Archive of Our Own ^beta

Somewhere out there, he could feel Eijirou.

He could feel their bond stretching thin between them, but it was humming strong, in no danger of breaking. As if distance could break something like that, something that Katsuki was quickly coming to realize he wouldn’t know how to be without. 

He wished Eijirou was at his side now. Actually, fuck that, he wished that neither of them were here, that instead he was reaching out to touch the clouds flying on Eijirou’s back, fingers streaming through air, on top of the world. He wanted to be curled up against him, Eijirou’s heartbeat humming against his ear.

Fucking stupid. What was the use of wishing for something? What was the point if it was just given to you, if you didn’t work for it? But fuck, anything to not be here, in this ballroom, at this party, staring at his mother while she implied that the only reason he was here was to marry him off.

The bond wasn’t strong enough yet for Katsuki to actually send a telepathic message to Eijirou. Eijirou reassured him that that would come with time. We’ve only been bonded a year, Katsuki, he’d laughed, more focused on playing with Katsuki’s fingers. It’ll come. But he was still on the other end, little bits of blue-grey stress spreading over to Katsuki, like mixing too much black paint against a painting, turning it to nighttime by accident.

He’d rather focus on figuring out why Eijirou was stressed, but his mother wouldn’t allow him; she sent an elbow straight into his side. “Katsuki,” she hissed, even if her mouth was still smiling. “Stand up straight.”

He straightened up just a little bit, narrowing his eyes at her. He’d returned here as a favor, and nothing else. The only reason he was here was that family, somehow, had inextricable ties that Katsuki would never be able to shake off. So fine, when his mother had found a damn witch to send him a message on the wind, he’d returned.

Mitsuki smiled at him mockingly.

He grimaced back at her in an approximation of a smile. He was, technically, in court, even if this wasn’t his court, and he knew well enough not to scream at her while standing in the ballroom was teeming with princesses and kings and queens in gorgeous colors, a sea of orange and red like a field of flowers. Causing a scene in this ballroom, a hundred miles from northern territory, was just begging for an army to march right over the border.

His clan wasn’t much for rules, preferring noisy lodge meetings to the stuffy, silent courts that the southern royalty preferred.  But he’d had to forcibly learn the rules, the handshakes, the bows, the titles; he’d had them stuffed down his throat because he knew, he knew, that at one point, being the Council Leader’s kid was going to catch up to him. Despite having twelve people on the damn council, Katsuki was, thus far, the only child of the council and that wasn’t likely to change.

The only political pawn, as it were.

He’d thought that by leaving, he was becoming the king.

“You know,” he said, as conversationally as he could. He tried to remember the trick that Eijirou had taught him, to talk from the back of his throat so that he was less likely to grind his teeth together and snarl. “You said I should return home because we were at war.”

“I said to prevent a war.” Mitsuki’s smile was tight, more of a taunt, really. She’d known the exact message she was sending off into the wind, perfectly worded to make sure he returned home. “Marrying you off is preventing a war.”

As far as Katsuki could see, it’ll just gain them an ally. “How?”

“Everyone believes we’re too isolated,” she said, raising her head. She wasn’t wearing a crown, but gold dripped from her ears and her throat, dancing around the gleaming medal at her throat. She didn’t need a crown to look regal. “It’s easy for people to wage war on us because they know we have no allies and because we never get face-to-face time with them.”

“I’m not getting married.”

She smiled benignly, raising a hand at a nearby woman in blue. Didn’t even cast a look at him. “You will if I say you will.”

He wouldn’t. She just didn’t know exactly how much he wouldn’t. And she’d never understand, or maybe she wouldn’t care to understand. But Katsuki had Eijirou, and he’d left. He’d made it as clear as he possibly could that he wasn’t going to play her game. He wasn’t sure why he’d come back. Because family was family, maybe, or because...

“Mom.” The talking from the back of his throat thing wasn’t working, not at all; he could feel his words come out rough, like he’d dragged them over gravel and coal before spitting them out, full of fire. “I’m already married.”

He’d come because he wanted her blessing.

The musicians played on, something boring and perfectly in tempo that Katsuki wouldn’t be able to dance to. People kept dancing, dresses swirling out in dizzying patterns, and Katsuki hated all the perfumes that everyone in these courts felt the need to put on, and some deranged woman was laughing, the grating sound digging into his ears. 

There was no war here but there was war on Katsuki’s mother’s face.

-----

“You seem like you have a good soul, Bakugou.”

Katsuki blinked. “I what now?”

“A good soul.”

“That’s the worst reason to save someone’s life I ever heard,” Katsuki scoffed. “And I don’t have a good soul.” He’d know better than anyone.

Kirishima snorted. “And what do you know about souls?”

At the time? Nothing. Katsuki hadn’t even answered, just dismissed the red-haired idiot with a grunt and went back to staring at the fire while Kirishima adjusted the dressings on his broken leg. Kirishima hadn’t taken it personally, even though Katsuki had intended for him to take it personally. Dumbass.

It had been, by Katsuki’s count of the tally marks he’d been passive-aggressively leaving with a knife on the cave wall, twelve days since Kirishima had saved his life. Kirishima didn’t seem to notice the marks, which meant the whole thing was a lost cause. Katsuki had not thanked him yet, because thanking him would mean acknowledging that he’d been stupid enough to put his life in peril and like fucking hell was that happening.

He’d known climbing down a mountain on a twisted ankle was dangerous. But the other option was to stay up on the mountain. The mountain that was infested with monsters. And Katsuki might be a monster slayer, but he had no sword - it had been left behind in the flank of a fleeing mountain troll - and no bow, either, not after the tussle with the griffin that he’d won, thank you very much, but the bow had snapped.

To top it all off, his water skein was empty and winter was setting in, which meant he was risking losing his fingers to the chilled air if he took off a glove to use his magic. So the only thing he had, really, was no options.

When he was falling backwards, hands clawing out for the air, he’d known he was stupid. Remembering thinking fuck, I hope the old hag never finds out how stupid I was. He remembered the exhilaration of pure weightlessness rushing past his ears, and then, bizarrely, no pain, only a crack as he hit the ground. Maybe it was waiting at the edges of his consciousness. Whatever had broken, he didn’t know. He was gone to the world.

He’d woken up to Kirishima on the other side of the fire. He didn’t recognize where he was, not that he explored many caves, but this cave had a fire, a pile of furs, and a person in it, humming while he turned a piece of meat over on the fire.

“Who are you,” Katsuki growled, trying to sit up. A heavy fur fell away as he tried to put weight on his hand and it buckled under him, sending sharp pain up his elbow. His ribs ached and his vision swam.

“No, don’t sit up!” The man yelped, shuffling over to Katsuki as Katsuki held up his hand in disbelief. There was a splint on it. He’d - fuck, he’d broken his arm. The splint ran from his thumb to his forearm, and it was expertly done, but Katsuki didn’t do broken arms. “You’re broken all over!”

“What?”

“You fell off the cliff,” the man said, gently pushing his hand against Katsuki’s shoulder until Katsuki lay back down. He was on - a make-shift bed, out of moss and furs and feathers in this cave and Katsuki was lying on it, warm and comfortable like he hadn’t been in - well, a long time. He didn’t want to think about how long. “You broke your ribs, and your leg. And your arm.” He gently waved Katsuki’s broken arm in his face. “And also passing out on a cliff on the side of the mountain at the start of winter was not real smart of you.”

“Die,” Katsuki growled, because he knew that, thank you. Obviously he hadn’t fucking intended to fall and pass out from shock in the freezing cold. “Who are you?”

“Kirishima Eijirou,” the man introduced, holding his hand out. Stupidly big smile, red hair like he was on fire, not a hint of predator in him, not that Katsuki could do anything if he was about to be robbed, or killed. Kirishima wasn’t even wearing a shirt despite it being winter, though it was blisteringly warm in this cave. Katsuki could feel the heat of the man’s hand spreading through his shirt. He looked only too happy to help, nothing else. “You’ve been out of it for like, three weeks. What’s your name?”

“It doesn’t belong to you,” Katsuki announced. He shook Kirishima’s hand just to explode it, then he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

Unfortunately, despite all that, Kirishima was the sort of person who held people hostage in caves on the mountainside so they could receive proper medical care, even if said patient kept trying to blow him up. Which was why Katsuki had been here twelve days and counting. 

Kirishima had managed to trick his name out of him on only the second day - not his first name, of course, because Katsuki might have left the clan but he still believed that given names shouldn’t be shared lightly. It was dangerous to share a name; you never knew who might have the magic or the power to misuse it. Katsuki would almost be impressed with Kirishima’s skill if he weren’t so annoyed, and also, if his leg wasn’t so itchy from being wrapped up in slightly slimy leaves.

So, sue him. Katsuki wanted to know why a veritable hermit had saved a man on the brink of death. Not only saved him, but had stuck around nearly five weeks when he probably had places to be before the winter snows set in. Probably had given up on getting there, since he didn’t seem to think he’d be leaving Katsuki alone any time soon. He carved them two fucking bowls out of a branch from a tree, hands steady around the knife in the firelight. That implied that he was plenty happy staying around in this cave with Katsuki until Katsuki could at least get his own food. So yes, Katsuki had to ask.

He just hadn’t expected Kirishima to tell him it was about souls.

“Come on,” Katsuki said now, because focusing on this ridiculous conversation was better than focusing on Kirishima’s warm hands on his legs, an uncomfortable mixture of pain and... well, he had nice hands, whatever. “What’s the real reason you saved me? I’m not buying this soul shit.”

“Don’t you think souls are important?”

“No, I don’t even know if I have one,” Katsuki snapped. He slowly flexed his fingers, now that he had a moment out of the splint while Kirishima played doctor. His wrist was healing faster, it must have been a hairline fracture. “Why?”

Kirishima looked curious as he looked up from Katsuki’s leg. He’d been wrapping it every day, leaves folding neatly around the purpling bruises and weird bumps. It would take ages to heal, Katsuki knew that, even though he could tell that Kirishima had set it neatly and properly, but he wanted to leave this damn cave. He’d left his clan so that he could see the world, not so that he could sit around in a fucking cave. “You don’t know if you have one?”

