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Kariage will admit, he had some expectations on the kind of person Katsuki was, that first time they met.
Honestly, what would anyone else expect? To be faced with someone who makes an impact just by standing, to feel the energy of someone who knows he's the best; Katsuki's the kind of person you can't ignore, the kind of existence that's too loud to turn your gaze from—in both the good and bad way. It's hard not to form an impression of him, even when you've only met him in passing.
Kariage had figured: it would be better to be this kind of guy's friend, rather than his enemy. And this is proven right, when he encounters Midoriya while at Katsuki's side: he'd been harsh, cruel—even if he didn't typically resort to violence as other bullies would, the fact of the matter was that he did bully Midoriya. Be it in words, or general treatment, none of it was kind.
Yet Kariage stayed by his side, knowing all of that. Even if it meant being seen as some lackey by people who had the critical thinking skills of a toddler, it didn't really matter as much when being by the side of someone strong.
He doesn't know just when it is that his feelings gradually changed.
From seeing Katsuki as someone arrogant with the strength to back it up, just when did he begin to see this person as a true friend?
When was it, that he began to believe:
This person would stay by my side, instead of just passively letting me stick by him, because he considers me a friend.
He’d help me if ever I were in trouble, because that's the kind of guy he is to other people he finds significant.
Bakugou Katsuki, for all his bluster and cruelty, treats his own as genuine friends instead of seeing them as less, as others would. Even if he calls people extras out loud, that's only because he doesn't waste time on people who don't matter to him.
If you do matter, on the other hand...
"Oi."
Kariage blinks out of his thoughts, finding Katsuki giving him an odd look from across the table. He quickly puts on a smile, wiggling his eyebrows when Katsuki scowls at him in turn. "What?" he asks innocently, "I was just thinking about you."
"Ugh, disgusting."
"That's not a nice thing to say to your boyfriend."
“If you wanted nice,” Katsuki huffs, setting aside the drink he’d been sipping from, “you wouldn’t have dated me.”
Kariage grins at him. “You’ve got your own special brand of niceness, Katsuki.”
“Gross.”
Katsuki says as much, but he doesn’t hesitate to bite the fries Kariage holds up to his mouth. The sight of it, and the casualness of Katsuki doing it, makes Kariage laugh—would the Kariage of first year middle school even expect that time would lead them to where they are now?
“What’s so funny?” Katsuki asks. He has one eyebrow raised when he says it, the corners of his lips twitching downward into a frown of confusion.
“Just thinking,” he says. He’s certain he looks fond, the way Katsuki makes a face at him. “About how long it’s been that we’re friends, and now, boyfriends. A younger me would’ve had a heart attack if I knew where the future would lead me.”
“A younger you, huh.”
Kariage smiles at him. “I’m glad you chose me as a friend, then.”
Katsuki smirks back, clearly amused at the sudden sentimentality. “I’m sure you are.”
“Oh, come on...”
“If you wanted sappiness from me, tough,” Katsuki scoffs. “Unlike you, I don’t realize stuff like that this late.”
Kariage shuts his mouth at that. Opens it again, before deciding to refrain from saying anything when he picks up his drink and takes a long, long, long sip.
For a guy who doesn’t like sappiness, his kind of sentimentality is even worse, the way he acts so casually about it. Even going so far as to imply that he’d been happy since the start in choosing him as a friend...
He’s too honest for my heart to take.
Katsuki snickers at him. “You dish it out like that, but can’t take it thrown back at you?” he teases.
“Shut it.”
Ah, really.
Loving Katsuki is easy, but being loved in return…
What a heavy and lovable thing, this unwavering heart of his.
No legitimately. I have a tea table in my room for when friends can come over again. Most of my friends have a key to the back door in my room. I make my friends sweaters and buy things they mention they want. I send handwritten letters in the mail to my friend who lives a block away. I annotate poetry books and give them as gifts when it’s not even a holiday. I keep extra gloves in my purse and jackets in my car.
I’m not trying to be like “ohoho look at me I’m such a good friend”, I’m saying the second I stopped going “I wish I had friends who would invite me to tea parties” and just. hosted the tea parties myself? I still got to do the thing. I still got to see my friends. I still got to be happy with them.
I don’t think it’s about who does it, I think it’s just the genuine act of caring for people, and giving a little light to the environments you’re in.
It’s a lot of energy, I get that. Especially if you’re putting in all this effort, but not getting any back.
But I think that’s the reason no one does it. I mean we’re so worried we’ll start doing all these things and our friends won’t like it or won’t be into it, so we just don’t.
Only last week my friend messaged me, asking if I wanted to go stargazing with her. When I forget about our weekly virtual tea party, another friend called me to ask if I wanted them to host it this week.
I’ve been invited on hikes and picnics and pie making competitions over zoom, and it all sort of started with me going out of my way to be “that friend”.
