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Straddling the violently cold apex of a jagged mountain called home, King Bakugou Katsuki clenched his teeth, firmly pulled the chaotic halo of dingy white fur around his face, and knew something was wrong.
His makeshift winter village, nestled in the outcrop of tall, hearty trees on the dry, windless lee of the severe slope, showed signs of new life.
Unwelcome life.
Their sturdy seasonal homes of stone and mud and logs were one extra, and as someone who knew everything about his people, including who was with child or not, Katsuki knew there should have been no incoming additions to the tribe within the two winter moons he’d been on the hunt.
With the blinding sun crowning his back in a heavenly flare and four hunters carrying enough food to last the remaining winter terror, Katsuki dug his hulking boots into the knee-high snow and trudged his descent.
Familiar scents carried up the ridge. The green, cloying stink of both young and rotten wood in their smokehouse, waterproofing the leather of newly tanned hides of forest animals. The gamy, tannic sting at the back of his throat of blood fortifying a stew. Heady, savory tobacco traded with another nomadic tribe.
A laugh rang out, clear as new birdsong in spring, strong and full of joy for morning rain and new leaves.
Blistering heat burned Katsuki’s cheeks as he set his jaw, one hand reaching back over his shoulder to grip the wide scabbard of his greatsword, his strides increasing in length and decreasing in grace as he quickened his half-slide down the snow and frozen earth.
He’d never heard that laugh in his entire fucking life.
“Bakugou!” Kirishima called out from behind, his harried steps never quite catching up. “Bakugou, what’s–”
“Strangers in the camp,” Katsuki bit off, hissing when he misstepped, fell on his backside, and began to slide, haphazard, down the snowy mountain. He didn’t care how he reached his destination, only that he arrived with the full force of his fury. Who the hell authorized –
“MINA.” Katsuki’s voice boomed between the trees as he sprung to his feet and stomped into the lightly forested area where their camp scattered organically between wide, thick trunks. Members of the tribe only gave a respectful nod and ducked out of his way, but no pink pop of hair appeared. “Mina, I swear to the old gods and the new–”
The large, crackling, communal fire, central to their survival, came into view, and with it one person Katsuki knew and one he certainly did not. The familiar fray of Mina’s cropped hair beaded with the errant black feather was longer since Katsuki had last seen her, but her profile, smiling at the man seated on the log beside her, sent Katsuki’s hackles on the rise.
“Oiy!”
“Oh!” Smile in place, Mina peered over a fur-draped shoulder. “You’re back. I didn’t hear you over the wild animal that seems to be running amok through camp.”
Replying only with narrowed eyes, Katsuki’s attention quickly turned, sinking his sharp concentration into the man stumbling from the log to stand.
Katsuki’s heart plummeted to his feet.
The man was short and stocky, his fitness indeterminate when some fool had thought to to clothe him in one of the tribe’s best ground-length fur coats. The rich, fiery mahogany of the coat set off eyes like winter pine and hair a wild bush of the same color. The man’s apple cheeks were flushed and freckled, his jaw too weak for a warrior and his anxious smile too wide and generous for a politician.
Just who was this pretty boy intruding on their winter solitude?
“Um, King Bakugou!” the man began, holding out a hand to shake. “My name is Midoriya Izuku and– ohno.”
This Midoriya person seemed to have forgotten he was standing behind a log when he’d approached to offer his large palm, and now, promptly lay face-down at Katsuki’s feet.
With an instantaneous grin of deviant delight, Katsuki dropped to a crouch, his big, booted feet on either side of Midoriya’s head. Midoriya moved to lift his cheek from the dirt, but Katsuki’s palm fisted in his soft curls and held him fast. His voice emerged low, a threatening rasp.
“Midoriya Izuku, is it? I only have one question. What the hell are you doing with my people?”
When Midoriya looked up with mud on his cheek and a shock of lightning in his eyes, teeth gritted against the yank of his hair, something long dead and buried shifted uncomfortably beneath Katsuki’s skin.
