Archive of Our Own

They had to airlift him offsite. That’s the first thing Katsuki hears when he wakes up.

Once the searing wave of pain goes down, Katsuki finally comes to, with eyes watering and his teeth clenched down on something hard and rubbery. Beside him, someone is saying, “No, no, no, don’t, please don’t.”

The world comes into focus piece by piece: the bedrail is cold on his skin, and the machine next to him is going haywire. He’s still in that fucking hospital bed. There’s a disgusting noise, wet and wretched, and he realises it’s him trying to spit his bite guard out.

“Okay, dude, calm–hey! Hey, we’ll take it off but you need to promise not to bite us this time.”

From the far corner of the room, someone says, “Is everyone good on their rabies shots ...? Damn, okay. Tough crowd.”

“Just shut up and go tell Midoriya.”

Izuku.

Everything’s weighing him down , there’s all these tubes and shit. He kicks his blanket off, spits the bite guard out. When he tugs at the tube in his nostril, his body makes a decision halfway between blacking out and meeting god. His cardiac monitor sounds like it’s singing . There’s too much–he needs to–

“Kacchan?”

Izuku limps pathetically into his room, someone rushing in after him with his IV stand like he’d forgotten it. 

Katsuki stares.

The IV stand goes clunk, clunk, clunk as Izuku hobbles toward him, going as fast as he can. His hair’s a fucking mess, that ain’t new, but god. His entire right arm is wrapped with stacks of metal rings connected by rods, and the bandages on his legs are still soaked. Behind him, his mom’s tying the back of his hospital gown to keep him decent.

Katsuki tries to speak, mouth adjusting to the space where the bite guard had been.

Izuku smiles. It kinda looks more like a wince with how it stretches the fresh scar tissue over his face. “Hey.”

“No fucking way you woke up before me,” he manages, voice raspy from disuse, but the tension in the room sinks in relief. Kirishima laughs like he’s just told the funniest joke in the world.

The IV stand comes to a stop by the foot of his bed, and Izuku clutches it with his good arm like it’s the only reason he’s still vertical. “Beat you by a full day, too.”

“You look like shit,” Katsuki says through cracked lips, all charm. There’s so much he has to say–a lot of introspection happens when you die, believe it or not–but he’d rather carve his own insides out than say it in front of all these clowns and Inko.

“You know? I feel like it too.” Izuku does not so much as sit at the edge of the bed as he does tip over and happen to land on it. “So. Not gonna ask me?”

“What,” Katsuki says, scooching so Izuku and his new military-grade arm have room. 

“If we won.”

“ Hell no .” Katsuki flicks one of the metal circles at Izuku’s bicep, and Izuku hisses in pain. “I told you we would.”

—--

There’s so much fucking therapy. Physical therapy where they pull him apart with their glorified tension bands and their little index cards and gold star stickers. Psychological therapy where someone Katsuki doesn’t know asks him things he’d never even admit to his own momma. There’s a session of dream therapy, too, where they ask him to describe dying, but Aizawa makes it real clear where he stands on that, and he never gets asked to do it again.

Everybody’s so banged up, the ward turns into an echo of their summer home at Nabu Island and they’ve got enough metal scraps between ‘em all to build a functioning tank. 

Slowly, they get discharged. One by one.

From the window, Katsuki watches the last of them go—Iida, released to the press outside like a minnow being swarmed by barracuda—until it’s just him and who else.

“Anyone up for shogi?” Todoroki asks, picking at his IV site.

“Screw you, you fucking suck at shogi.”

“I’ll play with you, Todoroki,” Izuku says, eyes still trained on Iida as Mic escorts him into the car.

“Amateur hour over here, you two don’t know enough between the two of you to even open the game.”

They exchange a look.

“He’s grouchy today,” Izuku explains.

“Did you two fight again?”

“He’s still mad I got two gold stars at rehab today— eep , Kacchan!”

Katsuki unties the back of Izuku’s gown. Iida’s escort is long gone down the driveway, finally leaving the three of their sorry asses in this hellhole.

The ward is empty except for them; Endeavor’s doing, Katsuki guesses, cause he’s still on his shitty, awkward redemption campaign and would buy out the pharmacy for his spoiled brat if he so much as sneezed.

They used to have boundaries. Now they piss with the door open, Izuku refuses to wear pants beneath his gown, and they change each other’s bandages. That kind of easy intimacy they fell into; beneath that though, Katsuki sees the years and years of unspoken ugliness between him and Izuku. Something Todoroki doesn’t bother to tiptoe around, but doesn’t really call out either.

When he’s not there, they’ll have it out. 

They stand there long enough that the press get bored and drift away. They’re the highest point on the horizon for at least a mile radius, and they watch as the orange sun burns closer to the tops of the other buildings then hides out for the day.

There’s the annoying tik, tik, tik of Todoroki picking at the transpore on his skin. 

“And then there were three, huh,” Todoroki says.

“I’m already sick of you.”

–

Izuku comes and goes. Some days, the sun shines out of his ass like usual, and other days he lies in bed facing the window, politely declining Todoroki’s requests to play AllMight Legends with him like a kid. He pulls the blanket over his head, and it’s like he’s not there.

Katsuki chalks it up to pain, cause he knows a thing or two about that. Turns out the metal circles on Izuku’s arm were just an Ilizarov fixator–a temporary framework to help his broken bones. It’s Katsuki who gets the cyborg treatment, ‘cause while Izuku’s bones were broken, Katsuki’s were crushed . 

He has all this metal crap in his arm that they put in while he was comatose. Needed to be done to salvage what they could, but even with that, Katsuki was at a miserable sixty percent sensation and forty percent motor function. He hadn’t even tried to use his quirk in that arm for weeks cause the firepower would’ve kicked back and torn him open. Again. 

The girl from support who wore a toolbox for pants came in one day, strapped a three million yen latticework of titanium on his arm, and pulled out a syringe as wide as her wrist. “As soon as I get this bad boy in ya, you can say bye-bye nerve damage!”

Katuski backed up against the wall. “Are you fucking–no!”

“You don’t wanna say bye-bye nerve damage?”

Todoroki and Izuku had mysteriously disappeared from the room.

“You have a degree in neuroscience now?”

She paused, like maybe she’d accidentally picked one up on the way but she wasn’t sure. “Do you?

“You’re insane.”

Hatsume shrugged. “So you want it or not?”

“Have I been giving mixed signals. No.”

Oil-stained and damp, the documents Hatsume left behind are marked all over with his dad’s blue sign pen and his mom’s tiny handwriting. He was a minor, but they wanted him to decide whether he’d go on with Hatsume’s crazy neural link idea.

It’s one of Izuku’s better days when Katsuki decides to read the file on the spare bed in their room, the one they use for manga and all their other crap. Just cause it gets better sunlight there, no other reason.

From beside him, Izuku slides out of his own bed like a slug and creeps over. “Watcha reading?”

“Nerdy shit really works like catnip on you, huh,” Katsuki says, like he’s not using one of Todoroki’s thousand yen pens to make his own notes.

Izuku swats his thigh, scooch over , and Katsuki does.

When they were kids, Katsuki would crawl all over him, kick him in the face if it meant he’d get something first, and then middle school hit and the face-kicking turned into actual ass-whooping and. Well. Now, they’re pressed together from shoulder to thigh, reading a teenage girl’s foray into neuroscience like how they used to pore over the weekly All Might strips in the paper.

“No fucking way she’s cleared to do this,” Katsuki mutters when he flips to the page with all the spinal implant diagrams.

“You know,” Izuku says through a yawn, “I don’t think she cares.”

