches him.
He heals the man as much as he can manage before lifting him up and asking where his home is. The man visualizes it in his mind, too far gone to speak. Katsuki takes them there.
_________
Katsuki was charged with simply delivering his father's commands and returning. The prophet—Deku, as Katsuki has taken to calling him—is something the angel has become fond of. He cannot describe it but it pains him to be away. He initially dropped the man off at his home, declared his actions a miracle and intervention from God and delivered upon the prophet his first charge—to protect the faithful. He immediately returned to his father, but a dread, unlike anything he had experienced wormed its way into his soul. When he came to deliver his next charge, as soon as he laid eyes on the mortal, his chest eased. It took a few instances like this before the angel decided that he will simply stay at the human's side.
The angel discovered loneliness.
_________
“What’s God like, Kacchan?” the man asks one day as they sit around a fire and Deku eats his dinner.
Katsuki looks up towards the heavens. He chucks a rock as he thinks of a way to describe his father. The stars twinkle and the heavens weave their way between them, proof enough for any mortal that God watches over them. He himself had never met him, only the highest chorus of angels had that privilege.
Eventually, Katsuki settles on the truth. Blunt honesty always seemed to suit him.
“I don’t know,” he sighs as he looks back from the heavens down to wide emerald eyes, a much more pleasant sight.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Never met him.”
“Huh,” Deku says as he wipes his hands of his meal and looks up to the night sky like Katsuki had been not a moment before.
The angel keeps his eyes on the mortal as he gazes upon the heavens.
“Then how do you know he’s real?” Deku asks. Katsuki knows the man is devout and is just curious about it and not actually questioning his father's existence.
Katsuki is silent for a moment before responding.
“I feel him.” He says resolutely. His father is in the air, light and water, in the soil and in the very flames before him.
Izuku looks down from the heavens and down to Katsuki’s eyes. They hold each other for a moment, and the mortal's face flushes as he smiles.
“Me too,” he says.
And Katsuki feels that funny feeling in his chest—
—and realizes that he will fall in more ways than one.
_________
It’s in the quiet moments he comes to know what home is. Heaven never holds a warmth like this, even as he treads through the snow of Deku’s land. He tends to the few animals the man kept and pats the heads of Deku’s dogs as they happily follow him through his routine. It was like time passed slowly here and he wishes it wouldn’t pass at all. He wished that he could stay in this moment of peace forever and that the troubles on the horizon would not come to pass. He knew the future would soon not be kind to Deku. The incoming army of pagans that Deku had been selected to defend God’s children from would not be an easy enemy to defeat.
When he had told Izuku that he was chosen, that he would lead an army of faithful and sacrifice everything, he knew for them he simply looked up at Katsuki and smiled as he spoke softly.
“It would be my honour.”
It struck Katsuki; most would scream and cry at a fate so horrible given to them—by the father of all no less. He defied all of Katsuki’s expectations of man. He possessed a graciousness he had never known, a dedication he had not realized possible, and a gentleness that quietly betrayed love for all, despite origin or creed. He had stared at the angel a moment, got up from the bed Katsuki had placed him in to recover, and asked if he drank tea. Simply content to lay down the rest of his life to his father, more concerned about being a good host for the creature in his home than his own fate.
“That’ll keep us through the winter, I think,” Izuku says, breaking Katsuki out of his reminiscing.
He looks down at the wood he has chopped. A couple of the dogs had been dragging it back to the house with him. Maybe he went a little overboard.
“It sure is handy having you around Kacchan,” the man says as he goes to relieve the dogs of their harnesses.
“I’ll help you stack them against the house,” Izuku looks back at Katsuki and smiles. “I don’t know how I’m going to cope when you’re back to wherever it is you came from.” He sighs and begins to stack the firewood as he said he would.
“Me either…” Katsuki says forlornly as he picks up some wood.
___________
Katsuki lays next to Izuku on his small hay mattress. Moonlight is pouring in through the window and illuminating his dark, full lashes. His view of the man beside him is obscured by his messy hair and Katsuki reaches over tenderly to push it to the side, rubbing the strands with his fingertips as he does so. He releases his hair after a few moments of observing the man in the moonlight. His freckles spread across his bronze skin, numerous and intricate in their patterning. He envied the sun that had kissed the skin as he wished to and left its mark, without retribution or damnation. He’s never known a feeling like this, of yearning, obsession, how the mere thought of this mortal’s existence brought him higher than any of his kind had ever been, and yet the mere thought of losing him brought him deeper than any layer of hell that ever existed.
