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It’s been thirty-three days since Shouto had broken up with him when he gets the call. Not that he’s counting.
Honestly, he almost doesn't answer the phone. It's an unknown number, and Katsuki didn't even like talking on the phone to people he did know. But something makes him pick up. Call it hero's intuition.
"Hello?"
"Am I speaking to Bakugou Katsuki? I'm calling in regards to Todoroki Shouto. You're listed as his emergency contact."
Is she fucking kidding? Had Shouto not taken him off as his fucking emergency contact yet? That had been one of the first things Katsuki had done. Izuku had fucking cried when Katsuki asked him.
"No—I mean yes, I am, but I—can you remove me as his contact?"
There's a pause, and then the woman says, "Bakugou-san, I'm calling because Todoroki-san was gravely injured on the job. He's in the hospital."
Something like panic settles like a stone in Katsuki's stomach. "Is he—is he alright?" Which is a stupid question, because she called him, didn't she, Shouto's emergency contact—
"I'm sorry, sir, but he's currently in a coma. There was an accident—"
He doesn't hear what else she says. She gives him a rundown on what happened and all he can hear is the sound of blood rushing in his ears. Shouto is hurt. Shouto is unconscious.
Shouto dumped him, and somehow this is still his problem to worry about.
"I'll be there," Katsuki says hoarsely. What else is he supposed to do? He's so fucking mad at Shouto still, but he's not going to leave him to rot alone in a hospital bed, coma or not.
When Shouto had said he wanted to break up, Katsuki had honestly thought he was joking at first. They weren't perfect, maybe, but he thought they were pretty damn good. He was happy. He was in love. He was humming in the shower. And then Shouto had torn it down in one fell swoop, and Katsuki was stuck sitting amongst the wreckage trying to understand just what the hell had happened.
"It's not you," Shouto had said. "And I know that's what everyone always says but it really is true. I'm not… I don't love right. I don't know how. And I don't want—I don't want to hurt you while I try and figure it out."
You're hurting me now, Katsuki thought. Surely Shouto could see the wound, as Katsuki bled out in front of him. But Shouto hadn't; instead he just left, and Katsuki had sat there for nearly an hour because he didn't understand, and then he called Izuku, and then he might have cried a little, fuck you. And that had been thirty-three days ago; and now Katsuki is standing in a hospital room looking at the pale face of the man he loves, his ex-boyfriend, sallow and bandaged and unconscious and breathing through a tube and fuck, Katsuki is going to throw up. He can't do this.
He has to do this. He has to do this because Shouto is making him, because he'd been too lazy to change his damn emergency contact information.
God, he's going to have to call the rest of the Todorokis to let them know. He swears under his breath. How could Shouto have done this to him? He was the one who had ended it.
He dials Fuyumi's number, the only one he has. They exchange recipes. When she answers her voice is tentative, likely already expecting bad news from the simple fact that he was calling.
"Bakugou?"
"Shouto—you gotta get to the hospital."
He gives her the information and she promises to be there as soon as she can; when they hang up Katsuki takes a seat beside Shouto's bed.
He looks horrible. Not that anyone ever looks good, lying unconscious in a hospital room. Although if anyone could, it would be Shouto.
But he looks… his skin is sallow, eyelids nearly translucent. There's bandages all over him. It had been a villain who'd done this to him. He'd been arrested, which was good, because if Katsuki saw him in the field he wouldn't be able to control himself. He'd make the bastard look ten times as bad as Shouto does.
There had been hostages, which meant Shouto couldn't fully unleash his quirk. That's how the coward had gotten the upper hand; it made Katsuki angry just thinking about it (and the thought he tried not to focus on, because it made his throat constrict with too many emotions to properly identify: if things had been normal, if they’d been together still, then Katsuki would have been on that shift with him, and would have been able to help).
"You bastard," he says, and this time he's talking to Shouto. "How could you do this to me?”
Because this is what's going to happen: Shouto's family will get here, and Katsuki will leave, because he has no reason to be here anymore. So he'll go home and maybe Shouto will call him when he wakes up, apologize, promise that he'd changed his emergency contact info. And then they'd go back to the way the were before—except every time he closes his eyes, he's going to see Shouto like this. Laid out half dead in a hospital bed. He can't kiss Shouto's sunken cheek and he can't hold his bandaged hand, and when this is done he's not going to be around to see Shouto healthy again, to get a soft smile, to rewrite this horrible image in his head.
