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What does love look like?
At age three, it’s the way his parents hold him after a nightmare. It’s the smell of milk pancakes with extra syrup that his dad makes, and the way his mom’s special curry makes his tongue tingle all over. At this age, love is forehead kisses and pinched cheeks; it’s a warm jacket when it snows. Love is comfort; love is home.
At age four, love begins to look like a boy with strange dots on his cheeks and the prettiest green eyes Katsuki has ever seen. It’s that shy, squeaky voice that asks if he would like to play, and the way those big eyes grow even bigger and brighter when Katsuki says yes.
At age five, Katsuki sees love in the proud look on his parents’ faces when his palms first light up with sparks. It’s the smell of smoke and burned sugar, and the sound of Deku’s voice as he exclaims “Kacchan is amazing!” over and over, the words so deeply ingrained in his head that Katsuki can sometimes hear them in his dreams.
At age six, Deku is confirmed as Quirkless. He looks at Katsuki with something like hope and despair in his tear-filled eyes, and asks him if he can still be a hero.
And from there, love… love starts to hurt .
Between ages six to fifteen, love doesn’t look like love at all. Amidst the burned notebooks and singed clothes; and all the praise and overwhelming pressure to succeed, Katsuki forgets what love should look like in the first place.
But at sixteen, Katsuki's body moves without thinking, and his Quirk blooms and awakens to save the boy with the pretty green eyes, and he finally remembers what love is supposed to be.
Love is fighting his way to Deku’s hospital room, desperate to see him, to hear him breathe; it’s tearing up that the dumbass letter and rallying his classmates to bring his childhood friend, his rival, his...his something, back to UA, back to Katsuki , where he belonged.
Love is an apology in the rain.
It's getting a hole punched through your chest (literally); it's dying for Deku—and coming back to life for him.
And at twenty-eight, Katsuki stands before his family and friends in a crisp white suit, holding the hand he had rejected long ago, and he declares, with absolute certainty, that love… love looks like Izuku.
Tonight is their anniversary, and they're stuck inside their apartment as the storm of the century raged outside.
This isn't how Katsuki planned to celebrate it at all, and he spent a good ten minutes glaring and cursing at the raindrops that splashed hard against their living room window.
But when Izuku pushed their furniture up against the wall, turned down all the lights, and asked Siri to play their wedding song, Katsuki’s bad mood all but vanished.
“Sappy bastard,” he teases, as he takes Izuku’s offered hand and allows him to take the lead.
The chaos outside is forgotten, the roaring storm settling like white noise between their ears as they fall into the familiar steps of the dance.
“You’ve gotten pretty good at this,” Katsuki remarks as Izuku smoothly twirls him and pulls him back, their movements perfectly in sync with the languid beat of the music. “How the hell did you practice without me knowing? We’re practically joined at the hip everyday.”
“I’ve been doing it at night, when you’re already asleep,” Izuku admits, equal parts sheepish and proud. “The restaurant we were supposed to go to had a band and a dance floor, and I really didn’t want a repeat of what happened last time.”
“Oh, you mean that time you broke my foot and we had to spend the night at the ER? That time?”
“Hey! You were the one who volunteered us to go undercover at that ballroom dancing competition in the first place!”
“Tsk, someone had to do it.”
“But Mina was free! She could’ve gone with you instead!”
Katsuki scoffs at that. “As if I’d pair up with that pink alien or some other extra. You know the deal, nerd. We either go together, or not at all.”
The music swells around them, and Katsuki twirls out of his husband’s arms on cue, closing his eyes as he spins back, confident that Izuku will be there to catch him,
And Izuku does, catching him without fail like he’s done for most of their lives.
“Yeah, I get it,” a voice whispers into his ear, and when Katsuki opens his eyes, he meets Izuku's adoring gaze. “There’s no one else I’d rather have by my side too.”
Katsuki's heart flutters, and he quickly ducks his head to hide his flushed cheeks.
They've been married ten years and he's still not used to the way Izuku looks at him.
Like the world could crumble tomorrow and Izuku would ask him what he wants for breakfast. Like everything and everyone else they know and love could suddenly disappear, and Izuku would take his hand and be happy that Katsuki was still there with him.
He's ridiculous. Seriously, bat-shit insane. And Katsuki loves him so fucking much.
The music shifts, and just as Katsuki prepares to do another turn, Izuku slides his arm across his back and abruptly pulls him into a low dip.
