A Mile In Your Shoes - Chapter 1

Midoriya froze, staring at the dark eyes down the street, the sneer aimed their way as he threw a body to the side. He’d evaded countless heroes, slipping away into the shadows unseen, but now he stood in broad daylight, lips curling as he stared.

“What have we here?” he called, taking a few steps toward them. “Two little baby heroes, is it? Come to tackle the big scary villain and save the day?”

He could still hear Aizawa's firm voice in his head, the long lecture about what was and was not their job as a U.A. student, and more importantly, the stern words he finished with as he finished.

“If you come across this man, do not engage.”

When Midoriya looked over to his left, the piercing red eyes were already looking back at him. Their gazes met, the words echoing through both their minds, and neither of them needed to speak to understand:

Sometimes you have to break the rules.

He heard footsteps beside him as he began to move, pace rapidly increasing as they launched themselves at the man, splitting to either side to surround him. The man dropped into a low stance to brace himself, and Bakugou cackled when he saw it, firing a small blast to launch himself into the air. By the time the man spun around to face him, Midoriya already had a foot landing on the side of his head. He just barely got an arm in the way in time, to take away some of the impact, but in the moment of distraction Bakugou shoved a hand in his face, blasting him down the street.

He hit the ground with a heavy thud, and Midoriya ran for him, ready to throw another blow. His pace slowed as he got closer, though, growing more cautious when the man didn't move.

“I think he's out,” Bakugou called after him, watching the limp figure that still remained static.

Sure enough, when Midoriya gripped his arm he didn't react, out for the count. He was still breathing, thankfully, otherwise Bakugou would have been in a massive amount of trouble, but he was certainly unconscious for the moment.

Midoriya's vision was slightly blurred, and he couldn't help but wonder when the tears had started to form. Were they tears of relief? Or were his eyes just watery from the cold breeze? He wasn't entirely sure.

He could hear sirens in the distance, the lights fuzzy when he looked up to see the car getting closer, but Bakugou stopped beside him, radiating his typical warmth, and just having him close felt comforting.

"That's what the asshole gets for underestimating us," Bakugou huffed. "Weak piece of shit."

“I have the weirdest headache,” Midoriya said quietly, as they watched the officers climb out of their car. “My vision is all weird.”

“Haah?” Bakugou demanded, his voice cracking a little. “Yours too?”

“Huh?”

He blinked hard, rubbing at his eyes in a last desperate attempt to clear them, and when he looked up...

“What?” he asked, his voice coming out... wrong. “Kacchan, are you...?”

Wide, emerald green eyes blinked back at him, a familiar face tightening as he scowled.

“Haaaah?” he demanded, his voice completely the wrong pitch. “What the fuck, nerd?”

Midoriya reached for his phone, only to find his pocket empty, his pants baggier than they should be. After a moment of confusion he reached for the other side, pulling out a thick-cased device and halting when it asked for a password.

“Kacchan, you're me,” he said finally, his voice too rough, too low. “What happened?”

“Yeah, and you're me, you fuck. Give me that.”

He snatched the phone out of Midoriya's hand, and Midoriya hissed a little at the contact, his palms warm and sensitive. He'd never considered the consequences of Bakugou's quirk before, the way it might make him feel beyond the recoil from his weaponry. Bakugou was used to it, though, he supposed.

“Kacchan, I'm you,” he said blankly, staring at the hands far too clean and pretty to be his own. “What happened?”

“Ah,” he looked up at the unfamiliar voice, locking eyes with a young officer. “You got hit by his quirk, didn't you? Switched places?”

“Yeah!” Midoriya agreed, eyes wide as he nodded. “How do we fix it?!”

“It'll wear off eventually, the longest we've encountered was about a week. Just be careful and keep yourselves safe until then. Thank you for your work here today.”

“No, thank you!” Midoriya insisted, shaking his head. “Thank you so much for arriving so fast! We appreciate it!”

“Not at all. Good luck!”

Bakugou was scowling at him when the officer took his leave, and Midoriya stared at him for a moment in his confusion. The expression looked so wrong on his face, with the narrowed eyes and lowered eyebrows, his lips turned down at the ends.

“What did I do?” he asked finally.

“Don't do that nerdy shit in my body. No stupid babbling and overbearing gratitude, you're making me look stupid.”

