In Your Shadow [Chapter 13]

[Chapter 12]

Katsuki knocked awkwardly on the open door, cringing when the staff within turned to look his way and lit up with their enthusiasm. They ushered him inside, already pulling hangers from a rack, and he grimaced when they pulled out a selection of ties for him to choose from.

“Are you growing your hair out?” one of the older women asked, tugging at it and making Katsuki squirm. “I hear it’s fashionable right now, but I don’t understand it, myself.”

“I’m not,” Katsuki grumbled, contorting himself a little in hopes of getting out of her reach. “I’ve just been busy.”

“Oh, then Hatsui can take care of that for you!”

She gestured toward another staff member, a younger woman this time, and Katsuki just shrugged.

“Sure, whatever.”

He headed over to the seat Hatsui offered him, sitting down, and couldn’t help but be a little relieved when the old ladies backed off. Hatsui didn’t say much, just asked a couple of quick questions about how short he wanted it, to which Katsuki just shrugged again, and then let him sit in silence. He wasn’t afraid to admit that she’d done a good job, when she offered him a mirror, and she smiled when he nodded his approval.

“Thanks,” he grunted.

“My pleasure.”

She brushed away the last few stray hairs from his neck, and then he was surrendered back to the old women again, resisting the urge to groan as they began debating the merits of ties all over again.

“The red one matches his eyes!”

“The red one looks like his school uniform, the black one matches his suit!”

“The black one is boring, the green one will match Deku!”

“The green one will make him look Christmasy, the grey one is much more classy!”

“The orange one,” Katsuki said immediately, when they finally looked his way again. “Like my hero costume.”

One of the women brandished it proudly, and he nodded slightly when she laid it on a table next to a shoebox. For a moment he thought they were going to make him strip right in the middle of the room, when they started handing him hangers, but thankfully they waved him toward a little curtain stall, where he’d not get much privacy, but at least they wouldn’t be staring at him in his underwear.

Resigning himself to a night of discomfort, he pulled the curtain and began to strip, swapping his baggy sweatpants for a pair of tailored black trousers that fit him like a glove. He was pleased to find there was a little stretch to them, when he tested them out – at least he wouldn’t be hobbling around stiffly, like he had the last time his parents forced him into a suit. He buttoned up his ironed white shirt, tucking it into his waistband, then squared his shoulders and headed back into the onslaught.

Soon, but nowhere near soon enough, he was finally standing outside one of the little offices off the lobby, where they did all their patrol debriefs. He could hear faint mumbles through the door, and knew Deku was waiting for him, but it took all his courage to actually knock and step inside.

“Katsuki!” Deku said brightly, eyes widening when he looked him over. “You look great, they did a good job. And the tie matching your hero costume? Great touch. I hope you didn’t give them too much trouble.”

“I wasn’t the one causing trouble,” he muttered, shutting the door behind him. “I feel stupid.”

“You shouldn’t,” Mirio assured him. “You look great, none of us would let you go out looking stupid. How did the sparring go?”

He perked up a little at the mention, remembering his exhausting morning in the basement, heroes dropping in before or after their patrols to spar with him for a few rounds.

“It was the best day of my life,” he said sincerely, not even ashamed when they both chuckled at him for it. “Ephia was terrifying, but she didn’t use her quirk, we just went straight martial arts.”

“She only ever spars quirkless,” Deku assured him. “She would never turn her quirk on someone innocent, but she likes the hand-to-hand practice for when people get close before she can quirk them.”

The words gave Katsuki flashbacks, but Deku didn’t address the previous night’s incident, so Katsuki didn’t dare to bring it up.

“Plasmatic was a lot of fun,” he continued, when they waited expectantly. “It was our second one, so we kinda know how each other moves, which made it a lot more intense. And Nightbolt was fascinating, with the way those blades change constantly, and they’re so hard to see sometimes. And Paragon was just a lesson in running away, trying not to let him touch me so I wouldn’t get those awful pain spikes.”

“It sounds like you had a good morning,” Deku smiled softly. “I hope you got some energy out, so you can suffer through this gala without losing too much patience.”

“I hope so too.”

Mirio laughed at that, though Deku just smiled a little wider – Katsuki figured he was safe, since neither of them immediately reprimanded him. He really needed to think before speaking, just in case.

“Ephia is gonna meet us there,” Mirio said, reading a message off his watch. “She’s only got a couple of hours.”

“I’m glad she’s gonna make it,” Deku said quietly. “She’s had a rough week.”

Katsuki didn’t dare to ask, though he did file the information away in the back of his mind, to see if he could glean any information later in the night.

“Is Hawks coming by before we go?” Deku asked.

“Nah, he’ll probably be late.”

