Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ejiro had no clue how he’d gotten here. Not, like, physically here. He understood the events and consequences that had led up to him being here in the physical sense, he just couldn’t understand how he’d gotten here mentally.

It had started maybe the third month into a new apartment. New location, close to work, nice views out the east window and subway tile in the bathroom. There was just one part nobody had prepared him for: the upstairs neighbors.

Every night, it seemed, for the past six months there’d been shouting and screaming from one floor up, directly over Eijiro’s head. It was a simple formula, two voices, one sharp and gruff, the other weepy and feeble. Add a dash of shattering glass and the occasional thud as well as the obvious sounds of doors slamming and people crying and Eijiro had spent a good two and a half months wondering if he should do something, and another half wondering how.

And that was how he’d met Izuku. After what had sounded like a particularly bad argument that had ended in an angry door slam and the sound of someone making a very advertised exit down the hall towards the stairs, Ejiro had talked himself up and then somehow walked himself up to apartment number 315. He’d knocked, almost prepared to get no response or to be told to fuck off and eat shit, when the door had been swung open so fast he’d barely even finished knocking.

“Kacchan?”

That night had changed so much and in so many ways that Ejiro couldn’t have imagined. But, he wouldn’t have changed it for the world...or at least he thought he wouldn’t have. Izuku had looked so lost that night, just a weepy-eyed, chubby-cheeked guy with blood on his face and hurt etched into his eyes deeper than anyone could ever erase. He’d looked about what Eijiro might have expected in such a tragic situation, and he'd known from the moment his expectations had been so disappointingly met, that he wanted to help.

They’d hit it off. Izuku had been strangely open, friendly, and kind despite all he’d been through just moments before. He’d even let Eijiro help clean up his face a bit so the scratches would heal. HIs resilience had been admirable, and his willingness to speak well of this Kacchan of his despite the cruelty...well, Eijiro hadn’t been able to think of anything manlier.

And thus he had entered a strange relationship full of semi-secret meetings and patching up injuries. Sometimes it was every night that week, other times it was a few days in-between, but without fail, Izuku had come to lean on Eijiro, which was an honor he considered himself highly unworthy of. It was a heavy burden, there was no doubt about that, and planet of times Eijiro was very certain that the weight of it was far beyond what someone as clumsy as him should bear, but he bore it willingly.

Now though, he felt somehow dirty or selfish for taking on such a serious situation, inserting himself into Izuku’s life as some rock of support when he turned out to be so weak. What sort of fickle friend stopped believing the obvious truth? What sort of confidant doubted when all the evidence was right there? What sort of a person was Eiji if, after weeks and weeks of trying to put together the broken pieces of Izuku after fight after fight, he was now feeling conflicted? A better friend wouldn’t have even dared to think what he thought right now, and that left the worst kind of taste in Eijiro’s mouth. He couldn’t understand how he, someone who had always cared and stood for what was right, someone he might have even gone as far as to call a “good person”, could have thought something like this. How could he do something so wrong?

And maybe it was even worse, because it wasn’t necessarily a thought. It was…intuition—an instinct. And that meant it was in his very gut to do this—to not believe a clear and undeniable victim, someone who he considered to be a friend, who he would even have claimed to love like a brother; that was just how close this whole ordeal had brought them! But, even as he hemmed and hawed at himself for how disgusting—how evil--he was for feeling this way, Eijiro couldn’t shake it. He couldn’t get the twisted knot out of his gut, and he hated Izuku’s partner for it.

He hated this Kacchan for sitting on that bed and looking so small and alone all by himself. Because that was what he deserved, he deserved to be alone and to feel small and abandoned when he’d done what he had. And Izuku didn’t deserve to look somehow suspicious or wrong for being surrounded by family and friends as he tried to cope with the trauma of this night and so many others like it.

But that’s how it was. That was how seeing him made Eijiro feel. It sowed a seed of doubt that had no business being there, driving an unwanted wedge in between what he knew was true and what he was seeing.

Eijiro had arrived, at Izuku’s frantically phoned in request, to the hospital to find Izuku already surrounded by his friends and mother, all of whom were understandably worried and shaken by his calls and the bandages on his arm and bruise blossoming across his chin. They’d all listened, Eijiro included, in sheer fury as Izuku had tried to insist it was nothing, everything had happened in a flurry of emotion and he ought not to have said what he had and shouldn’t have called them. And in response, they’d all hugged and cried and begged him to leave…. And of course, because he was just that faithful, just that much of an optimist who saw the good in people, he had sworn he couldn’t abandon Kacchan, that there was good in him and Izuku loved it too much to go.

It had been a lot—too much for Eijiro, who had lived in independence and isolation for just a bit too long to stretch these sorts of emotional muscles without some repercussions. And since Izuku had had plenty of supporters around to try and get it through his thick skull that Kacchan was no good, he’d had stepped into the hallway for a breather.

He’d walked the hospital wing, smiling at passersby and trying to find the nearest vending machine to get something for Izuku, something to settle the shaking in the poor man’s hands. He’d had surprisingly little trouble tracking one down, and soon he’d been punching in the code for the fruitiest, most indulgent drink they’d had. And then he’d happened to look up and really take in where he was, and he’d realized with something between fury and dread that he’d found Izuku’s boyfriend..

If Eijiro were honest, he would have said he’d expected Kacchan to be there. He’d rather expected to find the asshole lurking close by, waiting to pounce the moment they were all gone and beg Izuku for forgiveness and his hundredth second chance. What he hadn’t really expected was to see him as another one of the patients.

The man had been in a room down the hall, perched on a bed and unmoving as nurses had shuffled in and out with papers and boxes of juice and all other sorts of things. He’d been hunched over, his face hidden behind the bushy, blond hair that Eijiro had always known him by. He’d looked small, frail even, just a little pathetic as he’d sat there, curled in on himself. But that hadn’t really changed anything until a nurse had come by with another ice pack, and he’d straightened up just enough for Eijiro to see his face.

Izuku had explained the story to them. He’d told them how Kacchan had rushed at him and he’d slammed the door on him to avoid being hurt further. But as the ice pack had been pulled away and another pressed to his face, Eijiro was ashamed to admit that his first thought was that nobody ran into a door like that.

Yes, Eijiro Kirishima had accused Izuku of lying in his head at that moment. His first instinct, his first reaction upon seeing the man’s partner, had been disbelief. He was truly the scum of the earth. Yet, even as he’d stood ther, telling himself how horrible it was to think that, how wrong he was and how unfair it was to Izuku, watching as Kacchan gingerly pressed the ice pack to his face, grimacing a little as the cold touched his face, Eijiro hadn’t been able to shake the thought that this, this was too much to have run into a door.

Try as he did, as he’d watched Kacchan nurse the mottled mess of bruises that had covered half his face, he hadn’t been able to see how Izuku’s story—how slamming a door shut just in time for his boyfriend to run into it, could have caused that. Unless Kacchan had decided to ram his own face into it over and over in some attempt at breaking through, and though Eijiro didn’t know him that well, he somehow doubted that even he was that insane. If anything, what made him hate the other man most of all was just how sane he did seem.

The first time Eiji had met Kacchan had been that night he’d first gone up to check on Izuku. It had been just as he was leaving, Izuku stumbling over an apologetic explanation that Kacchan wouldn’t like it if he found them alone together after their argument as Eijiro had assured him it would be alright. He hadn’t been sure he would even have wanted to meet Izuku’s boyfriend at the time, so furious had he been. And yet, the universe had sensed his anger and sent him a direct challenge, because no sooner had Eijiro stood to go than the very man they’d been speaking of had walked in, leaving him left face to face with the very man he’d wanted to avoid at all costs, or maybe fight—he hadn’t decided which at that point.

That was the only interaction Eijiro had ever had with Kacchan, and the man hadn’t even said a word, although his actions had been quite communicative enough. He’d just stood there, stiff as a statue, face grim and wary. He’d looked like a vicious animal waiting to strike, suspicious, cruel, and proud. It had taken a lot out of Eiji not to walk up and deck him—wipe that look of contempt right off his face-- but he’d somehow found it in himself to hold back, just try to smile and nod politely, although he’d gone to no great lengths to extend any warmth or happiness to see and meet him.

After that, Eijiro had wanted to stay, convinced that the moment he’d leave Kacchan would do something. But, Izuku had insisted he go, and not wanting to make a fuss and possibly get him in further trouble, Eiji had allowed himself to be ushered out the door, taking great pleasure in the way Kacchan had so quickly sidestepped out of his way, backing into his apartment like he was putting distance between himself and an opponent. He’d ;eft that night wishing Izuku a very wonderful, very peaceful and quiet evening, enjoying the way Kacchan’s features—fine, sharp and deceptively nice—had twitched and pulled at his words, like he was sucking on a lemon and trying to pretend it wasn’t sour.

From his first glimpse of him, Eijiro had known all he’d needed about Kacchan. He was an entitled piece of shit, someone who was so used to getting their way that they threw a tantrum whenever they didn’t, whether it was skim milk in his latte instead of oat, or his boyfriend letting him walk all over him or be his own human being. He’d probably been waited on hand and foot, had thousands of girls and guys at his feet, fawning over him for his good looks and bad-boy aloofness. He was selfish and cruel, that was obvious, but more than that, Eijiro had seen no shame in his face that night and that had said everything. Kacchan hadn’t been upset with someone knowing because it was wrong, he’d been upset that someone was now in his way.

Or…at least that had been the impression left on Eijiro. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

Kacchan was making that same expression now, his body just as stiff and his face just as sour. But in this context, with one eye swollen shut and some of the deepest, ugliest bruises Eijiro had ever seen mottling his perfect skin, it didn’t look so proud and entitled at it once had. It now looked—felt—like more. Like maybe that was how it was supposed to look, like someone who didn’t care besides the inconvenience being caused, but underneath…. There was something more to it now, something that just by seeing it made Eijiro feel lost, and maybe just a little scared to be,

And logically Eijiro knew it was because of where they were and the bruises. He knew it was the crazy night and the high emotions and the grief and empathy for hurting people that came with places like this that made everything all wonky. It was just the situation crossing the wires in his head, making everything warp into things it wasn’t. But despite telling himself that, he could feel his memories of that meeting shifting—changing axis as he watched Kacchan tenderly poke at a bruise.

Suddenly, He wasn’t so sure if the man he was watching now had curtly stepped out of his way, or dodged a punch he’d assumed was coming. He couldn’t recall if the hatred radiating between them had been mutual, or if it had simply been Eiji. He couldn’t recall if the way Kacchan had been nursing his wrist had been a warning to Izuku that he’d throw a punch if his boyfriend made a fuss, or if he’d seen bruises there that the man’s jacket sleeves had been too long to fully hide.

The truth was that Eijiro was second guessing himself, all for the sight of an abuser in his hospital room, shaking his head when the nurse’s question, “Is anybody coming for you?” as it echoed down the hall. It was pitiful, as it should be, and yet the toxic black goo of doubt was creeping in and Eiji was doing an absolutely pathetic job of fighting it off.

It made sense that there was no one for Kacchan. It made absolute sense that his shit personality had scared everyone off. Izuku had said as much during one of their nights--

“He doesn’t really have any friends. He’s not good at making them and they don’t usually stay around with how he treats them. He used to have some friends back when we first started dating, but they weren’t good for him. They constantly justified his behavior and they didn’t like me being around him because it changed him. Eventually they had falling-outs and he hasn’t ever really replaced them.”

And yet, weren’t abusers supposed to have friends?

God! It was such a sinful, ugly thing to be asking—a disgusting line of questioning. So what if Izuku’s boyfriend couldn’t keep a friend around? So what if he couldn’t keep Izuku from keeping them around? What did that prove? Nothing! It proved nothing, except that Izuku was so brave and manly that no matter what Kacchan did, he couldn’t strip him of everything!

But then…why did he stay? If Izuku had resources, friends, family, somewhere to go, why did he stay with Kacchan?

Again, it was such an ugly, evil thing to ask and Eijiro hated himself for it, scolding himself for such a horrible question as he grabbed his drink and turned back the way he’d come as fast as he could without seeming suspicious. So what if Izuku never left! So what if every time they fought it was Kacchan who went storming off, with nowhere to go and no one to come and get him from the hospital, while Izuku had friends and family and hell, a neighbor just one floor down ready and waiting if he needed help? Why, it was the first rule of abusers to know that they always manipulated their victims into staying! Hell, even tonight, after everything that had happened, Izuku had been insisting he wouldn’t leave Kacchan. He’d outright refused to press charges!

Still—still, the knot in Eijiro’s stomach wouldn’t let up, not even at the grateful smile Izuku gave him as he handed over the drink. He felt sick the entire time he was at the hospital, reluctant to leave and yet so relieved when Izuku insisted he go home because the hospital had to be doing strange things to Eijiro’s head. The entire way home he poured over his state of thought, twisted into a ball of guilt and frustration over how he could think such things, or allow for such doubts! It seemed to taint every thought he had, until he couldn’t even worry over Izuku insisting he needed to walk home with Kacchan in order to “talk things out” without that evil seed of doubt whispering how strange it was that after everything that had happened, Izuku would want to walk his partner home.

And what place did Eijiro have to ask a question like that? No matter how much it niggled in his ear, making him wonder, making him question. Why would Izuku want to walk Kacchan home? Because that was his boyfriend! And sure he had places he could stay, resources for distance, space, a chance at escape, a chance to leave, but so what if he’d rather go back to his boyfriend! That was part of the game, wasn’t it? Part of the way they twisted you and kept you there! Why should he think so critically! If Izuku wanted to walk with his boyfriend, he should!

But…what if Kacchan didn’t want to walk with Izuku?

Kacchan left frequently after their fights. In fact, he was always the one who left, storming around who knew where for a few hours before returning, stomping back up the stairs and down the hall, announcing to everyone that he was back almost as loudly as he’d informed them all he was leaving. Where was there for him to go if nobody was going to come and get him? Where were the people insisting he leave, taking him back to their apartments and offering to let him sleep on their couches with all the misguided fury of people too stupidly believing in their own kin and friendships over the obvious truth that Kacchan was a monster? If Eijiro met them, he’d rip them a new one right along with Kacchan, but they weren’t there and he’d never met them, so where did Kacchan go and what did he do when Izuku never left? Because Izuku had places, he had friends—one right below him! But Eiji always went to him. Izuku didn’t go away, and Eijiro would never insinuate that this meant that Izuku deserved it—he most certainly did not—but…

Eijiro shook his head, snapping himself out of that train of thought, unwilling to indulge it and dig himself further into this grave. It was ugly and wrong, he wouldn’t allow it—he couldn’t. He couldn’t betray Izuku like this. It was none of his business to be concerned about what Kacchan needed or wanted, he’d forfeited that right long ago.

Instead, he simply rolled over, pulled the covers up and tucked them under his chin, and then tried to fall asleep.

“He’s out?” Kirishima asked, surprised at Izuku’s news. He glanced around his cubicle for a moment before ducking just a little lower.

“Yeah. He doesn’t have a concussion so I can’t really keep him in. Besides, he lost so many jobs because of all the bruising that he’s desperate to make them up as soon as he can,” Izuku replied, voice sounding much less wet and wobbly than before.

He’d called just a few moments earlier, snuffling and sad because of another argument, one that Eijiro hadn’t been home to hear this time.

“H-he’s angry at me for slamming the door on him,” Izuku had sobbed, trying to sound put together and failing. “I-I lost him all those gigs and he blames me. He just said all these horrible things about h-how I always do this to him, a-and I’m trying to control him by taking away the only thing h-he has left.”

Eijiro had been eight minutes from his lunch break, so he’d crammed himself into his cubicle as small and unnoticeable as possible to insist that Kacchan was wrong and comfort the poor guy, trying to fight through the other man’s sobs as he swore up and down that Izuku was good and he hadn’t done anything to be ashamed of. After all, self-defense wasn’t wrong, even someone like Eijiro knew that.

“Are you sure you’re okay? I can try and come back if you want.”

“No, no it’s okay,” Izuku hiccupped.

“Oh, okay,” he replied skeptically, pausing for a moment as he weighed the merit of the question that had been burning a hole in his head since that night. He’d been trying to bury it, along with all the other horrible things he’d been thinking that night, but it kept rooting it’s way up above ground, refusing to die, insisting it was innocent and the question justified. Taking a deep breath, he indulged the undead question, breathing it out in one nervous go. “Hey Izuku, Do you know where he goes? When he leaves?”

“Huh?” Izuku responded, sounding a little caught off guard. He always sounded that way when people asked him questions like that—confused or surprised, but never upset. He was good like that, never offended at the questions. Eijiro liked that about him, it took a great deal to be the bigger person and see the best in people when they asked such personal and even accusing questions. He wouldn’t have judged him for taking offense honestly, who was Eijiro to ask him about his abusive partner like this was an investigation or something?

“Sorry, I don’t mean you need to keep track of him or anything, or to insinuate something! It’s just that he’s always storms out on you and I just…uh…wondered,” Eijiro explained, feeling chagrined despite Izuku’s friendliness.

“Oh. Uh, no, I don’t know,” the other man replied. “H-he doesn’t really talk to me about that stuff. I guess I just assumed to his parents’?”

“Huh, I thought you said he’s on bad terms with his parents?” Eijiro asked, biting his tongue and inwardly cursing as the thought slipped out.

What on earth had gotten into him? What was he thinking, nitpicking everything Izuku said like he was some sort of witness being cross-examined? He had nothing to prove! Why couldn’t Eijiro just keep his mouth shut?

“Oh, I told you that?” Izuku said, sounding a little strained. “Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have, Kacchan wouldn’t like anyone knowing. I don’t even remember telling anyone, it must’ve been when I was freaking out or something, wasn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say you were ‘freaking out’,” Eijiro argued. He hated the way Izuku always undermined his feelings like that—probably Kacchan’s doing. Nothing Izuku did was “freaking out”, he’d been realistically upset that night, just like every other night. “But I won't say a word, I promise.”

“Thanks Kiri, you’re the best,” Izuku said, his smile so warm it made it through the telephone wires. Eijiro smiled back, forgetting for a moment his friend couldn’t see him.

“It’s nothing, I’m just glad I can be here for you,” he replied bashfully, wincing as his cubicle neighbor stood up, glancing down over into Eijiro’s and frowning judgmentally before walking off for lunch.

“I really appreciate it, Ei,” Izuku insisted. “I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you here to help me. You're a loyal friend...”

And if that didn’t just leave a burning ball of guilt in Eijiro’s stomach. He spent the rest of his day feeling sick.

Chapter Text

Things were mostly quiet in the upstairs apartment after Izuku’s call. And Eijiro, ever the optimist, found himself hoping for the best. Maybe this last time had finally shocked them out of it. Maybe Kacchan had realized how horrible he’d been and apologized, finally scared out of it by Izuku standing up for himself and both of them ending up in the hospital. Maybe the police had had a chat with them despite their staunch refusal to get any authorities involved, or maybe, by some stroke of luck, Kacchan had finally gotten tired and given up. Either way, Eijiro was relieved, both for his own sleeping schedule and for Izuku, to hear radio silence from above.

Instead, it came from the window.

It was maybe the eighth day since the call, the fourth since Eiji had started to play with the idea of a new age of peace and quiet, when he happened to leave his window open after a particularly spectacular failure that involved a fish and a timer he’d definitely forgotten to set. The apartment had just started to finally start smelling normally and lose the smoky haze when the first strains of the argument wafted in, the words unclear but the voices familiar. One was shrill and stuttered, the other gruff and sharp, both of them incredibly inappropriate in tone and volume, but neither caring.

As they drew closer to his window Eijiro couldn’t but tiptoe over and peer out, trying to be stealthy so as not to get caught. It was rude to make entertainment out of someone else’s argument, he knew, but Eijiro had never had the opportunity to actually see how Izuku and Kacchan’s fights went. The most he got was a few muddled words and what Izuku reported to him, which admittedly left a lot to the imagination. The context would help in the future, he tried to tell himself. And besides, if they were making a spectacle, shouldn’t they expect spectators?

With a small curse, Eijiro corrected himself, shaking his head in frustration at his own problematic thinking. If Kacchan was making a spectacle he should expect spectators.

“Then why’d you say it, Deku?”

“I didn’t say—“

“Yes, you did! The moment you got a chance you brought it up!”

Eijiro crouched on the floor, poking his head up past the windowsill and watching. It looked like the two of them, Kacchan and Izuku, had come from a dinner or something. Both of them were dressed relatively nicely, in button downs and dark pants, hands shoved in pockets before being whipped out to gesture wildly at each other. They would’ve looked nice together, except they were both so clearly agitated that even someone blind and deaf would have picked up on the animosity flowing between the two. Even just three stories up, Eijiro felt like he could cut the tension with a knife.

They were coming close to the apartment complex at this point, hovering close to the stairs so that he had to strain neck to properly see them. He wondered how long they’d been shouting, or rather Kacchan shouting and Izuku probably being utterly humiliated and trying to keep the conversation quiet. The blond was gesturing wildly, jabbing a finger towards Izuku with each accusation while the other man looked seconds away from bursting out into tears.

He should do something, but he found himself glued to the spot and his tongue dry and numb as he watched.

“It’s not my fault I made a mistake!” Izuku squeaked back, his voice riddled with frustration and sounding a little waterlogged. “Other people can make mistakes, you know!”

You tell him, Izuku, Eijiro thought to himself.

“But that’s the f*cking problem,” Kacchan shouted, waving his hands in the air. “It’s a mistake right? I’m just supposed to fucking let it go? So then why the fuck can’t you let go of anything?!? Why are MY mistakes still coming up?

Eijiro wondered which of many mistakes this was that the blond was getting so defensive over. Eijiro would be more than happy to remind him of any number of them.

“Because your actions have consequences, Kacchan!” Izuku snapped back, giving just as good as he was getting. “You just want me to pretend like it never happened?!?”

“Hell yeah,” Eijiro muttered. Kacchan looked cowed at the outburst, the mighty brought low. So much for pushing the little guy around.

“You bullied me Kacchan!” Izuku pressed on, using his turn at dominating the argument to jab his finger in Kacchan’s chest just like his boyfriend had moments earlier. “You made me feel like shit! And now you want to walk around and act like everything is fine and do whatever the hell you want?!”

Ah, so it was the big one. Surprisingly, Izuku had been rather open about his and Kacchan’s past. In fact, Eijiro remembered feeling a little flustered with how forward he’d been about it, confessing on that first night the years of abuse followed by a heart-wrenching make-up, a promise to start over, and now more of that same behavior no matter how Izuku had tried to sweep it under the rug. Prime example of someone who’d been manipulated into normalizing and even romanticizing someone’s horrible behavior, in Eijiro’s opinion. The anonymous forum had agreed.

“It’s not about doing whatever I wa-“Kacchan started to reply, his voice low and growly. Izuku quickly cut him off, and Eijiro couldn’t help but grin. It was kind of nice to see the asshole get a taste of his own medicine.

“Yes it is! It’s always about you, Kacchan, ALWAYS! What do you think it’s like having to put up with you day in and out? All you ever do is nitpick and complain, you refuse to take accountability for anything, you just blame me all the time! Do you have any idea what that’s like? It was a mistake, Kacchan—A MISTAKE!”

If Eijiro hadn’t been far too aware of his precarious predicament he would have thrown up a fist and cheered. He’d never seen Izuku like this before—it was great! Here he was finally standing up for himself, taking what he deserved, getting some gosh dang respect! Eiijiro couldn’t have been prouder. And Kacchan, well, he looked pathetic. It was almost laughable. In just a few seconds Izuku had taken all the wind out of his sales, and now Kacchan looked like a hysterical, bratty child not getting his way—exactly what he was. This was much better than Eijiro had expected!

“NO IT WASN”T!” Kacchan all but shrieked, digging his hands into his hair and pulling for a second, letting out a guttural growl before holding up his hands and counting off on each finger. “It was my friends, and then your friends, and then my mom, and now my fucking boss! Hell, Even the goddamned downstairs neighbor knows!”

Eij panicked for a moment, scrambling to duck behind his curtains, horrified at the thought that he was being spied on. Dear god, had they known he was watching the whole time? Why was Kacchan bringing up him?

The yelling continued, and hesitantly, he poked his head back up to watch the rest. Kacchan’s voice had taken on an even further shriek to it, rough and growly and yet somehow pitched high in a way that made him sound even crazier than before. It made Eijiro wonder if he really should step in and make himself known. Sure, Izuku was running circles around Kacchan in the argument department, but his boyfriend was really working himself up out there, and if Kacchan was about to hit Izuku—

“It’s not one time, Deku! It’s every time—every goddamned time! You can’t leave me one fucking person, much less a fucking job! And then you try and tell me I’m fucking crazy for seeing it? You’re trying to tell me this is my fault? I have eyes, Deku! I know what you’re doing—I know what this is and I’m not going to let you make me go crazy. I’m done! I’m fucking done!

Eijiro frowned. God, he really wished he knew more about what was going on. Was this another modeling gig? Was Kacchan still holding a grudge about the face stuff? If he was so upset he shouldn’t have started shit and he shouldn’t have given Izuku a reason to close the door on him like that. Granted, it was ugly and excessive, but really? Kacchan still just sounded ridiculous. What had Izuku said that could be so bad?

