In Your Shadow [Chapter 5]

[Chapter 4]

It wasn’t often that Katsuki was sent anywhere other than the gym first thing in the morning – well, aside from his meetings with Deku – but there he was, not even seven a.m. yet, grimacing as he knocked on a plain office door down a quiet corridor. He was still kind of amazed by the soundproofing in the building – you’d never have guessed there were so many people inside, if you were just walking the halls unaware.

Well, maybe not at seven in the morning, but in general.

“Come in!”

Katsuki stepped inside, waving awkwardly as he closed the door behind him, and the young man stood up to offer him a hand.

“You must be Bakugou, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Um, yeah,” Katsuki nodded, shaking the man’s hand awkwardly. “You too.”

“Come make yourself comfortable. You don’t seem like the desk type.”

He rounded his desk and gestured to two soft-looking armchairs, letting Katsuki pick one and take a seat before he took the other. Katsuki sank into the cushions slightly, and he had to admit they were incredibly comfortable, not to mention he didn’t have to think about sitting up straight like a nerd-ass like he did on Deku’s stupid office chairs.

“I’m Surusumi Yutaka, just Yutaka is fine. Have you done this before?”

“You can call me Katsuki,” he returned, surprising himself a little – he had thought it was weird when Deku went straight to his first name, but there he was, offering it up of his own accord. “Um, not really. I saw someone yesterday, but uh… Deku said this might work better. You, I mean.”

“Sometimes it takes a few tries to find the right person,” Yutaka agreed. “I’m sure Deku told you, but I’ll reiterate just in case: you can say whatever you want to me, ask whatever questions you might have, complain about whatever you want, and I won’t be repeating a word of it to anyone else. There are no cameras in this room, it’s a no judgement zone, and I’m especially not going to report back to Deku on how polite you are, so you don’t have to second guess your words.”

Katsuki couldn’t help but snort at that, and Yutaka cracked a little smile of his own.

“I know how he can be, and I know it seems ridiculous sometimes. You can act however you want in here, just consider it your break from the expectations. From all your expectations.”

He hated to admit it, but that sounded… Good. Not just a break from sitting up straight and saying please, but from… Everything.

“So, how are you doing? You’re new to interning here, right? How are you finding it?”

“It’s… Not what I expected.”

“In a bad way?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been doing, so far? Who have you been working with? Fill me in on all the fun stories.”

It took Katsuki a little while to get started, but he had to admit… The guy seemed cool. Worlds away from the annoying hag he’d met the day prior. He talked about the essay, getting a good laugh out of Yutaka when he got to the twelve pages part, about hanging out with Mirio, about Deku’s crazy rules and the way he seemed to see right through him, always knew his plots when they’d only just begun to form. He even talked about school, a little – about the assignment he’d been emailed the day before, and the classmates who were off working with other heroes. He suspected none of them were stuck with sidekicks.

“And it bothers you to be working with the sidekicks?” Yutaka prompted, when Katsuki stopped with a scowl.

“People pulled strings with Deku to get me here. My mentor from an old internship, and one of my teachers. One of my favourite teachers. They wanted me to come learn from Deku, but he clearly doesn’t want me here, he only agreed because of them, and now he’s just shoving me off on the nearest sidekick instead.”

“Have you talked to Deku about that?”

“He says it’s not true.”

“But you don’t believe him.”

“Why would I?” Katsuki grumbled. “He’d say it either way, and he’s still not working with me.”

“Okay, let’s assume it’s true, then. What does that mean for you? Being here is useless?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have researched the sidekicks when you did that essay, do you think you could find another hero here that you’d like to learn from? If Deku really doesn’t want you around, he’d probably be happy to pass you on to someone else that you want to work with, right?”

“I guess so. Mirio is… Cool I guess. He works with me a lot.”

“That’s good, you’ve already gotten one benefit out of being here, then. You got to work with Mirio. What have you been learning from him?”

“I don’t know, he mostly just… supervises me, I guess.”

“Well, what do you know about him as a hero? What do you think you could learn from him?”

“He… had good quirk control. Like, really good. He had… weird ways of using it, things most people wouldn’t have thought of.”

“Do you have any weird ways of using your own quirk?”

“I dunno about weird,” he grumbled. “I can use the light for stuff, or propel myself. But they’re just… options. Not really anything unusual.”

“Then maybe you could take a chance on Mirio, yeah? He might have some insight you haven’t considered, or there might be something he used to do, which will spark an idea for you. If you have him around, you might as well use him.”

“Yeah, I guess so. He does seem…”

This time Yutaka didn’t prompt him, when he trailed off; he just gave Katsuki time to think about it, to choose the words he wanted.

“He would have been an amazing hero,” he said finally. “If he hadn’t had that stupid run-in. I think I would have liked interning with him in his own agency.”