“I–” Midoriya spat dirt to the cold, hard ground, gaze unflinching. “I am your people.”
“Leave us,” Katsuki snapped in Kirishima’s face as he whipped shut the layers of wool and animal hide covering the doorway to the yurt. Face set like the seething coals of an extinguished fire far from dead, Katsuki turned and appraised the stranger standing in the center of his personal lodgings.
“Midoriya Izuku,” he sneered.
“Izuku,” the intruder corrected, his hands at his sides. He wore supple, buttery gloves of foreign design, and his slacks and vest screamed of Yuuei, the only major fortification this side of the river for a fortnight. Tribespeople didn’t live in Yuuei unless they’d abandoned their culture or their people had abandoned them . Neither was good for the person standing among plush fur bedding, ambrosial incense, and an ornate chest bursting with weapons.
Katsuki approached slowly, a predator assessing his prey from all angles, red eyes raking from toes to crown in search of tender striking points. When the man Izuku finally began to fidget, Katsuki’s smile stretched like a scythe.
“Do you know what I do with trespassers and liars?”
Izuku’s bright gem eyes flicked up to meet his and quickly found the ground once more, his throat working around some kind of reply as he swallowed.
“I-is this a literal or figurative question? I’ve read every book and article available on your tribe and–”
“Why?” Instantly, Katsuki was at Izuku’s side, one hand bruising around a bicep, his mouth just shy of Izuku’s blushing ear. “Why have you–”
“I told you.” A vehement whisper, steel underlying the pointed words. “I told you, I’m one of you . I’m one of you. I just want a home again.”
“Liar!” Katsuki shoved, his breath and palms hot as he watched Izuku gawk and stumble. Katsuki pursued, closer and closer, nose to nose in a sneer. “You didn’t answer my question before, so I’ll tell you. I bathe in the blood of liars.”
“I have the other sword!” Izuku shouted in Katsuki’s face, diving forward a step and crushing their foreheads together, their brows grating upon each other with such a strength that Katsuki almost tripped backwards in shock. “I have King Yagi’s All Might in my quarters as we speak, and it’s just the same as the one you carry on your back! Dammit, listen to me!”
Ice cut through Katsuki’s fury and left him frozen and hollow as a beast’s old corpse, bloodless and still in the snow. They were both breathing hard, skin to skin, noses smashed together, Izuku’s face a unflinching blur.
“Liar,” Katsuki rasped. “The other half disappeared the night of the fallen White King versus King Yagi. The White King was killed. But he destroyed Yagi’s sword, and the other half was lost to the earth. The–”
“It was never lost.” Izuku stepped back, his tired, slumped shoulders thicker and broader than Katsuki had thought for a man of his stature. Shaking his head, Izuku rubbed scarred hands over his face, palms pressing into his eyes as if blinding a memory he’d rather not see. “My mother ran away with it. Ran away with it and me.”
Large hands dropped to Izuku’s sides, and his freckled face looked less soft and more haggard, dark around the eyes and exhausted.
“She feared the tribe would turn against the White King’s wife and baby once the battle ended. The sword was collateral, should I ever wish to return.”
There was no lie in Midoriya Izuku’s eyes.
The Gods were laughing at Katsuki tonight. Katsuki’s voice shook as he managed a whisper.
“Show me.”
Ten days could not change the unsettling picture of Katsuki’s sword reclined beside Izuku’s. The ragged, shattered center cuts of gilded gold matched perfectly, two soulmates in steel, reunited.
More disconcerting was the way Izuku seamlessly fit into the lives of those he’d only known for a handful of months. He learned to weave baskets, to smoke fish, and sharpen arrows. Tribe talk told Katsuki of Izuku’s good humor with the children, his intent listening to the elders, and his sharp intellect.
Katsuki didn’t need gossip to see those qualities. His eyes were ever on Izuku, from sunrise to sunset and into the clear, starry nights around the fire. Izuku showed no signs of intending to claim or battle for a leadership position of which they both knew he deserved by blood.
