Chapter Text
It starts with three words.
Check your door.
Katsuki’s halfway through microwaving leftover curry at midnight when his phone buzzes on the counter. The message thread is still pinned, still a graveyard of logistics and clean-edged mission talk. He expects another ETA? or report signed. Not this.
He stares at the screen so long the microwave beeps at him three times.
He doesn’t text back. He moves.
The hallway outside his apartment smells like dust and old paint. He flips the chain and pulls the door open and—yeah. There he is.
Izuku, damp around the edges like he’s been out in the drizzle too long. Hoodie darkened at the shoulders, hair curling into his forehead, knuckles scraped. He’s holding a paper bag like a shield and blinking at Katsuki like he might still bolt.
“Hey,” Izuku says quietly. “Sorry. I didn’t want to…call.”
Katsuki steps back. “Get in.”
Izuku edges past him, toeing out of his shoes like it’s muscle memory. The scent hits second; cedar and bergamot and rain, softer than it is on anyone else, like his skin takes it down a notch on contact.
“What happened?” Katsuki asks, because it’s easier than why are you here.
Izuku lifts the paper bag. It’s dripping a little at the corner. “I, um. Brought soba. From that place on 3rd.”
“You walked it through a storm?”
“They were out of lids.”
Katsuki exhales, a rough little laugh he didn’t plan on letting loose. He takes the bag anyway, sets it on the counter, and grabs a towel for Izuku’s hair without thinking. Drops it on his head. Izuku ducks a little under the weight and grins into the cotton.
“Sit,” Katsuki says, already pulling the first-aid kit from under the sink. “You’re leaking.”
“It’s not bad.”
“It’s still leaking.”
Izuku sits on a stool at the island. The kitchen light makes everything small and close. It’s the worst possible space to talk if you want room to dodge, and maybe that’s the point.
Katsuki cleans the scrape on Izuku’s knuckles. Alcohol, cotton, careful pressure. Izuku hisses through his teeth, then immediately tries to play it off, doing that awkward little smile that makes Katsuki want to roll his eyes and shove him in a closet simultaneously.
“Minor car fire,” Izuku says, like he owes him an explanation. “Guy kept trying to go back for his phone. I tripped over a curb because I was watching him and not my feet, and…yeah. I figured you’d make fun of me for it.”
“I will,” Katsuki says. He tapes a butterfly strip across the widest part of the scrape. “Tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
The microwave beeps again. Katsuki ignores it. Izuku pulls at a loose thread on his sleeve until Katsuki slaps his hand away and smooths the tape down once more for good measure.
“There,” Katsuki says. “Don’t use your hands for a week.”
Izuku laughs. “Right. I’ll just hero with my toes.”
“Finally, a smart plan.”
They eat at the counter out of the paper containers, shoulders angled in, hipbone to cabinet door. It’s quiet in the apartment besides the rain hitting the glass and the fridge humming like always. The soba’s still warm. It tastes like long nights and twelve different kinds of sodium. Katsuki pretends he doesn’t like it and finishes his portion anyway.
Izuku clears his throat. “Kacchan.”
Katsuki doesn’t look up. “Don’t call me that if you’re about to say something stupid.”
“I might be,” Izuku says softly. “But I’m gonna try not to.”
Katsuki sets the chopsticks down. He finally looks.
Izuku’s eyes are ringed red from the weather and not sleeping enough. There’s a scratch on his jaw again—new, not the one from last week. He’s turned on the stool so he’s not halfway out the door anymore, knees braced against the cabinet, fingertips worrying the paper seam of the empty takeout lid.
“Why are you here,” Katsuki asks. It comes out flat, not mean. He doesn’t have the energy for mean tonight.
Izuku takes a breath. “Dispatch doubled us last week on that scaffolding thing.”
“Yeah.”
“It felt…easy.” Izuku’s mouth twists. “It shouldn’t feel easy, not when everything else is—” He breaks off and stares at the towel in his lap like it might supply the rest of the sentence. “I kept thinking about it.”
Katsuki says nothing. The quiet stretches.
“And then today,” Izuku tries again, “that guy with the car—he was so normal and so sure he needed to go back for a thing that doesn’t matter at all, you know?”
“It matters to him,” Katsuki says.
“Yeah. That’s what I mean.” Izuku looks up like he’s bracing for a blow. “So I kept asking myself what my phone is. What the stupid, not-worth-it thing is that I keep running into fire for. I think it’s…us. Or whatever’s left. Whatever I keep seeing in subway windows that might not even be real.”
The apartment tilts, just a degree. Katsuki fists the towel to stop his hands from doing something worse.