"You fucking bastard," he says, and if his voice shakes, if a tear slips down his face, no one is here to see it.
He has to sit on his hands to stop himself from reaching out. It feels pathetic to still be so in love with his ex, with a man who dumped him. But Katsuki—well, Katsuki had been ready for forever, and it takes more than thirty-three days to turn that off.
True to her word, Fuyumi is there quickly, Natsuo and Endeavor in tow. Fuyumi gives Katsuki a thankful look, but the three of them immediately turn all their attention to Shouto in the bed, Endeavor calling for a nurse; so Katsuki slips out the door and gives them their space.
He should leave. It would be better to slip out now that his family is there. There’s no reason for him to still be here, Shouto had made that very clear.
It’s not you, Shouto had said, but Katsuki didn’t fucking believe that. I don’t love right. I don’t know how. Seemed like a load of excuses to him, because Shouto’s love had been just fucking fine. More than fine. Katsuki had been happier than he’d ever been, and he hated that. Hated that he’d had happiness and had found a way to fuck it up.
He still doesn’t even know what, exactly, had gone wrong. What had flipped the switch, had made Shouto decide that Katsuki wasn’t worth it anymore. He’d gone over everything in his head over and over, trying to find the moment things had changed, but for the life of him he didn’t know. They hadn’t been perfect, obviously. They fought a lot, and Shouto was surprisingly vicious with his words, and they weren’t always the best at communicating, and sometimes Katsuki was still too fucking proud to admit when he needed something—but all of that had been worth it for the good parts of it, for Shouto sleepy-eyed and soft in the mornings, for someone who understood him, for the feeling of knowing that after a shitty shift or a hard day he would have someone waiting for him. After everything they’d been through, the good was worth the bad.
Or at least, it was to Katsuki. Apparently not to Shouto, who had walked away from them without looking back, leaving Katsuki behind trying to figure out what he had done to make himself so easy to walk away from.
It was those old, ugly feelings of inferiority that kept him up at night, the ones that had made him lash out as a child. And it didn’t help that Shouto was Shouto. Perfect Shouto, the one everyone wanted. Next to him, Katsuki was loud and obnoxious, still placing top five on the ‘heroes most like villains’ list, even as he climbed the ranks of top hero. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so blindsided when Shouto ended things, actually.
He heads outside to a courtyard, where he takes a seat on a bench and squints his eyes against the sun. There’s a bird chirping somewhere, and Katsuki wants to tell it not to be so damn happy at a hospital. No sense of goddamn decorum.
Shouto would have laughed at that. Shouto always laughed at the things Katsuki hadn’t meant as jokes. He had a nice laugh, too. Musical-like. Like some fairy-tale prince. And if Shouto was a prince, what was Katsuki? Some kind of barbarian, loud and rough and undeserving of royalty.
He should leave. He should leave; there’s no reason for him to be here anymore. Maybe he can get them to change Shouto’s contact info himself. He could put Fuyumi there instead, so next time this happened (because there was always a next time) she could be the one to get that heart wrenching call.
But then—then Katsuki would have no way of knowing when Shouto was hurt. He wasn’t privy to that information anymore. He’d probably have to find out through Izuku, who would hear about it from Fuyumi or Endeavor, maybe, and he would tell Katsuki. So many people to pass a message through, rather than getting it directly from the source.
Maybe he wouldn’t ask them to change it, after all.
Katsuki doesn’t leave. On the contrary, he heads back up to Shouto’s room. He tries to think up an excuse in case one of them asks what he’s doing, why he’s still hanging around after Shouto made it clear he didn’t want Katsuki in his life anymore, but in the end he decides he’ll just glare at anybody who makes a stink about him being there.
When he arrives at the room, it’s only Fuyumi who’s there. She’s sitting beside Shouto’s bedside looking at him with a sad, motherly look on her face, but she looks up when she sees Katsuki and gives him a soft smile. He’s always liked Fuyumi; of all the Todorokis, he thinks her and Shouto are the only ones worth a damn.
“Hi,” she says. “Natsuo had to leave, and my father is talking to the doctor. My mother’s going to be here soon, though, so he’ll probably clear out,” she says, in answer to his unasked question. “Are you staying?”
