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The first thing Katsuki becomes aware of is the fact that he’s not dead. Or at least, he’s assuming he’s not dead, because he’s hoping being dead isn’t going to hurt this fucking much. It feels like Shigaraki had turned him into dust and some stubborn idiot had gathered up all the pieces and super glued them back together.
There’s a sniffle near him, and Katsuki opens his eyes to see the stubborn idiot in question.
Izuku is dressed in a pair of hospital scrubs and has bandages… pretty much everywhere. His hair is singed off on one side of his head, and he has a black eye, and he looks like complete, absolute shit. Katsuki feels immediately a hundred times lighter when he sees him, feels a thousand times better, can barely notice the pain radiating through his body anymore. Izuku is here. Izuku is safe.
It’s over.
“‘Zuku,” he says, voice hoarse and the name coming out slurred. Izuku’s head snaps up, and when he sees Katsuki looking at him he immediately bursts into sobs and flings himself at him.
“ Kacchan,” he wails, kneeling on the bed with one knee, both arms around Katsuki’s neck. Pain shoots through him as he’s jostled but it doesn’t stop him from wrapping his arms around Izuku’s waist and dragging him fully onto the bed. Izuku sobs into his neck, shaking, and Katsuki shoves his nose in Izuku’s hair and pretends he’s not shaking, too. “Kacchan, you were dead,” Izuku is still trying to talk through his tears. “You were dead, and your heart had stopped, and I saw you and you were dead, Kacchan, and if I hadn’t unlocked the second’s quirk you would still be dead—”
Katsuki pulls away to look him in the face and says, excitedly, “You unlocked the second’s quirk?”
Izuku just cries harder. Katsuki brings him back in for a hug, but Izuku’s sobs don’t seem to be tapering off. “Izuku, you’ve gotta calm down,” he says, as Izuku continues to fall apart. “Take some deep breaths for me, baby, come on.” The pet name spills out without him meaning it to, but it sits naturally between them as he rubs Izuku’s back.
“I c-can’t,” Izuku says.
“You can beat that fucker All for One but you can’t take some breaths? Come on, take a deep breath. Follow along with me.” He takes a deep breath, and Izuku follows along, breaths coming shaky and wet with tears, but eventually his great heaving gasps for air start to calm down, until he’s left just sniffling and crying quietly into Katsuki’s neck.
“So what was the second’s quirk?” He asks, voice still a little hoarse and rusty. Izuku curls into him and fists a hand in the front of Katsuki’s hospital gown.
“C-can we talk about it after, Kacchan?” He asks softly, and Katsuki nods, shifting and ignoring the pain as he curls around Izuku, too, arms and legs and bodies entwined so tightly it’ll take time to unravel.
“Yeah,” he grunts. “Yeah, s’not important now.” And it’s not, because the only important thing is this— him, and Izuku, and their beating hearts. Alive and pumping blood, Izuku’s breath in his face and tears staining his collarbone.
All for One’s words echo through his mind: you’re closer to Izuku Midoriya than anyone else. At the time Katsuki hadn’t thought much about it, other than the brief thought that AFO didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about… but now…
“Izuku,” he says. “What happened?”
Izuku nuzzles in closer, and Katsuki’s heart feels like it’s exploding all over again. “I got there and you were… and I— I don’t really know what happened after that, Kacchan. I was so sad and mad and scared and the second’s quirk just burst out of me and all I could see was the blood around your mouth and your, your All Might card—” He sounds like he’s about to start freaking out again, so Katsuki tightens his hold and shushes him.
“Okay, okay,” he says.
“I didn’t know you kept it,” Izuku says. “The card.”
“‘Course I did,” he says. “Kept it on me the whole time. They were our good luck charms, remember?”
“Yeah. Yeah, Kacchan, I remember.”
It’s a type of intimacy Katsuki isn’t used to, that he didn’t even think he was capable of. His fingers (the ones that aren’t mangled and broken) stroke through Izuku’s hair, and Izuku’s pressed so tightly against him, and Katsuki had thought he was going to die. He’d been — not okay, but ready. Being ready to die is half of what being a hero is. He’d been ready to die without ever seeing Izuku again, without being able to tell him half the shit he wanted to tell him, without giving him a proper apology that they could talk about instead of standing in the rain with all their classmates watching. He thought he wouldn’t get another chance.