“I saw you there,” Izuku says, suddenly small. “Twice. I didn’t look up the first time because I was—because I was a coward. The second time, I thought—” He swallows. “I thought I’d make it worse.”
“You didn’t,” Katsuki says, and he doesn’t know if it’s true, but it feels like it.
Izuku nods like he’s been waiting for permission to breathe. Then, in the same breath: “Ochako isn’t—that’s not—”
Katsuki’s jaw clicks. “Don’t.”
“No, you should know.” Izuku’s voice steadies. “She was staying with me for a week after her building had that pipe burst, and the gala photos were…just photos. She kept trying to make me text you.” A humorless little huff. “She called us idiots a lot.”
Katsuki stares at him. It takes a second for the words to land on the right shelf.
Izuku rubs the bridge of his nose. “I should’ve said something sooner.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
Katsuki looks away because the ceiling is safer. The small crack over the hall door. The stark white bulb in the cheap dome fixture. The way the rain is making a blurry watercolor out of the balcony lights.
“Okay,” he says finally. “Say it now.”
Izuku sets his hands on the counter like he’s negotiating with himself to keep them still. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Do what.”
“This.” He gestures around, helpless. “The almosts. The subway. The pretending we don’t notice things, and the meetings where we act like we’re trying to win an Oscar for ‘competent exes except we never even—’” He cuts off before the word lands. “I don’t want to do it. I’m tired.”
Katsuki barks a small, incredulous laugh into his palm. “You’re tired.”
“Yes.”
“What about me,” Katsuki says, and the edge finally finds his voice. “What about the last six months of you walking in late with your little hearts on coffee lids and that interview where you—” He bites off the rest, because he refuses to spit it into the room and make it permanent. “You think I didn’t try to tire myself out?”
Izuku looks like he’s been hit and deserved it. “I didn’t think.”
“No. You didn’t.”
“I was scared,” Izuku says, and the way he says it makes Katsuki stop. It’s not an excuse and not a knife, just a fact he can’t sand down. “I was sure I’d say it wrong, and you’d tell me to get over it, and then I’d still have to see you every day.”
“And now?”
“Now I said it wrong and came over anyway.”
Katsuki snorts despite himself. The towel is still in his fist. He throws it at Izuku’s chest. It hits with a damp thwap and slides to the floor. Izuku blinks down at it like maybe it had a different answer printed on the underside.
“You said something,” Katsuki says.
“Is it the right thing?”
“Not yet.”
Izuku nods. “Okay. Then…what do you need me to say?”
And that is unfair. It hits under the ribs, right where the old anger lives, and scalds it into something raw and bright.
Katsuki circles the island because he can’t talk across it anymore. He stops an arm’s length away, close enough to smell the rain clinging to Izuku’s hoodie and his skin underneath it. He doesn’t touch him. He wants to. He hooks his fingers into his own pockets to keep them where they belong.
“You texted me ‘check your door,’” he says. “Before that, the last thing between us was ‘check your desk.’”
Izuku winces. “Yeah.”
“Three words,” Katsuki says. “I haven’t said anything important in less than four in my entire goddamn life.”
“That’s true,” Izuku says, a laugh leaking out around the edges like he can’t stop it.
Katsuki leans forward until the counter presses into his thigh. “You want three from me?”
Izuku’s eyes flicker, hitch, steady. “Yes.”
“Okay.” Katsuki breathes in, slow. Out, slower. “Don’t leave tonight.”
Izuku doesn’t move. His eyes do, though; they go shiny, then darker, like he’s thinking about the last six months all at once.
“Okay,” Izuku says.
It’s not fireworks. It’s not a swell of music. It’s just the air changing temperature in a room that’s been stale for too long.
Katsuki reaches for him the way he means to reach for a knife—confident, practiced, careful—and then remembers this is Izuku and not a fight. His knuckles brush the damp hair at Izuku’s temple. Izuku shivers, minuscule and involuntary.
“Still leaking,” Katsuki says, because if he doesn’t joke he’s going to say something embarrassing, like I haven’t gotten a full breath since I saw you on a Tuesday two months ago.
“Occupational hazard,” Izuku says, a breath too quick to be steady. He turns into the hand. “Kacchan.”
Katsuki hates that word until he doesn’t. He lets his fingers settle at Izuku’s jaw and Izuku tilts because of course he does, because this is the rhythm that never left them even when everything else did.
The first kiss is short and badly aimed. Not with their mouths—Katsuki has never missed his mark in his damn life—but with the rest of it. Their noses bump. Izuku breathes out a laugh against Katsuki’s skin like he’s still sixteen and can’t believe he gets to have this, and now they’re both ruined.