Frustrated and unbearably curious, Eijiro craned his neck further. Somewhere in the argument the two had maneuvered themselves until Izuku was out of his line of sight and only Kacchan could be seen, facing the building and far enough back to be seen over the balcony. He could see perfectly as, in lieu of an answer, or maybe along with an answer too quiet to hear, Izuku reached out. It was a manly gesture. It took a big man to be able to put things aside and hug it out, but Kacchan reacted like he’d been burned, staggering back with a sharp “Don’t touch me!”.

“Kacchan! Stop this already,” Izuku pleaded, loud enough to be heard this time.

“I don’t want to be touched right now,” the blond replied, digging a hand through his hair agitatedly. It was clear he was still boiling mad, but Eijiro was just relieved he was leaving Izuku untouched. In fact, he was almost concerned in Izuku for even attempting. What if he’d gotten close just for Kacchan to swing at him? Izuku really needed to consider his safety more, give the big brat some space so he didn’t get hurt--

Izuku’s response was just a bit too quiet for Eijiro to hear and he strained against his screen to try and make sense of what was happening below. Kacchan’s face was scrunched up in a grimace, and he flinched backwards again as Izuku tried to reach for him once more.

“Give it up, Izuku,” Eijiro muttered under his breath, crouching but ready to spring into action the moment the blond snapped and swung at him, “It’s not worth it.”

“Fucking dammit,” Kacchan said, the quietest he’d been since their arrival and yet his voice still carrying. “I just—fuck it, I’m leaving. Don’t wait up for me.”

Eijiro sighed in relief, glad to see the fight diffusing before it came to blows. But then Izuku came into view again, following Kacchan as he turned to leave.

“Kacchan, stop! You always run away, just come inside and we can talk.”

The blond ignored Izuku, shaking off grabbing hands and continuing to walk away. Eijiro bit his tongue. What was Izuku doing? He’d just faced down a lion and won, why was he chasing it? What the hell was he doing?

“Kacchan!” Izuku tried again, grabbing the other man and wrenching him back with his hold on his jacket. Eijiro was taken aback by the action, and more than ready to call for help as Kacchan stumbled back into his boyfriend, wrenching himself free without a single regard for Izuku. He looked worked up, face flushed and eyes wide. Eijiro suddenly knew what people meant when they said something just “came over” their partner in all those documentaries on domestic violence. Kacchan’s entire posture had changed, he was breathing heavily and the way he looked at Izuku...A knot twisted in Eiji’s gut, a voice telling him he needed to put a stop to this right now. But Izuku didn’t seem to have the same conviction. Instead, he pushed on, grabbing the blond again and shouting; “You always do this! Every time something bad happens and you have consequences to face you run away and make me look like the asshole! Everyone’s always asking where you go and pointing fingers at me! It’s not fair and you’re not doing it this time. Grow up and come inside!”

Eijiro gawked, a mixture of guilt and horror pooling in his guilt at Izuku’s out of character outburst. “Everyone’s always asking where you go and pointing fingers at me”. Was Izuku talking about him? He didn’t—he hadn’t meant—what? And to make it all the worse Izuku was putting his money behind his mouth now, both hands grabbed onto Kacchan and pushing him back towards the apartment, the blond fighting and shouting for Izuku to let him go and get his hands off of him while Izuku just kept shouting for him to come inside and to stop being a “fucking coward”. Eijiro had never heard his friend swear before. He’d never seen him so physical either. He’d never seen Izuku like this at all.

It made him feel sick. Suddenly that knot in his stomach wasn’t worry over Kacchan hurting Izuku, it was a broadened worry for the entire situation and how...how wrong it all was! What the hell was Izukudoing? Kacchan was trying to leave, why was he stopping him—physically stopping him? What on earth was happening?

Frozen to the spot, Eijiro watched as the couple wrestled, one grabbing at body parts, the other trying to wriggle themself free. It was a flurry of limbs, growing more desperate by the nanosecond as Izuku continued to drag Kacchan back towards the apartment stairs. Time seemed to dra, slowing down until Eijiro was watching it in half speed, staying that way until, with a pained cry, Izuku hit the ground, clutching his cheek as Kacchan staggered back, nearly falling himself and looking a bit like a deer in the headlights. Eijiro clutched the windowsill tightly, breath held to the point of bursting as the whole world seemed to be on pause.

“Fuck,” Kacchan gasped, an incredibly eloquent summary of the current situation. And with that, time was moving once more, and Kacchan was staggering away like some cross between a criminal and a wounded animal, Izuku on his butt in the parking lot, still clutching his cheek.

In the end, Eijiro went out to help Izuku back to his apartment. It was awkward, uncomfortable in a way that no other time had been for three very distinct reasons. The first and foremost was that Eiji had been eavesdropping. Not that the two of them had made it very difficult thing to do, but he still felt very sheepish as he wandered out to help Izuku off the pavement. The second was that he was fairly certain Izuku had been talking about him when he’d mentioned how everyone was pointing fingers at him and, well, he liked to think they both knew that wasn’t fair. And third, because people were staring, obviously. There was no way there weren’t more people like Eijiro trying to secretly get the scoop on this screaming fit and inevitable fallout. And having now inserted himself, even as the part of a hero, felt like inserting himself as a character in a very embarrassing theatre production. It made shame burn unexpectedly deep in his gut. Maybe that was because of a fourth and entirely unrealized source of awkwardness until Eijiro was inside and cleaning the blood from around the scrape on Izuku’s cheek.

Because Izuku kind of deserved this one.

Not that Eijiro was—was an abuse apologist! Okay, so maybe this made him one, and he was sorry for it, so incredibly sorry, but he had morals, and this—this was weirdly half in and half out and all over the place in a way that didn’t fit into either category of good and evil. Izuku should have—Kacchan shouldn’t have either, and the yelling was uncalled for, but Izuku should have let him go. And it was probably equally wrong of Eijiro, equally as unforgivable for him to think this way about a victim, but it changed things and Eijiro couldn’t shake it from his head that Izuku had been the one to push things to a snapping point, both figuratively and literally. And was that terrible to say? Because Eiji could think of a million ways that a victim could push their abuser to snap and still not have deserved what happened, but Izuku’s situation felt entirely different. He’d grabbed Kacchan. When Kacchan had wanted to leave, to walk away from the situation while Izuku was still untouched, Izuku had chased him down and tried to force him into the apartment. And all Eiji could think was that if he didn’t know everything he already did he might have assumed that the blond was the one in need of saving, not his companion.

Yet, there was still an insurmountable amount of guilt at the thought of condemning Izuku in the slightest. Yelling and hitting and everything that Kacchan had done to Izuku for the past months that Eijiro had been around were unacceptable. Of that, Eijiro had no questions. But the shift in dynamic that tonight had brought had removed his friend from the angelic pedestal of innocence Eiji had so foolishly propped him up onto. In all his time, all of this had seemed so cut and dry, so black and white. Now, the waters lay muddy, the growing evidence not yet quite enough to tip the scale out of Izuku’s favor, but the two sides growing more dangerously even in a way that simply did not sit well with the way the world seemed like it ought to be.

And how could that not make you feel like a garbage human? To begin to question and doubt the validity of your abused friend’s innocence? To begin to wonder if they themselves didn’t bring some of this on themselves? What sort of person thought that way? Eijiro apparently, which made putting Izuku back together tonight all the worse.

“Eiji, are you okay?”

Eijiro startled out of his personal musings at the question, snorting at the absurdity of it as he focused once again on disinfecting the bruising cheek.

“That’s a silly question. I should be the one asking you,” he replied, feeling like the smile he gave was just a bit too forced. Izuku didn’t seem to notice returning it with a genuine one. It shifted the scrapes, and he winced, dropping it quickly.

“Thanks again for helping. That was…embarrassing. I guess you probably heard quite a bit.”

Eijiro schooled himself into his best attempt at neutrality. It probably failed, and he couldn’t help but look at least a bit chagrined as he replied.

“Yeah, just a bit.”

“And what did you think?” Izuku asked, tilting his head to the side to give Eiji just a bit more access.

Eijiro paused. What did he think? He was disappointed, for one. Frustrated that not even the idea that people were hearing and seeing it happen would keep Izuku’s partner from screaming and shouting at him. He was bothered at the way that with every attempt to quiet or settle the conversation Kacchan seemed to grow just a little more crazed, like the very idea of Izuku wanting some dignity to be maintained was enough to make him scream. In at least five to ten different ways, Eiji could think of how inappropriate or unacceptable the whole thing was and how Izuku should dump his boyfriend’s ass and get out before things got any worse. But a stronger memory kept cycling through his head, coming to the forefront quicker and with more force than any other.

“I-uh,” Eiji started, unsure how to ask this question that he needed an answer for, but felt so incredibly guilty for asking. “When he tried to leave…why didn’t you just let him go?”

And that really was the catalyst of tonight, wasn’t it? What had taken a screaming match to a near brawl—at least in the context of what Eiji had seen and heard. And it was a telling thing, this refusal of Izuku’s to let his partner leave, whether Eijiro liked to think about it or not. Because it reflected something he’d been pondering from the start: Why didn’t Izuku just leave Kacchan’s ass?

Why did he stay, and more than stay, why was he never the one to leave, never one to spend a night at a friend’s while things cooled down or slam a door and walk away? Why was it that when the yelling happened upstairs Izuku was always at least 50% of the noise he heard? Why, when it had been so clear that his partner was past the point of reasoning with or emotional maturity to deal with the conflict, had he been persistent? Persistent until it had no longer been an innocent partner begging their significant other to stay and talk things out, but rather an arguing boyfriend literally dragging their partner into a private apartment in the name of privacy, against that partner’s will?

Eijiro would take any answer. Izuku could have told him he was tired of being yelled at, he’d just dealt with it for so long he’d snapped. Hell, he could have even said he just finally wanted revenge for everything Kacchan was doing to him, and he would be satisfied. He just needed any answer, to save it from being just a mystery in his head for which he concocted up all the solutions, wrapped in an ugly, unfair mixture of blame that felt taboo to bestow on anyone but Kacchan.

But, maybe he hadn’t made that understandable when he asked, because Izuku’s response was not good. His face fell, his eyes turning steely and hard, his shoulders rising defensively as he pulled away, staring at Eijiro like he was the enemy.

“I don’t mean to imply anything,” Eijiro rushed to explain, stumbling through the words to express that he believed Izuku. He really did, he wasn’t blaming him for tonight, he just wanted to know, to understand. “I just am wondering why you did, uh…what you did.”

The explanation seemed to fall on deaf ears, or else Eijiro, even at his best intentions, had fallen too far into the cesspit of whatever deep and disgusting pool held all the horrible people who mocked and belittled victims and their stories to realize his own blunder. He wasn’t trying to discredit Izuku, he wasn’t trying to do anything but understand what had happened and why his friend had done what he had, but the stormy look on Izuku’s face communicated well enough that regardless, Eijiro had fucked up.

“You think I deserved what happened,” Izuku said, his voice quiet and clipped. Eijiro scrambled backwards, his instincts screaming at him to create distance. He flailed his arms, trying to appease his friend.

“No! No not at all!” he denied. Izuku’s face twisted, something both wrathful and distraught maring his usually cheery features.

“Then why would you ask me that?” the man asked, his voice shrill and clearly upset, just shy of a shout. He sounded like he had with Kacchan.

“I didn’t—I’m sorry,” Eijiro begged, falling into a deep bow in an attempt to appease. “I didn’t mean to insinuate anything!”

Izuku seemed to be at war with himself for a moment, half words and frustrated grunts falling from his lips before he made up his mind, passing final judgement on Eijiro. “Just go,” he snapped. “I want to be alone.” And Eijiro promptly and gratefully fled the apartment.

Chapter Text

Eijiro took the stairs two at a time and slamming his back against the door of his own apartment the moment he was in, sliding down until he was crouched on the floor, leaning against it as he laid his head in his palms and ran a hand through his hair to try and sooth himself. He was surprised to realize how much the spat with Izuku had affected him. He was shaking, his heart pounding a mile a minute and his stomach in knots. Izuku had just been so…there was just something about the way the emotion in the room and around him had just ratcheted up so suddenly, like a dial gone from 10 to 100 in the blink of an eye. It made Eijiro feel like he was acting on instinct, not reason, left with no time to respond, only enough to act.

Eijiro had never argued with Izuku before. He rarely argued with anyone, too passive and people pleasing to ever get there. Maybe he just wasn’t used to the negative emotion that came with someone being upset with him anymore. Maybe it was just that it had all already been a big night and things were weird. But he just felt so shaken by Izuku’s response. He couldn’t get his shrill voice and steely eyes out of his head. It was like a hair trigger, which made sense given everything Izuku had been through that night, so maybe for Eijiro to be so shocked and so…so hurt wasn’t fair, but he was still shaken.

For lack of a better term, it had been intense. Izuku was intense when he was emotional. And when it was love or affection or just about anything positive Ejiro loved it. It soothed that insecure piece of him that never could quite stop asking if people really liked him, if he really was all that great. But when it was negative? All Eijiro could think of to describe it was like being forced into an oven and then someone slamming the door shut and turning it on broil. It was a sudden and overwhelming flash of heat, high intensity and overwhelming, and suddenly Eijiro was finding himself sympathizing with someone he really didn’t want to. His flight instincts had never kicked in so strong.

He just—it was just—he’d never been on the receiving end of anything but positivity from Izuku. It was a little terrifying. And given this whale of a night… Now he had no food, a drafty apartment, the unfortunate dishonor of being recognized by the abusive boyfriend who lived upstairs, and a probably now no-longer-friend. It was one hell of a night that was for sure.

Miserably, Eijiro pulled out a cup of instant ramen, the kind he saved for emergencies just like this. While it heated up, he wrestled out of his clothes, taking care to close the curtains lest he add to the night’s events with a strip tease. He padded around in his boxers, moping and feeling sorry for himself as he stabbed through the Styrofoam cup on the way to the couch and spilled hot broth all over his bare thigh. He ended up using his throw blanket to wipe it off, cursing when he realized that now his blanket was tainted, and he’d either have to cuddle with ramen or get up and get another one from the bedroom.

Someone knocked at the door while he was still deciding what to do, and with anther groan, he wrapped himself in the ramen blanket, peeking through the peephole to see a familiar figure. Anxiously, he opened the door, cracking it enough to poke his head out instead of throwing it wide and inviting Izuku in the way he usually did. Call him unforgiving, but he just wasn’t feeling all that warm and welcoming at the moment.

“Hi,” Izuku said, looking sheepish. He scratched at the back of his head awkwardly, his gaze lowered and body hunched over. He looked a lot more like the Izuku Eijiro was used to.

“Hi,” Eiji returned, a little more relieved. Izuku’s intent was clear in his body language.

“I just wanted to apologize,” he said, finally meeting Eijiro’s gaze. “I was worked up, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“Oh, it was nothing. I’m sorry I asked,” Eijiro replied, relieved to have things smoothed over and ready to reinstall Izuku as a friend. Though it’d been hardly an hour since the falling out, he’d been feeling the full effects of a friendship breakup. He was relieved to be spared the whole fiasco, especially as he had no ice cream in his fridge to sooth away the pain.

Izuku smiled, looking relieved that things were mended between them. He stepped back with a bounce, tucking his hands in his pockets.

“Well, I should go. I just didn’t want to leave things the way they were. Uh, goodnight!”

“Goodnight!” Eijiro agreed, waving Izuku off before closing the door and wandering back over to the couch, pleasantly surprised at the unexpected upturn his evening had taken. It didn’t make up for the fish or the ramen blanket, but all things considered, he was relieved and encouraged. He was so lucky to have such a kind and forgiving friend!

Things were quiet again for the first few nights after the upstairs neighbors’ very public falling out. Eijiro appreciated it. He wasn’t sure if he could take the emotional frenzy that usually came after the big fallouts. It took a lot, admittedly, to be able to be there for Izuku the way he needed. He was a big-emotions sort of guy, the kind who felt extreme and often needed extreme responses in turn. Eijiro was always happy to be there, happy to help, but it did tend to tire him out a bit, and he still wasn’t totally over everything that had happened with the fight outside and Izuku snapping at him.

Maybe he was holding a grudge. He didn’t feel any resentment per say towards Izuku. But it still just sat and rattled In the back of his said sometimes, in the same mental container as the hospital and the scene of Izuku trying to drag his partner inside like some sort of serial killer. He was imagining it as a mixing bowl, with all the memories like ingredients inside On their own they were just what they were, butter, eggs, sugar—the hospital, the grabbing, the snapping. But together in the bowl they sort of knocked together and broke apart and then mushed into a creamed mixture. Was it a cookie? No. But how many more things might they put in there until it was?

It was an odd metaphor, he knew, but it described things well enough in his head that he left that idea feeling enlightened. He didn’t think Izuku was at fault, he didn’t think he was an abuser himself. Izuku wasn’t a cookie. But the ingredients…well, some incidents didn’t make Izuku a cookie. It was if there were all the incidents.

And sure, Eijiro was still a little bit lost even with the metaphor. It helped him decide what Izuku was, but it didn’t exactly help him decide what to do about it. Nobody ever told you what to do with an almost-abuser. It wasn’t like you could eat the ingredients as they were, it wasn’t a cookie yet, you might get salmonella! So then…what did you do? It wasn’t so black and white and simple when you couldn’t quite use that label, but pure and entirely innocent didn’t fit Izuku anymore either. And that left Eijiro in limbo. Izuku was uncatagorizable. Neither fully evil nor fully pure, his judgement remained to be seen. And while that still made Eijiro feel like a shitty human, it made him feel just a little less like it knowing that he wasn’t sending Izuku from one extreme to the other, just settling him somewhere nice along the middle.

The only problem was that as Izuku gravitated towards the center, so too did Kacchan. Much slower, albeit, but he was slinking ever closer to a territory that made Eijiro very uncomfortable to welcome him into. And yet, his sense of justice made it equally uncomfortable to make Kacchan stay where he was. Because if Eijiro was so eager to help Izuku because he was a victim of an abuser and to abuse someone was wrong, then that shouldn’t change no matter who it was with and to, right? Sure, it made everything muddy and gross and shameful, and anyone who heard Eijiro’s thoughts would probably be horrified, but consistency was good, wasn’t it? After all, wasn’t that what integrity was—doing the right thing no matter if it made you look good or not? And he’d highlighted integrity as one of his best qualities on his resume, so he’d better live up to it.

And live up to it he was trying, especially when every washer was full and at least one was done and waiting to be taken out. It was so tempting just to pull out the wet clothing and either throw it in one of the dryers or leave it on the table for someone to get and hang out to dry. It would serve them right, letting it sit while good people waited to wash their clothing! Eijiro only did this once every two weeks—just so long as his underwear stash could stretch—was it too much to ask that he be able to clean his clothing with the same dignity and swiftness of any other man?

He looked at the washers plaintively, still limbo-ing between intrusively presumptive and fatally polite when the door to the room slammed open and the last person in the apartment that he would ever want to see strode in. Kacchan took one look at him and curled his lip in an ugly sneer, brushing past him with a dusty pink laundry basket on his hip that completely undermined the bad boy demeanor he was going for.

“Good evening,” Eijiro said, because it was thoroughly ingrained in him to be overly polite. His bow went unobserved and he stiffly leant himself against the folding table while Kacchan busied himself with one of the washers. All he received for his greeting was a derisive snort, which Eijiro could admit he probably deserved, at least in the other man’s eyes. He was, after all, just the nosey upstairs neighbor who knew too much. Although, he still wasn’t sure exactly what exactly he was in trouble for knowing…exactly.

It was an incredibly awkward minute between them, Kacchan taking his sweet time unloading the drying while Eijiro tried not to make it look like he was waiting. He swore the other man was going slowly on purpose, stopping to shake out each damp shirt and look it over before draping it over the side of the basket. Eijiro was about to lose his mind, his instincts telling him to start up a conversation and be polite while his brain said kick him into the machine, lock the door, and turn it on high. And then he caught a flash of familiar colors and his body went on autopilot.

“Is that All Might? I loved that series when I was a kid. It’s not as good as Crimson Riot, but the crossover episodes were amazing.”

Kacchan stiffened, giving Eijiro the filthiest side-glare he’d ever experienced.

“Are you a fan?” Eijiro asked again, his big, stupid mouth moving on its own and digging him further into a hole he wanted very much not to be in. Why couldn’t he just shut up and hate the guy from afar?

“No.” Kacchan replied, revealing his hand as probably the worst person in the world. He wasn’t a fan of All Might and Crimson Riot? They were classics!

“Oh,” Eijiro replied, because what else was there to say. How could you continue on a conversation with someone who didn’t even like the best superhero shows in the entire world? UA Heroes was the cinematic universe to top all universes!

They went back to their awkward silence, Kacchan finally pawing through the last of the clothing and gesturing to the washer dryly, the sneer still curled across his face. Eijiro just looked at the machine blankly. He wasn’t stupid, he knew a trap when he saw one. He’d had the same dang idea, no way was he getting locked in a washer and spin-cycled to death.

Realizing his plan was foiled, Kacchan scoffed and rolled his eyes. He might have said something under his breath too, but Eijiro couldn’t quite make it out. And that should have been the end of it, as Kacchan brushed right back past Eijiro with every intention of their meeting ending, but the abhorrent and evil need to be loved or at the very least not-hated grabbed Eijiro with its snaky little hands again, and before he knew it he’d blurted out something incredibly stupid.

“He shouldn’t have done that!”

Kacchan paused in his steps, glancing back at Eijiro like he’d grown a second head, which Eijiro could admit he himself felt rather similarly. If he could exit his body, he would turn on his heel and glare bloody confused murder at himself too.

“You were wrong to yell at him like that, especially out in public. It’s humiliating,” Eijiro said, because if he was going to say the other thing, it was only right that this be said too, for integrity’s sake. “But he shouldn’t have grabbed you. It was wrong too.”

And now that his big, fat nose was properly inserted into none of his business, Eijiro gave himself up to sweet death.

But Kacchan didn’t move. In fact, his face hadn’t so much as twitched since Eijiro had elaborated on his own stupidity. The only thing that had changed were his eyes, somehow softening into not an angry confusion—a “why the hell are you even talking to me?” sort of confusion—and into something softer. Maybe a “why on earth would you ever say that to me?” sort of look. Neither were particularly enjoyable to be on the receiving end of.

Eijiro supposed the word for it was shocked. Kacchan looked shocked. But then again, before he could really back it up with facts and logic, the face was gone and the vicious sneer back in place as the man gave a disgusted scoff and slammed the door behind him on the way out, leaving Eijiro to wonder if he’d said something very right, or if he should find somewhere else to sleep tonight.

He spent all night thinking about it, trying to analyze the look on Kacchan’s face, or think out how this was definitely going to bite him in the ass at some point. He shouldn’t have said anything, he should have said more,--who knew! All he knew was that he couldn’t get the interaction out of his head, for better or for worse.

Chapter Text

Ejiro fully expected consequences for speaking up that night in the laundry room. He braced himself for it, for Izuku’s betrayed face or Kacchan’s wrathful revenge. But a week went by and nobody ever addressed it. In fact, he was even invited up Thursday night, after the usual screaming, slamming, and stomping that signified his friend was alone and probably in need of some emotional TLC. And despite his worry, the next Saturday evening that Eijiro slunk down to do his laundry, he met Kacchan again and didn’t even immediately die.

It was awkward at first. The blond was perched on a folding table and aggressively scrolling through his phone. He was clearly agitated, his movements sharp and his face pinched into a permanent snarl more severe than his regular one. Eijiro froze, obviously, putting two and two together and getting that he was in big trouble. But Kacchan merely glanced at him, huffing and going back to his phone instead of pinning Eji up against the wall and threatening to kill him. And that, combined with the fact that his only pair of nice work pants had coffee stains on the lap that he’d forgotten to wash out when he’d gotten home yesterday, gave him courage. He walked in and went about his business, overly aware, but pretending not to be, of the clearly angry and frequently volatile person perched close enough to have suspicious and dangerous access to Eijiro at a truly vulnerable time.

The layout of the room required Ejiro to turn his back to Kacchan in order to do his laundry, and he could feel the other man’s presence behind him the entire time. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and he glanced over his shoulder constantly. He was certain Kacchan was looking at him, although the reflection in the glass door was too distorted to tell, and every nervous glance he made over his shoulder proved nothing.

Why the other man was even down here when there was still 25 minutes on the only other load going through themachines was beyond him, and he wished with everything in him that the other would leave. But Kacchan didn’t. He stayed angry and he stayed where he was, making Eijiro’s skin crawl, until whatever it was agitating him finally became too much.

“He hates when you put things on the top shelves in the cupboards because he can’t reach, so you put things that are yours and you don’t want him to touch up there. But then he always gets mad at you because he says that’s keeping things from him, but that doesn’t even matter because even though he says he can’t reach you keep finding half your fucking snacks gone anyway and he’s the only one who could be eating them. So you confront him and tell him to fucking knock it off because they’re your snacks, and he insists that you share everything, and it’s not fair for you to keep things to yourself. But THAT’s not fair because he has his shit and you don’t mess with it. So who’s wrong?”

Eijiro froze like a deer in the headlights the moment the other man started speaking. At first, he was too panicked to even digest what the other was saying, and then he had to rewind in his head and try and remember how Kacchan had opened the story while digesting what he was saying at the present, leaving him to sift through utter confusion and for several moments after the other man had stopped weaving his story.

