Chapter Text
Izuku dropped his hand to Katsuki’s side, hands curling around rough scales. He hissed, “Kacchan, are you crazy?” as his eyes flicked between him and their assailants. The leader twirled her knife in between her fingers, the snow crunching underfoot as she and her compatriots advanced towards him.
They were slow, savoring the chase like it was the best part of hunting Katsuki. And he watched them menacingly, ignoring Izuku’s pleas for them to run, because there was nowhere to run and not enough time to escape. All that could save them was Katsuki brutally injuring them to the point they no longer posed a threat, or neutralizing the target.
And it struck him like a blunt force to the skull, that he was the target and Izuku knew how to neutralize it. Turning his large head, he bumped his snout against Izuku, then nudged him towards the catmint. Izuku’s frantic eyes searched between him and the direction he pointed, brows furrowed like he didn’t quite get it.
So Katsuki flung his tail at the low sweeping branches of a nearby tree, twigs and debris falling from its skeleton. Katsuki blew fire on its remains, forming a slight, weak fire for Izuku to slave over.
A twig snapped and Katsuki’s gaze drifted back to their assailants, close with their weapons drawn. Not tearing his eyes from their approaching forms, he slipped his tail around Izuku’s waist and moved him towards the fire. “Kacchan, are you insane?” Izuku hissed, because maybe he didn’t get it.
But Katsuki did.
There was nothing for the poachers to hunt if there was no dragon on the mountainside.
Katsuki’s only usefulness was in protecting Izuku’s; Izuku’s was in making Katsuki human.
“That’s real fucking cute how much your dragon’s gotta do shit for you,” the blonde called, rushing towards him now. Blocking Izuku from sight, Katsuki braced for her first strike, a knife to the arm, or chest, or snout. But it didn’t come, her stopping dead just a meter away.
She watched him, smug smile plastered on her face, as the clunking of glass and metal instruments sounded from behind where Izuku was emptying his bag.
And then someone screamed from up atop the canopy. Katsuki glanced upward, and two men fell from the sky, landing on Katsuki’s neck and the slope of his hide. They clenched their hands around his scales, and then something clunked against the armor of his skin—a knife, a sword. He felt the chipping of a scale, a burn against his spine.
Katsuki barreled forward, over the woman who had only just moved out of the way at the last possible second. He threw his body around the slight clearing, knocking his sides against trees in order to throw his assailants off.
“TOUYA! TENKO! The fuck are you doing?” The blonde screamed from across the way, struggling up out of the snow. “Are you going for a leisure ride?”
“FUCK OFF, TOGA!” One of them shouted, slipping his blade in between the grooves of Katsuki’s scales, piercing tender flesh beneath them. Katsuki howled, kicking his front legs off the ground to slam the poachers—Touya and Tenko—into the trunk of a large birch. He heard them scream, heard Izuku squeal his name from over by the fire—and then stumbled forward with a painful ache pulsating between his shoulder blades.
Katsuki turned back to look at them, the way the two men clobbered over themselves to get back on their feet. He could hear their boss—Toga—shouting something strange and foreign to fuzzy ears. The hit must have jostled him, made it hard to think or hear, made the corners of his vision foggy.
He could see Izuku across the clearing, frantically measuring ingredients in cups and then adding them to a pot he’d placed over the fire. His eyes kept snapping up to the scene before him, Katsuki stumbling across the clearing. There was little he could do besides throwing the poachers off his body, knocking them against trees when he got the opportunity. He wasn’t going to hurt them truly; no biting, no burning. He didn’t want to leave Izuku with the impression that he was a monster, that he was just as vicious and cruel as the day Izuku had fled their village and Katsuki had been transformed into the cold-blooded creature his actions mimicked.
He wasn’t going to let him see that again, regardless of the way Toga approached him, sharp knife glinting as she bared fanged teeth. Katsuki wasn’t going to let Izuku, who wanted so badly to stay with him once all had been said and done, see the cruel parts of him that endangered that dream.
Katsuki didn’t deserve Izuku’s kindness and companionship, but he would handle that guilt alone. He wouldn’t give Izuku more reasons to fear him.
And then, as he watched a drop of anxious sweat trail to the tip of Izuku’s nose as he leaned over the open fire, a sharp blade sunk into his chest. The cry it pulled from him was frantic. He stumbled back and watched as Toga stepped back, too, thick rivulets of blood falling from her knife to the disturbed, snowy floor. “What? Caught ya off guard?”
