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“Come on man! It’ll be fun, I promise!” Kirishima said, leaning over the edge of the dorm’s kitchen counter.
“Can you also promise that there won’t be any alcohol there, shitty hair?”
“Well, no-”
“Then I’m not going.” Katsuki said resolutely, chopping the carrot in front of him with vigor. Frat parties were notorious for having all things alcoholic, and no one in the dorms was anywhere near 21. Hell, wasn’t half and half still 18?
He set the carrot aside and began on another. Behind him, a pot stood on the stove, warming up to a boil as he finished chopping vegetables.
Kirishima pulled his arms off of the counter, crossing them. “I’m not gonna be able to convince you, am I?”
“Not a chance in hell, dipshit.”
“Figures.” he said, sighing deeply. “What are you making, anyways?”
“Chicken noodle soup. And if you think about stealing any without asking, I’ll burn your godforsaken crocs in the bonfire at the end of the semester.” he said, dropping the vegetables into the soup pot.
Kirishima gasped “Dude! You can’t do that, they were a birthday gift!”
“Does that make them fucking fireproof?”
“Well no-”
“Then pay me or make it yourself if you don’t want to keep living off that shitty ramen in the pantry”
Kirishima groaned and went to sit on one of the bar stools overlooking the dorm kitchenette.
“You know that everyone is going to beg you for some, right? There’s gonna be more than enough to share, dude!”
“Fuck you! Just because I'm not sharing with you doesn’t mean I’m not sharing with anyone.” he said, stirring the pot of veggies.
There was a pause for a minute, the kitchen filled with nothing but the sound of wood against metal and the sizzling of vegetables.
“So who are you sharing with?”
Katsuki grunted. “S’not that hard to figure it out, shitty hair.”
The kitchen was quiet again as he thought for a bit.
“Midoriya?” he asked hesitantly.
“No, earbuds bitch. Of course it’s fucking Deku!”
“Because he’s sick right now?!”
“Why the fuck else!” he said, moving to add in the garlic, bay leaves, and thyme. “That damn nerd went and got himself sick, and no one else here can feed him anything but crackers, ramen, or takeout.”
“I think Uraraka tried to get him some chicken nuggets at lunch?”
“Exactly! He’s not going to get better if he keeps eating that shitty food. He can get back to losing to me once he’s right as fucking rain again.”
“Oh!! You don’t want him to do badly at finals so you can beat him fair and square?” Kirishima asked, smirking a bit.
“Fucking obviously. I can’t beat his ass in finals if he’s on his deathbed when they happen.”
“That’s super manly of you, Bakubro! Helping a friend like that!”
“Oi! That stupid Deku isn’t my friend, he’s my fucking rival. I’m gonna beat his ass once he’s better.”
“And rivals make soup for one another?”
“Fuck off. And pass me the chicken broth. Should be in the pantry, 3rd shelf on the right.”
Kirishima laughed, getting off the bar stool. “Fuck off is your go-to phrase when someone else is right, did you know that?” he mentioned, opening up the door.
“Fuck. Off.”
“You know I’m right, bakubroooo” Kirishima singsonged. He grabbed the chicken stock and handed it to Katsuki, who popped off the cap and slowly poured it into the pot.
“You know, that’s still going to be more food than 2 people can eat. If I help you out some more, can I have a bowl too?”
Katsuki ignored him, crushing the carton and throwing it away. Crossing the kitchen back to the pot, he grabbed the lid and plopped it on top.
“C’mon dude, please?? I won’t tell anyone else where I got it from if you do! I’ll tell them not to bug you for it!”
A long moment passed before Katsuki relented. “The chicken breasts are in the fridge”
“Huh?”
“Chicken breasts. Grab them for me before I change my mind.”
Kirishima beamed, opening the fridge to search.
“Thanks, Bakugou, I won’t let you down!!”
“Better fucking not. This soup needs to be perfect.”
“Perfect for Midoriyaaaaa” Kirishima singsonged again.
“OI! Don’t make me change my mind.”
-~-~-
Izuku was lying on his bed belly down, struggling through both his cold and his essay. His history of criminal justice professor, Aizawa, wasn’t going to care about his cold- just that he got his work done.
He had spent all of yesterday in bed, too lethargic to trust himself to write anything coherent. Now that he was feeling marginally better though, Izuku intended to get the paper in online before his midnight deadline.
He checked the clock at the corner of his computer screen. 7 pm, it blinked at him. “Ugh” Izuku groaned, rubbing at his eyes.
“5 hours left” he chanted to himself softly, trying to let the reminder put him at ease. “5 hours left and then I don’t have to think about this essay ever again”. But you still have 4 more pages to write! his mind reminded him.
Feeling a tickle at the back of his nose, he reached for the tissue box beside his screen halfheartedly. He hated being sick, because he hated feeling helpless. He worked so hard to get into UA university after all…
“Ah…” he began to say, his head lurching back without his permission.