The most immediate impression Eijiro could grasp was the surprise and curiosity in the fact that this was the most Izuku’s boyfriend had ever said to him. He wondered why on earth was Kacchan telling him this. And then with some strange sense of honor and horror, it finally sunk in that oh god, he was being asked to judge Kacchan’s fight with Izuku.

Eijiro balanced the terrible task set before him and all its consequences. Why was he being asked? If he answered, would his words only be brought up to Izuku and thrown in his face? Was Kacchan trying to turn him against his friend? And what if he didn’t answer in the man’s favor? Would the blond become angry? Did he expect Eiji to support him?

But then again, what if he was being genuine? What if this was someone who really wanted to know what was right and what was wrong? The way Izuku had grabbed him that night, trying to wrestle him back inside---

What if he genuinely didn’t know when he was in the right and when he was in the wrong, and this was him going to someone who had actually told him, for once, what was good and what wasn’t? What if this was the fruit born of Eijiro’s last words to him? What if this could change things for the better? For Izuku?

“Well,” Eijiro finally croaked, cautious and unsure how much or how little to say. He was thinking on his feet, trying to accurately parse out what information he’d been given and work towards an answer that neither dismissed the immediate red flags he could pick out in the man’s story, nor would encourage or excuse Kacchan’s previous behavior. Somehow, he needed to be able to say it all, and yet he didn’t think he even knew how to express the level of nuance he felt towards the scene the blond had set. “I guess I would start by asking myself if I had communicated to my partner that these were things I didn’t want to share…”

“I fucking did!” Kacchan said, his voice raised and agitated. Eijiro winced, certain the other man was going to get up and leave. He certainly looked frustrated enough that Eiji wished he would. But instead, he merely huffed again and settled, pinning Eijiro with a look that was both scathing and expectant.

“Then, I guess I would say that my partner is in the wrong,” Eijiro continued, very carefully. “Because it’s not wrong to have a few things to yourself, like snacks, or a pair of socks you like…and I imagine it would feel kind of violating if, when you asked, and your partner wouldn’t respect something as small as that.”

Nervously, Eijiro picked back over what he’d said, trying to look for any flaws—any promotion of the horrible abuse Izuku had suffered, any possible way what he’d said could be taken as an excuse to yell and hit and punish. He was walking a dangerous line, he knew. If Kacchan wanted to, any of what he’d just said could be claimed as a reason. After all, he was in the right, he had been the one whose privacy was being violated, so why shouldn’t he get to yell at Izuku until he cried? Eijiro just knew that if he heard them yelling tonight he’d be sick, and he’d never be able to face Izuku again. He felt like he’d just damned the poor, battered man to months of suffering, all because Eijiro couldn’t keep his mouth shut and his nose out of others’ business.

But Kacchan didn’t work himself up into a bloodlust frenzy at Eijiro’s proclamation of innocence, or rather, Izuku’s guilt--it was far too obvious the blond wasn’t simply pulling the story out of thin air. It was clearly a scenario still recent and sensitive in the blonde’s psyche. Instead, his shoulders seemed to loosen ever so slightly, and the death grip he’d had on his phone lessened just enough that Eijiro could look at it and wonder how the poor thing hadn’t been crushed to death. Kacchan relaxed, bringing down the tension in the room from a ten to a solid 8, and for a moment, something flashed across his face, a glimmer of relief in his eyes before he sprung back into a ball of angry defensiveness, his lips pursing shut and his brows pinching together and down.

Kacchan sneered, like everything Eijiro had said was stupid and childish, and the he hadn’t just acted like he’d been wandering around in the desert for days and Eiji’s proclamation of not-guilty was a bottle of water. He glared, hopping off the table and walking out the door like their whole conversation had been a waste of his time, leaving his clothing in the washer only 10 minutes away from finished, and Eijiro flabbergasted and a little bit worried.

This guy was such a contrarian. Where did he get off acting so huffy when Eijiro had agreed with him? And worse, what was he storming off to do?

Too scared to hear the consequences, Eiji stayed in the laundry room and waited, praying whatever blow up was about to happen because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut was quiet enough that he could stay selfishly and blissfully ignorant downstairs. He held his breath, waiting with his phone out for the expected text from Izuku, begging him to come up and patch him up or to let him in so he could have someone to process with and a shoulder to cry on.

But nothing happened. The building looked favorably down upon Eijiro, and he heard no sound of an angry couple going at it like cats and dogs. He got no text. Kacchan’s laundry finished, and out of a strange auto-pilot need to be polite, he moved it over to the dryer. He waited ten more minutes, glancing at his phone and flicking through memes that had little to no impact on his usually spongy, meme-thirsty brain.

And then he got impatient. Against all better judgement, Eijiro got fed up with waiting. He headed back for the stairwell, trying to move quietly and keep the echoing down so he could hear any potential rows. At the door to his room, he paused, listening carefully for anything from the upper floors. He was met with silence, and he entered his apartment both skeptical and on edge.

He texted Izuku, and was almost immediately met with emojis of a thumbs up and a smile. The apartment stayed quiet, and Eijiro could hardly believe it. Part of him wanted to ask, to see if Kacchan had even gone back upstairs or just went outside to cool off. Another part wondered if this was just the calm before the storm, and he should brace himself for an ugly night, or an ugly tomorrow. Maybe Kacchan wouldn’t bring it up now, but surely he’d asked Eijiro for a reason. Surely he was just trying to turn Eiji against Izuku, and use it as a weapon? That had to be it, right?

Eiji bit his lip, feeling a confusing concoction of guilt and anger. God, why had he even answered Kacchan? He’d sworn to himself to hate the man forever for what he’d done. That was the only right way to handle things! But here he was giving the guy reasons to—well, to justify what he was doing. What kind of person did something like that? How could Eijiro claim to be anything but a traitor to Izuku, one of the nicest, most kind-hearted people he’d ever met?

And with that decided, Eijiro wallowed in guilt for the rest of the night.

The fight never came. And a week later Kacchan was back in the laundry room with another scenario. But Eji was prepared this time. He’d sworn he would never reply. He’d ignore him and if he wouldn’t take silence for an answer, Eijiro would just tell him to fuck off, and probably get the living daylights punched out of him. It was risky, but he was mentally prepared.

“He wants you to have dinner with his mom, but they scheduled it over your work. You tell him you can’t go. He says reschedule or don’t show, and that he would have done that if it was your parents. You tell him that’s not fair because you need the work and he didn’t say anything until now and he tells you ‘don’t bother, you’ve already made it clear you don’t give a shit about his family’, and now he’s giving you the silent treatment. Who’s wrong?”

“Why can’t they just reschedule?”

Eijiro smacked his head against the dryer as the words came out before his brain could wire his jaw shut. He cursed, mostly because of his big, stupid mouth, but also because hitting the dryer had hurt.

“Because that’s not the point,” Kacchan replied, raising his voice and making it quiver in a way that was very reminiscent of a shared acquaintance of theirs. “The point is that you don’t care about anything but what you’re doing, you care about a stupid job over what’s important to me!”

“That’s not fair,” Eijiro said again, once more cursing his big, stupid, autopilot mouth. He wasn’t supposed to talk to this guy! What was he doing?!?!

Determined not to say a damned word more, Eijiro pursed his lips and got to his feet, hoisting his laundry basket onto his hip and heading for the exit to do his folding upstairs. He determinedly did not look at Kacchan as he went, but as he reached for the door the other man asked another question.

“Then what is fair?”

And Eiji, well, he was a traitor and a sucker, because Kacchan’s voice sounded almost as vulnerable as Izuku’s, almost as innocent and honest as a victim instead of the perpetrator, and in that instant a shameful amount of the wherewithal Eijiro had built up crumbled. He just…he almost felt sorry for Kacchan when the man asked the question like that—like he honestly didn’t know what was fair to him. And it shouldn’t have mattered because the guy was an ass! The worst kind of person! But Eijro was a weak and traitorous man, and his mind was already slinking back to that scene in the hospital, and the defeated looking guy he’d seen there.

“He should have let you know early enough in advance to get it off from work, or he should have asked about your schedule and planned around it if he expected you to come,” Eijiro started, shifting the basket on his hip and absolutely refusing to make eye contact with the other man perched in his usual spot. He watched Kacchan’s dryer instead, fixating on the blur of colors. “And it’s not fair to make it an either or situation. It’s not that you either go to work or you don’t care. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

A moment of silence passed after Eijiro’s explanation, and the weight of the total betrayal of his intentions hit him like a brick. A second later, he turned and he was jogging up the steps, not waiting to see what Kacchan’s response would be, and just praying he hadn’t completely fucked everything up further.

God, why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut and stop fraternizing with the enemy?

The consequences that followed Eijiro thereafter were heavy and exactly what he deserved, and yet he found himself unable to wriggle out from under the burden he’d allowed to be placed on his shoulders. He was doing double duty now. Every couple of nights he’d end up at Izuku’s, or doing his best to comfort and support over calls and typo-ridden texts. Every laundry day, he became the living version of r/amitheasshole for the other member of that failing relationship, subject to far too detailed stories to be hypothetical and the constant worry that somehow his answers were going to come back to bite him in the butt. And yet, they never did.

By some stroke of luck, Eijiro’s double life remained unnoticed by Izuku. The man had no clue that after his heartfelt sobs about his cold and callous boyfriend, Eijiro would sneak down to the laundry room only to hear about Kacchan’s obsessive, nitpicking partner. It was positively scandalous, and every night he swore he’d put a stop to it. He’d change his laundry day, he’d go earlier, he’d wait until late at night or until he could hear them fighting upstairs. But somehow, he never could. No, Ejiro was the worst person in the world, because no matter how much he knew he shouldn’t, he kept going back to the laundry room, and he kept letting that bastard taint him.

Eijiro had never wanted to be an abuse apologist. He abhorred the act of abuse and with hardly a second thought he’d have gladly denounced anyone who dared to excuse it or to encourage its existence. But the more he heard of Kacchan’s stories, the less he could firmly say he wanted nothing to do with the man, and it scared him.

For the first few nights, the scenarios presented to Eiiro were trifling and trivial. They were little spats, trifling things said or miniscule actions taken. he found judgement simple and yet complex, and his replies had ranged from innocent to guilty and everything in between. He always felt good about the nights where his verdict fell in Izuku’s favor, or he could at least remind the blond that his harsh behavior was equally as unwelcome as whatever wrongdoing his partner had committed. But more often than not, Eijiro found something hidden and heavy settling into his gut as well, leaving him mentally satisfied with the outcome but instinctually off-put. And that feeling only grew as so too did the scope of Izuku and Kacchan’s relationship through the blonde’s eyes.

Eijiro had always seen Izuku as the embodiment of innocence, a force of good too set in its way to deviate even for the smallest of things. Upon their first meeting and every one since (up until Eijiro became a horrible, horrible person) he had believed beyond a shadow of a doubt all of what the man had said and represented. But, as the nights built up, and the scenarios got more elaborate, Eijiro could not deny that the smiles and tears that came to mind at Izuku’s name took on an almost sinister nature in his mind.

The Izuku in Kacchan’s stories was vindictive and mean. He took pleasure in holding every flaw, every spat, every mistake over his partner’s head, twisting his words and his actions until there was only one clear option in which there would be peace, and always at the expense of one person’s happiness and character. His ill-intentions and inability to yield on even the smallest of issues seemed to permeate every aspect of life, until even something as simple as the placement of a toothbrush might become the end of the world. And as each story added and added, it only got worse.

Which brought Eijiro to now, almost five months since that first time he’d bumped into Kacchan in the laundry room. He was more uncertain than he’d ever been, and terrified by the duel images that lived inside his head. Two parallel stories mirrored each other, one pulling at his gut, the other at his mind, until he was being ripped in two, still so unsure of who to believe and what to do. It made laundry an almost terrifying prospect.

Kacchan looked worse for wear tonight. Normally, he was composed. Maybe a bit agitated, maybe a bit prickly, but always put together. At his worst, Eijiro had only ever seen him in a nice looking pair of joggers and a fitted tank top, and even then, he’d looked like he’d walked right off a shoot with perfectly plucked eyebrows and flawless muscles bulging. It’d put Ei’s stained sweatpants and floppy, should’ve-showered-yesterday hair to shame. But, today Kacchan looked…rough. His hair was a mess, like someone had ruffed it up and not in the effortless, sexy way. His face was blotchy too, eyes puffy and bloodshot with dark shadows underneath.

“He went through your phone,” The man started the moment Eijiro had closed the door behind him. “He saw that you were planning to start trying to move out and he got angry. Overnight you start losing gigs one right after another, they just keep calling and saying something’s come up or they’ve changed direction. But it’s fine, you just schedule new shoots, but then he starts getting angry again, and he starts nitpicking fucking everything and trying to start arguments. It’s like he’s trying to get you riled up, asking for a fight, and you keep trying to leave but he never lets you. He just keeps going after you until you get mad enough to try and make him let you leave, and then he hits you.”

Eijiro sucked in a breath, pausing in sorting out his darks and lights. He used to just throw everything in together on cold, but now that Kacchan is here most of the time he feels judged. The other man hasn’t said anything, but Eiji can see the way he curls his lip in disgust every time he throws it all in one load.

God, so there it was. He’d finally said it, the thing Eijiro had been dreading and yet anxiously waiting to hear. This admission, this uttered sentence changed everything. It gave him the permission to think, to honestly wonder and worry if…but then if it was lie—and who was he to say that the fact that Izuku had hit Kacchan meant that Kacchan hadn’t hit Izuku too? It might not change anything at all!

But, holy shit, it changed everything, especially when Kacchan looked like that. And did thinking that make Eijiro a horrible, ugly, no good abuse apologist? Maybe, but when something like this was staring him in the face how could he not at least consider it—Like, genuinely consider it?

“And he keeps aiming for your face--you fucking know he’s doing it on purpose!--and now you’re losing jobs because nobody wants to waste time and money on covering the bruises and you’re months behind rent because you haven’t worked in months and now you can’t leave because you owe him so much money,” Kacchan continued, his voice getting tenser and breathier as he went. “And you can’t stop him because every time you try and fight back he gets hurt a-and he’s telling people you’re doing it to him for fucking fun and now it’s on police records and hospital records, and now nobody wants anything to do with you and anyone thinks your some crazy fucking psycho—“

Before Kacchan could continue the door swung open. Both of them jumped, panic stricken at being caught by Izuku. Instead, a nameless and unfamiliar woman entered, looking anywhere but at them with the sort of desperation that said she knew she’d walked in on something. The room went awkwardly silent as she loaded a bundle of towels into the only empty washer. Eijiro ducked his head, trying to look busy with his waiting pile of dirty laundry, wracking his head for anything to say and coming up empty. It felt like a century before the woman was done and the door slammed shut painfully loud behind her. He couldn’t shake the look she’d shot at him, a look that was confusing, indescribable, but definitely negative, probably because she heard all the fighting too.

Sometimes Eijiro forgot it wasn’t just him and Izuku and Kacchan. Everyone else saw things too, everyone else made their evaluations and none of them thought about this like Eijiro did. A little voice in his head reminded him that was because nobody knew what he knew--what Kacchan was telling him right now-- but it was easily overwhelmed by the embarrassment of what that woman must think. Did she pity him, did she think he was in here getting lectured after being ambushed by that disgusting boyfriend-beater in 415? Or did she think he was cool with it, that he was just hanging out for fun, and he didn’t care what kind of a person it was with?

Either way, the look stayed with him, burrowing into the back of his head as he continued to work through his laundry. During that time, Kacchan had recomposed himself. He looked a little bit more like himself, his frown a little more set and his slouch a little more defensive and unapproachable. He no longer looked on the verge of tears. Eijiro bit his tongue, waiting for the scenario to continue. It took a minute, but when the blond started back up again, there was a familiar edge to his voice that had been missing before.

“But you can’t prove a goddamned thing. He hides his fucking tracks so good and you know he’s aiming for your face on purpose and you know he fucking called those agencies, and he’s been turning your friends against you—you fucking know it—you just can’t prove it and nobody believes you, and you feel like you’re going insane, and Deku won’t admit to anything. whose wrong?”

Eijiro bit his lip, drawing blood when he pressed down too hard and then occupying himself with trying to stop the bleeding instead of answering. It wasn’t that he didn’t know. His gut and his brain both agreed. Red flags—red flags all over. If Izuku had told him this story, he would have acted immediately—offered his apartment, given him the money he needed to pay off the missed rent, gotten him out of there. Hell, he’d already offered those at least a hundred times to Izuku! So why was it any different with Kacchan?

He was still holding onto the what-ifs. That was the problem. Because this was so resolutely, so obviously wrong, and yet he couldn’t let go of the nights spent comforting Izuku and listening to his stories. Sure, it sounded like maybe a lot the guy’s relationship troubles could be fixed if he wasn’t so hard on Kacchan, and sure, what Kacchan said explained a lot of it, but the truth was supposed to be obvious and the first and most obvious thing Eijiro had ever known about this whole situation was that Kacchan was a horrible, abusive boyfriend and Izuku was his victim.

What was he supposed to do? Two sides of the story, each one with such a serious, bone-chilling weight, and here was Eijiro, the world’s worst abuse apologist and a backstabbing traitor if he got this wrong.

All he could think of was that woman’s face.

“It’s…never right to hurt someone, unless it’s in self-defense,” he said very slowly, terrified of saying the wrong thing. He racked his brain for a way to both condemn and yet say nothing, to both say that what was happening was wrong and yet not admit to whom. He just needed to know more first—he needed to see it and to have proof of who was telling the truth.

Eijiro made the mistake of looking up from his laundry, catching Kacchan’s eye. The other man’s eyes were dark, something guarded replacing the open earnestness he’d come to recognize in them with every scenario the other man had put forward—like he’d genuinely wanted to hear what Eiji thought. Now he’d clearly changed his mind. His lip curled into a sneer, and in the blink of an eye he was looking at that cornered animal he’d thought he’d seen that first night returned.

“You too, huh? I should’ve fucking guessed.” He snapped, and before Eijiro could even try to deny, he was out the door, the slam of it falling shut behind him echoing and ringing in his ears for minutes after.

Chapter Text

The fighting got worse for the next week, and Eijiro was entirely convinced it was his fault. They were at it every night, probably during the day too because there were times it was already started by the time he got home from work. At one point, he could have even sworn he heard the sound of glass shattering. But he’d been in the shower and it could have easily been his imagination and he was too much of a yellow-bellied coward to check for certain. He stayed up almost all night every night listening to them go at it, listening for the telltale slamming doors and waiting for texts. But they came infrequently and only every with a quick “I’m okay” or “sorry, you could probably hear all that”. And Eijiro couldn’t bring himself to go up to Izuku or to invite him down.

He also switched his laundry day.

He really was the absolute worst person.

But Eijiro didn’t know what to do. He was just a person, just some stupid guy in his early twenties who sometimes got crumbs stuck in his boxers and spilled tea on his comforter and slept in it anyway. He was just some thick-headed idiot trying to earn enough to make it to next week and maybe buy a cool new video game so he could feel alive again for a little bit. He wasn’t some arbiter of justice—he didn’t have a fucking clue what the hell was going on most of the time! So then why was this on him? What cruel turn of fate had left him such a god-awful moral conundrum with absolutely fucked consequences that he was privy to for the rest of who knew how much of his life? Why was any of this on his shoulders? And why was it that no matter what he did it never felt right and HE never felt right?

Eijiro winced as the shouting picked up again, Izuku’s shrill voice cutting through the ceiling almost clear enough to make out words. With some guilt, he admitted his curiosity to himself in knowing just what they were fighting over. Without Eijiro to pacify him, had Kacchan snapped? He gave the likelihood about a six out of ten. Eijiro had been tentative in passing negative judgement over the man’s scenarios, but he also hadn’t avoided condemning his actions. If Kacchan was acting out of anger because of a negative response, it was either a buildup of frustration that had remained suspiciously unnoticed (highly unlikely in Eiji’s opinion) or something completely centralized to that one instance, which still felt like a very sudden and completely unadvertised response.

But then, was it unadvertised? Kacchan had looked pretty rough that night. Maybe Eijiro should have just known better. Maybe he really was to blame as much as the knot in his gut liked him to believe.

But then again…

The Izuku Kacchan had inadvertently described over nights of obviously not-hypothetical scenarios was the sort who might not take kindly to being undermined either. He was the sort of vindictive person who always managed to navigate themselves onto the moral high ground, even at the expense of someone else’s sanity. What were the odds that Izuku had grown fed up and finally snapped? Or worse, what if Kacchan had said something? God, would Eiji be next? Would Izuku come for him?

Eijiro shook his head, hoping the physical action would shake some sense into him. He snorted too, mumbling a “you’re ridiculous, Ei” just to really drive home the point. But the idea stayed in his head, and his conflicted emotional about the whole thing continued to swirl until he was forced to sit up and accept the fact that he would get no rest. Almost as soon as he moved, several loud shouts rang out, followed by the unquestionable sound of something delicate and glass hitting the floor, a heavy thud, and finally the front door of the upstairs apartment slamming shut as someone hightailed it down the stairs. Eijiro froze, wondering if he’d caused that too.

God, he couldn’t even get up in bed without making a mess of things.

Dreading the text he’d most likely be receiving any minute now, Eijiro hid his phone under the covers, wincing at the inevitable buzz of a new message. He willed himself to look at it, but his hand remained as it was, his treacherous thoughts reminding him it was late, and he could definitely argue that he’d been tired and slept right through everything. It was a tempting idea, and the very fact that it was so seductive of an option made Eijiro feel like a monster. He groaned, flopping back onto his bed for some extra flare before sliding off the mattress, letting himself ooze onto the floor like the ball of slime he was.

He just…he didn’t want to do this right now. He didn’t have the mental capacity. He needed to walk this out first—yes, a walk sounded great, and he could take out his garbage. He could get rid of his mountain of take out and junk food wrappers, go on a walk to clear his head, and then tackle this. After all, in order to help someone, you have to help yourself, right?

Thrilled with his plan, Eijiro threw on a shirt and a warmer pair of sweatpants and shuffled to the kitchen to round up the garbage. He got old takeout juices on his hands and he grumbled the entire time, trying to be quiet so Izuku wouldn’t hear him upstairs. Once he had everything together, he slipped outside, inching down the hallway and stairs, taking care that each step landed light and that he stayed in the shadows. Every crinkle of the garbage bag made him wince, and he paused frequently, listening for any sounds of stirring around him, but there was nothing but the occasional whirr of a car. The night was quiet, almost as though it was trying to make up for the mess upstairs. Eijiro appreciated it, the world seemed as chagrined as him about the whole thing.

Eijiro stole down to the dumpster unseen to the best of his knowledge. The walk across the parking lot was a bit of a risk, but he made it hopefully unseen. The blinds to Izuku and Kacchan’s apartment were drawn, and he never saw them move, so he had hope.

Feeling the weight off of his shoulders at a moment of freedom, Eijiro sighed, flexing his neck and congratulating himself on a stealth mission. The cool air felt nice and refreshing, and he had a feeling he’d be going to bed late, probably screwing over future him with a measly four or five hours of sleep, but that was just the price he paid for this mess. For now, there was no way he could go back to sleep, so he might as well enjoy the wakefulness.

With a second sigh, Eijiro tossed his garbage into the dumpster, turning on his heel and preparing to meander his way back towards the building when he heard a sound. It was a strange sound, sort of waterlogged and tense and growly, kind of like an animal, but a very sad and angry animal. It was definitely there to maim and maul him as karma for the mess Eijiro had made.

Eijiro knew the only right way to act was to accept his fate. As a man, he owed it to everyone to go nobly and bravely into the fires of hell and pay penitence as earnestly as possible. And therefore, upon hearing the sound that indicated his doom, he squawked, jumped, and spun around with a hand clenched tightly over his chest.

“Whose there?” he gasped, ready to turn and run at a moment’s notice, shrieking all the way back to his door.

“It’s just me, calm the fuck down,” a familiar voice growled from the other side of the dumpster.

Eijiro did not, in fact, calm the fuck down. Kacchan was one of the last people he wanted to see at a time like this. He’d have rather faced whatever hell-demon he’d originally thought.

Kacchan rose over the dumpster very similarly to that demon Eijiro had been wishing for and strode around, coming unwelcomingly closer and making Eijiro squirm uncomfortably. He could have just run the way if it had been monster, with Kacchan, he instead had to stay and make polite conversation— Well, as polite as Kacchan ever made it—and find some sort of excuse to escape. This was exactly what he’d been dreading. Now he was trapped, stuck in the middle of this—thing—and with the guy who was supposed to be blamed for it all but whom Eijiro was consistently failing to actually hate as much as he knew he should.

Goddmmit, why hadn’t he just stayed in bed?

“Oh hey…uh, sorry I didn’t see you there!” Eijiro said, shuffling backwards, looking for an acceptable escape. “I, uh, I was just taking out my trash. I gotta get to bed though, it’s late and I, uh—oh shit, is that blood?”

Just as quick as Eijiro had noticed the state of Kacchan’s hand, it was tucked behind his back and guarded with a defensive glare.

“It’s nothing,” the other man said, far too quickly and gruffly to be honest.

It was most certainly not nothing. It had only been a quick glimpse that Eijiro had gotten, but he’d seen the rivulets of dark running down his hand. There were drops of it on the pavement even, just darker than the blacktop and shining in the light of the city.

“It doesn’t look like nothing, are you okay?” Eijiro pressed, all hesitancy gone in favor of that strange, slightly motherly instinct that remained latent until the most necessary of times.

