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Shouto feels like he’s dying.
It’s worse than the time he was like, actually dying, bleeding out on the concrete after some two-bit villain had snuck up on him, Katsuki kneeling over him and saying don’t you fucking go anywhere, you bastard. If you die on me I’ll kill you myself.
Shouto sneezes for what has to be the hundredth time that morning. Yeah, this is definitely worse than that was. He takes a breath and levers himself off the hallway wall, which he’d been leaning against for the past few minutes. He’d been going...somewhere. At some point he’d had a destination in mind, surely? His brain currently feels like it’s made of syrup. His second breath turns into yet another sneeze, and Shouto groans at the way it makes his whole body ache.
“I heard that, dumbass, go back to bed. I told you not to get up!” Katsuki’s voice filters through the cotton in his ears from some unknown location. The kitchen, maybe? Right, yes, the kitchen - that’s where he’d been going. He remembers now. He’s a functioning adult who is definitely not sick and definitely not hopped up on brain-syrup-inducing drugs.
And he is not going back to bed, not yet anyway. He has very important, very critical tasks to attend to, all of which involve convincing Katsuki to come back to bed with him. Shouto trails one hand along the wall as he focuses for a moment on putting one foot in front of the other. Why was this so critical again?
He finally reaches the end of the hall where it opens up to the rest of their apartment. Katsuki looks up at him, and Shouto blinks him into focus just in time to catch the exasperated eyeroll that’s directed at him.
“Go. Back. To. Bed.” He points a wooden spoon at Shouto in what he can only assume is supposed to be a threatening manner. It’s rendered much less effective by the plink plink of droplets of soup falling back into the pot he’d been stirring.
“But I’m already here,” Shouto protests, taking careful steps across the lounge. There’s no walls to hold onto here, and his syrup brain sloshes precariously with his every movement. He reaches the kitchen with all the grace and speed of an elderly snail and proceeds to drape himself across Katsuki’s back in a fit of pure exhaustion.
Katsuki grunts under his weight, shifting his stance to more effectively hold Shouto up. Shouto hums his thanks and wraps his arms loosely around Katsuki’s waist, laying his cheek against the warm, broad plane of his back. Warmth, right, that’s why he hadn’t wanted to stay in bed any longer. He’s been expressly forbidden from using his quirk to maintain his body temperature - so you don’t set the fucking building on fire trying to make up for your damn fever, or so he’s been told. But the bed is cold without Katsuki’s incessant body heat next to him, and he keeps shivering every time the medicine starts to wear off.
Like right now, for instance.
“M’cold,” he tells Katsuki’s shoulder. It doesn’t answer him. Katsuki goes on stirring whatever it is he’s got boiling in their big stock pot, and Shouto sighs and closes his eyes. This’ll do, he supposes.
“Oi, don’t fall asleep back there. I’m not fucking carrying you back to bed.”
“Mmm. I think you would.”
Katsuki flicks off the burner and turns around, gently dislodging Shouto as he goes. Shouto lets himself be manhandled away from any hot surfaces, slouching back into Katsuki’s arms once they’re in safer territory.
“And I think you’re delusional,” Katsuki says, not unkindly.
“No. Just cold.” He feels very insistent on this point, possibly because it’s the only good leverage he possesses at the moment. He really wants to go back to bed, and he really wants someone warm to curl up next to.
Katsuki just happens to be the someone who’s here, that’s all.
Katsuki hums, bringing one hand up to press against Shouto’s forehead.
“Am I hot?” Shouto asks, tilting into his touch and blinking innocently at him.
Katsuki snorts and lets his hand drop. Shouto mourns the loss deeply.
“No. You’re actually terrible, face-wise, and also your fever isn’t even that high anymore.”
“Don’t be mean to me, I’m dying.”
“I’ll say something nice at your funeral.”
“Like what?”
Katsuki pretends to ponder the question, absently tucking a few strands of red behind Shouto’s ear. “Hmm, like how I just don’t know what to do with all my free time now that I don’t have to cater to my germ-laden husband at every second?”
“Truly touching. Make sure there’s plenty of tissues for Izuku.”
“Deku can bring his own fucking tissues, I’m not his mother.”
Shouto smiles, the pointless back-and-forth between them warm and familiar. He lays his heavy head back down on Katsuki’s shoulder, to only mild grumbling.
“I’m not gonna stand here and hold you up all day, you know.”
Shouto seizes the opportunity, remembering suddenly why he came out here in the first place. “Come back to bed with me, then.”
More grumbling. Shouto tunes most of it out, just keeping one ear open for the important bit that he’ll eventually get to.