“But because of the way it happened, it feels like a bad thing now,” Yutaka nodded understandingly. “I can definitely see how that would happen. I guess it’s just about framing, and context, right? You were expecting something else, so the context isn’t the best. But you’re still getting a good experience, right? Isn’t that the main thing?”

“Yeah,” Katsuki admitted. “I should probably be more grateful and stuff. I did thank Deku for it yesterday, I thought maybe Mirio was sick of me so I felt like I should say something.”

“That’s a great step, I’m sure they both really appreciated it.”

“I’m supposed to write an essay this weekend. For school this time, not Deku.”

“Oh? What are you writing about?”

“A hero I’m working with,” Katsuki explained, grimacing a little. “I feel like I should be writing about Deku, but he hasn’t actually worked with me, so it would feel… Am I allowed to say shitty?”

“Go ahead,” Yutaka laughed. “It feels shitty to write about someone who hasn’t worked with you?”

“Yeah. It would just be to… to save face. So people wouldn’t know Deku was ignoring me. So I don’t think it makes sense to write about him.”

“So what do you think you’ll do instead?”

“Do you think they’d complain if I wrote about Mirio?”

Yutaka’s eyebrows rose, and Katsuki felt his cheeks warming.

“I know he’s not technically a hero now, and he sure says he’s not, but…”

“You know, hero doesn’t always have to be a job title,” Yutaka smiled. “It has other meanings, too.”

“Yeah.”

Before Katsuki knew it, their hour was up, and somehow they’d just been… Talking. The whole time. Katsuki wasn’t much of a talker in the first place, let alone to strangers, so the concept… Kind of blew his mind.

“It was really nice to meet you, Katsuki.” Yutaka said, when they rose from their seats. “I had a great time getting to know you, and hearing about all your cool experiences. I hope you’ll come back and tell me any new stories you come across.”

“Yeah,” Katsuki nodded faintly. “I uh, had a good time too.”

He moved to leave, but as he reached for the door handle he found himself hesitating, fingers resting limply against the metal.

“I think Deku wants me to come here because I get angry a lot,” he mumbled. “And he says I bottle up my feelings or some shit.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t think I do. Keep it in, I mean. Most of it comes out in the anger.”

“I’m sure you know yourself better than Deku would.”

“But I do have…”

Katsuki trailed off, but Yutaka just waited patiently.

“I think I have anxiety problems,” he admitted finally. “Deku commented on it too, on me biting my nails and stuff, I’d always thought it wasn’t a big deal before that, like no one could tell what I was thinking anyway so it was fine.”

“Being able to say it out loud is a big step.”

“Can you… help me with that? If I come back?”

“I’d be more than happy to.”

“Okay,” Katsuki nodded. “Um, I’ll see you next time, then.”

“I’m looking forward to it already. Take care of yourself, Katsuki.”

“Yeah, you too.”

The halls felt oddly quiet around him as he headed back up to his apartment. Deku had scheduled a break straight after his appointment, and a schoolwork block right after. He hadn’t understood why at first, but he felt like he was beginning to. It was surprisingly hard work to just talk about stuff. He’d barely even touched on anything important, other than what had slipped out somewhat naturally, and it had still felt draining.

So there he was, with an hour of free time on his hands, and then school straight after. And then lunch, too. So really, he had about four hours of free time – Deku seemed to have overestimated how much work Aizawa was sending them, if he was giving him a two hour block for it, but he was hardly going to admit that and lose his chance to recover from all the extroversion he’d had to deal with.

Which, ultimately, meant one thing: He had time for a nap.

He wasn’t much of a night owl, but he’d been pulling some pretty late ones since arriving for the internship, and honestly a couple more hours of sleep, especially after seeing Yutaka, sounded like heaven. And no one would check up on him, right? He’d already told Aizawa he got the assignment, and they had days to fit it into their schedules, so he could do it later – no big deal.

Mind made up, Katsuki stripped off his decent clothing and tossed it aside, slipping back into a pair of his favourite old boxers. He set an alarm on his phone for the start of the lunch period, giving him plenty of time to find Mirio there and talk to him about the essay, to find out if he was okay with it and find some time to talk, then he crawled back into his comfy, cosy bed with a yawn.

It was gonna be a good day.

─────

Katsuki knew he was scowling as he held up his notebook, but he couldn’t seem to wipe it off his face – no matter how much he tried, that was just his permanent expression. Mirio just smiled, though, as if he didn’t care at all, and waited patiently for Katsuki to find his words.

“Aizawa-sensei sent us schoolwork,” he explained in a grumble. “I have to write an essay.”

“Oh! You need help? I wasn’t the best student, but I can give it a shot!”