“I’m fine. Fuck off,” Kacchan growled, looking for all the world like a cornered animal. It was the exact same face Eijiro remembered from that first night, sort of haughty and furious, like he was ready to throw a punch if anyone so much as looked at him wrong. And yet, despite all that, Eijiro could now recognize the hunch of his shoulders and the slow, assessing move of his eyes up and down Eiji’s body for the justified wariness he’d begun to suspect. Doubt had cracked his mental image of this Kacchan and here and now either Eijiro was kidding himself and doing something terrible, or he was seeing what somebody should have seen sooner.

He should check on Izuku. For all he knew, Kacchan’s hand was bloody because he deserved it, because he’d pushed and pushed until his partner had needed to hurt him. And yet, he couldn’t convince himself. Every doubt, every question was weighing on him now, driving him away from that thought. Every instance down to that night that Izuku had snapped at him, so unlike his usual self, whispered to Eijiro to help Kacchan without question, and there were so many voices—so many iterations—that even his ugliest words couldn’t shake him out of it. Not even abuse apologist could shock Eiji from that gut-feeling that he needed to help, and in particular he needed to help this person, not the other.

“Come inside. We should clean that and you can hang out until you feel ready to go back—if you want to, of course. You don’t have to, you can stay the night if you need.”

If you would have asked Eijiro even just a few months ago if he would ever have offered so much, much less said more than a word to Kacchan, he would have denied it vehemently, and maybe even been furious at the insinuation that he would dare give such a monster such attention. But now, it came pouring out, the offer between them before he could so much as second guess it. And Kacchan seemed to understand how monumental this was. His face was slack in shock, his narrowed eyes wide in surprise and the crease between his foreheads softened. He’d been shaken from that pinched, wary glare he seemed to reserve just for Eijiro.

“Why?” he asked, all that suspicion returning as quick as it had left.

What a great question. Why should he get help from Eijiro? Why should Eiji even offer to help to begin with? What if this was another fuck-up? What if this was helping the enemy? All the doubt that had been so quiet now roared back to life, and for a moment he considered rescinding the offer.

But then he remembered that image of Kacchan in the hospital, how small and pathetic he’d looked all alone in that room bruised to hell and back and with nobody there for him. And the question—that god-awful, unwelcome question that had ruined every good thing about Eijiro and his stance on filthy, rotten abusers started getting louder.

“Why not?” he asked, unsure how else to candidly and convincingly explain the sheer complexity of trying to navigate the guilt, confusion, and shame of this entire ordeal.

There really was no good way to express “hey there, if you’re a victim I want to help and support you and make you feel safe, but also if you’re the abuser I want to pound you into the ground because you deserve it, you monster. But I don’t know which one you are yet, so good luck figuring out which treatment you’re gonna get. Now, please come inside so I can take care of your hand.”

And either Eijiro effectively skipped over all that, or Kacchan was just battered and bruised enough not to care, because with an aloof grunt and a look down his nose like he was entertaining a naughty child he’d rather punt into the sun, he followed Eijiro back to the apartments.

Chapter Text

Katsuki wasn’t entirely sure when or how it’d gotten like this. There wasn’t just some night where a switch had flipped, and he’d suddenly woken up and realized what was happening to him. It had been so subtle, so minute and laced in explanations and excuses and justifications. He’d been blind to it, like that frog in the pot of boiling water, unrealizing as the temperature slowly rose until he was boiling alive, trapped with no way out.

He hadn’t really even considered it until that advertisement on TV, the one with the woman covering bruises, doing her makeup until the sound of the door opening and slamming shut made her panic. They hadn’t shown anything, there’d just been shouting and the woman begging her husband not to be angry. And then, in big bold letters it’d said to call some hotline if you or a loved one was experiencing it—that thing—domestic abuse.

Any other time, any other ad, he wouldn’t have cared. But that night he’d felt something terrifying in response to what he’d watched. Maybe it was the makeup, the way stylists had been complaining lately about how hard it was to get the right shade of foundation to cover the bruises, but he’d seen a kindred spirit, and the swell of understanding had risen unbidden as he’d seen the look of stress and panic on her face as the door had slammed. It had been just a normal night, one of a million he’d spent sitting on the couch with Deku watching TV, and yet that one had changed everything, leaving him sick to his stomach and awake all night, afraid of what it’d meant that he’d understood.

Part of him had wondered if he should call the number, but the ad had been long gone by then, and he’d been too scandalized by the idea to try and research. Instead he’d suppressed it, stamping it down somewhere cold and empty where it could die.

Only it hadn’t died.

If Katsuki could name the moment he well and truly understood beyond a shadow of a doubt the extent of what was happening to him, he would say it was the night in the hospital, after Izuku had slammed his face with the door. When Izuku had arrived surrounded by family and friends—people who had no business in their relationship hearing his story, listening to his cries, accepting his lies. And Katsuki had been alone.

He’d felt small, and helpless, lost. And he’d wondered then if this was going to be the rest of his life. Because, despite it all, he’d never considered leaving. He’d already known it just wasn’t that simple. And then and there, he’d understood that despite knowing, he’d stayed complacent, so complacent that he’d eventually be boiled alive. He’d well surpassed calling the hotline—well surpassed calling anyone at all. That night had brought with it true understanding, and with it, a sense of true hopelessness.

So no, Katsuki didn’t really know how he’d gotten here. He was strong, independent, and successful—or at least he had been. He’d been above this, too smart and strong to be cornered into a relationship like this one, too bold and defiant to be cowed. And yet little by little Deku had whittled away at those things. And now Katsuki was here.

And here was a little hard to understand at this moment.

Deku had started small, so small Katsuki hadn’t realized for ages what was happening. He’d thought his friends were fickle, people too eager to think the worst of others and drop them rather than see that they’d changed and grown. Deku had agreed, and together they’d faced the world alone. Only, Deku hadn’t been alone. Somehow, his friends had stayed true and Katsuki’s hadn’t.

And then it hadn’t just been friends, it’d been employers too. Photographers had grown flakey, brands disinterested. Neighbors had become shifty, Izuku’s mother cold. All around him, people had changed, and it had taken a while before Katsuki had realized why. And after that, he’d come to regard everyone Deku touched with a certain level of preconceived hatred. It was the only defense he had, and he’d never cared if his animosity only proved them right. One way or another they’d hate him, and he would have rather it happened on his terms than Deku’s.

So of course he’d been defensive when the downstairs neighbor had gotten involved. He’d been just like the rest, gullible to Deku’s victim act, easy to turn and more than willing to take Katsuki for what his partner made him out to be. He’d seen it in the man’s eyes, in the way his fists had tightened the first time Katsuki had walked into the house. He’d expected battle, half expected the guy to punch the living daylights out of him or at least to explain to him why Katsuki was the scum of the earth and should go to hell. It had been a small mercy that the loser had held his tongue, but only a small one.

The thing was, there was something incredibly torturous about knowing everything thought a certain way of you. There was a certain agony to knowing an opinion was made, and everything you were and did now only served to confirm what they already saw. There was a paranoia to it—the feeling that everything you did was under scrutiny, everything called into question or used to fuel a flame you would do anything to have put out. There was a hopelessness to it, a feeling that no matter what, it would never change because you had no power to make it, even in your own actions you lacked any power to make someone see and understand. For years Katsuki had felt powerless, like his body wasn’t his own, his actions someone else’s. He’d felt like a man possessed, everything he’d said or done erased and re-written by another person, until he wasn’t even himself.

And then someone had seen him—not Deku’s version of him—him.

If Katsuki could describe that night, he would say it had been intoxicating. It had been like finding water in the desert, or food after a grueling workout. It had given him something he had been desperate for for so long he’d forgotten that there was ever a chance to have it. Because the thing about your actions not being yours was that certain rights didn’t apply to you, and that was frightening.

It was a terrifying concept, but one that was now so ingrained into Katsuki that he took it without a second thought; he didn’t get to defend himself. He had no right. No matter what he said or how he begged people to see, it would never be self-defense, because people would never not see him as the monster. And yet…

Even thinking about it now, staring at that idiot with his shitty box-dyed hair with the roots grown out way too long to be acceptable, Katsuki could still get drunk off of being recognized like that, as someone to whom wrong could be done.

“He shouldn’t have done that.”

There were a lot of things, in Katsuki’s opinion, that Deku shouldn’t have done. But it had been so long since someone else had thought so that Katsuki had started to think that maybe he’d been wrong after all, and he never had really had any right to be treated how he’d thought he should. And then someone—not just anyone, Deku’s new pet project had looked at him and seen him.

And maybe that was why Katsuki followed him in the end, because even if this werido never saw Katsuki again, he had seen him, and Katsuki hadn’t really been seen in so long he’d almost forgotten he was a person, and not just the antagonist in Deku’s autobiography.

So that’s how he’d ended up here. Trailing behind a practical stranger, unsure if he was walking towards safety, a moment of rest and humanity, or if something terrible was about to happen.

It was a tense trip across the parking lot. Katsuki hasn’t been able to shake the feeling of eyes on him in years, but it was heightened now. If Deku knew—if he thought Katsuki was trying to turn his ally against him… well, it would just be par for the course. He’d never been able to keep anything from Deku, he wouldn’t be all that surprised, in the end, if tonight was the night he found out, He’d managed to keep his laundry meetings a secret far longer than anything else, so the monumental blow-up that would result would only be fair. If Katsuki hadn’t wanted it, he shouldn’t have kept reaching out to the nosey shitty-haired neighbor, it would have saved him the trouble.

If living with Deku had taught Katsuki anything, it was how to read body language, and he was at least comforted to know that this neighbor had some hesitations about them being out in the open. He glanced at Katsuki’s apartment window almost as frequently as Katsuki did himself, moving at a jerky pace that screamed anxious but trying not to show it. With numb amusement, Katsuki wondered if this neighbor had as much of a reason to be afraid of being caught as he did.

“So, uh, you probably know where my apartment is, so…yeah, we’ll just go in and bandage you up and then you can go wherever you want—or you can stay. I’m not gonna, like, kick you out or anything,” Shitty Hair rambled when they were finally out of view of Katsuki’s and Deku’s apartment window.

Katsuki grunted in reply, shifting his hand slightly so the blood wouldn’t drip onto his clothes. He followed quietly, taking measured, quiet steps to try and avoid alerting anyone to his presence. Usually, he didn’t care how much noise he made, but at a time like this he’d rather nobody knew what he was up to. He wasn’t sure if Deku talked to anyone else, but he knew what people thought of him, and he was sure at least a few would have no problem reporting him back to his boyfriend. He couldn’t imagine how bad that would look, for Deku’s newest friend to be messing around with him. It would ruin Shitty Hair’s reputation, for one, and it might even make him a new enemy depending on how gracious Deku wasn’t feeling.

Shitty Hair was twitchy and nervous as he opened the door to his apartment, definitely aware of how Katsuki’s presence tainted him and put him in danger of losing any good associated with him. He fumbled with the keys, and then the lock, and even managed to struggle with opening the door. He hovered in the doorway, gesturing stiffly and making things infinitely more unpleasant as he did so, but Katsuki hardly cared. The loser could be as weird as he wanted, just so long as he didn’t rat Katsuki out or anything.

A sudden, terrifying thought occurred to Katsuki at that, and he held back for a moment, wondering if maybe Shitty Hair could be that cruel. Could he be that good of an actor, luring him into a trap?

“I know I haven’t been the most—eh, tactful? But I’m not going to say anything to Izuku, if you’re worried,” The Shitty Neighbor said, clearly too perceptive for his own good. “I just, uh, nobody should be hanging around a dumpster with open wounds so if you come inside we can clean those up.”

Katsuki remained where he was, narrowing his eyes and trying to radiate his best “don’t fuck with me” energy before taking a tentative step. Shitty Hair seemed to relax at that, and as Katsuki finally entered the apartment, he followed in behind him, closing the door and possibly sealing his fate.

The apartment was the spitting image of Katsuki and Deku’s, the exact same countertops, exact same doors, exact same layout. The only difference was in the way the space was occupied. Deku was a hoarder, a man as cluttered outwardly as inward, with always something unnecessary on one shelf and a thousand others strewn across the countertop. It didn’t complement Katsuki’s style very well, but Kat had learned early on it was better to just leave it. Trying to clean up after Deku was like trying to hold back the tides, and more often than not it turned itself into some sort of argument about touching peoples’ stuff and things going “missing”. Shitty Hair’s apartment, in contrast to theirs, was rather sparse. Not that it wasn’t messy, it certainly looked like one guy lived here and had absolutely no reason to clean. But, it lacked the clutter, it wasn’t so full. Katsuki was drawn to that, to the empty counter space and the feeling of potential that came with a shelf only half filled. It relaxed him in a way his place hadn’t in a long time. And if he squinted and purposefully forgot everything about himself, he could almost imagine this was his place, just clean and free of the stress of looking at everything Deku—always encroaching on his space, but he never allowed to touch.

“The bathroom’s this way—although you probably knew that. The layout’s the same,” Shitty Hair said, filled with a sort of fearful, simpering energy, like he was trying to appease Katsuki. It was different—unwelcome, but a far cry from most of the other ways people treated him nowadays, and he couldn’t deny there was a certain refreshment to having someone at least concerned about how he felt about their actions.

On second thought, it wasn’t consideration as much as self-preservation. Still though, for once his actions could create an outcome of his choice, it wasn’t like pushing random buttons hoping one of them wasn’t for a nuclear bomb the way it felt with Deku. He followed, cupping his free hand under the bleeding one to try and keep from staining the floors.

“Actually, the bathroom’s kinda tight and cluttered, why don’t you grab a seat and I’ll find the first aid kit,” came the muffled, nervous voice again, and Katsuki halted in his tracks, turning back to the kitchen and the island with two sad, clearly unstable stools shoved under the countertop. He pulled one out with his foot, settling carefully to avoid collapsing the whole thing and analyzing the room around him. There was nothing exceptional about the place, and the only thing he found worth looking at was the giant Red Riot poster hung reverently on the wall, the only intentional looking part of the whole apartment. In the background, there was still a steady stream of muffled, one-sided conversation happening that Katsuki let filter through the back of his mind.

“—I guess what I’m trying to say is that this is all kinda convoluted and hard to understand, you know? I mean, I don’t want to, like, support abuse or be an abuse apologist or anything—it’s just all kind of a lot, and I hope that’s not offensive, I don’t mean to accuse you of anything—or Izuku either. But I just kinda don’t know exactly what to do, so I figured I’d break it down into more bite-sized pieces. Like, I don’t know everything, but I do know that walking away from a fight bleeding isn’t good, so I can help fix that. Just—case by case, you know?”

It was a novel approach, Katsuki would give him that. He couldn’t think of any other person who had claimed to do the same, or been quite so proud sounding of it. It was foreign, almost absurd sounding to Katsuki, maybe because for once it was a system that benefited him. Katsuki wasn’t unaware of his faults, he knew he was quick to anger and passive aggressive at times. He knew he could be moody and he’d been an asshole as a kid—to Deku in particular. But for so long he’d been taught that those things disqualified him from any good. It didn’t matter that Deku had smashed the plate and shoved Katsuki into the shards, because Katsuki had instigated it, he’d been the one with a bad attitude that had goaded Deku into it. This strange system Shitty Hair was trying enact, that separated what had happened from what had caused it to happen, it was stupid. And sure, it had served Katsuki all those nights in the laundry room, all the “you were wrong to do that, but he shouldn’t have been doing what he was either '' giving Katsuki some false expectation of some sort of…recognition. But now that he knew where it came from, the system this idiot operated under, he couldn’t abide by it. It wasn’t as simple as what was good and bad, it was about what was earned. That was why Shitty Hair was stupid enough to do this for him, because he was too dumb to see the big picture.

“Anyway, I found the first aid kit so just sit tight and we’ll get you sorted!”

Shitty Hair trotted into the kitchen with a proud smile on his face, like a cat bringing a dead mouse to show its owners. He hopped onto the second stool next to Katsuki with far more faith in its structural integrity, beckoning towards Katsuki’s bloody hand and slapping a wet towel over it the moment Katsuki gave it to him.

It really wasn’t so bad, it was bloody yes, but that was because Katsuki hadn’t really bothered with it. The cuts weren’t deep and he had no doubt they’d heal just fine, but Shitty Hair still worked with serious focus, the smile quickly replaced by a frown of concentration as he blotted the wounds, quickly washing, disinfecting, and then slapping band aids left and right. They were hero themed, a medley of cartoon crime fighters beaming up at Katsuki as the loser worked his way up his arm, coercing Katsuki to remove his jacket to get at the farthest up.

“So, what happened?” he finally asked, the question having hung between them for far too long. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me, it’s not a big deal, but I just figured I’d ask—“

Katsuki sighed at the never-ending nerves and appeasement from his nursemaid, rolling his eyes and grunting just to make him bite his tongue and give it a rest. Katsuki wasn’t going to kill him—not after this. He was smart enough to know not to bite the hand that fed him.

“Dropped a plate and then fell on it,” he explained tiredly. It was obvious that Shitty Hair was skeptical, but he simply nodded and packed up the first aid kit. Katsuki appreciated that for once, the idiot could mind his own business. He slid off the seat, grabbed his coat, and shuffled back to the door with a feeling of not quite contempt towards his obnoxious neighbor.

“Are you going back?” Shitty Hair asked, a disapproving frown on his face that made two conflicting emotions rise in Katsuki's chest. The first was defiant, prickly and ready to snap at someone who clearly looked at him like some battered and bruised victim—some pet project to care for and clean up and coo over. It held undercurrents of resentment for the person who was clearly too stupid to understand why Katsuki didn’t deserve such a stupid sentiment.

The second emotion was one that rose very threateningly close to his eyes, settling back there with an aching pain as a voice whispered in his ear that Katsuki used to long for this—for someone to worry and to offer him a place to stay. By the time he’d come to want it enough to acknowledge it, any chance of it was long gone, and yet here it was, appearing now with such an aching nostalgia that he almost stopped and turned back, until the asshole part of him that had gotten him here in the first place reminded him why he’d lost that privilege.

“You got a problem with that?” Katsuki asked? Because what was he good for if not being an asshole and starting fights?

“No, but the couch is open, if you wanted it,” came the nervous reply.

Katsuki wouldn’t take him up on it if it killed him, and he considered saying as much, except the red riot bandage on his wrist caught his eye. He used to buy the All Might version for Deku, just one of those small things he could do to show his boyfriend he saw him, and he cared about the things he enjoyed. The first few times he’d done it Deku had been so happy, he’d made Katsuki kiss every bandage several times over, flirting and giggling in a way that had made Katsuki’s chest flutter and swell. After a while the novelty had worn off, though, and Deku had stopped caring, so Katsuki had given up buying. They got boring, flesh-toned ones now.

With a pang of longing, Katsuki held his tongue, closing the door quietly behind him.

Izuku was angry. Katsuki could tell because the whole apartment was heavy with it—deathly silent when he returned, turned against Katsuki just like everybody else. It didn’t appreciate his interruption to its stewing, echoing loudly with the sounds of the door closing and shoes being sloughed off just to get revenge on him by telling Deku he was back. But Katsuki refused to act afraid. Even if he felt that sickening curl of uncertainty, the question at the forefront of his mind “what would he return home to?” he kept his head high and his posture proud and straight.

He got to work cleaning the floor. The shards of the plate were still there along with a few miniscule smudges of blood now long dried and a pain to scrub off. He worked quietly, trying not to let his apartment know about the contempt he felt at being the one to do this task, lest its walls betray him and carry the sound down to Deku. Regardless, his partner heard and Katsuki’s stomach sank a little lower as the sound of the bedroom door opening echoed back down the hall to him, the apartment taunting him with it.

“Where were you?” Izuku asked, his voice sullen and laden with heavy emotion, none of it pleasant. His eyes were red, like he’d been crying, and Katsuki refused to meet them.

“On a walk,” Katsuki replied, heavily aware of the perverse nature of their dynamic, him on his knees picking up shards of plate and Deku towering over him. It was ironic, Izuku never liked Katsuki touching his things, and yet here he was cleaning up his mess.

“Where’d you go?” Katsuki’s partner asked, his voice clipped and annoyed if not a little watery.

“Around,” he replied, well aware that it was not enough to satisfy, but equally aware that too much would only goad Deku further.

“You know I’m just trying to make peace, you don’t have to be such a jerk about it,” Deku snapped, walking away from the kitchen and into their living area. The distance did wonderful things to Katsuki, and he could feel his lungs grow back to their normal size as his partner put more distance between them.

But, more air meant more breath to waste on speaking, and Katsuki had never been very good at holding his tongue when it mattered.

“Oh, is that what you were doing,” he grumbled, knowing immediately that Izuku had heard. And if he had not heard, he had at least sensed. A cold panic set in and he bit his tongue far too late. He had to fight the urge to curl in on himself as Deku approached again. He refused to run, and he forced himself to remain nonchalant as he worked at the floor.

“Are you serious right now, Kacchan?” Deku said, his voice rising to a shrill, accusatory whine. “You do this every time! I’m trying to make things work between us and you have to be a passive aggressive ass about it!”

Katsuki refrained from speaking, biting down hard on his tongue this time before anything could slip out. “I know what you’re doing!” he wanted to say, “I know what you’re doing to me!”, but instead he focused on the floor, scrubbing it until he wondered if he was going to do more damage than the smashed plate had done to the fake-wood.

“I was trying to apologize, you know!” Deku continued.

“Keep it, it means jack-shit to me,” Katsuki thought to himself, too wise now to go for the bait being waggled just in front of his nose. Too many times he’d been played the fool by this very thing.

“Oh, and now you’re ignoring me? This doesn’t get better if you don’t put in some effort, Kacchan!”

Katsuki had heard that one too, maybe not in the same words, but the sentiment had been there almost from the beginning. “More,” Deku would demand, and without fail Katsuki would give, because he owed it—owed Deku, right?

His boyfriend continued on, venting his frustrations, picking apart Katsuki’s lack of response, his propensity to respond too much, how he never helped around the house but was always getting his hands into things that didn’t concern him, how he was never emotionally available, but too emotionally oppressive. And it continued on and on until there was not a piece of Katsuki that had not been declared a fatal flaw, bound to doom their relationship if it could not be adjusted immediately.

“And what can I be then?” Katsuki wanted to respond, “If I’m angry I’m overreacting, but if I’m calm I’m being emotionally unavailable and apathetic. If I talk to you, I’ve said too much and gone too far, but if I’m quiet I’m stonewalling you and tearing this relationship apart. So what I am I supposed to do?

But if he asked, he knew what the response would be. Deku would scoff and say Katsuki was just being difficult on purpose—weaponized incompetence as he had graciously informed Katsuki—and then nothing would change, not Katsuki and certainly not Deku’s opinion on the matter.

Eventually, Deku got tired, and Katsuki ran out of floor to scrub, and after some particularly strained moments Deku retreated back to the bedroom, worked up and at wits end no doubt. Katsuki, on the other hand, just felt tired. He recognized part of it was the emotional rollercoaster of the day, but part of it was more instinctual, that of an animal who had survived something dangerous, and now needed to gather back its strength while the predator was away. He hated that part of him, but it dictated too much of his life now for him to despise without despising himself.

With Deku almost guaranteed to be locked away for the rest of the night, Katsuki grabbed a throw blanket and shucked off his pants, trying to find a comfortable position on the couch. He wished more than anything he could be in his bed, with a fluffy comforter and nice, crisp, and clean sheets, but that was tainted for tonight. So instead he did his best to relax, turning the TV on to a low volume that would help lull him to sleep, and absent mindedly wondered why he couldn’t have just saved himself the emotional damage and slept on a different couch.

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry,” Shitty hair said, bowing deeply the moment Katsuki opened the laundry room door. Katsuki paused, gawking at the grand display, not sure if he should bask in it or… probably ask why this was happening before he beat this guy’s ass or whatever else he decided to do about it.

“What?” he asked, letting the door slam behind him and giving the groveling neighbor a suspicious glare.

“I’m sorry!” Shitty Hair repeated, his voice echoing around the cement room obnoxiously. “I heard the arguing last night! I didn’t mean to listen, but I’m sure it’s because the band aids are so distinctive. I’ve used them on Izuku before so I’m sure he recognized them---“

Oh, oh.

Katsuki felt suddenly lightheaded, leaning on the folding table for support as the realization struck him. Holy shit, had Deku seen? Did he know? He felt sick for a moment, blood rushing through his ears and pounding in his head.

No, if Deku had seen, there was no way things wouldn’t have been worse last night. If he’d realized, Katsuki would have known, that was a guarantee. He was most certainly safe.

Crisis averted, Katsuki pushed himself off the table, forcing himself to put on a sneer and roll his eyes. He hoisted his laundry back up high on his hip, conscientiously relaxing his shoulders, shaking off the panic from before. A little stayed, niggling at the back of his head. He’d have to be a bit cautious tonight, just until he was absolutely certain Deku had no clue.

“Stupid,” he snorted, brushing past Shitty Hair without a second glance. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“It had nothing to do with you,” he added, after a moment of silence.

Shitty Hair’s body slumped, a sigh bouncing across the walls as he dropped, turning around to bother Katsuki again, this time with that stupid grin of his.

“I’m so glad, it kept me up all night. I felt awful!”

Idiot, Katsuki thought to himself. Did he realize how terrible that sounded?

