Work Text:
Katsuki throws an annoyed look at the clock. It's way past 2am now and that means it's way past his bedtime but Shinsou is still not home and that means Katsuki can't go to bed.
Usually he wouldn't wait up for him—he'd never get any sleep like that, with Shinsou being an underground hero—but Katsuki knows that today was a special mission, one that made Shinsou worry for days before today and in Katsuki's experience special missions tend to go wrong one way or the other.
So, he's waiting up.
Katsuki checks his phone for the hundredth time in the last hour but still, there are no new calls.
He's one of Shinsou's emergency contacts, with the agency as well as his medical contact, right after Aizawa and Yamada, should they not be there, simply because he and Shinsou live together and it's convenient like that.
But tonight Aizawa and Yamada are on a mission of their own, in a different town no less, and so if anything were to go wrong today, Katsuki would be the first to know.
It's probably a good sign that no one called him yet, but it doesn't help to alleviate any of the worry he feels. He and Shinsou are—friends in a way; definitely more than just flatmates, that's for sure and while Katsuki is used to always being low-key worried about all his friends, it's somehow worse with Shinsou.
His quirk is powerful—incredibly so, especially with all the training he did on it, but his quirk leaves him with no bodily enhancements and should someone figure out how to silence him or god forbids, steal his voice, then Shinsou has to rely on his hand-to-hand combat.
Which he's damn good at, Katsuki knows that first hand, but it's hard to trust in that when there are such incredibly powerful quirks out there.
"Fuck," Katsuki hisses under his breath because he promised himself he wouldn't think about all the things that could go wrong, about all the ways this mission could go sideways and Shinsou could get killed and yet here he is, doing exactly that.
He gets up to get himself another coffee and even though he'll suffer tremendously for it tomorrow he is determined to stay awake until Shinsou comes home. Or his phone rings.
Katsuki really fucking hopes he doesn't have to accept such a devastating call—not now and not ever—but in their line of work it's always a possibility, and Katsuki damn well knows that.
Doesn't mean he has to like it, though.
He has just finished his coffee, running aimless circles through the apartment, when he hears the front door.
Katsuki freezes for a moment, before he almost drops his coffee cup in his haste to get to the door.
"Shinsou?" he breathes out and will never ever admit to it and then he comes to a screeching stop when Shinsou fully enters the apartment.
His clothes are torn in more places than Katsuki cares to contemplate and even though there are white bandages peaking through, most of them are turning redder with every second that passes.
"What happened to you?" Katsuki blurts out and Shinsou blinks at him, one of his eyes already swelling shut and there's a nasty, curved cut on his chin that makes Katsuki go cold.
Someone did try to go for his voice then.
"Work," Shinsou says, as smartass as ever, and while Katsuki has to fight against rolling his eyes, he's also incredibly relieved because a smartass Shinsou means an alive Shinsou and that's really all Katsuki was hoping for this night.
"They let you leave like this?" he demands to know as he carefully pulls Shinsou deeper into the apartment, so he can at least close the door behind him.
"Nah, I slipped away before they could ship me off to the hospital," Shinsou groans out as he bends down to take off his shoes and Katsuki would like to snap at him that he's going to do it, but before he can do so, Shinsou kicks his shoes off.
"Why the fuck would you refuse medical treatment when you look like absolute shit?" Katsuki hisses out because what if it's something more serious, what if the paramedics missed something and there are internal injuries and Shinsou is about to keel over and die on Katsuki?
"I always look like shit, as you like to remind me," Shinsou tells him with a small smirk but drops it soon enough in favour of a pained gasp when he tries to take off the top of his hero suit.
"Let me, you fucking dumbass," Katsuki says and slaps his hands away, before he steers him towards the bathroom.
He's not about to deep clean the hallway, there's just no way, so Shinsou will have to bleed all over their tiles instead.
Shinsou doesn't say anything until he's seated on the toilet, his chest exposed so Katsuki can better survey the damage and he doesn't think they have enough bandages at home to deal with all of this.
"I just wanted to be home," Shinsou mutters out through clenched teeth when Katsuki peels one blood-soaked bandage after another off.
It takes Katsuki a moment to piece the conversation back together but when he finally does he's filled with something almost soft and why the fuck does it have to be Shinsou who makes him feel like that?
"You should have gotten checked out," he grumbles, though he can't deny that it's good, having Shinsou home, even as hurt as he is, because it means he's here and not dead and that is what Katsuki was so very afraid of after all.
"I did," Shinsou says with a pointed look at the ever-growing pile of dirtied bandages and Katsuki stops to pinch the bridge of his nose because this motherfucker really knows how to push all his buttons.
"Sorry," Shinsou whispers after a moment and tilts his head back until he can rest it against the wall.
There's a faint cut on his throat, nothing more than a thin line, and some papercuts are worse than this, and yet it makes Katsuki freeze.
"They try to go for your voice?" he asks as he reaches out to trail his fingers down the column of Shinsou's throat, even though the answer should be obvious.
"Yeah. Got me figured out real fast, this time. I think I either have to take an extended break or get another strategy or something, because word of my quirk's been spreading."
"Damn," Katsuki mutters and Shinsou shrugs even though it makes him hiss in pain.
"It was to be expected. Underground might be forever but undercover is not and Aizawa's been telling me I've been pushing it as it is."
He might sound all blasé about it, but Katsuki knows him better than that. Shinsou loves undercover work because despite all the shit he sees during it, all the fucked up stuff he has to do, he feels as if he's doing something.