Katsuki stumbled forward, thrown off balance by the blistering pain in his chest, then the warmth dripping down it. He tried to look, tried to assess the damage, but his eyes were glued to the sides of his head and his neck wasn’t made to give him clear views of his own body.
Toga stuck the blade to her tongue, licking off Katsuki’s blood. It rosied her lips and left smudges on the metal. She smiled, blood caught in the cracks between her teeth. “Had it made special,” she said, stepping closer. “Some knives are actually made for cutting dragons quickly. You’re not as impenetrable as people like to think.”
Hands grappled at his tail, and Katsuki realized that the other two assailants were up now, ready to keep fighting. A dizziness overtook him—a dizziness he tried to ignore. He flung his tail, but only one of the poachers actually fell. The other kept climbing, strong muscles keeping him upright. Katsuki thrashed, slamming against trees and roaring in ear-splitting pitches to keep his assailants from finding purchase atop him.
Izuku looked frantic from what Katsuki could see behind his blurry vision, tears now turning his eyes glassy as he stirred his concoction with shaking hands.
Katsuki wished he could call to him, tell him it would all be fine, but another knife plunged deep inside him, piercing scales and flesh and sinew at the juncture between his hip and torso. He screamed; this time, he could not stop fire from pushing past his tongue and gnarly teeth, the full extent of it setting the canopy above them on fire.
“So, he speaks!” One of the men called from atop his back.
He tried to throw him off, but he was too startled with himself to do anything so grand. Breathing fire had scared him. With a forest on fire, the chances of destruction doubled. And Katsuki didn’t want Izuku looking at him and being reminded of disaster.
But what was done was done, and Katsuki couldn’t suck the fire back into his lungs. Someone grabbed one of the spiral horns atop his head and yanked it hard, sticking the tip of his knife between layers of skin and keratin, trying to pry it away from his head.
The sensation sent Katsuki reeling, the pain of the attempt making spots appear in his vision, marring it from images of Izuku and the assurances that he was safe on the other side of the clearing.
Frantic, he threw himself back against the same tree as before, knocking off his unwanted rider and making the tree shake. A crack like lightning resounded through the forest, and then a fat branch fell forward, landing atop one of the poachers. Katsuki stared, eyes wide, as the flames licked his sides, his skin, setting him on fire and making him scream.
But his friends, his partners, didn’t bother reaching for him. His gray hair turned to char, filling the clearing with a foul smell. And it struck Katsuki that he was the reason this man was burning alive. He tried to reach for him, teeth nipping at black fabric as he tried to pull him free.
Because as selfish as it was, Katsuki didn’t want Izuku to hate him and killing a man was a fast way to ensure he did.
Still, Toga and whichever poacher had survived did their utmost to keep him away. Knives sliced and stabbed his skin and scales with fervor, chipping away at his armor too easily for humans up against a dragon.
And Katsuki howled, the pain making his body collapse upon itself.
“KACCHAN!” Izuku screamed across the clearing, dropping a steaming ladle to the disrupted snow. The stabbing stopped, the poachers turning from Katsuki to Izuku.
Toga rolled her eyes, flicking her gaze between her victim and his friend. “Go shut him up, Touya.”
No.
Toga flung her legs over Katsuki’s neck, straddling him as she grabbed ahold of his horn and chiseled away at the base. Touya hoisted himself from the ground, fingers dancing around the hilt of his knife. His boots crunched in the snow as he made his way towards Izuku, who now had a grip on his own weapon, but was still sitting on the forest floor, blocking his potion from the threat of their attackers.
Izuku could handle himself.
Izuku was strong, he was smart. Every story Izuku had told him since their reunion was a testament to how fierce and capable he was.
But there was a part of Katsuki—a small child inside him that still saw Izuku as weak, as a creature who needed protection—and that side of him saw Izuku’s frantic eyes and knew he couldn’t leave him to take care of himself.
Unhinging his jaw and dreading the aftermath of such an impulsive decision, Katsuki ignited a fierce fire in the back of his throat, and forced it out across the clearing, the inferno stretching over the poacher’s body. He screamed, a guttural, dreaded sound that split Katsuki’s ears. He squeezed his double-slitted eyelids shut, drowning out the sight of a burning man, pretending hard that he was not the monster he just proved himself to be.
