personal-0004

"Just throw a knife already!" Stain growled.

With a tiny squeak, Deku nodded and threw the knife. It took a slow trajectory, and Stain was easily able to knock it aside long before it had any chance of hitting him in the face. Dabi was unimpressed. The kid had seemed to think he could throw a knife Stain wouldn't be able to deflect.

"Not like that!" Stain snapped. "Do it like you mean it!"

Oh, so he could but he was holding back.

He released a heavy sigh, pulling out another knife. "Fine."

The knife flashed and Stain's eyes widened. He managed to duck to the side at the last minute, but the knife still skimmed across his forehead, cutting a long, thin gash there. "Holy fuck!" he exclaimed, looking excited. "You've gotten way better, kid! You don't get to throw them at me anymore."

"I'm so sorry I hit you!" the kid said, looking worried. "You said you could--"

"I'm not mad," Stain assured him as Deku produced a first aid kit out of nowhere and ran over to him, fingers already fumbling for gauze. "I'm impressed. You've improved a lot and it's only been a couple months."

"How are you against a fire quirk?" Dabi asked as Deku started trying to fix Stain's forehead, mumbling apologies under his breath.

Deku flinched just the tiniest bit and Dabi lifted an eyebrow. Did the kid have previous trauma from a fire quirk user? Unsurprising, although it was hard to imagine that this sunflower had a Traumatic Backstory™.

"It depends, I guess," the kid answered, not looking away from the gauze he was pressing to Stain's forehead. "I'm okay at deciphering weaknesses in opponents, but fire users are probably hard to beat because of the heat factor."

"'Okay' my ass," Stain grumbled, clearly annoyed with Deku for some reason. The kid ignored him.

"I don't think I could beat Endeavor," the kid said honestly. "If that's why you were asking."

"Nah, I think it would take a fucking miracle for anyone to beat that asshole in a fight." Dabi lifted a hand, flicking blue fire out from his fingertips. "I was just trying to figure out the odds of me being able to beat you in a fight."

The kid's eyebrows twitched together as Dabi let the flame slip away. "Right now the odds are high," he said, turning away to look at Stain's forehead again. "But if I made an effort, by the end of the week you wouldn't be able to beat me."

Well that was a bold statement. Dabi was surprised. He hadn't expected the kid to throw out a full-on challenge like that. "Why's that?" he asked.

The kid didn't answer, just pursed his lips together.

Stain answered for him. "Because despite what his painfully low self-esteem tells him, Deku is an amazing quirk analyst. He'll find your weaknesses and poke them. He likes to deny it, but he's already found all of mine, and he uses them. It's crazy, actually."

"I didn't do that," the green bean mumbled.

"Then tell me why you aimed for the back of my calf two days ago?"

The kid didn't answer for a long time, and Dabi was half-convinced he wasn't ever going to answer, when he finally said, "You were limping."

"There. Proof."

The kid sighed. Dabi snickered at his defeated expression. "Endeavor have any weaknesses?" he asked curiously. He honestly didn't think Endeavor did have any weaknesses, but it would be interesting to see what the underripe banana could come up with.

"Um, he's reckless and too stubborn to stop fighting when he's injured," Deku said, lifting a shoulder. "He's too prideful. All it would take is a few good insults and the guy would completely shut down."

"So you're saying if I walked up to the Garbage Fire and called him a dickhead, he'd suddenly be unable to beat me?" Dabi asked incredulously.

"No, I'm saying if you were in a fight with him and made an actually intelligent attack on his character, he would stop fighting. Especially anything relating to his kids."

Dabi felt his expression sour. "His kids."

"Sure. It doesn't take a genius to know that there's something going on at home that Endeavor doesn't want everyone to know. All it takes to prove it is one look at his fourth kid, um… I can't remember his name, but he has a really bad burn scar over his eye."

"Shouto," Dabi supplied before he could think.

"Right! Shou…" The kid gave him a curious look. "Wow, you really pay attention to Endeavor, don't you?"