I genuinely believe that the easiest answer to “how do I get friends like that?” Is to be one. In most cases, everyone else just follows by example, because they aren’t worried they’ll be wasting time and energy anymore.
They are part of the reason A03 is a thing now. Not the whole reason, but part of it.
The Great Purges of 2002 and 2012 are when ff.net got a wild hair up their ass about THINK OF THE CHILDREN and nuked any fic posted on there that was explicit. Thousands upon thousands of nc-17 smutfics were lost.
It’s what led to the creation of alternate hosting sites for smutty fic…AdultFanfiction was the one I went to…but thousands of fics would never be recovered.
Shit like the Great Purges and the Strikethrough of Livejournal eventually led to fans banding together to create A03, which I would have absolutely KILLED for when I was 15.
I love this because I will bet you that persefv has read that bit we are all so inundated with hyperbole and advertising that says that the consumer is somehow in charge of whatever product they are shilling that we all just assumed this was another sales tactic.
THE OTW WAS CREATED BY FANS SO WE’D HAVE AN ARCHIVE THAT WASN’T SUBJECT TO CORPORATE REVIEW.
Nonprofit, so that nobody could ever say, “this isn’t making enough money; it’s getting shut down.” (See: Geocities, Quizilla, Figment, G+.) With lawyers involved and a firm awareness of the legalities of fanfic, so nobody would decide “we’ve gotten a nasty letter from a megacorporation with lawyers, so we’re hiding because we can’t afford to face a lawsuit. (Jedi Hurtaholics, Trevizo’s Millennium site.) With teams, so that an argument between co-mods didn’t result in the destruction of a whole archive. (Gryffindor Tower, Detention.)
AO3 IS OUR SITE.
It is by fans, for fans. Fans do all the coding. All the legal paperwork. All the abuse/tos violation complaints. Fans make all the choices about policies. Fans decide how to run the fundraisers. Fans write the blog posts. All the volunteer staff are fans; all the people who train them are fans. Fans wrangle all the tags.
(And the other OTW projects, too. Fans manage the entries at Fanlore. Fans run the Open Doors project. Fans publish Transformative Works and Cultures.)
EVERYONE WORKING FOR THE OTW LOVES FANDOM. Wants it to survive. Wants it to be awesome for everyone.
(Knows that it can’t be awesome for everyone; some approaches to fandom just clash hard. But they strive to minimize those clashes as much as possible, because they love fandom.)
AO3 is not some company that decided, “we’ll make a site for fanfic and then…” I don’t know what people are thinking is the reason. Money? Data harvesting? Tax shelter? Amusement and pity?
Nope; AO3 was fans saying, “Livejournal sucks; we’re tired of this fucked-up ‘rebuild every three years’ garbage; WE NEED TO OWN THE DAMN SERVERS.”
That’s the “of our own” part of the name. OTW isn’t a “them” running the site “for us.” It’s “us” making places for “us” to share what we love with others of “us.”
I was there for all of that shit, and AO3 is a godsend. If you enjoy or create fanworks, support AO3, donate if you can, and remember why it’s there in the first place!!
“We regularly ask teenage girls to read books in which characters degrade women, expecting them to understand that the book’s other merits outweigh its misogyny. To set such an expectation and not consider its effect on young women is foolish and hypocritical; we rarely expect young men to do the same, and hardy ever expect young white men to read extensively in traditions where their identities aren’t represented or are degraded. We need to reflect on the way the literature we celebrate supports the idea that women who are sexually frustrated create problems for themselves, while men in the same situation create problems for the world. Though the links are subtle, our celebration of a canon of sad white boy literature affects the way we think, and how much tolerance we offer to men like [Alek] Minassian and [Elliot] Rodger.”
— Erin Spampinato, from this article on the correlation between celebrated literary canon and the ‘incel’ culture that has arisen in online spaces (Jun. 2018)
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Bakugou Katsuki has never believed in ghosts in all his life—
But that doesn't do anything to stop ghosts from believing in him anyway.
To be haunted would seem a terrifying ordeal to the average person, or, maybe, a relief to the lonely, but Katsuki is neither of those things. He's never been average, not from childhood up to adolescence, and he's not lonely.
Mostly, he just finds it annoying.
Never mind the fact that it's morbid to be faced with bloodied apparitions, or that it's bizarre to see spirits and gods only spoken of in stories, in temples.
They're so damn noisy, is the thing.
You'd think the dead would be more calm, or gloomy. But no, what Katsuki gets through all the years of his life are noisy little bastards that like to tell him gossip he doesn't even need to know about.
"That Deku kid, he's really intent on following you around, isn't he? I can see him looking at you from up here."
Alright, fine, he'll conceded that they're useful sometimes.
But only sometimes.
