Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Katsuki meets Izuku, the first time he sees green so bright it nearly blinds and is old enough to remember, he thinks him rather plain. There’s a splattering of freckles, nervous, twisting hands, and of course, eyes of emerald—the only thing about the other boy that will linger past their first meeting—and little else.

His mother is much of the same, though she squats down to Katsuki’s level and peels her son’s fingers from the edge of her skirt. Then she smiles at him, and Katsuki thinks she’s beautiful.

He hides behind his mother’s legs to escape her kindly gaze.

“Katsuki-chan,” she says, shifting like a wave receding to expose its sandy banks, and big, tearstained eyes meet his, “this is Izuku.”

Now Izuku’s eyes are closed, and Katsuki thinks he’s beautiful. Even like this: slumped against the gym wall as streaks of blood sluggishly trail from the edge of his hairline to drop on the rough cement floor.

Eijirou had been the one to drag his limp body out of range, and he flashes Katsuki a thumbs up when he catches him staring.

Izuku is fine, Katsuki thinks, and he’s going to wake to their victory.

It’s just him against Uraraka and Todoroki now, his hands cloaked in deep, burgundy stained cloth wraps. A hint of a soon-to-be bruise peeks out from the cut off of Uraraka’s compression shirt, her biceps straining as she raises her arms in front of her in preparation for Katsuki’s attack. He keeps his chin low and peers at them through the space between his curled fists and waits. He’s outnumbered and, loathe to admit it, outclassed without Izuku by his side.

One on one, or not coming off an eight-round winning streak, and he thinks the match would be heading in his favor. As it is, Todoroki strikes first, herding him into the boarder of their makeshift ring, and he barely dodges the roundhouse kick Uraraka has waiting for him. He dives forward and rolls between them both, the edge of Todoroki’s knuckles brushing his shoulder, and his cotton t-shirt catches flames.

Katsuki puts a couple meters between them and regains a defensive position, beating out the smolder on his shoulder.

“No quirks,” Aizawa calls from the sidelines, his voice buoyed by Shinso’s voice amplifier held to his lips.

Todoroki wipes the sweat from his brow. “Sorry, Sensei.”

“One hand penalty for the next two minutes,” Aizawa says. Todoroki drops his right hand behind him.

They attack him together this time, Katsuki fielding Uraraka’s quick strikes towards Todoroki, and they shift a few degrees apart to avoid friendly fire. Uraraka sticks to Todoroki’s undefended right side, but even with the handicap, he manages a solid kick aimed at the meat of Katsuki’s thigh, mitigated only by the outward turn of his leg so it catches him in the calf instead.

“You going to dodge forever, Bakugou?” Uraraka pants. “Scared we’ll beat you if you get too close?”

Katsuki’s lips thin, but he keeps quiet. He can’t lose his cool, not with Izuku missing from his side. He can’t afford anymore weaknesses.

He lands a glancing hit on Uraraka, and she stumbles back a step. A trickle of blood edges past her mouth and she ignores it in favor of taking advantage of his now open right. With a right cross, she snaps his head back and Todoroki follows with a high kick he doesn’t manage to avoid.

Head ringing and sprawled on the ground, he covers his face as his classmates rain strikes down on him. The match only ends if he taps out, or, like Izuku, falls unconscious. Around them the class erupts in anxious titters, though he’s not able to make out any individual voices. Still, he gets the idea. Katsuki knows how this must look. Like he’s facing down a dead end. But Uraraka and Todoroki know well enough not to lighten up, even when he’s curled up protectively on his hands and knees.

Todoroki lingers a little too long after a kick, and Katsuki springs forward, grabbing him around by the back of his knees and pulling him down. He manages a sharp, startling elbow to his face before Uraraka kicks him off with a foot to the side of his head. He rolls with the hit and lands in a crouch facing them.

Todoroki, struggling to sit up, is clutching his weeping nose. Katsuki deems him the lesser of two evils and focuses on Uraraka. Though exhausted beyond measures, he presses her hard, ignoring quality for quantity as he inundates her with hits. Few land hard enough to do any real damage, but while her hands are raised high around her face, he wraps the crook of his elbow around her neck and drags her back and to the side. He swipes the leg holding all her weight out from under her and together they crash to the ground. Following his trajectory, Uraraka keeps her arms tight around her face. He throws his legs over her chest to keep her place as he wrestles for an arm. Winding clasped hands between her, he twists, and the hard edge of his wrist bone digs into her arm, and it springs free.

Katsuki secures her arm to his chest and throws himself backward, his spine cushioned by the layered training ground. He cants his hips upward, pulling her arm taut and putting pressure on her elbow. Uraraka slams a foot on the ground before he breaks her arm.

“I yield,” she says and rubs the inward bend of her elbow.

Katsuki’s off her like a shot. Todoroki has stumbled to his feet, the bottom half of his face smeared with crusting blood. He’s back to both hands now, and he raises them when Katsuki meets his gaze.

“Get his ass for me,” Uraraka mutters as she passes him, Tsuyu meeting her the moment she passes climbs over the roped boarder to usher her to a bench.

“I think you broke my nose,” Todoroki observes, wincing as he wipes a trail of blood before it can drip into his mouth.

Katsuki shrugs. “Yeah, well. You sucker punched Izuku when he stopped to ask if you were alright, so. Guess we’re even.”

Todoroki winces but doesn’t apologize. There’s a guilty pinch to his eyes when he says, “Sensei said not to stop until someone yields. He didn’t yield.” Quieter, he adds, “he’s fine.”

And the thing is, Katsuki knows he is. He’s seen Izuku fight through broken arms and shattered bones and blinded eyes; he’s been through worse than a brutal training match. But that didn’t stop the terror that tore through him when Izuku crumpled to the ground and fell deathly still. He thinks he blacked out. He came back to himself with blood coating his knuckles and Izuku nowhere in sight, and the crushing hollowness that settled in the pit of his stomach was staunched only by Eijirou, dragging Izuku’s motionless body off to the side.

But Katsuki doesn’t waste time explaining that to Todoroki. He doesn’t think he knows how. He simply attacks, the way he’s good at, the way he was made to, and now it is his turn to force Todoroki into a corner.

He will admit, in the privacy of his own mind if nowhere else, that he’s fighting on the wrong side of cruel, even for him. He pulls no punches, and when his strikes do land, increasing in frequency as he presses Todoroki, red blooms beneath his fists.

Todoroki ducks beneath a particularly nasty blow, Katsuki’s fist slamming into the wooden post he had kept his back to, and it splits in two, a clean crack down the middle.

“I yield,” he says, just loud enough for Aizawa to hear, and immediately the winning bell chimes.

“I’m not fighting him when he’s like that,” he mutters to Yaoyorozu, and she winds an arm around his back when he stumbles. She’s already extracting a roll of gauze from the skin of her neck. “It’s a fucking training exercise. He was fighting to kill.”

“Practice makes permanent,” Katsuki says and hops over the rope of the training ring.

Yaoyorozu frowns at him. “You can’t kill the villains you fight, Bakugou.”

Katsuki bumps past her and Todoroki, waving off Aizawa’s concerned look. He’s fine. Besides, he has more important things to worry about. “I will if they deserve it.”

“And what would they have to do?” Todoroki asks. “To deserve it?” But he’s already a fading voice behind Katsuki.

Izuku is sitting of his own power when he stalks close. Eijirou keeps open hands around him, just in case. The blood has been cleaned from most of his face, though it left behind a soft red stain, and it hides the scattering of freckles that normally ghost over the apples of his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose.

Katsuki squats down so he’s eye level. Carefully, minding the still drying blood on his knuckles, he pushes back Izuku’s fringe. “How you feeling?”

Izuku breaks out into a grin. “Great!” Then he winces. “Might have a concussion,” he admits, quieter.

Next to him Eijirou laughs. Katsuki whacks him hard with the back of his hand until his laughter pitters into something softer. “That’s what happens when you go down like a sack of rocks! No shame though,” he says, knocking gently into Izuku’s shoulder, “Todoroki’s a great fighter.”

“It was a cheap shot,” Katsuki mutters. “Izuku would kick his ass in a fair fight.”

Izuku’s face blooms red. “Well, he got me good this time,” he says. He doesn’t disagree with him, and Katsuki grins a shark’s smile. “Kirishima-kun told me you won though! Aah, I wish I could have seen it!” He pats the smooth line of his thighs, looking for a notebook and comes back empty-handed. “Do you think Aizawa-sensei would let me have a copy of the security tape? I’ve never seen you fight Shoto and Ochako before! I bet you hit one of them with an Ezekiel, right? It looked really good in practice yesterday, felt really strong, too. I couldn’t breathe properly for five minutes!”

“Hmm, I don’t think Katsuki pulled any chokes,” Eijirou says, an impish smile dancing on his face that Katsuki immediately distrusts. It means trouble, and that trouble is always, always aimed at him. “Now that I think about it, he’s never done any chokes on me!”

“You’ve got a fat neck,” Katsuki growls. “It’s not worth my time trying to choke you out.” He worms his hand underneath the loose fabric of Eijirou’s joggers and pinches deep into the skin above his ankle and twists. Eijirou’s smile grows tight, but it doesn’t fall.

“No, I don’t think that’s it! Maybe Katsuki just doesn’t like getting as close to me as he does you!”

Izuku eyes the hand Katsuki’s stuck up the leg of Eijirou’s pants. Fuck it, in for a penny in for a pound. Katsuki grabs a thicker chunk of flesh and twists that, too.

“Ow, jeez, dude, I give!” he says. “Man, you are mean today, almost taking off Todoroki’s head and now this?”

“What’s that mean?” Izuku asks, his eyes flicking between Katsuki and Eijirou. He’s in no hurry to tell Izuku about the fight, nor the way Katsuki nearly lost himself the moment he went down.

“It means he cracked the wooden post behind me,” comes Todoroki’s nasally voice, a wad of gauze held to his nose, “with a hit meant for my head.”

Izuku’s eyes blow wide, and he turns fully to Katsuki. Trapped in emerald pools, he’s fixed in place like a beetle under glass. “Waah, Kacchan, really? Without your quirk, too? That’s amazing!” Softer and just for Katsuki, he says, “you really are amazing.” And even without Eijirou’s snickering, he knows he’s lit in a deep red blush.

And suddenly he’s cursing his younger self, because how could he ever think Izuku looked at him with anything but pure adoration? And how did he ever not melt under his gaze?

Katsuki’s voice gets caught in his throat. “Thanks,” he manages. “You—yeah.” He flashes Izuku a weak thumbs up and Izuku burns radiant under the attention.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Todoroki sighs. He grabs Izuku by the arm and hoists him up. Katsuki rises with them and blocks Todoroki’s path with a fisted hand to his chest.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he asks. “He’s injured.”

Todoroki quirks an eyebrow at him. “I know. That’s why I’m taking him to Recovery Girl.” He points behind them and Recovery Girl’s greyed bob pops into view. Uraraka is with her already, a brace fixed around the arm Katsuki nearly snapped. Maybe Todoroki was right, maybe he was going a little too hard, but he took Izuku from him, and that was the most wicked choice of all. Katsuki lets them go, and fuck if seeing Izuku leave doesn’t get harder each time.

“Bye, Kirishima-kun!” Izuku calls over his shoulder as he’s hauled away. His smile grows warm and reaches to crinkle the edge of his eyes. “Bye, Kacchan.”

Eijirou whistles, low and deep, the moment they’re out of earshot. Katsuki’s impressed he waited as long as he did. “That was kind of pathetic, dude,” he says.

Katsuki groans and drops his head into his hands. “I know,” he hisses. “But I can’t stop. He just looks at me with his stupid, big, green eyes—”

“That you love.” That he loves.

“That are ugly and stupid and I hate him,” Katsuki says.

Eijirou peels his hands from his face. “You want to kiss him so bad,” he grins. The worst part is Katsuki does. He wants everything from Izuku, his crooked hands, his awkward laughs, the odd way he stirs his tea, always counterclockwise, before he drinks it, scalding hot with steam leaking over the mug. At the same time, he wants nothing at all. He’d take silence with Izuku over anything the universe had to offer. He'll take anything he's willing to give.

“…maybe.”

“You want to date him.” Eijirou sings. “And kiss him and marry him.”

Katsuki pounces on him then, rolling until he’s perched on Eijirou’s stomach. “You need to shut the fuck up, shitrag, before you lose speaking privileges.”

“They hated Jesus because he spoke the truth, too.”

They dissolve into mindless limbs, technique traded for uncoordinated kicks and petty slaps. Katsuki comes out the winner, because of course he does, the exhaustion from his last fight meaning nothing in the face of victory.

“Kacchan?” Katsuki’s head whips up and he can feel Eijirou shaking with laughter beneath him. Izuku’s gaze flicks down. It stays, one, two, three moments long on them. “Aizawa-sensei said he was going to give feedback now,” he says, a bit sullen.

Katsuki sits down on his heels, effectively leaning himself against the backs of Eijirou’s thighs. “Don’t need any. I was flawless,” he says. “You did alright, too, I guess.”

“Sensei said he was going to announce the winners,” Izuku says, his eyes stuck somewhere just behind Katsuki.

Katsuki peels himself from Eijirou, feeling every bit of those eight matches deep in his bones, and offers a hand to pull his friend up.

“Guess we can go,” he says, knocking gently into Izuku’s side.

They’re declared the winners, by an easy and safe margin. “Dedication is great, Bakugou,” Aizawa is saying, “but try reigning it in when you’re with your classmates, alright? They’re going to be your teammates someday.”

“What’s the point of training if we half-ass it?” Katsuki asks. “We’ve got a couple months left before we’re out of here. Shouldn’t we be treating every match like we’re on the field?”

“Training is meant to instill good practices,” Aizawa says. “Trying to kill your sparring partner wasn’t the goal here.” Katsuki stews in his own anger, but he knows well enough to keep his mouth shut. “Just, know when to use all that power, got it?”

Katsuki bares his teeth at the ground. “Got it,” Izuku says for him, and Aizawa nods and moves on. He’s talking about the graduation ceremony, and Katsuki tunes him out. He already knows what he’s doing at the end of the year. Knows who he wants to do it with, too.

“Kacchan,” Izuku says, ducking to catch his eyes. “You want to hit the showers, or would you rather glare at the ground some more?”

“You must’ve hit your head pretty hard if you think I won’t whoop your ass,” Katsuki says. He buries his fingers in sweaty, green locks and shakes him gently. The bump he had seen earlier had faded, and there’s not a trace of split skin. Still, he lets his hand linger. “Getting bratty, are we?”

Izuku tugs him to the changing room. “C’mon, Kacchan,” he says. He sounds, not nervous, not quite, but tense. The tight line of his shoulders solidifies it. “I want to talk to you.”

“We’re talking now, aren’t we?”

But Izuku shakes his head. “No, it’s important,” he says. “And I don’t want to have this conversation all sweaty and gross.”

“Hey, I smell fine,” he says over the pounding in his ears. “We can do this right here, right now.” Katsuki doesn’t think he can bear to wait. Nothing that has Izuku pinching the webbing at his thumb bodes well for him.   