“Fair point.”

The clock above the door reads one-thirty, which means Todoroki is just starting PT. Katsuki wipes his palm on his pants–they've graduated from hospital gowns, thank Christ–and decides: I am going to discuss the trauma I’ve caused him now . 

He looks down at Izuku like, okay here I go , and finds him dozing off. Real sight he is, two huge mats in his hair from the weeks it was wrapped in gauze. Drool starting to pool at the corner of his mouth, and the big scar over his face flaking at the edges. That’s gotta itch like hell. There’s crusted blood where the metal punctures into the meat of his arm, and Katsuki makes a mental note to swab it with some antiseptic later.

Three, four, five in the morning, Katsuki would wake up ‘cause of all the leaden, achy feeling in his arm. Every time he did, Izuku was already up. Dark circles under his eyes like that time they’d found him in the rain, like he hadn’t slept in days.

Izuku without worry, without burden, doesn’t really exist anymore. ‘Cause he’s a big fucking sap who tends to overthink, and ‘cause he’s sixteen just like Katsuki and had to save the world from literal decay and destruction.

So if the nerd wants to sleep, he’ll let him sleep. And if he says he isn’t ready to talk, then he isn’t ready to talk. 

Noiselessly–and with a little effort with his half-dead arm–Katsuki inches off the bed. He clears the mattress of the manga volumes, and watches Izuku naturally fall horizontal. His All Might blanket stinks and is frankly crusty at this point, but Katsuki grabs it off Izuku’s bed, throws it on him, then turns out the light.

Back then, when he’d fought AFO, Katsuki had thought that the all-consuming want to do whatever the hell Izuku wanted, to fight beside him, and to carry what he couldn’t was the result of some battle-induced adrenaline high. But the room is quiet now, and he doesn’t find all that want to be any less true. 

—-

Katsuki used to think it was like this: he was the comet, aflame, trailblazing, yadda yadda , and Izuku orbited around him. Getting singed when he got too close ‘cause Katsuki couldn’t stand him. His bright eyes and his goodness. His uselessness. Two-pronged weapon Deku always had pointed at him, and it disgusted him because it made him know where he was weak.

Now, Katsuki looks at Izuku standing across the gym, sizing him up for the twelfth time this morning, and fuck it, he feels proud.

“Midoriya’s still favouring his left leg and I haven’t seen him use Blackwhip once since–”

“He can use it,” Katsuki grumbles, wincing a little when he stretches his bad arm. “He’s just going easy on you dorks.”

They’re two weeks out from being discharged. Todoroki and Izuku had left without fanfare, but Katsuki had the whole brigade up and down his ass about it. He had a pacemaker that beeped in alarm if he so much as walked briskly , and he was a quarter robot by now. Which meant everybody got to train except for him.

He glowered and bitched, watching from the sidelines– you could still learn something , Aizawa said–until Hawks said, “Let him do it. If he can go against Midoriya with his handicap, he should get put back in physical.”

Katsuki ignored the word handicap–it was bait, and his pacemaker kept silent, thank you –and walked out to talk to the maniac from support.

There’s two ambulances parked outside with the engines running and a crew of medics in their tacky orange jumpsuits on standby. Hatsume stands right at the edge of the mat like she’s itching for a fight herself, and she’s the only one who seems excited. You die once and suddenly everyone handles you with kiddie gloves, geez .

Or, well.

Izuku turns mid-conversation with Uraraka, already smiling like he knew Katsuki was watching. He waves. Katsuki rolls his eyes and looks away.

“Did y’all feel that electricity ?” Kaminari asks.

Kirishima elbows him in the gut, to shut him up and to get him out of Katsuki’s swinging range. He claps Katsuki so hard on the back, the pacemaker rattles on his chest. “Feeling good, dude?”

“Quit coddling me, it’s just Izuku.”

“Oh, yeah.” Kaminari’s still doubled over in pain but he never knows when to shut up. “Izuku, savior of the world. Izuku, Symbol of Peace. Y’know, that one.”

Yep. That one.

Izuku starts warming up, and it’s obvious it’s a good day for him. He plants his feet into the mat, goes into a deep squat and even through his black compression pants, the thick cords of muscle are visible. That wasn’t crazy to look at when they were alone in the hospital room or anything.

“Oof, did Midoriya get beefier ?” Mina asks.

“I’ve been telling you guys, all he could do was lower body when he had that fixator in. Gotta watch out for that California smash or whatever he calls it, dude.”

“Screw that,” Katsuki shrugs his half-metal arm, “Every day’s been leg day since this.”

One by one, Katsuki feels pairs of eyes lock onto his ass.

“I gotta be honest, my guy, it doesn’t show.”

Pop and boom, Kaminari has to regrow his eyebrows once again.

Mina’s still trying to figure out how the fire extinguisher works when Aizawa calls them to the center.

“No Quirk use outside of training, Bakugo,” he says like he knows the words don’t mean shit. “Setting ground rules: one five-minute round which ends effectively once someone is pinned for three seconds or knocked out. Or forfeits which would happen when hell freezes over. As requested by,” a deep sigh, “you two, all body parts are free to hit. As decided by myself and All Might–listen carefully, you–no eye gouging. No biting. Bakugo. No fish hooking. Don’t kill each other. Do not destroy the gymnasium. Quirk use is allowed, and you were each approved one support item the day prior. Understood? Okay. Good boys, now shake.”

Even on a weekend, the class doesn’t pull apart from each other that much. They’re gathered at the sidelines, and the tension in the air spikes when Katsuki and Izuku clasp hands.

“Do your worst,” Katsuki says, and Izuku grins. Aizawa pinches the bridge of his nose and shoos them away to go to their respective ends.

When the buzzer goes off, they rush at each other. The roundhouse kick is expected, familiar, and Katsuki blocks with both forearms, but Izuku hooks his toe around him and–Katsuki finds himself punted to the wall like a whole planet just got thrown into his chest.

Holy shit, he hears from the sidelines. 

He threw him. The nerd fucking threw him across the gymnasium.

Katsuki laughs, climbs out of the imprint he made in the concrete. His legs are still smoking from breaking the impact of his fall. “Let’s fucking go, Deku,” he roars, careening himself back into the fight.

Quirk power in his bad arm is still half of what it was, but his aerial movements never banked on strength anyway, just how consistently and how fast he could fire off, and Hatsume’s support bracer is glorious . He zips to dodge Blackwhip, a little more on guard. If Izuku had used Gearshift on him that first time, Katsuki’s legs would’ve been halfway across the city.

Smokescreen goes up. Tch . His Quirk literally created smoke as a side effect so a little visual impairment wasn’t gonna change shit, especially not when his opponent was a green firecracker. Speaking of—

Katsuki rolls to the side and aims a stun grenade at his previous spot, right where Izuku lands, legs locked like he was gonna kick his head in. Kicking off from his boots, Katsuki sails towards him, with an explosive pummeling of AP shot.

Izuku sputters, Fa Jining to dodge, “The face, Kacchan, really?”

“You’re the one who said free hit, dumbass!”

A black tendril wraps around his legs and Katsuki’s dragged so fast across the floor, he’s only aware of it when he smells Izuku’s burnt hair and gets suckerpunched in the face.

Oof. He hopes on his life that was OFA 45 percent.

Nausea be damned, Katsuki grabs the front of Izuku’s shirt with his bracer arm and throws . The nerd would be feeling that one down his spine for days if he did it right.

“Like my new support item, Deku?”

Izuku’s on the floor like the wind got knocked out of him. He spits out a little blood and, “OFA two percent? I’m really impressed.”