"Determined brat," says a grinning fox, supposedly a messenger for Inari, if Katsuki's to believe its words. (He seriously doubts it, though.) "A worthy warrior to follow your lead, I'd say."
Katsuki doesn't bother to answer that. Unlike Deku, he's not up for looking like a crazy bastard who talks to himself, even if he'd technically be talking to spirits.
"It's interesting, though, how he doesn't see us," chirps the bird ("I'm a dove! A messenger of Hachiman, you disrespectful child!" the thing would often say) perched on Katsuki's shoulder. "You'd think he would, when he can meet the spirits of his quirk's predecessors."
Great, it's not like Katsuki needed to know that either.
"Our Katsuki's rather special," says the old hag with a missing arm. ("Lost it in the war before, can't imagine myself having it back even as a spirit," she'd explained, though he didn't ask.) She adds, "And yet, he still thinks he's not strong enough. What a stubborn boy!"
Katsuki clenches his jaw at those words. It's an argument he's had to face over and over, especially once high school began and he had to face his own weaknesses head-on. It's an old argument, but damn if it still doesn't piss him off.
What would a dead person know of his determination to keep getting better, anyway?
"I'm just speaking as a concerned grandma, kid," the old hag says, smiling at him. "You've got that pissed-off look on your face again. Trust me, I know and admire your determination to improve. But seeing as I'm dead and older than you by decades, I can afford to look at you like a dear grandson, okay? I can be worried that you're pushing it."
"'m not," he grumbles.
"Bakugou?"
He clicks his tongue at the sound of Ears' voice. "Nothing," he says. "Deku at 6 o' clock, Glasses comin' in at 11. Y'know what to do."
Jirou gives him a thumbs up from where she's crouched on lower ground.
He grins as he hops away from the branch he'd been hanging off of, making sure to refrain from using his explosions at full-force as he distances himself from Jirou to do her work. They're both gonna need the space, considering how he intends to distract the idiots while she wrecks them.
He's gonna win this one with an absolute victory, like always.
He doesn't need any spirits, or ghosts, or even gods to make that shit happen.
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Katsuki thinks he understands love for the longest time, up until the moment he realizes that he doesn't.
It was easy to understand, he thought. Love is this complex thing that can be both simple and confounding, something that makes people either reckless or more anxious, something that doesn't exist as one thing as it is exists in a variety of forms. People make it out to be this poetic, beautiful thing, when really it's just a set of feelings directed toward oneself or other people contained in one word.
He always had the impression that people who couldn't easily figure out that they were in love with someone without having to consult the internet were dumbasses.
(It's your own head making you feel things. Why the hell would you consult anonymous nobodies to figure your own shit out?)
So it stood to reason that he believed he'd know when he falls in love. Not if, but when—because he saw it as a possibility for himself, even if it seemed like a fanciful thing at the time, something far off into his future when he's more established as a pro hero. He figured it was something he'd know from the get-go, something he could control even when other people liked to make it sound like it was out of their hands—he's Bakugou Katsuki, after all, and no mob character so easily moved to stupidity by sentimentality.
Then he realizes how much it pisses him off to see Yoarashi Inasa's name flashing alerts so often on his phone, how much it pisses him off even more to not see it happen as often as he'd like, and he thinks—
Ah, shit.
He had understood love—in theory, but it hadn't prepared him for the real thing.
Of course, he gets angry. He's pissed off because he didn't live up to his own expectations, ending up just like those nobodies he'd made fun of for not realizing their own feelings from the start.
He ends up calling Yoarashi the exact moment he accepts the reality of his own feelings.
"Bakugou, you called first! Did something exciting happen?!" Yoarashi says, voice at a ridiculous volume as always.
"Shut it," he snaps, not minding the boisterous laughter that follows. Shit, that's already a sign in itself, isn't it? "I need you to meet up with me for lunch. Same place."
"Oh, craving spicy udon, I see! I'm craving udon myself, I'll see you there! I'm glad you called me!!"
"You're the only one with enough guts to handle takin' me on for a spicy udon challenge," Katsuki says, feeling a headache coming on as he realizes just how much these tiny details are adding up to an obvious whole. He rubs at his temple with his free hand, thinking, I already enjoyed spending time with Yoarashi because he could keep up with me. How the hell didn't I realize sooner?
"Is that so! I'm glad my position as your udon rival remains unchallenged!"
"Dumbass," Katsuki huffs. "I'm hangin' up."
"I'll see you later, Bakugou!! Take care on your way!"
"Nn."
He stares down at his phone once the call ends, and breathes out a sigh.
Now, how the hell is he gonna tell Yoarashi?
---------------------------
He decides to wing it, because if there's one thing he's good at, it's strategizing on the fly.
(While part of him wants to make this kinda thing grander, more elaborate than something confessed over bowls of udon, another part of him is more than comfortable to put it out there in a place that's become theirs from repeated visits, at a time when they're just happy to indulge in each other's company.