He brought the tissue up and cupped it around his nose, careful to make sure he wouldn’t spray his work area in snot.
“AAAACHOOO” he sneezed, expelling the contents of his nose. Eugh, that would probably count as one of those ‘dad sneezes’ that Uraraka made fun of him for having earlier. Thankfully though, his tissue had done its job, and Izuku tossed it into the wastebasket beside his desk.
“Oi, Deku!” Katsuki’s voice rang out from beyond his door.
Oh gosh, was his sneeze that loud? He hoped that he hadn’t bothered Kacchan! But what did he want right now? They had repaired their rocky relationship from highschool into being rivals since they began living in the same dorms and taking the same major, but Izuku knew that he probably wouldn’t be seeing Kacchan until he was entirely better. He wouldn’t let himself get sick because of Izuku, especially with finals week so clo-
“DEKU. Stop your muttering and open the damn door or I’m coming in anyway.”
“O-ok Kacchan, I’ll be right there” Izuku called, beginning to untangle himself from the blankets over his lap, and shoving a few tissues off of the side of his desk. Before he could finish doing his quick clean up, his door slammed open. Izuku looked up at the blonde in his doorway, scandalized.
“You took too long.” Katsuki shrugged, stepping inside. In his hands, a bowl with a small towel covering it sat. Izuku eyed the bowl, wondering why Katsuki brought his food upstairs to eat.
“You still feeling sick, shitty nerd?” Katsuki said, looking around the mess of Izuku’s room. He didn’t have it as clean as he normally did, excluding his shelf of All Might merchandise. That corner of the room was spotless, as always.
As Katsuki continued looking around the room, Izuku’s eyes glanced up, observing Katsuki’s face. It was twisted with annoyance, but it didn’t seem the same as other times he had been annoyed. Between his eyebrows, Izuku noted, was a small crease he didn’t typically see on Katsuki’s face. It almost looked like he was concerned, which was a look he hadn’t seen on Katsuki’s face in years.
Izuku brushed the thought aside, not wanting to get his hopes up. “A bit woozy still, but I’m feeling a lot better than yesterday!”
“Uh-huh” Katsuki replied, setting the bowl down on Izuku’s desk in front of him. “I don’t know how, considering what shitty food you’ve been eating.”
“Hey! Uraraka did her best!”
“With chicken fucking nuggets?”
“Yes” Izuku said indignantly, trying to stand up from his chair. Katsuki pushed him back down with little effort. “Sit the fuck down, Deku. I brought you soup.” he said, knocking his knuckles on the desk next to the bowl that he brought up.
Swiveling his chair so that he was facing the desk again, Izuku leaned closer to the bowl, lifting the cloth off of the top. A small puff of steam was released as he did so, followed by a more steady stream of vapor. Did he make soup? For Izuku???
Always the easy crier, Izuku felt tears beading at the corners of his eyes as he whipped around to face Katsuki. “Are you sure, Kacchan? You never share your cooking with anyone!”
“Tch, stop being a crybaby” Katsuki handed Izuku a spoon, carefully wrapped up in a napkin. “Finals week is coming up, and I need you to be able to take the tests. That way when our scores get in, I can beat your ass in grades!” he said with a manic grin. “I can’t win if your ass is bedridden or in a coffin or some shit. So you better be there for finals week.”
Accepting the spoon, Izuku began to dig in, savoring the taste of the soup. “This is so good, Kacchan! No wonder everyone always wants your cooking!”
“They want it because they’re too lazy to cook for them damn selves. Shitty hair helped me make this today though, so he got to have a bowl.” sitting down on the bed behind Izuku’s desk chair, Katsuki loomed over Izuku’s shoulder. “What are you trying to work on while you’re sick anyway, fuckin nerd?”
“Uhhh,” Izuku said dumbly, flustered by the sudden closeness. Instead of answering, he set down the spoon and used his mouse to scroll up.
“Is this for that essay due tomorrow night?” Katsuki said, his breath brushing over Izuku’s shoulder. Izuku wasn’t focusing on what he was saying anymore, his mind focusing with laser precision on their proximity. “Just work on it in the fucking morning. You write like a lunatic anyway, and you’re going to feel worse if you don’t get to sleep.”
Izuku was still focusing on Katsuki’s closeness; This was the closest that his childhood friend had been to him since they were in elementary school, and lingering feelings were beginning to resurface.
Back In middle school, Izuku had a major crush on Katsuki. It was one that he knew he would inevitably let slip, and so he decided to distance himself from Katsuki. Who hadn’t taken it well.
The rest of middle school and their high school years were full of misplaced blame and Katsuki’s signature glare. When Izuku’s feelings finally faded (or so he thought) he finally felt more comfortable reaching out to his childhood friend again. It took a long time before Katsuki trusted him enough to-
Izuku was snapped out of his thoughts with a sharp flick to the forehead.