“You smell like caramel, I know, Kacchan. Just, can you meet me outside in fifteen? After everyone’s left. Please,” he adds when Katsuki digs his heels into the ground for obstinance’s sake.

“Fine,” he says, because he has never been able to deny Izuku anything. Not when it mattered. Not when a simple yes brings the light back to his eyes and releases the strain he had been harboring.

“Thank you,” Izuku breathes, and then he’s tripping over his own feet to get inside the locker room. “Oh, the water heater’s broken!” he calls over his shoulder. “Better grab one of the showers quick before the hot water runs out!”

Eijirou and Denki both love languid, steaming showers, and they both entered the locker room before them. “Motherfucker!” Katsuki yells at Izuku’s back.

All the stalls are taken, and Katsuki sits furious on the bench, stripped down to his boxers, his towel hanging over his head.

“Sorry, Kacchan,” Izuku says, as he exits the shower with his towel wrapped around his tapered waist, sounding like he means it very little. “The cold strains my muscles.”

Katsuki deliberately does not turn to face him, as much as Izuku’s voice calls to him. From the corner of his eyes, he can see the bare, tanned skin of his back as he changes, a smear of scarred pink tracing lightning across his skin with a great pool of scar tissue collected on his shoulder.

“’S fine,” he says. “You’ve got to take care of your old man body.”

“Ha ha,” Izuku says and then he walks past Katsuki wearing only loose jeans. Holding up one side of his pants he bends over in front of Katsuki, a scant few centimeters between him and the slow trails of water running down Izuku’s back that get caught in his waistband. “Do you have a belt I can borrow?” he asks, digging through Katsuki’s locker. It was locked, but Katsuki’s not surprised he knows the combination. “Shoto took mine the other day for ‘testing’ and left a huge singe in it. It’s practically useless now.”

“Uh huh,” Katsuki says, barely managing to keep his tongue locked safe behind his teeth. Izuku’s skin is not for him to touch, but oh how he burns to. His hands begin to crackle, and he hides those too under his thighs.

“Thanks!” Izuku chirps. He pulls out a long strip of leather and winds it through his belt loops. He sticks the metal piece through the tightest hole. His hands run reverently over the belt and Katsuki refuses to be jealous over a piece of leather. “Oh, wow, Kacchan. This is really nice!” he says. “You sure you don’t mind me using it? I’m kind of worried I’ll ruin it now and owe you like, my firstborn child, or something.”

Katsuki wonders if he can get Izuku to wear more of his clothes. Would it be suspicious, if Izuku’s clothes went missing all at once? Maybe he could steal them in increments and leave his sweatshirts and joggers in Izuku’s room, so he’d have no other choice.

Izuku spins around and cocks out a hip at Katsuki. The worst part is it looks good on him, really good, and Katsuki knows it’s just a belt. But it’s his, and Izuku is wearing it, and he can’t help but conflate the ideas until he brains screams Izuku is his.

“Obviously I’d only take cash payments,” he says instead, because his heart has been exposed once before and even that was less trying then this.

“I offer you my Silver Age All Might figurine in near-mint condition,” he says.

“Deal,” Katsuki says. “Wait ‘near’ mint? How did a nerd like you manage to damage a stainless-steel figurine?”  

Izuku hums and struggles into a thick sweatshirt. Katsuki mourns the loss of his pretty, pretty view. “Well, someone was five and didn’t know how to control his quirk properly and burnt little baby fingerprints into his hair.”

“What a bastard,” Katsuki says.

“Yeah well, he’s got some redeeming qualities.” Izuku smiles. “He also just missed the shower I left empty for him.”

Katsuki whips around to see he’s right. His towel falls pitifully into his lap. “You snooze you lose, Bakugou,” Tokoyami says, and pulls the curtain closed behind him.

“Don’t you shower in a birdbath?!” Katsuki yells. Izuku laughs and slides on his red sneakers, grabbing a thick duffle bag, and suddenly Katsuki can’t remember what he was upset about.

“I’ll wait for you outside, okay?” he asks.

And Katsuki will never be grateful enough that he’s able to say, “yes,” and feel only longing when he’s left staring at Izuku’s retreating back.

Eijirou’s the next person to finish. With the chilled locker room air chasing him into the dripping shower, Katsuki laments their lack of stalls. Izuku is waiting for him, and Katsuki can’t shower fast enough.

He struggles to pull jeans over wet skin, and soon he’s the last person in the locker room, his pants stuck halfway up his thighs.

“Need some help, dude?” Second to last. Katsuki hops in place, looking like a strung-out rabbit, and manages to get his pants over his hips.

“I got it,” he says. He reaches into his locker for a belt and comes back empty handed. He’s reminded of Izuku in all his glory, his waist held not by Katsuki’s hands but his belt, and he thinks it good enough. It has to be.

“Thinking about Midoriya?” Eijirou asks.

Katsuki scowls and feels his face heat, knowing that’s as good as a confession to Eijirou. “None of your fucking business.”

Eijirou laughs. “You know you get all dopey eyed when you think about him?” he asks. “And you, well you don’t smile, but you look less like someone spat in your food, and honestly that’s a Katsuki Grin.”

“I don’t get ‘dopey eyed’,” Katsuki snarls. He can’t find his socks and stuffs his feet into his shoes without them.

“I’m gonna take a picture of it one of these days. Maybe show it to Midoriya,” Eijirou says. Katsuki says nothing and digs through his locker for his phone. “What’s got you in a rush?” he asks.

“Was supposed to meet up with Izuku after this.” He looks up at the large analog clock hanging on the wall. “Twenty minutes ago. He needed to tell me something.”

“I could have sworn you guys were talking while I was in the shower,” Eijirou says. “Laughing and giggling and picking out baby names.”

Katsuki shakes his head and tries to get the image of him and Izuku, old and gray with a family of their own out of his head. Izuku is his friend, and he needs to learn to be content with that. “He said he wanted to talk in private,” Katsuki says. “He said it was important.”

At that Eijirou shuffles back on his feet. He bites the edge of his lip with a sharp tooth.

Katsuki narrows his eyes. “What’s that look mean?” he demands.

Eijirou raises his hands high above his head. “Nothing!” he says, but he still won’t meet Katsuki’s eyes. He takes a threatening step forward and Eijirou cracks. “I—might know what he’s going to talk to you about,” he admits.

Katsuki shrugs and shifts past him. “Cool. So will I in like, thirty seconds.” But Eijirou stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Katsuki, I don’t think you’re going to like what you hear, and I just. I want you to be prepared. I think you’re going to be inclined to react a certain way, and I think it’s important you take this news with tact.”

Katsuki freezes in his spot. “What do you know?” he asks.

Eijirou backs up a step, looking genuinely frightened in a way he hasn’t in years. If Katsuki could think beyond the thrumming in his head, he might worry he’s regressing, that all his and Izuku’s hard work is crumbling to nothing. “Maybe Izuku should be the one to tell you this—”

“What do you know.”

“I—I don’t know for sure, okay?” Eijirou starts. “But I heard Midoriya and Todoroki talking a few weeks ago, right after Aizawa mentioned picking the pro hero agencies we want to work with.”

Katsuki feels ice slither up his throat.

“And if we wanted to partner up with anyone. He, Katsuki,” Eijirou says, “it sounded like they were planning on being partners.”

Like a vice, the ice steals his breath.

The thing is, the crux of the issue, is that Katsuki can’t even be upset, because he made no plans with Izuku. He holds no right to his future, was lucky enough to share his past and present with him, but the years rolling ahead of them were up for grabs. And someone else got to them first.

Katsuki was going to ask, he was, but the idea of rejection was more terrifying than any nightmare All For One could inspire, and at his core, Katsuki is a coward.

A coward who will have to watch his best friend and the love of his life become a hero with someone else.

“Katsuki?” Eijirou asks when regret has silenced him, its heavy hand around rough over his mouth. “I could be wrong.” But Katsuki’s seen the way Izuku and Todoroki fight together, the intrinsic trust that didn’t have to be forged in blood and tears. He’s seen the way they look at each other, and that dagger pierces deeper than them all.

“Then I’ll change his mind.” It is then that Katsuki decides he won’t accept defeat, not now and not never. Especially not when it is Izuku who he fights for. “Last day to pick a partner is the day of graduation, right? I’ll make him choose me.”

“Katsuki…”

“He’ll choose me.” Maybe if Katsuki says it enough, he can speak it into fruition. He’s desperate enough to try.

“You know what? Yeah! We can do this! Midoriya is like, more obsessed with you than he is All Might, we can change his mind!” Eijirou exclaims.

“We?”

Eijirou huffs and swings an arm over his shoulder, picking up Katsuki’s duffle bag for him to lead them out the locker room. “Of course!” he says, turning down the empty hallway. “Like I’d ever let you do this by yourself. It’s you and me, always.” Then Katsuki meets arresting green and suddenly they’re not alone.

“Ah, hi Midoriya!” Eijirou turns to Katsuki and speaks into his ear. “We can finish this conversation some other time,” he says, and it echoes down the hallway. Katsuki knows Izuku hears by the way he curls inward, just slightly. He wonders what else he heard, how much of Katsuki’s heart was laid bare for him to see. “Come to my room later?”

Katsuki nods and Eijirou transfers his duffle bag into limp hands, winking at Katsuki as he leaves.

“See ya later, Midori!”

Izuku’s delayed when he says, “’bye, Kirishima.” Louder, and fortified with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes his calls back, “see you later!”

Izuku doesn’t move, and so Katsuki is the one that comes to him. “What did you want to talk about?” Katsuki doesn’t think he can wait any longer for his dreams to shatter at his feet. Maybe if he’s prepared, maybe if he steels himself, he can catch some of the shards before they reach the ground.

Izuku watches Eijirou until he turns the corner. “I—we don’t hang out much, outside of hero stuff, do we?”

Katsuki is thrown by the non sequitur. And by its blatant inaccuracy. “We watched a movie last week,” he says.

“In the UA common room,” Izuku says. “With Kaminari and—and Kirishima on the couch with us.”

“Yeah?”

“Would you, would you want to hang out?” Izuku asks in a rush. “Like at the mall or the park or I heard Mount Kentoku was a real difficult hike this time of year, but I’ve been practicing on some easier trails, and I know you’ll do great on it, of course—"

“Izuku,” Katsuki cuts him off. “This what you wanted to talk about?” And he feels his heart begin to settle.

“Yes,” Izuku exhales.

“Just this? Nothing else?” Katsuki asks. Izuku nods so quickly he has to plant a hand on the soft skin of his cheek lest Izuku wear his head loose from his neck. “Yeah,” Katsuki says on a long exhale. “Sure. Let’s, watch a movie or go to the park. Or something.”

Katsuki feels as though the weights shackled around his ankles have been loosened. Not gone completely, not yet, but now Katsuki has time. Time to plan and make Izuku think of nothing but him, to run though Izuku’s thoughts the way the other boy has dominated his.

“Oh,” Izuku breathes. “Oh, that’s great, Kacchan. I’m really happy. Would—would tonight work?”

“Yeah, sure,” Katsuki mumbles.

Izuku’s hands flutter by his side, and he offers Katsuki one of his sweeter smiles, not that Katsuki could ever pick a favorite. This one, this one though, is uneven and pulls too much at the right. A few teeth peek past his lips and they’re slightly crooked too. Nothing about it is perfect, but it’s Izuku’s, and Katsuki loves it all the same. Maybe more, because this one is reserved for him.

And Katsuki swears he’s going to do everything in his power to keep his smile close.

Chapter Text

They’re pressed close, a few crumpled sheets of paper balled so tightly Katsuki thinks they’ll never be smooth again, and still Eijirou shuffles closer. He leans over Katsuki’s shoulder and points at something a few lines down on the notebook in his lap. It’s halfway filled already, and the clock on Eijirou’s dresser flips towards two in the morning. “I don’t think Midoriya would appreciate you calling Todoroki a—oh, jeez, I’m not going to say that out loud—to his face,” he winces. “Maybe segue into the conversation a bit? Have a soft opener, like a business pitch, y’know?”

“‘Dump Todoroki’s bicolored ass’,” he offers.

“That sure was an attempt!” he says. Eijirou takes the notebook from him and flips through it. He doesn’t linger very long on any one page. “Oh cool, it’s all like that.” He stops somewhere near the end and turns so Katsuki can see. The entire page is filled with small, tightly spaced cursive. It’s also crossed out so thoroughly Katsuki tore through to the other side. “What was this?”

“Nothing I’m going to say.” Katsuki wants to snatch the notebook from Eijirou, but he refrains. He won’t be able to read any of it. Katsuki made sure of that.

“Why don’t we start off with why you want to partner with him?” Eijirou asks.

“It has to be him,” Katsuki says, and is content to leave it at that. He runs a tired hand down his face. They’ve been at this for hours and have depressingly little to show for it. If Eijirou had asked him this before, hell, if he asked just earlier today, Katsuki would think it has to be him would have been enough. Now, with someone else standing between them, Katsuki doesn’t think it is. In the ringing quiet of his own mind, he’s worried it’s him that will fall short.

His frustration mounts until it dances nears something tangible. “I don’t get why this has to be so fucking complicated!” he shouts. A fistful of paper sparks and catches fire from his fury alone. Eijirou grabs his hands in unbreakable skin so he doesn’t set the entire room ablaze. Pieces of paper studded with advantages and experience flutter to the sheets as ash. “Why can’t I just grab him and shake all the dumbass outta him and tell him I want to fight beside him for the rest of our lives?!”

“You’ve got to be nice about this.”

“I’m always nice,” Katsuki hisses. “I’m a fucking delight to be around, and anyone would be lucky to have me.”

“Even Midoriya?”

No. If Izuku were smart, if Katsuki wasn’t so selfish he can feel his bones Izuku’s emerald green, he’d stay far, far away from Katsuki. “I—I’m trying, okay?” he amends. “Izuku knows that.”

“Does he?” Eijirou asks.

“Yes.” He has to.

“You weren’t very kind to him when we were younger,” Eijirou says, and he doesn’t know the half of it. He doesn’t know that Izuku’s timid nature and twisting, nervous hands were born from Katsuki’s dangerous ones. He doesn’t know Katsuki’s mistakes have been etched into tan, freckled skin so deeply no apology could ever heal hope to heal it.

“I honestly thought you were joking when you told me you liked him. Thought it was some kind of mean prank you wanted me to be in on.”

“I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t fuck with him like that,” Katsuki says. He wants to say he’s not cruel, but even Eijirou wouldn’t let him get away with that.

“You tried to beat the shit out of him on our first day at Yuuei. Succeeded at it a week later. You liked him then?”

Katsuki drops his face in his hands. Shame curls around the base of his spine and didn’t he miss it. Shame is his father, guiding him with heavy hands down a path most familiar. Shame is his mother, present in every waking decision. Worst of all, shame is tender. It tells him to let his habits catch him as he falls; it feeds the fire he tends to most wickedly and threatens to spill lose and burn down the forest that’s just begun to grow back.

“Since the beginning,” he says in a great breath. His insides are being pulled from him. Sticky, bloody lining is dragged out, piece by piece until he rings hollow. “Since the moment I saw him. And I’ve tried to make everything up to him but I just—I don’t know how to tell him.”