He can go all-out once his feelings are confirmed to be reciprocated, anyway.)
"Oi, bastard. Since I won again," he says, barely managing to stifle his grin at the flushed and teary-eyed look on Yoarashi's face from eating so much spicy udon, "you gotta do somethin' for me."
"Right!" Yoarashi says, agreeing easily even when Katsuki hasn't said shit yet. Yoarashi's an idiot; Katsuki wonders how his taste even turned out this way. "I'm all ears, Bakugou!! What'll it be this time?"
"Go out with me," he says, making sure to keep his intentions clear as he stares Yoarashi in the eye. "I mean that in the romantic sense."
"Huh!" Yoarashi says, frozen in the middle of wiping at his wet eyes. "You like me too?!"
"...too?"
Yoarashi grins widely at him. Katsuki can't help from squinting at the brightness of his beaming grin; it's no wonder he's not as intimidating as he could be even with his size, with a puppy-ish face like that.
"I like you, Bakugou! I was going to ask you out once I figured out a good plan with Camie-san, but—"
"Why the hell would you tell her that shit?!"
"Because I wanted to make it special!!"
"I don't need somethin' like that!"
"But I want it to be special!!"
"WELL, it's too late for that since I'm asking first!"
If exclamation points could be expressed through a person's face, Yoarashi's expression certainly made a good attempt in communicating them. He says, "Shoot, you're right! I should've planned this out faster!"
"Hah!" he huffs out with a grin, folding his arms over his puffed out chest. "Seein' as I asked you out first, trash that idea of consulting Illusion girl for that stuff! I don't need anyone interfering with our business—we can figure out what we want for our dates on our own."
Yoarashi stares at him with wide, almost-starry eyes at those words, simple and commanding as they were. Katsuki can't deny that he likes feeling this kind of power, knowing that he has the attention of someone so strong—
And now, he can have Yoarashi in the way that he likes, just like that.
His grin widens.
"I don't like any half-assed shit either, so don't think I'm gonna be half-hearted with planning any dates out, Yoarashi."
Yoarashi grins right back. He says, sitting tall in his seat as he pumps a fist to his chest, "Of course! I've never doubted your hot-bloodedness, Bakugou! It's one of the things I love the most about you!"
Katsuki feels a good, almost overwhelming kind of heat spreading through him at the blunt declaration of affection, but doesn't let that sway him or his grin. Even if his realization came a little late considering how deep he'd already gotten with his feelings, he could still call it his victory that he made a move first.
He nods decidedly, wide grin shifting into a smug smirk.
I found out recently that at a time of his life when Tolstoy was in a slump and had stopped writing & earning money, his wife Sophia borrowed money from her mum to start her own publishing office and publish editions of his works—and in order to figure out how publishing worked, she travelled to St Petersburg to ask Anna Dostoyevsky for advice, as Anna had also spent the past 14 years planning the editions of her husband’s work, correcting proofs, placing ads in papers, battling official censors, etc.
It reminded me of this post about women writers supporting each other—so many links between women in history that we never hear about. Someone please write a book about the wives of all the great male writers…
(In previous years Sophia, while giving birth to Tolstoy’s 13 children and raising them and managing his estate (he was a count) pretty much on her own, also wrote the clean copies of all of his manuscripts out of his nearly illegible drafts—the final draft of War and Peace was 3,000 pages and she copied it seven times, correcting spelling and grammar and offering key suggestions and critiques of the plot; for example explaining to him that people would be more interested in the social or romantic plots, the human aspects, than in the minutiae of the battles and war strategy plots. A few months before his death, Tolstoy named a male friend the executor of his literary estate rather than his wife, who had been doing this thankless job since she was 19, and gave to the public domain all the copyrights to his works that Sophia had previously owned (for her publishing company). She wrote in her diary “Now I am cast aside as of no further use, although I am, nevertheless, expected to do impossible things.”)
Also I shouldn’t be surprised (but I am) at just how many “great male writers” read their wife’s (or female relatives’) diaries and drew a lot of inspiration from them, stealing ideas or even sometimes entire sentences / paragraphs / poems out of them. This is such a recurrent pattern. There’s Tolstoy (who read Sophia’s diaries and also asked her, when she was 17, to show him a short story she’d written, gave it back to her the next day saying he’d barely glanced at it, when he actually wrote in his diary “What force of truth and simplicity!” and used the story as the embryo for the Rostov family in War and Peace), but also William Wordsworth who read his sister Dorothy’s journal and drew a lot from it, and F. Scott Fitzgerald of course. When Zelda was still young a magazine editor offered to publish parts of her journals, and her husband (of 5 months!) said he couldn’t allow it because he drew a lot of inspiration from them and planned on using parts of them in his future novels and short stories. There’s also French novelist Raymond Radiguet who stole his female lover’s diary to write his novel The Devil in the Flesh, and was lauded by fellow male writers & critics for his brilliant insights into a woman’s mind. Which had been copy/pasted from this woman’s diary.
