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Lovers should go to amusement parks together. They should hold hands and share crepes.
✺
The amusement park is a myriad of colours—zigzag reds and oranges of a fire-themed roller coaster; yellow of a ferris wheel stretching from the main axle to the spoke cables in ombre shades, encircled by navy capsules and neon lights. In the backdrop is the sunset sky, eventide painted in strokes of warm pastels; and beside Katsuki is the green of Izuku.
(There is also the colour of loss, draping them in smoke, a shade in between black and blue.)
It’s a weeknight, so the place is relatively uncrowded. Katsuki prefers it this way. He won’t be knocking into people everywhere he goes, and there’ll be no one staring at him weird—as if he’s grown a second head or something—when he talks to Izuku. There’s a distinct smell of grease and sugar wafting through the air, promising deep-fried treats and syrupy-sweet confections. The kind of food that Katsuki abhors but Izuku loves.
“Wow, the last time I went to an amusement park was thirteen years ago.”
Katsuki halts in his tracks and fixes Izuku with an incredulous look. “Seriously? Wasn’t that the time Inko brought us to USJ?”
“Yup,” answers Izuku, “I made plans with Todoroki-kun and the others to go during the summer but you know what happened.” He gestures with his hands to indicate the war.
“I remember you bawling your eyes out because you didn’t hit the height requirement for the Hollywood Dream,” sneers Katsuki, completely ignoring that bit at the end of Izuku’s sentence. “You really were a scaredy-cat. Looked so stupid crying over the fucking Jurassic Park ride. It was a ride for kids, Deku.”
“Let me remind you, we were kids back then! Besides, I wasn’t the one who puked my guts out afterwards. The ride that was, in your words, meant for kids.”
Katsuki flips him the bird, and Izuku sticks his tongue out.
If his hands are shaking, Izuku doesn’t say anything about them.
✺
Their first ride is a jungle cruise that weaves through a waterway peppered with animal replicas and stage smoke. In the shallow waters, their riverboat passes by a herd of elephants who are dipping their trunks into the stream.
“Did you know that elephants can’t jump?” lilts Izuku, “And female elephants get pregnant for two years.”
“What the fuck Deku. You’re such a nerd.”
At this moment, the elephants in the river whip around, laser eyes illumining red as they spray water from their trunks at the passengers on the boat. Even with his insane hero reflexes, Katsuki fails to duck, and gets his shirt thoroughly drenched. Izuku laughs at him.
The colour of his laugh is golden, Katsuki thinks. Like windchimes jangling in the breeze, like if the sun were made a sound.
Their boat drifts past rhinoceroses storming through water grasses, crocodiles zipping across a violent current, hyenas perched on an elevated rock. All the while, Izuku shares a fact or two for each animal.
“Did you know that rhinoceroses communicate with their poop?”
“Did you know that crocodiles can hold their breath underwater for over an hour?”
“Did you know that hyenas aren’t actually related to dogs?”
“I swear to god Deku. We’re an at amusement park, not a fucking science class,” gripes Katsuki. But the exasperation in his voice is fond, and he ends up eating his words anyway, when the boat crosses a stream brimming with piranhas teething around the hull.
“It’s your favourite animal Kacchan!”
“Fuck yeah,” says Katsuki, peering over the boat to get a better look at the fish. They’re incredibly realistic for motored replicas, the triangular edges of their razor teeth bared in full view.
“Piranhas are the fucking coolest. They’re able to bite with a force three times their size,” he adds. “They also cluster in groups not for strength but their safety.”
Izuku smiles at him so fondly it aches to look at.
“And you call me the nerd.”
✺
They go on the rollercoaster next. Where most people love the unobstructed views that the front seats offer, or the maximum acceleration of sitting at the back, Katsuki chooses the middle. Because no one sits here, they get the entire row to themselves.
