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They hold hands when they’re children, not because they want to, but out of necessity. That’s all it ever is; sometimes they have to cross the street together, and Katsuki begrudgingly allows Izuku to hold his hand, and all but drags the other boy, muttering about how he needs to learn to move faster if he wants to keep up.
For someone who’s always tagging along, he sure can be slow at times.
Izuku’s hand is soft when they’re kids, and warm and a little sweaty, because they’re always outside, always playing until they can’t anymore. Katsuki’s hand is sweaty as well; it isn’t much longer after that that he has to be more careful about that.
They only hold hands out of necessity, and only when they are young. When they start to grow apart, they aren’t crossing any streets together, and so they don’t have any reason to hold hands. They don’t have any reason to spend any time together, but from time to time, Izuku still tags along, always behind Katsuki but never able to catch up. He isn’t fast enough, and he isn’t able to keep up.
That is, until he isn’t chasing after Katsuki anymore at all. They’re still going in the same direction, but Izuku has his own reasons for going in said direction, and he isn’t simply tagging along anymore. When that happens, he begins to catch up, and has less difficulty keeping up, and doesn’t seem to care about being at Katsuki’s side anymore.
Katsuki isn’t supposed to give a shit about that, he knows. He never wanted Izuku tagging along behind him, so he shouldn’t care either way what he’s doing with his life now. Certainly, he shouldn’t miss it, and he doesn’t , he swears.
Izuku’s hands look like they’d be rough now, but Katsuki doesn’t care about confirming that.
He forces himself forward, as if still trying to shake the boy who isn’t even following him anymore. Whether Izuku is trying to catch up or not doesn’t matter; he’s there , and Katsuki has always tried to shake him, and right now should not be any different. He’s used to Izuku tagging along but always being behind him, and that is how things should stay. So he pushes himself, further and further forward, and Izuku always catches up anyway, but he’s not just looking at Katsuki now, and that’s all that really matters.
Is that all that really matters?
Is that what bothers him?
Does he want Izuku tagging along after all?
Is he only bothered because Izuku is catching up to him without tagging along, because Izuku is not doing this all for him now?
Facing that is not easy for him, and he would sooner die than admit to that out loud, but it becomes hard to ignore that that is the case for him. He remembers the soft hand in his, remembers dragging Izuku along and telling him to move faster, to keep up, and he wishes that he were still dragging him along. He wishes that he could feel that hand again, whether it’s still soft or not, and he wishes that he could look behind him, and see Deku, his Deku, following behind him again, struggling to keep up.
This time, he thinks he might slow down a little, just to make sure that he doesn’t get too far ahead.
But there’s no chance of that now, because Izuku has caught up, and continues to catch up, time and again. Things will never be the way they were before, and he wonders why he only realized he liked it like that when it was too late. Izuku is closer to him than he’s ever been, but to Katsuki, it feels like the distance between them is impossible to close.
But then, with Izuku caught up to him, he learns that they can still walk hand in hand. It’s just that now, they are also side by side.