[Also, while he didn’t read it until after her death, Henry James’s sister Alice mentions in her diary that he “embedded in his pages many pearls fallen from my lips, which he steals in the most unblushing way, saying, simply, that he knew they had been said by the family, so it did not matter.”]
I really love reading women’s journals, and when they were married to a famous writer, you wouldn’t believe how often the person who edited them mentions in the introduction “if some passages sound familiar it’s because her husband was reading her diary and ~getting inspired” ie plagiarising although the term technically doesn’t apply because every word his wife wrote and idea she had was legally his property (just like she was).
It makes me feel so bitter to contrast what women do—decades of unpaid, unacknowledged work to proofread, copy, publish, preserve from censorship, improve, develop and promote their husband’s writing—with what men do—openly steal ideas and whole sentences from their wife’s writing while forcing her to give birth to 13 children that she didn’t want and he doesn’t help raise.
There has been a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet in my house as long as I can remember, and I held dear many verses from it for a long time. Then I read about his relationship with one Elizabeth Haskell, who supported and edited and worked so closely with him that, “Haskell’s contribution to his writing, including The Prophet, was such that by today’s standard she would be acknowledged as co-author.” (Wikipedia, but there was a much longer article about her I stumbled across once.)
Kind of takes the mystic-spiritual edge off a male writer when you learn that much of what was published under his name was discreetly written into his work by a talented but nameless woman behind the scenes.
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Katsuki was brought up by a mother who took one look at her future husband and said, “this one. This man is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with,” and made those words a reality, a promise.
Katsuki has never known what it was like to love in half-hearted servings. His home is a loud one, an occasionally violent one, and he’s under no illusion that his mom is the perfect kind of mother any kid could have when there are a million more who could’ve been—would’ve been—better.
But she’s the one he got, and he doesn’t regret her.
Regret implies a futile hope to change his past, to change how he was brought up, and he’s never been the type to mope helplessly over things that have already passed him by. Brought up rough, brought up tough, he knows that he’s survived and dreamed and become the person that he is now because his home is right here, with this family who’s never known love as an uncertain, wavering thing.
He doesn’t like her motherly act in tandem with her rough nature, but she doesn’t like his attitude either. There are a million things they can and do dislike each other for, but he knows even without saying anything (because some things really don’t have to be said as they are just understood) that loving your own family doesn’t require liking every little thing about each other.
Love has always been that simple, for him. It’s all-encompassing, tough, and unshakeable. It doesn’t ask for confirmation, as it does just exist. It’s felt instead of heard, understood instead of doubted.
It’s only when he’s already in high school, seeing how some families are a little less functional than his own, that he understands how love isn’t always a given. That toughness isn’t always a sign of love, as it can be just cruel.
When he tells Todoroki to give his own pathetic shot at convincing the kids in their remedial class to listen to them, he doesn’t do so out of some misplaced pity. He’s not that kind, nor that stupid to presume things that are unasked for.
He just knows that the world he used to think he knew, wasn’t a world he really knew after all. As annoying as it is to admit, there might be some things he just doesn’t know. Be it because of a certain amount of privilege, or because the world has been far kinder with him than he’d thought it was to the point of holding him back from figuring things out at an earlier age—
There are some things he just can’t understand, because he’s never gone through the shit some other people have.
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Katsuki watched, just a little bit curious, as Inasa grinned at him from his side of the bed. They were both lying on their sides and waiting for their alarms to ring (Katsuki estimated they were early by around half an hour, though he hadn’t bothered to check yet), but that wasn’t anything new.
It was quiet.
That wasn’t new either—which was the surprising bit, Katsuki realized belatedly.
“So you can only shut your trap in the early morning?” he asked, reaching up to smooth out the wrinkles in between Inasa’s brows. “Didn’t think it was possible.”
“Oh?” Inasa blinked, grin unwavering even with his blink of surprise. The way he leaned into Katsuki’s touch made him feel itchy in his skin, sensitive, like Inasa could see right through the simple gesture to feel his affection. (It was slow, his growth into acceptance of these softer parts of himself, but it was going.) Inasa asked him, “How do you mean?”
“You’re not yelling,” Katsuki pointed out. “Hell could turn right over but you’d still be yelling on a usual day. What gives?”
“You might be a factor?” Inasa suggested.
Katsuki made a face.
Inasa burst into a laugh, but it wasn’t the same volume as it usually would be. On a normal day he’d already be busting a poor civilian’s eardrums—was it really him? It was a strange idea, and grossly sentimental.