Still, his smile was infectious, and Katsuki the corners of his mouth twitch just a bit. He couldn’t help it if his eyebrows wanted to hag a little lighter on his face when he looked at the idiot. He was obnoxiously cheery in the sort of way that tainted everything around him. How he could be so chipper if he’d spent all night chewing his nails and wallowing in guilt over Katsuki of all people was beyond him.

“Next time just bang on the ceiling or call or something,” he suggested, distracting himself by sorting his wash, pulling the whites from the darks. “Stop wasting your time on other people’s drama shit.”

Katsuki knew he’d said the wrong thing when the room behind him fell silent. God, that was so familiar to him. He always stuck his big dumb foot in his mouth and—

“No, it’s not that. I’m not bothered by the sound,” came the overly worried reply. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind it if it wasn’t so loud sometimes but it’s not the sound that keeps me awake! I thought I made Izuku mad at you because you’d been with me and I felt terrible! I’d never want to make him mad at you because of something I did!”

Katsuki scoffed, turning on his heel and swinging around to face his shitty neighbor.

“You don’t make Deku mad at me. I do that,” he stated, amused at his own inside joke. Shitty Hair didn’t seem to get it though. If anything, he looked upset. Again, Katsuki’s giant fucking foot going right into his goddamned mouth—

“You sure about that?” Kirishima asked skeptically. “I mean, don’t you ever think maybe he gets himself mad?”

“You think I don’t know my own boyfriend?” Katsuki snapped, tired of this stupid game. He hated people like this. Nothing he said was ever good enough for them. They and their thin skin were a bother, and Katsuki hated having to creep around it never knowing what was going to set them off! If he wanted to walk on eggshells, he had plenty sitting in his house waiting to go out in the garbage, he’d just throw them on the floor and prance around!

At the very least, Shitty Hair was quick to back down. He quickly mumbled an apology, promising he didn’t mean anything by it and looking like a kicked puppy, which just made Katsuki feel even worse.

“Look,” he huffed, going back to his laundry and shoving the first batch into the washer. “If you wanna know so bad, he was upset I was giving him attitude while he was trying to apologize, alright?”

“Giving attitude”. That was something his mother used to say to him. Something Izuku had picked up before they’d cut ties with Mitsuki, after she’d gotten…overbearing. It was his fatal flaw. The cameras loved it, his agents said it sold well in a photo, the way he pouted like he was about to cuss someone out was just what girls liked these days, guys too. But the thing was, it didn’t sell half so well in person as it did on the camera. Sure, it was cute and sexy if someone saw a twenty second clip of him slinging jabs with a heckler. Wasn’t half so delightful when you put up for it for twenty years, or so people told him.

“You? Attitude? I never would’ve guessed,” Shitty hair said, his voice light and teasing as he shouldered past.

Katsuki was taken aback. It was such a stupid little thing, and yet, it’d been so long since anyone had done that to him. Honestly, it’d been so long since anyone had even talked to him, much less teased him, much less treated him with anything but contempt, especially after confessing to being an ass to his boyfriend while said boyfriend was trying to apologize. He was, to be perfectly honest, at a loss for how to respond.

“Oh, I uh, sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I wasn’t trying to insinuate anything, it’s just that you’re kind of a prickly person. Not in a bad way! You just…have a sharp wit. I get the feeling not a lot gets past you, in a good way.” Shitty hair babbled, hands outstretched placatingly.

“S’fine,” Katsuki growled, picking at his whites for lack of anything better to do while he waited for his darks to finish. Usually, he left, but Deku had his day off today and the apartment was too frigid and uncomfortable to enjoy any of his usual pastimes. He wasn’t exactly thrilled be he dealing with Shitty Hair either, but at least he was as wary of Katsuki as Katsuki of him. It was a nice change, for once. Though not as nice as he would have thought.

They fell into silence, both of them awkwardly distracting themselves with their laundry, waiting for the other to make the first move and decide where this was going. Katsuki’d played this game longer, with high stakes and a far more ruthless opponent, so in the end, Shitty Hair broke first.

“So…if you, uh, don’t mind me asking. What was he apologizing for?—you don’t have to answer if you don’t want I don’t want to intrude or anything it’s just if you needed to rant or get something off of your chest! Talking about your feelings is super manly, after all!”

“Stop that,” Katsuki cut him off. “Just ask your question, or say what you’re going to say, don’t add all that extra shit.”

Shitty Hair’s mouth snapped shut and he nodded, intimidated into silence. Katsuki felt a little bad. It was just too much like Deku, and it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and something ugly twist in his heart—something that missed the innocent, mumbling, bubbly boyfriend who used to take forever to get to the point just like that. Katsuki used to tease him about it.

“He was mad because I agreed to a shoot out of town and I’ll be gone for a week. He got too worked up and he dropped a plate. I tripped and fell on it and cut up my arm. That’s all,” Katsuki fibbed glibly. It came so easily, at this point he didn’t even hesitate.

He could tell Shitty Hair didn’t believe him. One eyebrow was cocked incredulously, and he was biting his lip, clearly unhappy but at the very least trying to mind his own business. His face looked mopey, incredulous and pathetic in a way that immediately made Katsuki angry.

“Why would he be upset if you’re going out of town?” he asked.

“Because I told him I wouldn’t do shoots out of town,” Katsuki replied, irritated by the skeptical tone. He didn’t need his Shitty Neighbor picking apart his stories.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because he doesn’t like it when I’m out of town!” Katsuki replied, his voice echoing around the room warningly. He ignored it, well and truly irritated now. He knew he’d told Shitty Hair to just ask his question and stop it with the mumbo jumbo, but he didn’t mean start a full-scale investigation! Especially not with that stupid, worried look on his face--

“Why doesn’t he like it—“

“Because he doesn’t, okay!” Katsuki shouted, whirling on his neighbor angrily. “Look, maybe you don’t know this, but partners have boundaries. I don’t want to have sex Wednesday nights, he doesn’t want me going out of town! You got a problem with that?”

He expected Shitty Hair to be cowed, flustered at least—the mention of sex was usually enough to get anyone off his back. But apparently the loser had a back bone, because he didn’t move. In fact, he stood up a little straighter and a little more into Katsuki’s face.

“And do you have sex on Wednesdays?”

Katsuki had never had someone ask that before, and for once, he was susceptible to his own games. His cheeks grew warm, his brain slowed to a crawl, leaving him fishing for a reply.

“Newsflash, but sometimes you fucking compromise with your partner,” he hissed, feeling suddenly wildly out of control of the situation and hating every moment of it.

“It’s not compromising if you’re the only one doing it!” The Shitty haired, big nosed, obnoxious dickwad hissed back.

The thing was, Katsuki knew that. He knew that on the surface, every relationship was supposed to be 50/50, everyone was supposed to give a little and get a little in return. But what nobody could ever seem to get through their thick skull was that that equation only ever worked when you’d been on equal footing to begin with. 50/50 worked when you’d both started on zero. But when you were on negative 30? Well it was just basic math! People like Katsuki had to do more! They had to go the extra mile, because they had an extra negative of shit to consider. Nobody ever considered that! And that was because they didn’t understand, they weren’t like Katsuki and Deku, they had no idea how it worked!

He said as much, and obviously Shitty Hair didn’t care for it.

“Alright then, how does it work? Why in the world do you have to compromise on your boundaries but he doesn’t have to on his?”

At this point they were practically out shouting at each other, just two grown adult men having it out in the laundry room and probably scaring all the other tenants. If anything, Katsuki was just proving to everyone who was already scared of him in this apartment that it was with good reason—he might shout at them in the laundry room next!

“BECAUSE WE’RE NOT EQUAL, IDIOT! BECAUSE I WAS AN ASS TO HIM GROWING UP AND IT’S ONLY BECAUSE HE HAS A MODICUM OF FUCKING MERCY THAT WE’RE EVEN DATING!”

“NOT EQUAL? MERCY? DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF? YOU’RE NOT A RESCUE DOG. YOU’RE HIS BOYFRIEND!”

“OH PLEASE! I KNOW HE TOLD YOU WHAT I FUCKING DID! DON’T PRETEND LIKE IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER!”

“WELL IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO ANYMORE BECAUSE HE FORGAVE YOU!”

“Listen here, idiot,” Katsuki snarled, getting into dangerously close territory as he crowded into Shitty Hair’s space, just seconds from losing all self-control and grabbing him by the collar and shaking him. “You don’t get to talk big about abuse apologist shit and what’s good or not and then say stupid bullshit like that. It fucking matters. Don’t give me any of that forgive and forget bullshit!”

“No!” Shitty Hair pushed back, his voice just as intense as Katsuki’s, not in the least big cowed like he should be. “No actually, it fucking doesn’t, because you changed and you apologized and he said he forgave you and you two agreed to date, and that means you’re equal! That’s the way it’s supposed to work! Remembering your boyfriend used to be an asshole is not the same as telling everyone you meet your boyfriend used to be a bully so nobody will side with him when smash his face in the door and send him to the hospital!”

Ironically, the feeling of hearing Shitty Hair say those words was incredibly similar to that first hit with the door. Pure and utter shock, a little bit of feeling horrified he would actually do that, a little bit confused that this was actually happening. A whole lot of numbness. Katsuki stumbled backwards, catching himself on the folding table.

“Look, he didn’t have to forgive you if he didn’t want to. Hell, he could’ve forgiven you and still never wanted you around again!” Shitty Hair continued, much softer, a whole lot less angry, disgustingly sympathetic. If Katsuki wasn’t still reeling, he might have been more offended by it. “But he didn’t do that. He told you it was behind you both! He forgave you and then he agreed to be your friend—your boyfriend! You did exactly what you should have and when you came back and you asked for him to give you a second chance he said yes. And if he didn’t want to give it to you than he should have just said no. What he’s telling you he’s doing doing is knowing someone hurt you and deciding not to hold onto what they did anymore, not using what they did to you to twist their arm so that nothing they do and no matter how much they change is every enough for them to let it go.”

No, that didn’t sound right. That didn’t sound fair. Katsuki couldn’t –

“Either what’s done is done and either he forgives everything or he lied. He can’t have it both ways. He can’t walk around saying you two are equal and then have sex with you on Wednesdays even when you told him you didn’t want to!”

God, the sex thing again. Katsuki snorted, because numb amusement was just about the only think he could manage to feel in the face this complex, aggravating, messy system some random stranger who just so happened to hear too much sometimes was laying out for him.

“I don’t—it’ doesn’t” he protested, trying to find the words to argue but hardly even understanding enough to form a coherent argument against anything Shitty Hair was saying. “It fucking matters! And It should matter to you!”

“Okay, okay I know I’m not explaining it well,” he said, tugging on his obnoxious hair, running his hands through it until it spiked up every which way. “It’s not—it’s not good to just forget what people did to you. That, does matter. You were an ass! I know that, Izuku made sure of it! But he—he said that you changed, and you apologized. He told me that he agreed to try things with you, he agreed to put the past behind both of you and he said he forgave you. Did he lie about that?”

No,” Katsuki replied lamely, unsure how to explain that he just hadn’t changed enough. That the problem wasn’t just that Katsuki had been a bully, it wasn’t just that he’d chosen to be mean, it was who he was too—that was the problem. Because now he didn’t chose to be mean, he didn’t go out of his way to tear down Deku and he didn’t really want to—hell, Deku had begged him to keep the nickname when Katsuki had wanted to call him Izuku! But shit still happened, he still hurt Deku and messed up, and he wasn’t actually any better than he’d been before—his track record was proof enough of that!

“So then if he forgave you and agreed to be your friend then his job was to let it go and give you a fair chance, right?”

“He didn’t have to—“Katsuki protested.

“No! No he didn’t have to, but he said he would. And then he didn’t, right? Every day since then, despite saying that you two were starting fresh, he’s brought that shit back up? He’s told it to people? He’s held it over your head?”

Katsuki didn’t know what to say—what to do. Yes Deku did those things, and yes Katsuki hated it so much he could scream. In the moment, all he ever wanted was for someone else to look at it and think it was as ridiculous and unfair as he felt. But what Katsuki felt couldn’t be trusted! He was biased, he was self-serving and an asshole, and when you took that into account it made everything fair, whether Katsuki liked it or not. It was Deku’s right. After what he’d done, Deku had every right to hold it against him. And Katsuki--sure he got frustrated! Sure, in the moment it didn’t feel fare, but it was what was due to him, in the end.

“Or maybe you’ve held it over your own head?” Shitty Hair pressed. At this point, he seemed almost manic, hardly even looking at Katsuki, just pacing and running his hands through his hair, talking to himself almost as much as Katsuki. “ Because just last week you were mad because I wouldn’t agree how fucked up what he was doing was--you--you freaking had a list of all the ways he’s screwing you over, and now you’re here defending him like it's the hill you’re going to die on! You don’t see how faced that is? You don’t think it’s not him, I dunno, manipulating you?”

Katsuki balked at the suggestion. It was too close to thoughts he’d had, too similar to things he’d done and said that had only ever dug him deeper into the hole. This was dangerous territory, territory that blinded Katsuki to things he needed to remember.

“Maybe—maybe he knows how sorry you are, how much you want to change and make it right—how willing you are to bend over backwards for him because of what you did, and he uses it. And sure, he says it’s done, he says you two are past it, but he lets you wallow in guilt and he lets you keep thinking you’re unequal instead of following through with what he’s said because it’s power!”

This was insane. Katsuki had to stop this, Shitty Hair was losing his goddmned mind.

“He’s manipulating you, Kacchan, don’t you see it?! “

And Katsuki did. He’d literally told Shitty Hair that Deku was. In a stupid bid to be seen by the only person who’d ever even bothered to glance in his direction, Katsuki had opened up about some of the darkest, most shameful, most humiliating things in his life, and here the nosey bastard was throwing it back in his face, telling him to fucking look at it and do something, like Katsuki didn’t know this, like he didn’t try and fail every time—like he wasn’t so fucking confused some days because he knew it was wrong and Deku was wrong and he should leave, and yet he couldn’t, couldn’t shake the guilt and the self-hatred and the blind trust that it would just take a little more before he’d endured enough and Deku would be happy.

He should have expected it. He never should have said anything. He never should have even looked at Shitty Hair. This was a mess, a stupid, regrettable mess that would only get worse unless Katsuki put a stop to it right now. So he did.

Deku was going out as Katsuki reached the door, dressed nice in a jean jacket and well-fitted black joggers. It wasn’t particularly Katsuki’s style, but Deku had an eclectic-ness about his wardrobe that just worked for him. It was endearing, especially to the son of fashion designers. There was something a little...sacrilegious that just piqued his interest.

If Katsuki had been in the mood, he might have stopped Deku and pulled him in for a kiss, a little reward for picking a successful outfit instead of some of the truly hideous fits he wore out sometimes. But instead, Deku stopped him.

“What’s wrong?” he said, hand tight on Katsuki’s arm. It made Katsuki jump—not flinch—and he realized suddenly that his face felt flushed and he was breathing hard. He must have looked absolutely furious.

“Nothing,” he dismissed, trying to pull away. Deku held firm, following him as he moved, keeping their close proximity. “Its fine, you go out.”

It was not the right thing to say, he hadn’t sold it well enough. He couldn’t school his features into the apathy he was going for, and his voice shook despite his best attempts to sound firm and calm. He couldn’t get the heat to stop curling around his cheeks and collar, getting worse as Deku got closer.

“No it’s not. What are you mad about now? What did I do?”

Deku said it so tired, so frustrated-like, and Katsuki felt immediate guilt. Guilt, and a large amount of dread. He didn’t want to fight right now, he was just so tired, he couldn’t do this right now.

“S’nothing. You didn’t do anything, I’m just bothered with the laundry.”

“Kacchan—“Deku started, always hounding, never letting Katsuki be.

Before he could finish, Katsuki dove in, planting the softest, most earnest kiss he could manage with his brain in overdrive, adrenaline skyrocketed, and emotions in utter turmoil. But it worked—it always did. Deku was a physical sort of person, stuff like this always pacified him.

Deku kissed back, following when Katsuki broke it off, stopped only when Katsuki stepped away, putting too large a distance between them to ignore.

“I’m fine. I’ll talk to you about it late. Have a good night and don’t worry about it.

Deku listened this time, pulling him in for a quick peck before waving goodbye and saying he didn’t know when he’d be back, but that Katsuki didn’t need to wait up for him. That wouldn’t be a problem, Katsuki had no expectation of sleeping tonight.

Katsuki went back down for his laundry a good two hours later. He wanted to give Shitty Hair a wide berth, but the guilt of hogging a machine and the worry of someone stealing something made him too anxious to wait much longer. He crept down the stairs quietly, glancing through the door window for any sign of red hair before he snuck in.

He’d expected to find his clothing missing, or maybe in a heap on the floor, possibly with an angry note telling him not to be an inconsiderate asshole and set a timer. He figured he’d be up until Izuku got back just finishing up getting everything cleaned and folded and ready for the week. But instead, everything was done, dried and folded neatly in his laundry basket with a note placed carefully on top that he was very skeptical of containing anything rude.

Still, his stomach twisted into knots as he plucked out the sticky note. He’d never been the biggest fan of apologies of any kind, his own, or others’.

Sure enough, the note was brief, sloppy and incredibly apologetic.

I am SO sorry for what I said. It was way out of line.

Please forgive me.

- Eijiro

Katsuki stared at the note, uncomfortable with its contents, but slightly fascinated. He hadn’t realized until now that he’d never known Shitty Hair’s name, although he was certain he recognized it from Deku saying it around the apartment once or twice. And when he thought about it, Shitty Hair hadn’t known his name either. He’d called him Kacchan—definitely picked up from Deku. This stranger, this dumb, happy-go-lucking idiot didn’t even know Katsuki’s name, and yet he’d invited him into his home, teased him, yelled back at him completely unintimidated no matter how nasty Katsuki had been, and had even done his laundry when they’d ended things on bad terms.

He really was nosey.

Katsuki flipped the note over carelessly, just to check and see if he’d written “just kidding, fuck you” on the back, it was far more likely in his mind than the misguided and blind kindness the idiot seemed to be insisting on.

He found nothing of the sort. There was no extra words, no explanation, just a recognizable sequence of numbers with a little smiley face at the end, all lopsided and squinty. His stomach twisted again, sweat began to beat around his collar again and for a moment he flushed warm and angry again. With a huff, he shoved the piece of paper in his pocket and he took his clothing back upstairs.

Chapter Text

Deku was manipulating him, Katsuki knew that. Deku was was hurting him, was abusing him, was holding things from his past over his head. Katsuki knew all that. In his braver moments he’d even tried to tell Deku so. But, he also knew that it didn’t change everything. It didn’t change that what he’d done was still having an effect, it didn’t change that he had permanently damaged something between himself and Deku, and to try and ignore it and brush it under the rug and demand Deku forget it would have been selfish. So, Katsuki didn’t.

But then, where did it stop? That was the question Katsuki, and now their downstairs neighbor kept asking. When were enough hospital visits? Enough humiliations? Enough sleepless nights before Katsuki got to keep his Wednesday nights sacredly nonsexual? When had he earned the right to put the plates in the cupboard he wanted them in? When could he leave his pants on the floor of the bathroom one or twice when he was forgetful and yet still convince Deku he couldn’t leave his underwear in the kitchen 24/7?

Why was the line between repentance and redemption so elusive?

In the end, Katsuki knew why, it was because he’d been an ass as a kid, and this was what he got for that—for loving the kid he used to bully. He could have gone anywhere else, found anyone else who wouldn’t have cared, but he’d decided to stay and try and fix the mess he’d made when he had no reason to think his clumsy, stupid hands could make things any better. He just couldn’t help it. He’d loved Deku—he still did! He just…missed the old one, the version he’d known that first year, where everything had been new and exciting and there’d been so many “I love you”’s and so many fewer “why are you always like this?”.

He was wide awake when Deku got home, and for lack of a better way to spend his night, and an itching undercurrent of need to get questions answered, Katsuki went out to greet him.

“Hi,” he said quietly, watching as his partner shucked his shoes off, fumbling with his slippers for a moment before shuffling over and wrapping Katsuki in a hug. Although Katsuki was taller, Izuku was by far the bulkier of them. It made his hugs either the warmest, most comforting thing imaginable, or an inescapable, overheated nightmare. Tonight, it felt like the latter, but Katsuki endured.

“You’re drunk?” Katsuki asked wearily, not even needing the confirmation.

Contrary to his normal personality, Deku was a very competent drunk. Perhaps a bit quiet, a bit serious, but generally speaking, it wasn’t unless he entirely hammered that he turned into a goofy, uncontrollable mess.

“Jus’ buzzed,” Deku argued. Katsuki found that debatable, but then again he’d always avoided drinking to that point. He hated the feeling of being out of control. So for him, drunk and buzzed were just vague terms for the same thing: not sober.

Katsuki supposed if there was one thing that skyrocketed when Deku drank, no matter how buzzed or smashed he got, it was his impulsivity. He could see it at work now, the wheels turning in Deku’s head as he started to smirk, a certain glimmer in his eye before he slid his hands down to Katsuki’s butt, leaning in for a kiss.

“Not tonight, Deku,” Katsuki said, twisting out of the kiss and pulling wandering hands off his rear end. He wasn’t in the mood. Out of all the nights especially, he didn’t think he’d be able to fake this one.

Immediately, Deku’s face fell, his posture hunching defensively as he frowned at Katsuki.

“What? You still mad at me about earlier?” he asked.

Katsuki sighed. He felt weary, not physically, but mentally. He missed the old Deku, the one who would’ve teared up and asked what he’d done and if everything was alright and then wrapped him up in a hug and promised they could just cuddle as he wanted for as long as he needed. And then he felt immediately selfish for thinking that way.

That Deku had been hurting, made insecure and emotional by Katsuki’s own hands. He and that Deku had been on oppositely unequal footing, Katsuki forcing him down, stomping on him like he was nothing. It was disgusting of him to hold that version of his boyfriend over this one, to think of that one as the one he’d loved and not this Deku.

After all, the good parts were still there. What made Deku Deku were still there, and that’s what Katsuki loved—he should be ecstatic for this. This Deku was fairer. This one could get mad at Katsuki, could stand up for himself and not take shit. This version didn’t take Katsuki’s attitude, and that was good. It was better. It should be better.

He was just tired and confused. He’d been tired and confused for three years.

“You didn’t do anything,” Katsuki protested, slinking a short distance away to lean on the back of the couch. “It was the laundry. Its fine now, I’m just not in the mood.”

“So laundry is a big turnoff now?” Deku said, just a little bit of alcohol slipping into his voice and making it sound unstable. “Are you mad because I asked you to do my laundry?”

“No, its fine—“

“You always say that and it never is,” Deku argued, always quick to anger, more so with the alcohol in his system. Katsuki hated it. “Are you upset because you’re doing more around the house? Because you could go out and get a job and actually pay rent and then it wouldn’t be such an issue!”

“You know damn well why I’m not working!” Katsuki snarled, his temper getting the better of him. “Fuck, dammit. Look, I’m just tired, I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s not about doing the laundry, okay? I don’t care about doing more chores.”

Surprisingly, Deku seemed to take Katsuki’s hastily beat retreat in stride, remaining irritated, but not pursuing it either. Instead, he circled back to the beginning.

“So then what about the laundry made you so upset?” He pressed, because he was the most compulsive, nosey person Katsuki had ever met. At the very least, that had never changed. He tried to tell himself it was one of those things that made him Deku, and therefore one of the reasons he loved him.

“It’s seriously nothing, don’t worry about it,” he tried again, almost—almost begging, but not quite that desperate yet.

Deku’s demeanor changed yet again, maybe because he realized Katsuki was trying his hardest not to cause any trouble. His eyes went soft, his shoulders slumped, and for a moment he looked like he sympathized. He held out his arms wide, invitingly.

“Hey,” he said softly, one of the most Deku smiles Katsuki had seen in a while on his face. “c’mere.”

Katsuki paused for a moment. He hadn’t realized he’d moved, putting the couch between them when Deku’s voice had started rising. He felt stupid for doing so now, he’d overreacted, like usual. He slunk around it, sliding back into his boyfriend’s arms and letting himself go, letting the tension melt out of his arms and his nose tuck into Deku’s stiff jean jacket. It smelled a bit like alcohol and cigarettes, but Deku’s cologne was still there, the same one he’d been using for years. He hummed softly, thumbing at the ridges in Katsuki’s back. Katsuki sighed.

This was why he stayed. These little moment of Deku, when the old and the new combined in such a wonderful way that Katsuki swore he could like in the moment for the rest of his life.

They stayed like that for a long time, just holding one another, standing in the soft light of their apartment, quiet, just enjoying each other’s’ company. It felt good. It felt amazing, and suddenly Katsuki felt like everything had righted itself, like as of now, it would all be okay. His mind slowed, his breathes felt even, and he was content. And it seemed like Deku was too.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” he asked, his voice low and rumbly, a little growly from all the shouting he’d probably been doing at the bar.

Katsuki grunted, pulling himself out of Deku’s shoulder, turning to rest his cheek on it instead.

“S’nothing, just saw you’re friend from upstairs.”

Deku stiffened a little, and Katsuki did the same, realizing his carelessness. He was terrifyingly close to saying something that could utterly ruin this night if he wasn’t careful. God, why couldn’t he just shut up and let them both enjoy something nice?

“Did he say something to you?”