"Well, that's enough of that," Stain interrupted, saving Dabi's ass. He'd bandaged his own forehead when Deku had been distracted. "I obviously am in no condition to fight right now, so you two can spar instead." He settled down against the wall of the alley, crossing his arms and watching them carefully. "Have fun."

"Quirks?" Dabi asked, pushing off the wall and casually standing in the middle of the alley, facing the kid.

"Knives?" the kid asked with a wary expression, settling into a deep, stable-looking stance.

"Neither. No advantages."

The kid smirked and Dabi blinked in surprise. Why was it so weird whenever Broccoli Head smiled? "My kind of fight," Deku said.

Before Dabi even had any hope of reacting, the kid was across the alley, one arm raised to slam into his neck. Staggering back a few feet as Deku's forearm hit his chest, he reached for his quirk before remembering he wasn't supposed to use that. As he tried to regain his footing, the kid dropped down, one leg sweeping out as he fell into a crouch. It hit Dabi in the back of the knees and he fell flat on his back. Deku was on top of him in an instant, pinning his arms down with his knees. Dabi gave him a dazed look.

"What just happened?"

"I beat you!" Deku said cheerfully, scrambling to his feet and offering Dabi a hand up.

"I wasn't trying," Dabi protested, which was a half-truth. He hadn't expected the little bean sprout to actually know how to fight, and he'd been caught off-guard by that goddamn smile. He wouldn't be making that mistake again. "Let's do it again."

Deku shrugged, backing down the alley again. "Okay."

They started again, Dabi making the first move this time. Deku was fast, and he was smart, and Stain was right about how good the kid was at finding weaknesses. A half a minute into the fight, he figured out that Dabi often left his midriff unprotected in favor of blocking his face, an old habit from training, and he brutally utilized that weakness until Dabi adjusted for it.

It was a close call, but Dabi managed to win, barely, by playing really dirty and scooping some dirt up from the alley to throw in the kid's face. The kid was caught off guard for probably the first time this entire fight, and he was distracted long enough for Dabi to tackle him to the ground and pin him there, face down.

Deku sighed into the street. "You fight dirty."

"So do you," Dabi observed.

"Friends," Stain said, nodding.

Both Dabi and Deku threw him a glare.

"I should go home," Deku said, wiggling around on his stomach to try to get out from under Dabi. Hopping casually to his feet, Dabi held out a hand and helped the kid up. "I don't want to push my luck with my mom, and I've been out longer than usual."

Dabi blinked in surprise. The kid had a home and a mom who would worry if he was gone. So much for the Traumatic Backstory™.

"You know where to find me," Dabi said, bowing his way out of the alley dramatically.

The kid grinned, and for the first time, it actually reached his eyes. "Yeah, I'll find you and beat your ass."

Dabi raised his eyebrows. "Where'd you learn language like that?"

Deku just laughed, and smirking, Dabi turned around the corner. Screw Stain's weird friendship plans, but the kid was actually someone Dabi could see himself wanting to hang out with more.

He wondered vaguely what Deku's quirk was.

Acceptance

Chapter Notes

For you, the chapter in which I found out that autocorrect likes "Stan" instead of "Stain."

We have a bit of a time skip here… say like… three months? If you're paying attention, you'll catch it, but I thought I'd throw out a warning.

TW// implied bullying, low self-esteem

The U.A. entrance exam was coming up fast, and all Katsuki could think about was stupid Deku and his stupid quirkless ass.

First, four months ago, the damn nerd had the audacity to get in a fight with Katsuki and actually fucking win . And then he did it again. And again. Deku had already broken his nose once, when he ran him into a wall, and he was starting to realize that somehow, the stupid fucker had learned to fight.

That was… troubling.

For many reasons, of course, but the biggest one was that in order for him to be learning to fight, someone had to teach the weakling, and that meant someone had to find potential in him. And there wasn't any potential to find there. Katsuki had checked. So what did this mystery teacher see in shitty Deku that no one else had seen? What had Katsuki missed?