“You make me want to bask in the quiet, sometimes,” Inasa said, wide grin softening into a smile as he gazed at him. His stare felt piercing, but in the fond way; Katsuki didn’t feel transparent as he did just feel...seen, maybe. “Because I’m figuring out that you’re very loud when you’re quiet.”
“...hah?”
“Your silence says a lot,” Inasa explained. “I never understood what that kind of thing meant until you. You’re so hot-blooded and passionate and I adore that about you,” he broke off into a laugh when Katsuki punched him lightly in the arm, “but you somehow manage to express even more when you’re not saying anything out loud. Like now.”
“Now,“ Katsuki parroted, the question sure to be obvious in his confused expression.
“Right here, right now, with just us. When you were looking at me earlier without saying anything, I could feel how much you were thinking about me,” Inasa said. Katsuki allowed the touch of his hand on his cheek, not saying anything even as Inasa brushed his bangs aside. “I love how you make me feel even without saying anything, so I think maybe some part of me wants to do the same? I guess I feel a little competitive about expressing my adoration for you without words.”
Katsuki snickered at that, pushing Inasa’s hand down to his mouth so he could give his ring finger a warning bite. “Dumbass,” he said.
Inasa grinned, not at all insulted by that. “Maybe!”
“You’re something else,” Katsuki huffed, finally pushing Inasa’s hand down onto the bed so he can cover it with his own. “As if you’d win, anyway.”
He expected the tackle of a hug that came after, but he allowed that too.
“We shall see about that, Katsuki!” Inasa cried, already back to his normal volume.
Katsuki snickered, squeezing his own arms against Inasa’s back with as much strength as he could manage. It was a nice thing sometimes, he’d admit, that he had a boyfriend who was far bigger, and stronger than him in some ways; it meant that he could give him his figurative all without feeling like he was holding back.
Do you know what this is? This is The Heart from Auschwitz.
An act of defiance.
A statement of hope.
A crime punishable by death.
On December 12, 1944, locked inside Auschwitz, Polish teenager Fania turned twenty. After spending a year in a concentration camp, Fania didn’t expect her birthday to even be remembered - but her best friend, Zlatka, risked everything to make her a birthday present, a paper heart.
Simply making the heart - or carrying it - could get either of them killed.
The heart was signed by many of their friends, bearing notes in Polish, German, French, and Hebrew that announced "When you get old, put your glasses on your nose, take this album in your hand and read my signature again,“ and “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” It was an act of great sacrifice and love for a friend.
Less than 40 days later, they began the Death March from Auschwitz to Ravensbruck, and from Ravensbruck to freedom. Fania carried the heart under her arm the whole time. And survived.
Fania donated the heart to the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center in 1988, where it is a featured piece of their exhibit. You can read more about the story of Fania and Zlatka Meg Wiviott’s Paper Hearts, coming September 2015.
the 75th aniversary of the liberation of auschwitz is in a couple of days (jan 27 2020) so I feel this is a good thing to have on your dash. Remember that every single victim and survivor of the holocaust was a person with so much love in their heart and so many storiees and interpersonal relationships like this.
Hate diet culture so much bitches will b like “don’t eat processed carbs they’re so bad for you” like and??? So what?? God did not give us grain and stone to grind it with for no reason. Bread is inevitable. Bread is food for the heart and the soul. U think I’m gonna give that up in pursuit of instagram fitness?? U think I’m gonna deny myself the simple pleasure of toast with jam so I can endlessly chase an ever-shifting standard of beauty that ultimately means nothing? In 20 years I will no longer be beautiful and in 60 my body will be vacant food for other, smaller creatures. But the taste of fresh bread? Of homemade donuts and still-warm pie? I will carry the taste on my tongue into whatever follows this life. So like. Stop telling me I should diet lmao. I’m not abt to martyr myself just to get a man to look at me.
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Shouto has never quite learned how to ask for affection properly, but Katsuki often tells him that it isn’t his fault.
(“Blame your shitty childhood,” he’d say, pinching the soft skin of his hot-and-cold cheeks and stretching them until Shouto can’t help smiling at him with his eyes.
“Okay, Katsuki.”)
And now, with Katsuki being a near-permanent part of his life, it’s gotten a little harder to figure out how to word it on his own. Not because it’s particularly hard in itself, really, but because it’s difficult getting in the practice of wording it gracefully when Katsuki always just knows.
Shouto could give him a look that lasts for more than a beat of a second, and Katsuki will just huff out a breath, then stand up and hold him. And somehow, for reasons Shouto can’t quite explain, Katsuki always seems to just know what he needs. It’s not always just one kind of affection, like clasped hands or kisses on cheeks or embraces—
Katsuki also seems to know how hard or how soft Shouto wants it.
