Chapter 1

Katsuki was angry. The reason for his anger was, quite predictably, Midoriya Izuku.

Bakugo hated Deku with all his heart, every part of his body, and burned with righteous fury whenever that idiot did something wrong. And Izuku did everything wrong.

Sometimes Katsuki thought it would be great to have never known Midoriya. That life would be calmer, and achieving his goals would be much easier. But Izuku was constantly throwing obstacles in his way, popping up where no one expected him, and generally had a masterful talent for ruining everything.

It all started with an innocent kiss.

Those fucking faggots kissed, and Katsuki became an accidental witness.

He absolutely did not want to see Izuku cupping Eijiro’s face with his hands, see his face flush red as he leaned in to kiss him. Fuck—Deku was kissing Kirishima himself, and that red-haired bastard was clearly not against it, because he pulled Izuku closer by the waist, kissing him back.

What the fuck? What the fuck kind of fucked-up joke was it that Deku’s goddamn boyfriend turned out to be the one person Katsuki sometimes—on rare occasions of moral generosity—considered a friend?

Why wasn’t it that bastard Todoroki? Why not that round-faced idiot who sticks her nose everywhere? Not even the shitty class rep that Deku talked to so often.

Fucking Kirishima.

And Katsuki absolutely refused to acknowledge the fact that while watching that scene, his stomach twisted and nausea rose in his throat. He categorically refused to acknowledge the tears that welled up, too. Because they weren’t there. They weren’t. They weren’t. They weren’t.

Katsuki did not admit—and refused to admit—that the kiss between those bastards had hurt him. He couldn’t possibly feel pain and emptiness. The rage came from something else entirely.

But fuck, some incomprehensible shit started happening to him.

On the first day, his lungs felt like they were heating up from the inside, filled with warmth and—what the fuck?!—some strange stirring. He was definitely imagining it. Then the unpleasant sensation shifted from his airways to his stomach, squeezing it and prickling from within. He felt sick, damn it, just from catching sight of Midoriya’s happy face.

And the kiss kept replaying before his eyes.

Fucking Deku ruins everything!

Katsuki wrote off his sensations as overexertion, even though it wasn’t fucking overexertion and he knew it. But Bakugo didn’t want to dig through all that shit, probably because deep down he knew exactly where it was heading.

The second day seemed to push him toward realization, forcing him to finally understand what was going on.

He developed an unpleasant, dry cough. His throat was torn up from the inside, scratched raw, and breathing became difficult. Recovery Girl decided it was a cold and prescribed medication that didn’t help. He was advised to skip a few days of school, but Bakugo had no intention of listening to anyone’s advice.

It’s just a fucking cough—no one dies from that!

Katsuki stubbornly kept going to classes, ignoring the tickle in his throat and the burning in his chest. He was angry at everyone around him, but most of all at himself—for letting some bullshit throw him off balance.

He isn’t sick.

He isn’t in love.

He isn’t Deku.

And if the world decided to prove him wrong—then fuck the world.