And losing him was a very real possibility, saints and prophets weren’t known for their long, peaceful lives after all.
The pain in his chest rose to the surface as he watched the man’s peaceful slumber. He knows he’d prepared Izuku for the coming war, and in turn, Izuku had consulted any lords that would hear him and prepared the faithful as much as he could. But still, the outlook was bleak.
Katsuki wanted to have something to hold, a piece of Izuku to remember at the end of all this. When the moment is over and he’s left to face eternity bereft of the thing that finally gave him purpose as opposed to duty.
The thought has the angel’s breath catching and he shocks when he feels wetness caress the plane of his cheek. He lifts his hand up in shock and sweeps his fingertips across his cheeks, when he pulls away the tips of them glisten in the moonlight—proof of the moisture that had collected. His breath catches in his confusion and he feels Deku stir from his slumber at the sound.
“Kacchan?” he asks groggily as the fog of sleep leaves his eyes.
He startles when he notices the angel's condition and concern sweeps over his features.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his rough, scarred hand grasping his cheek in concern.
“I don’t know… what is this?” Katsuki asks.
Deku goes silent for a moment, contemplative, before speaking once more.
“You’ve never cried before?”
Katsuki blinks more of the curious wetness from his eyes and shakes his head.
“What’s happening?” Katsuki repeats and Deku snuggles up closer to him. The man tilts his head up towards him and wipes a tear off of his cheek before tucking a stray tuft of hair behind his ear.
“Us mere mortals do it when we’re in pain. I guess angels aren’t as acquainted with that feeling,” Izuku states as he wraps an arm around Katsuki.
The action brings warmth up to his chest and somehow he finds himself ‘crying’ harder.
“Shh, shh…” Izuku coos as he holds the angel in his arms.
“So what brings you such anguish, oh mighty creature?” Deku asks, his manner of speech teasing in an attempt to lift the angel’s spirits.
Katsuki stops for a moment. He can’t explain… how can he? He doesn’t have the words—the vocabulary. How to explain the pain in his chest when the sunlight bounces off of his eyes, when he laughs as clear and as pleasant as the ring of a windchime, the look on his face when he gazes upon the stars, the thick timber of his voice when he contemplates the meaning of it all, late in the dead of night. Katsuki cannot fathom it at all, how any creature such as he had been born of a mortal mother, raised among mortal men, and still came to be the most precious of all of his father’s creations.
He doesn’t have the words but…
Katsuki lifts his hand up and cradles Deku’s cheek. The angel closes his eyes and lets the mortal feel what he does not possess the means to say. All of it, the need, the worry, the loneliness, and the ultimate soul-consuming warmth of it all.
He hears the man gasp aloud as Katsuki slowly retreats his hand back from his cheek.
Deku’s eyes are wide. They start to shine with the moisture the angel has recently become acquainted with himself and he reaches over to grab the angel's hand and intertwine it with his own.
“But… you’re an angel,” Deku says, his voice quiet and reverent.
Katsuki, again, can’t think of anything to say, so he simply rubs Deku’s hand back and forth with his thumb.
“You’re an angel and you love me…” Izuku says, dumbfounded, his eyes wide and glistening where they stare into Katsuki’s own.
“Oh…” Katsuki says. It’s a soft little exhalation that leaves his lips, a puff of air between them, where they lay nearly intertwined under the wool and fur bedding.
“I love you?” Katsuki confirms, a little dumbfounded.
There it was.
The vocabulary.
Deku giggles as he nods, the gentle and cheerful sound bringing warmth to his chest.
“Yes!” he confirms as he leans forward to press his lips against Katsuki’s. He revels in the feel of them, plush yet chapped, from the dry winter air. His own lips tingle where Deku’s are pressed against him. An odd, curious sensation but so, so lovely.
“Deku—mmf,” Katsuki gasps out, in an attempt to ask what this wonderful action was called but he is cut off when Deku presses his tongue into his parted lips.
It’s warm and hot and slick and it causes a heat he’s never felt to spark at the core of him. He opens his mouth wider and little sounds fall out of him, sighs, whimpers, and groans. Odd, weird little noises, he would think to be embarrassed by them if it weren’t for the same sounds leaking out of Deku. Along with a chorus sung sweeter than any angel had before.
“Kacchan, Kacchan, Kacchan…” The green-haired mortal sighs over and over. If Katsuki never hears any other sound again he will be satisfied.
“Deku…” he gasps out in return. He can’t think of anything else in this moment.