When Shouto has barely managed to form words, struggling through the bone-deep need to be crushed into a hug to feel stable, feel real, feel supported, Katsuki will have already wrapped his strong arms around him to hold him close, anchoring him to his body and to the earth. He never says anything to offer comfort, nor does he have to; Shouto knows Katsuki’s intentions are best heard in his actions than any romantic declarations.
“Thank you,” Shouto would often say, hugging Katsuki back with the same fierce strength that says: “given a choice, I’d choose to never let you go”.
Katsuki would, often, just heave out an unamused exhale in turn. Sometimes though, he’d say, “Don’t thank me for this, idiot.”
I love you, why the hell would I choose not to hold you when I can?
Shouto would always smile, after. Because after some time, living and breathing in the same space as Katsuki, loving him with his entirety and being loved back in the same way, he’s managed to learn:
The voice of Katsuki’s heart is much louder when you know how to be still and listen, understanding instead of assuming things out of his actions.
And Shouto, knowing this, loves him even more.
(How strange and wonderful it is, to love someone: you’d think you’ve already reached the limits of loving, yet eventually learn that there’s still so much more love you have to give.)
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Summary: Bakugou Katsuki saves some civilians from the wreckage left behind by an earthquake.
Some of those civilians prove to be a little annoying to handle.
-----
“I refuse to be saved by a bully..!”
Katsuki scowled at the pathetic whining and thrashing of the civilian in his arm. Rescuing wasn’t usually his schtick in most missions, but luck wasn’t kind to him today; the villain wasn’t something he could fight, given how natural disasters (an earthquake, in particular) wouldn’t give much of a shit for his quirk.
The civilian in his arm (a bit on the thick side, shorter than him with close-cropped brown hair) made his day a little bit worse by virtue of being a difficult shit. Be it that he really had a death wish, or he had no grasp of the danger of his situation at the moment; he seemed to just not give a damn that Katsuki was doing his damn job in evacuating him. He kept muttering about hating him too, talking about “bully” this and “fake” that— something told him that this wasn’t the complaint of a bigoted dimwit who only saw Katsuki for his façade with the media, however.
This was the complaint, the cracking voice, of a person who held a grudge. Katsuki has had enough experiences with ‘em to know from just a few hints.
“Tough,” he said, hefting the man up into his arms and ignoring his yelp as he shifted to carry him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Because I’m saving you anyway.”
“You—!”
Katsuki ignored the yelling when he found a crying child in his periphery, knelt before a collapsed body that they continued to shake awake to no avail. The body seemed to be that of an adult, possibly the kid’s guardian; Katsuki didn’t mind the yelp of surprise he got from the civilian over his shoulder when he did a swerve on the spot to head for the kid.
“Wake up, wake up, please, wake up,” the kid sobbed, weakly shaking at the body before them. No visible blood, though there were debris near their head that might’ve knocked them out cold.
“We’re going, kid,” he said, not minding the teary-eyed face turned his way when he knelt beside them. He checked the collapsed person’s vitals (a normal pulse, so probably just knocked out, though he couldn’t discount a concussion), then checked the body for some injuries, before turning to the kid once he found no obvious ones he had to treat. He said, “I’m gonna carry you both; if you struggle, you’re dead.”
“Wh-what the hell are you saying to a child—?!”
“O-okay,” the kid said, sniffling, before wiping at their eyes and putting on a brave face. Katsuki could admire their guts, at least; it wasn’t often that a kid stopped bawling at the sight of him, instead of the reverse. “How should I..?”
Katsuki grinned a feral grin, before swiftly dropping the extra from his shoulder down to the floor until he gave out a yelp.
“Just be still and don’t fuss, kid.”
------
They were all quiet when Katsuki finally dropped them off at the evacuation site: the kid, dropped from his teeth; their mom, set down on a medic’s cot from his arms; and the idiot civilian, dropped to the floor from where he’d held him between his legs.
He had made to leave as soon as he was done, thinking that he could get in a few more evacuees, up until he stalled when he felt the small hand tugging onto his gloved arm.
“Ground Zero,” the kid said, smiling a wobbly, snot-faced smile at him when he turned to face them. “thank you for saving me and my mommy. Sh-she’s all I have, so...”
Katsuki rolled his eyes, before giving the kid a strong ruffle on the head. It earned him a yelp though he knew it wouldn’t hurt; he knew how to control his strength, unlike some idiots. “I’m just doing my job, brat,” he said, scowling at the weirdly sparkly-eyed, pink-faced stare he got once he let the kid go. “Go back to your mom.”
“Okay!” they said, grinning brightly at him. What the hell.
They gave a wave as they went, which is how Katsuki found his gaze trailing over to the idiot civilian who refused to be carried like a normal person. The guy was still glaring daggers at him, his anger so obvious that even his cheeks flushed pink with it.
What a waste of time.
“...I won’t say thank you just because you saved me,” the idiot said.