“You little—”

The gym mat disappears beneath him. Brain, meet damage, he thinks as pain cracks along his skull. Izuku had gotten fast, too fast with Fa Jin, and that wasn’t even the most dangerous part of him.

Two things Katsuki realised when planning for this: one, Izuku had harnessed all his Quirks and was only getting smarter with Gearshift which meant Katsuki, who fought with precise aggression and hard and fast hits, couldn’t be within reaching distance of him long enough to get any good ideas.

Currently, Izuku has him pinned down by the hips, Katsuki’s good arm locked in a bear grip, so he isn’t doing so hot on lesson number one. He’s doing pretty hot everywhere else, though. But, ignoring that –

The second thing he realised is that ‘cause he explodes from everywhere now, the timing of his hits no longer bank as much on his agility or his position.

His momma always said his temper would be his downfall—hypocrisy not found in her dictionary—but now, Izuku’s sweat is dripping from the hollow of his neck, and Katsuki’s blood is boiling, and he’s pretty sure he could take over the world.

Aizawa’s counting. Izuku is heaving from the effort of holding him down. Katsuki grins.

Firing off from his boots, Izuku’s shirt still locked in by his bracer, the gymnasium disappears around them. He’s never gone this fast before, no longer able to tell up from down, the spinning walls around them made of smoke and flame. 

Izuku hits him across the face half a dozen times, tries to Fa Jin out of the crazy Hulk grip Hatsume engineered, Blackwhips around Katsuki’s free limbs, but they’re going too fast. The momentum is addictive. The wind singing in his ears, whipping at his skin. His pacemaker is belting between them, and Izuku’s eyes go wide. Focused.

Oh, fuck. Here it comes.

Spotting the blue gym mats beneath them, Katsuki locks in on his target. He has to act faster, Gearshift alone could wreck him totally, and the kickback would get whatever scraps were left.

They plummet.

Izuku twists like he’s gonna hit him with a cross punch to send him back to his ancestors, and Katsuki pops off faster. He’s lightheaded from the lack of oxygen and the air’s boiling even for him, the tunnel of fire closing in as they hurtle towards the ground. 

A fist collides with his jaw, and the pain is—

Fine.

The pain is fine, but now he can’t move.

“The fuck?” he rasps.

Katsuki gets his bearings. He’s upright, two feet in the air. In place of Blackwhip around his limbs are thick bandages, so constricting that he fights to inhale. Izuku is beside him, a mirrored image, except his fist is raised like he wasn’t done trying to beat the shit out of him.

Katsuki snaps his chompers at him and Izuku lunges. They’re pulled further apart with a force that gives ‘em both whiplash.

“I said,” Aizawa’s eye flashes, “not to destroy the gymnasium.”

—

“Well,” Hawks says, voice muffled through the respirator mask, “the good news is you’re back in physical.”

Around them are rubble and clouds of smoke that Katsuki isn’t sure are from him, Izuku, or just all the debris they created. He has an icepack on his head but needs about forty more for the rest of him, and Izuku should just be dipped in silver sulfadiazine at this point.

The ambulances meant for Katsuki are tending to their classmates who weren’t able to evacuate in time. Kaminari, knocked on the head. Mineta, who caught a stray AP shot to the face, and would hopefully go blind. 

Sirens in the distance, firetrucks on the way. The destruction’s a little misplaced with how bright and cheery the sun is, and Katsuki knows this because they tore down half of the gymnasium roof.

He has a huge fucking headache and it’s not from getting whacked around. “I didn’t win,” he mutters.

“Did I say you needed to win. I said you needed to hold your own.” Hawks raises both arms towards the ruined gym like he’s a ringmaster at a circus. “Behold: holding your own.”

“Ugh.”

All Might returns from talking with the paramedics. “All students accounted for and no serious injuries.”

“Successful training session?” Hawks says.

All Might nods. “Indeed.” He turns to Katsuki. “Congratulations, young Bakugo. When I saw you fight All For One, I was astounded. Amazed by your talents, and beyond hopeful for the future. Never did I imagine that the young first year I met could evolve so quickly to someone so formidable, that someone with your capabilities could be so—“

Katsuki groans, makes eye contact with Izuku, sees the corner of his mouth twitch, and he can’t help it. They erupt into peals of laughter. Izuku’s covered in burns bandages but he leans against Katsuki anyway, chortling.

All Might looks puzzled, and then relieved.

“Thanks, Sensei,” Katsuki says. He transfers his ice pack to Izuku’s chest, probably bruised from contact with the bracer, and Izuku yips from the cold.

“ Kacchan ,” he whines, and— sigh .

“Big fucking baby,” Katsuki grumbles, holding it in place.

All Might and Hawks exchange a look.

Don’t be weird, don’t be weird—

“Ah, the pillars of first love,” Hawks says, shorn wings fluttering behind him, “public transit, umbrellas during a sudden rainfall, and beating your boyfriend bloody at your high school gym.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Try me.” Hawks sidles a little closer to All Might. “Though you’ve actually got a decent shot now. Don’t try too hard.”

Katsuki’s fighting a fierce, mad blush right now, but Izuku can’t see anyway, tucked into his shoulder. He smells terrible, hair burnt in various places, and he looks like shit. Katsuki lets him stay.

——

The postal worker who has U.A. on their route has their work cut out for them when internship season comes. Everybody in the class gets a stack of invites, Izuku’s the tallest, obviously, but Katsuki’s not far behind.

Not bad for someone who exploded their own heart on national television.

“That was never gonna hurt your chances, Kacchan,” Izuku says, “when you got up, you looked so cool, I was like ‘this is like at the end of All Might X: All Mighty All The Time when he gets thrown down the canyon’, you remember? Then he comes back?”

“ That’s what you were thinking while fighting the guy trying to bring the apocalypse.”

“Yeah?”

(Katsuki is thrilled he looked cool, ‘cause he was hoping he did.)

They’re in Katsuki’s room, sorting through their invites. Izuku is having one of those days so when the stack of mail arrived, Katsuki took theirs up and Izuku knew where to find ‘em. He’s not good with the rowdiness of the common room when he gets like this.

He’s … well.

Izuku’s got the premium VIP package on trauma locked down, lifetime membership with the works. He has a cocktail of insomnia and nightmares and panic attacks that Katsuki tracks by the dark circles beneath his eyes. He refuses to go to therapy about it (Katsuki will defend him on this one, ‘cause he already has like, half a dozen other voices in his head. Maybe he doesn’t want more constructive input ). And he’s just … off .

After everything, Katsuki thinks the country ended up fucking lucky that they got a hero who always gets back up. Not a single one of ‘em deserved him, and they never would. If on his bad days, he was just off , then that was fucking fine, right?

“Who’s at the top of your list?” Izuku asks around the pen cap in his mouth. He’s tabulating all the agencies in his notebook–nerd alert–by priority and then pros and cons. Katsuki’s stealing it later. “Like if you had to choose today and your first day of work was tomorrow, where’d you go?”

“Endeavor, if the old man weren’t outta commission.”

Izuku hums. “We’d get to work with Todoroki, too,” he says, scribbling in his notes.

“Who the fuck–it’s an internship. Nobody’s holding hands and making friendship bracelets.”

“I like working with Todoroki,” Izuku argues, “powerful Quirk, and he’s dependable. He doesn’t second guess, you know? It’s not about friends–though he is a really good friend!!–he’s a good battle partner.”

Not as good as me , Katsuki thinks. Oh, what the fuck .

Ooh, big green monster. Not like Katsuki wasn’t familiar. Not like it was new even with Izuki. It just hadn’t ever been so fucking persistent before.

