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“Riot! There are a few citizens in there that need to be evacuated!”
Katsuki’s voice is loud and strong, filled with the almost giddy, not quite post-fight high that they’ve almost become accustomed to, being pro heroes for so long. Yet it never really fails to make Eijirou’s heart race.
“The villains should be taken care of, I’ll meet you back at the agency, okay?”
Eijirou yells out, “Sure, love you!” His eyes are focused on the building. It’s clearly unstable, and likely about to fall. It shouldn’t be an issue, though— his unbreakable is perfectly suited to the task, like he was made for this job. He’s running into the building before Katsuki has a chance to respond.
The building is not stable. It’s dusty and Eijirou feels a sense of trepidation, foreboding, like it could come crashing down at any second. He shakes it off, and forges onward.
There are four floors to the building. There’s not that many civilians on each floor, and Eijirou is getting impatient. He keeps thinking of Katsuki.
”Back at the agency,” he promises himself. “Soon.”
As he rounds a corner on the third floor, he feels rather than smells the acid. Immediately he breaks into a run, searching for the source. He’s almost cleared the floor, but the pungent smell is intensifying with every step. Eijirou scans the hallway one more time, then looks up—
His heart plummets. There is acid pooling on the ceiling.
Eijirou steps back, quirk activated, and sees a single drop hit the floor. He barely has time to go unbreakable before the world implodes.
The ceiling cracks, then crumbles, and the villain bursts through the ceiling, arms slick with burning acid that dissolves whatever it touches.
______
“That little shit,” Katsuki hisses as he smashes the ‘call’ button on his phone for the fifth time in a row. “Where the fuck is my husband?”
(After the sixth missed call, a pit of fear opens in his stomach. He brushes it aside. Eijirou’s probably still caught up in the rescue efforts, or getting checked over by the paramedics. Worst case scenario, he’s in the hospital.)
Katsuki sits on the bench outside of the agency. He bounces his knee as he feels anxiety rise in his chest. Fuck. Who else can he call?
Deku! Deku was still at the scene. Katsuki can call him, and find out what’s happening to Eijirou.
His hands shake ever so slightly as he taps the button to call “Nerd” over and over again. On the ninth missed call, he shuts off his phone and stands, deathly silent, heart beating out of his chest. He says to his assistant, “I’m going to see where the fuck Eijirou is, I’ll be back.”
He doesn’t wait around for a response. He doesn’t wait to call a cab. He tears through the city on aching feet. Civilians jump out of his way. He’s still in his hero costume, covered in sweat and dirt, and he probably looks just a little bit manic.
Katsuki finally skids to a stop, out of breath, at the place where the building was. But instead of the shaky structure he left behind, there is just a clear blue sky.
That’s fine. That’s fine!! Katsuki knew the building was probably going to fall. His husband has a hardening quirk. He’s practically immune to blunt force trauma, right?
Katsuki steps over the caution tape marking the edges of the scene. Nobody stops him. His eyes scan the scene in front of him, over and over again. Police officers. Rubble. Ambulance. More rubble. Deku, being tended to by paramedics. More rubble.
Where the fuck is Eijirou?
Katsuki has no patience left. He wants his husband, and he wants him now.
He storms his way over to Deku. His eyes are trained on the nerd’s face, and if he wasn’t so pissed at Eijirou he’d wonder why Deku looks so… broken. Sad. But his husband is missing, and that’s the priority.
“Deku,” he hisses. “Where the fuck is Eijirou. He’s not fucking answering his phone so I tried to call you but you didn’t fucking pick up.”
Deku’s head is bowed. When he raises it, and his eyes meet Katsuki’s, Katsuki’s heart drops straight through his chest.
Worst case scenario, Eijirou is in the hospital.
“Deku, don’t you fucking look at me like that. ”
Izuku looks at Katsuki with aching eyes. Tears well up, only it seems so much more painful than his usual weepiness. “Kacchan…” he says, with a special kind of sadness in his voice.
(Katsuki knows what that tone means.)
He takes a step back. No. “No, Izuku. Tell me where the fuck he is. He’s not here, right. What hospital. What fucking hospital, and why the hell didn’t they CONTACT ME?! ”
Izuku hops off the rubble and reaches out a hand to him. “Kacchan...”
Katsuki chokes on a breath, staring at his outreached hand. “Deku,” he replies shortly.
Izuku’s eyes are soft. “Come here Kacchan, come sit down.”
The world feels foggy, almost. Unreal. Katsuki reaches out with trembling fingers, and Izuku grasps them. He exhales. Izuku’s hand, mottled with tough scar tissue, feels grounding. It feels like a support, feels like an embrace. Soft and firm and a little bit scary. Katsuki grasps it like a lifeline.
Izuku draws him into an embrace. Lays his arm around Katsuki’s shoulders; This only works because he’s bent so low, hunched in on himself as if trying to keep himself from shattering. Izuku leads them to a more secluded area, then sits down on the ground. “Kacchan,” he says. Katsuki does not meet his eyes. “I’m going to take you to your apartment, okay?”
Katsuki’s head snaps up. He chokes on a sob— not a sob, not a sob, he’s fine, Eijirou’s just in the hospital— and says, “Izu-“
He doesn’t get anything else out. Deku draws him close, pulls Katsuki’s head to his shoulder. His costume is covered in a fine layer of dust. Katsuki breaths in and feels it tickle his nose.
“Izu-“
Izuku looks at him with searching eyes. “Kacchan,” he says, “Don’t you want this to be more private?”
Katsuki- he doesn’t- he doesn’t-
“I don’t want anything other than my husband, shitty Deku. Tell me where the fuck he is. Tell me right fucking now.”