“It’s not something I can see, now is it.” Katsuki waved his good hand around. It didn’t really bother him, if he had one or didn’t.

Kirishima laughed, head thrown back so that the firelight played across his cheeks. “I guess humans can’t,” he said, grinning. Katsuki didn’t look at the flash of his sharp teeth. It’d looked threatening if he wasn’t always smiling, a total happy-go-lucky idiot. “Anyways, either way, I couldn’t just leave someone to die. Not when I could help them!”

Katsuki stared at him. “You’ve helped.”

“You can’t even move yet,” Kirishima countered, straightening up. “If I left now, you’d just die of starvation. Or ruin your leg so badly that you’d never get off the mountain.” He rolled his neck, reaching his hands up the cave ceiling, popping his back.

Katsuki loathed him. He just wanted a straight answer. “Maybe I like this mountain and I don’t need to leave it.”

He hated the bastard for laughing.

But this was fine. Katsuki would be on his way, eventually. Once his leg healed. It just meant he was probably stuck in this cave with this idiot for a few months. He hated socializing. Maybe he could tell Kirishima to find a nearby cave and leave this one for him.

Kirishima probably wouldn’t mind. He’d just make some joke about being “cave neighbors” and still waltz in every night, carrying a rabbit by the ears to skin for dinner while Katsuki carefully watched him.

Katsuki hated how warm he felt right now. Hated how warm Kirishima was making him feel. He had to be concussed still, he had to be having fever delusions, he wasn’t – he wasn’t getting soft at the idea of someone – a complete stranger, even! – choosing to stay with him.

People just didn’t usually choose him. Katsuki had long since made peace with that. Didn’t even mind it at this point. It was just unusual, that was why Katsuki was thinking about it so much, it wasn’t – it wasn’t because Kirishima was a good cook and interesting company when he wasn’t being damn annoying. It was – Katsuki was just injured, that’s all. That was it.

“What are you even putting on my leg anyways,” Katsuki grumbled. It smelled almost a little musty. “It doesn’t smell normal.”

“Oh!” Kirishima said, grinning. He leaned over, hand on Katsuki’s shoulder - he was always so fucking touchy, Katsuki hated that he didn’t hate it - to pass him one of the wooden bowls he carved. He also had finished a wooden pot and was working on utensils. Making a home out of this stupid cave. Gods only knew how he found it. Or even got up here. Or how he’d managed to drag an unconscious, feverish, broken-limbed man up here. “It’s a taaka root and silverberry mixture, plus dragon spit.”

Katsuki swallowed his stew wrong and started coughing, which was absolutely hell on his ribs, which didn’t much appreciate moving still. Kirishima hovered over him, worried, hands fluttering because Katsuki was still so banged up he couldn’t be touched, and then remembered that they had water in this cave and passed the skein over. Katsuki swallowed the whole thing down, taking as deep breaths as he could without his own damn ribs trying to kill him, which, in total, was not very deep. “You what?”

“Dragon spit.” Kirishima took the water back, lying it flat on the ground. “I know, it’s kind of gross, but it has really good healing properties!”

Katsuki looked up at the cave ceiling, hating everything. Specifically, Kirishima Eijirou, and the question that Katsuki was now required to ask. “Where the fuck did you get dragon spit?”

Kirishima looked bewildered. “From - my mouth?”

“Your mouth,” Katsuki repeated. He looked down at the stew in the bowl. He looked at his leg, neatly wrapped. He looked up at Kirishima, and his cherry red hair, and the teeth in his mouth like they belonged something dangerous. There were stories, old old stories that had barely left the northern clans, about dragons who could walk among men. “You’re a fucking dragon?”

Kirishima blinked. “What, you couldn’t tell?”

“How the fuck would I be able to tell?”

“Wow,” Kirishima said solemnly. He grinned, showing off those teeth. “You’re a really bad monster hunter.”

Katsuki punched him with his good hand.

-----

Mitsuki wore her queen face as she dragged Katsuki out onto the balcony immediately, thumb digging into the corner of his elbow right where his scar ended.

“Mom!” Katsuki hissed as she shoved him bodily against the railing, his hip connecting solidly with the marble. He hadn’t had a single drink since arriving here, but the cool air still cooled him down, brought him a little clarity. He could see a few couples, dotted around the gardens, bright dresses and coats against the glowing fountains and stars as they cooed over the gently swaying flowers. They were most definitely having a better time than he was.

“What the fuck do you mean you’re married.”

“What the fuck do you mean what do I mean,” Katsuki said, because it was pretty damn clear what he’d meant. He could not have been clearer. “I left! I got married!” He wrapped his fingers around the white stone, staring at the way his white gloves faded away in the dark until it appeared he had no hands at all. “He’s – he’s good to me.”

A critical mistake; she knew too much now. Her eyes narrowed; her shoulders straightened under her furs. Her gold earrings winked at him. He shouldn’t have said anything. “You knew, Katsuki, what your one job was. I don’t care what -”

“I don’t care about all this bullshit,” Katsuki interrupted. He could feel Eijirou on the other end of the bond, worried about him now; he knew enough to tell Eijirou’s different variants of worried apart and that steeled him to say the next part. “We’re not coming back home.”

“No, you’re not,” his mother told him, and for a second, he actually thought she’d understand. His heart started beating a little faster, a traitor in his chest – his mother loved him, despite everything. That was why she was so hard on him, because she wanted him to the best, and he’d done that, he’d become the best for her. Wasn’t it right that he should get a bit of happiness? He turned towards her, hand reaching out for her. His mother loved him; she’d be happy for him-

She slapped him. 

Katsuki’s head whipped to the side, cheek stinging; his mother was a hunter as well as a leader and no clan had use for a leader who didn’t work, who didn’t earn their spot. Katsuki’s hand was still reaching out for her, suspended in the air, a son full of hope. He took it back, the bridge crumbling, the glove singed, and raised his hand to his cheek. It would be red tomorrow. One of her rings had cut him. She wasn’t happy for him. She would never be happy for him.

He could feel Eijirou on the other end, angry red-orange rage straining as if he pushed hard enough, he could appear by Katsuki’s side. He must have felt the pain as the hit connected, must feel the sluggishly bleeding cut as if it were his own cheek. Katsuki tried to send him good feelings, to reassure him that he was fine, but he just - he wasn’t sure he was fine. But he wasn’t in danger, and he focused on that. No danger. No danger. No danger, until it became a mantra, until there was no doubt that Eijirou would get the message, stretched across the entire country, blooming across entire skies, brushing the stars. 

His mother was talking. Yelling. It took him a minute to focus back in. His hand was twisted in the fabric of his shirt, right above his heart, and he could only think about the stars in the sky, not the prickling in his cheek or his mother in front of him.

“You are coming home,” she told him sternly, wrapping her hand in the collar of the proper southern doublet he hated to wear. “I don’t care about whoever you ‘married’-” she sneered the word, lip curling up. She clearly didn’t think much of it. Katsuki looked like that when he was angry too. “You can get your backwater marriage annulled and no one will know the difference.”

Technically, no, Katsuki hadn’t married anyone in the eyes of clan law or in the eyes of any other real law, since dragons didn’t really interact with humans very often. A dragon ritual preformed in the middle of a mountain probably didn’t hold much weight with her, but damned if Katsuki was going to share that part. It had mattered, and that was what was important. What mattered was that Katsuki had done it, had wanted it to last forever, had finally not been alone.

“I’ll know,” Katsuki said finally. Despite the hand at his throat, the words were clear. “And I don’t break promises.”

Mitsuki threw her head back and laughed. “And what about yours to me?” 

Fuck, she wasn’t even looking at him. That’s how little she cared. She thought he was a known entity, and he wasn’t anymore: it had been five years since they’ve laid on eyes on each other. Katsuki was taller than her now by several inches, the shoulders that had always seemed so broad and imposing, the hand at his throat, both were so much smaller than he remembered them.

In the stupidest and most rewarding thing he’d done all day, he reached out and snatched the golden medal at her throat and tossed it over his shoulder, where it landed with a thud, hopefully in mud left from the earlier rain.

“I never promised anything,” Katsuki snarled, knocking her hand from his shirt. He flexed his fingers like he still had the pendant in his grasp, hand smoking as he fought down his magic and worked through the anger that thrummed in his body, a symphony that only he knew how to conduct.

It was childish. Katsuki didn’t care.

She pressed her hand to her forehead, considering her palm instead of looking Katsuki in the eyes. “Go away,” she told him wearily, suddenly looking like his mother again instead of the Head. So small. He hadn’t really meant to hurt her; it was just that she made him unable to think. “I don’t want you at this party tonight.”

He wavered there, unsure what to do. She’d never ended an argument like this before; usually they’d keep yelling at each other until one of them was hoarse and then Katsuki would stomp away, scattering all the people outside their lodge who had heard them. They were good at making sure the whole village knew their business. “Ma.” His glove had a little spot of red blood on it, dotted around the hole he’d burnt through. “Can’t you be happy for me?”

Shouldn’t she know how important this was to him? Katsuki had run away to avoid this, Katsuki had never wanted anyone by his side and he’d found someone. Eijirou loved him, more than anything, and that was everything. Katsuki wasn’t going to give that up, no matter what.

The corner of Mitsuki’s lip tightened. “Just go.”

-----

“You can see my soul?”

“Of course I can, what did you think I meant when I said you had a good soul?”

“Obviously not that,” Katsuki said, pulling his hand back from the kindling as it sparked and caught with his magic. Then, because he was unable not to ask, “What does my soul look like?”

By springtime and snow melt, Katsuki’s leg was strong again, strong enough to climb down a mountain. Kirishima had been diligent, and had also explained that his spit – absolutely disgusting - was healing it faster, making it stronger, somehow. Katsuki hadn’t listened, because it was kind of gross.

Katsuki knew lots about dragons now. He knew what a dragon looked like when transforming, when their leathery wings split their back and it looked so painful but Kirishima didn’t look like he was in pain; he looked jubilant. He knew that dragon scales were impossibly hard to shatter or break, which meant Kirishima had no problem watching Katsuki’s back, guarding from the explosions. He knew that dragons had night vision, which was incredibly convenient, and that they ran warm so that they could fly high, warm enough that Katsuki was still burning even when he was laid flat against Kirishima’s back in the sky.