The second kiss isn’t careful. It’s not rough, exactly; it’s the stubborn force of two people who didn’t think this room existed anymore and are building it back with their hands. Izuku’s fingers find Katsuki’s shoulder and slide, then anchor. Katsuki’s palm finds the back of Izuku’s neck and stays. The rain gets louder for a second and then disappears because everything else does.
When they break, it’s because oxygen is a thing, not because either of them is smart enough to stop.
Izuku’s forehead rests against his. “I kept thinking about the subway.”
Katsuki rolls his eyes softly, because that’s easier than what his chest is doing. “You always were a commuter kid.”
“You kept getting off two stops early,” Izuku says, and there’s a smile in his voice; you can hear it even if you aren’t looking. “It made me crazy.”
“Made you crazy,” Katsuki repeats. “Uh-huh.”
Izuku draws back half an inch. He’s not smiling now. “I thought if I stood up and you looked at me like I was a stranger, I’d—” He swallows. “I didn’t stand up.”
“You did tonight,” Katsuki says.
“Yeah,” Izuku says. His hand tightens at Katsuki’s shoulder, just enough to be felt tomorrow. “I did.”
They make it to the couch because the counter corner is a war crime. Katsuki drags a blanket off the back and throws it over Izuku like a net. Izuku flails and curses and laughs, and then he’s under it, warm and damp and very here. They don’t do anything they can’t come back from; there’s none of that frantic velocity that turns an old house into a pile of wood all at once. It’s all bracketed in, deliberate.
At some point Katsuki ends up on his back with Izuku half draped over him, hearing the small sounds he forgot he knows how to hear: the soft valve-click of Izuku’s swallow, the way rain changes pitch on glass when the wind shifts, the quiet scrape of their socks against each other when Izuku tries to untangle his ankle and fails.
“Say it again,” Izuku murmurs into his collarbone, because once is never enough for him. Never has been.
Katsuki considers being difficult. He has a whole arsenal of ways to be difficult. Tonight, he chooses not to.
“Don’t leave tonight,” he repeats. Then, because he hates being predictable, he adds, “And stop stealing my towels.”
“You threw it at me,” Izuku protests. “It’s yours.”
“That’s not how theft works.”
“Hmm,” Izuku says, and there’s a smile pressed into his skin, which might be a crime in several prefectures. “I’m new at this.”
“Me too,” Katsuki says, and he didn’t plan to admit that but the room’s already full of things he didn’t plan.
Izuku stills. He shifts until they’re lined up better—fit, press, click—and his breath evens against Katsuki’s throat.
“Do you want three from me?” Izuku asks, after the quiet gets wide and soft.
Katsuki wants to say you don’t owe me symmetry, but the truth is he does. He always has. He nods, and Izuku can feel it, so he speaks into the spot their pulses almost meet.
“I’m not leaving.”
Katsuki shuts his eyes. For the first time in months, the air goes in and stays.
They drift. Not sleep—not yet. Just that edge place where your body remembers it’s not a weapon.
It’s later when Izuku’s phone buzzes from the coffee table. The screen lights up the ceiling with a square of cold. Katsuki doesn’t move for it. He can feel Izuku think about moving. He settles instead, a small surrender.
“Don’t you dare,” Katsuki mutters.
“I wasn’t going to,” Izuku lies badly.
“You were.”
“Fine. I was. But I’m not.”
Katsuki smirks into Izuku’s hair. “Good.”
The rain thins. The fridge kicks off. The apartment holds.
After a while, Izuku says, “What do we do tomorrow?”
Katsuki opens one eye. “About what.”
“Everything.”
“Breakfast,” Katsuki says. “Coffee. Then I tell Eijirou he’s on Denki babysitting duty for a week. Then I make Dispatch fix their rota so they stop doubling us unless it’s a five-alarm.”
“And after that?”
Katsuki thinks about the lobby interview that made him want to punch a wall for no reason. He thinks about hearts drawn on coffee lids and scaffolding lowered in one clean piece and the way the subway lights turned Izuku’s face into something he couldn’t look at without breaking. He thinks about three words and how they can be a knife or a key depending on the night.
“After that,” he says, “we stop being cowards.”
Izuku makes a noise that is not a laugh and not a sob and might be both. “Okay.”
They do sleep, eventually. It’s clumsy and not particularly restful and still better than the best night Katsuki has had in a long time. At some point, he wakes to Izuku starfished halfway across the couch, mouth open, hand still anchored in Katsuki’s shirt like his body forgot to stop holding on. Katsuki reaches to pull the blanket up, wishing he could freeze this moment in time and revel in it forever.