Despite the White King having been notoriously wicked and selfish, desiring magicks to tear the Gods-gifted abilities right from the souls of his people, Izuku appeared to be nothing of the sort.
Where the White King, Hisashi, had been greed, Midoriya Izuku was unmistakable generosity.
Even so, Katsuki felt like a man teetering on the edge of something wide and black and all-encompassing when he watched Izuku integrate within the tribe. As if Katsuki could make one wrong step and plunge into something he couldn’t begin to understand or trust.
Izuku had even begun to smile at him. Tentatively, at first, from a quick side glance when he’d caught Katsuki watching him clumsily attempt to string a taut bow that snapped back in his face with a red welt across his chin. Then fully, as he did across the sparkling night fire when Katsuki’s childhood friends poked fun at him. Every time Izuku smiled, the chasm opening before Katsuki grew wider.
Katsuki didn’t like it one bit, and kept his distance as best he could.
Unfortunately, the Gods sought to curse him on this merciless winter of his life.
The ever-present fire burned low, cinders and ash spitting and popping red and gold as Katsuki frowned and poked at it with a stick. He was first to wake on this day, well before the sunrise cast her burning cloak across the icy sky. Sleep had grown increasingly difficult with the knowledge of that infuriatingly intriguing man sleeping mere huts away.
How long would he stay? How long until Izuku realized he wasn’t meant for this life and headed back to civilization?
A snap from the forest’s edge alerted Katsuki to a quick stand, his palms heating with a power his people treasured but rarely used. One did not simply abuse a gift from the gods. But should an intruder happen upon his tribe, Katsuki would not hesitate to throw flame.
Soft blue shadow melted back as Izuku emerged from the thick line of trees, his smile wide and bright as its own sunrise. A flurry of red cardinals, disturbed from their snowy boughs by Izuku’s approach, streaked in all directions like a spray of blood. And around Izuku’s neck and shoulders, arrow still pierced through the heart, hung a young doe, a prize for even the most practiced hunter.
Their eyes met in the clearing, Izuku’s small but sturdy frame keeping the deer aloft with strength and steadiness. His eyes aglow with victory, Katsuki swore he saw a spark of unearthly lightning flicker and short out before Izuku looked down to watch his step upon approaching the fire.
“What the hell is this?” Katsuki asked, knowing full well what the hell this was. He needed a moment to – to collect himself from the visage of this little lightning-and-thunder warrior hiding in a scholar’s clothes. Katsuki’s attention lingered on the arrow in the doe’s heart, briefly empathized with the pang in his own chest, then brushed it off.
“I wanted to do my part,” Izuku said simply.
“You–” Katsuki licked his lips, hands fisting at his sides as he looked everywhere but Izuku’s face. Something about the way Izuku looked into him was more piercing than any sword to the side. “We have plenty of food.”
“Not this fresh, though.”
Damn if the smart mouth wasn’t right.
“Want to butcher this with me?” Izuku asked casually, shifting the deer a little, a few beads of sweat on his brow.
Katsuki scoffed and smirked.
“What, and make me do all the work?”
Izuku raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth quirked.
“How do you think I made a living all these years?”
Katsuki scrunched his face.
“Why would I know?”
“I was a butcher,” Izuku said flatly. “Now, do you want me to bleed this out or what?”
Katsuki stared and distantly wondered if Izuku would slice out his unsteady heart before he left, too.
“You’re staring,” Aizawa drawled as he chipped at the head of a particularly wicked arrow.
Katsuki paused from picking his teeth with the sharp scrap of bone, his attention pointedly fixing on the flames instead of a distant Izuku, shirtless in the noonday sun as Mina tattooed their tribe’s symbol of a deer, with the symbol for the Snow Moon hovering overhead. Izuku winced from time to time, for the process was slow and sharp and bitter, but he did laugh and smile and chat in between.
“Well.” Katsuki tossed the bone into the flames and pointedly did not look over when Izuku yelped. “S’an awfully girly set of tattoos for a man’s first.”
Aizawa raised a dark brow, his eyes as keen as the arrow between his hunter’s fingers.
