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Perched on her balcony in the middle of the night, he almost looks frightening. She wonders if that’s what villains and criminals feel when they see him. Fear. Panic. Dread. But she doesn’t feel that at all. He looks so different, it throws her off sometimes, so distant and different from the Deku she used to know. He removes his cowl, almost to reassure her that it is him but she would have known him anywhere.
“Deku,” she whispers, not sure of how to go on anyway. It's 3am, she's still wearing her pink heart-shaped pyjamas and she hasn’t seen him in months. There’s many things she wants to say. She wants to scream at him. She wants to be angry. But really, she’s not. She knows the kind of person he is. The kind of hero he is. She should have known better. “You should get an ice pack on that,” she says instead as she opens the large window for him. “It’ll help with the swelling and the pain.”
“Don’t worry,” Deku says, and tilts his head, smiling faintly. It makes her stomach flutter traitorously, even after all this time. “I can cope.”
“Recovery girl is tired of you, I imagine. So you come to me for my medical expertise,” Ochaco says with the most neutral voice she can manage, pretending to be unaffected by seeing him. Why else would he come to her apartment?, she wonders. After he left U.A, and specially after graduation she took an interest in first-aid immediate assistance to be able to help with the injured and wounded during the job. After holding so many people on the brink of death, she couldn’t stand not being able to at least offer some type of medical help while the ambulance got to the scene. She was not a real nurse or a doctor but she could manage pretty well on her own, and she had a solid experience after three years of hero work. She had even begun to garner some fame in the vigilante circles, since she treated anyone who needed it off the books. Nevertheless, she definitely didn’t expect him .
“And for your All Might band-aids,” Deku says and she imagines him as he was before, with a small smile and a faint blush. But he’s not that boy anymore. Seeing him all beaten up, battered, dirty, asking for her help at her window, she is again overcome with the conviction that Deku is secretly looking for a way to take all the aches and hurts of the city— and not just its people, but the city itself, the potholes in the streets and the gas main leaks and the anguished scream of subway brakes — into himself. Deku wants to take on the pain of the people he cares about, because he thinks he can weather it all, and that by acquiring their transgressions and their injustices, he can save them all. He’s so damn stubborn.
“I think you should really put an ice pack on that. It doesn’t look too good.” She wonders what kind of fight he got into that managed to get him this bad.
“I’m not that concerned about it,” Deku says, and of course he isn’t. Ochaco feels anger flare in her chest, rise behind her eyes, because of course not. Of course he doesn’t think about himself at all.
She never thought he’d become an outlaw, working outside of the Hero Commision, a vigilante. But when she thinks back at it it makes the most sense. That fiery, sacrificial spirit of his wasn’t going to sit still and take orders. From the moment people started whispering about the man in the green mask, who can sense if you’re in danger and doesn’t look the other way, she knew he was going to work himself to the ground.
“You’re angry,” Deku says, finally stepping in, as if this was normal. As if they’ve talked just yesterday and not months ago. Who does he think he is? Showing up at her apartment, all charming and hurt knowing she’ll never turn him away.
“No,” Ochaco replied, clipped, because it doesn’t matter what she says anyway. They’ve had this argument multiple times and in the end that’s what ultimately led their budding relationship to fall out. They weren’t exactly dating back then, but they weren’t exactly not. He was so focused on being a secret hero, a hero for everyone, a hero all the time, that he simply had no time for anything else. No for himself and not for their relationship.
“Come here,” she says, and he obliges. She steps towards him, painfully aware of the distance between them and takes the cowl completely off, lifting his chin to examine the wounds. “Anything broken?”
“No, but I think my wrist is sprained,” he says, almost ashamed as she walks away to get her first-aid kit. Her footsteps resonate across the apartment and she feels nervous all over again. When she returns, she sees he’s sitting on the couch, eyes closed. She takes a minute to look at him. He looks tired. She remembers how Izuku used to be about the wounds and the scars, he would just not let her see them. He covered them up and often stayed away for days at a time until he healed on his own. The fact that he has come to Ochaco now, no longer trying to hide or shy away from her hands, makes her feel something deep inside of her chest.
