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The thing with waking up in the cold is that winter has a way of creeping into Izuku’s skin, setting root and stiffening here and there, until his body creaked and groaned like a rusted metal joint. It is unpleasant, especially over scar tissue, which is tough to begin with, tougher after the cold sneakily beats into it while Izuku sleeps unaware.
The other thing with waking up in the cold is that Izuku doesn’t have to, anymore.
There is a sun in Izuku’s bed, mattress dipping in his gravity like spacetime, and the air around them is suffused in his warmth. Izuku, himself, is cloaked in his heat, seeping in the pores of his skin and seeking out the chill, evaporating it.
There is a stupidly heavy arm weighing down his waist, and it’s in part from this that the warmth in Izuku originally emanated, like ink in water. The other part lies behind, Katsuki’s front plastered along his back, like their hearts decided they were too far apart and settled for smashing ribcages.
A rush of air tickles the back of Izuku’s neck, the arms around him tighten, and he giggles. Muffled grumbles are being shoved unceremoniously into his nape. Kacchan is waking up.
“N’Zuku,” Izuku can make out amidst the unintelligible rumbling.
“Morning, Kacchan,” Izuku whispers, words pulled wide with his smile. He tries to turn over, but his fiancé holds fast, squeezing him even closer. Izuku giggles at the way Kacchan hugs him stubbornly, face burrowed in his neck and curls.
“G’m’rnin’,” Kacchan mumbles, and Izuku settles for shoving himself further into Katsuki’s hold to get his fix. Their legs tangle further, one of Kacchan’s coming around to hook around his, until Izuku realizes he is practically laying on his front, wholly smothered in his Kacchan.
“Lemme up,” Izuku whines, unashamed to be childish in this bed with the man who had known him since he truly had been one. He wanted to hug his soon-to-be husband. Izuku wiggles under the oaf, fruitlessly.
Katsuki grumbles stubbornly in response, immovable.
Izuku flops down into the sheets, giving up. Then he hisses, having accidentally laid his weight weirdly on his cold, stiff, aching hands.
Katsuki freezes above him, letting up immediately and pulling Izuku along with him. Shuffles and pulls Izuku like a ragdoll with a muscled arm around his chest until they are situated like before, plastered along each other back-to-front like they are trying to pass for a single person.
Kacchan gives a concerned hum, is almost certainly eyeing the hands Izuku was letting lay limply on the sheets, chin hooked over his shoulder. Izuku has his eyes closed, enjoying Katsuki’s warmth and the rumble of his voice echoing through him and ignoring the pain. They’d been through this enough times that Izuku knows what Katsuki wants, anyway.
“C’n I help, baby,” Katsuki’s lips are warm on his ear, his morning rasp sending delicious shivers up Izuku’s spine, combined with the feel of him not really asking, “‘M’gonna help.”
Izuku gives less of a nod and more of a sigh-slash-let-his-head-roll-back-further-into-Katsuki’s-shoulders, which Kacchan knows to take as a yes anyway.
Hands unreasonably hot for the cold weather — they might’ve been incubated under the blanket, but by now Izuku knows they’re really just another part of Kacchan — slide up, up, dragging his sleep shirt as they travel lazily, like Katsuki is using this as another excuse to touch him more.
Not that he ever pretends to need excuses — Kacchan seems to take a particular joy in putting his (hot, hot) hands on him whenever he so pleases, to Izuku’s occasional embarrassment but shy mutual pleasure.
Up his hands go over his torso, his chest, too-hot through the cotton, teasing, just his fingertips with a ghost of a palm — playfully across his chest and collar, as if accompanying a fond memory — then to his arms, cupped from the underside almost at the armpit on both sides, so Izuku has the impression he was being held like a personal stuffed toy, hugged and enveloped like this by Kacchan.
Katsuki’s fingers can meet wrapped around Izuku’s mid-upper arm, not from a lack of muscle on Izuku’s part (he’s definitely not scrawny anymore, even if he’s not as clearly jacked as Kacchan or Kirishima, and he knows he’ll get bigger as they age), but because Kacchan’s hands are just that big in comparison. This is a fact both of them find themselves fixated on quite often.
Katsuki takes the time to wrap long fingers around Izuku’s arms and slide down to the point where his fingertips can touch, takes an indulgent moment to hold his hands there, marvel at how he holds Izuku so. Squeeze a little. Just a second, but Izuku knows.
That moment of slight pressure, of deepened warmth, like a brand on his skin from Katsuki, a ring that spells his name. Izuku wills his heart rate to slow.
Kacchan’s hands continue, reach his elbows and uncurl, fingers outstretched now as they smooth over Izuku’s forearms. His inner forearms, especially, where he is soft and vulnerable. Disgraceful, really, scandalous is this act, frankly improper. They are just hands on skin. They should not do so much to Izuku.
Yet Kacchan has a way of touching him that burns him from the inside out, and he yearns, and his skin bleeds. And Kacchan’s hands move achingly slow, almost taunting, as if he knows, he knows, how every centimeter shivering under his touch corresponds with another lurch in his stomach, another nerve path that sizzles silent in Izuku’s brain.
Izuku full-body shudders. Katsuki’s grin widens, and he noses Izuku’s curls, mouth warm on his neck. Presses a light kiss there. Izuku almost passes out.