He knew that this dragon wasn’t going to leave his side, either. So he knew Kirishima’s strength in battle and the way it felt to see the sunrise from his back.

Kirishima hummed thoughtfully, pulling on his cloak. “Your soul is white,” he said, tapping his chest. He grinned. “It’s right above your heart and it burns like a fire. Almost like dragonfire!”

Katsuki had seen dragonfire by now, too, billowing out of Kirishima’s mouth and it burned brilliant, the most beautiful colors he’d ever see, so many he couldn’t possibly name them, different bits and pieces of light interacting until Katsuki was sure he was seeing the warriors of the afterlife, thought to appear only in unknowable bursts of light to ferry the dead to the next world. But it had just been Kirishima, strong. “I still think souls are dragon nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense,” Kirishima pouted, crossing his arms too. He’d been slowly inching his way around the fire, the past few months. Back in the cave, Katsuki had made it clear that he was supposed to sit on the other side of the campfire, but Kirishima kept coming a little closer. By the time they’d left the damn cave, Kirishima was comfortable sitting within arm’s reach, just like he was now. Katsuki could reach out and take his hand. Or punch him. “Dragons take the concept of souls very highly. We even form soul bonds!”

“Seems like nonsense,” Katsuki teased, and he hated that he was teasing him. “Soulmates don’t exist.” Even if they did, surely no one would be unfortunate enough to be paired with him. He couldn’t imagine himself playing house with some faceless person, raising children. If he was lucky, even, it wouldn’t be a faceless noble that Katsuki was stuck with, his marriage preventing war. No, he wanted to be out here, in the wilds, every day a surprise, Kirishima at his side - well. At least that first part. He didn’t know where the second part came from.

“Not soulmates, Bakugou,” Kirishima said. “Soul bonds.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is you get to choose,” Kirishima said softly. The firelight rendered his face mysterious, shadows cutting across his eyes, and Katsuki wondered if they even knew each other at all. The thought hurt more than he expected. “It’s like - it’s like allowing each other in, and seeing the worst and best parts of each other’s soul, right? And you can feel it, in here.” He pressed a hand to his chest, just over the long cut he’d gotten a few weeks ago, one that was keeping him from transforming. Katsuki had had to stitch it back up, carefully focused on thread instead of the rise and fall of Kirishima’s chest, how their breath mingled in the cold air between them.

“Seems useless to me.” 

Eijirou snorted. “You’re clearly not a romantic.”

“Obviously not,” Katsuki snarled. “I fucking left my clan so that-” he snapped his mouth shut. Kirishima had shared a lot about him, but Katsuki had tried not to return the favor, even if Kirishima had a way of getting it out of him.

Kirishima scooted a little closer. “What,” he probed.

“You’re too close.”

“But we’re friends now, Katsuki,” Kirishima whined. His hands on Katsuki’s. Katsuki hated him. When had this stupid idiot even learned Katsuki’s given name? Who said Kirishima could call him by it? As if - as if Katsuki would ever call him Eijirou back.

Eijirou’s name would probably fall nicely off his tongue. Shit.

“I don’t think so,” Katsuki disagreed. He was close. Too close. Katsuki could feel the heat coming off Kirishima in waves, because the damn lizard was always hotter than a human. Katsuki closed his eyes but he couldn’t escape that heat, the way it burned and comforted in equal measure. Before this, only his own magic kept him warm. He’d used to sit and stare at his hands, sparking and flickering until he could perform something grand. No one else ever came close to him.

“Maybe not,” Kirishima agreed, and he slid that hot hand over Katsuki’s collarbone, fingers ghosting up his neck until he must be able to feel Katsuki’s pulse. He tilted his head, nosing carefully along Katsuki’s jaw, mouth turned up in a smile and a whisper. “Katsuki.” So close that Katsuki was burning, Kirishima’s hand branding his skin, that he’d never be cold again.

Katsuki still couldn’t say his name, so he leaned in and pressed his lips to Kirishima’s, sealing his fate in fire.

-----

Katsuki’s rooms in the palace were large compared to a clan lodge but he knew enough about bullshit politics to know that it was probably on the smaller end of rooms offered in this palace and was therefore an insult. It didn’t matter, not at all, because it was completely private, unlike a clan lodge, where he spent the night sleeping in bunks surrounded by twenty other kids his age.

He pulled off his stuffy doublet and tossed it on the bed. He hated the high neck. It always made him feel so trapped; his mother had a habit of resting her hand just so on the back of his neck, like at any moment she could become the personification of collar chaining him there. He didn’t even let Eijirou touch the back of his neck.

He curled up on the bed, confused, almost, at how lonely he was. There had been a time where he’d wanted this more than anything, where sleeping in the lodge where snores and snuffles and sleep talking would run grating fingers down his spine. The first night he’d ran, tucking himself into a small cave that he’d found as a child so that no one could find him, it had been so blessedly empty, even though he couldn’t stand upright.

He’d felt like he could breathe.

He could breathe now, but there was no one sharing the same air. The side of the bed that Eijirou usually liked was empty; Katsuki could throw his hand out and find nothing at all.

He put a hand on his chest, focusing. Breathe in. Breathe out. In, out. He could practically hear Eijirou’s voice counting with him. Maybe he was, wherever he was. Eijirou was always looking out for Katsuki like that. Katsuki had hated it, at first. He hadn’t really understood it until the first time Eijirou had gotten sick, down with some silly dragon pox that usually only children caught. Katsuki couldn’t do anything but wait, pacing the floor in some stupid inn while Eijirou chattered feverishly with his delusions and smiled up at Katsuki - such a stupid placating smile - as if Katsuki was the one who needed tending.

“Stop smiling at me,” Katsuki snapped.

“Can’t help it,” Eijirou slurred. “You’re very sweet.”

“Stop that.”

He wasn’t sure what was so sweet about being worried silly over an illness that Eijirou had reassured him that children got this all the time, he just needed rest and time to heal, but Katsuki wanted to fix it but he couldn’t. And this was far stupider than the times he and Eijirou had been back to back, fighting together, second-nature after two years traveling together. They kept an eye on each other, always. Sometimes Katsuki wondered if the reason he’d been so lonely all his life was because Eijirou was supposed to be there, always. They moved together like they’d been training partners since birth, like they could read each other’s thoughts.

He thought he was more scared by the realization that he was in love more than the actual being in love. Being with Eijirou just - felt right.

So he’d clasped Eijirou’s hand tight, forehead pressed to their twined fingers like he was keeping vigil, but the vigil was for fire and strength and - love, fine, love too. Katsuki was going to say it out loud one day. Not yet, but he had to, because he could feel it burning in the good soul Eijirou was always so fond of saying he had.

Katsuki would die before he gave that up. 

He still knew that, lying here on the stupid bed in the small room that he barely remembered the politics for. He pulled at the ties on his shirt collar, still too tight. If Eijirou would here - but no. He wasn’t here, that was the problem. 

Katsuki just needed to figure out a way to leave. His mother would be watching him. She was always watching him, dark eyes on the back of his head during training, running drills over and over until he could kill a man or a monster and not discriminate between the two. He was the most skilled warrior of the clan, everyone whispered. He’ll be the next leader.

But they didn’t want him to be the next leader. There’s a difference between being the best and being respected, and being respected for his skills didn’t mean a single damn thing to the clan. There were lots of good warriors, there would always be lots of good warriors standing tall.

He’d managed to get three days away before his mother caught up with him last time, fury in her eyes. He’d expected her to bring him back and he’d clenched his jaw, hand on his sword, committed to the fight.

She didn’t drag him back with her.

He could remember with perfectly clarity the way she dragged a knife up the insides of both his arms to ruin his tattoos, the black ink that Katsuki had only received a year before, the youngest anyone in the clan had ever received their marks. Katsuki had selfishly been trying to avoid this. In the nights before he left, he’d wondered if running was right, or if he should stay and let them mar his arms.

He hadn’t, because he’d known his mother would be the one to do it. It was always the Head and Mitsuki was not so weak that she wouldn’t carve up her son’s clan tattoos to prove it. 

“Leave, then, outcast,” she’d spat, wiping Katsuki’s blood and she’d taken the horse, his horse, back with her, leaving Katsuki lying on the dry autumn grass, staining the brown red. 

Wasn’t that enough? Couldn’t they accept, now, that they weren’t clan, but mother and son?

Eijirou had fussed over the scars when he learnt what they meant, fingers pressing carefully against the inside of Katsuki’s elbow as he inspected them. Katsuki hadn’t had dressings or bandages - he’d torn his cloak and thanked god that you couldn’t see the blood against all the red - so the scars were thick and heavy, raised white lines breaking up what should have been connected, beautiful black ink. “I figured it was on purpose,” Eijirou had worried, “They were so neat.” Because Katsuki hadn’t struggled. “Who wrapped them?”

“I did,” Katsuki said, looking away. He didn’t want to see Eijirou’s eyes. “That’s the point. Because - because the clan can’t take care of you, once you leave.”

“I hate them,” Eijirou had muttered furiously, and Katsuki’s head swiveled around of its own accord, because Eijirou didn’t hate anything but now he had fire and glass in his voice too, like he’d stolen it from Katsuki’s throat with a kiss. “I hate them.”

He’d pressed hot kisses in a line against the scars, up in a row until he reached Katsuki’s collarbone. When Katsuki tilted his chin up, Eijirou’s eyes had been welled up with tears, silently falling down his cheeks. “What’re you fucking crying for,” Katsuki had mumbled.

“You,” Eijirou said rebelliously, eyes narrowed. Predator. “Because you won’t.”

Katsuki fell asleep to that memory, wrapped in his barbarian northern cloak instead of under the luxurious blanket on this bed that was too soft, too unlike the hard dirt forest floor. He didn’t know how to be this anymore. Maybe he’d never known how to be this - good son, clan leader, willing to do anything for the sake of peace.

He’d returned home with thoughts of war. That was what it took to call him home. That was what he knew how to be.

