Chapter Text
Izuku was happy.
Really.
He’d gotten stronger—strong enough to help people—even if he was always aiming to get better. He’d made friends, lots of them. He’d been able to fight alongside those incredible people, attend an amazing school, and all that jazz.
And he’d been able to make up with Katsuki.
Katsuki apologized to him.
And as if Izuku wasn’t happy enough with being rivals and friends at this point… Izuku was dating Katsuki.
As in a romantic relationship with the explodo-boy.
As in, Izuku could sleep in his room and not be blasted away.
Just thinking about it made him unbelievably bubbly and squirmy.
It was a hot day when he accidentally confessed. The two of them often trained together after school hours, much to their classmates' despair because they were always destroying the training grounds. It got to the point where Cementoss wouldn’t even blink before walking up there to remake the floors and walls after the wonder duo hurricane.
No amount of nagging from Aizawa or gentle arguments with All Might was enough to break their bad habits. Out and about, in their internships, they were careful and didn’t put civilians in danger by breaking more than necessary in fights.
But it was different when it was just the two of them. Both went all out in a frenzy every single time, delighted to have someone to match their abilities and vent their frustrations.
They’d throw blows, kicks, curses—Izuku would always deny it, but he participated in that one too—and the other would receive and give it back in equal measure.
It worked for them. They were pretty much evenly matched, with the same number of wins and losses—much to Katsuki’s rage.
On this particular day, Katsuki had a bad day at his internship. He was severely scolded for cursing—again—at a civilian, and Izuku was kind of exhausted from holding a whole building wall in place for twenty minutes so people could escape its collapse. That resulted in an extra-aggressive Bakugou pinning a slightly distracted Midoriya to the floor, who might or might not have tripped over his own feet.
Panting and sweating, Katsuki was straddling Izuku’s lap, holding his thighs in place with his own legs and pinning the greenette’s hands over his head on the floor. The blond had that smug smirk plastered on his face, and suddenly Izuku felt that his own reddened face wasn’t from exertion anymore.
“Hah! I win, you fucker!” Katsuki gloated unabashedly.
“I could throw you off!” Izuku bit back, something that had become normal between them.
“You saying you’re letting me win, you shitty nerd?!” Katsuki held both wrists with one hand—almost bruising—and used his free hand to grab Izuku’s jaw and squeeze his cheeks. “Is that what you’re fucking saying?! Throw me off then, you coward! Let’s see if you can!” He shook the greenette’s face with his hand.
“I don’t want to!” Izuku managed to squeeze out from the duck mouth Katsuki’s hand was causing.
“And why the fuck not, huh?!”
And, by the gods, his filter-to-mouth must have been broken that day, because this is what he ended up saying: “Because I like this!”
Katsuki blinked once.
Twice.
The hand on Izuku’s face loosened, unconsciously it seemed.
“The fuck are you saying?” The blond’s expression turned into a scowl. “You like losing to me?”
“No, you idiot!” Definitely broken. His filter-to-mouth was irreparably broken. He could feel Bakugou’s palms heating up with what was undoubtedly some explosions to counter him. “I—I think I like you pinning me down.”
Katsuki’s palms sizzled, and smoke from extinguished explosions floated up from them.
The blond’s expression scrunched up even more, and he let go of Izuku’s face and hands, sitting down on his thighs. “Should’ve known you were actually a freaking pervert behind those freckles.”
“I’m not a pervert, Kacchan!” The greenette raised himself onto his elbows to scowl at his childhood friend.
“You are if you like people pinning you down in a fight, Deku!” He growled, and Izuku started doubting the pervert-claim because he thought it was hot.
“I don’t like people pinning me down, Kacchan!” Midoriya groaned back, and before he could think twice, he finished, “I like you pinning me down!”
Red eyes widened slightly. “Hah?? What the fuck is that supposed to mean, dipshit?”
“I think it means that I like you, Kacchan,” Izuku huffed with no small amount of sarcasm, feeling his face hot from what was definitely not the fight.
“You think ??” His nose scrunched up even more.
“Can you stop scowling at my confession?!” At this point, Midoriya might or might not have realized that he’d really just blurted that out. And that he might have destroyed everything they’d built up to this point. But he just couldn’t seem to stop.
“That was a freaking shitty confession, Deku! You ‘ think ’ you like me? What the hell?”
“Fine!!” It was Izuku’s turn to growl.
He pushed his friend off of him, and since Katsuki was shocked, he just fell on his butt, blinking angrily at the boy in front of him. Before he could do or say anything, Izuku got up on his knees and fisted Katsuki’s tank top collar, pulling him up so they’d be eye level.
Really, to anyone watching, it just seemed like they were fighting again, but what Midoriya yelled out did not match that image whatsoever.
“I’m in love with you, and now that I said it out loud, it really seems like a bad idea because!! What am I going to do after you reject me?” He breathed heavily and started mumbling away, the fist on the other’s shirt less sure than before. “I mean, cry, I guess, right? There’s really nothing else to do? Should I flirt with you? I haven’t flirted with anyone else before, but I could? Would you hate it? I guess I—”
He was interrupted by Katsuki’s hand shutting him up with his palm.
