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The first time Eijirou ever drew him, it was in the margins of an English worksheet. He was fifteen, bored out of his mind, half-listening to Present Mic conjugate verbs at a decibel that physically rattled the classroom windows. His pen hovered over the paper absently, doodling loops and arrows to nowhere—until Katsuki caught his eye across the room, scowling into his textbook like it had personally wronged him.
Kirishima, naturally, wasn’t really paying attention. He was staring out past the rows of uniforms and slumping shoulders, pen barely grazing the paper in lazy arcs. A swirl here. A jagged little lightning bolt there. A couple loops that might’ve been part of a katakana character if he’d actually meant to write anything. He was half-listening, letting the cadence of the lesson wash over him like a language he hadn’t yet learned to understand—until Katsuki caught his eye from across the room.
He hadn’t meant to look. Not really. His gaze had just sort of drifted that way, like it always did when he wasn’t thinking about it too hard. And there he was: Bakugou Katsuki, hunched forward over his textbook like he was preparing to interrogate it, elbows on the desk, pen held with exacting precision. His brow was drawn in sharp concentration—or maybe just annoyance—jaw flexing slightly as he underlined something with a kind of controlled, surgical aggression. He looked like he was mad at the words themselves, like he wanted to make them beg for mercy.
Eijirou’s pencil stilled. The line he’d been drawing shifted course.
It curved with intent this time, deliberate and smooth, not the idle jitter of someone tuning out a lecture. He started with the jaw—angular, stubborn, a little too perfect for how real it was. Then the mouth, straight and unsmiling. The eyes were tricky, always were, so he left them blank for the moment, just little almond shapes shadowed under that heavy brow. The collar of the uniform came next, sketched loose and tugged half-off like Katsuki had pulled at it out of irritation five minutes ago, which, Eijirou now realized, he probably had.
He didn’t breathe much as he finished it. Didn’t even glance up again. Just filled in the hair with short, controlled flicks of graphite, catching the vague shape of that sharp-blond mess, softened slightly at the edges from where Katsuki had clearly run a wet hand through it after hitting the gym. His heart thudded a little too hard when he was done, pencil frozen in the air, as if the act of drawing him had called something up and out of him. He stared at it for longer than he meant to—long enough to miss Present Mic’s instructions and the end-of-period announcement. Long enough for his hand to start cramping.
When the bell rang, Eijirou blinked like he’d just come up for air. He looked around. No one had seen. Good.
He tore the page out—quickly, neatly, careful not to smudge it—and folded it twice. Once to hide the face. Again to hide the feeling. Then he slipped it into the back pocket of his folder, right behind last week’s worksheet and an overdue field trip form he hadn’t had the nerve to hand in. A tiny, stupid secret, pressed between pages like a dried flower. Something he could pretend didn’t exist.
He did this a lot.
More than he should have, than any human being or otherwise should, really. It started innocently enough—just drawings, just shapes. But somewhere between the first sketch and the twenty-seventh, it had shifted into something else, something that crawled beneath his skin and lingered. A habit he couldn’t kick. A confession he wasn’t ready to speak.
Sometimes he’d draw Katsuki after sparring, when they were still catching their breath, standing side by side in the changing room, skin flushed from effort and arms streaked with sweat. He’d memorize the set of his jaw, the way his muscles moved beneath the fabric, the way he tilted his head when Eijirou said something dumb, not quite laughing but definitely amused. Those ones were always the messiest—sketched fast, from memory, on the corner of a towel or the back of a printout someone left behind.
Other times it would be in the common room, when Katsuki was yelling about something stupid like overcooked rice or Kaminari’s sixth failed attempt at rewiring the TV remote. His voice would echo through the dorms, all volume and bite, but there’d be this glint in his eyes—like he cared more than he wanted anyone to know—and his hands would move in big, dramatic slashes as he gestured, almost like punctuation. Eijirou would sit on the floor, sketchbook balanced on his knees, and draw the shape of those hands before he ever dared attempt the face again.
And sometimes—his favorite times—it was just because. Because Katsuki was there, and he looked good in profile, and Eijirou couldn’t stop seeing the lines of him even when he closed his eyes. Those were the hardest drawings to explain. The ones that showed up in the middle of training logs or next to notes from math class. The ones he didn’t even realize he was doing until they were already half-finished, until Katsuki’s face was staring up at him from a sheet of paper he’d meant to use for something else.
By the time they graduated, there were dozens. Maybe hundreds.