“Tell him what?” Eijirou probes.

Katsuki spreads his hands wide. Let them try to encompass everything that makes up IzukuandKatsuki and have them fall desperately short. “Any of it. That I’m sorry, that I’m obstinate and ill-tempered and sometimes I still have to think about saving people. That it doesn’t come as naturally to me as it does him, but I still want to try. That he makes me want to try,” Katsuki says. “I apologized to him once, it wasn’t even half of what he deserved, but it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.” He looks up at Eijirou, looking for atonement from anyone who will give it, from anyone but the only person who deserves to mete it out.

“What if I ask him, and he says no?” His voice is an insect’s wings, fragile even to his own ears. “What if he picks Todoroki over me and I have to watch them fight together for the rest of our lives?”

“If he chooses him, then you’d just have to get used to it,” Eijirou says, and Katsuki feels the pit in his stomach swell. “But you have to ask. You’d hate yourself if you didn’t.”

Katsuki asks, “can’t I just tell him to be my partner?”

Eijirou tilts his head. “You could,” he says. “But don’t you think he deserves better? Don’t you want him to want to be your partner instead of being forced into it?”

“I couldn’t force Izuku to do anything,” he protests. Izuku is a burning fire and a roaring river and a thousand other wild things Katsuki would have no hope to tame. He wouldn’t want to. He loves that Izuku can be backed into a corner, but he will never, ever yield. Even when he should.

“But if you asked, he’d do it,” Eijirou says. “No matter what it was, if it was you, Katsuki, he’d say yes, regardless of his own desires. And well, that doesn’t really sound like an enthusiastic agreement to me.”

Katsuki’s hands crackle, and a burnt, sickly smell fills the air. To him, his quirk has never been anything near sweet. He takes a deep breath, and they fizzle out with his exhale. “Hand me that damn notebook.”

Katsuki wakes to a heavy weight on his chest. Grunting, he rolls Eijirou off and sits up, the other boy snoring despite his less than gentle interruption. Their notes are scattered around them, crumpled and disordered, but it doesn’t matter. Katsuki’s long since memorized them.

Sunlight trickles into Eijirou’s dorm and dances on the dust floating in the room. The entire place is an organized kind of messy, always cleaner after Katsuki visits, and he can pick out the pieces of their friends as well as if they were standing next to him to point them out themselves.

The stack of DVDs in Eijirou’s bookshelf are Mina, the well-worn manga Denki. Hanta lines the wall, in posters from movies Eijirou dragged him to. And filling in the bits between is Katsuki. Like a bucket of spilt paint, he’s scattered everywhere.

Katsuki had helped Eijirou design a more focused workout routine, and the bright red dumbbells he bought him stick out from under the bed. He hates to sleep between anything less than fine, silky bedsheets, and pooling around his waist are sheets with a thread count over a thousand.  

He takes a moment to lean back against the headboard and share the heat radiating off Eijirou.

Katsuki knows that he was not kind when he was younger. If he is honest, and the only person he has ever lied to is himself, he does not think he’s kind now, either. He’s an amalgamation of everything he never wanted to be. He is everything his parents praised, everything his teachers nurtured, and sometimes he hates every part until there is nothing of him left to love.

But his friends never made him feel like he is anything other than firmly planted on the ground. They hold him to no expectations, and when he inevitably falls from the ones he sets himself, it’s them who pick him up. It is them, it is Eijirou—and though he knows he deserves him least of all, it is Izuku, too—who find his scattered pieces and clean them free of dust and debris. It’s them who put him together, cracks and all, their fingers stained gold where Katsuki only sees red.

Sometimes Katsuki thinks he stole this life. This one is too kind, and the people around him love him too much. Sometimes he thinks he only wants it to be, so that when he inevitably burns the hands they hold him with he can say it’s not his fault. He was given diamonds in place of graphite. He cannot be blamed; he did not know what to do with it, and in his negligence, it withered and died.

Next to him Eijirou shuffles and comes to life in bits. He stretches deep and rubs at his eyes, missing the bit of sleep crusted in the corners. Katsuki thinks he’ll keep quiet and let him discover it himself.

“What time is it?” he mumbles, turning his face back into his pillow.

Slowly, Katsuki comes back to himself. Serendipity or something more divine, it’s not his place to decide. This was the life he was given, and lord knows he’s green enough to want to keep it.

“Five to six,” he says. It’s unusually bright this time of day. Maybe winter is finally passing, laying down for stretched out spring days to take its place.

“Thank god.” He cracks a red eye at Katsuki. Their reds are different, Katsuki notes. Eijirou’s red is kind. “That’s taking into account the delayed two hours, right?”

“The what?”

“My clock’s two hours slow,” Eijirou says.

Katsuki feels his earlier goodwill drip from him like sap. He rips the pillow out from Eijirou’s head, and it thuds gently on the layered mattress. He presses the pillow hard onto the other’s boy face, stuffing feathery down into his mouth until he can feel his breaths beneath his hands.

“How the fuck was I supposed to know that?!” he yells.

Eijirou murmurs lowly into the pillow. When Katsuki only presses harder, he taps out on his arm, three little staccatos, and Katsuki relents.

“Denki took the power out last week!” he gasps. “My alarm clock restarted.”

Groaning, Katsuki rolls off the bed and into the bathroom attached to Eijirou’s room. He crouches down, mindful of the cluster of mildewy bath towels tucked in the corners, and hunts in the cabinet beneath the sink for an extra toothbrush. Eijirou goes through them like candy, his sharp teeth wearing them down to nubs, and Katsuki comes up victorious after a few minutes of shifting through expired face cream.

He rips open the packaging with more force than necessary, rough plastic biting into the soft skin of his palm. “Oh yeah, ‘cause it’s my fucking fault I thought you’d have an adult impulse and reset the damn thing!” he calls into the room.

When Katsuki only hears the shifting of sheets, he sticks his head out the door, toothbrush hanging from his lips, to yell, “get out of bed, you useless sack of shit!”

Katsuki sifts through Eijirou’s dresser for an extra uniform, the one he fell asleep in crumpled and sticking to his skin under the awkward sensation of midnight sweat. He doesn’t have time for a shower, not if he wants to make it for any of second period.

“Do you own any plain undershirts?” Katsuki asks. The top-drawer bursts with Crimson Riot merchandise and other noxiously red shirts and Katsuki’s under a time crunch but he’d rather come to class half-naked than wear something that bears a name other than All Might’s.

Eijirou throws his arms high over his head and yawns wide enough for Katsuki to make out pointed canines. “Think I’ve got some in the back of my closet?”

Hidden under a few failed tests and thick snow boots, Katsuki finds a black tank top. Eijirou’s uniform slacks—the one from second year because he only owns three at his mother’s insistence and the last, larger pair is coated in mud from the calf down— are a bit tight when he pulls them on, and Katsuki worries faintly about splitting the seams.

He forces them out the door with Eijirou’s shirt unbuttoned and Katsuki’s belt clacking loose as they run.

His hair is a disorderly mess, not that he ever really pays it much attention, and their hurried run through the corridors does nothing to help.

He runs his hands through it as they jog through the school and catches his reflection in a classroom window. Bagged eyes and wild hair stare back at him, looking like it’d been pulled and teased, and Katsuki gives up.

They duck behind a stack of lockers when Present Mic walks past class 3-A and burst through the doors just as the warning bell rings.

Katsuki wears his tie these days, respect for a man who’s risked his life for them on numerous occasions wrapping it around his neck, but he finds his missing when he goes to tie it.

Eijirou slides up to him and pulls an extra from his pocket. “You forgot this,” he says, and Katsuki loops it loose, the knot coming to rest near his collarbone.

Aizawa isn’t here yet, preferring to roll into class a few seconds after the starting bell chimes, and Katsuki takes a minute to still his heaving chest before he heads to his desk.

Izuku is already seated, his head pillowed on crossed arms as he stares up at Todoroki, the other boy’s hip cocked against his desk as they whisper fiercely together.

It's vexing, more than Katsuki cares to admit, to see them so close. Their friendship had been fast, and worst of all, easy. They were held down by none of the baggage Katsuki knows he carries like a scar. He swears, in the privacy of his own mind and in the heating of his veins, that Todoroki will not steal the spot by Izuku’s side that Katsuki both hoards and covets.

It’s Todoroki who sees him first, and nothing about him is welcoming. He was smooth angles and worried hands with Izuku, and like the striking of a match, none of it seems to extend to Katsuki.

“Bakugou,” he says, cold like his mother, a fire’s heat like his father. A blooming bruise creeps up the hard line of his chin, and Katsuki doesn’t try to stop the pleasure that floods him. He ignores Todoroki in favor of the boy beside him.

Izuku turns to meet Katsuki’s gaze slowly. His soft eyes, when they raise to Katsuki’s, are haloed in puffy, reddened skin. He leans his cheek against his arm and speaks more into his sleeve than to Katsuki. “Hi, Kacchan,” he says quietly.

Todoroki doesn’t give him a chance to respond. “You busy last night?” he asks like he already knows the answer.   

“None of your fucking business,” he says anyway, because there is no way Todoroki knew what he’d been doing. He had scaled the ivy curling up the outside of the dorms to ensure he wasn’t seen. He had forced Eijirou to speak in nothing above a whisper until midnight struck.

It’s just the three of them in the corner of the classroom, the rest of their classmates slow to arrive. He’s glad for the isolation, because Todoroki looks at him like he wants to spark a fight. Katsuki feels irritation prickle at his sleep-tender skin and knows he’d return the animosity tenfold.

“You skipped a button.” Izuku points to somewhere in the middle of his chest. His finger, where it keeps a safe distance from Katsuki’s skin, seems to tremble.

“It’s missing a button,” Katsuki observes as he looks down. “Bastard doesn’t own a single shirt that isn’t fucked up or too damn dirty like he’s not a floor above the washing machines!” The end of his sentence is yelled over his shoulder, and through a cluster of blond he hadn’t quite managed to tame, Eijirou flashes him an enthusiastic thumbs up from his desk near the front of the classroom.

"That’s—you’re wearing Kirishima’s uniform?” Izuku asks. Katsuki looks back down at him, and Izuku wilts into himself a little bit like he’s dying. And suddenly Katsuki is twelve and angry and he doesn’t understand why Izuku keeps looking at him while his eyes fill with tears. Then Katsuki blinks, and it’s his Izuku in front of him, a thousand times stronger and still as quiet as he was all those years ago.

He wants to dry tears that aren’t there so badly he aches with it. He stuffs his hands into borrowed pockets.

“Stayed the night at his yesterday,” he says. “We were—I was helping him study and I lost track of time.”

“You were with Kirishima,” Izuku says like a confirmation. Like a court sentence. Katsuki nods and thinks he’s tying the noose around his neck himself. He hates this, hates feeling like he’s missing a step and held forever in freefall. He hates feeling out of place and unsure with Izuku.

“And you didn’t think about saying anything?” Todoroki spits. He leans closer to Katsuki, but he knows Izuku still hears. Todoroki brandishes his height like a shield, backing Katsuki in a corner he refuses to yield to.

He has to look up into multicolored eyes. “What the fuck are you going on about?” he asks, and now it’s his turn to hiss like burning flames. “I don’t have to tell you shit—"

“You didn’t think Izuku deserved to know?”

Katsuki feels his ears heat. In embarrassment or shame, he doesn’t know. Instead, he lashes with an iron-laced tongue. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Izuku!”

The temperature in the room drops, and Katsuki swears he can see icicles in the air. “How dare you—”

“Shoto.” Katsuki didn’t notice him stand, too caught up in the storm Todoroki brought. Izuku places a hand on his left side, the dangerous, uncontrolled side that’s supposed to fester and burn. Izuku’s hand, when it finally pulls away, is unscathed. Katsuki’s knees weaken with jealousy. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not. He can’t keep doing this to you,” Todoroki says. Katsuki is but a witness to the conversation, the epicenter of a storm he fanned into existence. “I won’t let him.”

“Shoto,” Izuku says again, says with none of the turmoil and history Kacchan is laced with. He says Shoto, and Katsuki knows it’s only said with something akin to love. “Just, let me, alright?”

Todoroki holds his gaze, and whatever he finds must satisfy him, because he squeezes Izuku’s hand between his and takes his leave. The scowl he sends Katsuki is nothing short of venomous, and Katsuki wonders what he did to garner such ire from a man who he only really knows by association.

“The fuck is his problem?” he asks, genuinely bewildered. “He can’t be that pissy that I whooped his ass yesterday, ‘cause it’s not the first time and it won’t be the last—”

“You could have said no,” Izuku says. His eyes don’t leave Todoroki, even though he’s already engaged in a conversation with Momo, his shoulders pulled tight. He turns to look at Katsuki then, his emerald eyes a watery green. Even drenched in sorrow, Katsuki loves them. “I would have understood.”

“What are you going on about—” And it hits Katsuki like a punch to the gut. He’d prefer one to this. “Shit, we had plans yesterday, didn’t we?”

Izuku nods and slides into his seat, the energy, little as it was, drained from him. “It’s alright,” he says, and sounds like he means it. But Katsuki is trying, goddamn it, and alright isn’t good enough. Not for him. Not when it’s Izuku.

“No, fuck, Izuku, it completely slipped my mind,” Katsuki says.

“Because you were with Kirishima.”

Katsuki falls into his own seat, his legs finally flagging beneath him, their effort gallant but futile in the face of Izuku’s misery. “No. Yes, I was with him, but I didn’t mean to forget, I really didn’t.”

“No one means to forget.” Izuku smiles softly down at his desk, and what Katsuki wouldn’t do to have it aimed at him. “He really is amazing,” Izuku says, his eyes drifting somewhere behind Katsuki.

“Eijirou?”

“Mmh. I can see why you like him.” Izuku fiddles with the pencils on his desk. He lines them up in height order in the corner just to rearrange them again by color. “You know you can tell me these things, right? Even—even now that you know how I feel,” he says, his ears burning red. Katsuki wants to know if they’re as warm as they look. “You’re still my best friend. And I care about you. I just want you to be happy.”

“I—the same to you.” Again. Because this is Izuku, and for him he wants to try. “You’re my best friend, too,” Katsuki says. That’s something he knows to be true. If he was buried deep and hauled from the earth long after his flesh was stripped and eaten from his bones, he thinks it would still be plain to see. “And—I care about you.” It’s pulled from him, a bit like a bushel of thorns raking through the tender tissues of his throat, but it comes out clean and unsullied, and Katsuki knows it’s the truest of them all.

Izuku smiles again, and this time it’s for Katsuki. It still hits him like a strike. “I know.”

He moves through the rest of the day like he’s underwater. Aizawa’s voice melds together into a great rush of sound that is nothing but overwhelming. The bell rings and he nearly jumps in his seat.

His notebook lays open and empty on his desk, his pencil held aloft in his hands as though he ever intended to pay attention. He keeps replaying Izuku’s smile in his mind, though this time it’s not through rose-tinted glasses.

Delicate like a bird’s wing and twice as tragic, Katsuki can’t keep his thoughts from it. Add it to the tally of his sins, let it be known it was Katsuki who marred the living legend that was Izuku’s smile.

