Chapter Text
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Katsuki is what his local librarian would call, a lifelong reader. Some of his earliest nighttime memories are of curling up with his mother on his bed after a day spent running through the grass chasing long-tailed dragonflies, knees skinned. Tucked into his mother’s side at night, he could feel her steady breaths as she read the stories of Anpanman, a hero so sacrificing he asked every hungry person he met to eat his bready, red-bean face. Katsuki was a fan of Apanman’s flying power, though he didn’t care overmuch for the sharing of his face.
“Then you’re missing the point of the story, silly dope.” Her words were exasperated but hushed. Nothing like how she sounded during the day chasing after him with hell on her lips demanding that he stop running, jumping, fighting, cussing. Nighttime reading had the power to even make his mother quiet. These are his fondest memories of her, memories where there are no battles to win, no tug of war between their stubborn personalities, just pages that she lets him turn until he’s old enough to start stumbling through the sentences himself.
He took to reading very young, to the surprise of no one who knows him and his absolutely genius brain.
Katsuki takes from those moments the quietude. The escape from the loudness of other people and their annoying demands on his time and obedience. In books, he can have his own adventures, and he can feel the way the pages wedge his mind open wider and wider to the infinite possibilities of the world—
Katsuki has only ever thrown out one book in his long history as a bookworm.
He was thirteen and reading a translated version of Plutarch’s Moralia. He liked Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, reading about Alexander the Great and Caeser, how powerful they were winning battle after battle and inspiring faith through their constant victories. Moralia was nothing like that. It was about brotherhood, sacrifice, agape, and finally, it was about becoming and never being.
Apparently, people are ever-changing and never are any one thing. They only ever are becoming many impermanent things. Then they die without ever having been anything, really.
It took Katsuki a few minutes to confirm he understood the meaning. He looked up a few words to see how it was translated, meditated on the instability of human nature, that humans would never achieve anything permanent in a world that was in constant flux, would never be.
Once he was sure he understood it, Katsuki went downstairs and threw the book in the green trash bag with the other burnables.
As fucking if.
Katsuki was the best. Sure, one day he would become better than All Might, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t the best now. Fuck Heraclitus and his bull about the unachievable things and impermanence. That shit was for losers who couldn’t work hard or who were too fucking self-deprecating to capitalize on their own potential.
Katsuki wasn’t a loser, and he was no stranger to hard work. He determined then and there to let all the other fuckers in the world waste their time sweating and hustling to become anything worthwhile. Katsuki would just be awesome.
And he is.
Katsuki is. And what he is, is the best.
Being the best, Katsuki likes having the best. The best clothes, the best books, the best gadgets. Why deny himself awesome shit?
So he doesn’t mind the jealous and shocked exclamations he sometimes earns for having the best of everything in life.
“Ehhh! Is that the new smartwatch?” Kaminari is almost drooling as it flashes where Katsuki is stretching after a long class.
“I guess it is,” Katsuki smirks. He lowers his wrist and lets his loser squad coo over it. He’d spent a little extra money engraving a skull on the black, sleek sides.
“Dang dude.” Kirishima whistles. “That's freaking cool. Can’t it project movies and stuff?”
“Like you’re finding out,” Katsuki scoffs. It definitely can.
“Don’t be like that, we can find a lot of uses for it!” Ashido says, eyes gleaming. “There’s that huge empty wall right next to the dining hall, after all! We could do movie nights. Or we could project on the back of Aizawa-sensei’s head.”
Katsuki can already see the wheels turning in her mind like a runaway train. She’s always the first to take things to an extreme, to turn things up to ten.
“Oi, she’s gonna get us all expelled.” Sero laughs.
“There’s a reason there aren’t TVs all around the dorms,” Katsuki reminds them. “You’re supposed to be studying to be heroes, not perfecting being the slackers you already are.”
“Stingy! Don’t hog it all to yourself,” Kaminari whines. “Come on, share it with us!”
“I’m telling you hell no—”
“People whose parents just buy them anything really do live different lives.”
It takes Katsuki a moment to register the words, floating as they are above his group’s abrasive chaos, but when the meaning lands, he finds himself standing, his chair screeching against the floor with fury.
“Excuse you?” Katsuki spits. “The fuck did you say, Round Face?!”