He swivels in his desk chair, the rusty wheels creaking, cause he’s done with this conversation. He’s not hiding or nothing. “You do whatever.”

Izuku’s staring at him again, he can feel those ridiculously large eyes in the back of his skull. That’s not new either.

In middle school, they used to say Izuku had two modes: looking for his Kacchan, and staring at his Kacchan. That made Katsuki violent, a horrible dark-red flush creeping over his face, and he got teased about it once, and–

Next thing he knew, Deku was on the floor. He’s uhh, not proud. If he could tear his middle school self a new one, he would, future of the world be damned. 

The staring is different now, though, like Izuku’s more lost in his own head and not really seeing him. You ever seen the light and hope and dreams slowly leave someone’s eyes? All confusion, despair, and gloom and doom. Kinda like on the battlefield when he’d take a bad hit, and was figuring out how to just go on . If Katsuki’s being mushy and honest, it breaks his fucking heart–heh–that Izuku has to relive all that with Shigaraki, his own mind tormenting him just to process.

Post-traumatic stress disorder really is a bitch.

“Kacchan?” Izuku says, and he really is breaking his heart over here.

“What.”

“You can …” He’s quiet for so long, Katsuki thinks he chickened out. Then, he tries again, “You can push me away again for this if you want, I don’t care. I wanna do internship with you. I looked through our mail, we have like. Ninety percent the same invites anyway. And this–this isn’t about me copying you or anything. We work well together, I feel like that’s obvious, and I think it’s a waste of time to not use this … opportunity to get us some real-world experience. I mean. Not like we need anymore, but you have to get what I mean–”

The eraser Katsuki throws bonks Izuku in the forehead, just missing his new scar tissue. “Would you shut the fuck up. Yeah. I thought that was understood, why’d you have to go and make it weird.” His pacemaker better stay fucking quiet, for the love of god . “Endeavor number one, jot that down. I like Jeanist and Fat Gum, too.”

Izuku lights up. “Oh, ‘cause Kirishima–”

“It’s not fucking kumbaya, nerd, I don’t care where Shitty Hair goes, swear to god…”

He smiles, and Katsuki’s delusional ‘cause he thinks Izuku already looks a little better compared to this morning. Like a quick hang in his bedroom and a gossip session and a pedicure could ever fix what they’d been through. “Okay, Kacchan.”

——

The most reassuring thing, cheesy as it sounded, is that life really does just go on without you. He still wakes up in a cold sweat, heart hammering, and so much phantom pain when nothing hurts. Izuku’s panic attacks don’t get better , but they do happen less often and he’ll take it as a win.

They take their midterms. They go on break for the holidays, and do their internships with Fat Gum. They visit the temple on New Year’s. Three months since the war and they go through the motions of normalcy ‘cause there’s nothing else to be done but get left behind and one thing Bakugou Katsuki never is is falling behind . It gets exhausting to pretend, but it beats wallowing.

They’re on the train one day, Katsuki in his hero uniform ‘cause someone was fucking running late but oh Kacchan wait for me I really wanna see that new exhibit today and what was he gonna do, say no?

At the other end of the car, a couple of girls are pretending not to take their photo. He doesn’t care.

Izuku’s just in his civvies—day off—and yapping his ear off, hands gesturing wildly, forgetting to hold on and knocking into Katsuki.

Katsuki grips him by the elbow. “Fucking—stay put. Hold me if you can’t reach the handle grip, pipsqueak.”

Izuku sticks his tongue out (“So mean, Kacchan”) but hooks an arm through Katsuki’s free one. He fidgets with Katsuki’s utility belt ‘cause he can’t stay put, the tug and pressure of his fingers on Katsuki’s hip.

A flash goes off. What-fucking-ever.

“Anyway, so some of the stuff they’re displaying today is from America—you know how they filmed there for some of the earlier stuff—I’ll take pics for you!! But if you want to come by during your lunch break, text me, I can wait. Or not. That’s okay, too …”

Slowly, slowly the light returns. The dead-eyed staring doesn’t entirely stop, but until Izuku wants to talk about it, Katsuki ain’t prying.

He leans back against the pole and closes his eyes, Izuku’s voice drifting away. It was gonna be a long ride, and he didn’t mind.

—--

The other shoe had to drop some time. With how much he repressed shit growing up, keeping things in and turning ‘em over til they turned pointy and mean, Katsuki should’ve known better.

Hawks has some kind of vendetta against Katsuki or something, ‘cause he pairs him off with Shouji for hand-to-hand combat. No Quirk use. 

Katsuki’s confident, right. He beat a villain who’d been tormenting his idol and his idol’s idols for decades. Not without help, sure, but still. He ranks highest in the class in both academic and physical grades. He restarted his own heart with his own Quirk.

With all that confidence, he can confidently say there’s maybe a non-zero chance he’s pinning Shouji in quirk-prohibited battle.

The war got everyone . Kirishima started throwing himself off buildings, zero damage sustained. Iida and the sound barrier became fast friends just for him to keep breaking it. Uraraka’s jacked , never mind Shouji.

They’re all fucking freaks now—thank you, tragedy and dread—and Katsuki thinks he’s actually doing pretty well for making it three minutes in until Shouji pins him across the neck with a forearm the size of a log. The force is like iron around his throat, and his vision gets hazy at the edges. Choking, blacking out, his pacemaker beeping in a panic, it’s all familiar.

A crack of green lightning and the stopper at his throat disappears. The sudden intake of breath in his lungs burns like acid.

Shouji is halfway across the gym, and there’s blood, but Katsuki can’t tell how much, cause in his fucking way is—

“Izuku,” Katsuki lunges, clamped in place by the black tendrils swarming protectively over his torso, “what the fuck—? Izuku !”

Across the gym, Hawks is speaking loud and fast into the intercom while Iida tries to get everyone to evacuate. Screw that, no one in their class ever fucking listens.

Todoroki skids in on a river of ice, building a barrier in front of Shouji. Behind him, Asui wraps her tongue around Shouji’s neck mimicking a cervical collar and Uraraka makes quick work of floating him to the side. 

The worst goes through his mind. They had it too good after the war, all this false peace. Grocery runs, ducking beneath maple trees when it suddenly rained. Horror movie nights on Fridays, betting on whether Kaminari would short circuit half of U.A. at a jumpscare. That was stupid, it was fucking stupid of them to think they could go back . Something was so obviously wrong.

“Izuku,” Katsuki growls, clearing Blackwhip with a flash and bang.

Izuku turns, eyes glowing, sparks of lightning crackling so bright and so loud Katsuki can barely look at him, can barely hear his own voice.

An ugly regurgitated memory of that day at the river, Izuku’s outstretched hand. Katsuki pushes it away, seething. Swear to god he was gonna knock this loser the fuck out, he was gonna punt him to the next city, he was gonna crush—

The noise cuts.

Izuku powers down faster than a citywide blackout. 

A familiar huff from the entrance of the gym, a clear sign they were in trouble, and their Sensei’s tired drawl, “Midoriya. My office now .”

Izuku stumbles, doubles over, and throws up. Triple whammy. Most of it lands on Katsuki’s boots. Jesus fucking Christ .

Katsuki crouches, not caring enough any longer to hold his breath from the stench, and grips Izuku by the jaw with his bracer arm. “The fuck is going on with you?”

That is evidently the wrong thing to say. Once Izuku looks up at him, his chest rattles, quick rabbity breaths hurtling out of him, and he shakes his head furiously, eyes shut tight. “Kacchan— Kacchan , I—“

“You what? Huh, Deku?”