“If I do, you have to actually sleep this time. None of this oh I’m fine, I’m really feeling better, Katsuki can you bring me my laptop bullshit, alright? The agency gives you sick days for a reason, your goddamn paperwork will still be there when you’re not sneezing all over it.”
“Deal,” Shouto says. The victory would taste so sweet, if he had any sense of taste right now.
“Fine. Go sit at the table first, I haven’t been stood here making soup all afternoon for you to not eat it.”
Shouto does as he’s told, dropping into the chair and trying to ignore the way the room spins under him as he does. He closes his eyes and focuses on the sounds of Katsuki still in the kitchen - the clink of porcelain hitting the counter, the sloshing of the ladle in the pot. He’s humming something tunefully under his breath, one of the incessant pop numbers that’s overtaken every radio station in the city. Shouto would never point this out, of course, for fear of collapsing his marriage, but he tucks the sound of it away in his mind.
He cracks one eye open at the sound of socked feet padding towards him, squinting against the fading afternoon sun. Katsuki sets a steaming bowl down in front of him.
“Eat. Don’t argue with me or I’ll send you to bed alone.”
Shouto pretends to hold a phone up to his ear. “Hello, police? I’m being threatened in my home by an overgrown dandelion and require assistance. Yes, I’ll hold.”
Katsuki sneers at him, and Shouto holds his spoon up in self-defense. “Remember that I’m fragile and dying,” he deadpans. There’s no need for any of their furniture to go up in flames over a joke. Again.
“You’re on thin fucking ice, Halfie. Fucking ungrateful- I even brought you a present.” Katsuki sits down on the other side of the table and flings something small across it at him. Shouto does not move nearly fast enough to catch it, so it hits him square in the chest with a small rattle - a packet of cold medicine, two unnaturally pale blue pills in their little plastic and foil container. He tries in vain to open it, digging his nail under the corner of the foil, but it’s no use. Blowing out a frustrated breath, he throws the packet back at Katsuki, who just quirks an eyebrow at him.
“Need some help?”
Shouto keeps his face perfectly impassive. “Just gonna eat my soup first.”
Katsuki rolls his eyes and picks up the packet, easily peeling up the corner on the first try and dumping the pills out onto the table. He looks obnoxiously smug. Shouto wants to hit him, just a little bit. Katsuki leans forward on the table, resting his chin in his hand. “I should alert the media,” he says, waving his other hand around as though he’s reading a sign. “Pro-Hero Shouto Finally Defeated; Cold Medicine Packet Reigns Supreme Victor.”
Shouto slurps up some soup and politely flips him off.
They lapse into comfortable silence after that, Katsuki scrolling through something on his phone while Shouto washes down his meds with the remnants of his soup. He nudges his empty bowl away, leaning onto the table and mirroring Katsuki’s posture.
Katsuki glances up from his phone. “Bed?” Shouto asks. He’s exhausted again, a lethal combo of the warm meal and the drugs seeping into his bloodstream.
“Yeah. C’mon.”
Katsuki doubles back to the kitchen with the empty dishes while Shouto makes his way to their room. The soft sheets welcome him back with open arms as he collapses face first onto the bed, splaying one arm out blindly in search of a pillow to shove under his head. It’s a far away sensation as Katsuki comes in and pries most of the covers out from under his body, throwing them over him instead and climbing in next to him. Shouto uses the last of his energy to shuffle closer, poking at Katsuki’s stomach until he drapes an arm around him with a huff.
He’s half-asleep almost instantly, but there’s one thought nagging away at the back of his mind.
“I am grateful, you know.”
“Hm? For what?” Katsuki says, their conversation in the kitchen already forgotten. Shouto presses on.
“You. Taking care of me. I know you hate it, but you do it anyway. Thank you.”
Katsuki goes quiet for a moment, thinking. “I never said I hated it. You’re annoying as fuck when you’re sick and you have like, basically no self-care skills, but, I dunno. I could. Never. Hate taking care of you.” He gets the words out haltingly, the way he does when they hurt his pride a bit. And Shouto knows this part of him, the part that can be gentle and kind and put someone else above himself. Maybe he’s the only person in the world who knows - and there’s not power in that, not really. It’s more like...awe. More like love.
“Plus,” Katsuki continues, his tone lighter, back on solid ground, “I fucking promised, didn’t I? ‘In sickness and in health’ and all that shit. And when have I ever broken a promise to you, huh?”
“Never,” Shouto says without hesitation, because it’s one of the few things he knows to be unequivocally true.
“Damn right. Now go to sleep.”
Shouto hums and lets his mind drift away, content. Katsuki’s arm tightens around him, warm and solid.
Yeah, he thinks before slipping into unconsciousness. It’s more like love.