She sounds so kind about it. She definitely knows they’re broken up, because she’s stopped texting him to ask about how Soba Sunday went (always a hit with Shouto), but she asks him like she truly cares about his answer, and her words carry an implicit permission inside them, inviting Katsuki to stay even if he doesn’t really have a reason to anymore. He nods and grabs the chair on the other side of the bed; he doesn’t want to leave.
Sure enough Endeavor sticks his head in the room to bid them goodbye, and shortly after that Rei arrives. Katsuki had never met Shouto’s mom; she’s a thin, older woman with long grey hair and Shouto’s left eye. She casts him a curious glance when she sees him but otherwise doesn’t react to him there; she grabs Fuyumi in a hug and they cry together, and Fuyumi leads Rei through everything the doctors have told them as Rei drags another chair over beside her daughter.
For a few minutes the two of them talk and blissfully leave him alone. He wants to reach out and touch Shouto—just lightly, just to ensure he's still solid. That he's real. That Katsuki hadn't imagined every weird and wonderful thing that had happened to the two of them. But he can't, because Shouto's family is right there and because thirty three days ago Shouto had shut the door in Katsuki's face (metaphorically—in reality Shouto had quietly excused himself while Katsuki sat there trying to wake up from a nightmare). So he sits in his uncomfortable chair and he doesn't reach out and he doesn't say anything, but he doesn't leave, either. Even when Fuyumi excuses herself to go get something to eat, leaving him alone with Shouto's mother, he still doesn't leave.
He probably should have expected it when Rei speaks to him. "You're Bakugou-kun, aren't you." Despite the fact that it's phrased as a question she says it like a statement, like she knows for a fact that he's Bakugou. He nods.
"Shouto has told me a lot about you," she continues. Probably not lately, Katsuki thinks but does not say. "He painted such a vivid picture of you, I recognized you as soon as I saw you." Katsuki doesn't know what the fuck he's supposed to say to this, so he stays silent. After a moment Rei gives him a small smile. "For all that he told me, I never expected you to be quiet."
Katsuki bristles at this but let's it slide off him. "What do you want me to say?" He asks. Rei tilts her head a little, a trait she shares with Shouto. It makes Katsuki want to punch something.
"Hm. You're very angry with him, aren't you?"
Katsuki briefly debates if he's died and gone to his own personal hell. Why is he here? Shouto fucking dumped him. He has no obligation to sit here and talk to his ex's mom about their relationship. He has no obligation to even be nice to her. He could tell her to fuck off for prying. He should. He's going to.
Katsuki opens his mouth, and instead he says, "Yeah."
What the fuck is he doing? What the fuck is he doing?
Rei looks at him kindly. His mother had reached out, tried to be there for him, but he'd pushed her away. He didn't want comfort, he wanted answers. Maybe Todoroki Rei could give them to him.
But he can't just ask. He can't just air Shouto's dirty laundry, even though she knows most of it. She caused a good chunk of it. But he can't just say Shouto thinks he doesn't know how to love and I think that means I wasn't worth loving to begin with. So he continues to sit there in silence.
Rei does not. "He hurt you." Again, this is not a question. Katsuki does not deny it, even though his first instinct is to do so. Rei sighs and studies her son with a sad look on her face.
"The problem with being a mother," she says, "is I know exactly why he did what he did. I know you probably can't see it, but I can perfectly see his thought process and why it led him there." Well whoopdedoo for her. "The problem is that I can't—I can't stop him from making the mistakes that he's making. I can't just explain to him that—that he doesn't have to be me or his father. That love is not a curse. I worry that we poisoned him against his own happiness." She seems to be talking to herself, almost, like she can't stop the feelings streaming out. "I saw the way he was when he was with you. I had never seen him like that. I have never in my life seen my son that happy. And he…" She comes back to herself then, blinks, seems to remember Katsuki is there.
He’s really not sure what he feels about Shouto’s mom. There is, of course, the very complicated fact constantly hanging over their heads that she’s responsible for Shouto’s scar. Katsuki knows Shouto doesn’t blame her for it, but the fact of the matter is someone is responsible for throwing a pot of boiling water on a child.
He gives some thought to what she’d said, though. I worry that we poisoned him against his own happiness. Was that what Shouto had meant, when he said he didn’t love right? Because of his fucked up parents? Was that what the problem had been all along? Sure, he knew Shouto had issues with them, but he didn’t think they were enough that they would have Shouto being this stupidly self-destructive.