He barely makes it to their next class on time, slipping in front of Izuku once more. He cannot pretend he doesn’t feel his eyes on his back, shifting past his clothes and skin to lay themselves on the pathetic heart nestled between his bones.

It’s atrophied, he knows. It’s weak and stuttered and entirely Izuku’s. Even after all this time, he’s still a coward, and he couldn’t bear to give it to the boy who’s owned it for years. Izuku would take it, because he is too kind for Katsuki, because he is everything Katsuki ever wanted to be and fell hopelessly short of, and he would never be able to look at something as pathetic as his still beating heart and not yearn to help.

There is no helping Katsuki. Not with this. He can feel Izuku slipping through his fingers, one mistake at a time, and he’s afraid he’s losing the love of his life to someone who deserves him.

He finds himself stalled at both a dead end and a fork in the road. As it always is with Izuku, it’s never simple.

The other boy is slow to pack up, and it’s only his stilted movements that alert Katsuki to the end of class. Though it must have, he didn’t hear the bell, his ears stuffed with cotton.

Katsuki approaches once Izuku’s desk is clear and he’s standing to leave, fiddling with the uneven straps of his backpack. Beating him to it, Todoroki appears from the shadows as though called and adjusts them for him. He hangs over Izuku a little like a collared guard dog.

“Hey,” Katsuki says. Izuku startles on his feet, tipping back towards Todoroki. Towards Todoroki, towards safety. The action, unconscious as it must be, sets his teeth on edge.

“Don’t you have someone else to bother? Kirishima, perhaps?” Todoroki asks and Katsuki’s jaw clenches tighter.

“Be nice, Shoto,” Izuku says. Quieter, he adds, “we talked about this.” And wouldn’t Katsuki have loved to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. What do you say about me, he wants to ask, when you don’t have to pick your words for my sake?

Todoroki holds Izuku’s gaze and Katsuki wants to tear them apart. Instead, he lets his body fall lax. Let Izuku see that he is no threat to him, not anymore. Let him see he is trying not to be.

"If you’re sure.” To Katsuki he says, “I don’t even know why Izuku bothers to give you the time of day.”

Katsuki growls, but Izuku beats him to it. “Stop it,” he says. “I mean it.”

Capitulating like glass under the slightest hint of pressure, Todoroki nods sharply to Izuku and steps back. It’s only then that Katsuki realizes how closely they were standing. A few scant centimeters forward, and they’d have touched. “I’m free tomorrow after dinner,” Todoroki says. “I’ll see you then?”

Izuku hums his assent and offers him a halfhearted wave goodbye. Where is the energy that lights Izuku from the inside out? Where is the life that pours out of him like water running over a pitcher?

“The fuck are you doing with Half’n’Half?” Katsuki asks instead, because he is selfish and awful and that pulls his attention the most.

Izuku starts walking back to the dorms and mindlessly Katsuki follows. He takes them down a longer path, one that wraps around the training grounds. Katsuki likes to watch the other hero students train, analyze their flaws and missteps, and, if he’s feeling particularly generous, yell them out for the students to fix themselves. Today he keeps his mouth closed.

“Ah, he was going to be my spotter for this new move I’m developing,” he says. They train together, just the two of them, at least three times a week. More, if Katsuki had his way. This is the first Katsuki’s heard of a new move, and it rankles something fierce that it’s not him Izuku came to. He feels like he’s been walking with wool wrapped around his eyes, Izuku laughing from behind his clouded gaze.

Katsuki’s palms crackle, and Izuku looks down at them with a concerned tilt of his head. And he has to remember that now is not before; Izuku is not mocking him with hesitant smiles and offering hands, nor is he afraid of him, and Katsuki won’t give him reason to be.

His hands fizzle into silence. “Why didn’t you ask me?”

Together they wind through the well-kept lawn. It’s the middle of a brutal winter, frost still dusting the grass tips despite the late hour, but students linger on it still.

Izuku lets the backs of their hands brush and sunlight peeks through the cracks in the dark clouds.

“You’ve already been helping me improve so much! I couldn’t ask you to do anymore.” You could ask of me anything. I would tear down the sky if you longed for a star. But he is a coward, and Izuku is too kind, and Katsuki keeps quiet and continues this dizzying dance.

“Well, maybe I’d want to,” Katsuki says and hopes Izuku cannot hear the words he traps behind his teeth.

Izuku’s eyes light up. Like ivory moonlight, they blind, and Katsuki has no choice but to look away. “You do?”

“You’d know if you asked.”

Izuku slides to a halt. Katsuki, walking a few centimeters behind him, is forced to stop. “Kacchan, will you help me?” he asks.

Katsuki thinks on it for a moment. This feels familiar, this casual push and pull that Izuku is so gracious to let them fall back into. Katsuki takes the offered hand like a man drowning. “Nah,” he says, and walks around Izuku, knowing the other boy will follow.

Izuku’s frozen for a moment, but he does not disappoint. He never does. By the time he jerks into action, Katsuki’s opening the waist-high gate to leave the courtyard.

“You jerk!” he yells and runs to catch up to him. “You said you wanted to!”

He cuffs Izuku over the ear, the only touches he allows himself to have shrouded in violence. “You need your hearing checked? I said I might want to,” Katsuki says. “And I’ve decided I don’t.”

“Ah,” Izuku says, falling a few steps behind, “okay,” He bites into the thick of his lower lip. Distantly, Katsuki’s aware of his desire to pull it free, but he’s more than practiced at shutting down wicked, wicked thoughts before they can do damage. “Sorry for being pushy.”

“Izuku,” Katsuki says, rolling his eyes, endlessly fond of this boy who is Katsuki’s moon and sun and gravity and knows nothing of it. Graduation looms close on the horizon, Todoroki and his kind hands and wanting eyes closer still, and Katsuki prays he can keep him a little longer.

He holds open the door for Gym Gamma and nods for Izuku to enter. “C’mon.”

Katsuki can see the tension drain from his body and almost feels bad. Almost, because if it were not Katsuki, Izuku would find some other way to wind himself up. At least Katsuki knows all his hidden bumps and turns and can be there to catch him before he works himself into a frenzy.

“Oh, you bastard,” Izuku says, but he follows, and Katsuki’s heart sings.

He lets the door fall shut behind them with a thud. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“You’re a menace and I hope Auntie busts you for the porn mags under your bed.” Izuku slants a smile at Katsuki, eyes lit in mischief. “Maybe I’ll tell her myself.” And Katsuki chases him all the way to the locker room.

This time Katsuki makes sure to change in the corner, taking the possibility of straying eyes from himself completely.

He strips down to his borrowed undershirt—a black wife beater of Eijirou’s that Katsuki is lucky stretches tight only over his shoulders—and breathable shorts over compression leggings.

Katsuki turns to face Izuku and suddenly temptation is a vice. Long legs broaden into thick, powerful thighs he knows holds back a raw power Katsuki’s always been a little in awe of. Izuku is nothing short of beautiful in any capacity he’s allowed to have him, but like this, tanned skin on display for no one but Katsuki, a shirt dragging up his back to expose lean muscle, and he is holding gold in his hands.

Then Izuku drags leggings up strong thighs and Katsuki has little time to mourn before he catches sight of elegant stirrups wrapping themselves over the arch of his foot. If his legs are temptation, then the rest of Izuku, freckled and exposed and maddeningly close, is nothing short of sin incarnate, and Katsuki is an angel eager to fall.

They have the gym mostly to themselves, a few clusters of students scattered around its edges. A large, three-layered tatami mat spreads over most of the floor. This practice ring isn’t bordered like the one they fought in yesterday, and a pair of students trade hits near its edge.  

Izuku bypasses it entirely and leads Katsuki to a bricked corner. “I’ve been having a bit of trouble with some of One For All’s quirks,” he says, and Katsuki is dragged from the delicate curve of Izuku’s ass to his excited eyes that only serve to pull him under quicker.

“Bullshit. I’ve seen you fight. You use them like you were born with them.” Izuku flushes to the thick edge of his hairline, and Katsuki wants him drowned in red forever.

He shifts back on his heels, his hands twisting by his side like he doesn’t quite know what to do with them. “Aah, thank you, Kacchan. But I meant using them together. I think I’ve been viewing them more as individual subsets of myself, instead of cogs in a machine. It takes me time to switch between them.” Time they both know they won’t always have.

He drags a nail between the mortar joints of the bricks, a small shower of dust trailing behind. “Blackwhip and Smokescreen together make the most sense. I could shroud myself in smoke and attack from inside.”

“But?” Katsuki probes.

“But I think I can do better.” Katsuki grins. He steps back a few paces. Izuku is like a hurricane, strong and gravitating and sometimes so captivating to watch that he gets stuck in its destruction. But he doesn’t go far.

“Show me,” Katsuki says, and Izuku explodes into movement. He scales the corner where the two walls meet with bouncing, crackling jumps, bits of brick ripping from the wall to tumble down and roll to a stop at Katsuki’s feet.

It’s only now that he understands the towering ceilings. Izuku disappears into a mere smear of color, lost in the blinding, open lights.

Katsuki hears the gust of wind before he feels it, and suddenly Izuku is slicing headfirst back down. A few meters before he slams into the ground, he rights himself and comes to a hovering stop. Katsuki is nearly blown off his feet by its force.

“Fa Jin into Float,” he says in admiration. “And the rapid stop adds to the kinetic energy buildup.” Katsuki’s beyond impressed. But this is Izuku, and even his most ambitious expectations are bound to be shattered.

Izuku nods. “Ideally instead of just stopping I’d, y’know, end the move with channeling all the energy into a kick, or something like that,” he says. “I think I lose some of my power during those turns, but I don’t know how to gain momentum in a closed environment without them.”

“You did,” Katsuki says. Of all Izuku’s quirks, he thinks Float has the greatest potential. It’s also, as Izuku has told him, the hardest to control. It’s based heavily on my emotions, he had admitted, when he was stuck hovering a meter off the ground in Katsuki’s room a few days after it was discovered. Especially the stronger ones. Like fear or sadness or—or love. With his heart in his throat, Katsuki had asked, are you afraid of me still?

“You wouldn’t have to turn at all if you increased Float in increments. Fa Jin would still absorb the kinetic energy from the bursts of speed you put into Float, wouldn’t it?”

“I think so,” Izuku says. His hand comes up to cup his chin. “But would it be best to do it in smaller jumps, or longer, stronger ones? Or should I—”

“Enough muttering,” Katsuki says. “Try it.”

This time when Izuku comes to a stop, Katsuki is thrown from his feet. He turns it into a backwards roll and ends with a knee planted on the ground, his other foot extended for balance.

Izuku rushes to his side and pulls him from his crouch. “I’m sorry, Kacchan! I didn’t think it was going to be that strong!”

Delicately, he peels Izuku’s hand from his bare arm. He’s sure he’d be able to feel his skyrocketed pulse if he touched him any longer. “Dumbass, you couldn’t hurt me if you tried. Besides,” Katsuki says, “it could’ve been stronger.”

Izuku grins.

They practice the move a few more times, gradually adding Katsuki’s short eruptions of compacted explosions to act as obstacles until Izuku can dodge them and not sacrifice even a fraction of his power.

Katsuki’s so proud he’s nearly bursting with it. “It’s passable,” he says.

Izuku comes to his side, chest heaving as he wicks the perspiration from his forehead with a towel Katsuki hands him. He looks good like this, his face flushed and eyes bright, sweat clinging to his hair and the smooth skin of his nape that makes Katsuki want to pin him down and see just how far his ridiculous endurance will last him if he— “Wouldn’t work on me, but I’m sure you’d be able to take out a dozen extras,” he manages, beating his heart back down his throat.

“You sure about that?”

Izuku goads him into sparring for the next hour, clearing the few other students that were using the practice mat like a rain shower over a dusty road. He knows they’re still around, keeping a healthy distance as they watch, mouths agape and eyes blown wide, but Katsuki doesn’t spare them a second thought. Izuku is in front of him, haloed in green lightning, and Katsuki’s never wants to look away.

He still beats him seven times out of ten, because Izuku’s only prettier pinned beneath him.

"Tapping out?” he asks. Izuku’s flat on his back and Katsuki shuffles forward into the ‘v’ of his legs to wrap his arounds around Izuku’s knees.

“No,” Izuku huffs, and tries to sit up. Katsuki leans further into his guard and pins both his hands above his head with a single hand. His skin is warm, he thinks, and then little after that because Izuku’s wide eyes are peering up at him, and they deserve his full attention.

“You sure?” Katsuki’s holding most of his weight up with his other hand, but when Izuku shakes his head and tries to wedge a knee between them to throw Katsuki off, he lowers himself down the rest of the way. Like this, he can feel each of Izuku’s hitching breaths.

Their noses almost touch when Katsuki says, “yield.”

Izuku pinches his eyes closed and turns his head. Unrelenting, Katsuki speaks into his ear. “C’mon, Izuku,” he says, feeling his chest stutter when he says his name, “surrender.”

Izuku wraps strong thighs around Katsuki’s middle, and he’s too pleased to think much of it until Izuku rolls them and ends up sitting on top of his stomach. As muscular as Izuku is, Katsuki thinks he could hold his weight like this forever.

Katsuki’s hands had let go of Izuku’s sometime in the scuffle, and he slides them down Izuku’s waist to rest on his thighs. Izuku’s not sitting on him, not fully, and Katsuki can feel his legs tremble with the strain of keeping himself suspended.

Katsuki wants to pull him flush against him. Instead, he settles for squeezing into the meat of Izuku’s thighs. There’s little give, and Katsuki wonders how they’d feel beneath his teeth. He wonders how they’d taste, too.

“I think it’s your turn to yield, Kacchan.”

Katsuki digs his thumbs into the inside of his thighs. Above him Izuku squirms, and Katsuki knows he’s waking a dangerous line, but he can’t help himself. “You cheated,” he says and feels a grin pull at his lips. “I had you.”

Izuku leans close, his lips painted with Katsuki’s breaths. “No such thing as cheating when you don’t fight fair to begin with, Katsuki.” He feels a bolt of heat race up his body. And Izuku must feel it too, he must see what he’s doing to Katsuki. He wants to tell him anyway, let this boy know all the ways he has ruined Katsuki.

“Way to go Midoriya!” Eijirou calls from the sidelines, clapping loud enough to send waves of echoes throughout the gym.

Izuku jumps off him like he’s made of fire, and Katsuki checks his hands to make sure he didn’t burn him by accident. But his hands are cold, colder still without Izuku’s skin beneath them, and it’s only in the absence of Izuku’s heartbeat that Katsuki realizes everyone else in the gym is holding their breaths.

They’d garnered quite the audience during their fight, but Katsuki’s point of focus had narrowed down to Izuku, as it’s always wont to do.

Eijirou kicks off his shoes and joins them in the middle of the mat. He helps Katsuki up and pats him on the back. “I only saw the last fight, but killer moves, dude! I really thought Katsuki had you near the end.”

Izuku isn’t looking at either of them, his gaze caught by something on the ground. Katsuki looks too and finds nothing but their bare feet.

