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There is a cat on Izuku’s bed. It’s looking at him with narrowed red eyes, looking decidedly disgruntled. It’s curled up, but has managed to do it in such a way that every fibre of its being is projecting disappointment.
“It’s really him,” Izuku says.
“Yes.” Aizawa scrubs a hand down his face, sighing.
“On my bed,” Izuku says.
“He refused to lay down anywhere else,” Aizawa says, repeating what he’s already told Izuku fifteen minutes prior. “Now, do you feel up to taking care of him, or–”
“Yes, of course, of course I do!” Izuku scrambles to say. Aizawa sighs again, but this time there’s a note of relief in it.
“Great,” he says, giving Izuku a tired half-smile. “Call me if anything comes up.” And with that he slides out of the room, leaving Izuku to stare at the cat. The cat that is Katsuki. Katsuki affected by a quirk incident, but nevertheless.
Izuku just stands in front of the bed for a moment. The cat stares back at him. Then, slowly, he blinks at Izuku, heaves a big breath and puts his head on its paws.
“Well then I guess it’s just… us,” Izuku says, still a bit overwhelmed.
Katsuki-the-cat doesn’t reply. Izuku didn’t really expect him to.
He sits down on the ground, since he’s not sure Katsuki would want him to sit down on the bed with him.
He can’t really believe that Katsuki is here, when he could have settled down in anyone else’s room, but is still quick to explain it away: they’ve known each other the longest, so perhaps Izuku’s scent is simply familiar. Or perhaps Izuku is an easy person because Katsuki cares less about his opinion than Kirishima’s or Mina’s, so he’s not as ashamed to be an instinct-driven cat in front of him. If he is ashamed. If he is instinct-driven.
The quirk he was hit with was a child’s, and apparently he’s only the third person to ever be affected by it since it only presented a few days ago, so nobody’s really sure what exactly the quirk does, apart from the obvious. The first person hit with it apparently turned back within the hour; the second took a whole day.
A part of Izuku wants to write everything down, start a folder of documentation. The much bigger part of him is focused entirely on Katsuki, the entirety of him preening at Katsuki being here, with him.
This is something he still hasn’t grown out of, even now that they’re on tentative speaking, friendship-adjacent terms again: he wants Katsuki’s attention, all of the time. Even after well over a decade, even after years of bullying, even now that he’s putting so much effort into rebuilding his relationship with Katsuki and should be glad with and focused on that, he just wants Katsuki’s attention.
He attempts to stop staring at the cat, but fails. Katsuki is still watching him, red eyes focused.
Izuku feels himself blushing, for some stupid reason. It’s just – Katsuki’s eyes are exactly the same, and he’s looking right at Izuku, and Izuku’s collection of notebooks are right under his bed, including the one with all the notes about Katsuki’s quirk that perhaps, possibly, at some point devolved from planning the perfect outfit and gadgets for Katsuki to drawings about what Katsuki looks like in loungewear, to musings about what he’d wear on his wedding day –
Katsuki-the-cat gets up, disrupting Izuku’s thoughts. He stretches and hops down from the bed, then walks towards Izuku. He climbs into Izuku’s lap without much fanfare, curling up again, still somehow managing to look severely disappointed and disapproving.
Izuku’s heart feels like it might beat out of his chest.
They just sit there like that for a while, Katsuki rolled up in his lap, Izuku not daring to move. He wants this so badly he feels stupid with it, out of his mind: Katsuki, close, only Izuku’s for this moment in time at least.
It’s dumb to feel this way, dumb to feel so possessive of Katsuki’s time, to want him to have only memories of Izuku’s closeness when he turns back.
He wants to tell Katsuki this: wants to tell him how dear he is to him, how dear their newly blossoming friendship is to him, how much he thinks about him, all of the time. He wants to tell him that he thinks about him every second of his day, and that if only human-Katsuki could be this close to him, he feels like he wouldn’t need anything else ever again.
Of course, he doesn’t say any of that.
Katsuki is warm in his lap. His fur looks very soft, but Izuku dares not to touch it, for fear of disrupting him. Instead, he stares, and his chest feels warm and overwhelmed.
