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“Christ, Deku, do you ever brush your hair?” Kacchan says, fingers catching in Izuku’s green tangles as he tugs downward. He winces, and pinches Kacchan’s thigh bracketing his own in retaliation.
“Ow, stop pulling! You’ll make it worse.”
Kacchan pulls again. “That doesn’t answer my question.” Izuku whines softly and pushes his head back against the other’s hands, hoping to get him to take a gentler hold on his delicate strands.
“I’m too busy in the morning, and too tired after I shower. It slips my mind.” Kacchan tsks quietly behind him.
“I’m playing hairdresser for you, then? My mom would be thrilled to see this. You’re fuckin’ lucky you never had to be one of her test subjects.” Izuku snorts at the thought, recalling the several times Auntie Mitsuki had managed to get her manicured hands on Kacchan’s hair and “fix it up” before some kind of important photo shoot. He’s pretty sure Kacchan’s provisional license photo featured a combover, or something. It wasn’t a bad look, technically, but with Kacchan’s face? Izuku’s just glad his official license features him in all his golden, spiky glory.
“You must know what you’re doing, though,” Izuku comments. “You always were your mother’s son.”
The remark earns him another sharp tug to his roots, and Izuku’s starting to think he’s going to leave this room with bald spots. “The hell’s that supposed to mean, nerd?”
Izuku exhales a soft laugh and tilts his head back comfortably when a thumb lightly rubs the spot at the base of his skull. “Nothing, sorry, keep going.” Kacchan huffs but doesn’t argue, and that’s about as much as Izuku can expect.
Kacchan’s grip does ease up, much to his delight. Here, in the hold of someone who knows him better than he knows himself, Izuku finally feels the tension of the past week’s training patrols leave him.
It’s early evening, and they’ve elected to skip dinner with the rest of the class to hide away in Izuku’s room. By their third year at UA, they’ve been given some semblance of freedom over their personal schedules, so long as they showed up to their usual classes, hero training, and assigned patrols. None of them were stupid enough to skip out unless an actual emergency happened, and they were granted actual free time in return for their diligence.
Izuku and Kacchan use it to de-stress. They don’t always do it together, as everyone in the class needs their share of solitude to keep their heads on their shoulders. This time, they shared a look and naturally migrated over to the closest room.
As Kacchan’s fingers work through his hair, surprisingly soothing despite their calluses, Izuku’s eyes follow the streaks of waning light overlaying their exposed skin. It’s been unusually warm out recently, so they find themselves comfortably lounging in cotton shorts and tank tops, happily indulging in the physical contact. At least, Izuku knows he’s happy about it. He also knows that Kacchan wouldn’t be here if he didn’t feel the same way.
It feels so heavenly in this spot, and Izuku feels immeasurably thankful that his dorm room window faces the direction of the sunset. His room is golden, in more ways than just the blanket of light. He feels the soft caress of warm breaths trailing over his shoulders, feels the warmth of Kacchan’s chest radiating behind him without it even being pressed to his back. Warmth, it’s everywhere. It’s as if the blazing, ruinous fire of the past had petered out into a gentler flame, and Izuku thinks he’d bathe in it if he could.
He loses awareness of the hands in his hair as the seconds pass by, until he feels pinpricks of warmth bloom at the edges of his scalp and cascade down the slope of his back. Involuntarily, Izuku shivers and tenses, and he opens his mouth to voice a question when Kacchan beats him to it.
“Relax, nerd. This’ll feel nice, trust me.” And with that honeyed but gruff tone in his voice, there’s no way Izuku could protest. He gives the slightest of nods, and then warm fingers shift higher, to his forehead where they pull back his unruly bangs.
The pinpricks start again as Kacchan plays with the thin strands at his hairline, pulling at them gently and deliberately, a clear contrast to the annoyed yanking from before. Each pull sparks up his nerves, sending light tingles down his spine and fading along the way. The actions are repetitive and lull him to where his eyes are lidded, sleepiness pulling at his senses.
Izuku is brought somewhat back into awareness as Kacchan’s hands brush against his cheeks and pull backwards, fingers digging into the hair above his ears. It’s shorter here, so the move repeats more often, a brush and pull over and over until Izuku’s face is flushing from the reverent touch. Kacchan’s fingers slip past his eyelashes, past the corner of his mouth, and it’s so much, but Kacchan was right.
It feels nice, and it feels even nicer when the hands finally dip under the somewhat lengthy ends of his hair to pull at the strands tucked furthest below. The sparks are strongest here, pooling in base of Izuku’s skull and slowly spilling across the plane of his back as Kacchan coaxes him to relax.
He lingers in this spot, probably noticing how low Izuku’s shoulders have slumped in contentedness. All he’d expected from the evening was cuddling and maybe stealing a kiss or two if he could get away with it, yet he was being treated to some kind of magical scalp stimulating massage that left him feeling lighter all the way to his toes. It’s blissful, honestly, and he never knew that was a word he could associate with Kacchan.