The tears are running down his face, and he tugs the bracer arm to let go . “Kacchan, please .” 

“Izuku,” Katsuki tries again, because time and time again they’ve been through this. Every gut-wrenching, ball-busting, heartbreaking miserable fucking thing. He thought they were clear to each other. Insides raw and open and exposed, he gave him that. “Izuku, it’s just me.”

Izuku won’t open his eyes. His grip on the bracer is so tight that even without his quirk, Katsuki feels the artificial nerve endings pinch and go numb. “Kacchan, please, I can’t look at you right now.”

Call him a fucking drama queen, whatever, his world cracks to pieces around him. 

——

At this point, they need to start a tally of concussions and fractured ribs in their common room. Shouji’s still out like a light, but the blood was just from him tearing his eyebrow open when he hit the ground. He is, by class 2A standards, in peak condition.

“I think Aizawa-sensei’s done chewing Deku-kun’s ass out,” Uraraka says quietly, slipping into the sickbay.

Katsuki snorts. “Great. My turn.”

She sighs. “Bakugo.”

“What? He’s gotta get that shit under control, he almost—“

“Is that what it’s really about?” She wraps her zip-up hoodie tighter around herself and starts tucking Shouji in. “Or you’re embarrassed?”

Fucking girls and their fucking intuition. He’d deny it but the silence from being caught off guard is just confirmation. Why bother.

“You have to know how hard he took it when you died,” she says plainly. She smoothens out the corners of Shouji’s blanket, looking for something to do with her hands. “You have to.”

“I do.” There’s a look of disbelief on her face like she’s up to her ears in bullshit already and she can’t take any more. “I do , Cheeks. He told me.”

“Mm, and what did he say?”

Katsuki thinks back to that day: they were in the hospital just starting PT sessions and Izuku asked if it hurt. A misplaced, bad joke (“Yeah, not as bad as dying, though–don’t, ah there he goes. Don’t fucking cry on me every time I bring it up, you Deku.”) and Izuku said, “Time stopped when I saw you. I thought Shigaraki had a new Quirk, it was so bad, like I was suspended in the longest, worst moment of my life.” And Katsuki wiped at the snot on his nose with a curry-blotted tissue and said, “Well, I fucking came back, didn’t I.”

He knows it’s never gonna be enough. Of all the things Katsuki has to apologise for, he’ll never top that. Probably. Hopefully. But he can’t stand the idea of Izuku losing his mind over him for the rest of his life every time he gets hurt. That shame brings him back to his childhood, to punches aimed at soft cheeks, a scrawny stomach, bright eyes. It disgusts him, and it humiliates him.

Uraraka has her chin in her hands when he looks up, her other hand scrolling on her phone. “We promised we wouldn’t show you this, but … it’s been six months. And we worry, you know? About you both.”

“Who’s we?”

Uraraka feigns looking around the room like he’s crazy. God, she was so annoying. “The class?” 

She finds what she was looking for on her phone and tosses it to him. Katsuki catches it with his good arm.

“They had to airlift you, you know. I don’t know how much they told you at the hospital. Shigaraki destroyed everything within a five-mile radius and none of the land vehicles could get to you guys. The roads were,” she shakes her head, “nobody could even tell where anything used to be. Deku-kun found you and wouldn’t leave your side, Bakugo. He kept signaling, he’d panic and say he couldn’t find a pulse, but I think he just wasn’t really all there at that point. Nobody wanted to move you without the right tech ‘cause we weren’t even sure if your spine was in one piece. We waited, but everybody else was looking for survivors, rescuing the people that got buried and caved in … We’re heroes. Civilians always come first.”

The picture on Uraraka’s phone hits him like a freight train to the chest. There’s so much blood. His arm is shattered, legs in an awkward position like a ragdoll. Face so swollen and bruised and so much skin split open, he’d have trouble identifying himself in a morgue. His lifeless looking body had been dragged into Izuku’s lap, arms wrapped around him, head pressed firmly over his heartbeat. Izuku, by way of flesh and mind, at least looked alive, but Katsuki sees that look in his eyes. Murky. All the light, gone.

“He waited with you for twenty-two hours.”

Katsuki drops the phone on the bed, presses the heel of his palms to his eyes. The bracer is cold on his cheek, but it’s welcome. Something wet runs down the inside of his forearm, and then his chin, and he takes a huge inhale that turns into a sob that wracks his insides.

“What the fuck,” he says intelligently.

Uraraka hands him a tissue which he takes and holds uselessly in his hand. The room’s spinning, and breathing feels like scraping bare mucous tissue over gravel. Was his pulse supposed to hurt? He can’t move . 

“Why did you let him do that?” he demands. He doesn’t know when he started full-on bawling, but here he is. “Cheeks, he hadn’t slept for days, he was–he was–”

“We know,” she says gently. “He wouldn’t move. Trust us, we tried.”

Katsuki glances back at the phone, and Uraraka quickly puts it back in her hoodie.

“That’s the only copy. There’s uh, nothing else to see. The press, those stupid vultures, they had that circulating for a few hours but we got it taken down pretty quickly.” She laughs without humor, “Tokoyami stayed up all night reporting it every time it got shared, you know. He was so dedicated. Yaomomo, too. That was the first time I ever saw her with eyebags. Also, I honestly think she threatened the news stations like, legally and physically. She was so scary.”

She sits by him and lets him cry like a loser for what feels like hours. At some point, Shouji wakes up, bewildered, and then he rolls over and goes back to sleep. Mood.

“We didn’t want you to know because … what happened was so–sorry–fucked up,” Uraraka says, working around the frog in her throat, “but we watch you two, and it’s like you’re playing pretend. I mean, looking back isn’t good all the time, but you can’t move on if you’re not at peace with where you came from, you know?”

Katsuki blinks owlishly at her. God, his head hurts. He was a cartoon animal and all this new information was a comically large anvil bashing his brains in.

“Who the fuck told you that? Gunhead?”

“Shut up,” Uraraka rolls her eyes, sniffling, and shoulders him, ow . Fuck, she really was jacked now. “I just wanted you to know Deku-kun really cares about you, and you can be embarrassed but he’s not going to stop. You can’t stop him from caring any more than we could move him from you. And it’s not like how much he cares is like, mathematically based on how weak he thinks you are or something. He just … cares. It’s just devotion. It just is what it is. Does that make sense?”

“No,” Katsuki says even if he does feel lighter, from the crying, from the girltalk, from the sudden realisation that it turns out there are a dozen more things to live for than he thought. “You sounded smarter when you were quoting Gunhead.”

“You are such a jerk.”

—---

The common room is full, even for six in the evening. Katsuki’s about to snap and say they better not be expecting him to cook dinner after that shitshow when Kirishima suddenly has him in a crushing bear hug.

“Uraraka told us she told you,” he says, voice muffled, “and I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.”

Katsuki is so lucky he’s too dehydrated to cry any more, otherwise this would be very embarrassing. He claps Kirishima on the back awkwardly, clears his throat, “I… me too.” He doesn’t really know what he’s saying, but he thinks Shitty Hair will get it.

“He’s not blasting him,” Mina stage-whispers, excited, then she gets in on the hug, throwing a leg around Katsuki’s waist like a koala. 

Kaminari and Sero creep behind them, arms hovering like there’s an imaginary forcefield.

Katsuki groans. “This one time– just this one time.”

“Hey, hey, everybody, bring it in,” Kaminari hollers, throwing himself at Katsuki’s back. 