Kacchan thumbs over his wristbone, and it feels delicate in his hand. The soft skin at his wrist, laid bare, stroked gently by a warm touch. Izuku is distantly aware of how vulnerable a place it is, thin skin stretched over vital arteries. Millimeters between living and bleeding out. Empty of armor, given gladly, gratefully, to the most dangerous hands in the world. To be held carefully in the cusp of combustion by the grace of trust, and little else.
Trust, above all, has Izuku giving himself over so freely, these most vulnerable, soft-bellied parts of him, to the man whose arms he is held within. Faith they’d be handled with care. Love has Izuku not minding if Katsuki ground them to dust beneath his feet, but trust has Izuku with his wrists wrapped in Katsuki’s warm fingers in their bed.
Katsuki’s hands slide up and now the backs of Izuku’s hands are glowing, even his fingers cupped in Kacchan’s, and he sighs from the utter relief in the backs of his knuckles. Their rings clink and sit together. It sends something warm and fluttery blooming in his chest. Kacchan’s hands fit over his completely, holds them loosely with his thumbs waiting in the air, until Izuku has relaxed fully. And then sweet, glorious Kacchan proceeds to bring down the act of an angel unto earth, and presses his hot thumbs into the flesh of Izuku’s hands, twin searing points of spine-melting relief.
Heat pours into Izuku’s palms, golden like honey in the sunlight, and he can’t help his relieved groan.
A grin presses into his neck, stretching there where Kacchan seems to think he won’t notice it, and it only adds to the warmth spreading through Izuku. Wrapped up in his love, letting him ease the ache; here, Izuku feels wholly still, completely enamored by the current moment. Safe and loved and warm.
In, and around, and around, and up, Katsuki slowly and carefully massages the delicate bones of Izuku’s hands with heated, slow fingers. He presses out the ache in his bones like the pain is ice to be melted, turned to water and dripping out between the gaps of his skeleton as Katsuki pushes heat into his joints with his thumbs.
His palms still cup the backs of Izuku’s, thumbs sometimes dipping to massage his wristbones too, and Izuku leans into this all-encompassing embrace, Kacchan fitting around him like a second skin.
Izuku shivers, from time to time. From the hand massage, and from the incessant kisses Kacchan keeps pressing into his neck the entire time, close-mouthed and open-mouthed and warm, warm, warm. Sucking and brushing and full of adoration Izuku still isn’t quite used to, yet, but by the gods does Kacchan seem insistent on getting him there. And every shiver gifts him an especially mind-melting kiss into his skin, hotter and rougher than the rest. Izuku can barely see anymore.
Kacchan finishes rubbing away the pain in Izuku’s hands and opts to just hold them in his. The simple movement does treacherous things to Izuku’s sanity.
Kacchan interlaces their fingers. Izuku’s heart leaps and bounds in his chest, even now.
Then Katsuki lifts their hands up to his lips, presses something soft and sweet and nonchalant on the back of Izuku’s, and Izuku reminds himself dizzily that he’s marrying this man, that he’s awake and this is real.
“Thank you, Kacchan,” Izuku whispers, adoration dripping from his voice like an overflowing bucket of sunshine. He glances at his fiancé over his shoulder. Katsuki has his eyes shut and jaw clenched, and when he opens them, Izuku gasps quietly at how dark his eyes have gone, the devotion and something else burning in them, something rather smug, as if on both of their behalfs’, steadfast and knowing.
How blessed he is, to wake and be loved.
The arms around him shift. “How’s your neck,” Katsuki mutters, and Izuku’s eyes roll back a little when Kacchan digs his fingers into the top of his spine. Just once, because Izuku goes so lax that Katsuki laughs and hauls him back like he weighs nothing at all, chuckling something under his breath about having nothing to work on.
“Better?” Katsuki prompts, nudging their heads together with the ghost of his laugh still gracing his face.
“Hmm,” Izuku sighs, smiling dopily. He feels loose as a happily plucked flower, with his slow-blink gaze a little unfocused and head lolling back onto Kacchan’s shoulder, and Katsuki suddenly takes him by the jaw and kisses him, long and hard.
Sudden but not surprising, because Izuku will often be doing something innocuous like smiling or laughing quietly or saying Kacchan’s name and promptly be swooped into a deep kiss unprepared.
As they break off, the very last of the chill leaves Izuku’s body in a gentle flutter, and he shivers against Kacchan’s solid form with its goodbye. Kacchan gathers him up even closer like he always does when Izuku shudders against him, exhaling out of his nose, pressing kisses along his hairline, the dip of his cheekbone.
“We should eat,” Izuku murmurs half-heartedly. His eyes are closed, and he’s basking in Katsuki like a cat in a patch of sun.
“Mmm.” Katsuki answers, head ducked into Izuku’s neck. He rolls his hips into Izuku’s backside, and, well— there’s that answer. He’s clearly very interested. Perhaps not in breakfast.
Izuku laughs delightedly, the joy in his chest bubbling up and out and spilling over his tongue, and he finally succeeds in flipping himself over and onto Katsuki, who goes easily, falls flat on his back with an oof as Izuku lands on him.
Izuku lays on his fiancé like a flattened slug, smiles uncontrollably into his warm, solid chest, loose-limbed and giddy. A hand tucks under his chin and lifts his face from its hiding place, and Kacchan doesn’t say anything, just studies his smile with a softness in his eyes.
Kacchan is quiet in the mornings, and he seems to like silently looking at Izuku most of all.
Izuku basks in his gaze, warm in his sunlight.