“Is it stupid that I’m a little nervous?” asks Izuku as they begin dragging up the track, slow and stilted to build up the anticipation simmering in their bellies. “I mean technically, it’s not like anything could happen to me, right?”
Katsuki’s stomach sinks, and for reasons other than the drop height expanding a hundred metres below their feet.
“Scaredy cat,” he mocks. Time comes to a standstill as they stop at the peak and Katsuki looks down at the view, rides and people of the amusement park shrunk down to a kaleidoscope of little, coloured lights. Seconds feel like hours, tension amalgamating in his gut like a whirlpool.
Then, they drop.
It’s so much—the fall, the loops, the brakes. Acceleration, velocity, vertigo. It’s adrenaline spikes and overworked lungs and blood rushing to his brain. Katsuki can’t hear himself scream over his thundering heartbeat.
But then he turns to look at Izuku and it’s like nothing else matters. Not the speed, not the height. Not the aerial sceneries, not the wind whizzing past their faces, shaking their skins. Not the star-speckled skies that wrap around their bodies this high up in the air. No, nothing else matters except for this—Izuku with his arms thrown up, mouth open in the widest smile Katsuki’s ever seen, one that could rival the sun.
Right then, his heart explodes, an ocean of love to match an ocean of grief.
Or maybe, love and grief are just the same things.
Katsuki’s legs are trembling when they get down from the coaster, gravel like disequilibrium beneath his feet. The reality of the day is starting to creep up on him, no matter how hard he’s tried to shove it in the back of his mind. It chases him, the way he’s always chasing Izuku.
✺
Apart from the rides, the amusement park has a carnival section teeming with food and game stalls. There are benches to sit and eat their food at, illuminated by strings of fairy lights hanging overhead. Katsuki and Izuku meander around the tents, soaking in the pop-the-balloon displays and smells of fairfood.
“Are you hungry Kacchan?” asks Izuku, “You haven’t had dinner yet.”
“I could eat something,” admits Katsuki. As if backing him up, his stomach lets out a telltale rumble, inciting another laugh from Izuku.
“What are you feeling? There’s dango and takoyaki and karaage…”
“Crepes,” answers Katsuki without hesitation, “choco-banana crepes.”
Izuku makes a face. “You don’t even like crepes.”
“I can appreciate a good sweet,” he retorts.
“Like Satou-kun’s bakes? Man, I miss his strawberry shortcake.”
He misses you too. Everyone misses you.
“Big Lips makes a mean chocolate cake,” concedes Katsuki. An array of crepes—folded within triangular cones, loaded with cream and fruit and chocolate drizzle—greets them as they near the stall. Katsuki orders from the girl behind the counter who doesn’t dare to meet his eyes. Izuku snickers, “If only people knew how harmless you are as opposed to how you look.”
“What do you mean? I’m tough as fuck,” says Katsuki, a little too loudly because the girl only cowers even more. Giggles erupt from Izuku’s lips.
Light sizzles fill the air as she splays batter onto the grill in a perfect circle. When it’s crisped into something golden and flimsy-thin, she smears chocolate spread over and tops it with sliced bananas. Folds it into the paper cone and hands it to Katsuki with a sheepish smile.
Izuku stares at the crepe like it’s a prized, limited edition All Might Silver Age figurine.
“That looks so good,” he says, “I wish I could eat it too.”
Katsuki’s heart drops again, descending into the pits of his stomach. If it keeps falling there’ll be no room left for it to go.
“How does it taste?”
“Too sweet,” he lies after taking a bite, “the chocolate tastes like the cheap kind. Bananas are overripe too. And the crepes’ a little burnt.”
“Well that’s unfortunate,” says Izuku, scrunching his nose. They amble some more as Katsuki eats, liquid chocolate dripping down his fingers. The tension he’s tried to ignore palpates again, saturating the air, stealing the oxygen from his lungs. His ears are whirring with static, a stark contrast to the carnival music pumping from the speakers.