-----

“Stupid souls! Stupid fucking souls, why didn’t I realize, if he doesn’t wake up-”

“Calm down, I’m up,” Katsuki rasped. This was a startlingly familiar situation, even if it had been damn near three years since he’d woken up to a stranger tending to his broken leg, too cheery by half. This time there was sky above them, fading red and orange with sunset.

Only a little bit of the worry on Eijirou’s face cleared, like a partly sunny day. He had a black eye, which was stunning, considering his whole power was not taking damage. “Katsuki! Katsuki, you’re awake! Don’t sit up-”

Katsuki glared at him and promptly knocked his hand away as he straightened up, head swimming. Katsuki, as a general rule, did not pass out. He considered it weak and cowardly, because it was. So he did not pass out. Especially in the middle of a battle, sword in his hand, like a damn infant. Usually, Katsuki and his body were on the same page - they weren’t fucking weaklings and that was that. If Katsuki put his mind to it, he could do anything, that had always been the case.

So he couldn’t be at fault, really, for not listening to what Eijirou was saying. When he blinked his eyes back open, dizzy, Eijirou was right there, so close that Katsuki jerked his head back and then immediately felt ill again. He wasn’t thinking much about the worried muttering. He was only thinking about Eijirou’s cool fingers against his forehead, one hand cradling the back of Katsuki’s head like he was a child. “You hit your head,” Eijirou mumbled. He waved his hand impatiently at Eijirou until Eijirou reached out, palm against palm, to pull him into a sitting position. “You might have a mild concussion. When you, um - when you-”

Katsuki let himself be maneuvered into a semi-sitting position against the rounded trunk of the tree. “Dumb fucking body,” he mumbled. Eijirou must have found this place for them to hide out, cliffs at their back, stream at their feet. Maybe he had to drag Katsuki’s body here. Katsuki would never let anyone else do that. He wouldn’t ever let anyone else touch him the way Eijirou touched him, soft and caring even though Katsuki was all sharp edges and shards of glass, no reprieve anywhere in his body. Eijirou was built to resist that.

Passing out made Katsuki a sap.

“Are you even listening to me,” Eijirou said, pained. His hair was an angry red blur, but his face was white. From fear, probably. “I’m trying to apologize.”

Katsuki hadn’t been, but he hadn’t done it on purpose. He didn’t make a habit out of not listening to Eijirou. He took a swig from the water skein that Eijirou passed him. The water tasted metallic on his tongue, or - oh, that was blood. He’d split his lip when he’d passed out. “For what?”

“For making you faint, it was my fault!”

“You’re damn right it was your fault I passed out,” Katsuki said testily. He didn’t fucking faint. He passed out. It was different. He passed the skein back, cataloguing the look on Eijirou’s face. That made absolutely no sense. “Why?”

Eijirou twisted a strand of red hair around his finger, finger winding in circles until his brown skin started going purple. He was so far away. He’d pulled his hands away. That wasn’t like him. Eijirou was clingy. He was always saying dragons were tactical creatures, but they’d only met three other dragons since they’ve been traveling together, none of whom liked Katsuki, and Katsuki kind of figured that even if that was true, Eijirou was an especially needy one, because he was always wanting to hold hands.

But he wasn’t doing that now. Katsuki had grown used to the comfortable way Eijirou would hold him at night, when they made camp, his nose buried in Katsuki’s hair. The way Eijirou would swing his legs into Katsuki’s lap when they did spend a night at an inn, laughing at the way Katsuki threw them off and threatened to explode his socks, but Eijirou wasn’t doing any of that. He was sitting just out of arm’s reach, knees drawn up to his chest. Making himself look as small as possible, which was not easy, considering how broad his shoulders were. He looked absolutely pathetic, nothing like the man Katsuki loved.

Whatever he was upset about, he was really upset about it.

Katsuki hated waiting. “Spit it out!” 

Eijirou yelped. “What do you know about dragon bonds!” 

Katsuki squinted at him. “Like… soul bonds, right?” His tongue felt thick. He drank more water. “You mentioned them before.”

This was true, technically, but Eijirou had only mentioned them once. Maybe he didn’t remember it, but Katsuki did, kept that knowledge tucked against his heart, because he figured that it meant his and Eijirou’s relationship had an end date. One day, Eijirou would meet some dragon he’d want to form a soul bond with. How could he not, when a soul bond was all that? He’d spoken about it so lovingly, about how it was one heart in two people.

Well, two dragons. Because as far as Katsuki could tell, humans... weren’t able to form soul bonds.

“Right,” Eijirou said weakly. “Well, dragons form bonds! Between, um. Mates and family.” He chewed at his lip. Katsuki blinked at him, then decided that raising a hand, despite his complete lack of energy, and making a get on with it motion was worth it. Eijirou flushed again, red crawling across his cheeks not unlike the way his scales did when he started to transform. “So, you know they’re soul links, right? It’s like - it’s like - it’s like one soul split into two bodies.” Even distressed, his voice was soft, stumbling over the words like just mentioning them was to feel connected. There was a soft, strained corner of his mouth turned up, the barest memory of a smile, and Katsuki suddenly felt incredibly lonely even if Eijirou was right there. 

“Okay,” Katsuki said slowly. He didn’t know why Eijirou was talking about dragon soul bonds when they were already together, and he definitely didn’t know how this was related to fainting. Passing out. “And - the passing out?”

“Right! Right, the, um. Right.” Eijirou let out an awkward little laugh, so out of place on him. He pressed his hands against the dirt in front of him. Twigs were probably digging into his skin as he bowed his head. “I. So. Bonds are - so. Usually when two dragons start courting, there’s - usually a fledgling bond starts to grow. It feels a little like, um. Well, like being in love. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

Katsuki did not understand at all where he was going with this. “No, I fucking don’t.”

“Katsuki,” Eijirou whined, suddenly sounding far more like himself then he had this entire conversation. It felt a little better. “You’re supposed to be smart!”

“Well, if you could be fucking clear,” Katsuki snarled.

Eijirou lifted his head again. “Are you being difficult on purpose?” he said, voice strained, but clearly, he didn’t want an answer. His mind was somewhere else, somewhere lost, so Katsuki held his tongue, knowing he’d have to find his own way back. “I’m trying my best to explain it!”

“Your best sucks.”

“Come off it,” Eijirou complained, the corner of his mouth quirking up - there he was - only for a brief fleeting second. “You try explain something that’s basically in a different language!”

“Maybe I will,” Katsuki snarked. “Get back the point, Ei.” He eyed Eijirou. Maybe he was just being testy because of the passing out thing, but he couldn’t stop stress from welling up, heavy in his ribcage. Eijirou wasn’t even angry, this wasn’t an argument, Katsuki had no reason yet to be mad, but he could feel stress and guilt and tension plucking at his heartstrings like they were a goddamn harp.

“Always so impatient,” Eijirou murmured, eyes soft. “Well, fledging bonds grow naturally, okay, but they don’t - they aren’t predetermined. I could have the choice to ignore a fledgling bond and let it fade away and mate with someone else entirely, or I could choose to never mate, or I could - I wouldn’t, but I could court several dragons, if I wanted to. And - so - the thing is, I-”

Katsuki got it, just like that, like a bone snapping clean in two. “You found someone you want to be your mate,” he said. It was harder to say - to breath - than he’d thought. 

Eijirou’s eyes softened. Shit. “Yes.”

“Oh.” 

That set Eijirou off again; he started to ramble, twisting his fingers together the way he always did when he was nervous. Little bits of dirt and grass fell away from where he’d been clutching at the ground. Katsuki would reach out, but he wasn’t sure he was allowed to, anymore. What was - did Eijirou want to leave immediately, to be with his mate? Was this just it?

Fuck, Katsuki was going to miss him. Katsuki was going to have to relearn how to watch his own back, because he wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d ever find someone else like Eijirou. Eijirou was singular, exceptional, the one person in the entire world who had been able to push forward and claim a spot at Katsuki’s side.

He wracked his brain, trying to think of people it could be, even though he knew that was a bad idea that was only going to get him into trouble. It was only going to cause his anger to rise up like an ocean swell, crashing along the cliffs off his body until the already-low walls of restraint crumbled into the water below, letting nature take its course.

It had to be someone they met recently. Eijirou wouldn’t have hidden this for so long, not if he truly wanted to leave. That dragon with the iron-like hide had gotten alone pretty well with him, maybe it was him? Fuck, Katsuki hated that guy. It would be horrible knowing that Eijirou was going to be the happiest he ever was with that bastard, that he was going to leave Katsuki behind, just like that. 

Fuck. Katsuki was going to miss him. But despite the ache in his heart, which was already begging him to do something, fix this, we can keep him, he’ll stay, he loves us, he loves us, he loves us, Katsuki curled his hands into fists and didn’t reached out for Eijirou’s at all.

The Katsuki of four years ago would have considered himself weak for even thinking about doing it. Would never have stooped to do something so low as to reach out and ask someone to stay. It was weak to need others, he’d boast, never having known that sometimes, other people could make you stronger than you’d ever known.

He wanted to. He wanted to wrap his hands around Eijirou’s shoulders and pull him close. If he wasn’t so sure that Eijirou would be deliriously happy with some other dragon soulmate, he would. He’d reach out and say stay with me, I can make you happy too. But Katsuki couldn’t begrudge him a soulmate, a person to share dreams with and feelings and thoughts, a person who would stay tucked besides his heart forever.

Katsuki steeled himself. If Eijirou was going to be happy then - fine. He’d deal, if Eijirou was happy. He would. He’d be alone before. It wasn’t that bad, really.

“Katsuki? Why are you making that face, is it - is it that upsetting?” Eijirou frowned. “You’re - you're mad.”

No. He was pretty sure the anger would come later, though. 

But still, it took everything Katsuki had not to snarl back, second-nature always close at hand. But he forced it down, down his throat, past his heart. It couldn’t settle around his heart. He didn’t want to be forever looking back on this time as bad, didn’t want to look back on Eijirou’s face and see an enemy. He couldn’t do what he always did, ruin things and expect that Eijirou would pick up the pieces. He was good like that. 

