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One day, Izuku knows, the nightmares will stop.
One day those wounds will heal, and he’ll stop being afraid of the past and the indomitable future, but until then, Izuku knows that every time he lays his head on his pillow, there’s a risk. Sometimes it’s as benign as an imaginary villain wreaking havoc on the town, but sometimes…
Tonight Izuku wakes up with tears in his eyes, and he reaches out for Bakugou without thinking because if Bakugou is here then everything is okay. Bad dreams are just bad dreams, but one of Izuku’s greatest fears is that one day he’ll wake up and their wonderful life together never happened, that he saw him for the last time ten years ago and didn’t think to even say goodbye. Because he never thought he would have to.
Now he says it too much.
But the spot in the bed next to him is empty. He reaches in the dark and feels his hands over ruffled sheets, and when he turns the light on, he confirms that Bakugou is gone but he was here. Izuku didn’t make him up.
The pounding in his chest eases when he sees the head print in his pillow, and his medicine is on the side table with Bakugou Katsuki on the prescription. Izuku looks around their room, and he sees pictures of them as men, not boys. Bakugou’s awards are framed next to Izuku’s signed All Might magazine cover (and Izuku’s awards are at his mom’s house because she likes to look at them).
Little pieces of them exist everywhere, the timeline spreading from one wall to the next, and Izuku forces himself to breathe.
It was just a dream. It was just a dream.
But the question remains, where is Bakugou?
Izuku waits in bed for a few minutes in case he just went to the bathroom, but a while passes without him coming back.
He gets up to investigate, but he doesn’t have to go far before he finds him perched in their window sill. It’s wide enough that a person can sit with their back against the bookcase, and Bakugou sits with his arm propped over one knee as he looks out over the city.
It’s raining, based on the light droplets of water on the window, and there isn’t any moonlight, but the world outside does a good enough job of casting a mournfully beautiful glow over him. Soft, and blue, and making the blond around his head glow like a halo.
He isn’t okay. If Izuku didn’t already know that Bakugou not being in bed when he can be is a red flag, his face would say it all. Izuku knows that look, that despondent vacancy that Bakugou sometimes slips into like his soul isn’t always attached the way it should be. And it’s been Izuku’s job to pull it back in when he can, to remind him that he’s here, and real, and very much where he wants to be.
So why didn’t he wake him?
“Kacchan?”
Bakugou blinks and looks at him, and it takes a moment for his eyes to refocus, to see Izuku standing there and register who his is, why he’s there, and where they both are.
“I woke up, but you were gone,” Izuku says.
“Sorry.”
Izuku shakes his head. He doesn’t like him apologizing to him or anyone else, and he certainly wouldn’t need him to for doing something as benign as getting out of bed.
No, Izuku only ever needed one apology from him, and even then, he never expected it or necessarily wanted it.
He takes a step forward, not yet sure what to do, and Bakugou gestures to the other half of the window sill.
“I don’t know if it can hold us both,” he says.
“What do you care? You can float.”
“Oh right,” Izuku says, although that isn’t the point at all.
“If it breaks, we’ll fix it,” Bakugou says. We always do, he doesn’t have to.
Izuku sits on the opposite end with both feet on the ground and one hand on the sill and the other on Bakugou’s foot. “So what are you doing here?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Bakugou says.
“Bad dreams?”
He pauses for a moment in thought, frowning slightly, but he shakes his head no. “Nah.”
“Oh.”
Izuku almost offers to leave him alone to his thoughts, but sometimes that’s not the best place for him to be, and Izuku–.
Has reasons to be selfish tonight.
“See anything interesting?”
“People should really learn to cover their windows,” he says.
“Oh, you mean like how we do?”
Bakugou tuts a laugh, the corner of his mouth tugging back into a smile. “Yeah, just like us.”
Izuku moves his hand to Bakugou’s knee and rubs it idly with his thumb as he tries to will away the warped picture of him from his dream. This version of him is infinitely better. There’s a healing cut on his cheek from a villain fight three days ago, but other than that, he’s perfectly safe. Perfect and safe, more like it.
Bakugou lowers his leg and turns his body, leaving his chest open, and Izuku turns around and takes his place against it. He lowers himself carefully until his head finds Bakugou’s shoulder, and once they slot together, he takes a full, deep breath.
In.
Hold.
Out.
Bakugou tilts his head against his. “Alright, nerd, tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Whatever it is that woke you up,” he says.
“Maybe I just couldn’t sleep either,” Izuku says.
“Liar.”
Izuku hums as a few more images flash through his mind, all as ugly as the ones before it, and he decides that every last one of them needs to remain unnamed. “If I don’t talk about it, I might forget faster.”
“You might,” he says quietly. “Or it’ll just eat at you all night.”
“Maybe I just don’t want you to hear it,” Izuku says.
“And why the hell not?”
Izuku presses his lips together and shakes his head, unable to answer. Bakugou puts his arm across his chest as a brace and exhales, quietly holding him in place because he knows. He knows. He’s woken Izuku up through screams and lashes of his quirk, and he’s held Izuku down as he called his name, switching from Izuku to Deku and nerd until something sticks. All are grounding once he knows it’s him, but they never know which version of Bakugou it’ll take to bring Izuku back.
Kacchan, however, always works for Bakugou. Izuku has tried Katsuki, but he told him to save it for when he’s dying, and that was that.