“Sorry,” he says, looking up. He takes a few steps back. Katsuki wants to follow, but he’s trapped under the heavy weight of Eijirou’s arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

Eijirou waves his apologies away. What they could possibly be for, Katsuki doesn’t know. “Hey man, no need! You were awesome out there.” He leans forward like he means to share a secret with Izuku, but by the arm around his neck, Katsuki is pulled along too. “You don’t have to apologize for Katsuki’s bruised ego, he’ll manage.”

“Sor—right. I’ve, uh, I should probably cool down, it’s getting late,” Izuku says. He stumbles over his feet and off the mat, dropping into a halfhearted bow before he heads to the weight sets along the edge of the gym. Not once does he look back at Katsuki.

He waits until Izuku’s loading plates on the bar to round on Eijirou. “What the fuck is your problem?” he hisses. “I was in the middle of something!”

Still smiling in case stray eyes linger on them, Eijirou says, “it looked like you were about to kiss him.”

Katsuki’s cheeks flush. “And what about it?” He can’t deny he wasn’t thinking about it, though his mind is filled with little else these days.

“Is this how you want to do it?” Eijirou asks, uncharacteristically somber. “In the middle of a sparring match with a bunch of underclassmen watching?”

Katsuki bites down hard on his teeth. Through them, he grits out, “no.”

“Then you’re welcome.” Eijirou winks. More subdued, in a way few but Katsuki ever get to see, he says, “you’ll get another chance. I’m sure of it. Midoriya didn’t exactly look disgusted sitting on top of you.”

Now Katsuki is sure he’s on fire. “He wasn’t sitting on me. We were fighting,” he hisses. “It was strategic.”

“He was perched in your lap,” Eijirou singsongs. “And it looked like he liked it!”

Katsuki fights to cover his mouth. Eijirou licks a wet strip down his palm and Katsuki recoils in disgust, wiping his wet hand on Eijirou’s shirt. “Shut up! He wouldn’t say anything even if he didn’t.” And it’s then that Katsuki is struck with a terrible thought. If Izuku hates it, hates the fleeting touches Katsuki allows himself to steal, the wandering hands and the soft smiles Izuku coaxes out of him, would he say anything? Or would he bear it in silence, as he does all the pain he’s forced to shoulder?

“Fuck, I’m probably making him uncomfortable.” Pulling the words from his throat and with it comes his still beating heart, Katsuki says, “I—I need to leave him alone.”

“Woah, dude no,” Eijirou says. “I think you’re catastrophizing a bit. Izuku would say something, if he didn’t like it. If he didn’t like you.” But Katsuki doesn’t know. Izuku has always been so careful with other’s emotions, holds them in his palm like he’s afraid a strong wind will break them. What if that’s all Katsuki is, someone else he needs to protect?

“Listen, remember when Mineta was hounding him for weeks?”

Unbeknownst to him, his hands spark and hiss. “Yes,” he growls.

“And he kept harassing him and grabbing his ass in the locker room when no one else was around and talking about his—”

“Yes, I fucking remember!” Katsuki yells. From across the gym Izuku’s head whips up. He tilts it in Katsuki’s direction, and he waves him off. “Get on with it.”  

“Right, sorry,” Eijirou says. “And you remember what Izuku did?”

“Ripped off his fucking balls and used them to pin him half-naked to the flag,” Katsuki says. Fucker was lucky Izuku got to him before Katsuki heard about what he was doing, or he wouldn’t have bothered stringing him up alive. As furious with himself as he is that he didn’t notice before, Katsuki still swells with pride when he thinks of Izuku, singled out and refusing to let anyone back him into a corner again.

Eijirou snickers. “And it took two days for them to raise the flag and find him dangling. Aizawa didn’t even give him detention for it!” He did, however, expel Mineta after pulling Izuku away to hear his side, a smudge of purple waving in the wind while they spoke.

“Someone like that wouldn’t let you get as close as you do if it bothered him without telling you,” Eijirou says. “Besides, when has Midoriya ever hated anything you gave him?” Katsuki swallows around the lump in his throat. He can think of a few things, the worst of which he knows is still pink and raised and unfeeling.

“Look,” Eijirou says when Katsuki’s shoulders remain tight and ashamed. He jerks his chin towards Izuku. His back is curved shallowly in the middle, and though his arms are flexed taut, they show no sign of strain. “He’s lifting like, a hundred and thirty kilos.”

“One-sixty,” Katsuki says, and he knows even without his quirk, it’s only a fraction of what Izuku can lift.

“That’s like, more than your entire bodyweight.” It’s nearly twice as much. “A man who could snap you in half wouldn’t let you walk over him,” he says.

“I guess,” he mutters, but Izuku has let him get away with worse before. Katsuki will not fall back into old habits. He refuses become his younger self once more. He swears on the fire in his veins and the thorns around his heart that he will not let himself hurt the boy who only reached for him with open hands. Not again.

Eijirou takes a moment to look Izuku up and down. Though he’s doing the same, has been since Izuku laid down on the bench, his hair pushed out of his face with a headband Katsuki knows bares his own colors, he still bristles at someone else’s eyes on Izuku.

Eijirou whistles. “Damn,” he says, “sometimes I forget how strong he is.” Katsuki agrees; Izuku’s grown stronger than he could have ever imagined.

Chapter Text

When Izuku takes up space, he contradicts himself.

His legs curl tight beneath him as he sequesters himself to a corner of Katsuki’s bed, his back to the wall. He keeps the sheets tight and tucked, a foot planted on the ground like even his weight on the mattress would threaten its collapse. Izuku writes with his textbook open on his knees, a notebook on the page he’s not reading. Multicolored pens pierce the knot of the small bun his hair is tied up in and another one sits behind his ear. He’s even reduced his fidgeting to short taps against the protruding bone of his ankle; anything more would be too much.

His body may be made small, folded in on itself again and again until the original image is creased beyond recognition, but he still occupies every corner of Katsuki’s mind.

Izuku breathes, and the air is forever tainted with him. He lays his eyes on Katsuki’s desk, his floor, the curtains lining his windows, and they’re made holy by his sheer existence.

“I think it would be fun,” he’s saying, and Katsuki’s shaken from his thoughts.

He puts his own pen down, an empty assignment staring back at him. He should know by now that whenever Izuku’s near, he’s bound to think of little but him.

“I told you, I don’t want to go,” he says. “I spend enough of my day with these fuckers as it is, don’t wanna fill up what little free time I do have with their ugly mugs.”

“Kaminari, Ashido and Sero said they’re going.” Katsuki grunts and flicks open one of his thicker textbooks. At least let him busy his hands with the idea of work, even if it will benefit him none. “Kirishima’s going, too.”

“I know.” Katsuki cracks off the cap of his pen with his teeth. “Still don’t wanna go.”

“It’s really important to Momo and Tenya that the whole class comes.” Izuku says. “This could be one of the last times we’re together as a group outside of class. In a few months we’ll be scattered across the globe. Won’t you miss—won’t you miss everyone?”

Katsuki shrugs and buries himself deeper into his textbook, words swimming off the page. He doesn’t throw the word friend around lightly. Still, despite his best efforts, a few still shoulder it. Eijirou had already sworn to follow Katsuki to whatever agency he chooses, and where he goes the rest of their group is quick to follow.

The only other person Katsuki worries after is Izuku, but he won’t let go of him if his nails bleed and skin tears, he’ll hold on tight through the blood that loosens its hold. He’s lost Izuku once, and he’s not the kind of man to make the same mistake twice.

“I’ve got no one to miss,” he says instead, because his fingers still shake when he thinks of asking Izuku to come with him. “Besides, I’d rather not spend the week before graduation with Half’n’Half.”

Izuku sighs and leans back against Katsuki’s pillow. A small part of Katsuki thrums, content that Izuku is comfortable enough in Katsuki’s room, comfortable around Katsuki, to let some of the tension drain from his shoulders.

“I wish you wouldn’t pick fights with him,” Izuku says and the thrumming morphs into unsteady vibrations that set Katsuki’s teeth on edge.  

“Hey, he starts shit, too. He was on my ass this whole week for no damn reason. Fucker tried to impale me with an icicle while Mic’s back was turned.”

“And you got detention for jumping over his desk to try and stab him with your pencil.” Katsuki grins, satisfaction lighting him gold. Let Todoroki know he will not bare his throat so easily; he will not bow down without a fight.  

“He’s a good man. A really good man,” Izuku says. He twists his fingers into Katsuki’s sheets, finally leaving a mark in his barren room. “I think you two are alike.”

“I’m nothing like him,” Katsuki seethes, surprised by the amount of venom that manages to leak out. Regardless of what Izuku thinks, Katsuki has been trying to be kinder, not just to Izuku, but the word around him too. His thumb pauses at the edge of a page. But isn’t that the whole point, that Izuku sees the change in Katsuki for himself? His apologies, his word, is nothing if he cannot back it up with sweat-laced action. “Check your creepy little notebooks again. You’re missing a couple thousand entries differing us.”

“You’re both smart,” Izuku says and sits up on his knees. “And so determined you’re stupid with it. You’re loyal to a fault and reckless and you make me so worried my hair is going grey.” When Katsuki’s eyes snap to him, Izuku has his closed. He’s tipped his head back against the headboard and speaks to the stars.

“You’re the most incredible, awe-inspiring person I’ve ever met.” The skin between his brows crease, his next words promising to be painful. Katsuki’s found honest ones always are.

“You’re more important to me than anyone, Kacchan.” His eyes finally find Katsuki’s and it’s like coming home and cracking his heart between his hands all at once. “You—you both are.”

Emeralds begin to drown. “And it’s so hard being pulled by you both,” Izuku whispers. “Sometimes I think you two want me to snap between you.”

“It’s his fault.”

Tears kiss the freckles on his cheeks, connecting them like a pious hand. “Kacchan—"

“He thinks he’s better than everyone. He would have kept going with only half his quirk if you hadn’t knocked some sense into him,” Katsuki says. “I bet he thought daddy’s connections would be enough to make him a Pro and he could half-ass life while the rest of us had to struggle and fight.”

“Kacchan, you know that’s not true.”

And Katsuki does. Todoroki is everything save careless, but he also holds Izuku like a prize he won above him, and familiar anger takes over. Katsuki welcomes it home.

“What ‘good man’ can’t protect his own mother—"

“Stop it.” It is Izuku’s turn to fester with rage. Katsuki would think him lovely, engulfed in green lightning, his lips pulled back in a snarl, but this rage is not for him.

Is this what love looks like on Izuku? Are these the colors it paints him with?

Static fills the room when he speaks. “I know you don’t like him. And maybe it was my fault to try and change that, but I won’t sit here and listen to you lie about him. Not when he was one of the first real friends I ever had.” The air around Katsuki grows tight, but he can’t even argue. He had been nothing close to a friend to Izuku, not back then. Maybe now, maybe when he strips himself of everything recognizable and flays himself to the bone, maybe when he remakes himself into something kinder. Maybe when Izuku smiles at him and bleeds the resentment from his veins like poison.

“He saved my life, Kacchan. When I was helpless in front of a man deprived of all empathy, terrified I was going to waste what All Might gave me, he saved me. I called,” Izuku says, “and it was Shoto who came. I won’t ever forget that.”

It had been a vivid sunset, the colors bleeding up the sky. It had been a dark dusk, the starting glow of the stars hidden from view. Either or neither or something in between, Katsuki can’t quite recall. He thinks back, throws his mind two years to the past, and only remembers sitting safe in his room as night fell.

He does remember, shifting through memories that fog his brain like clouds, seeing Izuku’s call for help, a string of numbers he instantly recognized as coordinates, and not doing a goddamn thing.

And he knows it was not because he was frightened as he never is—as he’s always been—or unwilling to shoulder a punishment for Izuku. It was simply because he did not care. He had thought, his feet planted on his bedroom floor as he switched his phone off, that it was time Izuku learned he was not made to be a hero. He was glass bones and petal skin. He was to be saved and never the savior, and Katsuki was tired of reminding him of his place.

Then Izuku had returned, not unscathed, but alive, and Katsuki felt his heart settle and his rage bubble. If he will not learn, Katsuki had thought, then I will teach him.

No matter how much Katsuki hates Todoroki, and oh, how he has learned just how wickedly hate can burn down a forest, he cannot hate him for this. Todoroki will always be the man who saved Izuku when Katsuki would not, and for that he can’t apologize enough. But he can try.

“I’ll go to the fucking party,” he says, because sorry has never come easy. Izuku hears it for what it is, a thousand apologizes and promises that by some miracle he chooses to believe. “But I’m not staying more than an hour.” Even his capitulations have little room for give, for the improvement Katsuki knows Izuku deserves.

“I wouldn’t expect you to.” Izuku’s tears have always been quick to dry, and now is no exception. Would he taste of brine, Katsuki wonders, or the honey he knows runs slow in his veins?

Izuku lays down across Katsuki’s bed, shuffling back until his head hangs awkwardly over the side. He looks up at Katsuki through dark lashes. “You should wear your red shirt,” he says, “the button down with the long sleeves.”

“Yeah?”

Izuku nods. “It goes well with your eyes. Makes them stand out more than they already do.” Katsuki’s glad he doesn’t have a mirror in his room. He doesn’t think he’d be able to stop himself from rushing to it to try and find what Izuku sees. Red like burning coal or a festering wound, his eyes have never been anything other than startling.

“How come I never see you in green then?” Katsuki asks. “Outside of that stupid costume.”

“Last time I wore green you said I looked like a ‘forest sprite that wandered off a D&D character sheet’.”

Katsuki snorts and turns back to his desk. “Don’t remember that.” He can imagine it though. Izuku, wrapped lovingly in shades of green, stealing the breath from his lungs. Izuku, haloed in the first color Katsuki ever loved, turning a deadly smile on him. He doesn’t have to wonder why he begged him to stop.

“Besides,” Katsuki adds, “you’ve got shit fashion sense. It probably had nothing to do with the color palate and everything with how you styled it.”

“I do not!” Izuku sits on his knees then, pulling up faded and worn joggers when they slip down his hips and expose a sliver of golden skin. Katsuki cannot help but stare. “I—I don’t dress up just to study!” he shouts, mistaking Katsuki’s hungry gaze for judgement. “I have great style when I put in the effort!”

“It’s not just your clothes,” Katsuki says, slinking out of his seat. Izuku watches him the way a deer scans for hunters, his eyes blown wide and searching. Katsuki pulls on a tuff of his hair. “It’s this, too.”

“I’ve been meaning to cut it,” Izuku says, running a hand through messy locks.

“Don’t.” Katsuki swallows around the saliva collecting in his mouth. “It looks good long, just—” He pulls an elastic from Izuku’s wrist. “Let me?”

He slides to the floor between Katsuki’s knees. His heart thrums so loud there’s no way Izuku can’t hear it.

Katsuki takes his time. He runs his fingers needlessly through smooth strands under the guise of brushing them down. He’s taking advantage, he knows. But he’s well aware he’ll never get a chance like this again, Izuku warm and pliant beneath his fingertips, tilting his head at Katsuki’s gentle insistence, and he plans to wring all the pleasure he can get from this moment.

He collects most of Izuku’s hair in a bun at the back. Tipping Izuku’s head back with two knuckles to his chin, Katsuki observes him from above.