“As usual. Just the three of us, then.”

He waved toward the table and chairs, and Katsuki took a seat obediently, settling in for the inevitable lecture about how to behave in front of other agencies and the media.

Instead, he felt ignored. All the chatter was about which companies they needed to network with, which heroes to thank if they got called up for any awards, who had been injured or sick recently that they needed to ask after – there was a veritable gold mine of information the two of them seemed to possess, or at least had notes on, and Katsuki couldn’t remember a word of it.

“Stop slouching like that or I’ll have to put a corset on you or something.”

Katsuki felt his face burn, quickly jolting upright in his chair, squirming a little as he readjusted. He tried not to let himself fixate on Deku’s tone of voice, but his brain wouldn’t seem to let it go – why did that suggestion sound so hot all of a sudden?

“Y-Yes, Deku,” he choked out, getting a concerned look from Mirio. “S-Sorry.”

“Good boy.”

Fuck. Since when had he been so pent up? Admittedly he’d been too busy and tired to rub one out while he’d been on his internship, but he didn’t think it had been that long.

He laced his fingers together, resting his hands in his lap carefully, and forced himself to stay bolt upright in his chair, shoulders back and head up, just like Deku always said. He felt like an idiot for it, but he couldn’t risk any more threats like that – at least not until the end of the night, when he could safely run off to his apartment.

“Alright, shall we head out?”

Mirio nodded, rising from his chair, and Katsuki stood up stiffly, following the pair of them out into the lobby, and then the street. Deku said a quick goodbye to a few staff members, and Katsuki got a raised eyebrow from Spelling Bee across the room, but nobody spoke to him, and for once Katsuki was relieved to feel invisible.

─────

“Bakubro!” Kirishima called, waving wildly from a table near the bar.

“Blasty, you came!”

Katsuki cringed, wishing he could just dissolve into the floor, but Mirio grinned at him fondly, and even Deku cracked a little smile as the hoard of Katsuki’s classmates came rushing over to accost him with their excitement at seeing him, and their teasing about his outfit. Katsuki bit down on his lip to keep from yelling at them, knowing too many eyes were already looking their way because of the commotion, not least of which those bright green ones that eyed him so observantly.

“My classmates,” Katsuki grumbled, when Deku caught his eye. “Sorry.”

“It’s nice to meet you all,” Deku smiled brightly, with that stupid crinkly-eyed grin that made so many civilians fall in love with him. “I’m Deku.”

Their excitement for Katsuki was forgotten in an instant, replaced with starry-eyed gasps from his classmates, who somehow hadn’t seen the tall, freckled, muscular hero standing right beside him.

“I should have brought my autograph book!” Kaminari complained. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Kirishima whined, elbowing Katsuki in the ribs. “You could have prepared us!”

“Another time,” Deku assured them. “Sorry, I don’t have my headshots on me tonight.”

Katsuki was pretty sure that was a joke, but he stifled his snicker just in case, relieved to see Mirio doing the same.

“I need to go meet with some people,” Deku told them all. “I’ll have to excuse myself, sorry.”

Katsuki followed him awkwardly, taking a few steps like a puppy on a leash, and Deku paused again to smile at him faintly.

“You can hang out with your friends, you’ve earned a break.”

Katsuki shook his head quickly, taking a moment to consider his words, even though his friends were already moaning behind him about being ditched.

“I’m here to learn, not to screw around. I can do that any time.”

Deku’s smile turned a little more genuine, and Katsuki knew he’d made the right choice.

“Come on, then,” he agreed. “Be good for me.”

A small part of him wanted to object, but he’d kind of gotten used to instructions like that, after almost two weeks of it. At least he was getting time with Deku, now, even if it was just to watch him schmooze a bunch of rich assholes at a party. So he followed quietly, greeting people when Deku introduced him and making painful small talk when the situation required, but mostly just observing, learning the way Deku laughed with people who wanted to think they were his friends, held intelligent conversations with people who wanted to think they were his equal, and asked about families and friends and fights with all the other heroes he came across, who might at least have had a chance at one or other.

Katsuki jumped when a microphone was shoved in his face, knowing the camera pointed at him was going to see him stunned and confused before he managed to school his features into something more neutral.

“Mr Dynamight, is it?” the reporter asked, jamming the microphone even closer to his face. “Tell us, how have you overcome your traumatic experience with the Sludge Villain to become a heroics student?”

“Forget that!” another reporter insisted, joining the first in an instant. “Tell us about the time you were kidnapped by the League of Villains – is it true that they tried to recruit you? And that you would have said yes if All Might hadn’t shown up right on time to stop you?”