All that matters is Deku. The heat of his skin, his wirey strength where he holds the angel against him, the copper of his skin in contrast to his own, the herbal, musky scent of him, the soft feel of his curls where his hand is tangled within them. He could drown deeper in the sensations and feelings of the most precious creature in all of creation, all that mattered anymore. Katsuki was a heathen and he knew it, now, knew his transgressions and spat in the face of them. Not even the warmth of his father could compare to the heat threatening to burn him to ash. Nothing could compare to the prophet, to this moment, to the time they had spent together.
He feels a hand against the core of him and he audibly moans, his flesh desperate and heated.
“What?” He asks, breaking his mouth away from Deku’s, breathless and gasping. He groans again when the man repeats the motion, more sure and targeted, and he shivers at the feeling.
“Oh, can I show you Kacchan?” Deku gasps out between them, his breath desperate and shattered. Katsuki can’t help but stare at the pink shine of his kiss-slicked lips.
“Show me?” Katsuki repeats dumbly, lost in the revelation of the night, the exploration into new territory.
Deku sighs again as he grasps the angel's cheek and tilts his gaze up forcing him to meet his own. His eyes are lidded as he looks into them. His thumb rubs against his cheekbone before he speaks again.
“Show you how mortals love,” he whispers and brings his thumb down to rub against his bottom lip.
Katsuki nods frantically and thick calloused fingers move to thread into his hair as his mouth is claimed once more.
The heat is back, the sweet sensations clouding his mind until the pressure is back against the core of him. He moans out at the foreign pleasure and Deku groans in response, taking control and deepening the kiss even further. The pressure continues against him until he gasps out, "Please."
He sounds absolutely wrecked and before he can even think to feel embarrassed, thick calloused fingers are frantically tugging apart the laces of his trousers. Then, Deku is dragging the garment down his legs. Katsuki gasps as he feels the cool night air against his heated flesh. His face feels just as heated as the rest of him when Deku parts to stare at his newly exposed groin.
Katsuki recognizes hunger in his eyes when the human stares for a few moments more before leaning into the shell of the angel's ear and whispering, "Your cock's just as pretty as you are, Kacchan."
The slow timber of his voice, the feel of his breath against his sensitive ear, and the lewd statement all feel like a punch to the gut.
"You're going to kill me," Katsuki wheezes out when he feels a rough calloused hand firmly grasp him and tug.
"Only a little," The human replies chuckling before wrapping his plush lips and hot mouth around his cock.
Katsuki loudly groans his hand shooting to green locks and grasping them between his fingers. Deku hums happily as he takes him deeper, his mouth hot and slick. It's like nothing he ever would have thought of before. Humans have found many a purpose for their mouths than just eating and Katsuki, between his broken moans as Deku takes him apart, can't help but wonder what other human ingenuity lies in store for him.
“Ah, Deku, hnngg…” Katsuki groans out, as the prophet laves against him, his tongue working in tandem as he bobs his head up and down.
He moans and groans as Deku works him relentlessly. It feels so good in a way he never could have comprehended before. He tries his best not to pull the green locks of hair trapped in between his fingers, he can’t bear to even think of hurting Deku. Katsuki lets go of the hair and thrusts his hands into the bedding to stop himself from pulling, but Deku makes a noise of dissent, grabs Katuki’s wrist, and places his hand in his hair again.
Katsuki tentatively gives Izuku’s hair a tug and he groans out lasciviously in turn. Katsuki lets out a moan of his own, keeps a tight hand on Deku’s hair while he watches rapturously as the prophet’s plush, slick lips take him deeper and deeper into his mouth. Despite the quiet of the night, there’s so much noise. The wet slurping noise of Deku taking him in as deep as he can, the little mewls that erupt from his throat, muffled by Katsuki’s cock, and Katsuki’s own whimpers falling unbidden from his lips.
Katsuki grasps harshly at green locks when Deku takes him deeper.
“Deku, aah—” He groans out. “Something’s…something’s happening.”
Katsuki continues when a tight pressure in his abdomen coils tighter and tighter. His hips thrust up as he speaks and Deku firmly grasps his hips, pinning them down to the bed as he continues fucking his throat on Katsuki’s cock.
The coil snaps and Katsuki cries out as the feeling overtakes him. He rides the high, completely oblivious of the world for a couple of moments as Deku works him through it until he whines when he starts to feel oversensitive. Deku slides Katsuki’s dick out of his mouth with an obscene slurping noise and smiles proudly up at the angel as he licks his lips.