“I’m not,” he managed to say. Eijirou’s face doubted him. Katsuki didn’t want Eijirou to remember him as mad. Snarling. He didn’t want Eijirou to remember him as fighting to keep a fate that wasn’t his. If it were anything else - anything but this, anything but Ei’s happiness. “I just - I gotta lie down.”

“Your head still hurts,” Eijirou said, dismayed. “Why didn’t you say so?” He reached out, feeling for the lump on the back of Katsuki’s head. Katsuki hissed, but he leaned into the touch anyways, despite the dull pain. Slowly, carefully, Eijirou helped Katsuki lie down, head pillowed on Eijirou’s thigh. “Sleep well,” he said softly, pressing a kiss to Katsuki’s forehead. Katsuki closed his eyes. 

He didn’t have to let go tonight.

-----

Katsuki woke up, head dancing with visions and nightmares. He lifted his head, wincing - the skin across his cheekbone was still aching but when he reached up, expecting to find a bumpy scab, the skin was smooth, completely healed. 

He’d had dreams of Eijirou. Not the usual ones, the terrifying nightmares where Eijirou was flying and he couldn’t catch Katsuki before he was dropped, hands bound. Not the ones where it was summer and Eijirou was insisting they have a picnic in the meadow, but mostly he’d lie and nap in the sun, heads folded under his head while the grass hid him from view.

It was like they’d been calling to each other. He could see glimpses of Eijirou in the lightning, red hair plastered down. He could hear his own name being called through bouts of thunder.

He couldn’t even remember when he’d given Eijirou his name, trusted him with that. It just seemed as if Eijirou had always had it.

“Katsuki,” Dream-Eijirou had called, cupping his hands around his mouth. Rain was pouring into his eyes, making it hard to see; Katsuki kept reaching up to wipe it away, but it was a meaningless gesture. “Katsuki!”

“Ei,” Katsuki said, taking a sluggish first step. He looked down and there was water pooling, rapidly rising up to his calves. He looked left and it was all open plains, trees and mountains in the far distance, the ground cracked and brown and begging for a drink, and then he looked right and he was standing in an ocean. 

Eijirou had partially shifted, scales running up his arms and shoulders, his wings acting as a very convenient umbrella. Katsuki pushed forward, yelling that Eijirou should fly, dumbass as he stumbled over the ocean of drops that were attacking his knees. He was sinking. 

Eijirou grabbed onto his elbow immediately, pulling him up, and his fingers dug in against white-hot pain. Katsuki yelled as it raced up his arms, brand-new but achingly familiar. Eijirou lifted their hands up, the both of them bending their heads together to inspect the blood there. In the near constant flashes of lightning that were giving Katsuki a headache, he could see his outcast scars reopened, sticky red flowing down his elbows and coating Eijirou’s hands. 

“So we’re not having a good time,” Eijirou said brightly, and Katsuki barked out a laugh. Katsuki could see his face again, what with the wing blocking the worst of the rain. He had dark circles under his eyes. Katsuki reached up for them and grimaced as pain stopped his hand halfway through the air. Eijirou noticed his wince and considered the cuts, which-

“Oh no, do not lick my arms.”

Eijirou wrinkled his nose, affronted. A cheap act, considering he had once licked a cut on Katsuki’s shoulder with his stupid speedy dragon healing spit before Katsuki could shove him off. It had been absolutely disgusting, but Katsuki had woken up to find the cut completely healed, even though it had been pretty deep. Convenient but gross as hell. He was not doing it in a dream, which had absolutely no benefits in real life. Probably.

“Fine,” Eijirou said, clearly not pleased. “But only because I know they’re old wounds.” He blinked and the deafening rainstorm ended, the silence too loud in its absence. Katsuki shivered. “They are old wounds, right, Katsuki?” His voice was thin, a knife’s blade. Katsuki did not want to disagree with that voice. “Your mother - she didn’t - she-”

“You’d have known if she did, dumbass,” Katsuki said, which of course made Eijirou’s shoulders relax, as if he’d said it like a comfort. As he spoke, he watched the wounds knit back together, the blood trickling away with the water droplets on his skin. Disgusting. “You’d have fucking felt it. No, we just - argued.”

“Good.” Eijirou pushed his hair off his forehead. It didn’t really stay. “I mean, I assume you’re putting mildly if all this-” he gestured towards the sky, encompassing the thunderstorm and the ocean. “-is happening, but-”

“Hey, take some responsibility for your half,” Katsuki said, even though he didn’t know how shared dreaming worked and it was possible the whole dream belonged to him. Whatever. They could both be thunderstorms in an empty night. “Besides, it’s not even working properly.” He pointed down to their feet, where all the water was disappearing, the water pink where drops of his blood had hit.

“Aw, shit,” Eijirou mumbled as the crack in the ground between them widened. Katsuki lurched, barely managing to hold on to Ei’s hand. “Well, just - ugh. Stop waking up!”

“You stop waking up!” Eijirou, fuck him, had the audacity to laugh. “Stop laughing!” Katsuki hit Eijirou’s shoulder. “Come get me, okay? The old hag is trying to marry me off. I need a daring escape. Like a really big one.”

Eijirou’s face dropped. “A dragon sized one?”

“I’m damn sure not looking for something lizard-sized,” Katsuki snapped. “The bitch won’t let up for anything else.”

Eijirou snorted. “If she’s anything like you, no, probably not,” he said, and he didn’t let Katsuki catch his breath after the metaphorical punch to the gut, didn’t let Katsuki say - or not say - we’re exactly the same. “I’ll be there, soon, okay, I just need to finish-”

His mouth kept moving but his voice stopped; behind him the grass and sky started to blur like a melted painting.

“I can’t hear you anymore,” Katsuki said, and then Eijirou flickered out of existence, a ghost, the imprint of him remaining for only a second when Katsuki opened his eyes to sunlight.

He wasn’t sure what Eijirou needed to finish, of course. Not really. They’d been traveling together, Eijirou nervous, because his real parents had called for him. Katsuki had been - well, it would be putting it mildly to say surprised, so maybe shocked was better - but he’d been shocked when Eijirou told him that he’d run away too. 

He’d been twelve, a half-dragon who wasn’t accepted by his father’s real family. His step-mother had only talked to him twice in his entire life. He’d never talked very much about his first family, and Katsuki had never pushed that point, because Eijirou hated to talk about it. He always said that his first family had hated him. For being different, for being a dragon, for not being proper, for being a weak link in his father’s line. 

Before learning this, Katsuki had assumed that Eijirou came from a warm, loving family; that reaching out to touch and hold and smooth away the furrows from Katsuki’s brow was second-nature. How could anyone become so much like the sun, burning golden and bright, if they hadn’t been born into it?

But Eijirou hadn’t. He hadn’t even met his father until he was seven.

Eijirou had asked him, hands trembling, to please, please come with me, Katsuki and Katsuki hated it. Ei was never supposed to be so scared. Ei was stronger than anything. As if Katsuki would ever have let him go alone.

Don’t have anything better to do, Katsuki said, leaning against Eijirou’s back so that he could hook his chin over Eijirou’s shoulder. Eijirou had laughed, the vibrations rumbling through his chest, but the fragile look had remained on his face for days. Katsuki hadn’t said why do you even have to go, because he understood better than most the inextricable bonds of family. Eijirou had kept chewing on his lip, trying to speak, to tell Katsuki more, but he never could; the words got stuck in his throat. Katsuki hadn’t gotten rid of that by the time he received his mother’s wind message.

The bitch had always had the worst timing.

He could see her now, coming down the hall at him, which ruined his chances of having a quiet peaceful breakfast where he plotted an escape. “Honey,” his mother greeted, voice syrupy and fake as shit. “You slept so late!”

Katsuki cast an eye towards the windows. “Stayed up late,” he said, which wasn’t a lie. Besides, no one else in this damn castle had woken up yet, on account of the fucking party last night. The only people in here were servants in lurid green uniforms and a man with dark hair and a heavy cloak, so far down at the end of the table and so big that Katsuki could barely see the boy next to him.

“What are you wearing,” she sighed. He’d put the shirt back on, necklaces hidden under the collar, but he’d also opted to wear his heavy well-worn boots and his cloak. There was no point in hiding it; everyone knew they were from the north. They could wear the doublets, but that wouldn’t hide their tattoos or their earrings or their snarls on their faces.

Besides, if Katsuki happened to have a chance to escape today, he was going to, and he liked this cloak. He liked his pants, heavy cloth so that Eijirou’s scales wouldn’t slice his legs open. And he wasn’t leaving behind this necklace, not after he’d worked so hard to carve it, hidden from Eijirou’s eyes. “Whatever I’d like.”

She sighed again, sitting down at the table. Good. He hoped he gave her a headache. “You’re lucky, son of mine.” She nodded sharply at the seat across to her; Katsuki dropped into it. Her pendant was back at her throat, shining cruelly at him. “Despite your bad attitude, your magic makes you very lucrative.”

Katsuki paused reaching for his water. He knew that. “What did you do.”

She smirked at him. “Oh, you found that out, did you?” She laughed, a mean ugly thing. “Found out that using that fancy magic of yours is only going to get you on a wanted list?”

Yes, he knew. He knew, because he’d had someone slap iron cuffs with carved runes onto him before he’d even know that magic was rare. It wasn’t rare, in the north. It was everywhere, flowing freely through the people and the water and the mountain and the clans. How was he supposed to know that people had their greedy eyes on it?

He’d been dragged away, spitting and making things as generally difficult as possible partly because it would be easier for Eijirou to follow a trail and partly just to be a dick, but the cuffs sapped his magic and therefore his energy and he couldn’t put up a fuss for that long. That had been before Eijirou had ever dared to kiss him but Katsuki had kept his eyes fixed on the sky, knowing he’d come anyways.

He’d never gotten to wherever the magic thieves were taking him. Eijirou had been the one to find their hideout and destroy it, because Katsuki didn’t want anything still left on this earth that could steal magic from him.

God, he remembered the feeling of it disappearing, too, like the sudden drop of a waterfall, a void in his chest with those cuffs around his arms, the laugh of a thief curling around the back of his neck like a collar. He’d thought he was over it, and then Eijirou was showing off magic tricks for him, only a few days into knowing they even had a bond, and he’d raised his palm and let off a little explosion.