Deku took a step toward him, ready to shut them down, but Katsuki knew he couldn’t run away – not just for himself, but for Deku, who would come under fire in a heartbeat for shielding Katsuki.

“They tried to recruit me,” he agreed, forcing himself to keep his head held high. “But I never would have gone along with it. I’ve wanted to be a hero for as long as I can remember, and being kidnapped from my school camp by a bunch of villains was never going to make me want to take their side. As for the Sludge Villain, it was definitely a humbling experience; at that age I think we all feel invincible, we all have fantasies about fighting off a villain single-handedly and being praised by all the heroes for it, so to feel my own mortality like that, it really dashed my confidence for a long time.”

“It must have been amazing to get an internship offer from the man who saved your life twice!”

“Yeah,” Katsuki smiled wryly. “That’s one word for it.”

“How did you react, when you saw that letter? Did you have a big pile of invites to sort through?”

“I didn’t look at any others,” Katsuki confessed. “One of my teachers suggested that this one would be good for me, and another agreed with him. I didn’t want to risk making a biased decision, once I saw the name, so I asked them to accept on my behalf before I opened the envelope.”

“You chose your internship without knowing where you were going?”

“I had a decent number of options,” Katsuki shrugged, trying his best to be modest about the massive pile of letters he’d received. “Including agencies I’d been to before, or heroes I’d worked with who offered me another chance, and I really appreciated every single one of them. I know any one of them would have been an educational experience in and of itself, and I hate to think about all the things I might have missed out on, by not picking another; but I trust my teachers, and I wanted to do what they felt was right for me. I’m humbled and grateful that I got this opportunity, I know how many people would kill to intern with Deku – including established heroes, let alone students.”

He didn’t dare to look Deku’s way, but he caught a glimpse of Mirio’s face, and was relieved to see that he looked somewhat impressed.

“But as for my reaction? It probably wasn’t the best one. I was mad, in some ways, because like you said, Deku has had to save my life twice. It felt like admitting defeat, in a way, to learn from the hero who saw you at your lowest point, like he was taking pity on me. In other ways, I was too smug – I tried not to lord it over my classmates, but there were definitely moments where it came out, and I regret that now. I wish every hero-in-training could have the experiences I’ve had these past two weeks.”

“And Mister Deku, Dynamight has been your first ever intern! What made you decide it was the right time, and he was the right person? Have you always known you wanted to work with him, since you saw his quirk so long ago?”

“He’s pretty hard to ignore, right?” Deku grinned, making the ever-growing cluster of reporters laugh. “But much like Dynamight’s experience, I went on the advice of my mentors. A teacher I’m still close to, and my lifelong hero. If they both tell me that I should be interested in a kid, it’s hard not to listen.”

“Did they only bring him to your attention this year? What about the rescues you did for him? You didn’t remember the child you saved?”

“I save a lot of children,” Deku pointed out, getting a few more chuckles from the crowd. “But no, he was brought to my attention a long time ago. Best Jeanist mentioned him to me, in his first year of high school, but at the time I brushed itoff and said I wasn’t interested in the type of kid he was interested in. I’m sure you all know the type of intern Best Jeanist likes, and while he plays an important role, that’s not a role I’m interested in taking on. So I brushed him off and never delved deeper. Later that year, Aizawa-sensei mentioned him to me, asking if I was interested in taking students on for work studies, and I told him I didn’t have the time or capacity for it. In truth, I think I mostly just felt unprepared, like I didn’t know how to handle a teenager.”

“But that changed?”

“Not really,” Deku laughed. “But he’s older now, he’s not a kid anymore, and he’s had plenty of hands-on experience with U.A. over the years, so I don’t have to shelter him or protect him from the world, to keep from scaring him off. In all honesty, I still wasn’t sure it was the right time – I’ve been so busy that I haven’t given him nearly as much attention as I’m sure the other heroes gave to their interns, but when All Might told me about this student he thought I’d love to work with, and I heard that name again, from a third person, and someone so important to me? I already knew from Aizawa’s suggestion that I needed to meet the guy at some point, but All Might too? I couldn’t keep passing up that opportunity.”

Deku glanced over, smiling softly at Katsuki, before he turned his eyes to the camera this time, rather than the reporter in front of it.

“All Might told me if I could spare five minutes for Dynamight, he’d learn more from it than other students would learn in a month. How could I pass up that pitch?”

“It must be a relief to know that next time he gets in trouble, you won’t have to save him anymore!”

Deku just blinked at the man, and Katsuki felt his hands ball into fists as he resisted the urge to argue, to get in his complaints before Deku could say a word.