Izuku screamed for Katsuki, but the latter was trying so hard to pretend there was nothing here but him. There was no murder, no crackling fire at his side and in the canopies above, no death and desolation.
And then Toga laughed, high-pitched and manic. Her thighs clenched hard around his neck as she leaned in to say, “You’re going to regret that.”
He didn’t know how he could regret anything more than putting Izuku in this nightmarish situation, in being at fault for his own affliction and in making Izuku still want him and leading him to what seemed to be an unavoidable end.
He didn’t know how Toga could make anything worse before he felt the slice of the knife against his neck, plunged deep so that when it was pulled out, he could hear the blood bubbling up from the wound to pour heavily over his throat.
Izuku screamed somewhere in the distance, but he felt a world away. Everything was fuzzy now. Everything was dark. Toga sliced through him again, and again, melting the snow and making it steam.
And then the weight on his neck was gone. Heavy, frantic grunts echoed in his ears, the sound cut off now and again as he slipped into and out of consciousness, only to be woken up again when a cold, familiar hand laid upon his jaw. “K-Kacchan? Hey, Kacchan, c’mon. You gotta wake up.”
He couldn’t. Opening his eyes felt as hard as turning human by sheer will alone. All he did was grumble, the rumbling deep in his throat making the gashes expand, a fresh stream of blood warming his neck.
“Fuck,” Izuku hissed, the tension and pain visceral in the hitch of his voice. Katsuki tried to shift closer to him, a poor attempt to comfort his close friend in his final moments. Hands found him, holding him still. “Don’t move,” Izuku said. “Don’t- don’t make it worse.”
But what did it matter if he did? What good would it do to stay still? It was so hard to breathe, to keep his mind on this plane of existence. It took all his efforts just to pry a single eye open, to look at Izuku’s watery eyes, the flicker of the surrounding fires dancing in his irises.
Izuku smiled at the sight of Katsuki’s opened eyes, sniffling as he said, “Hey, Kacchan. Hey. It’s gonna be okay.”
He didn’t sound like he believed it.
Katsuki himself didn’t.
But then Izuku clapped his hands to his cheeks, startling himself out of his panic. “Okay,” Izuku said, more to himself than Katsuki. “Okay, I can do this.”
He climbed to his feet and scurried off somewhere Katsuki could not see. He waited patiently, watching the sky through the flaming canopies. It was painted the same reds and oranges of Katsuki’s dragon breaths, drowning Katsuki’s vision in crimson. He closed his eyes, the harsh brightness of the image seared into his mind.
Izuku came scurrying back, his fingers immediately falling to Katsuki’s mouth. “Okay. Okay, Kacchan,” Izuku started, breathing shallowly. “I- I need you to drink this, okay? I’m, I’m gonna pour it into your mouth now. You- It’s okay if you don’t drink all of it, but take a few gulps.”
A bitter, hot liquid trickled onto Katsuki’s lips, slipping between his jagged teeth onto his tongue. Katsuki sucked the liquid back into his throat as Izuku poured it slowly. He drank and drank until his throat seized, until all he could feel was the pain from the gashes in his neck, and then he stopped.
The rest of Izuku’s strange concoction spilled over his face and through his open mouth to the melted snow and limp grass below them.
Izuku gulped when he noticed, and Katsuki listened closely as he sat the pot onto the ground and pulled pliers from his jacket pocket. “I- I sterilized it with the sulfur fire,” Izuku told him. “That was the next step. So- so, I’m just gonna-”
Izuku disappeared, fingers trailing down Katsuki’s body to his massive chest, rapid breath making it swell and fall in quick succession. Katsuki squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, jagged teeth cutting into his gums as Izuku took the pliers to the scales over Katsuki’s heart, peeling them away one by one.
“You’re doing good, Kacchan,” Izuku called, voice frantic and raw. “It’s- It’s almost over-”
And it was, but not for the reason Izuku thought. No, with every scale pulled, a blinding pain had Katsuki lurching, shaking, grunts and cries ripping from his mutilated throat. Izuku kept singing praises and swearing happy endings, but Katsuki barely heard them now. They were overruled by the crackling of the surrounding fires, the roar of blood in Katsuki’s ears, and the deafening silence of encroaching darkness.
“Almost done,” Izuku called from somewhere far away.
In the back of his mind, Katsuki recognized the burn of something wet and acidic burning into the space over his heart.
