[fic] how deep is the river
for @bakudeku-week, day 3/? → rainy day
izuku’s been scared of thunderstorms ever since they were kids. katsuki’s fears lie somewhere deeper beneath the surface.
The streets of the city are bloated with rain. The wet cement sky clouds over with cataracts of grey. Like a kidney stone passed out with the pungent storm tearing through the city, the jaundiced sun is no more.
“It hasn’t let up at all, huh,” Izuku says, undoing the sling over the cast on Katsuki’s left leg. “And I wanted for us to go for a walk, too.” He sighs. “Especially with how you’ve been cooped up in here a week already.”
“No way that’s happening anytime soon,” Katsuki snorts. He reaches across the bed to flick Izuku’s forehead. “It’s typhoon season, idiot.”
Izuku uncaps a bottle of ointment, that generic yet pungent smell of herbs filling the room, almost enough to overpower the everpresent smell of the damp creeping beneath their floorboards. “You say that now,” Izuku says, spreading the ointment over Katsuki’s wounds, “But Kacchan was the one diving straight into a flooding canal.”
“Right, because you gave me so much time to check reports of flooding in the area before fucking drowning like an idiot,” Katsuki sneers. “None – ” he stabs his finger in the direction of the bandages on Izuku’s shoulder, “ – of this – ” then the gunk on his own leg, “Would have happened if you actually bothered to be minimally competent at your job, shitty Deku.”
Izuku massages the oil in with calloused fingers. When he lifts his hands to wipe the oil off, they tremour with a year-old spasm.
“Quit before you make a fool out of yourself already,” Katsuki says. He glares at the mould huddling in the corner of the ceiling above them. “Or outta that old man All Might.”
Don’t get him wrong, Katsuki’s got no doubt in his mind that his quirk can put anyone else’s into the ground. Never mind genetics, he spent years ripping into his own physiology to understand it inside out, devising strategies and applications he could recite in his sleep, and forging his body into the perfect vessel.
But if there’s one thing that keeps him up at night, it’s the fact that ultimately, he is not omnipotent. That he is only human.