Katsuki is panting, a puddle of raw nerves underneath the prophet, unable to string along any thought other than holy shit.
“You were so good, Kacchan. So polite,” he says with a smirk on his face as he leans up to press his lips against Katsuki’s. He opens his mouth needily and bitterness sweeps across his tongue as Deku’s tongue teases against his. Katsuki gasps around the taste and hears a slight chuckle from the human pressed against him.
Izuku breaks the kiss and breathily speaks against him. "You want to keep going, angel?" Izuku asks and Katsuki dumbly nods his head, words still evading him.
The prophet leans over their pallet bed to the wooden nightstand beside it and fumbles a moment before coming back with a vial of green-coloured liquid.
"Traded for this last time we were in town," Deku says as he grabs hold of Katsuki’s wrist and turns his palm upward. The blonde angel watches with rapt attention as the thick, slick liquid pours into his palm and pools in the center as he quickly cups it.
"Hold still," Deku commands, pulling his shift up and off his torso.
The angel gasps when the prophet's golden, freckled skin is laid bare before him. Deku's white scars stand in contrast with the tan of his skin and Katsuki's ruby eyes burn as they take in built muscle. He smells like the forest after rain, and deep green hair makes its way down his abdomen to his full and leaking cock.
Katsuki reaches his un-oiled hand forward and caresses his hip bone in awe at the unbelievably mortal beauty before him. Deku shivers at the touch and straddles Katsuki’s waist as he leans forward and nuzzles into Katsuki’s chest. Katsuki watches with rapt attention as Deku grabs his wrist again and leads it down to his ass where he’s lifted it up in the air.
The prophet brings their hands forward to press at the seam of him. Deku’s thick, calloused fingers pressing against the back of his hand and pushing the oiled pads of his fingertips against the ring of muscle. Deku moans and Katsuki imitates the movements the man shows him, rubbing against him. The weight of him atop his chest makes something within him rise again, the whiny, breathy moans that ghost along his heated skin. Katsuki gasps when Deku presses Katsuki’s middle and ring fingers into him. The little gasps and moans continue as the mortal guides him. Katsuki thrusts them in and out like he’s been shown until he feels something within him towards his abdomen that has the man atop him groaning loudly.
“There!” Deku yells out, high and whiny.
Something in Katsuki roars up at the sound; he needs more, he wants.
He presses at the spot and Deku presses his ass against his hand as he cries out again, as if Katsuki’s hand has more to give him. Katsuki questions the thought for a moment until he feels two of Deku’s fingers snake in beside his and press incessantly on that little spot within him. He thrusts their fingers again and again as Deku’s cries grow louder and louder with each passing moment.
“Kacchan please, please,” he gasps out against him as his eyes meet his own.
“Anything, anything I have is yours to take,” Katsuki groans out brokenly.
Deku removes his fingers from his ass and grabs Katsuki’s wrist again so he does the same. The smaller man moans at the emptiness and Katsuki’s ears burn at the lewd slurping noise as they exit. Deku shakes against him for a moment before taking a deep breath and pushing himself up to pin Katsuki’s arms against the pallet bed beneath him.
“I’ll teach you, Kacchan, it’ll be so good. We’ll be so good.”
He squeezes his hands and Kacchan groans at the pressure against his wrists. Izuku releases them. Katsuki keeps them there like he was told as Deku leans back and grabs him with his slicked hand, pouring more of the oil on him. Deku thoroughly spreads it on him before positioning his ass atop his swollen, aching cock.
“Kacchan, look at me,” the green-haired man says. Katsuki tears his gaze away from Deku’s hands and looks towards his wide, emerald eyes. “Don’t look away,” he commands as he slowly lowers himself unto Katsuki’s cock.
“Ohh—” Katsuki grunts out brokenly as he struggles to keep his eyes open. It’s slick and tight and hot. It’s everything he didn’t know he could want and nothing he ever expected to.
He can’t stop his hand from lifting up from the mattress to grab at Deku’s forearms where he has them braced against him.
“Deku!” He cries out when Deku lifts up and grinds his hips back down against him.
Deku grabs his hands and intertwines their fingers, holding them, before pressing back down against the mattress.
Katsuki holds Deku’s gaze as he continues to grind against him. The movement of his hips is slow and he grinds against him when his ass meets his hips. Katsuki feels that moisture on his cheeks again and that now familiar coil tightening at the core of him yet again.