As darkness overtook him, a grim and lonely void, he thought of the pain that came with leaving, of failing at the last possible moment. He hoped that Izuku would find someone better to travel with, to live with. That he would continue his life with the pride and strength he’d worked so hard to garner, the self-confidence and grandeur that Katsuki wouldn’t be there to praise him for.
He had wanted to make up for the pain he’d caused Izuku in the past.
And like everything else he tried, Katsuki failed miserably.
With Izuku’s sobs echoing in the distance, Katsuki faded into black.
At first, the warmth he felt seemed as good a sign as any that Katsuki had died and slipped into whatever afterlife existed. The gentleness of the furs surrounding him, a clean breeze, and the sweet smell of pine and snowdrops consumed his senses. And it would all have been perfect if not for the longing Katsuki had for Izuku, his smile and his companionship.
And then the sound of sniffling and the feeling of an arm pulling him closer had Katsuki going still. It struck him then that the afterlife could not feel like this. He imagined that any nirvana wouldn’t involve cold feet and the sounds of someone crying.
Painfully, he pried his eyes open. A splitting pain consumed his head, but it was nothing on the sight of Izuku curled into Katsuki’s side. Izuku’s arms were wrapped around his shoulders, his head tucked into Katsuki’s upper arm. Eyes squeezed shut and mouth contorted with Izuku’s sobs, he looked so frightened. He clutched onto Katsuki like there was a threat of him being taken away for good, and that was when Katsuki realized.
He was alive.
“I- Izuku?”
“Kacchan?” With dizzying speed, Izuku moved into a sitting position. His hands went to Katsuki’s face, palms pressed to Katsuki’s hollow cheeks. A hesitant, disbelieving smile found its way to his rosy, freckled face. “Oh my god,” he whispered. “It worked.”
Worked.
Katsuki looked down at his body, at his long and bony fingers as they curled into fists and the shift of his feet under a heavy blanket. He blinked back up at Izuku, baffled with what he saw. “I’m… human?”
Izuku nodded violently, a surprised laugh falling from his mouth. “Yeah, Kacchan. You’re human. You’re human and you’re safe. I- the wounds disappeared when you transformed. You’re gonna be okay.” And then, lip wobbling and eyes squeezed shut so that his tears had nowhere to go but down his round cheeks, he dropped his head to Katsuki’s chest. Hiccuping, he whispered, “I was so scared.”
Katsuki’s hands found Izuku’s scalp. His first gesture as a permanent human, he curled his fingers into Izuku’s curly locks. It was soothing for Izuku, a dream for Katsuki. To touch Izuku in the most personal way possible, to hold him like humans do…
“I can stay now,” Katsuki whispered, lips pressed against the side of Izuku’s face as Izuku moved up to hold him in an embrace. His eyes flicked up to Katsuki curiously, but he didn’t ask for clarification. He just stared at him, a gesture Katsuki loved because there was something so special about sparkling green eyes staring down at him.
“Kacchan…”
“I’m-” Katsuki clenched his jaw. It was bizarre how poetically he could create a phrase when he was a dragon and couldn’t share it. But now, human and vulnerable, the words on his tongue felt disjointed and confusing. He rolled them over his tongue, tasting them individually before blinking up at Izuku and saying, “You said you wanted me to stay with you.”
Izuku watched him for a moment, the red on his cheeks from the cold erupting into something far more personal. Bobbing his lips in a stammer, he started on an, “I, uh- Well-”
“I want that,” Katsuki promised, reaching his shaking hand up to stroke affectionately at Izuku’s face. “I think- I think I want to see more… of all the amazing things you can do. You’re so incredible, Izuku.”
Izuku choked on his tears, the sound ugly and sad. It must have seemed improbable to him that this would ever happen. But it had, and after the minute it took for him to realize that, he leaned down to press tentative lips to Katsuki’s in a kiss that burned through Katsuki immediately. It was soft, nothing more than lips on lips with a promise of more somewhere in the future, but it was perfect. It was Izuku and Katsuki, an unbeatable team.
Izuku curled onto his chest, careful not to strain any of the muscles that Katsuki was not used to. Katsuki laid a hand atop his head, combing through tangled curls as he watched the snow fall above them, thick flakes racing to the floor. But for the first time in many long years, it wasn’t cold or isolating.
It was wonderful.
Everything was so perfectly wonderful.