Work Text:
Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.
Katsuki stumbles home a mess of bruised, torn skin. He didn’t have time for a full body check-up, but whatever he could hide behind bandaids and stitching he’s done. There are sharp fizzles of pain where scarring jags across epidermis, where sore spots have been prodded and joints have been strained. But nothing beats the ache in his chest where his crumpled heart resides.
The door opens to reveal Izuku waiting for him at their sofa. At the sight of Katsuki, he instantly gets up on his feet.
“Kacchan…”
“You’ve seen the news, have you?” asks Katsuki tonelessly. “The intern was new, we shouldn’t even have had to send him there. But we were understaffed and the Commission insisted on it. Even so, I’d requested that he just observed. Still they asked him to check around the building for any remaining survivors before I blew it up but there was no time to brief him sufficiently and there were so many hidden rooms and corners and—”
Izuku takes a tentative step towards him, mangled hands coming up to curve around his trembling shoulders.
“There wasn’t any time. The building was going to collapse and I had to take it down safely. When he told me there was no one left in the building I had no choice but to listen. But no one should have pressured him to do this in the first place. He’s just a fucking child, how could he have known? How could we sit there and watch him bear the weight of a civilian’s death when he hasn’t even graduated yet? How could this—”
It’s when a blistered thumb carefully wipes away the beads of moisture trailing down his cheeks that Katsuki realises he’s crying. Izuku cups his face in an anchoring hold and pulls him close.
“Kacchan,” he breathes out, stopping Katsuki from spiralling further, “hey. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”
It’s telling how this is the first thing Izuku decides to tell him, that it isn’t his fault. Izuku sees through all of his carefully constructed barricades; and underneath that bravado, he finds the rot that’s embedded irreversibly into Katsuki’s bones—Katsuki’s hatred for himself. After an entire day spent fighting fires, it’s admittedly relieving to hear the person who understands him most acknowledge this part of him.
Here, with only Izuku’s eyes on him, Katsuki finally lets himself break down.
Those mornings when we kiss and surrender for an hour before we say a single word.
Working as a pro hero means that some nights, your partner comes home when you’re already asleep. Katsuki doesn’t know what time it is—it could be past three in the morning, or four, even—when he feels the bed dip with another weight atop it. He’s far too wrapped up in the domain between slumber and awakeness to acknowledge Izuku’s presence, eyelids still sewn tight, vestiges of an interrupted dream floating languidly behind them. With the warmth that emanates from Izuku’s body, Katsuki feels sleep licking at his consciousness once more, beckoning him to fall deeper into rest.
But the idiot next to him obviously has other plans, considering he gets up and mounts Katsuki’s body, bracketing his sides.
Katsuki is a little more cognizant now, but still too exhausted to fully awaken. His body keeps up with his act, breathy snores tumbling from his lips in a steady rhythm, matched with the heaving of his frame, the rise and fall of his chest. Izuku leans down to brush their noses together, and Katsuki’s heart stills behind his breast.
It isn’t the first time he’s done this. The nerd is sappy as hell, and way too obsessed with Katsuki than any reasonable person should be. But Izuku has never known reason when it comes to Katsuki. Only when it comes to Katsuki. Katsuki has long since learned not to fight it.
“Can I talk to you for a bit?” whisper-asks Izuku, the edges of his words fuzzy and a little out-of-tune from trying to keep his volume low. His voice tickles and it makes Katsuki want to snort. The nerd thinks he’s all slick asking for permission, when they both know he’ll ramble despite Katsuki’s non-answer.
“I missed you a lot today, Kacchan. I mean, I miss you all the time but especially when we have different shifts. I prefer coming home to you when you’re awake and all—” here, Izuku does his rendition of Katsuki’s gravelly voice (it’s admittedly gotten better over the years), “—shitty nerd, you better wash your filthy hands and feet before stepping one foot into the house.”
A giggle peals from Izuku’s mouth, because he’s the kind of loser who laughs at his own jokes. It’s followed by a thumb caressing the expanse of cheek below Katsuki’s right eye. Its blistered terrain moves with the peaks and troughs of old scars that throb underneath. “Do you know you’re the best thing that’s happened to me?” sighs Izuku. It infuriates Katsuki sometimes, that Izuku only remembers him in incandescent light, years of grief Katsuki had bestowed him in childhood cleanly forgotten. Katsuki will bear the weight of remembering them for him if he has to. That’s just a small price to pay for the gift of Izuku’s grace.
Izuku bumps his forehead onto Katsuki’s, every syllable that pours from his mouth transferred from skin to skin. “That I love you so much, Kacchan. It’s been you, it is you, and it’ll only ever be you.”
Katsuki stays ramrod still if only to keep the shudder that’s undulated through his skin from visibly showing. But the flush in his ears is something that’s impossible to hide. If Izuku sees it, he doesn’t say anything, simply pressing a kiss onto their pinkened tips.