Katsuki hadn’t known the rules. Katsuki didn’t know how things worked. He’d pushed away from Eijirou immediately, vision swimming, breathe in, breathe out, but his breath caught in his throat. He should have known it. Dragons were hoarders, of course they’d want to steal magic, and that was his magic in Eijirou’s palm and breathe, Katsuki, breathe, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking, it’s still yours, you still have it- and then he’d been igniting sparks across his palms, big enough to call attention to themselves, big enough to rock him backwards until he collapsed, burying his head in his knees. 

Eijirou wouldn’t steal his magic, Katsuki knew that. But it had been something else to see him draw on it, to draw on power through the bond. So yes, he knew. He knew better than most, especially his mother, who hadn’t left the fucking North in twenty years and had no magic of her own.

He closed his fingers around the goblet. Southern kingdoms were always so hypnotized by a bit of gold. It would be pretty bad to explode the damn thing. His fingers itched. “What. Did. You. Do.”

“Found you a match, ungrateful child,” she said, waving to the man far down the table, who stood up, chair scraping back with an unpleasant thump. He’d been watching them, then. Shit. Fuck. “If things go well, then you’ll be married next spring.” 

Stupidly, the first thing Katsuki thought was that’s pretty damn fast.

She took the silence as something else, though. “No crude remarks? Decided your paramour isn’t enough?”

“He’s not my fuckin paramour,” Katsuki hissed. “He’s my partner, got it?”

“Not at all!” God, but the smile on her face was knife-thin. She tapped her nails against the table, tip tap, tip tap, until Katsuki wanted to rip her fingers off her damn hand. “As far as I’m concerned, that means nothing. You didn’t get a blessing from the clan leader.”

“I don’t need one, remember,” Katsuki said, sitting back in his seat. He caught the eye of a servant, who flinched. Probably scared of him and his mother, yelling back and forth, Katsuki’s hands smoking through the gloves he was required to wear, so that everyone would know he had magic (was dangerous. Was valuable). “I left.”

“Family doesn’t leave.”

“Then what was the point of carving me up like a fucking deer?”

“Manners.”

The man was halfway down the table now, guiding a black-haired boy with a bowed head. Katsuki’s theoretical intended, most likely, if he had any damn intentions at all, which he refused to have. Mitsuki was smirking at them both, though to them it probably looked like a pleasant polite smile and not like a lion about to devour prey.

His mouth was dry. He hadn’t even managed to eat anything. And he was going to have to pretend to be fine with this for - days? Weeks? However long it took Eijirou to arrive. Because Katsuki was under no delusion that he wouldn’t be guarded. Hounded. He’d only escaped last time because his mother let him.

And she had no political incentive to do so again.

So he had to pretend to be okay. Okay enough that she let him on a bit of a longer leash, soh

If he were Eijirou, he’d be so much kinder, but Katsuki couldn’t do kind. It was risky, first of all, and secondly, Katsuki just - didn’t know how to explain to a complete stranger that he was in love with someone else, so much that he was skirting his entire duty, that he was going to be the weak link here.

Fuck.

“Hello, Council Head,” the man rumbled, voice deep. “Well-met. Your son, I presume?”

“Bakugou Katsuki,” Mitsuki introduced. “Meet King Kirishima Yuu and his son, Prince Eijirou.”

Katsuki snapped his head up, the other boy did too. Katsuki hadn’t recognized him with the black hair neatly tied at the nape of his neck - where had that come from? - but undoubtedly, the man staring down at Katsuki with wide, red eyes, was Katsuki’s Eijirou.

-----

“I think you should take it easy today,” Eijirou whispered, not wanting to disturb the early morning peace. He always liked the part of the day where the only sound was bird song and everything was cool and damp with dew. His eyes were still closed, eyelashes casting shadows across his cheeks. He must have just woken up. He’d been curled around Katsuki when Katsuki opened his eyes to weak light, but while he’d usually get up, thinking about breakfast, today he stayed down, shoulder against the packed dirt of the forest, and just looked at Eijirou. “Your soul is all gray.”

Whose fault is that, Katsuki wanted to say but he let the insult wither on his tongue. Don’t ruin it yet. Eijirou was smiling at him, but then Eijirou was always smiling, even when he was actually asleep. Katsuki let one hand trace over the freckles on his shoulder, skimming as he worked his way up to the freckles on Eijirou’s cheek.

“Feeling better then, are we,” Eijirou teased, finally opening his eyes.

Katsuki couldn’t help it. He needed one last kiss. He guided Ei towards him, hand on his jaw. Just one more, as their lips slid together. Just one more, as Eijirou giggled, his hand finding Katsuki’s waist. Just one more, Katsuki begged, and he’d beg forever.

“There you are,” Eijirou said, beaming up at him. There was a faint red line across his cheek, where he’d fallen asleep lying on his leather arm brace. “Your soul is all golden again. I was worried about you last night.”

Katsuki finally forced words out his mouth. “Right. Yeah.” Stupid words to say on the last morning they’d probably spend waking up tangled together. He gestured vaguely upwards. “My head.”

Eijirou tilted Katsuki’s head to the left, scrutinizing the bump. “I can’t feel it at all now,” he reported, fingers ruffling through Katsuki’s hair. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Katsuki lied, then realized it wasn’t a lie. “I - actually I feel fucking great.” He sat up fully, tilting his head around. He could see the stream and the trees above them and the clear sunlight. His vision was fine, he wasn’t dizzy at all. He definitely didn’t feel mildly concussed, like he had yesterday. “The fuck?”

“That’ll be the healing,” Eijirou nodded. “Dragons heal fast.”

“I know that,” Katsuki snapped. He’d seen Eijirou heal annoyingly fast many times, cuts that should take weeks to heal turning to scar in a matter of days, as long as they were properly tended to. There was still a faint white scar over Eijirou’s heart, from the cut Katsuki had sewed up, but the thing had only been stitched together for five days before it was almost brand new. “What’s that have to do with me?”

“Uh, well, hopefully it’s not killing you,” Eijirou said. “I’m really not sure.”

“What?”

“No one’s had a soul bond with a human before, so it might be sapping your energy or your lifeforce to heal you, I don’t know!”

Katsuki dropped his hand from his head, jaw dropping. Eijirou looked startled, but he didn’t have a monopoly on that, because Katsuki was fucking floored. Maybe this was all a delusion. Maybe he was still concussed and this was all a trick of his concussed mind. “Your stupid soul bond is with me?”

“Um, yes,” Eijirou said, looking mystified. “Of course.”

“Don’t pretend that was obvious,” Katsuki yelled, jabbing a finger at him. “That was not fucking obvious!”

Eijirou stared at him. “I … didn’t think you’d be this mad.” His voice was terribly, achingly small. “I swear, it was an accident.”

“Of course I’m mad!” Katsuki yelled, because he’d just spent an entire sleepless and concussed night trying to make peace with the fact that he was going to be alone again, very soon, and it hadn’t even meant anything, because Eijirou wanted him. Eijirou had a soul bond with him. “I thought we were going our separate ways!”

He felt the words hit Eijirou, like a fire doused in his heart, a cold sudden sensation like chilled water trickling down his back was Eijirou went completely still. Shit, something had gone wrong. He tried to find it, but Eijirou was too quick, speaking up before Katsuki could go through the conversation again.

“We can break the bond, you know,” Eijirou said hesitantly, heavy gray smoke filling their twin lungs. “I mean – we probably should! I don’t think anyone knows how bonds with humans might work. It could be dangerous! And I know humans don’t mate for life-”

Like hell they were going to. Katsuki knew that Eijirou was working himself up into a panic, trying to convince himself that breaking the bond, that leaving each other, that being alone was the best thing to do. He was too good like that.

“I didn’t think any humans could form soul bonds. Are you sure?”

Eijirou nodded. “It might have happened because I’m half-human. Or because you have a very aggressive soul.” Like they needed a soul bond to tell them that. “But it can be broken, Katsuki. It might be a little painful, though.”

Katsuki frowned. Something didn’t add up quite right. Not with the way Eijirou was looking, not with the sickly feeling Katsuki could feel from him, not with everything Katsuki had been told about bonds. “I thought you said it would fade away.”

“Those are fledging bonds,” Eijirou said, waving a hand around as to wipe the notion away. “Those don’t have to mean anything. This is different, ours is really strong. Most dragons would attend a bonding ritual at this point. The ceremony is just a formality, though, by that point, they’ve shared souls. They’re already mated.” He sighed. “It’s romantic.”

“Hold on,” Katsuki said suspiciously. “You told me dragons bond for life.”

“They do.”

“And this is practically a mate bond.” Eijirou kept frowning at him, not sure of the trap Katsuki was setting but sure he was being set up for one. Gods only knew how Eijirou had managed to form a full soul bond with a fucking human on accident. “That means - you won’t mate again, if we break it. This is it.”

Regret flashed in his eyes and his soul, just for a moment. So he had been hiding it. “Probably not.” Eijirou met Katsuki’s eyes. “You have a very strong soul, Katsuki.”

“Stop smiling when you’re upset,” Katsuki demanded. He hated when Eijirou pretended like that, pretended with him like that.

“I’m not upset,” Eijirou protested, like Katsuki couldn’t read it all over his face, like it wasn’t stamped on his damn heart. “Katsuki, I might not have meant to make a bond with you, but I know what I was doing. I knew humans don’t make bonds! I knew that if I stayed with you, I’d never get one, but I’d get you, and that was worth everything! You were more important to me than some stupid soul bond! If you left me right now, I’d still never mate again. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want to.”

Katsuki hated him. Katsuki loved him. “Where you even going to tell me that, bastard,” he said quietly. “What if I had just left you? What if yesterday I’d just decided I wanted to be alone again? Don’t you think I should know that? I’m in this relationship too!”

“But you’d stay,” Eijirou insisted. “If I told you that, you’d definitely not have broken it, because you’d have felt horrible! I know you, you have a good soul.”

Katsuki blinked fury out of his eyes. “Like hell I do! I’m selfish! I’m beyond selfish, and I’m mad as hell, and I’m not breaking this fucking bond!” He shoved a hand through his hair. He wanted to explode something. “Are you an idiot?”

