Work Text:
Katsuki was sitting at his home office (the kitchen table) when he realized he hadn’t seen Deku for two weeks.
The pen in his hand stilled, hand hovering over the quirk accident report he was writing up, frozen. With the sun coming from the window to his right, half of his face and one arm were slowly warming, almost like there was someone leaning against him, shoulder-to-shoulder. The whole room was silent.
Nothing had truly broken the quiet once Deku left. It had settled over their apartment like a mourning veil. The front door opening and closing, the TV, the barely-working coffee maker, the shower, the blender. The quiet sigh of Katsuki’s own breath as he tried to fall asleep every night, too cold without the routine heat of another body and too angry to get an extra blanket from the closet.
He glanced behind him into the kitchen. The clock on the oven said 9:34 in thin red numbers, and it was Friday. Fourteen days ago, around this time, Deku walked out of their apartment with nothing but a duffle bag and a head full of idiotic optimism.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to be,” he’d said.
“Like I fucking care,” Katsuki had answered. “Get out before you miss the train.”
Katsuki wasn’t one for undercover missions. He’d done a few, hated all three with fury. Talking to people, making friends, and keeping a low profile were essentials. All things he’d never exactly excelled at. He spent the whole time biting his tongue and doing his damndest trying not to blow his cover.
You never got a time frame, not really. The Hero Commission would always bullshit something, four to six days, seven to ten weeks, one to three months, but the real answer never changed: As long as it takes. You’re undercover until you either finish the mission or fuck up badly enough they have to pull you out.
Even if Deku didn’t like them, the Hero Commission would still send him. He was too damn good at that kind of thing. It pissed Katsuki off. That type of mission played to Deku’s strengths perfectly. He was easy to like, friendly. Strong and reliable in a fight. Level-headed if things went south. For the most part, he’d even learned when to keep his stupid mouth shut.
So the Commission kept assigning him undercover work, and Deku kept saying yes, and Katsuki kept his anger simmering on the back burner.
After Deku got back in town, the same thing always happened: The Commission shoveled a pile of money into their joint bank account and told him to keep his mouth shut. Because he didn’t get any media attention or brand deals or shit like that while he was flying dark, the work paid well.
The thought that he was taking all these cases for the payout didn’t sit right under Katsuki’s skin. It couldn’t be true, so he refused to consider it.
Deku’s absence was not without repercussions. Since he was in the public eye less and less, his ranking had all but stagnated. He was stuck at number 23 and had been for months.
Katsuki, on the other hand, had been only in the spotlight lately. A few times, villains had even specified that they were there to fight Dynamight, his list of nemeses was short but growing.
Late night talk show hosts and interviewers invited him to come entertain them with his explosive personality and easily branded image. He said yes because saying no would only put him behind in the popularity rankings. There was nothing better for him to do once he got home, anyway, so he might as well put on a tailored suit and insult people for an hour.
To an outsider, it looked like their rivalry was finally starting to slip. Deku was beginning to lose to him. That couldn’t be further from the truth. If anything, they were closer in strength than they ever had been, still straining to push harder, neck in neck with no sign of the gap widening.
On the short breaks where Deku was home, he charmed the media, won over civilians, and gave Katsuki a run for his money in the sparring ring. He acted like he’d never fucking left in the first place.
-
The following morning, day 15, Katsuki tried once again to make coffee. The beast would not be tamed. Piece of shit spit too-weak coffee all over the countertop, splattering the cupboards and his pajamas with flecks of disgusting brown. He yelled at it, punched it, and didn’t feel better.
Maybe since Deku was gone he could finally throw it out. Nerd was the only one who could cajole it into working, and he wasn’t here, and neither of them knew when he was going to be back, so fuck. It didn’t matter if he got a new coffee maker. Between Deku’s undercover work and Katsuki’s recent brand deal with an athleticwear company, their bank account certainly wouldn’t hurt from it.
Who the hell was he trying to convince? He didn’t throw it out. He didn’t look for a new one, either. He picked a drink up at a konbini on his way to work, just like he’d done for the past two weeks and one day, and just like he’d continue to do for fuck knows how long.
The next day, Katsuki went to work. Patrolled, signed a few autographs, filled out stack upon stack of mindless paperwork. He apprehended some shitty D-list villain that had been going around mentally hacking into people’s computers that he could get within a few feet of.