The group hug gets stifling pretty quick, he runs hot as it is already, but Katsuki decides he’ll give ‘em ten more seconds to sort out their bullshit, their feelings about seeing him die fast then having to watch him die slow. Maybe five seconds, ‘cause he’s pretty sure the arm snaking around him is Sero trying to grab Kirishima’s junk ‘cause he thinks it’s funny, but whatever .

Todoroki wanders into the room. He approaches quietly then locks his arms around Kirishima’s and Jirou’s backs, settling in.

“Hey,” Katsuki says. They’re about three bodies away from each other, but Todoroki knows he’s talking to him. “Where’s Izuku?”

——

The next train out is in seven minutes so Katsuki books it to the station. His palms are sweating overtime, heart pounding, he wants to hurl . Some fucker in his brain said POUND THE ALARM and ran with it, and the familiar route to Izuku’s house bleeds away around him, just one foot in front of the other until he’s at his door.

It takes him two tries to get the code in.

They didn’t spend much time at Izuku’s place when they were younger, ‘cause Mitsuki was afraid he’d break shit and ‘cause it was so much smaller. Katsuki stands in the doorway and can already see Izuku in their little kitchen, turned to him with a can opener in hand.

“Kacchan?”

All his senses power down. The heavy breathing is him , he realises, ‘cause he ran the two kilometres here from the station. He’s suddenly so tired, so relieved to see Izuku in one piece. He didn’t know he was on edge about that until he wasn’t, and it’s like someone pulled a plug on the static in his brain.

“Hey,” he says, leaning against the doorway–fuck, he really is tired–and raising both hands in false surrender, “easy now.”

The attempt at lightheartedness falls flat. Izuku frowns and drops the can opener. Scarred hands fiddle with the sleeves of his sweatshirt.

“I don’t want to fight,” he says quietly. 

Katsuki doesn’t know what the hell is happening. His heart falls out of his ass, maybe? “I don’t wanna–”

“I’m sorry,” Izuku grabs about five sheets of paper towel, balling them up in his hands, “whatever you think, I need you to know I wasn’t going easy on you that day we wrecked the gym. With Shouji today, it wasn’t …” He swallows. “I don’t pity you, I don’t think you’re weak, I don’t look down on you, Kacchan, I promise, those things are so far from–” Izuku shudders, paper towels crumpled against his chest, “You don’t have to believe me.”

“I believe you,” Katsuki says, then he realises that’s not true. “I wanna believe you.” Maybe the higher-order part of his brain, the one that trained and evolved and died, does. But even as Izuku talks about pity and weakness, the miserably insecure pit inside of him flares. It’s small now, because he worked to make it small, but it’s insistent and loud . A hundred sore spots, and Izuku has access to all of ‘em.

From down the hallway, there’s footsteps in the bedroom, purposefully loud like a declaration. 

Izuku grimaces. “Oh, uh. Mom’s home.”

Katsuki says, “Let’s go for a walk.”

On the way out, Izuku grabs a windbreaker and a scarf from the hooks by the door even if spring broke a week ago and they don’t need it. They don’t have to talk about where they’re going, they just keep walking. Katsuki doesn’t really care where they end up.

The fresh air in their neighbourhood clears up Katsuki’s mind and Izuku’s sinuses. He uses up all the paper towels, chafing the skin on his nose, then stuffs them in his pockets. Gross ass nerd.

“D’you get suspended?”

“Yeah. A week.”

“That’s rough.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “I apologised to Shouji on the phone. He said to make sure you were okay cause you and Ochako kept crying. He said you had a fight.”

Katsuki scowls. “I knew that fucker was awake the whole time. Eavesdrops and can’t even get the details right, fuckin’ creep.”

They make it to the playground and Izuku beelines slowly to the swings, settling in. Katsuki’s not a baby so he sits nearest to him on the triangular metal framework, legs outstretched so Izuku knocks into him every time he rocks forward.

The street lamps turn on after seven. Izuku looks as tired as Katsuki feels. Ratty sweatshirt, hasn’t touched a comb in about a month, dry ass ashy skin, tired . Like an alien invasion could come hailing down right now and he’d just let ‘em.

Katsuki takes stock of the freckles smattering his cheeks and the irritated tip of his nose. Yep. Still there. He used to tease Deku about those, pinch his cheeks, slap him and make it sting. In hindsight, he was obsessed. He is obsessed.

“D’you remember that day in the rain?”

Izuku was so exhausted and out of it then that Katsuki doesn’t expect anything, but he nods, eyes wide. 

The pit of insecurity shakes and trembles, threatens to erupt, bangs on the walls and screams. It’s not more important than this. It’s not painful enough to scare him from saying his piece.

“All that stuff I said. It wasn’t about forgiveness. I needed you to know you weren’t alone. I beat the shit outta you our whole lives to feel bigger, I made you feel that way, and I dunno how to make it any clearer that whatever it is, whoever it is, I don’t care who comes back looking for you–I’m with you now.”

Izuku wipes at his face with the heel of his hands, nodding. “I know, Kacchan, I’m sorry–”

“Izuku, I’m giving you one chance: if you don’t want me to walk with you, then tell me to fuck off. ‘Cause this …” This is forever . For him, at least. “I mean it,” he says, louder than he means to.

His brain is roaring with panic in this new uncharted territory. A little emotional vulnerability here and there he could adjust to, but offering his life to someone else was embarrassing as hell.

Izuku is quiet, staring straight at him. For days and days, Katsuki would see despair in those eyes. Now they’re different. Considering.

He says, “I always want Kacchan with me.”

A little crack in the big wall that loomed between them. Katsuki was going to demolish it with a pickaxe. “It’s gotta be as equals. We have each other’s backs, we don’t interfere . You have to trust me.”

He’s always saying the wrong fucking thing.

Izuku pulls out the scarf–that’s what it was for–and hides his red, blotchy face in it. He scuffs his red sneakers in the sand in frustration, the chains on the swing creak in his trembling hand like they’re gonna break. “You said you believed me.”

“I do."

“You don’t ,” he snaps, “I didn’t… I wouldn’t do that to Shouji just out of–of pity , I’m not like that.”

“Then what?” Katsuki tugs the scarf down harshly, sees Izuku’s ugly crying face.

The swing groans as Izuku’s grip tightens. “Just understand–”

“Understand fucking what?” They were going in circles. Katsuki had offered his life already, and Izuku was still hiding, like Katsuki wouldn’t willingly take everything from him. No matter how stupidly mundane, no matter how ugly and shameless.

“Just this one thing–”

“No, Izuku. I said if you didn’t want me to walk with you, then tell me to fuck off!”

There’s fury in his eyes. Good. Anger and honesty and truth, Katsuki wanted it all.

“Do you know what it’s like being hailed and praised every single day for being the Symbol of Peace, knowing you were about to kill someone?” he spits. The framework of the swing screeches, and Izuku stands. “I was going to tear his skin off with Blackwhip, I wanted to Gearshift his body in quarters. People on the internet write thinkpieces about how I’m the real new-age hero, I’m revolutionary . And here I am, knowing that I would’ve turned him inside out and it wouldn’t have been enough.”

Katsuki’s a real asshole, because his first thought is, That’s it? 

That doesn’t seem like it’s gonna help the public property they were on the way to wrecking, though, so he grabs Izuku’s wrists, tries to calm him down. Izuku is screaming at this point, so he counts them lucky that people these days were too afraid to live this close to U.A..

“Izuku, just, okay–shh,” Katsuki shakes him, just a little to get him to shut up, “Sit down, breath, nerd. You’ll go blue.”