All stashed in different places—hidden behind syllabi, folded into old test booklets, slipped into the backs of drawers with bits of loose change and half-used pens. He kept them like secrets, carefully hoarded and never discussed. Not because he was ashamed of them—of course not, it wasn’t weird to draw your friends sometimes, right?—but because the truth was that they weren’t really for Katsuki. Not in the way he would’ve expected.
They were for Eijirou. For the ache. For the feeling he didn’t have language for yet, only shape and shadow and breath.
For the fact that Eijirou had been in love with Katsuki Bakugou for years, quietly and completely, and hadn’t yet figured out how to say it out loud without burning the whole thing to the ground.
But then, of course, everything changed.
Not all at once. Not like a switch flipped or the sky split open. No, it changed the way water does when you warm it slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, until one day you reach in without thinking and realize it’s burning.
They graduated. Walked across the stage in the stiff grey uniforms they used to complain about, diplomas heavy in their hands and futures buzzing on their skin like static. Then the real work began—the messy, beautiful, soul-crushing, exhilarating slog of becoming pro heroes. There were rankings to climb, agencies to impress, interviews to endure, and citizens to save. They started to see the world not as wide-eyed students but as soldiers, tired and hungry and too familiar with what it felt like to patch your own wounds on a rooftop at 2 a.m. because there wasn’t time to stop. They bled. They grew. They made names for themselves.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, they moved in together.
It wasn’t supposed to be a forever thing. It wasn’t even supposed to be sentimental. It had started as convenience—an apartment close to the station, two bedrooms, one bath, a balcony with barely enough space for Katsuki’s drying rack and Eijirou’s tiny grill. They agreed on a cleaning schedule. They split rent. Katsuki cooked, because Eijirou’s version of “seasoning” amounted to opening a bottle of soy sauce and calling it a day, and in return, Eijirou handled the laundry, which meant every single sock Katsuki owned was now perfectly folded into neat little pairs like some kind of domestic origami.
It was easy. Easier than Eijirou thought it would be.
And somehow, over time, it also became everything.
They trained together most mornings, rising before the sun when their bodies were still stiff with sleep and their limbs carried a thousand microbruises from the day before. They sparred in the public gym like it was still U.A.—no cameras, no fans, just sweat and shouting and the kind of wordless trust you earned by standing beside someone long enough to know where they’d be before they moved.
They patrolled together when their shifts aligned. Ate together when Katsuki wasn’t swamped with press or Eijirou wasn’t on an overnight in some distant ward. They laughed together, too—genuine belly-deep laughter that cracked open the quiet like sunlight through curtains. Stupid things, mostly. Eijirou slipping on a wet floor at the grocery store. Katsuki nearly blowing up a rice cooker. Jokes that no one else would ever find funny but that left them wheezing on opposite ends of the couch, tears in their eyes, stomachs aching from joy.
Eijirou’s sketching didn’t stop. If anything, it got worse.
He filled entire notebooks now, not just corners and margins. He kept one by the bed, one in the living room, one in his hero duffle that he swore was for mission notes but which, more often than not, ended up filled with motion studies of Katsuki tying his boots or reloading his gauntlets or rubbing at his jaw after a long day. His lines grew more confident, more detailed. He stopped drawing from memory and started drawing from observation—quick strokes when Katsuki wasn’t looking, longer pieces when he was asleep on the couch with his hoodie bunched under his chin and his hand curled under his cheek like some impossibly delicate thing.
Sometimes Katsuki caught him.
Not always. But often enough.
And every time, his reaction was the same. He’d glance over, tilt his head, and let out a noise that was half a scoff and half a sigh, then say something like, “You’re gonna run out of ink one of these days if you keep wasting it on my ugly mug.”
But he never told him to stop.
Not once. Not even when Eijirou waited for it, bracing for the inevitable snark that would cut just a little too close, that would make him pack up his pencils and shove the sketchbook under the bed again. Katsuki would just roll his eyes and go back to whatever he was doing—reading reports, cooking dinner, scrolling through his messages with a frown—and Eijirou would exhale like it didn’t mean anything when it always did.
There were other signs, too. Smaller things. Pebbles in the path.
Katsuki didn’t say much, but he had this way of showing care that felt like gravity: constant, unseen, undeniable. He started making bento for Eijirou on days they weren’t on the same shift, packing them in the black lacquer box his mom had given him back in second year, the one he’d once claimed was “too damn pretentious” but now treated like sacred equipment. Each one was portioned with ridiculous precision, tailored to whatever Eijirou had coming up—high-protein if he had a patrol, extra carbs if he was doing heavy lifting, electrolyte jelly tucked in if it was hot out.