She puts on her gloves and walks even closer. She touches the bruised area around his eyes very softly. They fly open, and she’s faced with those deep green eyes again. She tries not to look into them, not to get lost in them. “I think your eye socket isn’t broken, just an indirect orbital floor fracture. It’ll heal on its own but you should take care of it. Take the ice.” He does. He tries to meet her eyes but she doesn’t want to face him. Not just yet.
“Do you ever actually think about yourself at any point during your fights,” she asks and Deku actually appears to consider that for a minute, and when he draws breath and opens his mouth she preempts him by placing a gloved thumb over his mouth, parting his lips slightly.
“Nasty bruise you’ll have there too,” she declares, pressing her thumb where his lip is beginning to clot. It’s swelling, too, though not as badly as his eye, and she can feel his breath through the glove and the curve of his half-smile. He leans into the touch, eyes falling closed, tilting his head for more pressure. “Deku,” she says again, very softly, because she’s not sure if she can do this again and yet there’s nothing she wants more than to embrace him, to kiss him, for everything to work out this time. He hums in response, and she feels that too in his exhale.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters and she’s not sure what he’s apologizing for.
“Let’s look at that wrist,” she says a little louder than she should have, trying to use her ‘nurse voice’. The one she uses at work when she needs to convince not only the patient, but herself, that everything is going to be okay. Ochaco leans down and reaches for his hand then traces her fingertips over his dusty knuckles, his long scars, the hollow of his palm, and he actually closes his fingers around hers. She almost wishes she had no gloves on at all so she could feel his skin against hers.
They’re so close that when he leans in to kiss her, she is not surprised at all. It feels natural, almost feels like an afterthought. It’s the barest press of his lips, the copper on his breath the strongest sensation, and she slides a hand around to the back of his neck very gently. She knew he was always going to be focused on being a hero, his mind was always elsewhere, his aspirations far away from her. And yet she couldn’t help but wish for more. She wonders if he missed her, if that’s the real reason he showed up tonight. She wonders if he thinks about her. Ochaco always had a hard time piecing together his thoughts.
He brushes his knuckles over her collarbones, follows the scoop neck of her shirt, and pauses, fingers pressed to her breastbone. “Ochaco,” he says, and she’s never heard anyone say her name like that, as if it’s gold under his tongue, precious and holy, an offering. She presses her forehead against his.
She could ask him. Why are you really here?. What do you really want from me? But she doesn’t. She’s too scared of the answer.
“I’m going to wrap this up,” Ochaco says carefully, still holding his hand in hers. She goes on to do her job meticulously, focusing on the repetition of wrapping the white bandage around his wrist and not on the feeling of his lips against hers. Not on the weight of his hand, not on the distance between them, not on his eyes on her as she moves.
“What I said before. I meant it,” he says quietly, gripping at her hand. “I am sorry.” She looks up at him, and his eyes are clear, sincere and genuine. She senses he wants to say something more, but doesn’t.
“I know,” she offers. Because it’s true. She knows he is sorry, but sometimes sorry isn’t enough when you’re trying to be together with someone. Sorry is not enough when you love someone and they can only give you crumbs of themselves.
“It’s done,” she announces, wondering if he’ll fly out the window and she won’t see him again for another couple of months. He doesn’t move though, and she takes that as good sign. After some hesitation she orders him to lay down on the couch and he does. If her assesment is right, it's probable that he hasn't rested in a while. She tries not to think too much about that. As Ochaco removes her gloves, she looks at the accumulation of bloody bandages in the trash and sighs. Izuku does not say another word until she is back and the lights are all out, leaving them in complete darkness.
“Thank you,” he breathes into the pillow. Ochaco bites her lip, wondering what kind of person puts themself under so much pain. Every single night. But she knows what kind of person he is. What kind of hero he is. And she loves him anyway, she loves him because of it. Deep down she knows she’ll take anything she gives him. She’ll accept the crumbs of his affection and his trust and his time. She lays down next to him and presses her lips against the top of his forehead. His flesh smells coppery with blood beneath a tang of her disinfectant.
“Always,” Ochaco says, and she means it. Izuku reaches back for her hand, and Ochaco lets him take it. He presses a soft kiss to the back of her hand and goes to sleep, still clutching it between his.