“The doe is not simply female. It is sensitivity, intuition, inner strength. The Snow Moon is merely the sky under which he arrived. You’re bothered he didn’t let you choose?”
“I’m not,” Katsuki snapped. Aizawa would always see too much, his gift made apparent in those odd, unblinking eyes.
“You two grew up together.”
Katsuki startled and stilled.
“What.”
“The king’s battle wasn’t until you and Izuku were two. I couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but I recall the pair of you here and there, belly-laughing and following each other like ducklings without a mother.”
Katsuki’s heart thundered like a horse’s hooves, merciless against his ribs as he struggled to inhale.
“Why tell me this now and not months ago?”
Aizawa’s gaze remained inscrutable.
“When would you have listened?”
Katsuki grit his teeth against a retort. The bastard wasn’t wrong. There was little possibility he’d have even taken the time to listen to nonsense back when he’d been enraged with Izuku’s mere presence.
“If I recall correctly,” Aizawa said with a yawn, when they damn well knew he was right about most everything, “the two of you even shared a pile of bedding in your second winter. You’d throw a fit if that one wasn’t at your side every second of the day. Both of your mothers were at their wits’ end.”
Katsuki shook his head, mind spinning with the implications.
“One might say…” Aizawa paused, tested the pad of his thumb over the arrow and frowned when it pricked a drop of blood. “You’d been bonded from the start. Funny how full circles work. Or sword halves.”
“Are you feeling well?” A large, warm hand brushed at Katsuki’s bare wrist, Izuku’s expression concerned. They stood before the entrance to Katsuki’s yurt, a landscape of sparkling stars above, the warmth of woodsmoke and laughter from the distant fire. “You’ve been quiet all night.”
Katsuki shrugged, his heavy fur cloak lurching with the motion as he studied Izuku’s face in the moonlight. Perhaps the Snow Moon did suit him, after all. He was somehow striking and beautiful and strong in her silver, milky glow.
“Are you not leaving this place?”
Izuku’s head cocked like a curious bird.
“Not if you’ll let me stay. I only want the family from which I came. My mother doesn’t wish to return to this life, but she gave me her blessing, and I treasure that. I treasure all of you.” Izuku ducked his head, speaking to the hard, unforgiving ground in a small voice. “I treasure you.”
Katsuki’s heart burst. Apparently, he’d had no control over it in the first place, or else every nerve in his body wouldn’t be glowing like a summer field caught aflame by a shock of lightning.
“Uh.” Izuku looked up in the breadth of Katsuki’s shocked silence, face tight and anxious. “I mean, I’m just. Everything’s lovely here and you’re just–also lovely and fearsome and–”
A gasp slipped from Izuku’s pretty mouth as Katsuki banded an arm around that sturdy waist and hauled him in hard, chest to chest, Izuku’s head tipped back to gawk up at him with moon-sized eyes.
“Kat–”
“Did you know,” Katsuki murmured, mouth a mere breath from Izuku’s, his lashes lowering as he inhaled the scent of pine and leather, “we once shared a bed as children?”
“I–m-my mother mentioned as much, once. But how did you–”
Katsuki captured the question on Izuku’s mouth with his own, the slide of his tongue encouraging Izuku’s lush lips apart. He delved in, prepared to conquer and claim for all of a moment before Izuku battled back with a lengthy, sinful moan, his mouth searching a new angle while his hips rolled and swayed and knocked the breath clean from Katsuki’s lungs.
Katsuki pulled back with a hiss, hands scrabbling for purchase around Izuku’s backside. When Izuku whimpered and went to his toes just to swipe his tongue along Katsuki’s lower lip, the earth simply dropped away, and this warrior, scholar, lover, nurturer– all of him, had to be his.
“Izuku,” Katsuki rasped. He carefully watched Izuku’s clouded expression. “Let me show you how a king shares his bed.”
Izuku’s smile bloomed like night blossoms worshiping the moon.
“As long as you allow me to show you how a would-be king shares his, too.”