“No-”

“Damn right, you aren’t,” Katsuki said, poking Eijirou’s chest. “You think I got into this mess because I thought it’d be nice to, what, just fuck someone by the campfire? You think I let people I don’t care about hold my fucking hand and touch my fucking hair? Call my fucking name? I don’t!”

“Katsuki-”

“It was a shitty proposal, but I’m not saying no.”

Eijirou gaped at him. “But – last night –”

“I thought you were telling me you’d found someone else!” Katsuki roared. “Some dragon! I was upset because I thought you were leaving me. Why else would I be mad?”

“I thought you were mad because you didn’t want a soul bond.” Clear as day. “Obviously! It hurt you! And you’d be tied to me!”

“I want to be tied to you!” Katsuki’s jaw worked, trying to figure out how to say what had to be said. That for years, now, he’d assumed that one day Eijirou’s tie to him would be undone, and he’d float away to someone else. Maybe Eijirou read that on his soul, because his eyes softened.

“Come here.” Eijirou reached out his gentle hands and Katsuki went, folding himself in against Eijirou’s broad chest. Eijirou wrapped his arms around Katsuki’s shoulders. “I didn’t realize,” he said softly. Katsuki rested his forehead against Eijirou’s shoulder. He breathed in, out, the hum of Eijirou’s voice comforting against the edge of his nose. “You were so upset yesterday! I was hoping it was just because of the fainting-”

“I didn’t faint, I passed out,” Katsuki said through gritted teeth. Frankly, he’d forgotten that whole portion of the evening, since it had been overrun by maudlin feelings that hadn’t even been fucking necessary. Fuck, but he felt lighter than air. “How did you even make me do that?”

“I usually put up mental blocks against telepathic creatures.” Right, Katsuki remembered they’d been fighting some snake demons, a set of twins. Known for having telepathy, of course. “Soul bonds aren’t supposed to be closed off like that! I swear I didn’t know it would rebound on you! I-” he laughed again, shoulder shaking. “Sorry.”

“Stop laughing at me,” Katsuki threatened, thought it was hopeless. He could feel the same joy welling in him too, tempering his exhausted heart. Eijirou must have noticed, somehow, because it only set him off again even as he clamped a hand over his mouth to try and hide it.

“Sorry! Sorry, I just – I was so worried last night, and it was all just because I’m horrible at explaining. Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry at all right now,” Katsuki mumbled. “I can feel it. You’re so happy you’re about to burst.”

Eijirou buried his nose in Katsuki’s hair. “Yeah, I am,” he said honestly. “I’m gonna cry, I’m so happy.”

“Don’t.”

“No, I’m gonna,” Eijirou said confidently. He smiled, pressing his thumb to Katsuki’s jaw, where a faint scar lived from a training accident. “You want to keep the bond with me. You want to be with me forever. I want to be with you forever. Can you feel that, right here?” He slid his hand up over Katsuki’s heart. “Listen.”

Katsuki closed his eyes, listening or feeling or however he was supposed to find this thing.

It took a moment, but - there. On the edges of his heart, he could feel a faint fluttering, slightly alien but still familiar. Eijirou’s consciousness, pushing at his, beating like a second heart in Katsuki’s chest. He could feel Eijirou’s happiness as easily as if it were nestled in his ribcage. “This is what it’s like?” To be so happy he was about to burst? To close his eyes and feel - see - understand - that golden-white joy, so bright that it was almost blinding. Dragonfire indeed.

Eijirou hummed, carding his free hand through Katsuki’s hair. He was probably getting dirt and twigs in it, but Katsuki didn’t care, not at all. He couldn’t. “This is what it’s like.”

-----

Eijirou obviously recognized Katsuki, it would have been clear even without the imprint of surprise - love - shock - warmth - that swept through his chest, even if Eijirou didn’t smile or let on at all. He bent into a bow instead, his father’s hand - his father? - at the nape of his neck. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Bakugou Katsuki.”

“Likewise,” Katsuki replied, standing up and sweeping his own bow, first to the King, then to the prince. The fucking prince. 

Eijirou looked ever the dutiful son in his all black ensemble, matching with his father. There was a golden circlet balanced on his head, crossing over where his horns would grow when he transformed. He was standing tall but his father was taller. They would have the same eyes, if his father knew how to smile with them. But there was no warmth there, they were cold like rubies whenever he looked at his son, and Eijirou obviously noticed. 

Their parents were talking, so Katsuki offered Eijirou his hand, politely, gloved palm up. Eijirou’s hand slid into the crook of his elbow, the rest of his body still a proper distance away as Katsuki lead him around the table and towards the patio doors. Two servants opened them in unison, smoothly. Probably happy to see them go.

Katsuki hoped their parents would simply think they were - well, he had no idea what his mother would think, but maybe it was that he was finally owning up and facing his fate. Fat chance.

At least King Kirishima didn’t seem bothered at all by his son wandering off. Eijirou probably knew how to play the dutiful son a lot better than Katsuki did, since Katsuki had never once been successful in that role. He wouldn’t be getting a standing ovation, that was for damn sure.

They walked together at the same pace, Eijirou’s polished boots clicking against the patio stone in a way that drove Katsuki nuts, partially because the sound was just fucking annoying but mostly because he didn’t like the reminder that they were different here.

“Katsuki-”

“Not yet.” Katsuki steered Eijirou towards the magic gardens, which had high hedges. There were little orange flowers on the gate which curled over Katsuki’s hand, trying to trap him there. They didn’t manage to keep his hand, but they did get his left glove.

Whatever. Fucking plants could keep it.

Katsuki craned his head up to look at the tall hedges. “I think we’re good now.” He couldn’t see the doors of the palace anymore, thought he could clearly see the roof and hoped that there was no hungover noble in the rooms watching them. He let go of Eijirou’s arm. “What the fuck?”

Eijirou gave him a watery smile as he sank down onto a stone bench. Flowers plucked at his hair, waving weakly in the wind. “Surprise?”

“You bet your ass it’s a surprise,” Katsuki said, reaching out and shooing away a climbing pink-flowered vine that was curling tendrils around Eijirou’s hair. He hated magic gardens. Plants didn't need to be this alive. “You didn’t tell me you’re fucking royalty. Your father is a king.” Katsuki had not been imagining a king. Or a human, even. He’d been imagined a huge black dragon, with scales like viscous oil, nothing at all like the grizzled but good-nature Crimson Riot that Eijirou considered his father now, who had welcomed Katsuki in like family too.

Eijirou waved that off. “I’m not royalty!” He pulled the circlet off his head - he’d done it because the pink-flowered vine hadn’t respected Katsuki properly, and was still trying to pull the circlet of Eijirou’s head, but Katsuki was grateful to see even a tiny bit of his husband back. “I’m not in line for the throne or anything! I’m illegitimate, remember?”

“So it’s really an insult that your dad is marrying you off,” Katsuki guessed. 

“He didn’t want to waste my siblings on – I believe he called you northern barbarians,” Eijirou agreed with a nod. “They’ll make other ‘more respectable’ marriages. But the northern clans don’t care about royal lines, so he figured that they probably wouldn’t mind me.”

“Well,” Katsuki said pleasantly. He was half-torn between being annoyed that some stupid southerners thought they could belittle him and being pleased that his mother was getting screwed over. “I don’t mind you, but fuck him.”

That, at least, got Eijirou laughing. “They have no idea.”

“Is that why you look all-” Katsuki gestured towards Eijirou’s whole somber ensemble. All buttoned up. Katsuki wasn’t even sure of the last time he’d seen Eijirou wear a shirt. “Proper, I guess. What the fuck is wrong with your hair?”

“Huh?” Eijirou lifted a hand to his ponytail. “Oh! I use magic to make my hair red.”

Katsuki stared at him. “What.”

“I look boring like this,” Eijirou whined, kicking his feet in the dirt like a child. Katsuki snorted. “I’m a red dragon, so I can usually just - make my hair red.”

Katsuki stopped his pacing, curiosity taking over the anger. “Could I do that?” 

The soul bond let him do a lot of things. His healing was speed up - not as fast as a dragon, but quicker than a human, which was the most useful thing. If he focused, he could channel Eijirou’s night vision, which was definitely the second most useful thing, but he couldn’t hold for more than twenty seconds yet. Sometimes, he could even breathe fire, real dragon-fire, which wasn’t useful yet because he couldn’t do it successfully more than one out of ten times, but it felt like nothing else. It made Katsuki light-headed to practice too much, but he swore he was going to master it.

Eijirou smirked. “Why, you don’t think blondes have more fun?”

Katsuki’s foot connected solidly with Eijirou’s shin. “I’m fucking curious, that’s all.”

“Always such a good researcher, my Katsuki,” Eijirou hummed. Katsuki could feel his ears turning red. Idiot. “We could test it out.”

“Later.” Hopefully, he couldn’t get his hair stuck like that. He didn’t think he was suited to be a redhead, it only really worked on Eijirou. “We need to leave. Hurry up and transform.”

“What?”

“Leaving, leaving now,” Katsuki said. “Unless you need to get something from your room?” He scrutinized Eijirou. He had no weapons, none of his usual clothes, just his usual dragon-toothed smile. But they could get more weapons, Eijirou could get different clothes. He was constantly tearing through the ones he had when he was transforming anyways.

“You don’t think we should stay?”

Katsuki blinked, momentarily disorientated. “Stay?”

“Well, this is the best outcome,” Eijirou pointed out. “An arranged marriage to the man who is already my husband? It’s literally perfect.”

Katsuki considered that, arms crossed. It was perfect. It would mean that his mother wouldn’t have a war on her hands next year, it would mean that two kingdoms were happy. But also, it meant that his mother won.

“I don’t want to make her happy,” he said honestly. Selfishly, but it felt good to spit out. Eijirou wrapped his hands around Katsuki’s, coaxing the second glove off before it caught fire. The flowers were shying away from him. “She didn’t care about me, at all. It might be easier, but this is just giving her what she wants.” he stared down at the plants underneath his boots. 

“You’re gonna set it on fire if you glare hard enough,” Eijirou nudged gently.