Freckles dance across his nose and lay themselves over the apples of his cheeks, up the slope of his forehead and a splattering scatters down his neck. He has a few, Katsuki notices, heart in his throat, on the pink of his bottom-heavy lips.  

He curls his fingers around the shell of his ear and Izuku shivers, Katsuki a voyeur to his bliss. He pulls a few strands loose and they flutter to frame his face, brushing the edge of his cheekbones the way Katsuki wishes he were brave enough to try.

He thumbs one of the silver studs in the cartilage of Izuku’s ear. “It looks good like this.”

Izuku fumbles in his pocket in search of his phone but Katsuki stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “Trust me,” he says. “It does.”

Katsuki feels something cold snake around his bare ankle, and it’s his turn to shiver. He would recognize the bumps and valleys of Izuku’s scars anywhere.

He pillows his head on the inside of Katsuki’s thigh and he dares not breathe, terrified he’ll startle Izuku into awareness and make him realize who he is baring his throat to. “’Course I do,” he says. “Of course you’re amazing at this, too.”

Katsuki clears his throat. “Yeah well, I’ve had lots of practice. Eijirou kept his hair ridiculously long second year, and if I didn’t put it up for him the moron would have tried to patrol with it covering half his face,” he says. “We partnered together so much it was basically just self-preservation.”

Izuku withdraws his hand, and an awful awful heat takes its place. “Right,” he says. “T—thank Kirishima for me, then. I bet he looked great with your hands—when you did his hair.”

Katsuki shrugs, missing Izuku’s hand already and not quite sure what he did to make it leave. “He did. He looks better with his short, though. I’ve got to cut his for him too, because that dumbass can’t do anything for himself.” He can’t keep the fondness from leaking into his voice. “He tried once and managed to give himself a bald spot in the back and stupid fucking bangs.”

Katsuki juts his hand straight out from his forehead. “They stood out like this; it was embarrassing to stand beside.” Izuku doesn’t turn to look, his gaze fixed on the dark carpet beneath their feet.

He hums. “It’s nice of you to take care of him like that.”

Izuku leans forward, and Katsuki can’t bear to watch him pull away first. He steps around him, his shin dragging across Izuku’s back and the other boy stills where they touch.

“Someone’s got to.” He pulls out his desk chair and falls into it, suddenly exhausted. Sometimes talking to Izuku is an exploration through an abandoned battlefield, explosives left forgotten in the ground beneath him. He can step as carefully as he likes, but he will always fall into a trap of his own design.

“And that someone has to be you?”

“It’s Eijirou. Of course it’s me.”

“Of course,” Izuku echoes.

Katsuki turns back to his desk, turns his back from Izuku’s searching eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for; he doesn’t know if he’ll be satisfied with what he finds.

Izuku takes the first steps, dangerous as they may be, because only he is brave enough to jump the divide, the decade of misunderstandings that have kept them apart, to stand by Katsuki’s side.

He crosses the widening expanse between them to lean his hip against Katsuki’s desk.

He shifts his weight, crinkling the assignment he has been working on. Like this, he has to look up to meet Izuku’s eyes. “I miss you, Kacchan.”

Katsuki digs his fists into the fabric stretching around his thighs. He catches some skin between his fingers and sinks them deeper. “I’m right here,” he says. He’s always been right here.

Izuku must not hear him. “I know you are, but sometimes—” he laughs, startled and artificial as if Katsuki would ever be fooled, into the thick hood of his sweatshirt, “sometimes I feel like we’re so far apart,” he says, “even when you’re close enough to touch. Sometimes I think you’re slipping through my fingers, and you’ll be gone before I even realize what’s happening.”

This should be Katsuki’s line, Katsuki’s future—the future that has never been guaranteed but he was foolish enough to call theirs—melting in his palms. “’M not going anywhere,” he promises. “Not unless you want me to.”  

“It feels like you already have.” Izuku plays with the strings of his hoodie and it’s then Katsuki realizes it’s his. He looks down at Katsuki. He wants to pull the sorrow from him like spun gold and let it burn him instead. “Lately you’ve been getting this look in your eyes when you talk to me. Like you’re not really with me, like you’ve drifted away already, and I’m left with a vestige of you.”

Katsuki has never wanted to go anywhere Izuku wouldn’t follow. And he has a plan goddamn it, to keep Izuku close, to tie them together with a red string so strong only Izuku could sever it.

“It pales in comparison to the real thing, Kacchan.” Izuku wipes at the corner of his eye, and Katsuki realizes he’s crying, crying because of Katsuki again. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be free of this awful cycle, this ouroboros of hurt and hurting he always seems to leave in his wake.

“I’m right here,” Katsuki says again, helpless when Izuku only seems to cry harder.

“For how long?”

“As long as you want. As long as you’ll have me,” Katsuki says, earnest down to his marrow, but Izuku just hums into the thick of his—Katsuki’s—sweatshirt.

“Until we graduate, right? And then we’ll be at different agencies with different partners, and I’ll have to live through losing my best friend all over again.” Izuku holds the sleeves of their sweatshirt to his eyes and soon it’s wet with salty tears. He is a dam holding back an overflowing reservoir, a cracked bowl bleeding gold. “I don’t know if I can do it again.”

For the second time in his life, Katsuki’s heart stops in his chest. “What are you saying?”

Izuku doesn’t remove his hands, and Katsuki can’t see his emerald eyes. He can’t see the eyes that pulled him headfirst underwater and never, ever thought to let him go.

“Maybe we should just skip to the end. Rip the bandage off now, before it hurts too much.” Izuku’s breath is so shallow Katsuki fears he’s not breathing. But this time Katsuki can’t spare a thought for him, not now, not when his entire world crumbles around him and his emeralds are still hidden behind shaking hands.

“Let’s start the beginning of the rest of our lives apart.”

Izuku doesn’t look him in the eye when he breaks Katsuki’s heart.

Katsuki goes to the party. He tells himself it’s because he made a promise, and he’s not one to take them lightly. He ignores the brass doorknocker and pounds his fist into white oak. It has always been easy to lie to himself.

It’s never been easy to stay away from Izuku.

Momo opens the door after a few minutes of him standing in the cold and watching the tips of peacock feathers dance over the high lining of the fence, wondering if their colorful plumage is enough to keep them warm.

She flings open the door and welcomes him with a hand to his shoulder that’s more to steady herself than usher him inside. Even if he couldn’t smell the booze on her breath, vodka or rum or something expensive, Katsuki has never been much of a drinker, he’d know she was proper wasted when Jirou steps from behind her shadow and catches her by the waist.

“Bakugou,” she says, not nearly as intoxicated as Momo who turns into her hold and giggles against her neck. “I didn’t think you’d show up.”

“Yeah, well, neither did I.”

Jirou leads them down a short hallway that spits them out at the opening to a broad foyer. An honest to god statue, picturesque and ivory smooth is erected in the middle of the room. Katsuki wants to go home already. He came, didn’t he? Promise fulfilled, signed and notarized, let him wash his hands of this.

Laughter trickles from one of the rooms past the spiraling staircases, and Katsuki knows Izuku’s is hidden there somewhere.

“Kaminari wouldn’t stop hounding you until you said you’d drop by?” she asks.

Katsuki shrugs and watches her lean Momo more firmly against her as she takes them between the staircases to double doors stretching tall. He doesn’t offer his help, knowing it would be unwelcome. “Something like that,” he says.

Jirou taps Momo on the cheek. “Hey, you want me to take you to your room?”

Momo comes to life. She wicks herself upright, smoothing nonexistent crinkles in her dress and smiles down at Jirou. Katsuki busies himself with the intricate tiling pattern beneath his feet. “No, no, no. This is my party! A host can’t leave before the guests!”

“Can you stand on your own?”

Momo takes a wobbling step on four-inch heels and teeters back into Jirou’s embrace. “Maybe not at the moment,” she says.

She startles when her eyes land on Katsuki and tries to stretch her shoulders straight. It has little effect with Jirou’s hand still wrapped protectively around her waist.

“Bakugou! When did you get here?”

“You let me in.” He gives Jirou a questioning look. “The fuck’s wrong with class rep?”

“Momo kind of went all out and got lots of booze,” Jirou says. Momo plays with the necklace that nearly disappears down Jirou’s chest, her fingers brushing the curved neckline of her shirt. Through her blush Jirou says, “lots and lots of alcohol. Help yourself.”

Katsuki grunts and opens the door for the three of them, a wall of sound welcoming him.

“Please,” Jirou says, “before she can drink the rest.”

Jirou gets Momo settled on one of the many couches that boarders the edge of the room while Katsuki’s eyes adjust to the darkness.

It’s stark, the difference between the old money elegance of the ballroom and the wasted teenagers strung on every surface, the heady scent of alcohol nearly strong enough to knock him over.

Katsuki sees Izuku first, before of course he does. When has he ever not sought him out in a crowd?

He’s sitting on one of the tables, a taller one that dangles his feet above the ground. He’s in a bubble of his own, Iida and Uraraka on either side of him like they’re blocking him from view. Izuku holds a red cup tight to his chest, his other friends carrying tall, sparkling glasses they ignore in favor of Izuku.

Todoroki stands in front of him, capturing all of Izuku’s brilliant attention. The music pounds in Katsuki’s skull, overwhelming even without Jirou to amplify it, and Todoroki must think so too, because he leans forward to whisper into Izuku’s ear.

Katsuki can’t tell, not when he stands so far away from Izuku and his terrible gravity, but he thinks their cheeks brush. Todoroki’s hand, and this Katsuki can see, plants itself firmly on Izuku’s thigh when he draws close.

Izuku throws his head back to laugh and Katsuki’s heart aches. Izuku sees him then, and his laughter disappears into silence.

To Katsuki’s perverse delight, it gives way to doe eyes and Katsuki’s name on his lips.

Coming, because he was called, because it was Izuku who called, Katsuki catches the “and we’ve lost him,” Uraraka mutters when she spots him.

“Kacchan,” Izuku says for the first time in what might as well be a lifetime, and Katsuki is a drowning man gifted a raft.

He pitches forward and nearly tumbles off the table, Todoroki catching him before Katsuki can.

He laughs, delighted, and how Katsuki missed the sound. “Kacchan, Kacchan, Kacchan,” Izuku says and then nothing else, taking pleasure in Katsuki’s name alone.

Izuku tips the rest of his cup into his mouth and sways in place. A moment later he tries again, his brow creasing when nothing comes out.

“What’s in that?” Katsuki asks Uraraka. He has not looked at Todoroki since coming near, afraid his hand still lays lovingly on Izuku and there will be nothing he can do about it.

Uraraka takes the cup from Izuku and sniffs. “Straight vodka,” she says and then peters into laughter.

She’s drunk, Katsuki notes.

“That’s his fourth cup,” Todoroki snickers, and Katsuki realizes they all are. Even Iida, straightlaced and uptight, is flushed and unsteady on his feet.

“On an empty stomach, Izuku?” Iida tries to chastise, falling flat when his eyes hover a few centimeters above Izuku’s head.

“Why haven’t you been eating, dumbass?”

Izuku shrugs. “Didn’t wanna.” He kicks Katsuki, a little too hard to be considered playful, and he grunts when the fraying tip of his sneaker makes contact. “Hey, you wanna take a shot with me?”

“And have to call an ambulance when you get alcohol poisoning? No, thanks.”

Izuku frowns and turns to Todoroki, Katsuki no more than a passing thought now. “Shoto,” he sings, leaning back so they’re close again, noses brushing this time, “you wanna?”

Katsuki grabs him by the back of his shirt like a newborn kitten and hoists him off the table. “Fuck, I’ll do it.”

He shoves Todoroki when he tries to follow. Izuku, now giggling to himself as he teeters to the drink table and sets up their glasses, doesn’t notice.

Todoroki holds up his hands in surrender. “What crawled up—” he hiccups and displaces a few strands of hair, both red and white, from his ponytail, “crawled up your ass ‘n died, Kacchan?”

“Jesus, don’t call me that,” Katsuki hisses. “It’s fucked up when you say it.”

“Izuku does,” Todoroki says. “’N you never get mad at him.” He frowns and fumbles with the cup in his hand, the crease in his brow deepening when he realizes it’s empty. “You don’t get mad at him about that. But you’re being an ass to him, y’know that? You’re—you’re making him cry, ‘n stuff.”

Uraraka rounds on Katsuki. She tips into Iida’s side and scolds him over his shoulder. “You’re making Deku cry? Again?” To Todoroki she says, “he seemed fine earlier. We went shopping and he was all smiles.”

But Izuku is like the aging layers of the earth. He is a thousand shifting faces at once. For someone like Uraraka, someone who has not entwined themselves in another until their colors bleed together, decoding Izuku must simply be a strike in the dark. Katsuki has always been able to see him in a light of his own making.

Todoroki nods. “Probably doesn’t want t’ worry you. He fell asleep in my bed last night, and—and when he thought I was asleep I could hear him crying. All hitching and sad, the way he cries when he’s really upset.”

“You have to stop being cruel to Deku,” Uraraka says.

It’s then Katsuki realizes this is the first day of the rest of his life. Hearing about Izuku like he is but a witness, peeking through pulled curtains for scraps. He will have to listen and watch as Todoroki fills the space in Izuku’s chest Katsuki was selfish enough to think as his.

“God knows why, but he really cares about you,” Todoroki says. “Why do you always have to make it so hard?”

Katsuki shoves past Todoroki. “Neither of you know a fucking thing.” He comes to a heaving stop beside Izuku.

He grins when he sees Katsuki. Izuku offers a shot glass briming with clear liquid. It spills a bit when their fingers brush, and Katsuki doesn’t know whose fault it is. Alcohol floods the table when Izuku slams the vodka bottle down too hard, and Katsuki pities the maids who will have to clean up after two dozen drunk heroes.

“Oops,” Izuku mutters and dries to soak it up with his sleeve.

Katsuki catches his wrist. “That’s fucking disgusting.”

Izuku’s eyes flutter around his face before finally finding their target. “Kacchan!” he shouts. “You came!”

“I said I would, didn’t I?” He pries the other shot glass from Izuku’s hand and pours it back into the bottle, screwing the cap on tight and then warping the metal for good measure. He throws his shot back and in the stinging aftertaste wishes it were stronger.

“Yeah but,” Izuku loses his train of thought. Katsuki waits and lets him find it again. “You’re mad at me. Thought you wouldn’t come.”

“I’m not mad at you, nerd,” Katsuki sighs. He has long since grown past the days when he could just be mad at Izuku. Every emotion, every thought Izuku breeds, is wrapped in a wreath of others. He is happy to see Izuku. He is terrified of losing him. He’s furious he’s put himself in danger again, furious he doesn’t value his own life the way Katsuki does. He’s so relieved he’s alright his knees grow weak.

He's upset with Izuku, yes, but his heart still sings when it sees emerald green and his fingers twitch by his side, yearning to touch.

“You didn’t talk to me at all last week,” Izuku says. Katsuki pulls him to the buffet table. It’s mainly appetizers, but Katsuki picks the denser snacks and stacks a plate high.