“That’s still a shitty confession.” Katsuki glared, but he didn’t yell.
The blond made Izuku let go of his shirt and pushed him away with less aggression than usual. Izuku fell flat on his ass, and Katsuki sat down in front of him, still glaring, but without any recognizable expression beyond that.
After a few silent moments of them staring at each other, Bakugou finally broke the silence.
“And what? You want to go out with me and shit?” He raised a questioning eyebrow.
“I—I guess?” Izuku hadn’t thought that far, to be honest. He hadn’t thought he’d be confessing, like, ever, so yeah, he was at a loss.
“And do what?”
“I—I don’t know? Hang out?”
“We already hang out.”
And that was true. They had a bunch of friends in common, so they were always hanging out. They even hung out by themselves, watching old All Might movies, reading comics, and all that after their relationship had gotten better.
“That’s not the same!”
“Deku, what the fuck do you want from me?”
“I don’t know!” He lowkey shrieked. “Hold hands?!” He flailed his hands.
“Are you a middle schooler?” The other snickered.
“Well, I’m sorry I don’t have a bunch of experience!” He huffed.
“Didn’t you go out with Round Face at some point?”
“Ochaco-chan? Yeah, but we didn’t do much, and… it’s different, okay?! We’ve known each other our whole lives—it’s weird to flip the romantic switch!”
“You’re the one confessing and saying you like me pinning you down in the middle of our training, you ass! It doesn’t get more weird than that!”
“Oh my god! You are impossible!” Izuku pulled at his own face.
“And you want to date me.” Katsuki raised his eyebrows again.
“I do!”
At that last outburst, the blond seemed taken aback for a second. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He chewed on his words a bit before speaking once more.
“You want to go out with me.”
“Yes?” Izuku answered, even though it didn’t seem like a question.
“You want to hold hands.”
“Yeah.”
“You want to kiss me.”
Izuku squeaked but answered all the same. “Y-yeah.”
At those answers, Katsuki blinked slowly and went on. “I won’t be nice.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“Don’t expect romantic shit.”
“Give me a little credit. Again, known you our whole lives.”
“You can’t tell the extras.”
“What? Why?”
“Because they’d annoy the shit out of me for it.”
“Yeah, they would,” Izuku giggled, and then the conversation caught up to him. They were going back and forth so fast that he hadn’t registered what Katsuki was actually saying. “Wait, wait, wait, wait! You—You’re accepting? You’re going out with me?”
The blond just shrugged.
“Why?!” Izuku shrieked again.
“What the fuck, do you not want to?” Katsuki’s face scrunched up again.
“I do! But as in, you are my boyfriend now?”
“Call it what-the-fuck-ever you want.” The blond snorted and got up, stretching his sore arms above his head. “I’ll still beat your ass. I won’t go easy on you.”
“I didn’t expect you to!” Izuku pouted, a little offended, but then he beamed, getting up to follow his new boyfriend so they could clean up and rest.
And that—
That was two months ago.
Now, they were still going out.
And really, Izuku was happy.
But Izuku was also getting a little greedy.
The greenette had, more often than not, slept in Katsuki’s room. He’d sneak in when there was no one in the corridor to see, and even with Bakugou’s complaints, the blond would let him stay over. They’d hold hands and chat, watch movies, and they had made out a few times as well. Izuku loved kissing Katsuki. They hadn’t done anything beyond that, and honestly? It was fine. That’s not what was bothering him.
Midoriya sometimes felt a little jumpy when he was with his friends and Katsuki was near them. He felt bad keeping it from them, but he also liked having this little secret just for themselves. It seemed special. So yeah, while it bothered him a bit, this was also not the problem.
The problem was… It was always Izuku.
Izuku was the one going to Katsuki’s room.
Izuku was the one who initiated their first kiss (he was elated that Katsuki had responded) and every other kiss afterward.
Izuku always reached out to hold hands when it was just the two of them.
Izuku was the one who called Katsuki to study with him in the common room.
Izuku was the one asking for cuddles (this one was even more of a surprise; he thought Katsuki would blast him away).
Izuku was the one asking for Katsuki to cook for him.
Izuku was the one who confessed.
And Katsuki… Katsuki had never said a word about any of that. He’d complain about every single one of those things before doing them. He was never the one to reach out.
And he had never said anything about liking Izuku back.
So if the guy was feeling more than a little insecure, could you really blame him?
Izuku knew—he knew Katsuki never did anything he didn’t want to. So, at the very least, he was not opposed to any of it. But not being opposed to it and actually liking it are two very different things. The blond had warned him that he wouldn’t be nice or romantic. But still…
The greenette was getting a little greedy. A little greedy to know if Katsuki, at the very least, liked any of this. He just couldn’t bring himself to actually ask, because he was already feeling really pathetic with all this.
So what else could he do?