And in the morning, Katsuki will say I love you back by pulling the covers over Izuku’s body and letting him sleep in. By preparing enough katsudon to feed an entire family and leaving it in the fridge with reheating instructions scribbled onto a memo pad, because the shitty nerd may be the world’s number one hero but he still struggles with a microwave. By getting through the workday and coming home to Izuku’s arms in one piece.
For now, with Izuku’s affections tucked neatly into his nooks and corners, he sleeps.
I look at you and see all the ways a soul can bruise, and I wish I could sink my hands into your flesh and light lanterns along your spine so you know there's nothing but light when I see you.
It's the way Izuku kisses him, that Katsuki just knows.
That Katsuki could commit unforgivable crimes and Izuku would sit with him behind bars, like there's nowhere else he'd rather be than inside a prison cell. That Katsuki could singe and burn and Izuku would hold the embers in his hands as if they were precious lights rather than weapons of destruction. That Katsuki could fall from grace and Izuku would plummet after him into hell if that meant being by his side. That every place on earth is just a burbling river from his childhood, and everywhere he runs Izuku is already there—looming over him with a hand outstretched.
Izuku maps Katsuki's body with his mouth, and plants flowers in every dark crevice.
Under his lips, the dystopian ground of Katsuki's skin turns into soil; blossoms with camellias, wisterias, chrysanthemums. The tunnels between his ribs where shame used to lie are lantern-lit with the graze of Izuku's teeth. The ridges where neck meets shoulder had held the weight of unnecessary expectations, now lightened by the loll of Izuku's tongue. The memories of war and death that'd lined the burrow of his chest are washed away by the moisture of Izuku's jaw. The cartography of veins on a bruised wrist—syphoning and cycling the poison of his blood, the utter weakness of his heart—is delineated by the shape of Izuku's canines and molars. Neutralised by the salt of his mouth.
Izuku kisses him with one purpose and one purpose only—to draw the light out of every darkness Katsuki had painstakingly tried to hide.
And there's nothing else Katsuki can do but kiss him back.
My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears,
You are my home, do you not understand?
As heroes, they’ve missed Valentines, anniversaries, and each other’s birthdays on many occasions. This year though, it’s their first time missing all three, plus Christmas.
Izuku is on his longest work mission yet and Katsuki hasn’t gotten used to the constant ache of missing him. It’s exacerbated by them skipping their annual tradition of eating KFC together for Christmas, the only day in the year Katsuki allows himself to indulge in shitty fast food. He’s set up the Christmas tree Izuku had insisted on buying ages ago, but its faux leaves and glittery ornaments aren’t able to replace Izuku’s absence in their apartment.
To make up for it, they’d promised to eat on video call together. Katsuki pretended he didn’t care much for the whole thing but had the family bucket pre-ordered an entire three weeks prior to the actual day. An hour before the agreed time, he already has his laptop propped up at the end of the dinner table, internet connection triple-checked so no technical difficulty can come in the way of their Christmas date. Katsuki definitely can’t finish all this greasy food by himself, but he’s sure Shitty Hair and Round Face will be more than happy to take his leftovers.
Seven minutes in with zero notifications from Skype, Katsuki decides Izuku’s already seven minutes too late. He grinds his teeth like that could quell the small bubble of anxiety behind his sternum. What if Izuku’s caught up with work and isn’t able to come online? Katsuki would have to resort to calling Halfie over so he won’t sulk alone with too much food for one. He aggressively shoots Izuku a text.
to: shitty nerd [19:07]
where the hell are you?
from: shitty nerd [19:08]
sorry kacchan, will be a lil late {{ (>_<) }}
to: shitty nerd [19:08]
die
from: shitty nerd [19:09]
i miss you too! (´ ε ` )♡
With no one else in the house bearing witness, Katsuki lets out a relieved sigh. Their plans might be delayed, but at least they aren’t cancelled. He chances a look outside the window by their dining table and is greeted with the pristine white of falling snow, the soft glow of Christmas lights. These, too, make his chest squeeze with the soreness of yearning. Their expensive heater isn’t enough to drive away the frigidity of wintertime—only the heat of Izuku’s body can. The fairy lights lose all of their beauty without Izuku by his side to watch them with.
He’s about to follow up his texts with one more asking the nerd to hurry the fuck up when he hears the door being unlocked.
Katsuki’s senses are instantly heightened. Security in their building may be tight, but who knows if someone’s managed to break in? Besides, the only other people who have a key to their apartment are their parents, and Katsuki knows they’re currently eating their own KFC dinner together in Musutafu. He bounds to the entryway on pure reflexes, heart rattling violently against his chest at the possibility of a villain. When the door opens though, who he sees makes him slam it back shut immediately.