Even worse, Deku had changed recently. He wasn't the same as he was five months ago, that was for sure. Before, he'd followed Katsuki around, chattering like an annoying bird or like a fucking mewing cat. It was so annoying. But now, he ignored Katsuki, or avoided him at all costs. He didn't even seem to be imagining they were friends anymore, and while Katsuki wanted to feel grateful, instead all he felt was this weird-ass sense of loss. Everything felt off.

And the other day Deku swore. In class. Straight up fucking swore. Since when does the nerd know how to string together the words "motherfucking fuckbucket"? And since when does he fucking say that in class? In front of the teacher?

Whoever this trainer was, they were teaching Deku a lot of things. Like how to disappear in the hallways, whether or not they were full of people. Or how to throw a really good punch. Or how to have an exceptionally dirty mouth, as the case may be.

Deku was becoming actually competent, and Katsuki didn't like it.

But it didn't matter now. He had to push the shitty nerd out of his mind, because he needed to focus.

The U.A. entrance exam was coming up in five months. He didn't have time to be distracted.

Dabi must have liked Izuku because he went out of his way to find them the next day, and the day after that, and so on. Izuku figured it was more because Dabi liked Stain than because he liked some random green kid who happened to throw knives. Nobody really ever liked Izuku, or seemed to anyway, and he could understand why. He wasn't really anything special, and the one thing that made him unique wasn't something to brag about. Then again, Dabi never asked him about his quirk. It was weird-- like he didn't even care what it was. At school, the first thing people would ask when they met was about the other person's quirk. It was the basis for all judgements, it was how people determined social hierarchy. So it was strange, to say the least, to be around people who didn't seem to care. And because Dabi didn't care, and Izuku didn't either, they found other reasons to like each other.

Izuku liked Dabi because the guy was smart and had a painfully funny sense of humor. He never got upset when Izuku beat him at sparring, and he was flexible enough to shift fighting styles and throw Izuku off. He gave advice without prompting, rarely got angry or out of control, and was all around an easy person to be with. Also, as a rule, he never asked prying questions, and Izuku never felt pressured to share his life story, which was oddly relieving.

Of course, Dabi wasn't without flaws. Probably the most unstable person Izuku had ever met, he often seemingly randomly would fly into a sky-high mood or sink into a sulky rage state. Neither option was good, and both of them usually meant Dabi would not listen to reason, and could go on a killing spree without warning. Also, Dabi wasn't great at discussions of morality or analysis or really anything Izuku wanted to philosophize about. Dabi tended to like ranting about Endeavor, discussing false heroes, ranting about Endeavor, listening to Izuku break apart his quirk for the tenth time, ranting about Endeavor, sharing villain community gossip--of which he had a lot, or, shockingly, ranting about Endeavor. Izuku also learned very quickly to not ask Dabi about his past, as it was the surest way to send Dabi into a homicidal rage spiral.

What Izuku didn't understand was what Dabi could possibly see in him that made him seem likeable. Either Dabi was just as lonely and desperate for human contact as Izuku, or he just had very poor taste in people, because Izuku wasn't worth having as a friend. Or, of course, Dabi was just crazy, which was looking increasingly possible. Izuku suspected that there was a lot more to him than met the eye, but since Dabi seemed to be respecting his privacy, he decided to return the favor and not look into his past, as tempting as it might be. He had risked a Google search, but nothing came up. After that, it had taken a great deal of self-control to not hack into police records for people with fire quirks or hospital records for people with burn scars, but he managed. He was still managing. Every night, he would stare at his computer for ages, internally debating the pros and cons of finding out Dabi's history, and every night he would reluctantly tuck the computer away. So he settled on just believing that Dabi was crazy, and that was the only reason he seemed to like being around Izuku.

Then again, there was always the possibility that Dabi genuinely liked Izuku, but the thought of that was so strange. Izuku was annoying and weak, and he muttered all the time and he was a waste of space. It was-- the idea that he could be friends with someone, let alone someone he just met, was so foreign to Izuku it felt impossible. So he settled for assuming the only reason Dabi stayed around was for Stain. It was easier that way.