This was something his father would punish him for—will punish him for. No doubt, Katsuki is damned. And yet, he can’t bring himself to care. Thoughts of never knowing the prophet, never loving him and being loved in return, and shown it, in the mortal way as Deku stated, eat at him. Being ignorant of something like this is hell, worse than any punishment his father could levy against him. His still heart has finally started to beat to a rhythm he was unable to hear until red eyes came upon green. Until that moment he’d been ignorant of the symphonies and the beauty of the melody surrounding his father’s children. If all humans even held a portion of the beauty and brilliance of the prophet’s, he had been a fool.
No, falling was worth knowing the beauty of the man whose gaze held his own. An eternity of damnation was worth knowing the mortal Izuku Midoriya, was worth loving him.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Deku whispers, leaning his forehead against his as he bears down on him again. “Stay here with me.”
“I’m here,” Katsuki tilts his lips up and kisses him, “I’m right here.”
“Ahh!” Izuku cries out as Katsuki thrusts up to meet him as he grinds down.
Katsuki continues thrusting up, chasing the pressure at the core of him, the cries falling from Deku’s lips, the tears threatening to fall from the corners of his own eyes.
The pressure rises and rises. He thrusts faster, chasing that now familiar cliff’s edge. He’ll gladly fall.
And fall.
And fall.
Deku’s hands squeeze tight against his as he moans loudly and throws his head back.
“Kacchan!” He cries out as his release covers his stomach.
Katsuki wraps his arms around him and pulls him back down to his chest and chases his own climax with wanton abandon, Deku crying out in his ear, still sensitive from his own.
Katsuki gasps when his orgasm finally finds him, he struggles to find his breath as his cock pumps spurt after spurt of his release into the prophet. He throws his own head back and tries to come back down as his hands wander. Over thick muscle and scarred skin, seeking, needing, feeling. He’s real, this small mortal, seemingly inconsequential and yet demonstrably important. His hands eventually thread through green, curly strands and he plays with them as he returns to himself. Moment by moment.
Deku is laid against his chest as they slowly come back to themselves. His chest heaves, breath by breath, and Deku rises and falls with it. He wishes he could stay like this forever, with the prophet safe against him like this, ear against his heart. Whole and present and ignorant of the fate to befall him.
Katsuki plays with evergreen strands of hair and tries not to weep.
________________
Katsuki waits for the other shoe to drop. But it’s nothing sudden, nothing so simple as that. No dire and prompt invasion; it’s a slow and torturous progression. It’s hours of convincing local leaders, nobles, and kings. It’s months of proving to the faithful the prophets link to divinity, of being chosen. It’s slow, oh so slow, and then, there’s an army at the gates and Katsuki can do nothing but watch as Izuku leads the faithful into war.
Then it’s fast, Katsuki can do nothing but hold on to the man for whom he’s fallen. He can love him with all he’s capable of, everything he never knew he had within him. He can do all of this… but he cannot save this man.
He can only enact his father’s will.
For once in the length of eternity, he envies the humans their freedom.
__________________
It’s another hush evening in the camp and his heated skin is soothed by the cool night air. It’s a nice sensation, the chill of the night and the all-consuming heat wrapped around his back. The smell of him soothes him after the body bliss of their coupling, all strength and musk and heat beside him. He’s alive and breathing despite another precarious battle.
Katsuki closes his eyes and listens to the camp. To the men tending their wounds, the many and numerous prayers to his father, to Deku himself. He tries to focus on the prophet’s breath ghosting against the nape of his neck, on the arm slung across his waist. Alive, so very alive.
Katsuki.
Suddenly, the bustling encampment is so very silent, as the call of the higher choir reaches him.
__________________
When the prophet wakes in the early morning, all that greets him is loose feathers against his pillow.
___________________
He breaks free of his chains and escapes down to the mortal realm. He was at risk of falling, locked up and replaced for his own good. The prophet was to be betrayed and martyred. inspiration for an eternity for the faithful.
He’ll burn for all time if he has to.
He must make it in time.
He falls to the earth, his pure white feathers burning off as he plummets, replaced one by one by dark inky down. It hurts, it hurts like nothing he’s experienced before burning him inside and out but, still, it is a small burden in the face of what is to come.
Katsuki grits his teeth and gains control of his newfound wings and soars to where he can feel the prophet. The chill of the wind where it chafes against his skin serves as nothing but a reminder to be swift. The newfound pain will not deter him.
He has to be there.
