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Katsuki’s bled all over the front of his hero suit by the time he makes it home.
A few minutes under warm water and it’ll all wash off, the on-site paramedics said. And, It may sting a bit, but remember it’s all in your mind! Like Katsuki had spent the last few months under a goddamn rock and hadn’t heard of quirk illusions. Like he hadn’t taken the stupid training course just like every other pro-hero. Anyway, that’s just the thing about quirk illusions, isn’t it? The wounds they show aren’t real, but they sure fucking hurt like they are.
Katsuki hauls himself up the stairs, jaw clenched, one hand clamped around the railing. His inhales are deep, air hissed through his teeth. His boots drag over the concrete. He really should get a fucking lighter model already.
He fishes the key out of his suit’s inner zipper and manages to push the door open. Blood spills out from the cut on his shoulder at the movement, and he gasps, eyes fluttering shut. He leans on the genkan wall to pause for air. It’s not fucking real but it’s as warm as blood, as dizzying when it pools out of his body. Stupid villain even got the colour right.
He undoes the clasps on his bracers and lets them thunk to the floor.
“Katsuki?”
He freezes, eyes snapping open. Shouto’s in their bedroom doorway. Shouto’s bolting to him, crossing the room in three strides. Shouto’s staring, staring, going, “How bad is it? Katsuki, how bad is it? How bad is it? Come on, I’ll call Recovery—”
“I’m fine,” Katsuki rasps. Manages to take his hand. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“Why aren’t you at the goddamn fucking hospital?”
Shouto’s face flares with anger, and Katsuki understands.
“Oh, sweetheart. It’s—I’m fine.” Another hissed, horrid inhale. “Ah, it’s—it’s a quirk illusion. ’m just peachy. Sorry.”
Shouto’s gripping his hand so tightly it hurts. He’s shaking. A breath heaves into him, and the tension in his body eases with the rush of an exhale. “Oh. I thought—oh.”
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m fine, just looks kinda—ah—kinda bad. ’m sorry.”
“Kinda bad?” Shouto says, then runs a fist over his eyes, shakes his head. “It’s—how do we get it off? Are you hurt?”
“Water. ’m good.” Katsuki raises a shoulder, and Shouto slips an arm underneath for support. They shuffle together towards the bathroom. “Fucking stupid if you ask me,” Katsuki grits out, “since all it takes’s a rainy battlefield for”—he bites his lip against a gasp of pain, swallows—“ah, for your dumb quirk illusion to be useless. But whatever.”
Shouto nods stiffly. He helps Katsuki into the shower and on the stool and turns the water on. It streams down Katsuki’s hair, down his suit, down the bloodstained mess of his chest. It’ll be a few minutes before it cuts through the knots of the illusion, but it’s easing the pain already.
Shouto kneels before him and unfastens the straps of his boots. He’s in sweats and a shirt with a drawing of a cat on it. It’s all getting soaked with the shower spray. A bloom of water spreads on his chest, right through the cat and the Musutafu Animal Shelter printed right below.
“Shouto,” Katsuki says. “Baby, it’s okay, I’ll do it, your clothes’re getting all wet.”
Shouto shakes his head and takes off Katsuki’s boots. He carefully unzips Katsuki’s hero suit, slides it off his shoulders, down his chest. Katsuki bites his lip to stop a wince of pain.
“Sweetheart, it’s fine. I’m fine.”
Shouto grunts. He helps Katsuki up and takes his trousers off and throws the hero suit out the open shower. It lands in a crumple on the floor.
Katsuki stays standing, naked, holding on to Shouto’s arm and breathing against his shoulder. Water sluices down his skin. It washes the last of the pain off his body.
Shouto tips forward, into him, pulling him close. Shouto’s breaths by his ear, Shouto’s fingers digging into his skin. Shouto, Shouto.
Katsuki breathes him in. He hugs him back, just as tightly, leaves kiss after kiss on his neck.
“At first I thought—” Shouto says.
“Me too.” It comes to Katsuki now, thirty minutes late—the shock of near-death. It arrives once he’s cared for, once he’s safe. His inhales quiver, turn ragged. His eyes sting.
Shouto holds him as he cries. He holds him until whenever—until he’s ready. Until he pulls away.
It never really gets easier, watching each other bleed.
They slip pyjamas on, throw Katsuki’s suit into the laundry bag, hang Shouto’s waterlogged sweats and shirt on the balcony clothesline. They stand there, breathing the summer air. The lights of Musutafu blink, little fireflies, and Katsuki slips his hand in Shouto’s.
Shouto turns to him, nudges Katsuki’s cheek with his nose. “Are you hungry? I was making dinner.”
“Hm,” Katsuki says. “Always knew you’d make a good househusband.”
And Shouto’s smile returns.
He tugs Katsuki back inside and they cook, side by side in their tiny kitchen, and eat sitting on the couch.
“I did, y’know,” Katsuki says.
Shouto looks up from his noodles. “Hm?”
“Know you’d be a good husband, um. A while before asking.” It still isn’t easy, the earnestness and truth, but Katsuki’s picked up a few things ten years on.
Shouto smiles, the warm one Katsuki keeps with him always. His stare goes to Katsuki’s mouth, to his nose, to his freckles, to his eyes. “You’re the love of my life,” Shouto says.
Katsuki lets out a choked sound and hits him with a couch pillow, and Shouto laughs.
And it still isn’t easy, but Shouto deserves it. “So are you, sweetheart. Of course you are,” Katsuki says, and feels his face burn.
Shouto kisses his cheek and doesn’t tease him. He puts on a show Katsuki usually pretends to hate, and they finish their dinner. Katsuki does the dishes, and Shouto cleans up the kitchen, and they brush their teeth and go to bed. They curl into each other, they kiss, they fall asleep.
It’s another night at home.