Uraraka blinks, mouth opening and then closing as she finds herself under his red eyes. Damn fucking right he’s gonna call her out. Her gaze narrows at him. At her side, Deku shuffles and Iida’s stupid mouth is already opening to interfere.
“It’s just different, that’s all,” she says coolly. “I wasn’t blaming you or putting you down just ‘cause your parents buy you things, though I really hope you’re grateful to them.”
Is she trying to piss him off?
“Fuck off! As if I’d need them to buy me anything! I work for my shit unlike the rest of you goddamn slackers.”
“You work?” Ashido’s head tilts. “Could it be… a sugar daddy?”
“Fuck you,” he snarls. “I’ve got a part-time job.”
That takes a minute to land, but when it does, he has seven nerds up in his face.
“What?! I never knew that! Bro, you gotta tell me these things,” Kirishima complains.
“You make this much doing part-time work?” Uraraka splutters, staring at the watch with disbelieving, overwhelmed eyes. “Wh-wh-HOW?!”
“Ooh, that doesn’t preclude a sugar daddy!” Ashido cackles.
“He’s too straitlaced for that,” Kaminari laughs. “He’d be way better as one of those dominant leather guys people pay to yell at them to eat better and get their life in order.”
“Fuck you and fuck you too, Daiso Pikachu.”
“A part-time job is against the rules,” Iida declares, fingers furiously adjusting his glasses. “Why, even by having this conversation you’re making us accomplices in your crime!”
“Go blow yourself, Hotwheels,” Katsuki scoffs. “The school knows. It’s something I’ve been doing for years so it’s not like they could stop me now.”
Well, the school knows what he does, even if he sincerely doubts they have any of the details...
“W-w-wait. Kacchan, you don’t… I mean… It’s not…” Deku’s face is red to his roots, hand raised to his mouth as though the loose cage of his fingers might cradle the impact of what he’s trying to say.
“Spit it out, shitty nerd.”
“It’s not… the same job as before, right?!”
Katsuki squints, then remembers that Deku has seen him a few times on his way to work in passing. It’s fucking aggravating being around someone who’s known him so long. Well, it’s always aggravating being around Deku.
“Of course it is. Why the hell would I find another job when I’m already the best at this one?”
“Oh.” Deku’s voice is more of a squeak.
Geez, his awkwardness about it is making Katsuki feel awkward. God, but he hates when Deku does that, like his weakness is contagious. What does Katsuki have to feel awkward about anyway? Absolutely nothing.
“What is it?” Ashido asks, bouncing on her heels. “Your job, I mean?”
“None of your damn business is what! Now I’m going to lunch. You extras can do whatever you want.” He shoulders his bag and stalks towards the door.
“Eh?! That’s not fair!”
“If Midoriya knows, we should know!” Kirishima protests even as he follows Katsuki out, hand on his shoulder like he's forming a train.
“Are you alright, Deku-kun?” Uraraka’s voice comes in quiet, just on the edge of Katsuki’s hearing.
“Fine. I was just surprised I guess.” There’s a pause.
Katsuki hesitates one singular moment. His narrow, red eyes meet Deku’s startled green ones and he scoffs. He leaves before finding out if the loser says any more. He refuses to lose sleep over what Deku does or doesn’t say.
Katsuki’s not ashamed of anything in life, and especially not of being fucking awesome at his job.
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Izuku watches Kacchan leave, wondering for the millionth time how the other boy does that effortless, I-don’t-give-a-fuck swagger. Even about this, he doesn’t care, does he?
“Come on, what is his job then?” Uraraka asks. Izuku is trying and failing to fight the flush down.
“Ah, I’m not sure I should say,” he murmurs.
“I’m not asking for any reason,” she says, seeming self-conscious. “I guess I just feel silly. I always assumed his parents were wealthy because of his nice things.” Her cheeks are a little red too.
The way her comment came out earlier, faint, a little stunned, reminded Izuku of every other time she’d been confronted with the different realities between her and their wealthier classmates. Yaomomo’s comments on her manor, Todoroki’s easy comfort with rich cuisine and formal, traditional rooms. Izuku hates that self-consciousness, even as he sees Uraraka digging in the dirt of her shame and only finding strength and determination. Uraraka is amazing, he thinks, not for the first time.
He mulls over what he can say.