“Are you fucking zoning out right now? Thought you said you were feeling better.”
“I am, Kacchan!!”
“Then what did I say?”
Izuku looked down at the soup, which was reflecting the blue light of his laptop’s screen back at him. “Um-”
“Then you obviously weren’t. That paper is due tomorrow night.”
Izuku’s eyes grew wide. “I thought it was due at midnight tonight!”
“And that’s why your dumb ass was stressing, huh?” Katsuki shook his head, sighing deeply. The annoyance was gone from his voice, replaced by an exhausted tone common among everyone at the end of the semester. “I’ll look over what you have for now. Eat your soup and get some sleep, work on it after class tomorrow.”
Without warning, he stood up and scooped Izuku out of his chair and onto his bed.
The transaction took maybe a second, but for Izuku, who was still fuzzy from meds and sickness, it felt like both an hour and heaven. Before he knew it he was propped up against a pile of pillows with soup in his lap and a spoon in his hand. “How-?” He began to ask.
“This thesis is shit, Deku. And you can tell that you wrote this while you were out of it.”
“That’s because I did, Kacchan. I wrote most of that an hour or two ago” he said, spooning more soup into his mouth.
As he ate, Katsuki read through the rest of the draft. Occasionally he grunted and deleted words, lines, and to Izuku's horror, whole paragraphs.
“Kacchan! You can’t do that!”
“I sure fuckin’ can.” he said, spinning around in the chair, meeting Izuku’s eyes. “It’s not like I’m writing the damn thing for you, just deleting the dumb bits. And trust me, you’d end up deleting them anyway.”
Izuku sighed and set aside his empty bowl, sliding father back onto the mound of pillows and breaking eye contact in the process.
Staring up at the dorm’s popcorn ceiling, Izuku heard Katsuki turn back to the laptop, and he let the clacking of keys begin to lull him to sleep. His eyelids started to droop, his body warm with feelings and the soup that Kacchan had brought him.
He had almost fallen asleep when he felt his comforter drag its way up his body, and he looked up to see that Katsuki was the one pulling it over him. He picked up a well worn All Might blanket and huffed at it. He brought it closer to his face, examining the edges.
“I’ve had that one since we were kids, y’know” Izuku yawned, tiredly admiring how the light from his desk lamp played off of Katsuki’s hair. His eyes followed his hairline to his brow, and then to his eyes, which were now looking directly into his.
Where normally he would be flustered by such an intense look, Izuku was too tired and too bold to care. “Your eyes are really pretty, Kacchan” he said. Stifling another yawn, Izuku missed the blush beginning to paint Katsuki’s cheeks.
“You’re about to pass out” he stated, attempting to fight the blush as he laid the ratty blanket over Izuku’s body.
“They are, though! Me being sleepy doesn’t change that!!” through the lashes curtaining his vision, Izuku could barely make out the deepening blush on the other boy’s face. He wriggled a bit underneath the blankets, trying to get more comfortable as Katsuki finished laying blankets on top of him.
Katsuki sighed and collected the soup bowl from the bedside table. “Shut up and get some sleep, ok Deku?” he murmured.
Izuku hummed an affirmative, watching Katsuki as his weight lifted off of the bed,(when had he gotten on?) flipped off the desk lamp, and began to leave the room. Izuku watched as he went, but something weighed on his heart with each step he took towards the door.
“Wait!” he said weakly, not sure he was loud enough for Katsuki to hear.
But Katsuki did hear, and from the doorway he turned back towards Izuku, his silhouette outlined by the hallway light.
“Can you, um.” Izuku gulped, his head foggy with somnolence.
“Can you stay, just for a while?” He asked quietly, expecting the worst. After all, why would Katsuki care enough to stay with Izuku right now anyways? He probably had better things to do, finals of his own to study for or friends to spend his time with. With each passing second, Izuku worried himself farther into his pile of blankets, desperately hoping for an answer.
Katsuki heaved a sigh and closed the door. He turned the lamp back on and sat at the end of the bed.
“You know what nerd?” he heard Katsuki say. “Yeah. I’ll stay awhile. Just for tonight.”
“Mmmm.” Izuku hummed, content to finally give in to his drowsiness. “Thank you, Kacchan. Goodnight…” he yawned, the world around him fading.
Katsuki watched as he fell asleep, waiting until his breathing had steadied completely to reply.
“Just for a while, I guess.” Katsuki said, slowly settling into the spot that he claimed against the wall. His legs laid across the length of Izuku’s bed, hanging off the other end. His legs were also just inches away from touching Izuku’s, a fact that made Katsuki begin to blush again.
He pushed the thought away from his mind, pulling out his phone and glancing one last time at Izuku, His crush since middle school.
“Night, stupid Deku.”