But Izuku liked Dabi, and he was learning quite a lot from him. Sometime after they began sparring, Dabi started teaching him other tools of the villain trade. Some of these were more relevant than others-- Izuku didn't think he'd ever need to know how to shoplift to be a hero. But then again, after a few lessons in how to rob a store, Izuku got really good at catching other people robbing stores. He knew what to look for. But learning to shoplift itself wasn't helpful, and was very illegal, so whenever they had that type of lesson he always found himself sneaking back into the store to purchase the items the legal way.

Then there were the more relevant things, like how to get people to give information for free. Izuku liked learning that type of stuff because it was all about analysis and prediction, figuring out how his own actions would affect his audience. There was a certain subtlety to it that he appreciated, like he was changing people's minds and they didn't even know. He preferred not to think of it as manipulation, but that's what it was, really. It required strategy, a lot of split-second decisions, and an in-depth analysis of the audience's brain. And then all he had to do was change his attitude or language, and people would come falling down.

"It's scary when you do that," Dabi told Izuku once, when they'd split off from Stain so Dabi could use Izuku to get some information about an up-and-coming villain group he wanted to watch. Izuku had gotten the information from their broker easily enough, although it had taken a complete personality change. He'd had to pretend to be cold, aloof, and untouchable. It was one of his favorite masks, actually, and it was stunningly effective.

He gave Dabi a curious look, "What's scary?"

"The way you look like a completely different person. And how easy it is for you to switch between personas like that."

Izuku laughed, brushing that off. It wasn't hard to do. Dabi was just being silly-- if he wanted to put on a different mask, he could do it too. It was just acting and adjusting to the environment.

Dabi stopped in the alley, catching Izuku's arm. Insistent, he said, "No, Deku, I'm serious. It's scary how easily you can get people to do what you want. Cool, but terrifying."

Faltering a little, Izuku frowned. "I'm not-- I'm not making them do it, I'm just-- just--"

"It's not a bad thing!" Dabi laughed. "It's incredible! You'd make an amazing leader, kid. People would follow you wherever you went. You could be unstoppable."

Izuku's frown deepened as they started walking again. Unstoppable? But that would mean he had power, and he definitely didn't. He didn't even have a quirk-- he was just weak and useless as always. But maybe… maybe there was a certain power that came from being useless. Maybe being useless gave him some other type of power, the ability to move people-- he shook his head, jostling himself out of that thought process while he still could. He didn't need false hope right now.

"Which hero school are you applying to?" Dabi asked, eyebrows raised. He'd been trying to get Izuku to answer that question for at least a month, springing the question at the oddest of times, but Izuku never answered. It was none of Dabi's business, and anyway, people always made fun of him when they found out.

"What's a hero school?" he asked, blinking innocently at him.

"Little shit," Dabi grumbled.

Oh, yeah, and Dabi had the biggest vocabulary of swear words Izuku had ever borne witness to. They were creative too. He treated swearing like it was an artform. And now some of those curse words were creeping into Izuku's speech too. His mother was not impressed. Neither, to everyone's surprise, was Bakugou Katsuki.

It was around this time that Izuku started to get obsessed with underground heroics. Before, he'd always loved the flashy heroes, the ones that got the attention of the spotlight and were always smiling no matter the situation. But then he'd met All Might and realized most of that was fake. Being around Stain for so long meant that some of his ideology was rubbing off on Izuku, and he was honestly really starting to understand all of Stain's ranting about false heroes. He couldn't agree fully because saving people is still saving people whether or not it's for the glory, and killing heroes because they spend some time every day smiling for the cameras is stupid, and oftentimes spotlight heroes were symbols of hope for the population. But he could agree, in part, that if spotlight heroes spent less time worrying about how they were perceived and more time saving people, the world would be a safer place.

Underground heroes and vigilantes were great because they did just that. They saved people regardless of how it would make them look, and they worked hard to make sure everyone was safe, usually without any credit. Izuku loved the idea of saving someone and not having to have all the attention afterwards. He wanted to be able to save people without them knowing it was him doing it. Then again, he liked thinking about public image and smiling under pressure, but to be a hero, all he needed was to want to save people, which he did. So technically, as Stain continually reminded him, being a vigilante was a great back-up option if he couldn't get into U.A.