“His mom used to be a model but now I think both his parents are designers,” Izuku says. “There’s money in it, but the business is kinda fickle. Not everyone’s lucky enough to be working all the time.” His hands raise. “Not that it’s bad, his home situation!” He can practically hear Kacchan yelling at him. “But I see why he’s working to buy his own things, is what I mean.”
Uraraka nods her head slowly. She has a way of taking things in that makes it seem like she’s really absorbing every word.
“It must take a large amount of money to be able to afford those kinds of luxuries,” Iida comments. “I hope it’s nothing illegal or questionable. That would reflect poorly on all of us.”
“Oh, no. It’s completely legal, it’s just…” Ah, Izuku is flushing again. Gods, but he really hates his tell-all complexion sometimes.
Uraraka pouts. “Honestly, now you’re just teasing us!”
“I’m not!” he defends. “Just… It’s not my business.”
“I guess.” She puffs out a breath, then smiles. “You’re too nice to that guy, Deku-kun.”
He can’t help but smile back, letting the pull of her and Iida’s good company lead him into the hallway. He wants to join them for lunch, but the nagging curiosity in his mind won’t let him go.
“Sorry, I’ll be there in a second.” He points to the boys’ bathroom in excuse.
Upon entering, Izuku catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the way to the stall and isn’t surprised by the flush that’s still taking up most of his face.
He shuts himself into the cloistered stall, smelling piss and avoiding looking at the Midnight can bend me over anytime scratched on the wall and the even scratchier she’d only do that to kill you etched below. It looks like Kirishima’s chicken-scratch beneath, reading, broooooo noooooo luv urself.
Izuku pulls up his phone, feeling antsy as he huddles over it and types the hiragana for Katsuki followed by the katakana model.
Hits spring to his phone and images are the first things that pop up. Oh no.
Izuku buries his free hand over his mouth as his shaking thumb clicks on the first image.
A black-haired girl in a summery dress leans over a chair in a chic coffee shop, a dark cherry-colored mouth twisted down in nonchalant dismissal. Her shoulders bulge with muscle cast in shadow around the cold shoulder swooping from side to side of the billowy sleeves and her red, kohl-lined eyes glitter.
Her mouth, her shoulders, the dismissal in her eyes— all of it, is Kacchan.
Kacchan wasn’t lying.
Kacchan is still an up-and-coming female model in Japan and Izuku really doesn’t know how to feel about it.
He thought Kacchan must have stopped when they got to high school. Surely with all the muscle he’s put on and his additional school workload he shouldn’t have the right figure (to be a female model, his mind echoes again) or the time. Things were different in middle school and elementary school. Kacchan was cute at first, then he grew more slender, his shape long and lean. His face was sharp and wicked as a fox’s with skin that was always clear and almost glowing from his quirk.
Kacchan’s face and skin are still flawless and stunning, but he’s exploded with muscle. With all the strength training he’s done, Kacchan is one of the strongest members of their cohort— the physics of his quirk demands it (Izuku has done case studies on the subject). He doesn’t get how Katsuki can hide the strong bulge of his biceps and the strength of his thighs in bell sleeves and sheer stockings like he is in the photos. The dark cloth slims the muscles, only hints at power, but still.
Clicking on the Instagram page, he realizes that Kacchan has covered his most muscular trait, his arms, but he hasn’t really hidden anything.
“Oh my god…” Izuku feels even flusher as he’s overwhelmed by the smirking, arrogant defiance in every image.
The pictures on the page are of photoshoots where Kacchan leans, slouches, flexes, and bends himself into perfectly artless shapes that somehow monopolize attention. His arms jut out in the suggestion of barely leashed strength, flowing into the femininity of dresses or androgyny of overalls with ease that Izuku can hardly make sense of. The look shouldn’t work, but there’s a fuck you curl to his lip that makes it all align. Strength in the softness that wouldn’t work without Kacchan’s attitude. In consequence, it’s impossible to look away from the net Kacchan’s red eyes cast and the easy physicality of his body. Izuku knows more about that physicality than most people do, having watched him moving through space for so many years.
This is different somehow, like finding another facet to a diamond that Izuku’s already spent years familiarizing himself with; both surprising and disorienting. He doesn’t know what to make of it, other than to be worried he’ll be overwhelmed and flushing for the next ten years until he can forget about seeing Kacchan in crushed velvet.