Katsuki scoffed. “Then don’t, I couldn’t give less of a shit,” he said, before turning away to leave. There were much more important things he could be doing than chatting with some rando, even if they shared a past. The chance that this guy was someone from the same elementary or middle school as him was likely, given that he didn’t have the time to bully anyone when high school came around.
It didn’t matter; the guy could hate him for as much as he liked. Katsuki wasn’t going to apologize to every person he sinned against in the past just to feel some self-satisfaction; he’s just going to keep moving forward to be the best hero, and that was that.
(So focused as he was on his goal as he left, Katsuki didn’t notice the shift from anger to embarrassment on the civilian’s face.
“Ground Zero’s legs are pretty strong, huh?” the kid asked him, peeking over their shoulder from where they were sat beside their resting mother. “He’s really cool.”
The guy didn’t say anything back, turning away as he rubbed at his flushed face.
The kid didn’t mind. The stranger probably already knew what they meant and didn’t need to say it out loud; he was the one who’d been carried by those same legs, after all.)
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inspiration
“Hey.”
“What is it?”
“I think we should break up.”
You look at me like I’m crazy, and maybe, I am. You’re so good to me, far too good for me—
I don’t think I deserve you. I never thought I did from the start, but it’s starting to feel truer with each day that passes and you tell me, happily, that you’ve been changing for the better because of me.
I never wanted you to change. You were already so much more than I could think to want, to love, but now you’re too much, and I can’t take it.
It scares me that you’re so determined to do things for me. What have I done to be worth the effort?
(What more will you do, for me? Do you even understand your own limits?)
“Don’t joke like that,” you say weakly, the feeling I get from your eyes unfamiliar and painful.
I fidget with my hands on my lap, and you cover my fingers before I can start picking at any hangnails, as is my habit. You take such good care of me that it’s terrifying to think of you loving me, because I never know what to do to be worthy of your affection. I’ve been struggling enough just keeping you happy, but it’s too much now. Too much. I can’t do this anymore.
I’m scared.
“I’m not joking,” I say, voice cracking from the extended silence. “I want to break up. Please.”
“What did I do?” you ask, your hands growing cold as they cover my own. Your expression looks desperate, your eyes look teary, and you don’t deserve to be sad because of me. Really, it’s for the best that we end this now. You say, “Tell me, and I’ll never do it again. If the problem is I’m not doing something, then I’ll start doing it. I’ll be more attentive, so—”
“I don’t like you changing for me,” I tell you. My eyes betray me with an overflow of sudden tears, rolling warm down my cheeks as I take in a shuddering breath. I don’t like the feeling in my chest right now, this tightness that makes it hard to breathe, and I wish it would stop.
I wish you’d just accept this.
“Th-then, I’ll...I’ll find a way without having to change, so...”
“I don’t want to be with you anymore,” I say, voice breaking into a sob as I bow my head. “It’s too scary. You’re too good for me.”
You breathe out what sounds like a sigh of relief. You must be thinking that I’m just anxious, right? That you can fix this?
There’s nothing to be fixed. I can’t be fixed.
“That’s not true—”
“Break up with me, please, please,” I beg, breaking my hands out of your grasp to bow my head to the floor. “I’ve had enough, I can’t take it anymore. I’ll be miserable like this forever if you won’t break up with me.”
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but it’s true. I can’t lie anymore, I can’t pretend that it’s all fine anymore. I worked so hard to make sure you never knew how bad I felt just being with you, and I did my best for so long.
I’m tired now. Please, let me go.
All I want is for you to be happy, with someone who truly suits you. Someone who’s satisfied being who they are with you, someone who doesn’t have to put up appearances. Someone who isn’t me, who tries so hard just to be worthy of you.
“...that isn’t fair. You’re not being fair, when you’re the only person I love this much. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong...”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I swear. “You’ve been so good for me, but I feel like a burden. Your feelings feel too heavy for me. I’m sorry I dragged it out for this long, that I said yes when you asked. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”
I hear a hiccup, then a tiny sob.
I don’t want to look, knowing how terribly beautiful you are even when crying. I don’t deserve to even look at you.
“I don’t want to break up,” you say, voice shaky. “Please, I don’t want to. J-just reconsider, please, give it time...I can wait for however long, I don’t mind it, just please, please, don’t say you’ll leave me.”
“I can’t,” I say in a whisper, raising my head without once looking up at you. “I’m sorry, but please, find someone else. Someone who can love you the way you deserve, someone who isn’t me.”
“You’re already more than I deserve. You’re all I want.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Please, take it back. I don’t want to break up.”
“I’m sorry...”
You sob again.
I’m sorry, for being so terrible to you. I’m so sorry.
But I know, I hope, that you’ll find someone who can make you happy. Someone who’ll be much better for you than me.