“You didn’t want me to,” Katsuki reminds him through gritted teeth. “You said you wanted to stay apart.” And it tore him to shreds, but it was Izuku who asked, and Katsuki has never been able to deny him. Katsuki’s been breaking to ashes and this time it’s Izuku who struck the match, so he’s made himself content with the heat.

“Oh,” Izuku mumbles. Katsuki sets him down on a couch so he can eat. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

Sighing, Katsuki joins Izuku. The couch is beyond comfortable, nearly engulfing Katsuki when he sinks into it. He leaves space between them, because Izuku in any proximity is dangerous, but having him close is lethal.

Izuku scoots until their thighs touch. Katsuki’s not strong enough to move away, not a second time.

Izuku offers the plate to him first.

“The food’s for you, dumbass.”

“These were boiled in chili oil.” Katsuki didn’t grab any chopsticks, so they eat with their hands and catch the crumbs that fall, more from Izuku’s side, with the plate held close between them.

Sometimes Katsuki feels like an insect, trapped under Izuku’s wide eyes and taken apart alive, his insides still squirming and red. It’s odd, to grow used to something that once made him rage and set to ruin. It’s stranger still, to seek it out.

“You’re staring,” Katsuki says around a thick bite.

“I like them,” Izuku says. “They look good on you.” Izuku hears the unasked question. He spreads his hands wide and wiggles his fingers like he’s passing coins between them. “Your rings. They look nice.”

They were his father’s, but Katsuki doesn’t tell him that. He’s sure he knows anyway. They’re something he doesn’t indulge in often—his gloves too form fitting to ever allow for extravagance. But they’re nice, he supposes. It’s nice to look down at his hands and see rings of gold and studded gems instead of bloodstains.

Katsuki grunts. “Your hair is fucked up,” he says. “Did you forget what I showed you?”

Izuku shifts in his seat, clearly uncomfortable, but Katsuki has never been one to flourish in comfort. It is discomfort that pushes for growth. Izuku taught him that.

“Maybe I like it like this,” he says, but Katsuki knows he’s lying.

“Liar,” he says, because it bears repetition.

“I tried,” Izuku says to his lap, the plate that rests on it empty. “Couldn’t do it as well as you.”

“’Course not.” Katsuki wipes his hands on a napkin. “Come here.” He pats the edge of the couch between his legs, so reminiscent of last week when Katsuki felt his world crumble around him. Maybe if he tries again, he can change the ending. Maybe he can keep Izuku from leaving.

Izuku’s eyes flit to the crowd and get lost. Katsuki doesn’t follow his gaze. “Kacchan,” he says, “I told you, I can’t do this. You shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Doing what?”

Izuku looks up at him then, helpless. Let me help you, Katsuki thinks, please, let me in to that whirlwind mind of yours, give me access to yours the way you own mine. “Don’t make me say it.”

Katsuki inches closer to Izuku, their knees a hair’s width from touching. “Izuku,” Katsuki says and hears his breath catch, “do what?”

Izuku’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, and it’s then that Katsuki notices a bit of rice sticking to the corner of his mouth. Without thinking, because Katsuki’s thoughts have never been wholly his around Izuku, he curls his hand around Izuku’s jaw and brushes the grain from his lips. His thumb gets caught, just for a moment, over the rough skin of his lip.

Izuku jerks from his grip in a way he never has, not even when Katsuki pressed his fire-born hand heavy on the tender expanse of his neck and burned.

“I can’t do this,” he whispers and for a third time, Izuku runs from him.

For a third time, Katsuki lets him.

Katsuki leans back into the couch and wishes it would take him. Though he doesn’t have to watch to know where he goes, he does anyway, and when Izuku runs to Todoroki, Katsuki’s eyes fall close. No more, they plead, let us see nothing that is bound to break us further.

But because Katsuki is weak, because he will never be able to stop looking at Izuku, he watches him, watches Izuku with Todoroki, watches them bend and wind and breathe together and knows deep in his bones that will never be him.

He runs his thumb over his lip, envisioning Izuku’s lip in its place. If this is the only way Katsuki is allowed to have him, then he shall cherish it still.

Katsuki doesn’t leave the party. He doesn’t even leave the couch. He tips his head against the hardy cushions and blinds himself by the chandeliers.

Around him laughter bleeds into a swelling sound, one he’s beginning to hate on principle. He wants to go home. He wants to burrow beneath his sheets, the ones that Izuku touched but never disturbed, and decay.

A pink hand shoves a beer in his face. It’s followed by a wild curl of hair. “You look like you could use something stronger,” Mina says, “but I know you hate hard liquor.”

She settles in the seat next to Katsuki, closer than Izuku had been, and shuffles into his side.

When Katsuki makes no move to take the beer from her hand, she pops the top off on the platform of her boot and hands it to him. Katsuki is forced to drink it lest it bubble over.

“Leave me alone,” Katsuki says.

“No can do, boss.” She taps quickly on the outside of his thigh. “Everyone’s been worried about you. For the whole week, actually, but you seem worse tonight.”

Katsuki knocks back a long drink. “’M fucking fine.”

“Eijirou would have come to cheer you up,” she continues, “but he’s a bit, uh, indisposed at the moment.”

Katsuki follows her eyes to a dark corner of the room. Eijirou’s held up by Denki and Hanta on either side, though they seem to be doing little in the way of helping. They struggle to hold his weight between them, and when Eijirou snickers into Denki’s neck, his laughter is quick to follow, and the three of them tumble over themselves in a pile of limbs.

“Yeah, I’m not touching that clusterfuck.”

Mina grins. He feels her smile press into the meat of his shoulder. “Oh, you’re in an awful mood.”

Katsuki tries to shove her off, but she holds on tight by the fabric of his shirt. “And it’s getting worse by the minute. Fuck off. I mean it, Mina.”

“Katsuki,” she says, and he’s stilled by the genuine concern in her voice. “You know you can talk to me, right? Or any of us. I know you have this, this complex—”

“I don’t have a fucking complex—”

Mina raises her voice and speaks over him. “To be the strongest in the room, but you don’t have to. Not with us.” She ducks in front of him to catch his eyes. “Let us be there for you, the way you’re always here for us. It doesn’t have to be with me, if you’d prefer to talk to Eijirou, just, don’t keep it all bottled up. Especially now that you’ve been ignoring Midoriya.”

“It’s not me,” Katsuki spits, surprised by the venom in his voice. “It’s not me that’s been ignoring him.”

Mina bites the edge of her lip. “That doesn’t sound like Midoriya. He worships the ground you walk on, no way he’d ever ignore you.”

Katsuki takes another drink and finds the bottle empty. “Well, he did. Seemed pretty fucking intent on never talking to me again.”

“But I saw you two,” Mina says. “Earlier tonight, all huddled together away from the rest of us.”

“Long time that lasted,” Katsuki snarls. “Then he went and ran off with him.”

“With—oh, oh, Katsuki.”

Izuku must think nothing of tearing Katsuki’s heart from his chest. He dances with Todoroki in the open space of the ballroom like he could not image being anywhere else, their hands intwined as they fall over each other in laughter. There’s a smile tugging at his lips, and while Katsuki can tell it’s not quite genuine, it’s getting there. It’s certainly happier than anything that had been aimed at Katsuki all night.

“I’m sure it’s not what it looks like,” Mina says.

“They’re going to be partners after we graduate,” Katsuki says, ashamed to feel tears prickling the corners of his eyes but letting them fall unhindered. He has nothing left to lose now. What is a little dignity in the face of this?

 “And fuck, I know I never asked, but was it my fault to think he’d want to fight with me? My fault I thought we—we had something together, something important?” Something Katsuki thinks was a little like love.

“Of course not,” Mina’s quick to say. It’s her that dries Katsuki’s tears under the ballroom lights and promises not to speak of it ever again. “I thought so, too. I think we all did. It was you and Midoriya, our only constants these past years. Our twin guiding stars.”

But Katsuki’s burning up alone. “Fuck lot of good that did me.” He pulls back from Mina’s warm hands and scrubs at his eyes until he’s sure they’re rubbed raw. The tears keep coming.

“Fuck Mina, I—I can’t be here right now.”

She follows him when he stands, her hands around his elbows. “You want me to come with you? We can leave now, screw the other guys. We can head back to the dorms alone.”

“No,” Katsuki says. He breathes deep and holds it, lets it soothe and then exhales twice as strong. “No, you stay with the Idiot Squad, god knows they need someone who isn’t plastered. I just need a minute.”

Mina looks conflicted, but she lets him go. “If you’re sure. Text me if you change your mind, alright?”

Katsuki nods. He can’t stay here any longer. He can’t be so close to Izuku and know he isn’t allowed any closer.

Momo’s house is a twisting labyrinth, but he manages to find a room, smaller than the rest, unlocked and faithfully empty. It’s a ringing kind of silence, one that makes him feel infinitely alone with eyes pinned to the walls, watching him on all sides. A chill races up his arms, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. Katsuki runs heated palms over his skin to chase them away. It doesn’t work.

He collapses onto a piano bench and slams his hands on the keys to kill the silence, but his anger only earns him dissonance under his fingertips.

The lights are too bright. It feels more like he’s being put under the knife than hiding in a piano room, and he flicks all but one set off in favor of opening the curtains that kiss the floor.

Moonlight streams through the glass in beams so thick he could part them like water. He tries, and they get lost in the scars wrapping around his arms. He’s been told the scars are from quirk misuse. His mother liked to say he had too much fire to contain. A boy touched by the heavens, she had called him, blessed beyond reason, of course he’s to bear some scars.

Katsuki never saw it that way, but he didn’t bother telling his mother; this was not something she wanted to understand. She saw the world different than he did. She saw Katsuki different than he did. She saw a son to take pride in, to hang on walls and walk through crowds like a prized calf. She saw his sins as bumps to be smoothed by her hands. Katsuki saw himself for what he was: tragedies wrapped in a man, a collection of mistakes he was never allowed to have.

He wonders after that other boy often, the one who would have been allowed to mold himself without interference, without expectations and a heavy heavy quirk on his shoulders. A quirk he never considered hating, for to hate it was to hate the marrow in his bones. To hate it would be to hate the only thing that has ever set him apart. He is Katsuki and he is his quirk. They are one and the same, entwinned at his spine, and he is nothing without it. Stripped of his quirk he is little but blistering rage and jagged skin.

In his anger—in his sorrow—he wants to include Izuku in this rallying of enemies, but he knows that it was Izuku who saw him, saw everything and promised to stay by his side, well before his quirk crackled along his palms.

He thinks the only person to not hold Katsuki to a mirror painted with their own vision was Izuku. He saw his mountain of sin and was never afraid to climb. He strapped boots to his feet and smiled. And what is a mountain to a boy who touched the stars? What is a mountain to a boy who has never left well enough alone?

What is Katsuki to a boy who was never his to keep.

“Bakugou.” His voice sets Katsuki’s teeth on edge. It sparks his hands and boils his blood.

Katsuki closes his eyes. “You need to leave.” For Todoroki’s own sake, he should not be here, not when Katsuki is like this. Not when he is whittled to his core and aching for it. Not when Todoroki has everything Katsuki has ever dreamed of and doesn’t even know the weight of the gold in his hands.

It is not his fault Izuku chose him, and Katsuki will not tarnish Izuku’s nature even in his own mind to say he could be swayed by anything but himself, but Todoroki will bear his ire regardless. Reason has no place in matters like these, not when his heart beats loud enough to drown everything out.

“’Zuku’s been looking for you,” he says because he has no sense of danger beyond the battlefield.

“Well, it was ‘‘Zuku’ who told me to fuck off, alright?” Katsuki says. “He should be happy I’m finally listening to him. You’re his lapdog, you should be happy, too.”

Todoroki smiles down at his feet, a touch delirious, and Katsuki’s hit with the pitying realization that he is still drunk. From Izuku’s touch or the alcohol, he couldn’t be sure.  

“Lapdog sounds fun,” he says. He grins at Katsuki, offering to share in his manic glee. “Wonder if he’d let me sleep in his bed.”

“You need to shut the fuck up and leave, ice man. Last chance,” Katsuki says.

Todoroki stands to his full height, and doesn’t Katsuki hate how he’s taller, hate how in every aspect he seems to be fall maddeningly behind Todoroki. “Make me,” he says.

"Maybe I fucking will—”

It’s Izuku’s voice, because he either ignites or extinguishes him, that calms the storm stirring in his chest. “Shoto, have you—oh. You found him.” And then sets him off once more.

“Found me?” Katsuki hisses. “You wouldn't have had to find me if you hadn’t ran from me like a coward.” He’s being cruel, he’s being cruel to Izuku, but he cannot stop himself. He’s careening down his mountain, and this time Izuku isn’t there to catch him.

“I—I didn’t mean to run, Kacchan,” he says, stepping closer. Katsuki steps back and Izuku freezes. Good, the vicious part of Katsuki that he can feel growing by the second says. Katsuki should not be the only one hurting.

"Then why did you, huh? Why do you keep running, hero?” Katsuki voice drops low and into the quiet, into the little world Izuku has created from his sheer existence that he always drags Katsuki into, he says, “are you afraid of me still?”

Izuku reaches towards him. “Kacchan, I can’t—I can’t be around you like that anymore. I’m sorry, but I can’t take it. I can’t have it just to know it won’t last.” There are tears in his eyes, water emeralds, but he doesn’t say no. He doesn’t say no, and Katsuki swears he can feel his heart shatter in his chest.

“Like what?!” Katsuki yells, the dam breaking loose. “Be around me like what?! I can never fucking understand you! You beg to be my friend; you hang off me like a fucking limpet for years and then you what? Decide you’re done with me? Decide you want someone else instead?! You can’t keep doing this to me, you fucking deku!”

Izuku sucks a harsh breath, and his reaching hand falls.

“Stop it,” Todoroki hisses, coming to block Izuku from view. “You’re being an asshole, Bakugou, more than usual.”

“Shoto, it’s okay,” Izuku says, pulling on his arm. Todoroki he is not afraid to touch. “He’s right, let it go.”

“No, it’s not.” To Katsuki he says, to Katsuki he yells and spits and rages for Izuku, “nothing he has ever done to you has ever been okay, and I’m tired of letting him get away with it. I’m tired of watching him tear your heart out when all you’ve ever been is far kinder than he deserves.”

"You can’t stop me from doing shit,” Katsuki hisses. “You’re nothing. Not here, not between me and Izuku, and not out there in the field. You can’t be anyone’s partner, Half’n’Half, you couldn’t even save yourself. If daddy came after Izuku too, would you just sit and watch?” The temperature in the room plummets.

“Kacchan—”

“Would you let him hurt Izuku like he hurt your mother?” When Todoroki swings, it is not unexpected. Katsuki sees it coming and lets it make contact with the outside of his forearm anyway. The vibrations that wrack his body feel good, they let him put his rage, his fear and his sorrow behind him, if only for a moment, and let the violence consume him the way it was always meant to.

Their fight is a dance, a passing of movement Katsuki revels in. He is fighting, he is coming home and breaking shackles and destroying the progress he made with Izuku, piece by painstaking piece.  

“Jesus—stop fighting! Aizawa is going to yell at you both when you come to class covered in bruises.”