It’s just weirdly embarrassing viewing Kacchan this way. Not his own embarrassment, just like… accidentally catching a glimpse of someone’s underwear, intimate and unexpected. And he shouldn’t have thought of underwear, because now he’s wondering if—
His thumb stops its frantic scrolling, hovering over a picture of Kacchan at a café. This isn’t glamoured up like the other shots, which were drawn with dramatic lighting to add shadows and contours to his face and muscles. Kacchan’s still wearing make-up and the dark, long-locked wig that sweeps in slick strands over his shoulder, but this isn’t professionally shot.
Kacchan is taking a bite of a fluffy omelet, teeth bright and sharp, eyes a teasing smirk, but nothing like the casual disregard of his cool model. This is a selfie. That Kacchan took. Of himself. In women’s clothes. And tagged with #GoProtein.
Izuku’s phone almost slips from his sweaty hand and he has to reach to snatch it from smashing against the ground. He stares at the black screen, wondering how, what even, and most importantly, why?
As kids, he could almost understand it. He always thought Aunty Mitsuki made Kacchan do it, some kind of spite making her dress Kacchan up as a girl and Kacchan was too spiteful to let her know it bothered him. Although, Izuku has always had his theories about Kacchan’s resistance to embarrassment. Kacchan doesn’t seem to do embarrassment the way Izuku and the rest of the human race does, instead stomping over the feeling with his own self-assurance. Measured, confident, and determined that his every choice is already right for the sheer fact of having been made by him. Still, Izuku can’t get rid of this bewildered feeling crawling around his chest. Even so close to adulthood, Kacchan seems to have decided to plough forward on this path of being a cross-dressing model without a flicker of concern.
But why?
“Why the hell would I find another job when I’m already the best at this one?”
That’s what Kacchan said and Izuku finds himself gently thudding his head on the stall wall. That’s just like Kacchan to get competitive about modeling as a girl. He’s such an idiot… and admittedly sugoi.
Of course, that’s the moment when his thumb slips and he hearts the post.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuu—
He unlikes it, hoping despite knowing better, that it won’t generate a notification. Or that Kacchan has forgotten that all of Izuku’s handles are exactly the same as in elementary and middle school. Surely he’s forgotten. Right? Right.
…Right.
Still feeling like nervous electricity is trapped under his skin, Izuku tries to confront Kacchan gently on the subject.
“I’m sorry for bringing your, uh, your part-time work up earlier,” Izuku says from where he washes his bowl in the communal kitchen sink. Across the room, he hears the rest of their classmates chatting by the couch, voices warm, but unless Jirou is eavesdropping, he doesn’t think anyone can hear him.
“You didn’t bring it up, I did,” Kacchan grunts. He doesn’t miss a beat in the steady tempo of his cutting on the counter.
“Still, I kind of reacted strongly. I didn’t mean to get everyone curious. I was just surprised.”
Kacchan doesn’t say anything, so Izuku stumbles forward, “I promise not to say anything to anyone.”
Kacchan turns, chef’s knife drawn and muscles bulging with barely reigned fury. Izuku startles and moves backward, one hand gripping the formica and the other raised in a shaky block.
“Why,” he snarls, “should I give a fuck what you choose to share with those extras or not?!” The knife swings down, belly-flopping into the soapy wash. “I don’t give a damn!”
He turns back to his pot and drops the dredged pumpkin slices in, the spitting, boiling oil a perfect match for Kacchan’s own overheated temperature.
“You aren’t…” Izuku doesn’t know how he’s going to end that sentence. Embarrassed? He already knows Kacchan doesn’t do that. Worried about being caught? Worried about being ostracized? Worried about being judged? Worried it might impact his hero career? Worried worried worried worried worried?
Izuku is almost always near dizzy with worry. To think Kacchan could avoid worrying over something as serious as this—
“I ain’t nothing. Nothing, but the best.” Kacchan says, maneuvering the tempura pumpkin slices over to a golden brown.
He half-turns, meeting eyes. Izuku is struck again by the overwhelming feeling of seeing new facets in Kacchan. Like discovering new shapes in the ceiling above his bed, transfiguring the familiar into the wholly new again. There’s something he’s missing, he realizes, and his brain sings with the promise of the unanalyzed life.
“I know that, Kacchan,” Izuku says at length. Kacchan scoffs but turns back to his pot. The pumpkin dries on paper towels, gold and shining.