“No, just was being annoying, using all the machines,” he lied. Sweet relief coursing through his veins when Deku only hummed in response, relaxing, slowly swaying them back and forth.

“He’s funny like that,” he chuckled, the sound sending soothing vibrations through Katsuki’s ear. It was nice, relieving.

Katsuki had never really associated any part of Deku with relief. It was a strange emotion, he thought, to feel around ones boyfriend; A melancholy emotion. It kind of made Katsuki want to cry, not in the way where he was so angry and pent up he literally might explode if something didn’t get out somewhere, but in the aching, “this has been a long time coming” sort of way. He hadn’t done that in so long.

Against him, Izuku hummed again, rocking Katsuki as he slowly shuffled them further into the apartment. He seemed happy. His happiness made Katsuki feel relieved, which made that melancholic need to cry even worse. Tentatively, he reached up a hand to swipe at his eyes, just to make sure he wasn’t doing anything as humiliating as weeping on Deku’s shoulder. Katsuki didn’t cry, he wasn’t a crybaby like Deku.

“What is it?”

Deku’s voice sounded light, innocent, the way it used to sound all the time.

What was the harm in asking? He was in a good mood. Both of them were. Katsuki could say it tactfully, keep the peace.

“Do you talk about how we got together a lot, babe?” He asked, trying to lead into things as gently as he could.

Izuku stopped rocking.

“What do you mean?”

Nope. Katsuki hadn’t been tactful. The pet name at the end, the soft voice, none of it had distracted Deku. He’d done it again, he’d stuck his big, fat foot in his mouth and now Deku would never let it slide no matter how Katsuki tried to smooth things over!

“Just… do you talk about before we got together a lot?” he asked, feeling suddenly exposed, like someone had wrapped him up in a warm blanket and then thrown him out into the snow.

“Are you asking if I tell people what you did to me?” Deku asked, tears welling in his eyes as he pushed Katsuki off his shoulder, holding him at arm’s length and glaring at him like he was a dirty kid who’d just run up to hug dad while he was wearing his newly washed white shirt. Like Katsuki had just ruined things. Which, to be fair, he had.

The old, stubborn part of Katsuki still didn’t like taking a look like that lying down.

“Why are you saying it like that?” he asked, curling a lip at the mere thought of it.

“What you did to me”—like they hadn’t discussed it, grown from it, fucking worked past it!

Shitty Hair’s words echoed in his head.

“What he’s telling you he’s doing is knowing someone hurt you and deciding not to hold onto what they did anymore, not using what they did to you to twist their arm so that nothing they do and no matter how much they change is every enough for them to let it go.”

It sounded so cruel, like such a selfish thing to do when Shitty Hair said it. When Katsuki could stand back and divorce himself from the situation, it was ridiculous, completely unfair! And yet he always had a reason for why it was happening to him. And sure, he believed those reasons, why else would he give them? But that still didn’t change how much it hurt, or how angry it left him! Maybe if there had been a timeline, a due date, hell a graph on the wall of daily activities until he earned his final forgiveness that he could color in every day, but there wasn’t! Katsuki never knew when this ended, and something about spending years dragging himself to a finish line that always seemed just a few steps ahead made his patience wear thin.

“Because you did that Kacchan! Or did you just forget! You did that to me and that’s part of our story. If you didn’t want me to talk about it then maybe you shouldn’t have done it!”

Oh, like he hadn’t heard that one before. SO many ways, so many versions, but always the same. If Katsuki hadn’t wanted something, maybe he shouldn’t have caused it. Only, there was a lot fucking more to it than just that, wasn’t there?

“No!” Katsuki argued, his anger making him stupid. He pulled out of Deku’s hands, shoving a finger at his chest. “You said it was done! You said it was over and it was behind us! So then why does everybody know? Why the hell does everyone need to know if it’s supposed to be fucking done!? You promised you forgave me, you said I had second chance, so then why the fuck am I still bending over backwards to earn it years later?!?”

Katsuki meant to be finished after that. He meant to let that piece be said and then to stop before it could get worse and he could get his big, dumb foot any further into his mouth and cause a mess. But suddenly it wasn’t just about this. In his head, it was all there, all the slights, the arguments, the lost jobs, the lost friends. Because it wasn’t like Katsuki didn’t know. It was that he’d just set them aside, convinced himself it was just his dues, just another degree until he’d paid off the negatives. But now he couldn’t get his fucking downstairs neighbor out of his head, couldn’t stop wondering how close he was to done, and why the goalposts got to move so much. Suddenly he wasn’t so unconvinced he wasn’t blasted past his 50% of the relationship and into the hundreds, rocketing past Deku at the speed of light. The numbers were just so damn confusing, especially when he was playing with a numeric system he was now realizing he’d always just let Deku tell him the rules on.

“And don’t lie to me, I fucking know! I know, Deku! My friends! My last agent—my fucking employers! Even the goddamned downstairs neighbor, Deku! It’s not paying dues anymore! It’s not even a cute fucking part of our story. It’s you getting revenge—you tell them that shit just so you can make sure you can control me!”

Katsuki was being hysterical. He knew it. He could feel the tears at his eyes as years of tamped down and festering hurts and grievances came bubbling back up, ushered in by the question of how much was enough, and when had he paid his debt. His voice was at least two octaves higher than it should be, and he was shaking, practically vibrating in his skin. He couldn’t believe what he was doing, but the tumultuous whirl of doubt and hurt wouldn’t stop tearing up laundry lists of hurts, demanding answers to questions he’d long since accepted he’d never get an acceptable reply to.

When did he get to stop watching what he said so closely? When did he get to meet Deku’s friends and not feel their eyes burning hateful holes into the back of his neck? When did he get Wednesdays off? And when did he get to go out of town for a job, especially when Deku was the reason he couldn’t find any here?

In the end, Deku had nothing to say, apparently. But after that outburst, Katsuki wasn’t sure if he had anything to say either. He was hysterical, yes, but he at least had the presence of mind to be horrified at what he was doing, the absolutely dumpster fire he had started. And that was probably why he didn’t react when Deku gave a much more nonverbal response.

That, or he was caught off guard—stupid really, what had he expected?—and the shock numbed him the exact same way it always did.

It was the taste of blood when he swallowed that really broke the trance between them. Katsuki felt the bitter, metallic taste taint his mouth, and then he realized what had happened—why he suddenly wasn’t looking at Deku, but rather at his kitchen 90 fucking degrees to his right. It took at least a good few seconds longer for the pain to register, but by that point the world had hit play again, and everything was moving at regular speed.

Katsuki had to go. It wasn’t an intellectual thought, it wasn’t planned or considered or evaluated for effectiveness or reality, just something deep in his instincts that got him moving, telling him his only concern now was survival, and that was better done with a door and maybe a few miles between himself and Deku. He moved on autopilot, pushing past his boyfriend and heading straight for the door. But it would never be that easy.

“Kacchan--Kacchan stop!” Deku shouted, grabbing him by the shirt and wrenching him back, maneuvering in front of Katsuki and corralling him in with his arms. The physicality of it was electrifying, and it set off alarm bells in Katsuki’s head, his body finally catching up to his instincts, his brain just a step behind, already tearing Katsuki in a hundred different directions, telling him to say a hundred different things.

“No! No Deku I’m not going to stop!” Katsuki argued, pushing away the hands, wrenching them off when they got a hold on something and shoved him further into the apartment. It scared him, the way Deku grabbed hold and dug his fingers in until they hurt. It made a stupid, ugly desperation rise in Katsuki, the kind that got him in trouble, and always made things worse. And knowing that it was coming, that all his attempts to remove himself before they escalated to something worse than a slap would be ignored and Katsuki would pay for it just made him angrier this time. Angry enough to say things he hadn’t dared to before.

“I’m leaving and you can’t stop me this time! I’m not coming fucking back!!”

“Kacchan I’m sorry!” Deku yelled, grabbing for him, pushing him back, and keeping him from the door. “Just stop! You’re not leaving, stop saying you’re leaving!”

“No you're not!” Katsuki yelled back. “You’re not fucking sorry, because sorry people change and you’ve been hitting me for fucking years!”

It felt so good, so good to say that. To finally point that finger at Deku’s chest and air out the dirty laundry he’d been keeping to himself, like he somehow thought he could keep the abuse a secret from his boyfriend. Like somehow he could convince Deku that Katsuki didn’t know what was happening to him.

What a joke. What a joke they were, what a pathetic existence they’d built together on these ridiculous systems and plays. Katsuki couldn’t do it anymore. No way could he anyway, he’d said too much. He’d burned one too many load bearing wall in this lopsided, malformed house of a relationship. He had to go--he had to now. Otherwise Deku would kill him.

“I’m going—let me GO Deku! I’m fucking leaving and I’m never coming back, Fuck you! Fuck you and this place and I--”

Katsuki moved too slow. He was too distracted, too close to the door and too certain he was about to escape. When Deku grabbed for him, Katsuki swiped and he missed, and suddenly Deku’s hands were latched on his collar and Katsuki was being flung into the kitchen, only just catching himself on the counter. Dishes clattered, a spoon hit the floor and bowls scattered, sending the last remnants of cereal milk splattering everywhere. Katsuki gasped, disoriented and out of breath, his body shaking with the urge to both fight and run.

“You’re acting crazy, Kacchan!” Deku snarled. He’d placed himself between Katsuki and the door, breathing heavy, arms up and ready to grab. He looked angry, so angry, maybe angrier than Katsuki had ever made him—and Katsuki had made him plenty angry over the years. He was breathing heavy too, teeth bared and body shaking with what had to be rage. No way was he scared. He was never scared of Katsuki when these things happened.

They stared at each other for a moment, both waiting for who would make the first move. Deku took one step forward, Katsuki took one back. Deku took another,

“You’re being insane, Kacchan! This is ridiculous, calm down!” he said, coming even closer.

“Then stay the fuck away from me!” Katsuki shouted, grabbing the first thing he could. It was a cereal bowl, tacky and disgusting, but one more thing between the two of them. He brandished it warningly. Deku’s gaze darkened.

“You wouldn’t dare,” he said quietly, his voice just above a growl.

And that was where Deku was wrong. Any other time Katsuki wouldn’t have, he knew what lines he didn’t dare cross. But tonight he’d already gone too far, if not in what he said than how he felt. There was no coming back from this, and he knew Deku knew that. He knew what this was. It wasn’t just a fight, this was trying to clean up loose ends and sweep something under the rug—sweep Kastuki under the rug.

Katsuki took another step back, the bowl poised to leave his hand, mere milliseconds from takeoff. And then his heel hit fabric instead of wood, and the world shifted as Deku’s goddamned underwear tripped him up, sending the bowl glancing off of its target’s shoulder pathetically.

The next thing Katsuki knew, there were two hands around his throat and he was being body slammed onto the floor. Stairs danced in his vision as he hit the ground. Distantly, he heard a crack and knew it had to be his head, but the sudden rush of breath leaving his body, compressed out by the hard floor and the heavy body on top of him, made him feel too floaty and far away to tell for certain. He gasped, body limp as he tried to reorient himself. Deku had no such issues though, and before Katsuki had even regained faculty of his hands, he’d landed another hit.

Like always, Deku aimed for the face. It wasn’t a particularly good strategy for most people. Generally, there was only so much you could do to hide a black eye or a split lip, and obviously someone would ask questions sooner or later. But Deku had been diligent. He’d laid his groundwork, and not even black, blue, and nearly concussed in a hospital had anyone dared to suggest that maybe Katsuki could be the victim and not Deku. At first, when the hits had first started, Katsuki had secretly hoped that even while he did his best to hide them and made excuse after excuse on his boyfriend’s behalf, somebody would notice and ask. But nobody ever had, because Deku, again, had been diligent in his groundwork, and there had been nobody left who had cared, nobody who would have believed.

Instead, despite the odds, Deku’s system worked well for him. After all, what was Katsuki if not a pretty face? Just popular enough to be sought after, but not enough to warrant the extra hours editing out a bruise or a crooked nose, his aim took more from Katsuki than his dignity. Each blow he landed might as well have cost Katsuki actual money—a month’s rent here, utilities there, maybe even the next two months if he managed to actually break something this time. The irony was that each hit made Katsuki want to leave more than anything else in the world, but simultaneously guaranteed he was trapped for just a little bit longer.

Dizzy, hurting, confused, out of breath, scared, angry, disoriented, Katsuki was hardly prepared for the second blow, nor the third, nor the one after that. Deku gave him time in between, winding them up, bringing them down hard with a closed fist that caught and tore at Katsuki’s face, making it wet with blood so that eventually the punches slid once they made contact, lessening the blows mercifully. He fought back as best he could, trying to curl in on himself and cover his face, clawing at Deku’s arms and chin, trying to push him back. At some point he made contact with his cheek, digging his fingernails in until Deku shouted, grabbing his hand and wrenching it painfully. Distantly, he thought he could hear himself shouting, telling Deku not to break it, begging him not to when his boyfriend didn’t stop.

But it could have all been in Katsuki’s head. It was hard to tell, there was so much going on and shock didn’t seem to want to wear off. They continued on the floor, Katsuki scrambling for purchase, trying to drag himself out from under Deku. He no longer cared where he went, outside, the closet, even just to the other side of the counter. He just wanted distance, space, a barrier of some kind. But Deku wasn’t having it. He grabbed at Katsuki’s wrists, pulling him around by the one he’d bent, making Katsuki wince and hiss as he wrenched it around. He sat on Katsuki’s thighs, holding him down until he was stretched out on top, catching Katsuki’s other hand and pinning it to the floor, holding him at bay and breathing heavy into Katsuki’s face.

“You try and hit me again and I swear to god I’ll snap both your wrists!” Deku threatened, his face curled in a vicious snarl on par with even Katsuki’s worst.

Katsuki jerked in his hands, trying to buck him off, wriggle his hands out from his hold, anything. But Deku sat firm. He was just too heavy. Katsuki was a model, his selling point was being svelte, toned enough to be appealing, but small and efficient for dressing. He didn’t have mass like Deku.

“Stop fucking moving!” Deku snapped, crushing Katsuki’s wrists in his grip. “Stay still and shut up!”

And Katsuki did, not because he wanted to, but because he was scared. Deku’s pupils were blown wide, entirely black except for the thinnest line of green and the way his face twisted as he growled and spat in Katsuki’s face felt almost inhuman. Katsuki had never fancied himself superstitious, but at that moment, he wouldn’t have been surprised if Deku was possessed. He looked demonic, hunched over him, breathing heavy and snarling like an animal. He looked vicious. He looked like he would murder Katsuki without a second thought. The threat seemed to pour off him in waves. So, Katsuki stilled. With a humiliating whimper he went limp, shaking in his boyfriends grip, waiting for mercy or death.

“Don’t you ever try and throw shit at me again!” Deku continued, his voice a low roar, gravely and vitriolic as he shook Katsuki by his grip on his wrists, making them sting, making Katsuki want to curl into a ball to cower instead of being left splayed open underneath, belly-up and vulnerable to whatever Deku decided to do.

“I’m sorry,” Katsuki choked on the words, knowing he only meant them as far as they preserved his wellbeing. He wasn’t sorry, not that he’d done it. He was sorry he was here, sorry Deku had him and was so angry he didn’t even care what he was doing to his partner.

“You always say that, you say you’re sorry and then you do this shit. You’re not sorry!”

Deku’s grip was getting impossibly tighter. Katsuki squirmed, his back arching and his legs twitching as he tried to escape the pain shooting down his arms.

“D-Deku stop! That hurts, Deku!”

Katsuki didn’t know why he bothered begging. His boyfriend knew it hurt, that was why he did it. And yet, at times like these, terrified, feeling like he was looking at a monster and not his boyfriend, Katsuki always found himself trying to call out to whatever humanity had convinced him to be Deku’s in the first place.

“You think you don’t hurt me?” Deku shouted back, everything Katsuki said like a thorn in his side, goading him on, making him more feral by the second. “You think the shit you do doesn’t hurt me?!”

“I’m SORRY!” Katsuki begged, self-preservation taking over, consuming anger and indignation and that need for justice that always lasted just long enough to land him here. It was treacherous like that. It got him worked up, but never saw him through, never saw him past Deku.

He wished he’d never said anything. He wished he hadn’t listened to Shitty Hair. He could have been in bed now, cuddling his boyfriend, pretending everything was fine and eking out a few moments of peace from amidst everything he’d been convinced should make him do things like this.

Maybe Deku could sense that how much Katsuki regretted it, because he loosened his grip just slightly. Sighing heavily, his face fell just a bit, some of the green returning, making him seem human again. He still looked angry, his brows heavy and his nose wrinkled with the barest hints of a snarl, but the look of murder was gone, in its place irritation, like for a stupid dog that tore up the house while he’d been out.

“I don’t know why you always have to do this,” Deku said, sounding as tired as Katsuki felt.

Katsuki didn’t know either.

“We were having a good night,” his boyfriend continued, holding Katsuki there, stroking his thumbs on his wrists like he was trying to sooth him.

They had been having a good night. It could have still been one, if Katsuki had just let it go.

“Fuck,” Deku sighed, leaning down until his forehead was on Katsuki’s collarbone and he was whispering into his chest. “I hate it when you make me like this.”

Part of Katsuki balked at that. It took two to tango, someone to throw a bowl and someone to be worth throwing a bowl at. But he didn’t want to fight anymore. He wanted Deku to let him go, maybe to go take a shower and go to bed so that Katsuki could be alone for a minute. More than anything, he still wanted to leave, but he knew how his boyfriend would respond if he tried. And really…technically he had made Deku like this. If he hadn’t said anything, if he hadn’t even bullied Deku to begin with! This was his fault, in the end, no matter how you framed it, so it was just better for them all if he stopped trying to get what he wanted over what was fair…right?

“Let me go? Please,” Katsuki whispered back, taking a few ragged breaths, feeling Deku’s nose digging into his pec.

If he wanted to argue, Deku didn’t. He just sighed again, slowly rising, dragging his hands back up Katsuki’s arms, pulling him up too until Deku was sitting in his lap, holding him up. His movements were slow, gentle even, the kiss he pressed to Katsuki’s forehead tender and emotional, the heavy breath Deku let out that ruffled his hair like a release of tension. Katsuki hated every moment of it, so desperate to be out of his boyfriend’s arms and away from his hands. He tolerated it. He tried to make himself want it, to be soothed the way Deku wanted him to be.

“I love you,” Deku said sadly, whispering the words into Katsuki’s skull. An ache formed in his chest, different from what radiated from his face and his wrists. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing back the tears as his boyfriend continued. “I’m sorry it’s like this sometimes.”

“Me too,” Katsuki reciprocated, rasping over the knot in his throat. And finally, Deku moved off him, pulling back and standing up, leaving Katsuki on the kitchen floor with the evidence of what had just happened. There was another pause, the apartment uncomfortably still after what had just happened, milk splatters and blood on the floor, the dishes scattered everywhere on the countertop. And the two of them, right in the middle of it, still trying to catch their breaths.

“I’m going to take a shower and go to bed,” Deku announced. “Goodnight.”

“G’night,” Katsuki echoed numbly, and then Deku left, finally.

Chapter Text

For a moment, as Deku’s heavy footfalls could be heard down the hall followed by the sound of the shower turning on and the bathroom door closing to muffle it, Katsuki thought about bolting. He eyed the front door warily, longingly, thinking about throwing it wide and running, and never looking back.

But where would he go?

And that was the question, always. After the adrenaline wore off and pain cut through the fog of righteous indignation with vicious clarity, it always came down to that. Where would he go? Anger was such a fiery emotion, it always clouded the judgement, promised him he’d never stand for this, that he was leaving this time. But it was a fickle thing, always disappearing in the quiet after the storm, after he’d gotten himself smacked around for his troubles, worse off than he’d been before.

There was nowhere to go, that was the truth. No friends, no family—Deku had seen to that. He had no money, every cent went to Deku to try and pay back what he owed. He was five months behind in rent, more so if he counted utilities. His agent couldn’t find work for him miles around, there was no way this latest gig wouldn’t get him blacklisted in the entire city for showing up with black eyes and a swollen jaw instead of the glamour shots they’d sent.

He had nowhere to run. This was it. This was the bed he’d made. He’d given everything to Deku, put all his eggs in this one basket. And now he was reaping what he'd sewed. He was never leaving this. He was better off making due, trying to pick up the pieces and make at least some of it worthwhile, cherish those few moments where they could be happy and learn to just shut up and take it during the bad. What else could he ask for?

Goddammit, what had he fucking done? How had he let so much get the best of him? Why the hell couldn’t he have just ignored Shitty Hair from the fucking beginning?

It had been fine before. Not good, certainly not perfect, but it had been bearable. And then that bastard had showed up, sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, letting Deku sink his claws in and making Katsuki just a little more alone just so he could catch him off guard with his stupid “Deku was wrong too” bullshit. And now look where he was!

Katsuki just wanted to be in bed. He wanted to be under his nice, clean covers, held by his boyfriend who loved him, talking about getting a dog or a cat, teasing Deku about what stupid name the sappy loser would pick, and play-fighting his boyfriend when he tried to grab his pecs or bite his ears like he used to. He wanted peace, he wanted a quiet that didn’t feel like it would eat him alive, and he wanted to walk outside his own door without the humiliation of knowing that everyone heard, and the isolation of knowing they all blamed him. They all thought he earned this, he knew they did.

More than anything, Katsuki wanted a do-over, a second chance to make things good, where maybe he didn’t fuck over Deku so bad, and none of this complicated equation mattered in their relationship. Maybe a life where he wasn’t stuck on a pendulum between wanting out and giving up that never swung quite far enough in either direction for his life to settle.

But he didn’t have those. He had this life, these mistakes, and this mess of a mind that would try to put the pieces back together and make sense and make do. So, he pulled himself off of the kitchen floor, wobbling as the world tunneled and tilted precariously for a moment. And then he went to pick up the cereal bowl, marveling at how such a worthless thing could survive without so much as a crack when Katsuki had long since been shattered.

The bowl gave up none of its secrets.

Step by step, piece by piece, he put the apartment back together, throwing the underwear in the hamper, dirty dishes in the sink, clean plates in the cupboards, counter crumbs in the garbage, and so on and so forth. He moved from room to room, mechanically sweeping, mopping, dusting, stripping the apartment of however many signs of life he could, until it looked like one of those staged apartments, decked out like a den of dreams for nerds, complete with limited edition posters, action figurines, and the singular plant Katsuki had convinced Deku to let him keep, sat wilting and pathetic on a shelf in the darkest corner of the living room where Deku had insisted it go after Katsuki had overwatered it once and almost ruined his boyfriend’s one of a kind remote controlled All Might doll with the moving eyebrows and three poses.

The little Aloe plant had seen better days. It had been a gift from a friend, once, just a leaf in a dirt pot with a promise that if Katsuki tried, it’d grow as big as he’d let it. So he’d let it do its thing, checking it every day, watering it with almost nervous obsession, willing it to grow. And it had. Like a proud father he’d bought a bigger pot, and then bigger, and he’d been planning for even bigger when he and Deku had agreed it was time to move in together, cut ties with their stuffy home prefecture of Mustafu and try their luck somewhere else. It hadn’t been that big of a change for Katsuki, he’d basically lived at Deku’s place already, but his little aloe hadn’t liked the move very much, and after their little watering mishap, the growing had slowed, then stopped, and then gone in reverse.

Katsuki paused in front of the plant, pulling it off the shelf with extra care not to disturb any of Deku’s things, wincing as his wrists, the right one in particular, protested at the movement He twisted the little thing around in his hands, observing the wilted leaves, the dry soil, the sad, small plant doing its best despite being deprived of everything it needed. He felt a pang of guilt looking at it now. He’d forgotten it, just a bit. Amidst all of Deku’s junk and the housework, and keeping up their tenuous relationship, Katsuki had let his little plant be pushed to the back, left to wilt and die.

It was a fitting metaphor, not lost in the least of Katsuki as he looked around the apartment, and the lack of him in it, despite all his work to keep it going. All his life seemed dedicated to this place, to making it inhabitable, a home, his home. And yet, the only piece of him here was in his hands, shoved to the back of a shelf in the darkest corner of a room, forgotten and wilted for the sake of an ugly remote controlled doll that barely even worked and was never used.

“I don’t want to die here,” Katsuki whispered to his plant.

The plant was as tight-lipped as the cereal bowl had been, and Katsuki turned to put it back on the shelf, pausing when he looked at that lonely, uninhabitable spot, a ring of water stains outlining where the pot had sat. Slowly, he pulled the plant back to his chest, hold it there as he stopped to think.

Maybe he was stuck. Maybe it was too late for him and he was in too deep. But he could at least save one of them. This plant didn’t deserve this, it’d done nothing but stick with him through thick and thin. It deserved better, someone who could take care of it, who would see it grow into something amazing.

Maybe Katsuki was kidding himself, maybe this was just a stupid excuse to get out of the apartment and breath for a moment. Deku would kill him if he knew, but he was asleep, and Katsuki wouldn’t be gone for more than a second. And so, what if it was just as excuse? So what if he wanted to enact some stupid secret level of freedom that let him leave when he wanted to? So what? He was Bakugou fucking Katsuki, and he would come and go as he please, only just when Deku wouldn’t find out.