“Then you have to stop scowling!” Midoriya returned without thinking, watching the eyebrows drop even lower. “It looks weird!”

“Fucking hell,” Bakugou spat, folding his arms across his chest. “If Aizawa finds out about this we're gonna be on house arrest for the rest of our careers.”

“I'll lose my internship,” Midoriya wailed. “Why does this always happen to me?!”

“Calm down, god damn,” Bakugou growled. “We can handle this shit.”

“How?!”

“We just... won't tell them.”

“What?!”

“It's less than a week, you heard them. I've known you your whole damn life, you think I can't pretend to be you for a couple of days?”

“But Kacchan, you'd have to be nice to people and let the girls hug you and be quiet in class and... and use my quirk.”

“We'll figure it out, alright?!” Bakugou insisted, gritting his teeth. “I'm not gonna risk being kicked out of school over this shit.”

Midoriya froze. He hadn't even thought about that – about the multitude of warnings Bakugou had already received, half of them at little to no fault of his own. He always just seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and with his frankly kind of shitty attitude, it had led to some close calls with the school.

“I'm sorry,” Midoriya said finally. “I was being selfish.”

“Whatever,” Bakugou scowled, looking away. “We'll figure it out, we just... we just need to be careful. Be smart.”

“Yeah! We can do it, Kacchan!”

“But more importantly,” Bakugou reached for his jeans, tugging at the waistband and cackling when he looked down.

“Kacchan, stop!”

“I fuckin' knew it,” Bakugou snorted. “I beat you again, nerd!”

“Stop!!”

Bakugou was still laughing when they got back to the school, taking a moment to find each other's ID cards to get through the gates, and Midoriya gave him a pointed look as they stepped onto the grounds.

“Kacchan, you really need to stop scowling.”

“I'm trying, asshole!”

“And be nicer!! No one will believe you if you talk like that!”

“And you think they're gonna believe you when you're standing here telling me to be nice?!”

Midoriya fell silent, and Bakugou snorted again.

“Yeah, nerd, exactly.”

“Can I have my phone?”

Bakugou handed it over without question, and Midoriya immediately pulled up his camera, staring into the screen like it was a mirror. Sure enough, Bakugou's face looked entirely wrong. His eyes were too wide, his expression too gentle.

He took a moment to test out his facial muscles, working out exactly how to knit his eyebrows together in a more “Bakugou” way, how to drop his lips into a little scowl and make himself look less approachable.

“Better,” Bakugou acknowledged, when Midoriya looked up again. “How long can you keep it up?”

“I guess we'll find out.”

With a long sigh, Bakugou forced himself to relax a little, his face softening into some semblance of neutral even though he couldn't quite make it to “happy”.

There was a little pause as they looked at each other, then Bakugou's lips twitched.

“I'm hotter than I thought,” he smirked. “Damn, you guys are lucky to look at me all the time.”

“Kacchaaaan,” Midoriya whined, immediately losing control over his scowl. “Don't play around like that, this is serious!”

They continued their path back to the dorms, but Midoriya glanced at his phone every few steps still, testing out his expression and reassuring himself that it wasn't all a weird dream. He felt too high up, not used to the extra bit of height on his frame, and especially not used to how damn top heavy he felt.

“How do you walk like this?” he asked quietly, glancing down at his body as he moved. “Don't you trip over constantly?”

“Haaah?” Bakugou demanded, the softness gone in an instant. “How do I walk? How do you lift your fuckin' legs with all this damn weight in them?”

“My legs?” he asked blankly. “What's wrong with my legs?”

“Why are your thighs so damn thick?!”

“Kacchan, stop! Why are you paying so much attention to my thighs?!”

“How could I not when they're fuckin' tree trunks attached to me?!”

“Look,” Midoriya sighed, shaking his head. “Let's just retreat to our dorm rooms and hope this passes soon, right? Maybe we'll be lucky and it'll be over by morning. Or... I don't know, maybe we can pretend to be sick.”

“I'm not missing a week of classes.”

“I don't want to either, Kacchan, but what else are we meant to do?!”

“We'll make it fuckin' work!”

Midoriya hoped that maybe they'd be lucky, maybe they could slink up to their rooms unnoticed and sort things out on the phone or by texting. As it turned out, though, their streak of bad luck was determined to continue.