“It wasn’t Dynamight’s fault he got kidnapped,” Deku said firmly. “And anyone who thinks that, can just toss that thought out right now. He was a kid, he was not expected to stand up to an entire gang of villains, and I was just doing my job by helping him out. I would have done the same for anyone, no matter who they were, or how old, or what kind of quirk they did or didn’t have. Can any of you honestly tell me that when you were fifteen years old, you’d have told a villain no when they offered to recruit you instead of murdering you? Let alone a group of them? Because I don’t think I could have done that, I’m pretty sure I’d have done whatever they asked of me to save my own life. The fact that Dynamight told them no, and kept telling them no, kept fighting back and trying his best to get out, that speaks volumes about him as a person and a hero.”

Music from the stage area broke up their interview, thankfully, and as Deku led the way to their agency’s table at the front, he shot Katsuki a little smile that seemed much more genuine than any other that Deku had given him.

“I’m proud of you,” he whispered. “For keeping your cool and not blowing up at them.”

“Proud enough to buy me a drink from the bar?” Katsuki whispered back.

“Not proud enough to break the law, no.”

“Damn.”

─────

Katsuki was a little surprised to see how friendly Deku seemed, as he chatted with Hawks and Miruko – he’d noticed how casual he and Hawks had been with each other, in their one brief interaction he’d seen, but that had just seemed like a Hawks thing, really. To see it with Miruko, too, had thrown him for a loop.

“They’re all around the same age,” Mirio explained, when he caught Katsuki staring. “They’ve done a lot of work together over the years, and gotten pretty close.”

“I never knew.”

“Yeah, they try to stay pretty professional in the field, but when they hang out away from work, you can definitely see how friendly they are.”

Honestly, Katsuki had never even considered the idea of Deku away from work – it seemed like the agency was his life, like he never left the building, so the thought of him sitting on Miruko’s couch in jeans and a t-shirt, or at a club flirting with people at Hawks’s side, didn’t even compute in his brain. What did they even do?

“My classmates are interning with them,” Katsuki said, holding back his personal questions. “I haven’t seen them around, though.”

“I sent her off to have fun with her friends,” Miruko told him, making Katsuki cringe to know she’d been listening in. “Tokoyami is doing the same. I can’t believe Deku has his poor intern just hanging around watching him talk to engineering companies about stuff no one understands.”

“I understand it,” Deku protested, pointedly ignoring the poor intern part. “I love those conversations!”

“Sure you do, buddy,” Hawks teased, clapping him on the back. “I still reckon you’ve got a big ol’ crush on that sales rep, you always spend hours talking to her.”

“She tells me about all the fascinating new tech they’re working on!” Deku objected. “Besides, ew.”

Katsuki raised an eyebrow, but Deku didn’t seem to notice.

“She’s pretty!” Miruko argued. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice!”

“Yeah, she is,” Deku snorted, taking a sip from a glass of wine when the waiters brought them around. “That’s kinda the problem.”

Miruko laughed, but Hawks reached over to slap Katsuki’s hand lightly, missing the apparent-joke in favour of stopping Katsuki from sneaking alcohol from the tray.

“Spoilsport,” he grumbled, when Hawks smirked at him.

“You should go have fun, I’ll take the beating when Deku complains.”

“We’re good,” Deku assured him. “Katsuki is fine right where he is.”

“You’re so cruel to your poor intern,” Miruko sighed. “I’m sorry, Dynamight, we tried.”

“I’m good here,” Katsuki assured them. “But thank you.”

“You’re too well-behaved, where’s that fire of yours gone? Come hang out with me for a week, we’ll get some fighting spirit back in you.”

“Uraraka must be having a good time with you.”

Miruko grinned, nodding, and Katsuki couldn’t help but wonder what made her seem so gleeful about the comment.

“She was real jealous when she saw the news this morning,” Miruko explained. “You were all over the news, did you see?”

“I was?” he asked, blinking at her stupidly. “Why me?”

“There were news ‘copters out when you made your heroic rescue, it was big news.”

“I’m just heat resistant,” Katsuki grumbled, face burning. “Anyone else with a quirk like mine would have done the same thing.”

“Heat resistant?”

“To the fire?”

Miruko just stared at him, waiting, and Katsuki shook his head.

“I don’t know why you’re confused.”

“I didn’t see a fire, I saw you saving Ephia’s ass.”

Katsuki’s jaw dropped, but before he could think of any vaguely-eloquent kind of response, the announcer on stage was speaking, and Miruko raised a finger to her lips, making sure he knew it was time to listen. Deku would no doubt be getting a few awards for his service, and Katsuki had to listen and smile and clap politely for the winners regardless of who they were, even if it made him sick to his stomach to do it.

But after, when the awards were done and no one had eyes or cameras on him anymore, he was sure as hell gonna be pulling up the news on his phone.

[Chapter 14]