____________________
He can see the smoke in the distance and he knows, he just knows. He lands amongst the humans, believer and not, watching on as the pyre the prophet is tied to begins to burn. All eyes are locked on his bruised and dirty face, his emerald eyes focused on the flames making their way up to his feet. His eyes look up again to scan amongst the crowd of people, his followers openly weeping and the pagan army sneering at his imminent suffering. Their eyes catch each other and hold, tears gather at the corners and spill down his cheeks. He smiles. Deku stares at him and smiles, simply happy to see him at the end.
A sob works its way up his throat that only he and the prophet can hear. He can’t let him suffer like this. He feels the blade in his hand before he can even finish the thought as he makes one step and then another toward the pyre. He knows the consequences, knows he will burn like Izuku is now…
Katsuki ignores the burn of the flames against his feet as he steps up unto the pyre. Deku’s still smiling and staring as Katsuki cradles his face with his left hand and swiftly works his blade into his chest with his right. He feels all the breath leave Izuku in a pained wheeze.
“Thank you.”
It’s barely a whisper that leaves the prophet’s chapped lips. Katsuki holds him and watches the light fade from his eyes. He stays with him until the very last second. He tries to fight the scream that wants to tear out of his chest but still, it leaks out of him as he lets go of the prophet to step back from the pyre and watch the thing he loved most in all of existence burn.
He wishes he could burn too, in that very moment, right that second, go as swiftly as his sun had.
And he does, he screams the moment it happens, his father’s favour leaving him. He can no longer enter heaven. He watches as the fire blazes up into the night sky. He watches as it builds higher and higher. He watches it burn all the green in the world. He sits and watches as all faithful and nonbeliever alike leave and the night turns to morning and all that is left in the field is the shell of Katsuki and a pile of ash.
He can no longer go home.
_________________________
Katsuki’s feet echo off of the cobblestone every night. He lives through wars, first fought with sword and then eventually, slowly, with bullets and then humans become able to summon hellfire itself and wipe nations out of existence. Word is sent by pony, then spoken through the wire, and finally through the air itself. The country he is in, the language, and the people, all have changed over time, and still Katsuki comes to the cathedral. He and the emerald bones are the only things that have remained the same over the millennia.
Katsuki comes every evening, bereft of his brothers, bereft of his father and bereft of his love. He has lived alone through the centuries. The occasional coming and going of mortal acquaintances and friends have briefly kept him company throughout the years, but at the end of it all he is alone.
Technology has risen and fallen, and eventually, the people do too. Katsuki hangs around the old dilapidated church, the prophet's bones miraculously untouched. Deku retained his father’s favour even after Katsuki had defied him. He sits alone, next to the jewel-encrusted corpse and speaks to them all the while. Even as Katsuki waits for the sun itself to go out, growing hotter and hotter each day. Eventually, it’s so bright he cannot see.
It’s so bright.
He cannot see.
He cannot feel.
_____________________
Katsuki blinks and he’s come to realize he’s reached the end of everything.
He hoped, at least, he’d finally be able to rest. That his father could muster up some mercy for him and lead him to oblivion.
Katsuki opens his eyes and knows, deep down, to the very depths of his core, that he is in the in-between. The ocean between heaven and hell, where the forgotten souls are left to rot. He feels tears well up in his eyes. Was his crime so great that he could not even feel the flames of hell? He was forced to endure eternity alone, always alone. He had suffered hadn’t he, did he not survive his punishment? His father had all of creation’s forgiveness for his mortal children, did he not have any for him?
He feels despair overtake him, its black pestilent waters rising up and up and up, like the ocean of the in-between, rising up to drown him. And Katsuki lets them; he’s so, so tired. He floats like that, in the darkness, for what feels like an eternity more when his half-lidded eyes, bleary through the sea, spot a speck of light. It’s faint at first but persistent, it grows and grows. Eventually, all the dark is gone and Katsuki basks in the warmth, a warmth he hasn’t known in so, so long.
Rough, calloused hands encircle his wrists and pull him from the void. Katsuki chokes on it, he coughs out all the despair, he coughs and coughs as a warm hand slowly caresses his back. Eventually, when all of it’s free of him and he feels the hand on him, he understands.
He turns in shock and looks at the soul next to him, and he sees eyes he thought he would never see again. His eyes filled with tears just like his own and a sad smile overcoming the face he’s yearned an eternity to see again.
Listen this casting is from hell and racist af but also it’s hilarious to me that they both played in super-hero related media AND that somehow Izuku is from GOTHAM but Katsuki is from fucking Nickelodeon’s Henri Danger.