Izuku exhales. “Okay, Kacchan. He’s- his bo- he’s over here, come on.”
Katsuki stands on shaking legs. He follows Deku in the fragile silence, making no move to avoid the rocks in his path. They dig into his shoes, and hurt his feet.
When Deku stops, Katsuki nearly bumps into him. They’re in the center of the rubble, secluded from the cameras. There’s nothing here but rocks, dust, a few people in uniforms milling around, and a-
Katsuki inhales sharply. And a body bag.
“That’s not him,” he says, and his voice sounds distant, like he’s hearing it underwater, like the rushing in his ears is something other than his imagination. “Tell me that’s not him. Tell me that’s not Eijirou.”
Izuku is crying openly now. “I- I’m so sorry, Kacchan. I’m so sorry. ”
“Izuku!” His volume is rising. “Tell me that’s not him!”
Deku cries, “Kacchan,” because that’s all he can really say.
Katsuki inhales and doesn’t feel it in his lungs. Bullshit. This is fucking bullshit. He wants to see his husband, and that’s not fucking him. So he storms over to the body bag. Katsuki exhales, ignores the exclamations of those around him, and pulls down the zipper in a single fluid motion. He’s seen corpses before, this should be fine, right?
Oh. Oh, god.
It’s him.
It’s Eijirou.
It’s his husband, with the same shade of shitty hair now coated in dust. It’s his husband, with the side of his— god, with the side of his face slick with blood. It’s his husband, with the right side of his face partially dissolved.
It’s his husband. Skull melted, brain exposed; blood mixes with his hair. The red is a few shades off.
It’s horrifying. He can’t look away.
It’s Eijirou .
Katsuki sits down on the rocky ground hard, eyes never leaving Eijirou’s unseeing eyes.
There is a faint buzzing in his ears. He feels an arm around his shoulder- Izuku, probably- coaxing him up and leading him away.
How. How. there was just a falling building. Just some trapped civilians.
“Acid quirk, Kacchan,” Izuku says.
Katsuki does not remember much, after that.
______
(Deku leaves him alone for the first night. That is a mistake, and he does not leave him alone for months after that. The remaining members of the bakusquad rotate shifts watching him. Everything feels hollow.)
_____
One cold autumn morning when the leaves have just begun to turn colors, Katsuki rolls over in bed and his body meets something firm and warm and soft. Brain fuzzy with sleep, he nuzzles into it, slurring, “Eijirou….”
Katsuki jolts upright, heart hammering. Eijirou. The creamy white pillow next to him is unmoving; the side of the bed is cold.
The pain flares up like an old injury, and Katsuki feels like he is drowning in it.
______
The new apartment is warmer. Katsuki wakes up alone, on the hottest day of summer, to sunlight streaming on his face and birds chirping outside the window.
He feels nauseous.
Deku forces him to take the day off hero work, so Katsuki spends the day with a mug of tea that grows cold too quickly in his shaking hands. People call him all day, but he silences his phone and doesn’t charge it.
It’s been a year.
He stares into the sunlight, wearing Eijirou’s favorite hoodie, and reminisces. He goes over every memory of his husband he still holds, as if to re-encode them into his mind, as if to experience them once more, as if to fill the void that Eiirou left behind.
He thinks of times of laughter, times of tears, times of tragedy made softer by the man beside him. He thinks of their early UA days, their early relationship days, their days as fiancés and then, husbands. He thinks of the shade of his dead husband’s hair, and pretends that he’ll come walking out of the bedroom any minute now.
He thinks of the weight of his hand, and the strength of his hold, and the tenderness of his lips.
He thinks of Eijirou, and the feel of his calloused fingertips, and abruptly he realizes that it’s no longer sunny and that he no longer remembers what it felt like, to be hugged by Eijirou.
He wraps himself tighter in the hoodie and sobs.
_____
He hasn’t moved apartments since the first time after Eijirou’s death. The sunlight still warms the bed, and he still wakes up to birdsong.
He does not have the energy to hate it. Katsuki drags himself up, wraps himself in Eijirou’s worn yet carefully preserved hoodie, and heads to the kitchen to make a singular cup of coffee. His eyes linger on the pictures that line the hallway. There’s one of his wedding day, one of the day Deku hit number one, one of Mina and Denki and Sero gathered around him on his birthday. Eijirou is in about half of them.
Only half of them. Two years now, and Katsuki still writes him unsent letters in his head at least one a month (when it used to be once a week). He still whispers soft goodnights into his pillow, into imagined ears that will never hear him, at least once a week (when it used to be every day). He still thinks about him every day, although it used to be every few hours.
It’s weak. It’s stupid. Katsuki mourns the loss of the moments of memory. Every once in a while it hits him how long it’s been since that day, and the pain rushes back, but it never lingers as long as it did the first disturbing time.
Katsuki sets down his coffee and goes about making breakfast. He tries to lose himself in the scent of too strong spice, but he still notices the soft footsteps in the hall.
He goes stiff. Footsteps, when Katsuki should be the only one in his apartment today. He flicks off the stove before creeping around the edge of the kitchen door, eyes searching for intruders.
The disturbance seems to come from his bedroom. Katsuki’s head peaks around the corner, and he sees him, and he is filled with rage.
How dare they. How dare this person take on the image of a young version of his husband. They have no right to him, no right to his face, no right to Katsuki’s love and life and pain.
Katsuki does not hesitate to think; he lunges forward. His opponent was clearly unprepared, seemingly studying the pictures on the walls. They allow themselves to be pinned down by Katsuki, barely even putting up a struggle.
Katsuki is not gentle. How dare they.
Palms already sparking, he grits out, “Who the fuck are you and why do you look like him? ”