The rain taps gently against the glass. The window always feels so much colder than the rest of the apartment, something that makes the summers a little easier and acts as a balm when he isn’t feeling well, but right now he can’t help but miss the warmth of their bed from three hours ago when he and Bakugou were finally settling into it.
Izuku reaches for his other hand, the one not holding Izuku to him, and he splays out his fingers until it’s at its full span, and then he closes it again and moves towards the ring glinting from the outside lights.
They can’t take these with them in the field. They learned the hard way thanks to quirk mishaps, even with metals like steel and titanium which should be able to handle a few little explosions, so Izuku is always a little relieved to see when Bakugou is wearing his, like he comes home every day and makes a conscious choice to be Izuku’s.
It’s like wearing a hero costume where instead of covering something up, it’s enhancing what’s already there. Out there, he’s Dynamight. He’s all explosions, and flare, and a mouth the moms can’t decide if they hate or love, and he’s all power and glory. Then he comes home, takes off his mask and gauntlets, puts this on, and he becomes Kacchan, who has always been Izuku’s hero.
Bakugou nudges him with his nose, a silent prompt for Izuku to tell him about his dream, but Izuku can’t. Some things can’t be shared, and some things shouldn’t be remembered, and even though Izuku sees them every single time he closes his eyes, Bakugou shouldn’t have to.
Instead, he tilts his head up and kisses his jaw.
“You tell me what hurts first,” Izuku says quietly.
“None of your damn business,” he grumbles, moving to his mouth for a kiss they both needed.
This is one thing they have in common, that they both ache and refuse to let the other look too closely. Bakugou won’t tell Izuku which scars still feel raw or which bones still carry the ghosts of their breaks, and Izuku has never told him that he flinches sometimes when he knows he has to climb too many flights of stairs or that some days he can’t make a fist or hold up a peace sign, so he just cheerfully waves a flat palmed hand to the people who cheer for him because who needs to know?
Maybe that shouldn’t extend to each other so much. Bakugou may have spent all night tossing and turning while Izuku’s thoughts ate at him, and neither of them knew anything was wrong.
Should it be like this?
Isn’t that unfair?
“I dreamed–,” Izuku starts, but he still can’t make himself finish. He takes a deep breath and shakes his head, the words tightening his throat.
Bakugou noses his temple. He doesn’t have to be told, he knows. No one knows or could ever understand Izuku’s nightmares the way he does, and somehow that just makes it that much harder to say anything. It would be so easy if he could mention these horrible things as abstract or impossible, but not with the shadows beneath Bakugou’s eyes. Not with the way he holds his arm when it’s cold. Not with how he rubs his chest like he can’t believe his heart still beats.
In comparison to all of that, how bad is a silly little nightmare anyway?
“Hey,” Bakugou says, his voice low in his ear. He hates it when Izuku tells him this, but Bakugou’s rasp has always sent a tingle up his spine. It made the early days of their training together very complicated. “You hungry?”
“What?” Izuku laughs.
“Oh, was that a hard question? Do you need to think about it?”
“No, it’s just, like, one in the morning,” he says.
“So?”
“‘So?’” Izuku echoes. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m gonna make something, dumbass, what do you think?”
“We would have to clean up.”
“We can do it tomorrow, I don’t give a shit.”
“Well, then, what do you want to make?”
“If you tell me we don’t have anything because neither of us went grocery shopping, I’ll scream,” Bakugou says.
“I want eggs,” he says. “And we do have those, I’m pretty sure.”
“You want eggs,” he says, raising an eyebrow.
“Mhm.”
“It’s one in the morning.”
“So?” Izuku says with a cheeky smile.
Bakugou grumbles and leans down for another kiss. “Fucker.”
“You started it,” he says.
“Yeah, yeah, so how do you want ‘em?”
“Over easy is fine,” he says.
“Wrong answer,” Bakugou says.
“Okay, then scrambled.”
“Nope, wrong answer.”
“Poached?”
“Wrong. Answer.”
“Okay, then tell me how do I want my eggs,” Izuku asks, amused.
“Fertilized.”
Izuku snorts in disbelief and sits up as he laughs while Bakugou rests smugly against the bookshelf. “God, what is wrong with you?!”
“What’s wrong with me?” Bakugou says. “You’re the one who laughed. Freak.”
For some reason this makes Izuku laugh harder, and Bakugou smirks to himself as he reaches a hand out for Izuku to pull him up.
They walk to the kitchen together, only turning the light on above the stove, and Izuku heats up some left over rice while Bakugou cracks four eggs into a pan.
He stands guard, waiting on this meal that should fix whatever’s wrong with them, the tape and glue needed for this long, weighed night, and Izuku steps behind him to put his head to his back.
He holds his arms around his waist, even as the oil pops out of the pan onto them, and he closes his eyes against the familiar warmth of him.
He listens.
Badump.
Badump.
Badump.
It still beats so strong, the little fighter in Bakugou’s chest.
Bakugou is still here.
Izuku lets his thumb flick over the band over his own finger and lets himself breathe.
Bakugou takes the pan off the burner, and Izuku wills himself to let go.
He turns around and looks down at him, and Izuku winds his arms around his neck easily. They won’t go back to bed tonight. They’ll have this late night snack, and they’ll move to their couch where Izuku’s head will find Bakugou’s chest, and Bakugou will wrap his arms and legs around him so Izuku won’t disappear again. They never talk about that either.
Maybe one day they should.
But not tonight.
For now, they just need this.