“Kacchan, let me in!”
“What the fuck,” mouths Katsuki, “what the actual fuck.”
The door opens again and Izuku’s face reappears—rosy and freckled and beaming. Katsuki remains rooted to the floor, unable to process that he’s seeing Izuku in the flesh after months. When he hadn’t expected any of this. When it feels like a dream; and he’s afraid to blink because if he does he might wake up alone again, in a bed meant to sleep two, eating fried chicken meant to feed two.
“Merry Christmas Kacchan!” shouts Izuku and the way his booming voice instantly grates on Katsuki’s nerves is proof that all of this is real, “We’d finished up a few days ago and I wanted to surprise you by coming home earlier than planned because I know how much our little Christmas ritual means to you and—”
Katsuki doesn’t let Izuku finish his sentence. He lunges forward, wrapping him in his arms, and as Izuku’s head burrows into the crook of his neck, Katsuki inhales the earthy scent of petrichor that he’s missed so much.
“I knew that you missed me,” teases Izuku, muffled where his lips are smushed against Katsuki’s collar.
“Shut the hell up.”
And so maybe they won’t have to miss Christmas for the first time. Izuku puts on an old holiday record and dims the lights, letting the room be doused in the city-glow filtering through their windows. With his insane One For All metabolism-turned-perpetual-hunger, they finish the food with no leftovers for their friends. Katsuki nags Izuku to unpack his luggage but it falls on deaf ears. He gets pulled into bed instead and finds that he doesn’t mind, because Izuku’s home.
This, he thinks, is the best Christmas present.
If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.
It’s when Katsuki is cleaning up the shitty nerd’s study room—he has a low tolerance for messes, and a mess is still a mess, as much as Izuku likes to call it an ‘organised chaos’—that he finds the book. It falls out from where it’s been wedged into Hero Analysis #13. The journal is charred at the edges from the time Katsuki burned it and sent it tumbling out of their middle school classroom window. He ignores the involuntary spike of guilt at the memory, slotting it back into the shelf and picking up the fallen, untitled notebook instead. This one he hasn’t seen before.
The book is well-worn, open on a random page where blocks of chicken scrawl are fitted between crisp blue lines, some of them spilling onto the margins. Katsuki doesn’t mean to read the texts, but it’s hard not to when the words are staring back at him so openly.
in the desert of my childhood,
you were a mirage of the sea.
my parched throat longed for your waters,
but always thought you
out of reach.
it’s only years later when I learned
that the ocean needs the sand,
as much we needed each other.
What the hell is this? Are they lyrics plucked out of one of those horrendous pop songs Izuku likes so much? Katsuki tightens his grip on the book as he continues reading the chunk of words below.
red, as the blood that pulses through my veins
and rushes to my cheeks when you’re around;
as the glass of wine that gets me tipsy
but never drunk like I am on you.
as the marks you leave on my skin
seconds before they turn into lavender;
as the shade of your eyes no names of colours
ruby and garnet and vermillion can compare to.
red, as my fragile heart —
one that beats for you.
Katsuki feels a telltale blush paint across his face, spreading to the tips of his ears. Because these aren’t top forty lyrics or some obscure quotes, no, these paragraphs are what Izuku has written about Katsuki. It hadn’t been as obvious in the first text but here, the red eyes and red marks are a giveaway. Affection is liquid warmth pumping through Katsuki’s veins, erupting butterflies in the conservatory of his stomach as he lets the words tattoo themselves behind his eyelids. How dare the nerd? How dare he wax poetry about him?
At this point, Katsuki knows he’s already read too much. The fact that Izuku hasn’t shared these words with him is testament to how raw, private, and genuine they are. With that in mind, he allows himself one more peep at the penmanship inscribed onto the bottom of the page. Just one more, and he’ll put the book back where it belongs. Katsuki won’t say a word about it until the day Izuku is finally ready to show him.
It comprises a mere three sentences, but they make Katsuki’s heart skip a beat all the same:
I’ve chased your back,
as you’ve chased mine,
only to realise we’re right by each other’s sides.
they said the end is coming
everyone's up to something
I find myself running home to your
sweet nothings
outside they're push and shoving
you're in the kitchen humming
all that you ever wanted from me was
sweet nothing
On the rare occasion that Izuku falls sick, he gets really sick.
With the sheets bunched around his shivering frame, he’s a mess of snot and flushed skin, cold sweat dripping down his temples in beads. Katsuki has replaced the wet towel on his forehead five times now, hoping he’d break his fever soon. Atop the bedside drawer is a flask of hot water that Katsuki’s just refilled, a half-eaten bowl of rice porridge that Izuku doesn’t have the appetite to finish, and medicines that Katsuki had already set an alarm for the next timing Izuku needs to take them. Half-asleep, Izuku groans as he shifts in the bed, the blankets dipping low to reveal him clinging onto the third-edition Dynamight plushie. The sight of it instantly sets Katsuki’s ears aflame. He’s equal parts shy and indignant because the one cocooned in Izuku’s arms should be him, damn it, not that half-assed soft toy version of him.