But Katsuki is in his element. He’s sure, if he were able to see himself, he’d be alight with bloodlust. Todoroki is weak to Izuku’s demand and when he stalls, his fists falling, Katsuki presses his advantage.

He slams into Todoroki’s chest and the air rushes out of him, so close it brushes the bangs from Katsuki’s forehead.

In a moment Izuku is between them. And Katsuki will swear to this, he will throw his voice in the air and scream that it was an accident, that this is a nightmare made real, that he never meant to hit Izuku.

His head snaps to the side like it’s on a pivot. He turns to Katsuki slowly—and isn’t it pathetic, that Katsuki’s so relieved he shakes with it that Izuku will still look at him at all—surprise writ plainly on his face.

A drop of blood trickles sluggishly down the cut across his cheek. Katsuki looks down at his hands, at the stones studded on his rings, and they are bloodied, too.

“Izuku,” he says, pleads, “Izuku, I—I didn’t mean to. You have to believe me. I didn’t mean to.”

Izuku brings a finger to his face, and it comes away red as Katsuki’s eyes. “Oh,” he breathes. “I’m bleeding.”

Katsuki moans somewhere low in his throat. “Izuku, please—”

“Get out.” Todoroki cups Izuku’s face in his hands. Izuku stares up at him, his eyes glassy and so so green. “Get out before you hurt him again.” And Katsuki, cowardly down to his bones, runs.

He finds himself by a river. He doesn’t remember the path, just that the rushing water sang a siren song of anything but Izuku’s aching little oh, and Katsuki was helpless to follow. His mind is full, of Izuku, of his wide eyes and reaching hands and his blood staining Katsuki’s shaking fingers. He tried to wash it off in the river, had scrubbed his hands near raw, but a ghost of red still lingers.

There are no stars out tonight, just the waning moon low on the horizon. The grass below him is wet and long enough to brush his cheeks and wet them, too. Or maybe he’s crying. He doesn’t dare check. These hands have done enough, and he keeps them low by his side.

“Kacchan.” Because he cannot leave well alone. Because he is drawn to Katsuki like a moth to a flame, like children to the fall of innocence.

Izuku kneels next to him, close enough to touch. Katsuki threads his hands together on his stomach.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says. Katsuki doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t think he could live through the disappointment he knows is there.

But Izuku just hums.

“You have to know I’m sorry,” he chokes out.

“I know.”

“You have to know I didn’t mean to.”

“I do.”

“I never wanted to hurt you,” he whispers. “Not ever again.”

“I know, Kacchan.”

And suddenly Katsuki is crying in earnest. “It’s like I can’t stop. Every time I try and be good, every time I try to be kind to you, I fuck it up.”

“That’s not true, Kacchan.” His fervor is almost palpable.

“That’s going to scar.”

“You can’t know that for sure,” Izuku says.

“It was deep enough. And you didn’t take care of it.” To find Katsuki, to track him down so quickly, he must have come straight here. Yesterday Katsuki would have loved to see him run from Todoroki and straight to him. Tonight, he cannot even muster a flicker of satisfaction.

“It’s just a scar,” Izuku says. “I don’t care. I have plenty others.”

“Eleven,” Katsuki says. “Twelve now.”

Izuku does not pretend to misunderstand. “Kacchan, stop it. Those weren’t your fault.”

"Two on the bottom of your feet, when my sparks set fire to the carpet.”

“Kacchan—”

Katsuki speaks louder. “Five, two on your lower back and three near the middle of your spine, when I threw you into that wall.  One on your palm, when I burned a stapler red hot and tossed it to you. Two more, one on each knee, when I shoved you down on river rocks that cut into your skin so deeply I saw the water run red.

“One—one on your shoulder.” The largest by far. It is deep and it is raised and it was cruel, and Katsuki didn’t care. Not until years later when he tapped him on the shoulder and Izuku couldn’t even feel it.

Katsuki looks up into emerald pools. “I hurt you.”

“You were a child.”

“I hurt you, Izuku. Again and again and again, and I’m not a child anymore. When are you going to stop letting me?”

“Never,” Izuku says. “Because you were a child, and I forgave you.” He reaches down and takes Katsuki’s hand, bringing it to rest between them. “And I will keep forgiving you, again and again and again, because you’re trying, Kacchan, I know you are.” When he smiles, even the moon weeps in envy. “I’m so proud of you.”

Katsuki traces a finger beneath his cut, bits of dried blood flaking off under his ministration.

Izuku pulls his hand away and sets it back on his stomach. “Kacchan, please don’t.”

As it was always inevitable, Katsuki’s heart breaks. “That. Right there,” he says. “You’re still afraid of me. I don’t blame you. Just, stop lying to me. Stop giving me false hope.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Kacchan.” He sounds appalled by the very idea. “I’ve never been afraid of you. Scared for, upset at, frustrated yes, but never afraid.”

“Then why do you do that? Why do you pull away from me?” Why does he fan his emotions just to douse them?

“It’s like you said, Kacchan. False hope.” He smiles wistfully down at their hands. He does not let go, and Katsuki thanks his stars. “Besides, I couldn’t do that to Kirishima. I know this, these touches and words mean nothing to you. But they mean everything to me, and I couldn’t do that to him.”

Katsuki sits up. “Do what to him.”

Izuku’s cheeks flush. He’s beautiful. “It—it would feel like helping you cheat on him with—with me. And I know,” he’s quick to add when Katsuki is struck still and gaping, “that you don’t lo—like me the way I like you, and it’s just friendly! And you’re a great friend, Kacchan, but when you touch me like that, I can’t help but—”

“What?”

Izuku swallows. But Katsuki fell in love with his eyes first and his strength second, and he says, “fall a little more in love with you when you do.”

He lets go of Katsuki’s hand. “I’m sorry for letting my feelings get in the way of our friendship. I know I hurt you when I pulled away. But—I can lock them away, I swear I can. I want to be in your life again, this past week was awful, I didn’t want to eat and Shoto had to practically knock me out to get me to sleep but I—I just, I just don’t think I can take all this and not do something stupid.”

“Stupid like what?” Katsuki asks, his heart in his throat.

“Stupid like kiss you,” Izuku whispers. And Katsuki can’t help himself—as it always is with Izuku, he is driven solely by passion.

He holds Izuku’s face gently when he kisses him. For a moment where Katsuki’s blood sings and his pulse races, Izuku kisses him, too.

Then he pulls back and slaps a hand over his mouth. Through his fingers he says, “I—I didn’t mean to, Kacchan. I’m so so sorry, I didn’t mean to kiss you I swear—”

“I kissed you,” Katsuki says. Again, because he can. Again, because he kissed Izuku, he says, “I kissed you.”

“Oh.” Izuku drags a finger delicately across his lips. “You did.” Then he punches Katsuki’s shoulder so hard his ears ring.

“How could you?!” He tries to hit him again and Katsuki grabs his hands in his. Izuku begins to crackle with green energy. “How dare you do this to Kirishima?!”

Katsuki pulls him closer and Izuku comes. Katsuki beckons, and Izuku comes. “There is nothing to do to Eijirou,” he says, a smile tugging at his lips. “We’re not dating.”

“Oh,” Izuku says. “Oh, so then you’re—you’re not partnering with him when we graduate?”

“No.” Katsuki runs his hands over Izuku’s neck. His chest, his arms, through his hair, and Izuku lets him. “What made you think we were?”

Izuku flushes to his ears and Katsuki wants to bite them. He can, he realizes, he can bite and touch and take because Izuku loves him. Katsuki will never tire of that.

"Hero couples tend to partner together. And partners tend to be couples,” he says. “On average they—they do better in the rankings if they debut together. And their synergy is off the charts—”

“Are you dating Todoroki?” Katsuki hisses. This anger is not directed at Izuku, but it’s so strong it nearly knocks him over. “Are you with him?”

“Shoto? No, no. I love him but—no. No, we’re not dating.”

“But you’re partnering with him,” Katsuki says. “You said most partners are couples. I swear, Izuku, if you’re joking, I will kill you, fuck my apologies earlier I’ll actually—”

“I’m not partnering with Shoto!” Izuku shouts.

“Swear?”

“Yes, Kacchan I swear on All Might I’m not partnering with Shoto,” he says. “Why—why do you care?”

Katsuki pinches the meat of Izuku’s cheeks, careful of the healing wound. “Because I’m going to be your partner.” Katsuki remembers Eijirou’s warning then. “If you want to. If you want to be my partner.”

Izuku sits straight so suddenly he dislodges Katsuki’s hands. But that’s fine, they find their place around his hips. “You want to be my partner? My hero partner? Like, we work together and fight together and we’re at the same agency and—”

“Yes, Izuku,” Katsuki smiles. “If you’ll have me, then yes. Be my partner.”

“Kacchan, hero partners share ranks. If you—whatever spot we earn, we share it.”

Katsuki digs his hands into Izuku’s skin, bordering on painful, but Katsuki knows he can take it. He likes a little pain. “Then we’re number one together, Izuku.”

The tears are expected. But that’s alright, Katsuki catches them all. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“Then we’ll have it, Izuku.”

Knocking on his door pulls Katsuki from his sleep. He stretches deep, satisfaction laced everywhere Izuku touches. He decides they are too far apart, and he pulls the sleeping boy close to him, nosing in the back of Izuku’s neck.

Blooms of purple decorate his skin, and Katsuki sinks his teeth into them again.

The knocking continues.

Careful not to wake Izuku, because there had been little sleeping last night, he detaches himself from Izuku who, in his sleep, had curled his arms over the ones Katsuki wrapped around his chest.

He grabs his boxers and loose joggers from the ground, pulling them on as he hops towards his door. He opens it a crack and is woken further by startling red.

“Heard you and Todoroki got into a fight last night man,” Eijirou says. “Sorry I didn’t come to you then, I think I passed out before midnight.”

“Keep your voice down,” Katsuki hisses, pushing against Eijirou when he tries to wedge himself through his door.

He must notice the state of Katsuki then. The hickeys and scratches he’s sure stretch over his back to curl around his shoulders. Eijirou’s mouth drops open.

“No fucking way—” he bulldozes past Katsuki and into his room, his eyes blowing wide when they fall on Izuku.

Izuku, exposed down to the dimples of his waist, laying on his stomach on Katsuki’s bed. Izuku, with a tanned, strong leg sticking from beneath the blankets. Izuku, layered in bruises made by Katsuki’s own hands, born of lust and not anger.

Eijirou whistles, quiet enough that Izuku does little more than stir and throw his head to the side, long tendons decorated in purple coming into view.

“Fuck, man, I always forget how hot Midoriya is—”

Katsuki takes him outside by the collar of his shirt.

“Katsuki, you gotta share—”

“Watch your mouth,” Katsuki hisses once the door is closed behind them. “I ain’t sharing shit.”

Eijirou bumps his shoulder into his. “I kid,” he says. “Well, mostly. Bet Midoriya’d look good—” Katsuki’s hands crackle.

“Kidding! I am kidding. I respect your and Midoriya’s ability to whoop my ass,” Eijirou yells and throws his back to the hallway wall. He smiles at Katsuki. “I’m happy for you man. You seem, really settled. It’s a good look on you.”

Katsuki shrugs, the cold of the hallways starting to get to him. “Yeah, well, Izuku’s always been good for me.” He rubs at his arms. “Took me too long to figure that out.”

“But you did,” Eijirou says. Katsuki comes to lean against the wall next to him. “Hey, did you manage to ask Midoriya about the partner thing?”

The satisfaction rolls of him in waves. “He said yes,” he says, smug. He slants his gaze to Eijirou. “He thought we were gonna partner together, actually.”

“Ah, poor dude.”

"Thought we were dating, too.”

“Ah, poor me,” Eijirou says. Katsuki lunges for his throat.

They wrestle on the floor until Katsuki comes out on top, Eijirou’s arms pinned beneath his knees. “I’d be—I am a fantastic boyfriend, you piece of shit. You’d be lucky to have me.”

His pinned hands flap somewhere around Katsuki’s ankle. “Fine, sure! Just get off me, man, you smell like sex.”

Katsuki grins and rolls off. They stare at the hallway ceiling together. “Thanks,” Katsuki says, not looking at Eijirou. He coughs the lump from his throat. “For helping me with all this.”

“I feel like I didn’t really do much other than complicate things, but, you’re welcome. And I’d do it anytime, Katsuki. I mean that.”

“Thanks, Eijirou. And the same to you. Always,” Katsuki says.      

Eijirou twists onto his side, his hands clasped in prayer in front of him. “Just give me five minutes alone with him, please—" Katsuki chases him all the way back to his dorm.

He opens his door slowly, but Izuku’s already awake. He’s holding a cluster of blankets to his chest in lieu of Katsuki, and he will not grow jealous over a bit of fabric. “Hi, Kacchan.” His smile draws one from Katsuki.

“Hey,” Katsuki says, “I wake you up?”

Izuku burrows into Katsuki’s pillow, a single green eye lit in bliss. “You did. It was awful, Kacchan. I woke up all alone.”

Katsuki stalks closer, planting a single knee on the bed by Izuku’s hip. “Did you?”

“Mmh hmm,” Izuku hums. His smile widens. “You gonna make it up to me?”

Katsuki traps him in a snare of his own making, his hands bracketing Izuku’s head. “If I have to.” And he settles into a kiss that feels like coming home.

Katsuki licks into Izuku’s mouth and he pulls him down closer, the blanket between them almost maddening. “Missed you,” he says.

Izuku laughs, and Katsuki feels it reverberate in his chest like it was his own. “You were only gone for seven minutes.”

“Seven minutes too long,” Katsuki says, dipping lower and leaving a trail of kisses as he goes. One over his neck, because Katsuki loves his voice. Another nestled between his pecs and over his heart, because he’s kinder than anyone Katsuki’s ever known. One for each rib, simply because they’re Izuku’s and he loves them by proxy.

From his place between Izuku’s legs he breathes, “I love you, you know?”

Izuku sits up on his elbows. “I did not know, you absolute—” Katsuki bites into the tempting skin of the expanse between Izuku’s hip bone and his thick thigh.

Izuku twists his fingers into Katsuki’s blanket and arches his back, a moan low in his throat that Katsuki fans into something louder, something that threatens to completely unravel him.

Katsuki unwinds Izuku’s hand from the sheets and weaves it into his own hair. “Show me,” he says, “show me how much you like the way I take you apart.” And Izuku does.

He sings under Katsuki’s hands, his mouth, his tongue. He comes completely undone, a breathless mess and Katsuki is not far behind. Neither of them last long, not under each other’s searching and excited hands. Soon, they lay panting beside each other. Katsuki pulls Izuku onto his chest, their sweat sticking them together even further.

“I love you, too,” he says into Katsuki’s neck. Katsuki rubs a hand over a bruise he made.

“Tell me again,” Katsuki says.

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“You’ll get tired of it soon,” Izuku says, and though he cannot see him Katsuki knows he’s smiling. He knows his eyes, breathtaking emerald green, the first thing Katsuki’s ever loved, are alight with a fire just for him.

“Never,” Katsuki whispers fiercely. “I could never tire of you. Now tell me again.”

“I love you,” Izuku says into the narrow space between them. Katsuki pulls him closer until there is none, until they are left lying heart to stolen heart.

“Again.”