Stepping out of the door was a thrill, trying to close it quietly behind him a challenge that made him hold his breath and his hair stand on end. There was a certain adrenaline to walking away with the plant, of taking something of his and going with Deku’s express disapproval. It was terrifying, it felt like a moment of control after one of the worst nights he could remember. It was that muttered comeback to your mother after she’d already torn you a new one and you were too cowed to try and fight her anymore. It was weak, pathetic, and nothing special. But it was a last word, and one that, if kept secret, would forever be Katsuki’s to have.

A piece of him was going to escape, and Deku could never have it, even if it meant that Katsuki was forever bound to an apartment completely absent of himself. It would forever be his little rebellion, the last word for when an actual last word was impossible.

With rebellion on the brain, Katsuki dashed down the stairs, turning at the floor below and counting the doors until he reached the fifteenth--just below his. The light was on, shining out from the cracks around the door, and for a moment Katsuki flushed, imagining Shitting Hair had heard it all. In his mind, the nosey neighbor was in his living room, chewing on popcorn, taking bets on who was smacking who around, grinning proudly when Katsuki started begging, feeling justified. Or maybe he’d decided against everything he’d spouted in the laundry room. Maybe Katsuki had proved himself enough of an ass that He’d picked his corner, and he was hoping Izuku had finally given back as good as he’d gotten. Maybe he considered what Deku had done to be in self-defense. Or, maybe he’d decided not to care either way, throwing on some headphones and letting his obnoxious upstairs neighbors beat each other to shit. After all, what had getting involved gotten him so far besides being used by Deku and yelled at by Katsuki?

Carefully, Katsuki set the plant in front of the door, straightening up to go when he heard someone coming down the hall, the sound of plastic bags knocking against legs giving ample warning before the person spoke.

“Yeah man, I know. But it’s just an annoyingly long train ride and by the time I’d get there I’d have to come back, which means if it’s gonna be worthwhile I’d have to take time off, and I’m too new. They aren’t gonna appreciate that.”

The voice was easily recognizable, rough and imbued with a smile even when he wasn’t. Shitty Hair continued down the hall, distracted with fiddling with whatever was in his bag and trying to hold his phone between his ear and shoulder. Katsuki froze, unsure where to go or what to do. There was only one staircase, and his neighbor was between him and it.

What the hell was he even doing up this late? Didn’t he know how unhealthy that was?

“Since when have I ever done that? You’re too dramatic, you know?” Shitty Hair said with a quiet laugh, “I’m like five feet away from my apartment, I’ll get on the game in like twenty minutes, just calm your ti--shit! Hi!”

Katsuki jumped, caught off guard by the other man’s surprise. The phone was nearly dropped, the bag of food was, and Shitty Hair stumbled a step before finally catching himself, the phone precariously hanging in his grasp. Katsuki scooted backwards, completely unprepared to speak to anyone, much less Shitty Hair. He was acutely aware of how much of a mess he probably looked and he knew what would happen

“Uh, hey! What are you doing-- holy shit man, are you okay? Crap, uh” Shitty hair fumbled with his phone, pressing it to his face as he garbled out a hasty “something’s come up. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

From the phone, the sounds of protest filtered over, someone begging to know what was going on only to be cut off as Shitty Hair ended the call, stuffing it into his pocket and cautiously approaching, looking at Katsuki like a wounded animal. It made the hairs on his neck stand up, and he backed up, moving away from the door and trying to circumnavigate his neighbor. Shitty Hair, however, kept himself obnoxiously centered in the hall, guaranteeing that no matter what side Katsuki chose, he could easily grab him. And he looked like he would. His hands were outstretched, his face twisted in a contemptible mixture of pity and concern. He looked like he belonged in one of those American TV shows where the women rescued vicious pit bulls and put them in sweaters. He hated it.

He hated to admit he commiserated with some of those dogs. If given the chance, Katsuki would’ve liked to bite someone too. But at that moment, Shitty Hair was keeping his distance, and though his adrenaline was ramping back up Katsuki still felt more inclined to bolt. He couldn’t risk another blow, his head already throbbed.

“Is...everything alright?” Shitty Hair asked, taking a tentative step closer. “Shit, dude, your face--are you okay?”

Katsuki couldn’t imagine how bad he probably looked. He’d been numb to most of his injuries up until a few minutes ago, still too in shock to fully register. But Shitty Hair drawing attention to it made it worse. Suddenly he was aware of how much pressure he felt around his eyes, how his jaw ached even when he wasn’t grinding it. His face felt sticky, crackly, probably from the tears and blood, and he distantly realized he’d gotten used to the tang of metal on his tongue. He probably looked disgusting.

“S’fine,” he croaked, caught off guard by how difficult it felt to speak. His jaw throbbed as he spoke, and distantly he realized that it wasn’t just built up tears and eye goop that made his vision blurry. The left one simply refused to open all the way, swollen most of the way shut.

Shitty Hair whispered something under his breath, probably an insult, but Katsuki didn’t care. He edged closer, trying to rotate their positions so that he was closest to the stairs and not his skeptical neighbor.

“M’just dropping something off. I gotta go back, I’m tired,” he said, trying to get the idiot to take the hint. “G’night.”

Shitty Hair didn’t move. He looked incredulous.

“He did this?”

What was the use in denying it? Katsuki was a good liar, he’d had to learn to be, but even he couldn’t convince someone to give up basic critical thinking.

“S’nothing,” he said, trying to glare despite how swollen his face had gotten. He didn’t doubt it was unconvincing and non-intimidating, but he had to try. “I was just dropping something off, Good night.”

“Are you kidding me?” his nosey neighbor said, running a hand through his hair and giving a heavy sigh. He looked overwhelmed, eyes wide and distant as he looked past Katsuki, like he was trying to figure out what to do, as though Katsuki hadn’t made it clear already what he should do. “You can’t go back.”

“Yes I can,” Katsuki growled, bracing himself. Shitty Hair wasn’t getting physical yet, but if he thought he could stop Katsuki, he’d regret it.

“Fuck dude, you shouldn’t--” he argued, taking a step forward. Katsuki mirrored, taking one back, holding his head up high and readying for a fight. He may have looked weak, easy to push around, but Shitty Hair wasn’t Deku, Katsuki had no reservations about doing what he needed to get away.

“If I don’t he’ll get angry. If he wakes up and I’m gone he’ll beat the shit out of me when he finds me,” Katsuki threatened. There was no way he could convince the nosey idiot he wasn’t in trouble. He’d be an idiot to try and go that route, but at the very least he could convince Shitty Hair that getting involved would make it worse. He knew the idiot was all torn up about that shit that already, if their previous interactions were anything to go by. “You want that on your hands?”

“No—fuck, of course not!” Shitty Hair whined, messing up his hair again as he ran his hand through it a second time. “But, holy crap man, I don’t think you know how bad you look. I can’t—I should call the police on you him. I need to take you to the hospital.”

Katsuki balked, the air between them souring further. If Shitty Hair called the police--holy shit-- if he—Katsuki wanted so many things, but not that. He’d never live with himself if Deku--

“Don’t do that,” he begged, unashamed of the act. “You can’t fucking do that, you’ll just make it fucking worse!”

Shitty hair seemed taken aback, and Katsuki supposed he should be. Katsuki had never been the type to get on his knees and beg, but he was as close to it as he could manage without being forced. It wasn’t exactly the most dignifying thing for him, especially with what he looked like already.

“Look, I won’t. I won’t call the police, but you gotta work with me. Come inside, let me at least clean things up. If anything’s broken we gotta get you to a clinic-”

“Not that either,” Katsuki negotiated. “They’ll call, they’ll report it and it’ll all go to shit.”

“Fine, fine, but please, man. Just come inside for a sec. We gotta, we’ve gotta at least clean your face, alright? You don't have to stay if you don’t want to, I won’t call anyone, but you need some freaking ice!”

If Katsuki had been begging, Shitty Hair was groveling by the end of his request. HIs eyes were wide and watery, his face twisted into the most pathetic and pleading grimace Katsuki had ever seen.

The offer was...not unpleasant. The idea of a few more minutes away from Deku was tantalizing, the chance to get cleaned up tempting. The idea of some ice, maybe something to curb the growing aches would be, well, amazing. And yet, if Deku woke up, if for whatever reason he found out, Katsuki didn’t doubt this would become the most stupid thing he’d ever done. Hell, dropping off the plant was already the dumbest thing he could have possibly done after what had just happened.

But he couldn’t find the willpower to say no. He just wanted a moment of rest, and Shitty Hair was offering.

“Alright,” Katsuki sighed, his shoulders slumping, relishing the dull ache as his bruised back shifted uncomfortably. It distracted from his face, or the way his wrist would ache sharply whenever he didn’t hold it just right.

Shitty Hair sighed, looking even more relieved than Katsuki felt, fumbling for his keys and scooping up his bags of whatever. He nearly kicked the aloe plant as he fumbled with the door, startling as he realized there was something there and squatting down and observing the plant with interest before turning to Katsuki, a question in his eyes.

Katsuki shrugged, looking anywhere but at Shitty Hair. He didn’t know how to explain it without earning one of those stupid, pitying looks. He had the feeling that even if he did bother to try, the idiot wouldn’t understand.

Juggling the bags, his keys, and now the plant, Shitty Hair finally managed to open the door, leaving Katsuki to wait anxiously, hoping Deku was sleeping soundly, and that his neighbor wouldn’t go back on his word.

Chapter Text

It was hard to stay composed. Eijiro thought that maybe he was doing a good job. He’d managed to lure Kacchan inside, a feat all on its own given how jumpy he’d seemed outside. But, it was a hard façade to maintain, especially when he had a moment to himself as he went to find his first aid kit.

Holy crap—holy shit,. He was going to be sick. Kacchan looked...horrible. He looked like he had that night in the hospital, face bruised beyond belief, eyes swollen and features mangled to almost unrecognizable, and the normal large, in charge, and slightly deadly presence was so subdued and cowed. He looked battered, broken down physically and spiritually.

It had looked bad in the dark. It was so much worse in the light. Kacchan’s face was mottled with bruising, both eyes covered with purple and black, one swollen shut the other tender and puffy-looking. His lip was split, dried blood smeared around it, stuck in the cracks of his teeth as be bared them in barely composed disgust when Eijiro tried to coddle him towards the couch. He was moving tenderly, favoring his back, absentmindedly grabbing his wrist and rubbing at it until he flinched, growing sheepish as he seemed to remember he was trying to hide how badly he’d been hurt.

Worse still was the wide, almost vacant stare he seemed to default to, slightly distant, always roaming the room with tired wariness, like he hadn’t fully realized this wasn’t his apartment and Izuku couldn’t get to him unless Eijiro let him.

God, he looked broken. And Eijiro was to fucking blame, he just knew it.

Hands shaking and mind wracked with guilt, he dug around his bathroom cabinets, looking for everything that might be useful. Towels, a blanket, medical tape and extra bandages. He grabbed his bottle pain meds, suspiciously light, rattling the bottle and finding it silent, muttering about past-him who did this crap just a little too often. He dashed back to the living room, finding Kacchan perched uncomfortably, staring straight ahead. He jumped as Eijiro made noise next to him, dropping everything in his arms onto the coffee table, shoving last night’s takeout box onto the floor to deal with later. He quickly ran back to the fridge, grabbing out ice packs and then pouring through the cabinets for any snack food. His shelves were abysmal, but he did manage to find some old Pocky sticks from a gift basket his mom had sent him for valentines.

He paused on the way back to the living room, staring at the Aloe plant on the counter, trying to parse out what was so important about it that Kacchan had needed to bring it to him now. It was...unexceptional. Half dead, tiny, and definitely under-watered, it looked sad in its too large pot. It was shriveled and, if he was going to be honest, kind of ugly. He failed to see why it would be so important that it needed to be delivered at two in the morning on a Friday night, especially after all that.

Unless… maybe it wasn’t about the plant. Maybe Katsuki had needed a cover to get himself out and to find help. And he had chosen Ejiro of all people to come to… his heart twisted at the thought, and with a newfound determination, he went back to the living room.

Kacchan, despite seeming slightly out of it, had had the presence of mind to start taking care of himself while Eijiro wasted time analyzing gifts, and when he returned, it was to the sight of a mostly cleaned face. A few places would take a bit more scrubbing, a spot under his lip, the creases by his nose and a smudge by one ear, but already things were looking brighter. It improved Eijiro’s outlook on the situation, seeing things with the blood removed. There was a cut on Kacchan’s cheek, the split lip, and a couple of truly atrocious shiners along his jaw, and his eyes. His nose, thankfully, was not crooked, and to the best of Eijiro’s discernment it didn’t seem to be broken, although he would have liked to get a professional’s opinion, as the way blood pooled under both eyes was concerning.

Keeping his moves advertised and slow, Eijiro sat on the couch, keeping as much distance as he thought reasonable between himself and Kacchan, offering a nervous smile.

“Mind if I…? He asked, gesturing at the dirty disinfectant wipe in Kacchan’s hand. Warily, it was handed over, and as gently as he could, Eijiro reached towards the other man’s face.

Kacchan flinched a bit, but jutted out his jaw, looking past Eijiro with something determined yet detached. Awkwardly but earnestly, Eiji wiped at the few spots left.

“You..uh, you can tell me about it, if you’d like,” he said eventually, when the silence got to be too much to bear.

He’d been thinking about it, after such an absolutely unacceptable overstepping of his boundaries in the laundry room. He honestly hadn’t expected to ever get the chance to speak to Kacchan again after what he’d done, but he’d decided that if it were to happen, this was the appropriate way to address it. No more question, no more sticking his nose where it didn’t belong and taking shameful liberties and overstepping boundaries, he’d be a listening ear and nothing else. He’d invite explanations, but not poke or prod. Nosey Neighbor Eijiro Kirishima was no more. Instead, he waited for a response.

It seemed Kacchan did not want to tell, not that Eijiro hadn’t considered this option. It stung a bit, the rejection, and it was still hard not to know. There was something about having someone show up at your apartment beaten to a pulp that made you anxious to know what had happened. But, this was a new and improved Eijiro, one who didn’t overstep boundaries, so he held his tongue, instead focusing on trying to clean out the cuts without automatically trying to grab Kacchan’s face to steady him.

It was an uncomfortable few minutes as Eijiro worked. They were solemnly silent the whole time, Kacchan for obvious reasons, him because he wanted to give his companion the space to speak if he felt necessary. That, and he didn’t want to risk saying something he’d regret again and driving Kacchan off. It was incredibly awkward. They were close, as the work demanded, and yet Eijiro was acutely aware of how intrusive this must be for Kacchan. He wanted to apologize for each moment he leaned in, dabbing at the cut on his lip or accidentally pushing his face in a different direction to wipe at a bit of blood he’d missed from earlier. It was a very tactile thing they were doing, that Kacchan was letting him do, and despite helping, or at least trying to help, Eijiro felt mostly guilty for doing it.

When he was finally done,he sighed, falling back and scooting to the end of the couch as Kacchan sat, cleaned, bandaged and iced to the best of their combined ability. It was...disappointingly little. There were too many places to cover, too many bruises, way too many spots of swelling that Eijiro couldn’t address--Kacchan simply didn’t have the hands to hold all those ice packs up. But, they’d done at least something.

“I’m sorry I don’t have any pain meds,” he said morosely, cursing past-Eijiro who had betrayed him so deeply. How hard was it to throw away an empty container??

“S’fine,” Kacchan replied, sounding incredibly tired. His voice was gravely, like he’d been shouting.

Eijiro’s chest ached. He sounded so broken. It was so wrong, all of it.

“You know, if you went to the hospital, they might be able to--”

“No,” Kacchan snapped, the most like himself he’d sounded all night.

Not wanting to chase the poor guy off,Eijiro bit his tongue and didn’t push it. Instead, he searched for something else, anything else to say. The silence just felt too...empty.

“I, uh, didn’t know you liked plants,” he tried, glancing back at the one currently sitting on the counter.

“I don’t,” Katsuki croaked, still facing forward, staring relentlessly ahead.

“Oh, well I guess that explains why the poor guy looks so rough,” Eijiro replied, forcing a laugh.

“It needs sunlight. Six hours per day.” Kacchan responded.

“Oh, sounds good. I guess you know more than me. I can kill just about anything. I guess maybe that’s not the greatest thing to tell you after showing up with that,” he said apologetically. “But I’ll do my best. Unless you’d rather take it back, I won't be offended.”

“No. it won't live in our place,” Kacchan replied, his voice cracking. “S’better off with you.”

Eijiro risked another glance over at his upstairs neighbor, finding his eyes glassy and unseeing as he looked ahead. The...irony of what Kacchan was saying was not lost on Eijiro, and knowing his neighbor, he got the feeling it wasn’t all that lost on him either.

“Then we can make it live here,” he said, wishing it were that simple for both the plant and Kacchan. “I’ll find a spot for it by the window. You can come check on its progress if you like?”

Kacchan didn’t respond.

“I…” Eijiro started, unsure how to approach what he needed to say but feeling more and more pressed to do it. “I’m sorry, I really am, for what happened in the laundry room. It was way—way—out of line, and I think that maybe if I hadn’t, things would’ve—”

Katsuki shuffled next to Eijiro, shaking his head and frowning deeply.

“I mean, I don’t want to assume that anything I do or say is that important, but if I had just—“

“It’s not your fault,” came the weary reply, and then a long, heavy sigh. Gently, Kacchan moved the ice pack from his wrist back to his face, pressing it into his cheek until he winced. He tested his arm, rotating his hand slowly, wincing a little before letting it rest against his knee. From the angle it rested, Eijiro could see the clear shape of a thumbprint bruised into his skin. It made him want to be sick, or cry. Maybe both.

“We’ve been doing this to each other long before obnoxious neighbors were around,” Kacchan finished with a wry smile and a far away look.

As someone who had grown up a self-proclaimed loser, Eijiro was quite familiar with that sort of tone. He'd made enough jokes with that same mindset to understand what the man was getting at.

"I think most people might agree that this situation is a bit different."

"No it's not," Kacchan replied tersely. "It's exactly the same."

"But you were kids," Eijiro argued gently, not wanting to upset his companion, but so anxious to be understood and to make Kacchan see. "You were young and stupid. He's adult, he should know better—"

Kacchan scoffed, rolling his eyes and shifting on the couch like he was about to leave.

"And he could get away!" Eijiro added, causing the other man to pause. "Every night he went home to a family who loved him. Regardless of what you did there were people around him, people who could help him grow. And you grew too! But for you--for you it's the one place it shouldn't be. It's in your home, it's the one person who should believe beyond a shadow of a doubt will always take care of you! It's in the one place you should be safe. And you're alone."

Kacchan sank at those words, seeming to collapse into himself, smaller and as his shoulders hunched and his head bowed, a shadow covering his face as he grimaced. Just like that night at the hospital, he pressed an icepack to the side of his face, and Eijiro watched. But this time, the guilt he felt was entirely different.

"Look, Kacchan--"

"Don't call me that," Kacchan demanded, voice wobbly. "It’s Bakugou.”

"Sorry," Kirishima said,"But look, Bakugou, I can't imagine what this has been like. I can't imagine what it was like to work so hard, to change so much and grow like that, only to find out that the thing you worked so hard toward isn't what you thought. I can't even begin to imagine what it's been like, losing family and friends a-and even your job, like there was nothing he couldn't take and no way he couldn't get to you. It sounds fucking terrifying. And then you're just out there, all by yourself trying to face the world and--and this, and then there's people like me."

Bakugou glanced over skeptically, but the acknowledgement, no matter how negative it seemed, only urged Eijiro onward.

"Fuck dude, I hated you. I thought you were the scum of the earth and the things I wanted to do to you—god, I can't tell you how embarrassed I am now for even thinking those things! And I would go insane, I swear I would absolutely lose it, if I were you and I'd met someone like me. I bet you hated me. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if you still did, me and everyone else who walks around talking about this stuff."

Bakugou shifted the icepack back to his wrist, still giving Eijiro that skeptical look that seemed to say "I don't know what you're talking about, but I already don't like it."

"God, just the—the way people like me are out there spouting all this stuff about abusive relationships and abuse apologists and believing victims and you just... you know I had this planned out better in my head! But, I guess what I just want you to know is that I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry that I never stopped to ask questions and I never stopped to ask myself why things felt wrong, and I'm sorry for everyone one of us who ever talks ourselves up about this shit and then leaves you to feel so fucking alone. And I want you to know that you're not. You're not alone because I get it now, and I know I'm late and I know I was an ass to you and I let you go through so much shit you wouldn’t have had to if I had just looked past all the posturing and performance and actually looked at you. And I’’m sorry for that, more than I even have words for"

Eijiro sighed when he got to the end of his speech, hands clenched and resting on his knees, his back straight and his head held high. If felt good to acknowledge it, to say up front what an indecisive idiot he'd been, how self-serving it had been, how desperate he'd been not to be wrong in the eyes of who the hell knows when the only thing that should have mattered that he knew what was right and what was wrong, and that he had put in the effort to know, regardless of what it had seemed. He'd been so hellbent on the story, on conforming to the appearance of being good that he’d stopped himself from questioning what deserved to be questioned and finding out the truth. It was unforgivable, and yet he was honored to be given the chance to even extend his apology. He was humbled, determined to be better, determined to—

"Don't give me that crap," Bakgou growled.

Huh?

Kirishima deflated. Had he said the wrong thing? Had he not seemed sincere enough? He meant it! He really did! How could he say it better? Did he need to get on his knees?

"Nobody ever called it fucking self defense, except for you. So don't you give me your bullshit about not seeing people. And don't give me that bullshit about knowing better either!" Bakugou growled.

"Huh?"

"You heard me!" Bakugou nearly shouted. "For years—fucking years everything I did, everything I said, even the way I fucking looked at him! It didn't matter what he did to me, if I did anything back I was a monster, a jerk, a fucking bully! And nobody did anything! Nobody said a word! He did whatever he wanted to me and it was okay, everyone thought it was okay and all I could do was ask if it was because he did it, and it didn't matter what he did. Or, if it was me, and it mattered what people did to everyone but me."

Bakugou's voice cracked as he spoke, the light catching tears as they pooled at his eyes. Eijiro watched, heart anxious and heavy and his own eyes growing prickly and wet as the other continued, shaking as he spoke.

"You're damn right you can't imagine what that's like! You have no idea what t's like to sit there and to know no matter what happens, no matter what you fucking do, you'll always be the monster, so it's better if you just never do anything. A-and then one day this shitty-haired motherfucker who you know thinks you're a fucking villain stops you and says some shit like 'he shouldn't have done that', and for once in your goddamn life he isn't talking about you! Do you have any idea what that's like? To have someone look at you after fucking years?"

Eijiro felt so incredibly warm and giddy and yet incredulous that he, Eijiro the idiot who always seemed to mess things up, had somehow done something right. He knew Bakugou was talking about him, he remembered saying those words. He even remembered the reaction he’d gotten from them, but he’d never imagined they’d last so long, or stick so deep into someone else’s brain. He hadn’t thought those words meant that much, and knowing they did just made him too amazed to think right. All he could do was nod.

"Don't fucking nod at me!" Bakugou barked, tears covering his cheeks as he turned to face Eijiro full on. "And don't apologize either because I don't want to hear it!"

Eijiro nodded again, caught himself, shook his head, shrugged and then just settled for wiping at the tears that were inching towards the edge of his eyes. He wasn't—he still couldn't quite rid himself of the guilt for how far he'd messed up, but it felt good to hear he hadn't messed up entirely; that somewhere amidst all the ways he'd made things worse, he might have had a moment of good. He just wished he just wanted to do more. He wanted to help Bakugou, and with Bakugou's confession, for once he felt like maybe he could.

Acting on impulse, Eijiro reached out, grabbing his neighbor's bicep lightly, being gentle and earnest even as Bakugou stiffened and looked at him like he was crazy.

"Stay here," Eijiro begged.

"I can't," Bakugou replied, wrenching the arm off and standing up to go. The vulnerability that Eiji had seen just minutes ago was replaced with a mixture of panic and frustration. "Fuck, I already stayed too long. I have to go back."

"You can't go back, Eijiro reasoned, following after his friend--if he could be so bold as to call him that. "After everything he did you can't just go back."

"I don't have a fucking choice!" Bakugou replied, agitatedly. "Where the hell am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do? He's everything I have—this relationship is all I have, I can't just fucking leave!"

"But it's not anymore," Eijiro begged, following him to the door, but not stopping him, making a great effort to try and not to do something Deku would. "Shit, I know I'm not much but you have me! You're not alone anymore, you can stay here! Do you need money? You owe him rent, right? I have some savings, we can pay him back and you can stay here no cost. I know I'm kind of messy and there's only one bedroom but I'll take the couch and I swear I'll work on doing the dishes sooner. You don't have to go back!"

Bakugou reached the door, filing it wide and stepping out, turning back to respond to Eiji.

"It's not that fucking simple," he said, sounding so incredibly tired. He looked it, eyes drooping, face still swollen and mottled with bruising. "I fucking love him, Shitty hair. He's all I've fucking got, and if I go and it doesn't—I can never go back. He'd fucking kill me."

The way Bakugou said it, it was like he believed it. It made Eijiro want him to stay all the more.

"People who love you don't make you think they'll kill you, Bakugou," he begged, his voice rough as he tried to choke back the emotions. He didn't want to seem loud or crazy. He didn't want to scare Bakugou anymore than he already was. But he also didn't want to see him go, now more than ever. If Bakugou left now, he'd never forgive himself.