Izuku stops in front of a game stall, and Katsuki follows his eyes from the rows of bottles on the table—some of which sport red and yellow caps—to the soft toy prizes dangling from the roof.
There’s one of a large green bunny.
“Oh my god,” utters Izuku, freckles made prominent by the rosy hue splashing his cheeks, “you have to get it.”
“It’s ugly,” says Katsuki. And it’s true, the plushie looks, more than anything else, like a botched-up version of Izuku with its mismatched eyes and distorted lip. The shade of green in its fur is nowhere close to Izuku’s viridian, mossy curls.
“That’s a big prize,” intones the man running the stall, “throw the ring around just one red bottle and you’ll get it.”
“Am not interested.”
“C’mon Kacchan!” urges Izuku. The smile on his face grows a little more wry, eyes glittering with challenge. Katsuki doesn’t like that look. “Unless… you don’t think you’re able to win?”
It’s pathetic how that always seems to do the trick, Katsuki’s chest stirring like something alive in response to Izuku’s teasing. Fight instincts overpower his flight instincts. “Of course I can. Watch me do it on the first try.”
The guy manning the stall widens his eyes, staring at Katsuki with a befuddled look. Completely used to it by now, Katsuki shrugs and pays a token for three rings. Narrows his eyes, targets his vision at a red-capped bottle in the back row. Steels his nerves, lets the noises of their surroundings fade out into silence. Then, as if braced for battle, he throws the ring with imagined, pinpoint precision—
It misses.
Izuku barks out a laugh so loud Katsuki almost thinks people would whip their heads around at the commotion. He scowls. “Don’t fucking laugh at me!”
“I’m not laughing at you,” says the man behind the stall, swallowing thickly, pale as if he’s seen a ghost. Katsuki ignores him again, turning instead to look at Izuku once more.
For some reason, the expression on his face—the curve of his mouth bracketed by a smile that is as feral as it is soft, irises gleaming with sheer belief—brings Katsuki back to when they were four-year-olds again. Fifteen years old. Seventeen years old. He’s always looking at Katsuki with unadulterated faith.
It mends his heart. It shatters it.
With that look etched into his brain, he aims for the bottle with renewed vigour, as though he’s blasting an AP shot at a supervillain. Plus Ultra, he thinks, or some shit.
He misses again.
Izuku cups his mouth, whispering as if anyone else could even hear him, “I think it’s a scam. Kacchan makes the most accurate shots.”
“You don’t fucking say.”
“Huh?” prompts the man.
“I’m not talking to you, geezer.”
“Kacchan! There’s no need to be so rude,” whines Izuku. Katsuki rolls his eyes and flicks the last ring haphazardly. To their surprise, it lands on an empty bottle. It’s not the red one they were aiming for, but the stall owner hands him a consolation prize for it.
“I don’t settle with consolation,” grumbles Katsuki, glowering at the new keychain on his palm, a mouse-shaped acrylic that looks like a knock-off of their principal.
Gleeful, Izuku echoes his thoughts, “He looks like Principal Nezu.”
“He’s the fucking ugliest piece of shit I’ve ever seen, that’s what.”
“You should keep it,” lilts Izuku, dipping his head low to get a closer view of the keychain, standing so close Katsuki could almost conjure the heat of his body, the dewy scent he emanates. Like the earth after it’s been washed by rain, petrichor.
Keyword: almost.
“Fuck no,” answers Katsuki.
For a heart-stopping moment, Izuku lifts his head, meeting Katsuki’s gaze, lashes fanning out so prettily over his eyelids Katsuki could count each distinct one. Backlit by flickering neons, he looks angelic, strobes catching in his hair, his skin. Cocooning him in a shimmer, glinting the ridges and slopes of his muscled frame. Katsuki’s breath catches in his throat.
“You should keep it, so everytime you look at it you’ll think of me.”
But everything reminds me of you.