“Not like that,” Katsuki sighed, taking a moment to breathe as he found the right words. “We’re meant to write about someone. A hero we’ve been working with. Shit we’ve learned, and all that.”

“And you need help choosing someone? Getting them to schedule some time with you?”

“I want to choose you.”

“Me?” Mirio asked, wide-eyed. “You should probably use an actual hero. I can probably convince Deku to give you ten minutes, if you behave yourself.”

As tempting as the offer was, Katsuki’s mind was made up, and he wasn’t the type who changed it that easily, especially when he wasn’t even sure he wanted to change his plans.

“You’re the one who’s been working with me this whole time,” he argued. “Deku hasn’t done shit. I’m not gonna bullshit my way through an essay just to use the number one hero as the subject, I’m gonna write something good.”

“You really want to write about me?”

“You think I’d say all this lame shit if I didn’t?”

“Well, thank you,” Mirio smiled fondly. “That’s really sweet of you. Do you have a break now?”

“Yeah, for like another hour.”

“Then why don’t we grab some lunch and take it up to your apartment? We’ll have some peace and quiet there, you can ask me everything you want to know, and if we run out of time we’ll finish it up later on. Deku said he was gonna schedule you time for schoolwork as needed, so I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Sounds good,” Katsuki nodded, tucking his notebook back into his bag. “Um, th-thanks.”

“You’re very welcome! I’m still surprised you even wanted me.”

“No one else has done shit for me,” Katsuki shrugged, looking away as his cheeks burned. “Besides, you were the most well-known hero in your grade at U.A. so you must have… something to teach me. A lot of things to teach me.”

They stood side-by-side in line outside the agency cafeteria, waiting for their turn at the buffet table, and Katsuki watched as Mirio reached under the table of plates and produced two wooden lunch boxes. He leaned over to look, finding a stack of them waiting there, and Mirio grinned at him knowingly as he handed one over.

“A lot of the heroes grab a to-go box and head off to their patrols or to do paperwork and stuff. It just makes it a little easier and cleaner than people carrying plates around everywhere. We try to tell them not to work during their meal times, but no one ever listens, so we had to make it more suitable for them to work with instead.”

“You guys really think about everything.”

“Deku likes to provide a comfortable and convenient work environment for everyone. One of my biggest jobs here has been to see what problems people come across constantly so we can come up with a solution for them.”

“Like what?” Katsuki asked, loading his box up with spicy beef stew. “Other than lunch boxes.”

“Costumes was a big one. People constantly shred their costumes and need new pieces, or if they have a lot of patrols, stuff gets dirty and they don’t have time for laundry before the next one. So we have services on-site specifically for costumes, to do cleaning and minor repairs, as well as spare bits and pieces for most of the heroes. If you pick up a work studies position here, Deku will probably get all your costume info from the school and have a spare set made up for you. Maybe not your gauntlets, I hope those don’t get damaged often, but your clothes for sure.”

“People don’t even have to wash their own costumes?”

“Have you been washing yours, here?” Mirio chuckled. “You don’t have to, you have better things to use your time for. Just give it to the people by the locker room, they’ll have it back on the racks in a few hours.”

“They probably have enough work on their hands without mine added to the load.”

“Nah, they’ve got plenty of staff and space, they get a decent chunk of downtime. I’m not gonna make you, obviously, but it’s there if you want to make use of it. That’s what they’re paid for, after all. It’s pretty neat.”

“And that was something you came up with?”

“Not exactly. I mentioned that it was a problem, Deku agreed that it’s a real pain, he said his mother did his for the first year so he hadn’t realised how much time it took up until recently. It developed from there.”

“So you and him work together a lot.”

“Yeah, we do. He’s a great guy. He really deserves his ranking.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Mirio only smiled at that, nodding toward the hallway, and they headed for the elevators with their full boxes of food. Plenty of other people were going this way and that, up and down in the elevators or power-walking through halls, some with their own boxed lunches in hand, but Katsuki’s floor was dead silent other than the ding of the elevator. Being right near the top, the apartments were only frequented by their inhabitants, and Katsuki was grateful for that every time he visited the madhouse of a front lobby. He couldn’t imagine all those people rushing back and forth right outside his apartment door.

“Have a seat,” he directed, waving toward the comfortable sofa. “Let me grab the laptop.”

He set his lunch on the coffee table, within reach of where he would sit, and Mirio just continued to smile at him as he got set up. Finally, as he chewed on a rice ball, he got into a document and shot Mirio a quick nod.

“Alright,” he began, taking a deep breath. “Let’s get started.”

─────

Katsuki thumped on the office door, glaring down at the cafeteria lunch box in his hand as he waited for the familiar voice to answer.

“Who is it?”

“Katsuki.”