“Izuku,” he says, because now that he’s started saying his name it’s like he can’t stop. “There’s still a lot of shit I gotta say to you.”
Izuku hums softly. “Can we talk about it later, Kacchan? I’m so tired, and I just… I just want to stay here and know that we’re both alive.”
“Okay,” Katsuki answers. “Okay, baby, sure.”
It slips out again, but this time Izuku smiles. “I like when you call me that.”
Relief spreads through him like a wildfire, and he’s about to close his eyes again when a thought hits him. “Where are my parents?”
“Oh,” Izuku says. “Your mom had been awake for like, seventy hours so your dad dragged her home to get some sleep. She’s gonna yell at you for waking up when she’s not here,” he adds with a slight giggle.
“No doubt,” Katsuki says, and then he says, because he’d thought he’d been going to die and then he didn’t and suddenly keeping secrets doesn’t seem nearly as important, “Rather wake up to you than her, anyway.”
Every time he thinks Izuku can’t possibly nuzzle closer to him, he’s proven wrong.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Kacchan. I don’t ever want to live in a world without you.”
“You ain’t gonna have to,” he says. “We did it, nerd, it’s done. It’s over.”
“Hmm,” Izuku says sleepily, and Katsuki settles into a more comfortable position and closes his eyes and drifts back to sleep, Izuku curled up in his arms.
“ You shithead!!”
Katsuki wakes up to this scream and then to the smell of his mother’s perfume assaulting his nostrils right before she smothers him in a hug. She’s crying loudly and doesn’t seem to notice or care that Katsuki is cuddled up with Izuku; she throws her arms over both of them and sobs and curses Katsuki over and over and over.
“Oi! Get off, hag, I’m fine! I’m fucking fine, Ma!” But Katsuki catches sight of his dad’s pale face, cheeks slightly sunken like he hadn’t been eating or sleeping, and guilt settles into his heart; he lifts his arm to awkwardly hug his mother, patting her on the back while Izuku awkwardly pats her arm.
“I’m fine, Ma,” he says, quieter this time. “Really, I’m fine.”
Mitsuki pulls away and angrily wipes at her face before her eyes land on Izuku, who has kind of shoved himself as deep as possible into the bed in response to the accidental reunion he’d found himself in the middle of. Her eyes flick from Izuku to Katsuki and then back again, and she raises one perfectly manicured eyebrow at her son, and the only reason Katsuki doesn’t flip her off is because he can’t bend his fingers.
“Hello, Izuku,” she says, and Katsuki can’t quite name the tone of her voice, but he knows it annoys him. “I didn’t see you there, all tangled with my son.” Katsuki glares at her, but Mitsuki isn’t about to be cowed by a glare she herself had perfected before passing it onto her son. “I’m sorry if I smothered you, although I am glad you’re okay, too.”
Izuku squeaks. “It’s okay, Auntie!” He says, high pitched like he’d just been kneed in the balls. “I’ll leave and let you three catch up.” He moves to leave the bed, but Katsuki grabs him and hauls him back, ignoring his parents standing there.
“Like hell you are,” he says ferociously. “You ain’t fucking leaving.”
His mother sniffs and then engulfs them both in another bone crushing hug. “I was so scared,” she says, and Masaru comes around to the side of the bed and Katsuki can feel his father’s hand rest on his head, trembling slightly. Katsuki swallows down the emotion in his throat, and in the mess of limbs and tears, he feels Izuku’s chapped lips press against his jaw.
Mitsuki and Masaru eventually move away, giving him room to pull Izuku even closer. Mitsuki sniffs, wipes her eyes, stares at the two of them, and then says “Does this mean we can stop pretending we don’t know you’re gay?”
“ Ma!” Katsuki bursts out; Izuku giggles into his neck, and Masaru lets out a long sigh.