“Oh, hey you guys! Did you have a good time back home?”

“Yeah, it was good!” Midoriya answered immediately, kicking himself for it when Bakugou glared at him.

“What the hell,” Kirishima stared, eyes darting back and forth between them. “What's going- oh my God, you met that villain didn't you?!”

“Shut up, shitty-hair!” Bakugou hissed, the words almost comical in Midoriya's voice. “I swear to fuckin' christ if you say a word to anyone you're gonna regret it.”

“Kacchan!” Midoriya frowned, elbowing him in the ribs. “Not in my voice!”

“This is amazing,” Kirishima snorted. “I can't wait to tell the others.”

“Kirishima, please,” Midoriya cut in quickly, clapping a hand over Bakugou's mouth. “We're gonna be in so much trouble if the teachers find out. I swear we didn't do it on purpose, but there's no way they'll believe that, not from us.”

Kirishima paused, mulling it over, then nodded faintly.

“Okay, yeah, I get it,” he agreed. “You're right. So you're just gonna... What, pretend?”

“Yeah,” Bakugou nodded, softening again finally. “It shouldn't last long.”

“Let me help,” Kirishima offered. “You could clearly use some work, you're not at all convincing.”

Bakugou scowled again, and Kirishima gave him a pointed look.

“That's exactly what I mean, you don't even look right.”

With a little smirk, Midoriya dropped his eyebrows like he'd practiced, narrowing his eyes.

“Haah?” he growled, making both faces turn to look. “The fuck are you on about, shitty-hair, I look perfect.”

Kirishima couldn't help but laugh, especially when Bakugou blinked at him with such confusion and almost offense on that freckled face.

“I've been watching Kacchan for a long time,” Midoriya explained, unable to resist a smile that felt so foreign for Bakugou to watch. “I know how to act like him!”

“Alright, Midoriya can maybe handle it for a little while, then. Your turn, Bakubro! Give us your best Midoriya impression!”

Bakugou halted, lips twitching awkwardly as he fought for words, his cheeks flushing red the moment he tried to speak.

“No way,” he answered finally, turning away instead to hide his face. “I'm not a fuckin' nice person, alright?!”

“Kacchan, you're the nicest person ever when you want to be!” Midoriya insisted. “You just have to try!”

Still Bakugou refused, and when other people began to show up they exchanged a look, not needing words to agree that it was time to retreat. As they began to leave, Kirishima leaned over to whisper in his ear through green curls.

“Try practicing with a mirror,” he suggested. “It's probably easier to be nice to Midoriya, right?”

“I'm not gonna be nice to shitty Deku!” he hissed, cheeks glowing just as bright, while Kirishima smirked at him. “Shut up, asshole!”

The elevator was thankfully empty when they arrived, so they rode in silence up through the floors, exchanging room keys from their bags.

“I'll text you,” Bakugou said quietly, as Midoriya stepped out to head for his bedroom. “I'll try, okay?”

Midoriya smiled, and once again Bakugou felt like he no longer recognised his own face, wondering when the last time was – if ever – that he had smiled like that.

“Yeah!” he nodded. “Have a good night, take care of me!”

“Whatever,” Bakugou snorted. “You too.”

Midoriya's first test came the moment the elevator left, when a door opened and made him jump halfway out of his skin, staring blankly as Tokoyami headed his way.

“Bakugou,” he acknowledged. “I don't see you here often.”

Midoriya bit back his greeting, forcing the scowl back on his face no matter how difficult it was.

“Whatever,” he shrugged, taking a few steps down the hall. “Need some shit back from the nerd.”

“I didn't know he was back yet, isn't he with his mother still?”

“What do I look like, his assistant?” Midoriya demanded, tearing up a little with how mean he felt already. “I don't give a shit what he's doing, I'll break his door if I fuckin' have to.”

“Have a good night, Bakugou,” Tokoyami said simply, stepping into the elevator the moment it returned. “Say hello to Midoriya for me, if you see him.”

“Whatever.”

He breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator left, hurrying to his room and fumbling with his key in the lock, breathing hard by the time he locked himself inside. When he caught his reflection in the mirror his tears started all over again, his breaths shaky as he squeezed his eyes shut.

How was he supposed to survive a week?