And so, life went on.

Stain yelled at Izuku a few times for "low self-esteem," which Izuku promised he didn't have. It's not low self-esteem if he really was more worthless than everyone else! Then it's just "harsh reality." Surprisingly, Stain was not impressed with that logic. Izuku didn't think Stain had any room for finger pointing, anyway. The Hero Killer wasn't exactly the perfect picture of emotional maturity. There were days when he'd rant about his ideology for hours until Izuku had to go home. There were days when he stopped to help people carry their groceries. There were days when he was a homicidal asshat. Both of them had good days and bad days, and Stain had no right to judge Izuku for something so inconsequential as "low self-esteem." It was so stupid! Izuku was too worthless to waste people's time with his "self-esteem issues."

That was a big part of the reason Izuku wanted so badly to be a hero. He'd been useless his whole life. He'd had to sit there, helpless, while heroes fought villains in front of him. They were all so powerful , it was like they were unbeatable. It wasn't that other professions weren't useful, just that heroes were so clearly amazing that the other options seemed nonexistent. Soon enough, Izuku had become convinced the only way he could turn his Dekunoubou into a Dekiru would be to become a hero. He wasn't so sure about that anymore. Dabi and Stain seemed to think he would be pretty useful as a vil…

Izuku never let himself finish that thought. He always managed to cut himself off before he completed the final word.

But he had to wonder…

Would he be more useful in a world where no one accepted him or in a world where everyone had to?

Slice

Chapter Notes

There's an OC in this chapter! She's important for later so I'm introducing her now.

TW for blood, LOTS OF BLOOD, major injury, alcohol, mentioned violence

I think gore too? I'm not really sure what constitutes gore but I think it's here?

See the end of the chapter for more notesDabi decided he liked Deku. The kid was… the kid was… There was no way to describe him, actually. He was smart and fast and really painfully good at beating Dabi in fights. A while ago, he'd to start using his quirk in order to beat the kid. He was just… really good at hand-to-hand combat. Of course, that was expected, with Stain as his teacher. But now the little shit was starting to figure out how to beat Dabi even with his quirk, which was annoying. Especially since his strategy generally included a lot of insults and dirty shots.

Today, Dabi had decided he didn't want to have his character attacked while getting kicked behind the knees, so he was sitting in the bar, playing on his phone and flicking his eyes around the room as he watched people come and go. He liked the bar because here he had access to information flow, and it was incredibly easy to find people with grudges against Endeavor. It was networking . Plus, he was well-known here, and people often liked to give him favors for favors. Which meant he could sit here and people would hire him to do their dirty work.

Dabi's phone rang and he sighed, lifting it to his ear as he saw the caller ID.

"Stain, I told you I'm not--"

" Dabi! " Deku's panicked voice came across the line. He sounded very distraught. " Dabi, I just-- oh my god, stop, Stain, you're freaking me out. Stain! STOP DOING THAT!"

"Kid, what the fuck happened?"

" Um, okay, so Stain and I were sparring and I had my katana and then he tried to grab my arm but then I did something he taught me the other day but I didn't realize that it was going to do that, stop looking at me like that Stain, I really didn't! "

"What did you do?" Dabi said, trying to keep his voice calm and steady, a polar opposite to Deku's voice, which was an octave higher than usual.

"I CUT OPEN HIS ARM!" Deku screamed into the phone, so loud that Dabi had to move the phone away from his ear, and several of the people sitting around him looked over in curiosity. " And blood is like… oozing out of it? And I can see the bone and he's bleeding everywhere and I don't know what to do! I've been trying to apply pressure and I found some gauze but Dabi please help, please, I don't know what to do, he told me I couldn't take him to the hospital but his arm is--"

"Kid, take a deep breath, just breathe for a second. You don't need to go to the hospital." Dabi stood up on his chair, looking the bar up and down as he searched for someone who came in almost every day to drown her miseries in alcohol. "There are a lot of people with healing quirks that don't exactly follow all the rules." He caught sight of her bright purple hair across the bar and dropped to the ground, carefully making his way around tables as he moved to her. "Send me your location, and I'll bring the morally ambiguous doctor over. Good?"