But Katsuki knows better than to catch Izuku’s flu now, when he has an early shift tomorrow, one that he’d traded today’s shift for so he could be at the nerd’s side despite his vehement protests. Katsuki won’t listen to someone who can’t even cook a proper bowl of okayu. So he wears a mask and keeps an appropriate distance, despite every cell in his body screaming at him to be close, close, close to Izuku.
Izuku draws his knees to his chest, waking himself up with his own coughing fit. Chest flaring with worry, Katsuki passes him the flask and watches him gurgle the liquid down. Propping his back up against the headboard, Izuku asks, “Is it time for my meds yet?”
“Not until an hour later,” answers Katsuki. “How are you feeling?”
“Like horse shit. Or what I’d imagine horse shit to feel like.”
“You are so weird.”
“I’m sick, Kacchan, you aren’t allowed to be mean to me.”
“I’m allowed to do whatever the fuck I want.”
Katsuki leaves the room to replace the towel on Izuku’s forehead and comes back with an added mug of steaming ginger tea. Izuku eyes it warily but Katsuki shoves it in his face anyway, demanding him to drink from it. Ginger may not be Izuku’s favourite flavour, but it goes a long way in relieving an irritated throat. Three small sips have him clicking his tongue and wrinkling his face in distaste, to which Katsuki grumbles, “You’re so fucking dramatic.”
He settles on the chair beside their bed at the same time Izuku burrows back into the sheets, Dynamight plushie tucked beneath his armpit.
“This is my first sick leave in three years,” quips Izuku, “maybe that’ll push my rank down in this week’s billboard charts.”
Katsuki feels a nerve throb dangerously against his temple. “Since when the hell did you care about shit like that?”
“I don’t,” answers Izuku earnestly.
“Then don’t ask useless questions.”
“It’s just…” drawls Izuku, the thoughtful cadence to his voice a premonition to the next stupid thing that’s about to spill from his mouth. “You and I have chased each other forever. We compete on who gets the most rescues, who’s number one on the charts. But there’ll come a day we won’t get to do this anymore. Will you get bored of me then, Kacchan?”
It is a stupid question and Katsuki has to physically retract himself from bonking the nerd on the head for it. But there’s a hint of genuine insecurity laced into Izuku’s tone, something that may go unnoticed by other people but which Katsuki picks up on immediately. While Katsuki thinks it’s obvious as hell he’d follow Izuku to the ends of the world, Izuku still thinks less of himself sometimes. A lot of the time. And Katsuki had played a part in causing that deprecation in their childhood, so it’s on him to take Izuku’s feelings seriously and correct any misconceptions he has.
What Izuku said is true—they’ve chased each other their whole lives, and the journey has been nothing short of exhilarating. There’s no one else in the world who brings the best out of Katsuki like him, who challenges Katsuki to reach greater heights and unravel truths about himself that’d remained dormant beneath years of unnecessary praise and societal expectations like him. And Katsuki is lucky enough to be that person for Izuku, too. Together, they’ve journeyed through the wildest adventures, in war and battle and rescue. It’s been a colourful twenty or so years.
But Katsuki likes the quiet moments too. He likes waking up an hour early to watch the sunlight pilfer through their blinds and play on Izuku’s skin. He likes lounging in his armchair with a book in hand, with Izuku’s muttering in the background as white noise. He likes spending entire afternoons working on new recipes and having Izuku gladly be his guinea pig. There’ll come a day when they have to step down from the hero stage, live the rest of their lives out in a series of dull, languid days like these, and Katsuki finds that he genuinely doesn’t mind.
“I like fighting with you,” he says. “Alongside you. Against you. No one else gives the same challenge as you do.”
The words are sticky in his throat. Sappiness isn’t Katsuki’s forte, but he’s promised to be more honest, to bare his feelings where they matter most.
“But I don’t- I don’t expect that out of you. You give me all of that, but I’d still be here despite it. I guess what I’m trying to say is, we could do nothing together and I’d still be- happy.”
Sweet nothing.
“So yeah, you have your answer.”
Izuku’s eyes glitter with tears because of course he would cry at anything remotely emotional coming out of Katsuki’s mouth. Sniffling, he lilts, “I really feel like kissing you.”
“You wish. You’re not getting your germs anywhere near me,” retorts Katsuki, but there’s zero bite to his words and only warmth in his chest.
He likes this, too—being able to take care of his sick boyfriend, to bare his heart out in the confines of their shared bedroom.
The nerd better get well soon, because Katsuki’s going to reclaim all of his kisses tomorrow.
Forever.