"I know," came the quiet reply. It was so resigned, so tired and broken, and before he could stop himself Eijiro reached out, wanting nothing more than to pull Bakugou into a hug and never let him out, not until every wound was healed and the ugly scar over his heart was gone.

Bakugou stepped back, out the door, out of whatever protection Eijiro could offer, and Eiji’s throat tightened more. He choked back a protest, biting his tongue for a moment, trying to think of what he could say.

Maybe he could compromise. As much as it felt wrong to let Bakugou go now, maybe it didn’t have to happen tonight, if he wasn’t ready. Maybe some other night, maybe next week, or next month, whenever he could. If Eijiro could just let go of right now, maybe Bakugou could let go of never.

"So then when you're ready," he offered, praying that Bakugou would take this—take his hand and not walk away and leave Eijiro here with a plant and a pool of guilt and fear so deep and consuming he'd never find the bottom. "Doesn't have to be now, doesn't even have to be in a week. But we work at it, and you call when you need me, and I keep extra blankets out just in case. And if you need a distraction so you can go to a shoot out of town, I'll take him camping or something, I’ll even buy a tent! And if you need it, I'll spend every wednesday blasting the loudest, most obnoxious dick-shriveling porn through my speakers until nobody in the building ever wants to look at a naked body again!"

The beginnings of a smile were teasing at the edges of Baugou's face and Eijiro couldn't help but grin as he gave his offer, holding out his hand to Bakugou, not to drag him back in, but to offer him a deal.

"We'll be partners in crime. And when you're ready, you land here, and then we get you launched wherever you want to go, whenever you want. Doesn't have to be now, doesn't have to be soon, but you're not alone, you’ve got me.”

Bakugou looked down at the hand, his body language stiff and reserved, the hint of a smile gone. If his face hadn't been so marred, Eijiro might have thought it would be screwed up in thought. But as it was, it just looked pained, and maybe just a little bit frightened. But not in the way Eijiro wanted to avoid, not like someone who was going to hurt you was standing right in front of you, but in the way a kid looked at the playground before going across the monkey bars for the first time. He looked scared, like he was facing a mountain, and considering climbing it.

"And I promise, no matter what, no sex on Wednesdays," Eijiro added, giving Bakugou his most winning smile, no matter how badly it pained him.

Bakuogu's response was something between a grimace and amusement, although it could have been flat out disgust and Eijiro just had a little bit of confirmation bias. But, the hand that tentatively moved to shake his own made him think he'd assumed right the first time.

Despite everything that had happened, Bakugou's grip was surprisingly strong, his hand warm and soft. It was an honest to god human being's hand, not that of a monster with claws and villainous thoughts, and not something made out of glass and about to shatter if Eijiro didn't handle it with the ultimate care. It was full human, a bit of a once-bully, a bit of a victim at present, but most importantly undecided in the future, which meant every opportunity could be afforded, as long as Bakugou was willing to take the chance. There was hope in that.

With a sickening reluctance, when the handshake was done, Eijiro didn't stop Bakugou from leaving. Though it took everything in him to do it, he let his friend go, watching him retreat down the hall, praying that he would hear no noise tonight, and every other night after that until Bakugou was ready. Who knew how many nights that would be, and who knew how big the mountain was in front of Bakuogu, but at the very least they'd done something amazing tonight, something Eijiro hoped neither of them would regret.

They'd started the climb.

A few short minutes later, after Bakugou had disappeared from sight and Eijiro had been forced to close the door and turn back to his messy apartment, his phone buzzed, rattling the counter. He rushed over, expecting it to be Kaminari, ready to complain about his sudden bailing for mysterious reasons. There were five texts from him, the last all in caps detailing the suffering Eiji was causing by leaving things unexplained. But he wasn't the only person to have texted. At the top of the list was a strange number, the text below a single word.

"Katsuki"

Eijiro smiled at the Kanji. It was a good name, Katsuki, a winning name. It was fitting.

They’d get through this somehow. Eijiro wasn’t superstitious, but he knew a sign when he saw one, and a name like that had to mean something. Katsuki would get his victory someday, over himself, over the demons in his closet, and maybe even over Deku himself. Eijiro didn’t entirely know how, he had very little clue when, or in what state they’d been in when it would finally happen,, but he would trust that they’d find their way, Katsuki, and him along to help.

And sure, he was a little clueless. He still kind of had no idea how he’d ended up here—not physically, he knew how he’d gotten into this apartment—and he still felt a bit like an idiot. But, he’d stumbled into the right things so far, no matter how clumsily. And if he just kept going, just kept seeing, looking for the truth, looking for what was good and right, looking for Katsuki in the midst of all the lies someone else had made to keep him hidden, then he had a feeling that things would be okay. And maybe, someday, he’d go and visit Katsuki after one of his shoots, in a new apartment, with a nice, happy, healthy plant sitting in the window.

Chapter Text

“One-o-four, one-o-four, one-o-four,” Eijiro muttered to himself, glancing from his phone to the plaques on the wall and back to his phone. There were words on both, the phone and the plaques, but they weren’t computing. They fell flat at his eyes instead of reaching his brain like they were supposed to. Meaningless symbols flashed at him as he sped walked down the halls, bug eyes staring at nothing and everything as too much information and yet not enough flooded his senses. He must have looked as crazy as he felt, because a nurse finally stopped him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for 104,” he gasped, the sterile, bright hall hurting his eyes and yet everything around him dull and far away. The woman, a kindly looking, elderly nurse, nodded, tugging on his arm with a gloved hand.

“This way,” she said, pulling him along like she understood he was incapable of instigating the movement himself. He stumbled behind her, being pulled down another hallway and towards an innocuous door. He was surprised when he recognized the innocuous symbols proudly displayed on a plaque next to the door. This was 104…the room.

He hovered by the door, thanking the nurse profusely and eyeing the plaque, positioning himself just outside the line of sight of anyone inside. He glanced at his phone again, the big, bolded words on top finally making sense, although all the little bits below remained as meaningless as before. But maybe that wasn’t a bad thing, he hadn’t exactly been in the best mindset trying to write out the apology. After all, if he couldn’t read it now, how would he be able to do so, actually facing him? He was probably better off just winging it, and that was saying something because it was him--Eijiro Kirishima--an absolute idiot.

Eijiro was terrified. He didn’t know how to face him after what he’d just done. He’d been stewing in fear and shock ever since the investigator had let him go, promising to contact him again if they needed more and encouraging Eijiro that he’d done the right thing. It had been weighing on his mind since he’d gotten himself into the hospital, stuck in the waiting room sitting with nothing but his thoughts and the occasional individual, checking with the front desk at least every five minutes until they’d told him to wait for them to get him or risk being thrown out. Each moment he’d spent out here had been one more spent letting things sit and fester, and now Eijiro was both too afraid to face his fear, and yet too miserable not to.

He had to see him. He had to get it out between the two of them and put this to rest before it could become bad, or at the very least worse than it was. Eijiro did’t want things to be bad between them, much less worse than bad. So, with a deep breath and a prayer, he mustered up a little bit of courage dove into the room, coming to stand at the edge of the bed and hovering over the figure laying in it, looking at him with tired, dead eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, choking on the words as the urge to cry took him by surprise. “I-I’m sorry, I know you asked me not to, but I had to, Kat. I just had to.”

Eijiro felt like an idiot, crying over the man, making a scene when he had no business making things about himself. He mumbled out a second apology, scrubbing at his eyes, wiping at his nose and trying to compose himself. Katsuki remained unmoved—emotionally at least—giving him a vacant stare as he shifted into a sitting position, swinging his legs over the side of the bed to look at him head on. His nose was taped up and bruises were pooling under his eyes, making him look so insanely tired and a little ghostly. His face looked puffy and raw, like he’d been crying, although that could have been the broken nose.

“I know-I know you didn’t want me to do it, but I just—I heard you up there and I couldn’t, Kat, I couldn’t not do something,” Eijiro continued, terrified by Katsuki’s lack of response. The idea of losing a friend over this hurt too much, he’d only wanted to help, he hadn’t wanted to hear Katsuki being hurt like that, it wasn’t fair that the only thing he could do was such utter betrayal that he’d never speak to Eijiro again.

“S’fine,” came the croaked reply, once Katsuki had left him to talk himself into a hole. His face hardly moved, his voice coming out tired and gravely, like he could barely make a sound. It was clear how much they’d numbed him up to fix his nose.

He paused, breathing heavy and slow, blinking a few times before continuing.

“S’my fault.”

Eijiro opened his mouth to protest, but Katsuki continued even further.

“I should’ve...I let it happen, I didn’t stop him soon enough. A-and now it’s too late and I-my face’s’ruined--”

“It’s not ruined, Kat,” Eijiro begged, hovering over his friend, horrified by what he was hearing and desperate to make Katsuki take it back. “You didn’t do anything wrong—it wasn’t your fault!”

“H-he’s going to be furious,” Katsuki croaked, ignoring Eijiro, eyes glossy but so swollen he probably couldn’t even cry.

“And you’ll never have to know because you’re not going back,” Eiji insisted, taking liberties and sitting down next to Katsuki, grabbing one of his hands. He was careful to avoid the fingers bandaged and splinted. “You’re going to be okay. It’s over now. You’re not going back and he’s not touching you again.”

“No Ei,” Katsuki said, as though he couldn’t hear anything being said to him .”I owe him so much and I-I won’t be able to get jobs now because my face is ruined--”

“It’s not ruined! Kat, it’s going to be okay, your face is okay,” Eijiro insisted, taking a risk and putting another hand on his friend’s shoulder, turning him to face Eiji, framing him in and trying to be firm as he spoke. “You’re going to heal and your nose will be okay, and if it heals crooked, then the agencies will love it, and someday, when you’re a supermodel, you’ll do interviews about it and tell everyone how you survived and you kicked ass, and everyone will admire you for it and you’ll get your own freakin hashtag and everything because you’ll be famous.”

“I don’t want to be known for that,” Katsuki hissed, jerking away from Eijiro’s hold. “For being fucking weak.”

Eijiro’s heart broke hearing his friend talk like that. He sniffled, trying to stay composed when all he wanted to do was break down and sob on the shoulder of his stupid, stubborn, brave, friend, who could somehow look at everything he’d done and think he was weak.

“You’re not weak, Katsuki,” he insisted, holding onto his friend tighter, shaking his shoulder a bit just to make sure he knew how much Eijiro meant was true. “Nobody—nobody—could go through this like you have. You’re so fucking badass and-and...just wait. I know you feel shitty now, but just wait, and someday you’ll see it too.”

If Katsuki felt any certain way about that declaration, he was clearly too tired to argue. Instead, he leant into Eijiro’s grip, gingerly maneuvering his chin onto Eijiro’s shoulder. There was a great deal of distance between then on the bed, and the angle as awkward. They had to lean very far to make contact, and unable to see, Eijiro had to rely on Katsuki’s responses to tell if he’d agitated anything tender. Gingerly, he shifted his hand down from Katsuki’s shoulder, pulling him in while he carefully shuffled himself closer, moving them into a real, or realer, hug.

They just stayed there for a while, the sounds of a busy hospital around them, the room itself still and sterile, just the two of them there to add some color and a little bit of life. Eijiro held on as carefully as he could, trying not to squeeze too much, but overwhelmed by the urge to hold his friend as tightly as he could, like maybe he could take all the shattered pieces and just push them back together by sheer force alone.

Even if he couldn’t voice it, Eijiro could practically hear the long, winding, redundant flow of emotion through Kasuki, the fear, the anger, the regret. He tried to will other things into the flurry of distress, things like hope and relief, the knowledge that new and better beginnings would come. But knowing Katsuki, the secret worrier that he was, Eijiro knew that at least a few things would need to be addressed before anything like hope could happen.

“I have a friend, Kaminari,” he offered, ”He lives all the way on the other side of Tokyo. He and his roommate just got a place with three bedrooms. They were going to turn it into a gaming room, but they said that if you needed it, it’s yours.”

Eijiro knew it wasn’t the best fix. Moving in with strangers after such a traumatic relationship sounded like a horrible solution, but it was the only one he’d been able to think of. Katsuki couldn’t stay with him, not until they knew what was going to happen with Izuku. And given the memories associated with that building, Eijiro figured healing was best kick-started as far away from such an emotional minefield as possible. He hoped that was the right thing to do, he’d been trying to research, but so often he’d found himself second guessing what he learned. Katsuki was just so unique, and the situation he’d been through was so particular, Eijiro couldn't help but be wary of the risk of painting the solution with too broad a brushstroke and missing too many important details.

“Kaminari’s a bit of an idiot, but his roommate, Sero, is pretty nice. I think you’d like him. They’d like you lots, I just know it. And I’d come and visit when I can. And I’ve got money, too. It’ll cover at least half of what you owe Izuku, and I can get a loan. We’ll talk to the landlords too, maybe they can help, either way, I don’t want you to worry.”

“Ei-” Katsuki started to say, his voice muffled and tired, sounding exactly the way it had the other times Eijiro had started to talk about an escape plan. But before he could finish there came an echoing cry from down the hall, making both of them jump and pull apart. The sound had not been particularly loud, but in the stillness of their room it cut through the peace like a knife.

“WHERE’S MY GODDAMNED SON?”

Next to him, Katsuki winced.

“Shit, did I hit something?” Eijiro asked, glancing back at him worriedly. Outside, nurses were running down the hall, blurring past the door on their way to apprehend the crazed woman shrieking in the hallway. How embarrassing, to be the family member of the person making a scene like that.

Katsuki shook his head, continuing to look distressed and pushing away from Eijiro and towards the door. He was wobbly, probably still in shock and maybe even a little loopy on pain meds—Eiji wasn’t about to judge. He was, however, not entirely on board with Katsuki escaping to try and ogle screaming women instead of resting. After the night he’d been through, he deserved rest, and he needed quiet, not this.

“Kat--Kat!” he called, chasing his friend out the door. But, Katsuki was on a mission, brushing him off and stomping down the hallway as aggressively as he could, being battle worn and weary. Eijiro followed along, determined that if he couldn’t stop his friend, he could at least keep an eye on him.

The woman was still making a scene, her voice carrying down the halls and drawing nurses and patients as they poked their heads out of rooms or ran for security. It wasn’t long before Eijiro caught sight of the huddle of onlookers around the front desk he’d hovered over less than an hour ago. He gawked as Katsuki shouldered his way through the fringes of patients and nurses, trailing behind in the wake of space the braver soul left behind.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re yelling in a goddamned hospital?”

Katsuki’s attempt at shouting was fairly pathetic. His voice kept cracking, and he couldn’t project over the sounds of receptionists trying to reason with a hysterical women hell-bent on seeing a child that, according to her shouts, “she had no goddamned clue where he was but he was here and she was seeing him now, thank you very much!”.

But all went still when Katsuki shouted. The seas parted, and Eijiro caught sight of the lady pounding her fist on the front desk. And there was no doubt as to who this woman’s son was.

If Eijiro hadn’t known any better, he would have thought Katsuki was about to give a lecture on proper decorum when visiting in hospitals, but before he could get his tired throat to croak out the words, she was on him, hands scooping his face and turning him this way and that like he was a doll.

“My baby! He did this to my baby! Where is he? I’ll kill him!” Katsuki’s most-likely-mother declared, all but confirming her status, unless Katsuki was secretly bi and into cougars and had developed a truly disturbing case of narcissism. Security guards and patients gawked, a few nurses rushed in, begging Katsuki’s mother to be gentle. And Katsuki just took it, looking like an angry baby chick as his hen-pecking mother worried and wailed about his current condition. It was…thoroughly embarrassing. Eijiro couldn’t tell if he felt worse for Katsuki, being in the middle of it, or himself for possibly being associated with people making a scene in the middle of a hospital corridor. The scene continued.

It took great effort to pry Katsuki’s mother off of him, and to convince her she must sign herself in and could not simply whisk her son away until he’d been given approval to leave. It took almost as much effort to explain to her that the hallway needed to be cleared, and she should go with Katsuki to somewhere more private where the other patients and nurses were not quite so privy to all her intentions for how to handle the man who had touched her son. In the end, it was Katsuki who was able to make her go, simply twisting out of her grip and dashing back down the hallway, much more motivated to move than before to move. Of course, the woman followed, a stream of curses, threats, and bemoaning’s following after her as she chased after her son, demanding he slow down lest he tired himself out, and that he tell her immediately where Izuku was staying.

Eijiro considered letting them go, following up later when things were a bit more quiet, and there were less prying eyes. But before they were out of range, Katsuki turned back, catching his eye and glaring.

“C'mon, Shitty Hair,” he growled, leaving no doubt to the many onlookers of which party he was with. Sheepishly, Eijiro hunched his shoulders and made to follow, until a second set of sharp eyes locked on him. He froze, like a deer in the headlights, as Katsuki’s attention brought that of his mother’s.

“whose that?” she asked, glaring suspiciously, putting her son’s menacing demeanor to shame as she towered over him in high heels that would most certainly kill a man if swung with enough force.

Eijiro gulped, trying to find a way to explain himself.

“My Neighbor,” Katsuki supplied flatly, watching Eijiro with a scathing lack of pity. “He called the police.”

And before Eijiro could blink the woman was on him.

Eijiro sighed heavily, leaning against the door wearily as he fiddled with his lock, missing the keyhole several times in his sloppy attempts to break in. His arms felt jello-ey and numb as he heaved them around, and his body ached with the desire to crawl into bed and sleep for hours and hours. Moving sure did take a lot out of you, he couldn’t imagine how Katsuki must be feeling. All he’d done was unpack boxes and help organize, he didn’t understand how he could be this exhausted, and he sincerely hoped whatever caused this level of tired wasn’t contagious. Katsuki’d had at least a few more packages to go before he’d be set up and moved in.

As elegantly as a drunk, Eijiro stumbled into his apartment, sagging against the wall as he shucked off his shoes and tossed his coat onto the couch. He lazily slouched his way into the kitchen, picking through cabinets and bemoaning his lack of foresight to pick up some ready-made food. All he had were ingredients, based off the shopping list Katsuki had made for him and demanded he follow. He could admit, he appreciated his friend’s impertinence and the meals that had come out of his stocked shelves. But he did have to acknowledge what an utter and absolute pain it was to come home dead-tired and have to think about making food, instead of simply eating it. He could think of no greater torture.

In the end, he grabbed a few slices of cheese, wandering around his apartment and pondering the meaning of life, hoping an easy meal would present itself, or he would stop being hungry so he could finally take a nap. Lazily, as he nibbled at his sparse pickings, Eijiro eyed the plant sitting on the counter; Katsuki’s little aloe. It was starting to look like something again, with tiny leaves poking their way out from the base, the ones already grown less gaunt and wrinkled, now plump with moisture and a healthy green. He’d almost killed it a few times already, but the little thing was determined to survive, and Eijiro could respect that. A plant that wanted to grow, no matter how horrendously you overwatered it deserved whatever it wanted without question.

He felt a bit guilty looking at the poor thing. He’d been very sneaky today, purposefully leaving it behind. Katsuki deserved his plant back, especially to spruce up the new place and make it feel like home. But Eijiro had left it behind, selfishly presenting himself as the bumbling fool who’d forgotten the most important part of his job. He wanted to be a good steward, he told himself. He was just trying to return Katsuki the biggest, best aloe in the world, show him that Eijiro could do something right! But that wasn’t exactly the truth, he knew that. The truth was just a bit more selfish than just wanting to return an investment tenfold in regards on a plant. If he was being honest, it was an excuse, a reason why Katsuki would need to see him again.

Maybe it was a silly thing to worry about. Eijiro was well aware his paranoia might be unfounded, and he’d tried often to reason with himself since Mr. And Mrs. Bakugo had taken their son back in and started helping him get back on his feet that his fears were unfounded, but he worried all the same. Katsuki was just so far away now. The only friend Eijiro had made since moving –Izuku no longer counted—and now he was an hour away by train, out of reach and probably most likely definitely going to forget him. And that was fine, Eijiro guessed. Out of sight, out of mind; that what happened with most relationships. But he liked Katsuki, he’d liked getting to know Katsuki, watching as layers of guarded reluctance and carefully composed defensiveness were pealed back to reveal a much more whole person, someone with a bit of an attitude who could make you feel like an absolute idiot, but would then spend the entire night scrubbing the grout between your bathroom tiles because he realized he’d hurt your feelings. There was just so much to Katsuki to be enjoyed, his snappy comebacks, the way he was definitely an undercover nerd just waiting to be unleashed, his amazing cooking skills, his boisterous laugh.

Eijiro didn’t want to lose his friend. He didn’t want to be shoved into the corner of Katsuki’s mind to live with the bad memories of this apartment complex and Izuku. He wanted to be part of the good memories, part of discovering what life could be like unafraid and unfettered by a controlling partner. So, the plant was an excuse, a selfish manipulation that would give Eiji a reason to pop up again, and insert himself, and if he did it well enough…well, he’d never been a salesmen, but he was willing to give it a shot. After all, if anyone could sell him as an invaluable asset, it would be him, right?

But what was he doing dwelling on thoughts like that? Katsuki had moved an hour away, not three, and he’d already begrudgingly offered his spare bedroom if Eijiro “was that desperate to bother him”. If that wasn’t an open door, nothing was! So, the plant would go back to stay with its owner a little later, a little fuller, a little more poetically healed from its time in a dark corner of an apartment with a dark history. And Eijiro and Katsuki would stay friends, they had to! In the meantime, Eiji was tired, and he deserved a nap after lifting so many boxes.

Satisfied enough by his snack, he shuffled across the kitchen and towards his bedroom, glancing out the window despondently when movement caught his eye. He paused, recognizing a familiar face shuffling towards their apartment complex.

Nothing if not nosey, he quickly scooted to the wall beside his front window, poking his head out from around the curtain to watch as Izuku made his way home, head bowed and shoulders hunched with his hands in his pockets. He looked subdued, eyes half-lidded and hair messy like he hadn’t slept in a while. Eijiro didn’t see him much these days, but it never failed that Izuku looked particularly terrible in this way. Some inner, petty piece of him liked to think it was his neighbor getting what he deserved, and it reveled a bit in seeing the man suffer day after day over what he had done. But another piece, one that Katsuki had surprisingly fostered over their time together, pitied the sight he saw in the lot below. Not because life was finally giving back as good as Izuku had given and it clearly was not kind, but because there was a person standing out there, hands in pockets and defeat plain on their face would most likely never understand why this had happened to them. And that—the inability to understand, take accountability, and grow--would forever lead them to destruction in the end. And for that, Eijiro could offer up at least a little bit of melancholy.

He watched until Izuku had disappeared under the stairs, making a slow and sad ascent to an empty apartment full of empty things that could never replace the person he had chased away. He thought about the few texts he’d gotten from Izuku since that night, one to promise he was okay, another to say that Katsuki had left, still another describing therapy and a myriad of ailments and frustrations stemming from the trauma he had experienced. Eijiro had never answered them, leaving Izuku to figure out for himself who had betrayed him and pulled his ex-boyfriend from the smoking wreckage of their relationship, leaving him to come to the conclusion on his own that his misdeeds were more widely known than he had thought, and the throne of lies, or at least delusions, was cracked and prone to shattering at any moment.

Eijiro didn’t know if the whole apartment complex knew. He didn’t know if Izuku’s coworkers had figured it out or if his friends and mother believed the police report over Izuku’s testimony, but it hardly mattered. Eijiro’s neighbor was no longer infallible, and the very object of all this deception had slipped from his grasp. Katsuki’s very existence and willing defiance would always live as a threat to the empire Izuku had built, and unbeknownst to him, Eijiro also held the power to raze his neighbor to the ground. Izuku must have known that all that was good in his life these days came at the mercy of the very person he’d tortured, and Eijiro, although he wouldn’t have dreamed of saying a word unless Katsuki asked him to. Regardless of who else knew, that alone had to be eating him out from the inside. And for now, that was satisfaction enough. Not that Eijiro wanted revenge, he’d long since moved past that white-hot burning need to slap Izuku silly and make sure he never showed his face anywhere again. What he felt now was more like…like being glad to see someone humbled, coerced to bend their knee by the nature of their own actions toward someone who they had made bow by force, and having the peace of mind to be able to see the need for it to happen in the first place for the tragedy it was.

To say Eijiro felt somehow enlightened and extremely wise coming to such an outlook on the subject was an understatement. His sentiments towards the whole affair were complicated, more so by the desire not to step on Katsuki’s toes, but rather let him set the pace for how they should respond. Katsuki had shown a surprising level of grace and reserve in regard to his boyfriend, which Eijrio was certain stemmed from the true and honest love he’d had for Izuku, but which Eiji himself had neither had nor been able to understand. And yet, Katsuki had somehow managed to walk Eijiro towards this peaceful state of mind, rather than Eijiro guiding Katsuki.

In the end, as life would have it, it turned out that these things were a complicated muddle of situation, time, and personality—unique down to the very moments that made them up. Who would have thought? Either way, the knot was slowly unravelling, the mess of an ugly relationship being slowly pulled apart and worked through. Katsuki was gone, Izuku’s grasp pried loose, and Eijiro was still here. Still a little clueless, but just a little less unsure of himself and how to navigate said mess. In the end, his system hadn’t turned out half bad; taking each situation as it came, doing right in the little things and trusting it would guide him through the big.

He never would have thought such a small idea would have gotten him here, to something so monumental as this. But there he was all the same. And at last, he thought he could say he knew how he’d gotten here, both metaphorically and physically.