Deku hiccuped. " Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm going to-- I'm going to keep trying to stop the bleeding. I think I hit an artery or something. "

"Good idea. I'm gonna hang up now, okay? Just hang in there until I get to you, okay?"

"Mmmhh," Deku said, sounding like that was the only response he could manage at the moment.

Dabi hung up and sighed heavily, sliding into the booth across from the morally ambiguous doctor. He didn't usually call her, unless he burned himself beyond repair, which happened more often than he'd like to admit. She almost never requested to be paid, and if she did, it was only in favors, so he didn't mind doing transactions with her, not like he did with other people who wanted payment in cash. He wasn't exactly fluid.

Her name was Fujimoto Reiki, but she hated it when people called her by her last name, so everyone called her Reiki or just "the morally ambiguous doctor." Her quirk was one of the most useful ones in the underground, and people tended to flock from all over to talk to her. Because of that, she was one of the most organized people Dabi had ever met. If someone met her even once, she'd remember every detail she'd learned about them, so that if they needed her again, she would be able to help without the typical required questions. Dabi owed her too much to count at this point, but she didn't usually take payment. She did everything for free. It was probably the only thing keeping her from getting kidnapped, honestly, but Dabi was sure she had other reasons for it. Either way, the entire underground was indebted to Fujimoto Reiki.

She gave him a bored look with her sharp grey eyes as he slid into a seat across the table from her. "What do you want?"

"I'm calling in a favor from Stain," he said, resting his elbows on the table and leaning into them.

Reiki lifted an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Yep. His stupid kid just sliced open his arm. Thinks he hit an artery."

"If he hit an artery, Stain would probably be dead by now," Reiki said with apparent disinterest, although everyone who knew Reiki knew that she did genuinely care, under the mask of impartiality.

"Well then maybe he didn't. But the kid's freaking out, and apparently there's a lot of blood.

"Got a location?"

"I'll take you."

She sighed, downing the rest of her drink in one go as she stood. "All right, I'm coming. You owe me, like, a lot, by the way."

"As always."

He slipped out the window, Reiki right behind him, and led her down the deserted streets, following the address on his phone.

A message came from Stain, AKA Deku.

bloodeater: There's so much blood .

He sighed, opening his messaging app.

cremationreallyburns: Don't lick it.

bloodeater: WHY ON EARTH WOULD I LICK IT?

In all honesty, Izuku was freaking out. He didn't mean to cut Stain's arm. Stain usually dodged away from Izuku's katana, and this time he'd just… he was too slow. Which was actually kind of scary. And yeah, maybe the actual severed artery part of it could have been avoided if Izuku hadn't put so much pressure on the slice, but he wasn't used to actually cutting someone, so how was he supposed to know how much force to use? And anyway, Stain was the one who refused to let them practice with dull weapons because "the weight distribution wasn't right," so this was arguably Stain's fault too!

But mostly what happened was Izuku had panicked when Stain grabbed his wrist, phantom burning pain spreading up his arm. So he lashed out at Stain's arm without thinking, which was inexcusable and he was already planning a very apologetic farewell speech for when Stain kicked him out. But right now, Stain was grinning at him like a maniac while Izuku pressed gauze into his wound in an attempt to stem the bleeding. "Your first severed artery!" he cooed, voice slurring. "Isn't this exciting?"

"No!" Izuku screeched, seizing another piece of gauze and adding it to the blood-soaked pile of gauze he already had on Stain's arm. "No, it's not! This is really bad!"

"Why."

"BECAUSE I CUT OPEN YOUR ARM?"

Izuku didn't know why he was arguing with someone who was going into shock, but Stain was forcing the conversation.

The window opened and Dabi ducked in, hands tucked casually in his pockets as his eyes swept the room and landed on Stain. "Huh," he said, eyeing the blood-stained gauze on Stain's arm. "Nice one, kid."

"Not you too," Izuku groaned, pressing his fingers more aggressively against the wound.