At first, Katsuki is just angrier. Angry that Shouto would dump him over such a stupid, asinine reason, that he’d overthink himself into giving up what had been a pretty fucking good relationship, all things considered. But he stops, lets himself breathe, studies Shouto’s unconscious face and gives himself a minute to think.
Shouto was, at the heart of him, kind and gentle, the kind of person who was late to their anniversary dinner once because he’d found an injured cat. So even though, in his darkest moments, he’d lain in bed and wondered if Shouto had been trying to hurt him, he knows that Shouto would never purposefully do that. So then why the fuck…?
He didn’t think he loved right. He thought he was fucked up like his parents, and he didn’t want to drag Katsuki down. So he’d pushed him away, like a goddamn moron.
“For what it’s worth,” Rei says. “I know he would be glad that you’re here. I hope you continue to visit him while he's here.”
Katsuki is nodding before he even really thinks about it, because despite everything he needs to be here.
Fuyumi comes back a few minutes later, and Katsuki finally excuses himself. Let them have some time for themselves; he had a lot he needed to think about. He gets home and makes himself a quick dinner, although he can barely eat any of it, and then he falls into a fitful sleep. He dreams of Shouto, pale as death in a hospital bed, and no matter what he does, he can’t get to him. He wakes up multiple times sweaty and panting, and the next morning he’s in a far more foul mood than usual.
It takes a couple of days before Shouto awakens, but when he does, he manages to do so when all of them are there. It’s a packed hospital room when his eyes flutter open, and between Fuyumi’s tears and Endeavor’s shouts Katsuki can barely get close enough to see him. He should probably just leave, really. Maybe he can get out of here without Shouto seeing him, and he can pretend he hasn’t obsessively been hanging around his ex-boyfriend’s hospital room.
But no such luck. Shouto’s head tilts to the side, and his eyes flick around the room, and they land on Katsuki. Katsuki watches them widen slightly, sees Shouto’s lips form his name, sees the absolute idiot try to sit up.
“Shouto!” Endeavor says in a panic. “Stay there!”
“Maybe we should go get the doctor,” Rei says. She gives Fuyumi a meaningful look, who grabs her father’s arm and starts to haul him across the room.
“C’mon, Dad,” she says. Katsuki is impressed at the way she drags him so effectively, even when Endeavor shoots a confused look back at Shouto. Rei gestures at her son.
“Natsuo,” she says. He makes a face.
“Why do we all have to go?” He asks. Rei just grabs him and pushes him lightly towards the door, and Katsuki can dimly hear him say, “Didn’t they break up?”
He shakes his head as he sits in the chair closest to Shouto’s bedside. “Subtle as a punch to the face,” he says disparagingly. Shouto is still trying to get up, so he says, “Would you fucking stop, Icyhot? Stay still.”
“You’re here,” Shouto says hoarsely. “You’re here.”
“Yeah, well,” Katsuki says, and tries not to read too much into how happy Shouto sounds. “Someone didn’t remove me as their emergency contact.”
Shouto’s eyes widen again. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, yeah. I—I’m sorry. I forgot.”
Katsuki narrows his eyes, because he knows when Shouto is lying. He didn’t forget to take Katsuki off, he just didn’t do it. Why?
More mysteries that Katsuki doesn’t know how to unravel.
Shouto still seems frantic, like he’s afraid Katsuki is going to disappear. Katsuki would like to remind him that it’s his fucking fault Katsuki disappeared in the first place. But he can’t deny that he doesn’t feel it too, now that Shouto is awake, and okay.
A nurse bustles in then; Katsuki stands aside as she does whatever it is she needs to do, but the entire time Shouto keeps turning his head so he can keep Katsuki in his line of sight. When the nurse is done the two of them are left there; Katsuki knows he doesn’t have a lot of time left before the rest of Shouto’s family comes back. There’s so much he wants to say, needs to say, but there isn’t enough time. He wants to tell Shouto he’s not mad anymore, not really; that he still thinks he was a fucking moron for ending this, but he understands better now. But they can hear Natsuo’s voice getting closer, and Katsuki doesn’t know what he can say.
So, like he did so many times before, Shouto steps up where Katsuki can’t.
“Katsuki,” he says, and his voice is hoarse but he’s alive and Katsuki can handle anything life throws at him, as long as Shouto is okay. “Will you stay?”
As if he’s ever able to deny Shouto anything when he asks it directly. “Yeah, Shou,” he says, and it feels as much like a beginning as anything. “As long as you want.”