His heart is beating way too fast, and he feels tender to the point of bruising, like if he were to peal his skin back and open up his chest, he’d find his heart blue-green-black, sore and dark and aching.
Katsuki has closed his eyes, a show of trust that makes Izuku’s lungs feel too tight.
Katsuki looks so small and vulnerable. Katsuki is choosing his room, his lap as a place of safety and rest.
Izuku wants to be his place of safety and rest for the rest of his life, and he doesn’t know how to say it, but even if he knew the right words he still wouldn’t: because Katsuki doesn’t want him like that, and Izuku has worked too hard to get their friendship back to ruin it.
His hands are trembling, and he ignores them.
- -
He wakes up with his face smushed into the carpet, and it takes him a moment to realise he’s fallen asleep. Asleep with Katsuki on top of him, a curled-up cat. Katsuki is still on top of him, but he’s no longer a cat; instead his very human limbs are draped over Izuku.
Izuku looks at him, feeling acutely like keeling over with how much he’s feeling. He doesn’t want to move. He never wants to move; he needs Katsuki’s closeness more than breathing.
But then he thinks about how Katsuki were to react if he were to wake now, and so slowly tries to extract himself.
This is, of course, exactly what wakes Katsuki, who sits up and stares at Izuku, eyes narrowed.
Izuku looks away. “Sorry,” he says, and feels himself start to ramble without knowing how to stop, “I don’t know how much you can remember, but I swear I wasn’t taking advantage of your state – you were a cat! I would never take advantage of you! Haha, because of course I’m not thinking about – and you climbed into my lap! And you were a cat! You were hit with a quirk – I’m sure you ended up in my room accidentally! And –”
“Shut up,” Katsuki interrupts him. “Izuku. Look at me.”
Izuku. Katsuki calls him that now. It makes Izuku feel shaky and too-hot every time he does. He looks at Katsuki.
“What do you mean, I ended up here accidentally?” he says, enunciating slowly. There is something aggressive curled around his words that makes the hairs on Izuku’s arms stand up. Part of Izuku wants to hide; part of him wants for every one of Katsuki’s words to roll over him. He can’t suppress the instinctive desire that curls through him when Katsuki starts looking hot-headedly dangerous.
“Just, Aizawa said you wanted to sit down here, but I’m sure it’s not because you wanted to be in my room, I mean –” Izuku looks down. “It’s not like you would’ve chosen me, I know that.”
“What the fuck,” Katsuki says, making Izuku’s head snap back up. He looks angry.
“I thought – but apparently not,” Katsuki growls, and Izuku is confused.
“You thought what?” he asks, plaintively, voice shaking only the smallest bit.
“I thought we were fixing things,” Katsuki growls. “You think I would spend time with just any stupid extra? You think I’d choose the room of any stupid extra? I thought I was being pretty fucking clear. But I guess people’ll always see what they want to see.”
“Kacchan,” Izuku says quietly, and now Katsuki turns his head away.
“Doesn’t fucking matter,” he murmurs, but in a way that says it matters a lot.
“Kacchan,” Izuku repeats, feeling stupid and a little bit bold and hopeful, “Kacchan, I’d never want to think that you don’t care about me.” Katsuki scoffs. Izuku’s voice trembles and quietens, but he bravely soldiers on: “It’s the opposite. I want you to care about me so much. Too – too much.”
Katsuki’s eyes snap back to him.
“Is that so?” he asks. He suddenly seems dangerous in a different way: a way Izuku hasn’t seen before.
“Yes,” Izuku says, voice still trembling.
“You’d better not be fucking with me,” Katsuki says, and his voice has the edge of anger but there’s also a sliver of anxiety, and then he leans towards Izuku, and he –
Oh. Izuku’s entire world stops. And then slowly, slowly starts moving again.
Katsuki’s lips are on his. Izuku is trembling, and his heart feels like it might beat out of his chest any minute, and he feels weak, and he feels like he could do anything right now.
But all that he wants to do is already happening: Katsuki’s lips on his.
Izuku whimpers a little bit, and he can feel Katsuki’s sharp smile right against his mouth.