Always one to go past expectations, Kacchan breaks the silence of the golden room when he starts to hum. Izuku doesn’t know what tune it is, but it’s deep with the natural cadence of his voice and it’s as melodic as the few times Izuku has overheard him singing to himself at odd hours in the dorm corridors. He’d never brought it up, in case doing so would scare Kacchan away from expressing himself. He wasn’t willing to risk never hearing his voice like that again by overstepping.
For once, Kacchan has allowed Izuku to hear him like this, all alone, meant specifically to be shared by the two of them. It brings a surge of emotion crashing into the inner walls of his chest, and it takes a lot to hold back the tears that want to fall. He hears Kacchan’s voice, and he wants to look at him. He has to see him, to see what kind of face comes with hands and a voice this tender.
Izuku pulls himself from Kacchan’s grasp reluctantly and moves out of the ‘V’ of his legs to turn and face him. Of course, in the state he’s in, he couldn’t have been prepared to see Kacchan’s eyes, irises muted red and hazy as they looked back at him, with now unoccupied hands raised uncertainly by his shoulders. As if he’s barely in control of his own body, Izuku reaches up to clasp Kacchan’s wrists and lower his hands to rest on the curve of his neck. The weight is warm and comforting, grounding him and giving him courage that fuels his next actions.
He’s fully in control of himself this time, and there’s nothing to stop him from placing his own hands along Kacchan’s strong shoulders and leaning in, crossed legs overlapping the ones still splayed out around his sides. Crimson eyes slip shut, a slight shake to them that betrays how it isn’t muscle memory quite yet with this part of their relationship being so new, and his own eyes close barely a second later.
They lean forward in tandem and when their lips meet, the sparks that had fizzled along Izuku’s back light back up and fly toward their point of contact, a pleasant buzz accompanying the chaste kiss. They’ve only had this a few times before, and this one takes him soaring into the stratosphere just like the others did. Kacchan’s fingers twitch once where they rest before readjusting to bury in the roots of Izuku’s hair again, and it pulls a soft sigh from him that bounces against the other’s lips.
As in time as they seem to do everything, they pull back from one another, but stay close enough to leave their hands where they are. Izuku feels the warmth radiating off his face and the tips of his ears, and once he opens his eyes, a glimpse at Kacchan tells him the feathery warmth is mutual.
It feels like coming home when Kacchan directs a smile at him without any hint of the pride or smugness he’s so well known for. It’s warm, the smile Kacchan saves for him, and Izuku is happy. He’s really happy.
“You really should get a haircut, dumbass,” Kacchan says, voice low as he toys with the thin strands at the nape of Izuku’s neck. His response comes easily despite the pleasant distraction, and he allows a lazy smile to adorn his face.
“Why, so I can get your name shaved into an undercut and follow in your footsteps?” he teases, lightly raking his fingernails along the clipped section of Kacchan’s hair. It’s grown out some by now, but he can still feel the light unevenness of the kanji spelling out Izuku in an ash blond trail. Kacchan scowls and shakes his head in an effort to dislodge Izuku’s hand, but he just shifts it upward and lets it get engulfed in longer soft tufts of hair.
“Fuckin’—We’ve been over this. I was drunk, mistakes were made. Stop acting like it was some stupid love confession, you ass.” But Kacchan’s face is flushing further red, and Izuku can read him too easily.
“Right! That’s why you haven’t gotten it shaved evenly yet, gotcha!” He smiles genuinely—it’s always genuine for moments like this with Kacchan—and thrives off the way the corner of his mouth is twitching like he’s holding down a laugh. “I mean, at least it wasn’t a tattoo, right?”
Izuku has said this before, nearly every time the drunk haircut story gets brought up (which is a lot, considering it only happened about a month ago), but he’s usually met with a scoff and a change of subject.
This time, Kacchan mutters something that Izuku couldn’t quite pick up.
“Uh, sorry? I didn’t hear what you said.”
Kacchan huffs, looks up slightly, but is obviously avoiding direct eye contact. Izuku bites his lip, intrigued.
“I said, I probably wouldn’t mind if it was. Y’know… permanent.”
Izuku’s breath catches, of course it does. The weight of a statement like that is not wasted on him, and he knows his brain is already scrambling to imprint the sound of those words into his memories. “Permanent,” he whispers, tasting the sentiment in his mouth. “Forever’s a long time.”
He’s saying it more to himself, but Kacchan hums in acknowledgement, imperceptibly leaning further back into Izuku’s space. He doesn’t mind. “It is. But I’m okay with starting with just right now. If, uh, if you are too.”
It comes out a bit awkwardly, as things tend to when Kacchan’s his most vulnerable and honest. It makes it that much more special.
“That’s more than enough for me, Kacchan.”
Everything is warm when they meet in the middle once more.