And who is Katsuki not to oblige? Aggressively, he attaches the keychain to his sling bag. Izuku grins at him.
As they walk off from the stall, the man stares strangely at the back of Katsuki’s head, wondering if there’s something—someone—he’s missed.
✺
There’s less than an hour left until the park closes. People are filing out, stalls are folding up, leaving blocks of empty pavement for them to traipse on. Katsuki’s hands are shoved into his pockets, beading with perspiration. Orange skies have traded for a starry canvas, and the lights look more ethereal set against it. With the sun completely vanished below the horizon, Katsuki is reminded of his impending deadline.
“It’s getting late,” he says. The keychain taps against his bag as they stride, in tandem with his hummingbird heartbeat. Ba-dum, ba-dum, like a pendulum that keeps on ticking, and Katsuki won’t know what to do with himself when it stops.
“There’s just one more thing I’d like to do before we go,” says Izuku. He points to the ferris wheel looming above them, magnificent in its spin and circumference.
“Okay.”
When they enter the capsule, the air goes still. It’s so much quieter than the music, the cacophonies of the park outside. Here, the thrum of his blood is magnified, reverberating in the atmosphere. Katsuki is so sure Izuku can hear him, hear the way his heart is tripping over itself. It’s taking everything out of him to rein the orange electricity that threatens to burst from his skin. Ten OFA users crammed in a single ferris wheel capsule won’t be a pretty sight. If he activates the quirk, he means.
Slowly, in rickety movements, their capsule draws up, taking them further and further away from the ground. Unlike being on the roller coaster before, where everything passed them in a flash, here they get to watch the earth coalesce into topography in slow motion.
Sitting across from Katsuki, Izuku has his face pressed against the window. And in another life, breaths would be billowing from his parted lips, fogging the glass. In another life, he’d trace shapes with scarred fingers on the condensation, and Katsuki would call him an idiot. In this life though, he’s simply looking at the view, and Katsuki is looking at him.
In every life, he thinks he’ll always be looking at Izuku.
“Beautiful,” says Izuku, turning back to smile at Katsuki. It’s a private smile, sweet and sad and encompassing every intricacy of their shared history, their lives intertwined like rivers on a map, veins under epidermis.
Like Izuku’s blood, pulsing in Katsuki’s own, when Katsuki had taken One For All from him.
“Yeah,” he breathes out, “beautiful.”
You’re beautiful.
Izuku has his hand splayed open on the seat, and Katsuki can see the scars running up the sides of his palm, charting around his fingers in labyrinthine spires. He can see the gaps between them, empty spaces aching to be filled. The gaping hole in his own chest—nothing but smoke, black-blue—aching to be filled.
Without thinking, he’s getting up from the seat, head knocking the roof of the capsule. It trembles, as he reaches out to grab Izuku’s hand in his own.
It slips through thin air.
Viridian eyes blow wide.
“Kacchan…”
And Katsuki’s heart is tearing itself apart. It feels like knives digging into muscle and blades sawing through bones and nails splitting flesh open. It hurts so fucking much, every moment soaked in pain and regret compounding into the single ache weighing beneath his breastbone—Izuku, sludge villain; Izuku, Mr Compress; Izuku, Shigaraki.
Izuku, in his dying moments.
Izuku, Katsuki, and the hand he didn’t take at the river.
Saltwater floods his eyes, cascading down his cheeks without control. Izuku brings his hands up to wipe Katsuki’s tears, but they pass through his skin like a projection, and that only makes Katsuki cry even harder.
“Kacchan,” he calls Katsuki’s name again. It’s spoken like something reverent in his mouth. Omniscient, inevitable. A baby’s first words. Kacchan, Kacchan, Kacchan.
“Deku, I—”
“It’s time, isn’t it?” says Izuku, kneeling before Katsuki.
“All Might and I met someone during a rescue,” answers Katsuki, sobbing freely. “She was so— selfless, saving everyone around her despite being a victim herself. She was just like…”
Just like you.