Katsuki isn't quite sure how he's going to deal with it when he can't do it anymore, but he figures that's a problem for another time.
Right now the still bleeding wounds littering Shinsou's body certainly take precedence.
"Can you lift your arms for me?" Katsuki asks, a wet towel at the ready and Shinsou sends him a murderous glare before he clenches his teeth together and lifts his arms.
His face drains of colour and Katsuki thinks they might be looking at more than just a few cuts and open wounds.
"You break any of your ribs?" Katsuki asks as he gently cleans off the blood and going by the purple bruise on his chest the answer is definitely yes.
"What do you think?" Shinsou grumbles, clearly struggling to hold the position and Katsuki is quick to clean everything up before he tells him to lower his arms again.
"Should have gone to the hospital. If I find you dead in your bed in the morning, I'm going to kill you." Katsuki pauses and thinks for a moment. "Fuck, Aizawa is going to kill me and I don't even deserve it."
His words make Shinsou huff out a laugh, closely followed by a pained groan and Katsuki presses his lips together in apology.
"Lets get this wrapped up, so you can sleep it off."
Katsuki leans forward to wrap the bandage around Shinsou's torso, not bothering to tell him to lift his arms again when they can do it like this, too but when he looks up his eyes meet Shinsou's and everything goes quiet for one, terrifying moment.
It feels a lot like that one time on the couch, that one moment they don't talk about, where both of them were leaning in, where Katsuki thought about kissing Shinsou and where Shinsou's eyes definitely dropped down to his lips and then they still both didn’t do anything about it and Katsuki freezes.
Shinsou does too, doesn't even breathe from the looks of it and the moment stretches on into infinity until it snaps when neither of them move yet again, and Katsuki goes back to wrapping Shinsou's wounds as if nothing had happened.
Maybe nothing did happen; he no longer knows with Shinsou.
"Why are you still awake?" Shinsou whispers out, his breath hitting the top of Katsuki's head and making him shiver and Katsuki almost snarls at him.
"Cause you were worried about this stupid mission," he snaps out and hopes Shinsou doesn't read too much into it.
But of course he's not that lucky.
"And you were worried about me," he adds, doesn't even make it a question and Katsuki would love to tell him that he's being fucking stupid, but he can't find it in him to lie to him like that.
"Shut up," he grumbles out instead and finally ties off the last of the bandages.
They are not immediately soaked red again, so Katsuki allows himself some faint hope that maybe these bandages will hold till the morning.
"When do you have to go back in?" he asks, because Shinsou's agency likes to run him into the ground and since he didn't go to the hospital they'll probably assume he's good to go again almost immediately.
"I've been put on indefinite undercover leave until they can figure out if I'm a one-trick pony," Shinsou mutters, something bitter to his voice. "I don't have patrols scheduled for the rest of the week, though."
"Small mercies," Katsuki says and guides Shinsou to his feet with a hand on his arm. "Then go catch some shut-eye, gods knows you need it, eyebags."
"My most fetching feature," Shinsou says, giving him a wide smile and Katsuki rolls his eyes at him.
He follows Shinsou all the way to his bedroom afraid that he’s going to keel over any moment, where he hovers in the doorway.
"You need some water or some shit?" Katsuki asks, unsure all of a sudden about what he's doing and it doesn't get better when Shinsou sits down on the bed and just looks at him for a moment.
"Don't leave me alone."
It's said so quietly that for a moment, Katsuki isn't sure if it even came from Shinsou but when he bites his lower lip and turns his head away, it becomes pretty obvious that Shinsou really just said that.
For a moment, Katsuki is frozen where he stands, doesn't know what to do but when he sees Shinsou's face fall, he moves on instinct.
"You better not be a blanket hog," Katsuki snipes out and Shinsou tenses for one, horrible second, before he goes soft and climbs on the bed completely.
"You'll just have to see," he mutters as he slides under the covers and very notably takes the spot near the wall, which leaves Katsuki between him and the door.
"You're safe here," Katsuki tells him even though he knows that sometimes it's not that easy after a harrowing mission and Shinsou closes his eyes and lets out a slow breath.
"Yeah. You're here after all."
It's a lot of trust; trust, Shinsou usually doesn't express towards Katsuki and Katsuki hates to admit how much that really means to him.
"Yeah," he simply agrees and tucks the blanket in around them.
Katsuki stays on his back, in a position that allows him to see the door even though he's mostly doing that to appease Shinsou but he silently congratulates himself for a smart decision when Shinsou shuffles closer and presses his forehead against Katsuki's shoulder, letting out a long, slow breath and melting into the mattress.
Katsuki's been awake long past his usual time and he should be falling asleep almost immediately, but instead his mind spins and he can't help but to wonder.
It's been two times now; two times where something almost happened but didn't and Katsuki is not sure he can take much more of that.
"Hey, troll doll," he whispers into the dark, almost with no hope because Shinsou must be exhausted and likely fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow but he's met with an inquisitive hum and his stomach twists with nerves.
"Are we ever going to do something about that?" he asks and hopes that Shinsou understands what he means. "I mean that was twice now."
"Mhh," Shinsou hums out. "So I wasn't imagining it," he mutters into the dark and Katsuki goes hot.
So there was something between them.
"All good things come in three," Shinsou goes on and reaches out to tangle his fingers with Katsuki's. "Do it again tomorrow and we can do something about it."
It's a promise, one that makes Katsuki's heart flutter in his chest and he cranes his head around to press a kiss to Shinsou's wild hair while he squeezes his hand.
"Alright."