Chapter Text
The room was still, the kind of silence that made Izuku feel like he was drowning in it. He stood by the window, eyes tracing the blurry lights outside, as though they held some secret he couldn’t grasp. His hand, against his better judgment, pressed against the cool glass. The chill seeped into his skin, but it did nothing to ease the heat that had been building in his chest. Nothing ever did.
Behind him, the air felt different. Katsuki’s presence was a weight on the space between them—dense, almost suffocating. Izuku could feel him before he even turned, the pulse of his anger and the quiet fire of his touch that never really faded.
"You okay?" Katsuki’s voice, low and rough, didn’t sound like a question. It was more of a dare—a challenge. To admit what they both already knew, but had never spoken aloud.
Izuku didn’t respond at first. There was nothing to say that hadn’t already been said in the silence that stretched between them.
His fingers twitched against the glass, and for a brief moment, he almost wished he could shatter it. The world outside might scatter, break into pieces that made sense, while he stayed intact, untouched.
But that was a lie, wasn’t it?
“I’m fine,” Izuku finally whispered, though the words felt foreign. He wasn’t fine. No one who felt this tight in their chest could ever be fine.
Katsuki’s footsteps came closer, slower now. The ground trembled under the weight of him, each step a reminder of the gravity between them. Izuku didn’t move. Didn’t have the strength to. Not with him so close. Not with everything that wasn’t being said.
Then came the pressure of Katsuki’s hands on his back. Gentle. Too gentle for everything that was cracking between them. His fingers splayed, grazing the fabric of Izuku’s shirt, just barely brushing against the heat of his skin. The touch was light, but it sent a shudder through Izuku’s body, as if something inside him had been cracked open and left to spill.
It shouldn’t have felt like this.
Izuku turned his head, just slightly, and could already feel the heat of Katsuki’s breath on the back of his neck, a quiet promise that neither of them could ever outrun.
“You’re lying,” Katsuki said softly. “You never were good at it.”
Izuku closed his eyes. The words felt like a slap. He wanted to argue, wanted to say that maybe Katsuki didn’t understand—that maybe he hadn’t been the one standing there, staring at the life that was supposed to be his and realizing it was slipping through his fingers. He wanted to shout that he had never wanted any of this to happen.
But all that came out was a breathless laugh, bitter and empty. “I don’t know anymore.”
The words hung between them, a knot that neither of them could untie.
Katsuki’s fingers flexed, digging into Izuku’s back just enough to remind him that this—whatever this was—was real, and it was consuming them both. There was no place to hide from it. Not from him. Not from what they’d allowed themselves to become.
“Don’t tell me you’re backing out now, Izuku,” Katsuki muttered, the words sharp, a flick of a blade across skin. “You think I can’t see it? You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”
Izuku swallowed hard. He felt the space between them stretch, become wider, filled with more things they couldn’t say aloud.
“I’m not... I’m not backing out,” he said, though his voice cracked like it was breaking under the weight of something far too heavy. “But Uraraka’s—she’s pregnant.”
The words hit him before he could stop them, and with them came the bitter taste of regret that he had swallowed so many times before.
For a moment, Katsuki didn’t move, didn’t speak. It was as though the air itself had frozen. Izuku waited for the storm to break, for the words to slice through the thick silence between them.
“Pregnant, huh?” Katsuki’s voice was colder now, lower. “You’re really going to play the hero, huh? Is that what you’re telling me, Izuku? You think you can just walk away from everything we’ve built—everything we’ve been—and be some goddamn family man?” His fingers dug into Izuku’s skin like he was trying to burn the truth into him.
“I never wanted this,” Izuku said, almost to himself, like a prayer, a confession. But Katsuki was already pulling away. He was too far from Izuku now, too far to reach.
“You think you’re the only one who has something to lose, Deku?” Katsuki’s voice snapped like a whip, the words filled with all the anger Izuku could never match. “You think you can just turn your back on me, on everything we are, and walk into some fucking fairytale with her?”
Izuku felt the sting of the name, felt the familiar weight of it pressing against his chest. Deku. It wasn’t a name anymore; it was a judgment. A reminder. He had been the fool to believe he could have both lives, that he could walk this fine line and never fall.
“I’m not asking you to understand,” Izuku whispered, his voice shaking. “I never asked for any of this. But it’s real now.”
Katsuki’s laugh came low and hollow, the sound as cold as the silence that followed. “Real? Yeah, real enough for you to ruin us both, huh?”
Izuku felt the loss in that moment, felt it in his bones, felt it like a weight too heavy to carry. This was it. This was the end of whatever had been between them.
“I have to go,” Izuku muttered, the words falling from his lips like stones.
“I know,” Katsuki said, voice suddenly soft again, but there was no warmth in it. No softness in him at all. “Go be a hero, Izuku. Go be the goddamn good guy.”
Izuku didn’t turn around. Didn’t look at him. But he could feel it—Katsuki’s gaze, burning against his back, searing through him in a way that no one else ever had. He could feel the loss of him even before he walked away.
Katsuki didn’t say anything more. He left, and the silence was absolute.
Izuku stood there for what felt like forever, trying to catch his breath, trying to hold the pieces of himself together. But there was no point anymore. Everything was already gone.