Izuku smiles softly. “What’s her name?”
“Sugawara Aoi. Twelve years old, quirkless,” answers Katsuki, his voice ripped from his throat like something scraped raw, “young, brave. She’s a perfect fit.”
“That’s a good thing Kacchan.”
“I know. I know what I have to do, Deku. I didn’t want this fucking quirk, it was never meant for me. I know it’s the right thing to pass the baton, I know all of this but—” Katsuki pauses to exhale a shuddery breath, “this is the only way I get to see you.”
It’s like being draped in a safety blanket—living with One For All, holding onto Izuku’s vestige—except you can feel the pointed edges of reality piercing through the fabric, breadths away from grazing your skin. It reminds you that you’re on borrowed time, that you’ve been selfish once, but you can’t be selfish again.
You can’t have Izuku all to yourself.
Izuku extends his hand, letting it hover just above Katsuki’s sternum, a little to the left where his heart is lodged.
“Here Kacchan,” he says, “I’ll always be here.”
Katsuki cracks all over again. He thinks of a world without Izuku—not even the relic of him, swelling through his blood in the form of One For All. He remembers his classmates after the war, after Izuku’s death—screaming his name during nightmares, crying themselves to sleep. And he thinks this is what the rest of his life will look like. This is the punishment he’ll have to bear, for the hand he didn’t take fifteen years ago.
“You have to let me go Kacchan.”
“I don’t know if I can do it,” admits Katsuki, the words spilling out of him without volition, “you never got to eat the fucking crepes. I never got to hold your hand the whole time, I— I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
He’s trembling everywhere, coming apart at the seams, crushed bones and torn heart and split skin.
“Kacchan, can I tell you something?”
Katsuki looks through tear-soaked lashes, at the boy he’s chased his entire life. This boy who softens his edges, whose scarred hands fill the gaps between Katsuki’s fingers. Who’s only ever wanted to stand with Katsuki, side by side.
“After I dealt the final blow to Shigaraki,” after I died, “I couldn’t move. I wanted to— I wanted to tell you but my mouth couldn’t open. Kacchan, you were holding my hand. I felt it, at the very last moment. My eyes were closed and I couldn’t see anything but I felt it.”
Izuku lets his hand pass through Katsuki’s chest. Katsuki feels a slight tingle—small flames blooming behind his breastbone—the closest thing he’ll have to touch.
“This isn’t goodbye. I’m everywhere, Kacchan. In Inko’s womb and Yagi’s blood and Sugawara’s quirk and most of all, your memory of me. Like this, I’ll be yours forever to have.”
Katsuki can’t say anything else because he’s crying too hard. “Izuku,” he chants like a mantra, as if he’d get to keep him a second longer for every time he repeated his name, “Izuku, Izuku, Izuku.”
The ferris wheel halts as their capsule reaches the peak—two boys suspended in zenith, the divide between land and sky, earth and heaven. Life and death.
“I once said,” says Izuku, “that lovers should go to amusement parks together. They should hold hands and share crepes.”
The corners of his lips raise into a smile that bathes the nighttime in pure, golden light.
“We did everything today,” he says, “I love you Kacchan.”
“Idiot,” says Katsuki, letting his own fingers pass through Izuku’s skin, “I love you too.”
✺
Sugawara drinks from the vial of crimson fluid. Immediately, Katsuki feels lighter, vestiges and energies dissipating from his blood, leaving behind only the buzz of explosions in his veins. He lets one more cry escape his lips—raw, honest, a last goodbye. Behind him, All Might places a hand on his shoulder.
He feels lighter by the absence of Izuku. It stains his world in tones of black and blue. The colour of grief, the weight of a hollow loss.
But matching up to it is the memory of him—ferris wheels and jungle cruises and dessert crepes and interlaced hands—and it weighs more heavily than the emptiness he left behind.
It is tinged in the perfect shade of gold.