He openly laughs at the shock on Katsuki's face.
"T-That wasn’t part of the steps, you ass!”
“I know,” he says, still laughing as he pulls him back up. His smile is bright, even in the dark. “But you always look so pretty when you're surprised, and I couldn't resist.”
Katsuki scowls at the way his pulse jumps and quickens. Ugh, this cheesy bastard. How dare he make him feel all warm and mushy inside? Katsuki grabs a handful of that freckled cheek in retaliation and pinches it hard. “Try that shit again and you get an explosion to the face, got it?”
“Okay, okay, sorry, Kacchan,” Izuku answers cheerily, his tone not sorry at all. Katsuki huffs, still a little annoyed, but he lets the nerd spin him under his arm anyway, their feet gliding flawlessly over the carpeted floor.
The tempo ebbs into something slower, and Izuku moves in, hands settling on the small of Katsuki’s back and pulling him close. Katsuki tucks his face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in. Izuku always smells like sandalwood—even as a kid, he smelled that way. Midoriya Hisashi left behind a half-empty perfume bottle with that particular scent, and for years, Izuku had sprayed a bit of it on his clothes everyday, so he could pretend that his dad was still around.
Though Izuku had long overcome his abandonment issues, the habit stuck, and Katsuki can no longer imagine the nerd smelling like anything else.
"Happy anniversary, Kacchan," Izuku whispers, breaking the silence, his breath warm against Katsuki’s ear. "I know this isn't how you wanted to celebrate tonight, but I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
Katsuki rolls his eyes. “Idiot.” He pulls away slightly, hands coming up to cup the other man’s cheeks. “There’s no need to make up for anything. Tonight’s already perfect as it is.”
Izuku pouts, or at least tries to with his face squished between Katsuki’s hands. It makes Katsuki snort. “But you’ve been looking forward to that restaurant for months! I heard their spicy Thai curry is phenomenal and—“
“We’ll go on our next day off then,” Katsuki drawls with a dismissive shrug, and gives that freckled cheek one last pinch before letting it go. “It’s just food, Deku. If you wanted to eat curry that much, I could easily whip up something just as good as theirs."
“Oh, I doubt it.” Izuku leans down and presses a soft kiss on his lips. “Kacchan’s curry will always be better than everyone else's.”
Katsuki grins. “Good answer,” then kisses him right back
The world around them dissipates, and the music, the storm, all fall to the wayside as the hummingbird thrum of their heartbeats take center-stage.
Izuku kisses him with the same burning devotion he holds in his loving gaze, and it leaves Katsuki a little lightheaded, a little unmoored, as if his whole life has been leading up to this particular moment—not him becoming a hero, or opening his own agency, or even reaching Number One on the billboard charts—but this, him being here, dancing in the dark, lovingly cradled in his husband’s arms.
When they finally part for air, Katsuki reaches up and cups Izuku’s face between his hands again.
He was never good at verbalizing his feelings, and oftentimes his words would mean the opposite of what he wanted to say. So Katsuki won't bother with words this time. Instead, he holds Izuku's gaze and hopes against all hope that his eyes would be able to convey everything he can’t bring himself to say—that Katsuki will follow Izuku to the ends of the earth if he asks; that he will gladly burn the whole world down to keep him warm.
That Hell is just another place he would go if that meant staying by his side.
And it’s the way Izuku’s face blooms with soft delight that Katsuki knows, without a doubt, that his husband understands.
“I love you too, Kacchan.”
At thirty-eight, love still looks like Izuku, only now he’s a full head taller, with crow's feet on the corners of his eyes, and a dark stubble he keeps forgetting to shave.
Love has changed since the day they got married, and also, somehow, remained exactly the same.
Love still looks like pre-heated bentos and lunch breaks on their favorite roof. On their days off, when they're allowed to stay in bed until the sun is high in the sky, love is lazy morning kisses that turn into something less wholesome. And on certain days, when the world is shittier than usual, love takes the form of a scarred hand squeezing his own, and a kiss that drives the darkness away.
But tonight, as they celebrate ten wonderful years together, love looks like the two of them at home, dancing to their wedding song.
And as they dance cheek to cheek, lost in the music and in the way their skin tingles where their bodies touch, Katsuki thinks that, hey, he won’t mind if love looks like this for the rest of their lives.
He won’t mind that at all.