Another day passed. He fought a bastard with an eye-contact initiated mind control quirk, though calling it a fight was probably generous. By the end of it, he barely had any bruises, which pissed him off. Nothing challenging was popping up, and, yeah, he was a hero, he shouldn’t be lamenting the lack of violent criminals, but for fuck’s sake. If you’re going to be a villain, at least be decent enough you don’t get K.O.’d within the first ten minutes. It’s just embarrassing at that point.
He wanted a real fight. He wanted to go up against someone he might lose to. He wanted green electricity crackling around his explosions, adrenaline, blood on his knuckles.
Back at the Agency, Kirishima cornered him and tried to convince him to come over to Kaminari’s place that night. Katsuki swore at him, called him the dumber version of a rock, and flipped him off as he walked out the doors. Out of either pseudo-friendship or sheer boredom, he’d already gone and hung out with the idiots twice since Deku left.
It was three hours of Dunce Face and Tape Face laughing too loudly at each other, and it grated on his nerves. Raccoon Eyes always wanted to talk shit and Shitty Hair kept giving him that fucking stupid look that screamed pity.
Two more days went by. Jirou dragged him out for lunch because he hadn’t been able to find the energy to pack himself something that morning. He’d never admit it, but Ears was tolerable company, if only because she barely talked and only asked questions if she was ready to get an honest answer.
Jirou wiped the grease from her hands on a paper napkin. “You hear from him?”
“Nope,” Katsuki said, staring down at the bottom of his empty bowl. Nerd always went zero contact to minimize risks, what-fucking-ever.
“You text him?”
“Nope.”
“You gonna text him?”
He pointed at her with his chopsticks. A stomach full of food was the only reason she was still alive. “One fucking guess.”
“Okay,” she acquiesced, taking a sip of her water. A huge purple hoodie was pulled over her hero costume, sleeves so long she had to roll them up just so she could eat. “Hey, let me know when he gets back in town.”
“You’ll probably see him before I do.”
“Yeah, sure. Like he’s not gonna run straight home the moment he’s done.”
He wanted her to be right. He hated how much he wanted her to be right.
“Pay your fucking bill. We’ve got work to do.”
-
The day after, once he was done with patrol, Katsuki holed himself up in their apartment. At first, he tried to focus on some paperwork he’d brought home. There was no reason he needed to do it that night, he just hated the idea of having nothing to concentrate on. It didn’t matter, though, because no matter how hard he stared at the form, it refused to make sense. Everything was too damn quiet.
So, instead of actually getting some work done, Katsuki turned on the TV to a random channel, volume low. It faded into the background, like he was in another room, making dinner or doing laundry or laughing at Deku for a slip-up on the field.
He sat on the couch and stared at the curtains drawn over the window. There was really no need for them to be closed. He should stand up, push them to one side, let some sunlight in. Frozen, he stayed impossibly still, and he thought.
He knew it was Deku the moment he heard the door open.
The way their apartment was set up, the entryway was a straight shot to the living room. If someone were sitting on the couch, all they would have to do was look behind them to see who was coming into the apartment.
Katsuki turned, and his mouth went dry.
The man who walked through the door was Deku but not Deku, and it curdled something deep in his gut. When he swallowed, the back of his mouth tasted sour. He couldn’t hear the TV at all anymore; it had gone completely silent the minute he saw the figure flipping the deadbolt.
With his duffle bag in one hand, dumbass ‘travel shirt’ t-shirt, and gym shorts on, Deku caught his eye and shot him a tired smile. His shoulders were drooping, a bandage wrapped around the middle of his forearm.
Deku’s freckles were gone, hidden by a layer of makeup. He looked strangely naked without them; it turned his already plain face into a near-blank slate for whatever character he needed to play. Instead of his easily recognizable green hair, it was ink black. Had to be temporary dye. His curls were still intact, though, if a bit longer than he remembered. Even though he clearly wasn’t still undercover, Katsuki couldn’t really blame him for not wanting to get recognized at the airport or train station or wherever the hell he crawled back from.
The first thing Katsuki said to Deku after almost three weeks of not seeing him wasn’t ‘Welcome home’ or ‘I missed you so much my chest hurt’ or ‘Come here’.
Katsuki glared at him, then turned back around to the TV. “Go wash that fucking dye out of your hair.”
He heard a bag being set on the floor with a dull thump, the metal zipper clinking against the hardwood. Fabric rustled, footsteps, and then nothing. With his elbows braced on the back of the couch, Deku leaned forward until he was in Katsuki’s line of sight again.