“I don’t want to give in to her!” Katsuki glared up at the sky instead. At least he couldn’t set the clouds on fire from here; he was too far away. “She told me - she fucking told me you didn’t count, because we hadn’t had a clan marriage! She’s the one who fucking ruined my tattoos! She doesn’t deserve this from me! We’re over. I’m denouncing her as my mother.”

Eijirou’s eyes were sad, but full of understanding. “Katsuki, are you sure?”

Katsuki gave him a curt nod. “And you? You’d just - let your father do this?”

“Huh? No way, of course not, I was already planning a break-out,” Eijirou said. He stared down at their hands, folded together. Grief settled over him like a veil. “I don’t even know why I came back.”

Absolutely no fucking way was he allowed to be all sad and mopey about this. So Katsuki dropped to his knees in front of Eijirou, forcing Eijirou to look at him. “Because you’re a good son,” he said fiercely, looking at Eijirou’s wet eyes. Eijirou cried all the time – when he was sad, when he was happy, when he was hungry, but Katsuki had never see him cry with this broken expression on his face. “Because you have a good fucking heart and you want to believe the best in everybody. Because you fucking wanted to know some shit about your parents, I don’t know! It doesn’t matter, ‘cause this can be the end! It can just be over, right now!”

“I know,” Eijirou whispered.

“So do you want to go?”

Eijirou laughed wetly. “Fuck, I think I really do. When did you get so smart?”

“You’re just so obtuse you didn’t notice,” Katsuki told him.

Eijirou nodded, pressing his forehead against Katsuki’s for a brief second before he stood up, the roses unfurling from his shoulders, petals following in his wake. “Come on.”

Katsuki nearly fell over, trying to twist around on his heels to follow. “Where?”

“I’m not going to transform in the gardens,” Eijirou said, sounding scandalized. He tugged on Katsuki’s hand. “I’d ruin them!”

Katsuki privately thought the palace could do with some ruining, and he could feel the pink-orange tinge of embarrassment and laughter on Eijirou’s soul. But he let himself be dragged back to the patio. Through the windows, he could see a few more nobles had made their way to the dining hall and Katsuki could feel Eijirou lament the fact that he wasn’t getting any breakfast at all, and Katsuki nudged back. Eyes on the prize.

“They’re coming,” Eijirou said. “Distract them.” He tossed his golden circlet at Katsuki, who caught it without looking. He much preferred to watch Eijirou transform.

It started with the roots of his hair this time, red bleeding through black until it was the Eijirou Katsuki knew. The scales started to sprout over his shoulders, tearing through the sleeves of his black doublet. His wings, heavy, blocking out the sun, casting a shadow over the entire patio. 

“Distract them,” Eijirou hissed, cutting a glare – pupils turning to slits - at Katsuki as he dropped to all fours, his teeth turning to true fangs. Under his left hands, the patio stones broke in two. The payoff for being able to transform into a terrifying monster was the few vulnerable seconds during which he could hardly control himself, could barely see a damn thing, but that was fine now, because Katsuki was there during those one-two-three quick seconds during which Eijirou became a fucking dragon.

Katsuki could hear screaming coming from the dining hall. Eijirou’s eyes rolled back into his head. Almost there.

“Katsuki!” His mother yelled, storming across the patio. She had no sense of fear. “What the fuck have you done?”

“Nothing, bitch!” Katsuki yelled back, shoving the circlet into her hands. “Meet my fucking husband!”

Her mouth formed a perfect ‘o’ as she took in the entire scene: servants running, several royals in the dining hall mostly just watching with vague interest, probably nursing a headache from all the drinking, and the fucking dragon, fully transformed, wings fully unfolded. Eijirou cut an impressive picture, red against the blue sky and spitting fire.

“Your husband,” she repeated faintly. Behind her, King Kirishima was watching his son - and he must know it was his son - rear above him, scales glinting the color of blood in sunlight. But Mitsuki didn’t yet. “What - what did you do with the prince?”

Katsuki pointed at the full fucking dragon behind him. “The fuck do you think.”

“You - what,” Mitsuki yelled. She dropped the circlet and reached out for him. “You ungrateful-”

He blocked her arm and took a step away. Eijirou was just behind him, it would only take ten steps, maybe, to get to him, but his mother would fight him every single one he took. He needed - he needed something big.

He took a deep breath in. He could do it.

Dragonfire always felt a little odd, because obviously Katsuki wasn’t a dragon. His lungs had absolutely nothing in them that were supposed to be able to breathe fire. Nor was his throat fireproof. 

But the dragonfire never hurt. It billowed up out of his lungs, like the first blessed breath after being underwater for just a little too long. It made Katsuki feel warm all over to use it, and it tickled a little coming up, but the actual fire was startlingly sharp and cold as it poured out, like his body was simply incapable of registering how hot it was.

So he wanted to show off, who could blame him?

Mitsuki gaped at him through the wall of flames. He smirked at her, smoke pouring out of his nostrils. Bitch. If she’d listened to him, she could have had a dragon on her side in her upcoming war but now she had no son and no warrior and no fire, not at all. “What-”

“Gotta go,” Katsuki said, flipping her off. He braced his foot on Eijirou’s front leg, climbing along the spikes with ease. He’d done this a million times; settling onto Eijirou’s neck was second nature. Eijirou reared up, the subtle vibration of his scales meaning he was about to take off. Good. Katsuki wanted to be gone.

“You’re a weakling, Katsuki!” His mother yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth. She always needed to have the last fucking word. “Needing saving? I thought that was below you!”

“I fucking asked him to come!” Katsuki yelled. The words stung, but only because she wanted them to sting. Katsuki didn’t give a fuck if he needed Eijirou to rescue him. He didn’t care about that part, anymore. “We’re partners, bitch!”

He couldn’t quite hear the rest of her words, they were too far up and Katsuki couldn’t keep leaning over the side, barely hanging on. He thought he heard her say you asked? But her tiny face was disappearing into the distance.

Of course she’d never believe that he’d asked. He’d left five years ago and she didn’t care to know who he was now. He leaned down, pressing his forehead against Eijirou’s head. Eijirou sent him a little prod, a bit of worry.

“I’m fine,” Katsuki mumbled, even if Eijirou couldn’t hear him with the wind. He’d know. “I’m okay.”

-----

“What do you know about souls, Katsuki?”

Katsuki pried his eyes open, blinking blearily. He could see the stars above them, which meant it was still nighttime, which meant he should be sleeping, but instead Eijirou was waking him up after the ridiculously stupid day they had. Escaping a fucking palace took effort, so did breaking ties with family, and Katsuki was tired. He’d go back to sleep but he felt like worry and stress tugging at his heartstrings, emotions that didn’t belong to him at the moment.

So they belonged to Eijirou. He must be still worried about their daring escape.

Katsuki stared up at those stars, wishing he could touch them. “I don’t know anything ‘bout souls,” he told Eijirou. Sometime in the night, their fire had died down, but Eijirou’s arm across Katsuki’s waist was more than enough heat. “Just know you’ve got mine.”

He waited a moment but Eijirou didn’t say anything. Instead, his face started to turn bright red, embarrassment bleeding into his cheeks, and Katsuki processed what he’d said and realized- 

“I didn’t mean it like that, dumbass,” he snapped, even though he’d somewhat did, and he was sure his cheeks were red despite their heat because he didn’t do things like get embarrassed, absolutely not. Being married, apparently, didn’t mean that Katsuki had learned how not to get flustered when he accidentally said really sappy things.

“Of course not, husband of mine,” Eijirou said, shaking his head. Jerk. “I love you.”

The thing was, Katsuki didn’t even need the bond to know. He could read Eijirou’s emotions right off his face, the pure bliss in his star-filled eyes. He was sure Eijirou could read the same emotions on his face, too, so that he didn’t even have to say it. Eijirou knew either way. Eijirou had always been too good at understanding him, bond or not. But he deserved to hear it sometimes.

Katsuki twined their hands together. “You know I love you too.” He took a deep breath in, bittersweet purples filling up his chest. Now or never, Katsuki. “Sit up.”

Eijirou did, his knees clanking against Katsuki’s. He looked tired too, after an entire day of flying, but his soul felt a little less discordant. “What?”

“I’m happy,” Katsuki said. “Don’t - don’t worry, okay? I’m so happy. I -” He reached up to his neck, carefully unclasping the necklace there. There was a better way to show it. “Here.”

Eijirou tilted his head. “Your necklace?”

Katsuki shook his head. “It’s yours,” he said thickly, gesturing for Eijirou to turn around. He carefully tied it around Eijirou’s neck. He’d talked to Crimson Riot about some sort of spell, to make sure that it didn’t tear about when Eijirou transformed, he’d even managed to get the spell, but he still had been too scared to give the actual gift. “I - carved it for you. It’s a betrothal necklace.”

Eijirou’s hands flew up to the charm at his neck, twisting around so that Katsuki could see the shock on his face. “What?”

“It’s a northern tradition,” Katsuki said. “I carved it ages ago, but-” he tilted his head down. “I wasn’t ready to give it to you.”

He felt more than saw Eijirou’s soft smile. “Hey-”

“Let me talk,” Katsuki mumbled, pressing his forehead against Eijirou’s back, right between his shoulder blades, exactly where his wings would sprout. “I wanted my fucking mother to bless the wedding, I guess, but that’s a lost cause-”

“Katsuki-” 

“And I don’t care,” Katsuki said fiercely. “I’m giving this to you because you’re my family, Ei. Have been for - for longer than I’ve known. I want you forever. We probably won’t ever have a clan wedding,” and he could feel his and Eijirou’s pain mingling, “But I want to marry you my way too. So this’ll just have to do.”

“I’m honored,” Eijirou said softly. “Thank you.” He grinned. “I really love you, you know.”

It wasn’t anything gorgeous. Katsuki’s talents did not lie in art. But the pendant looked good there, a tiny carved wooden flame lying steady against Eijirou’s chest, another bit of Katsuki that Eijirou would carry with him forever.

“Yeah,” Katsuki said, pulling him by the necklace for a kiss. Eijirou smiled into it, twining his arms around Katsuki’s neck, and Katsuki could live here forever, in between the spaces between Eijirou’s kisses and his heart and his brilliant red soul. “I know.”