Katsuki has him sit on the framework beside him. Intermittently, Izuku lights up green, chest heaving until he calms down. Katsuki watches, breathes with him, traces soothing circles over his wrists and his forehead. He takes the snotty scarf and wraps it back around Izuku, swaddling his ears and his neck up tight.

Once Izuku’s calmed down, he slumps backward, rests his head on the bars. His cheeks are smushed together from how Katsuki wrapped him and he looks stupid. “I never said that out loud before.”

“Don’t. Not to anyone else. You’re right, it’s not pretty.” And the people only want pretty. God, they don’t deserve you.

Katsuki’s words are harsh, but he swings a leg over the bar and slides closer to him, until Izuku’s legs are caged in between his. Izuku keeps his gaze on the treeline, so Katsuki grips his knee tight, thumb digging into the nerve of his thigh. Look at me .

He does. Whatever sadness and regret there is in his eyes now, Katsuki will take it. At least he looks alive.

“When I got there, Shigaraki didn’t give a shit. He said I was only interesting ‘cause I was closest to you. More than anyone.” He clutches the scarf by Izuku’s neck so he can’t look away. “Izuku, if villainy didn’t work, then no one would fucking do it. How can you beat yourself up for this? He meant to get to you.”

“And I let him.”

“But you didn’t.” You can’t really talk sense into someone who won’t listen. But Katsuki will sit by Izuku and tell him everyday until he does. “He’s in detainment. He writes you freaky fanmail all the time, Todoroki burns ‘em over the bins.”

“For a moment … still … I only didn’t, because you came back. When I told you time stopped for me, I meant it.”

Katsuki’s hand falls to Izuku’s lap. The scarf unravels. “Lapse of judgment. Take it from me, I’m the fucking expert.”

“If you didn’t come back, I would’ve. Or died trying.”

That gets him. Katsuki, to state it plainly, had long accepted that he would kill for Izuku. Strap him to a lie detector, he wouldn’t bother hiding it. It’s just simple and true. If he were just strong enough, he would have killed Shigaraki so Izuku wouldn’t have to bear that burden any longer. But the idea of Izuku harming himself for him–it’s wrong . 

“Hey,” Katsuki works around the lump in his throat, “You don’t do that for me. Got it? Never.”

“You wouldn’t be able to stop me anyway.”

Katsuki’s temper flares, and he tugs Izuku in by the front of his sweatshirt. His bracer arm lodged between their chests, he looks into Izuku’s eyes and grumbles, “I’m not fucking around.”

Izuku’s eyes flash, always ready to rise to a challenge, always ready to contest Katsuki. “Neither am I. You think you’re the only one allowed to care about other people? What’s with that?”

“Izuku, I’m serious. If something happened to you ‘cause of me…” Katsuki doesn’t know how to say it without opening up a whole lot of mush he’d refused to look at for like, the past year . How could Izuku not get it? How could he not know that Katsuki would raze cities for him? He’d give him the control to his pacemaker, he’d sink to the bottom of the ocean and he– he came back to life for him . How could he not know?

“It goes both ways,” Izuku says.

But I don’t deserve it . 

Izuku seems to understand this. He lays a warm hand on Katsuki’s thighs, pets down his chest with the other until he finds his pacemaker. “You said that day in the rain wasn’t about forgiveness. You’re right, you never needed it. I never resented you. It was impossible to.”

Katsuki feels like he’s standing over the edge of a cliff–no, worse. Mangling his body didn’t seem as daunting as this. Seventeen, his heart is completely under someone else’s control, and he’s scared.

“You get it, right? You have to get it.”

He does. Bakugou Katsuki does not fall behind .

If he knocks around in his head, he’ll find that this was obvious for years, but he’d rather throw himself off the nearest building than accept it. I don’t deserve it . Soft cheeks, scrawny stomach, bright eyes. He cringes. 

He would spend the rest of his life fighting beside and protecting Izuku, but he didn’t deserve him like that .

“Izuku,” Katsuki shakes his head, fully intending to tell him to cut it out. Take that look of adoration elsewhere. “Not after everything.”

He doesn’t need to tell him what he means, a testament to how badly Katsuki truly did fuck up.

“Lapse of judgment,” Izuku says.

“Fuck you, that’s not funny.”

Izuku scoots closer until they’re touching almost everywhere, thigh sliding against thigh. The scarf tickles Katsuki’s chin, and Izuku’s palm is rough over his neck. He smells musky, like he didn’t shower after training, and from this close, Katsuki can make out every pore and freckle. 

Everything is Izuku, there’s nothing else. Katsuki can feel the wind chill, but he swears his skin’s sizzling right now. He’s beautiful .

He’s so fucked.

“You’re always calling me stubborn.” Izuku’s so close it’s like he’s saying the words right into his skin. “You know no one can make me do what I don’t want to do. So what if I choose to love you? You can’t change that.”

Katsuki’s heart races. No, literally, his pacemaker starts beeping, and it’s embarrassing as fuck. Izuku looks down and bites back a smile, it’s so cute .

Fuuuuuck , what the fuck was he supposed to do. He scrambles to quiet the alarm, reassure it that he is safe, he is with a guardian, he is getting first aid, blah blah blah .

His palms are sweaty. He never had plans of telling Izuku anyway , but if he did, it would’ve been more suave than this. How many fucking times was he going to debase himself in front of this nerd.

Moment ruined, Izuku has retreated to lean back against the bar, which doesn’t mean much with how small the swingset is. Their knees are still bonking together, and Katsuki could easily reach for him.

Katsuki looks at him and remembers the boy at the river, the boy who ran at the sludge monster and Mr. Compress and Shigaraki, the boy who stayed with him in the rubble. To deny himself is easy. Katsuki was an Olympic-level gold medalist at repression.

To deny Izuku is harder. And he’s not gonna pretend there’s not a fucked-up extremely selfish part of him that he’d chained up years ago, now going off the rails after what Izuku said. He wants . He’s wanted for so long.

Izuku stays on his side, watching him, chewing the corner of his mouth.

Katsuki scoots closer. Izuku cocks his head, smiling, fighting back a blush. He always turned so red at the slightest thing Katsuki did, it drove him crazy.

“If you don’t want this, then tell me to fuck off,” Katsuki says, leaning over him like an offering, “cause this is for real for me.”

Izuku pulls him in and kisses him, and even if he’s the one who started it, he has to pull back almost immediately to hide in Katsuki’s neck. “Oh, my god ,” he whines.

Fuuuck , he was so fucked.

Katsuki will do anything to chase that again. He kisses down Izuku’s temple and his cheek, trying to get him to look back at him, “Nerd, the fuck, stop hiding from me.” He nips at a freckle, watches the skin puff up red in real time and kisses that, too.

“Kacchan, this is really embarrassing for me.”

“No, I know ,” Katsuki says, because who else would get it aside from him? Izuku’s nose is cold against his neck, and he nuzzles in like burrowing himself in Katsuki’s neck would hide him from Katsuki . God, he wants to kiss him again. Now. Or he’ll wait a million years, who gives a fuck.

Slowly, Izuku lets the space between them open up, peeks out from beneath the scarf. Katsuki plants his hands firmly on Izuku’s waist— tiny , his brain says, before he mentally slaps himself, focus —and squeezes.

Izuku lights up green again. “Umm, just ignore that.”

“Sure,” Katsuki says, pulling him in and kissing him on the mouth. Whichever of Izuku’s fifty Quirks is acting up right now, he doesn’t care enough. This time, he wants to feel it. His palms slide over Izuku’s warm nape, the scarf falling away, and Izuku tilts and sighs, opening up for him. Katsuki takes it and runs.