“How about a kiss first?” he asked.
“How about get the hell out of my face before I explode it off.”
It was disconcerting to see Deku so close while he didn’t look like Deku. He had no freckles. No green hair. He didn’t even smell like himself, just reeked of hotel soap and a hundred different people. Equal parts unfamiliar and unwelcome.
This was a version of him Katsuki hated, because it wasn’t him at all, it was the person he’d been playing for the last three fucking weeks, and every single time he finished an undercover mission he worried Deku wouldn’t fully come back to him.
With a sudden burst of quickness, Deku darted forward and pressed his lips to Katsuki’s temple for a split-second. They were warm and chapped. The touch was over as soon as it began.
“Get the fuck away from me,” Katsuki said, but his voice was hollow. They both knew he could have dodged. “Shower.”
“Okay, Kacchan.”
His palms dragged across the back of the couch for a moment, then he snapped his fingers on each hand twice and clapped, fidgeting. Loping footsteps, a heavy sigh, the bathroom door opening and closing, clothes hitting the floor, the shower turning on.
Turning off the TV completely, Katsuki shuffled down until he was lying on the cushions, head resting on a throw pillow. The shower was clearly audible. Katsuki closed his eyes and listened.
About fifteen minutes later, the sound of the running water cut off. The bathroom door opened, and he fought the urge to look. He was capable of self control. He heard Deku go into their bedroom. When he came back out, he walked to where Katsuki was lying on the couch in not-really-silence.
“Hi,” Deku murmured.
Say it again, Katsuki thought. Say anything again, and don’t stop saying it, just keeping talking so I know you’re here and you’re not going to leave.
“Mm,” he answered, and opened his eyes.
It was Deku. The real one, in sweatpants and a ratty All Might t-shirt, standing in the middle of the living room with that dumb, soft smile.
He looked tired. The makeup had hidden the dark circles under his eyes, a purple so deep it almost looked black. Now that he was bare-faced and back to normal Deku, they stood out starkly, even against his tanned skin. His freckles had reappeared. Though most of the dye had faded out of his hair, it was a far more muted shade of green than usual, damp and heavy.
Katsuki watched him walk over to the windows, pull back the curtains with one hand. The sun was dimmer than he'd expected, sinking low in the sky, painting the room a burnt orange. It was a beautiful sunset, if you cared about bullshit like that. Deku turned back to the couch and hovered over him.
“You look like shit,” Katsuki said.
“Well, I’m clean. Now can I have a kiss?”
“Did you even win?” He didn’t know why he asked that. Undercover cases usually aren’t as simple as victory or loss.
Still, Deku said, “Yeah.”
“No one got hurt?”
Deku chewed on the inside of his cheek. “No one died. I did rough up a couple of the leaders at the end there.”
“You roughed ‘em up?” Katsuki couldn’t help the mocking sharpness in his voice. His anger was clear. This is exactly why he couldn’t keep himself in the background, why he didn’t go on undercover missions with Deku or anyone else. “Are you sure it wasn’t the other fucking way around?”
“Kacchan?”
Something snapped inside him. Maybe it was his tone, soft and welcoming and gentle, and maybe it was the three weeks, and maybe it was how cold he’d been at night, and maybe it was none of those things, only Katsuki’s ever-reliable anger and his all too rational fear that one day Deku wouldn’t come back.
Katsuki sat up, put his hand on the thick muscle of Deku’s shoulder, and squeezed. He felt the heat from his shower clinging to his skin, soaking through his t-shirt to Katsuki’s palm.
Deku didn’t swear, didn’t yelp, only flinched at the sudden pain and hung his head. He’d been favoring his right arm ever since he walked through the damn door. Must’ve taken a hit. Could just be some bad bruising, could be a fucking broken bone. He could never tell with Deku.
Dropping his hand, Katsuki stood with purpose. This had gone too far. Shitty nerd wouldn’t stay with him, didn’t care when he left for three weeks, couldn’t even manage to drag himself home in one piece.
“Wait—wait, Kacchan, it’s not tha—”
Deku’s voice cut off when Katsuki took his face in one hand, pinching the softness of his cheeks until his face squished and his lips pursed like a fish. His skin was still barely damp from the water and steam. Warm. When Katsuki manhandled him, turning his face left to right, inspecting, he realized his thumb was pressing into a green-and-purple bruise on Deku’s jawbone. Directly on top of it, and he hadn’t said a word.