There was a pause for half a second, no doubt from Deku grabbing his notes to check for a meeting, but he recovered as quickly as ever.

“Come in!” he called back, and Katsuki pushed the door open, cursing himself for the pout he couldn’t quite wipe off his face. “Katsuki, welcome. Have a seat, what can I do for you?”

There were a lot of answers to that, all bubbling up in Katsuki’s throat, but he bit back the snark as he took a step forward.

“I don’t need to sit,” he said instead, probably a little blunter than Deku would have liked. “I made too much food for my dinner, so here, eat it.”

He slid the box across the desk, and Deku gave him a puzzled look, lips moving slightly as he fought for words.

“I keep seeing you walking up here with those sh- awful konbini dinners. And I’ve never seen you with a damn vegetable in your hands. Tonight I made too much, I can’t eat it all myself, so eat it.”

Deku smiled knowingly, but didn’t say a word about the blush rising to Katsuki’s cheeks, and Katsuki was admittedly a little grateful for that. If nothing else, at least the guy knew how to be tactful, to let someone save face.

“Well then,” Deku said fondly, accepting the box and taking off the lid. “I’m happy to help you eat-  Wow. You made this?”

His tact gave way quickly in his surprise, and this time Katsuki’s face flooded with warmth, burning bright red right down to his chest. Stupid face, betraying him like a damn traitor.

“It’s no big deal,” he grumbled, looking away in a hurry. “It’s just dinner.”

“It’s amazing, Katsuki! I can’t cook to save my life. I guess you knew that though, since you’ve noticed my eating habits.”

“Mirio said most of the stuff you guys do is because of a problem you ran into in the past,” Katsuki said quietly, refusing to meet Deku’s eyes. “The fact that you provide at least one decent meal a day for all your sidekicks probably says a lot.”

“Yeah, I guess it does,” Deku smiled softly. “Can I eat it now?”

“Whenever you want. It’ll go cold soon, though, so heat it up if you wait.”

“Thank you, Katsuki. Really.”

“It’s no big deal. Um, can I… be excused…?”

“Of course,” Deku grinned. “Thank you for asking, and again for the food. It looks delicious.”

“No problem.”

He made his escape quickly, heart pounding weirdly fast as he jogged up the stairs to his apartment. He must have been tired, worked himself too hard in his last gym session or something – there was nothing else that would raise his heartbeat so quickly, after all. Unless he was about to have a heart attack? He’d never gotten out of breath on the stairs before, but there he was, suddenly breathing heavily as he let himself back into his apartment. How long would it take for someone to find him, if he collapsed? Morning? Would they come looking for him when he didn’t show up to meet Deku? They were all so busy, they might just leave it and wait for him to come be fired himself. Mirio would get worried eventually, right? But how long would that take? Should he go knock on his neighbour’s door? Or call someone? Maybe he should call someone, then they could at least send an ambulance if something happened, right?

He fell into the chair at his desk, pushing the borrowed laptop aside, and with his phone clutched in one hand he just focused on breathing. He wasn’t having chest pains or pressure, and nothing was numb or tingling, so that was a good sign, right? Maybe heart attack was jumping to conclusions, just a little.

He raised his empty hand, gnawing on his thumbnail, but after a minute he pulled it out again – Deku had already noticed his shitty, bitten nails once, he didn’t need more complaints about them. No doubt he’d think they were ugly and unprofessional, like Best Jeanist had, not that he cared what Best Jeanist thought.

Then again, Deku seemed to know why he had them, too, if the counselling appointments were anything to go by. It sure as hell hadn’t been a coincidence that he’d mentioned it right before telling him about the first shitty session.

Yutaka was better, though, he supposed. The first lady had been torturous, like hanging out in an old folks’ home, but Yutaka was… Easier. Easier to talk to. He didn’t feel judged, with Yutaka. He even planned on showing up to the next session in his comfy old sweatpants – he knew Deku would kill him if he found out, but if his sessions happened at ass o’clock in the morning to accommodate his schedule, it was gonna take everything in him just to show up. Putting real clothes on was out of the question, and Yutaka didn’t seem like he’d notice or care, so as long as he kept his promise to not divulge stuff to Deku, and as long as Deku kept his promise to not ask, all would be well.

His heart rate began to level out, and with it, his breath returned, his lungs no longer struggling to inflate. Not a heart attack then, just… Tired, or something.

There was another answer, of course, but Katsuki didn’t like that one. He didn’t want to consider that cooking his boss dinner, of all things, might somehow have triggered a panic attack. So that idea went straight back into the safe where it belonged, locked away in the back of his mind with old nightmares and embarrassing memories he desperately wished he could forget.

He’d find out for sure the next night, anyway.

[Chapter 6]