Words aren’t his strong suit and they’re not fucking enough anyway. He grips Izuku roughly, slides an arm around his waist and crowds him in against the bar. Both of their lips are chapped–all the fucking crying –and Katsuki thinks he tastes blood–definitely Izuku’s–but he doesn’t care. Izuku is so warm and pliant, you couldn’t get him to give this up even if the world were ending a second time.

Bip, bip, bip, bip, bip, bip–

“Ignore that,” Katsuki says, pulling Izuku back in when he hesitates. Pacemaker, fucking cockblocker. 

“You sure?” Izuku says, making a great effort to sound like he cares.

“I’ll kick you halfway across town if you don’t kiss me right now, Izuku, I swear to god.”

“Yeah, okay.”

His other hand pillows Izuku’s head on the bar behind him, and he doesn’t even do this on purpose, he’s just kinda grabby–when he tugs on Izuku’s hair, Izuku’s hands claw up his sweaty shoulders and he whines. Katsuki physically feels Izuku try to stop himself.

“Don’t,” Katsuki says, pulling back to kiss along his jaw, “Fuck, be as noisy as you want.”

“Mm?”

“It’s hot,” he says, never mind the shame. An hour ago, he wouldn’t have even admitted at the gates of heaven that Izuku was attractive. Now he was making out with him on a swing set and telling him to whine for him. 

Izuku is so far gone. Flushed cheeks, tongue darting out to lick across his bloody lip. Katsuki did that, and tries not to lose his fucking mind over it. His pacemaker is relentless and he thinks yeah, no shit . He doesn’t need a machine to tell him that his heart’s in overdrive, he’s kissing his best friend.

They kiss for what could have easily been an hour, who knows, Katsuki’s not keeping track. If he could pour out every mushy thing in his heart that once made him a coward into this kiss, he would. There’s so much to say, so much to feel, he doesn’t know where to direct it all—

“Kacchan,” Izuku says softly. He swipes at the spit on Katsuki’s chin—they’re still sloppy, sue ‘em—and kisses him once more before leaning back on the bar with a finality.

Katsuki doesn’t need to be told. He wanted to stop. That was fine. Katsuki was still having fun, but the nerd had a long day. He squeezes Izuku’s thigh in reassurance, and Izuku jumps .

The hell.

Katsuki looks down, and up the inseam—

“Nerd, are you hard ?”

“ Umm —“

Holy shit.

“Holy shit,” Katsuki says. The things he was gonna do to him—

Izuku jumps again, and fishes a furiously vibrating cellphone from his pants pocket. “Oh, it’s Mom, okay, sshh—hello…? Yes…I’m five minutes away. With Kacchan, yeah … Umm, no I don’t think so…. Yeah, no …. No…. Okay, I’llseeyouathomebyeIloveyou!”

Katsuki looks at him.

“Stop that.”

“What?”

“Don’t be handsome right now, I can’t look at you.”

“Does it have to do with your boner—“

“Ack! Kacchan!!!”

Katsuki laughs, but decides he’ll ultimately spare him. He gets off the swing set, and Izuku takes his hand when he offers it. 

“Was Auntie mad?”

Izuku tangles their fingers together and falls into step with him. “No, just a little concerned, she uh,” he clears his throat, “She wanted to know if you’d stay over so she could set up the extra futon.”

“Huh?”

Katsuki and Izuku had been sharing a bed since they were like four and sure, that had stopped when Katsuki turned into a little shit, but things were different now.

Katsuki glances down, sees the severe blush creeping up Izuku’s face and feels himself start to heat up too. Ah. Things really were different now.

“Auntie’s really perceptive,” Katsuki mutters.

Izuku tucks himself into his shoulder and nods.

They argue over who gets to bring who where—Izuku wanted to walk Katsuki to the station, and Katsuki wanted to walk Izuku back home—and this time, Katsuki wins.

“I get to walk you back next time,” Izuku insists.

“Yeah, from your dorm room to mine. That’s chivalrous as fuck, nerd,” Katsuki says even if the idea of a next time made him, ugh , real soft.

It takes Izuku awhile to get back inside because Katsuki kisses him good night, and that takes another. Few minutes.

“You gonna turn this red every time?” Katsuki murmurs. “It’s cute.”

That makes Izuku blush harder. “Good night, Kacchan.”

“Night, Izuku.” Once Izuku’s at the door, he calls down the driveway, “Have fun with your boner—“

“Kacchan!!!”

—-

Once Izuku’s suspension is up, Katsuki picks him up from the station. It’s not even like a real train ride or nothing, it’s just the subway. He just uh, wanted to help the nerd with his luggage. 

(And they hadn’t seen each other since that first night and Katsuki was starting to think it was too good to be true and that he’d made it up in his head, even if Izuku was bombarding him with little heart-eyed kaomojis in texts.)

Izuku surfaces at the exit they agreed to meet at. It’s rush hour, and he’s short enough that Katsuki sees him first, craning his neck around to look for him.

“Hey,” Katsuki says, immediately holding his hand. No takebacksies. 

Izuku grins. “Hey! I texted you, you could have at least replied, I wasn’t sure if you were coming …”

Like Katsuki would ever not show up for him. “I don’t have your number saved,” he says.

“So mean, Kacchan.”

They make the short walk to U.A. hand in hand, passing by the teachers’ residence where All Might is on the balcony hanging his laundry. He stops. 

Izuku waves with his free hand.

All Might throws his fist in the air, less like his signature pose and more like he’s in a cheesy eighties movie.

Katsuki rolls his eyes and drags Izuku away. 

When they enter the common room, Katsuki raises their joined hands and says, “This is happening now, and if anyone has anything to say about it, they get an AP shot to the face.”

Nobody has anything to say about it. But there is so much money quietly passed around that Katsuki’s free hand starts to spark anyway. Uraraka makes bank , which makes Katsuki wonder if she was … Nah. No way.

This time, when Katsuki says life goes on, he means it. They finish their second year, all limbs accounted for, and take a summer trip with the class where Kaminari almost dies ‘cause of a box jellyfish. (Universe got jokes.) They go on dates which only sometimes end in them having to save a citizen. After graduation, they get their own place, which somehow involves Todoroki crashing for weeks on the pullout couch that he got them as a housewarming present.

“Hey,” Katsuki says when it’s one of those mornings and they don’t have to look at the calendar. They just know from the weird atmosphere that his death anniversary is coming up, “d’you think maybe we shouldn’t have started dating when … all that was still happening?”

How fucking blessed are they, to have been able to put enough distance to call it all that .

Izuku laughs quietly. “You’re kidding, right. You were so dense, Kacchan, it’s like you couldn’t tell I was trying to date you that whole year. I kept tagging along with you at the grocery! I bought you ramen every Friday during internship–god, remember that All Might film exhibit where you stood me up?”

“The fuck–I was on duty!”

“You could have texted me !”

Katsuki falters in realisation. “You thought the best time to woo me was right after we almost died–I actually did die, loser–and we both refused to go to therapy?”

Izuku shrugs, shoots him a coy look over his shoulder. It takes more work to get him to blush these days, Katsuki might be losing his charm, or Izuku's just coming in to his own. Either way, the challenge is hot.

“Can’t I be traumatised and wanna ask you out?”

“You’re unbelievable,” he says, meaning it in the best way. 

Izuku’s never gonna be quite the same and that’s fine. Neither is Katsuki. He still lives with the guilt that Izuku assures him he should never have to worry about, but he deals with it. You move on best when you're at peace with where you came from, or whatever Gunhead said.

Between the two of them, there’s nothing left to do but live.