Morning is grey and thin and comes anyway. They wake up sore in the stupid ways—neck, lower back, the place where the couch bar lives—but the headache that’s been living behind Katsuki’s eyes for months is gone. He’ll take the trade.
Coffee first. Izuku steals the first mug and leans against the counter with that awful comfortable posture that means he’ll be in the way for the next ten minutes. He is in the way for the next ten minutes. Katsuki still moves around him, bumping hips like it’s habit, pretending he needs the cinnamon from the exact cabinet behind Izuku’s shoulder.
They don’t talk about the subway. They don’t talk about Ochako, except that Katsuki texts her a single 👍 when she sends ?? followed by did you die or did you figure it out. She replies with seventeen confetti emojis and idiots. Katsuki blocks her for four minutes out of principle before unblocking her again.
“Walk me to the station?” Izuku asks once breakfast is gone and the day starts pressing at the edges.
Katsuki makes a face like it’s a terrible imposition and grabs his keys.
The platform’s almost empty — early enough the trains haven’t remembered to fill yet. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead. Somewhere down the line, someone coughs; somewhere closer, a coin hits the tile and skitters away.
They stand shoulder to shoulder. Not touching. Not quite. The air between their sleeves is warmer than it should be.
The hum of the approaching train fills the space between them. Katsuki looks down the tunnel, doesn’t move. Izuku’s hand bumps his — not by accident. Katsuki hooks his pinky around Izuku’s and leaves it there.
The headlights spill into the station. Doors peel open. Izuku takes a step forward. Katsuki calls after him, voice low enough that it barely clears the space between them.
“Hey, Izuku?”
Izuku glances back. “Yeah?”
“I love you.”
For a second, the noise of the platform drops out. Izuku smiles — not the polite PR smile, not the careful one from the interviews — the real thing.
“I love you too, Kacchan.”
Then the doors close, and the train carries him into the tunnel. The platform exhales.
And for once, Katsuki doesn’t feel like something’s leaving.
Epilogue — Two Years Later
By now, the bullpen’s changed. New desks, fresh paint, a better coffee machine that still burns half the pots. Katsuki’s office is technically down the hall these days, but he still finds reasons to pass through.
Izuku’s in the conference room, deep in his last meeting of the day. The glass walls make it easy to watch him without being obvious — that familiar lean over the table, hands cutting through the air, the pen he’s been clicking without noticing.
Katsuki’s thumb brushes the edge of the envelope in his pocket. It’s thin — just one Post-it inside, old enough that the paper’s gone soft. Izuku wrote the front years ago, back when notes like this were shoved into mission reports or taped to each other’s lockers: Eat something green, idiot. The ink’s faded, edges curling.
On the back, in Katsuki’s blocky, deliberate print, it says exactly what it needs to: Will you marry me?
No hearts. No frills. Just the thing he wants.
He slips into Izuku’s office while the conference room is still full. The place smells faintly like cedar and the cheap citrus cleaner the janitors use. Katsuki sets the envelope dead center on the desk where Izuku won’t be able to miss it, then leaves without a sound.
The hallway outside is quiet — most people have already gone home, the hum of the building settling into its nighttime lull. He waits there, a neat bundle of wildflowers in one hand — the kind Izuku once stopped to photograph on patrol because “look, Kacchan, they’re growing through the pavement.” The ring box rests in his other palm, small but sharp, silver catching the low light.
Eventually, the conference room door opens. Izuku steps out alone, tucking his pen into his pocket as he heads toward his office. He disappears inside. A beat later, there’s silence, then the faint scrape of a chair.
Katsuki takes out his phone. The message thread is still pinned.
He types: Check your desk.
Beneath it, he adds: I left you something.
He hits send.
From across the hall, he sees the moment it happens — Izuku pulling the envelope toward him, frowning at the familiar scrawl on the front. Turning it over. Pausing.
When Izuku looks up, his eyes find Katsuki immediately.
Katsuki’s already on one knee.
Izuku steps out slowly, like he’s making sure the floor will hold.
“Hey, Izuku?” Katsuki says, voice steady even though his chest isn’t.
Izuku’s mouth tilts into the kind of smile you can’t fake. “Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Kacchan,” Izuku says, and then, without looking away, “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
The office is quiet — no phones, no footsteps, just the faint whir of the vents and the soft rustle of flowers as Katsuki gets to his feet.
He slides the ring onto Izuku’s hand. Izuku laughs, breathless and real, like the sound’s been waiting years to get out.
And just like that, they’re building something that doesn’t need an ending.