“Dear,” he says. “I thought we agreed we’d do that more tactfully.” He should have known better, really; Mitsuki and Katsuki rarely did anything tactfully. “How about we go talk to the nurses and get the answers to some of our questions?”
Katsuki may have been the spitting image of his mother, but it was his father he respected and idolized the most. Calm and collected and easily in control of his emotions; Katsuki had never been able to emulate that. He gives his dad a grateful look, though, and he thinks Masaru understands, because he’s an expert at speaking the language he and his mother yell.
“Fine,” Mitsuki says. “Inko should be here soon again, Izuku,” she warns. “Not that I think we’ll be able to separate the two of you. Almost like you’re kids again—”
“Get out, hag!”
Masaru pulls a ranting Mitsuki out of the room to go talk to the nurses, and Katsuki sighs heavily as Izuku giggles softly. Katsuki leans back so he can look Izuku in the eye, tucking a wild curl behind his ear and smiling softly when it pops right back out.
“Kacchan,” Izuku says, then worries at his lip. Katsuki waits, growing less patient but doing his best not to let it show, until Izuku finally works up the nerve to ask. “What are we… what does this… I mean, what are we, um, doing?”
“We’re lying in a hospital bed after getting the shit kicked out of us,” he says, even though he knows what Izuku is saying.
“You know what I mean!” Izuku wails. “I mean the c-cuddling, and you called me, um, baby, before, and—”
Katsuki moves slowly, both to give Izuku time to move away if he wants to, but kind of mostly because it hurts to move. Izuku’s big green eyes widen before they flutter closed, and Katsuki presses their lips together in a brief kiss. He doesn’t push it; he doesn’t want to move too fast, and more importantly it fucking hurts to move, just a soft press of their lips before Katsuki moves back, eyes searching Izuku’s face for any signs of rejection.
Izuku opens his eyes and smiles at him, wide and beautiful and for him alone, and Katsuki feels himself unravelling, feels every wall and shield he’d ever built around himself crumble in the face of it. It’s the brightest fucking thing he’s ever seen in the world.
“We’re what we’ve always been,” Katsuki says. “You and me. Pushing and pulling.”
“And kissing, now?” Izuku says, half cheeky and half nervous. Katsuki grins. It hurts, but so does everything else. The pain is the least important thing in the world right now.
He kisses Izuku again. There are, approximately, eighty thousand million things they need to do and talk about and figure out, but in the oasis of the hospital room nothing else seems to matter. It’s just the two of them, untouchable. Izuku kisses him back, one big, scarred hand tracing Katsuki’s jaw. Katsuki is two and a half seconds away from saying fuck it to moving too fast or the pain, but there’s a very familiar high pitched squeak from the doorway, and the two of them pull away to see—
“Mom!” Izuku says frantically. Inko is clutching her purse very tightly to her chest.
“Mitsuki said you were in here,” Inko says, eyes flicking around the scene as if she was trying to take it in but couldn’t quite comprehend all the information. Katsuki moves away from him, conscious of his mother’s gaze, but Izuku doesn’t let him, and it makes something very warm bloom in his chest like some kind of invasive flower. “The doctor wanted to go over your injuries, Izuku.”
“Oh, right.” Izuku gives a self-conscious laugh, and when he pulls away from Katsuki, somehow it makes the pain worse. “I’ll be back soon, Kacchan,” he says, so only Katsuki can hear. He gives him a smile that has a glint of something bright and mischievous in it. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Katsuki wants to say something really clingy and embarrassing, like please don’t fucking go, but he hasn’t quite lost it that much. Instead he squeezes Izuku’s hand as tightly as he can with all the damage done to his, and trusts the promise in Izuku’s voice.
As they leave the room, Inko turns back; Katsuki isn’t sure what he’s expecting, if he’s about to get over a decade’s worth of anger thrown back at him from the mother of the kid he’d tormented for years— but instead Inko gives him a weak, tentative smile and says, “Thank you, Katsuki. For turning into the hero he always thought you were.”
After, when Katsuki is alone, he finally lets himself cry.