Katsuki let his hand fall to his side. Deku must’ve noticed that he noticed, because his big eyes went all soft and stupid.
“It was just a little tap,” he said, and shrugged his left shoulder only.
“You’re injured,” Katsuki spat. “And a fucking idiot.”
“I’m alright, Kacchan.”
“Yeah, and who the hell told you that?”
“I wanted to come home.”
“Get your ass in the car. We’re going to the hospital.”
“I wanted to come home,” Deku repeated, like he hadn’t fucking heard him the first time, like he didn’t listen to every single word that came out of his goddamn mouth. “I got checked out before I left. Nothing’s broken, I just need to take some ibuprofen for a while.”
Katsuki wanted to punch the bruise on Deku’s stupid, freckled face for abandoning him to their shitty coffee maker and the silence and the world and then limping back to him like a dog with its tail between its legs.
Jaw tight, he accepted this. He didn’t move to sit, though. Deku had something to say. It was obvious. Written all over his stupid fucking face.
“What?” Katsuki demanded.
“If I tell you something, are you going to get mad at me?”
“Probably.”
Deku smiled, but it wasn’t his real smile. It was all lips, no eyes, and the sight burned like acid down his throat. “I missed you.”
“That’s what you fuckin’ wanted to tell me?”
“No.” He rubbed the back of his neck, wincing. “So, here’s what’s up. Before I left, the hero I was working under approached me for a review. After the whole case was wrapped up, I mean. She gave me some critiques and pointers, that kind of thing. Overall, though, she said she approved of how I acted and my handling of the last, uh, situation that went down before backup came. She was pretty adamant that I go home and rest, but after that, she was mentioning that the Commission was probably going to contact me soon about working on a new—”
“Don’t go,” Katsuki blurted.
Deku stared at him, eyes wide.
“Don’t fucking go,” he went on, because Deku wasn’t saying anything, and if Deku wasn’t saying anything the silence would settle back onto them, thick and suffocating. “I don’t give a shit about how good the money is, or if they think it’s only going to be a few days, or whatever the hell they came up with to make you want to do it. I don’t fucking care.”
“Kacchan, I—”
“My answer isn’t gonna fucking change, Deku. What—what is it? Do you need a fucking break? You like all the people you meet while you’re a different goddamn person? Like their fucking quirks? What the hell is—”
A hand closed over his mouth, scarred and strong. When Katsuki breathed in, it smelled exactly like Deku, deep and fresh and slightly spicy. Something warm and all too familiar curled low in his stomach.
Head bent, Deku used both his strength and the element of surprise to force Katsuki to backpedal, stepping with him until the crooks of his knees hit the couch. With a gentle push from Deku, Katsuki flopped onto the cushions, taken off guard. He looked up at Deku with both astonishment and annoyance.
In a surge of pettiness, Katsuki bit at Deku’s palm, front teeth catching the rough, calloused skin. Deku took the hint and slid his hand from Katsuki’s mouth around to cup his jaw, touch so comforting it was almost overwhelming.
“Kacchan,” he said, meeting his eye. “I told them no.”
As his words sunk in, Deku sunk into his lap, moving onto him slowly, settling himself so he was straddling Katsuki’s thighs. He felt Deku’s full weight, short frame packed with muscle. Nerd was built like a fucking brick.
“I’m not going again, not for a while.” After a moment, Deku added, “I missed you, too.”
Katsuki grabbed onto Deku’s t-shirt, reaching for the justified anger always boiling under his skin and only finding ugly desire.
“Who said I fucking missed you?”
Steadily, Katsuki's grip on his frustration began to slip. It was like Deku was easing it out of his fisted hand, uncurling his fingers until he could reach into his palm and take it all away.
Deku smiled, and it was his real smile. “You’re really dorky sometimes, Kacchan.”
His breath started coming shorter, and before he knew it, he was staring at Deku’s full lips. The deep orange sun spread out behind him, drawing him in, soaking them with warmth and the unforgettable feeling he couldn’t name. Deku’s chest dipped with each breath, raising his other arm until he was cupping Katsuki’s face with both hands, scarred, broken fingers brushing in his hair, thumbs swiping over his cheeks.
Katsuki set his palms on Deku’s thick, powerful thighs. "I want a new coffee maker."
"Okay," Deku said, grinning stupidly. "I'll get you one."
Katsuki didn’t wait for Deku to ask again. He just leaned up and kissed him.