And always, always, there was a note.
Not love letters. Not sweet little confessions. Katsuki didn’t do things like that.
His notes were handwritten on scrap paper or the backs of old training rosters. Sometimes he’d shove them under the lid, sometimes tape them to the soy sauce packet. They were gruff. Abrasive. Barely even counted as “nice.”
But they were perfect.
“Eat the whole fucking thing. I saw your breakfast. That was not food.”
“Don’t forget your knee brace. If you twist it again, I’m icing it myself, and I won’t be gentle.”
“This is your reward for not getting concussed last week. Again. Moron.”
Eijirou read them like prayers. He tucked them into his wallet, smoothed them flat and kept them between pages of his mission journal. Some mornings, when he was tired and sore and doubting everything, he’d take one out and reread it with a grin pressed into the back of his hand.
He never mentioned them aloud. Not directly. But sometimes he’d draw a cartoon version of the note in return—Katsuki rendered chibi-style, arms crossed, frowning dramatically with a speech bubble that read “Eat, bastard.”
He left those sketches on the fridge.
Katsuki never commented. But they always disappeared by morning.
Which was kind of the same thing as asking him to keep going, wasn’t it?
Because Katsuki didn’t do passive approval. He wasn’t the type to offer permission with soft words or open expressions. He didn’t encourage with affirmations. But he allowed things. He endured them. He let them happen—and when it came to Eijirou, especially, he never stopped him. He’d grumble, complain, sling barbed comments like armor, but he never actually asked Eijirou to stop sketching him. Never took the pen out of his hand. Never scoffed so hard that it made Eijirou feel small. That had to mean something.
So when the Hero Collectors’ Series announced their latest limited-edition capsule set—highlighting the most popular pro heroes across the last fiscal quarter, complete with stats and foil variants and a holographic insert for the “Top 10 Elite”—and Dynamight’s name was not just included but headlining, Eijirou didn’t react the way a colleague or even just a friend might have.
He didn’t just nod in passing or text a half-assed congratulations. He didn’t repost the PR announcement with a few emojis and go on with his day. He didn’t swing by the con booth and pick up the multipack like a normal fan might, smiling politely while flipping through the cards with idle curiosity. That wasn’t enough. Not for this.
Instead, he pulled out the full set of pens Katsuki had bought him for his birthday last year—the ones he’d circled in a catalog and left on the coffee table for weeks without comment, pretending not to notice when Katsuki ordered them and pretended not to care when Eijirou opened the box with his name on the tag. They were expensive, imported, lacquer-handled with precision tips and refillable cartridges that made his hands feel important when he held them.
He cleared the table, not just of clutter but of everything—moved the fruit bowl, wiped down the surface, even lit one of the weirdly expensive candles Katsuki claimed was for “guests” but which had never been burned before. Then he sat down with the thickest piece of cardstock he could find and flattened it with both palms, like he was about to write scripture.
And then he drew him.
Not Dynamight. Not the media-trained, overproduced version the agencies liked to slap on billboards and breakfast cereal and the side of commuter trains. Not the explosive silhouette with his mouth fixed into a staged snarl and his quirk bursting at all angles like some special effects reel. Not the propaganda-poster face with the synthetic glare and tension in all the wrong places.
He drew Katsuki.
The real one. The one only he knew how to capture.
He started with the mouth, mid-yell, lips parted around something unmistakably Katsuki—probably some profanity, probably directed at him. Then the brow, slashed low over his eyes, but not angry. Determined. Alive. The kind of expression he only wore when he was absolutely locked into something he loved—training, cooking, fighting, teasing. His gauntlets were partially clicked into place, not fully deployed, just resting at that halfway point where it always looked like he was preparing to do something reckless. One foot was braced like he’d just pivoted out of the way of a blast. His pose was a little crooked. A little asymmetrical. It made the whole thing feel kinetic, like he might lurch off the page at any second and scold Eijirou for wasting his good ink.
He gave him a grin. Barely there. Just the whisper of a smirk curling at the corner of his mouth like he’d just landed a difficult combo move in a training sequence and was waiting for Eijirou to notice. And his eyes—he spent the most time on the eyes. They were open, bright, cutting through the page like they had something urgent to say, like they’d been searching for someone specific in a crowd and just found them.
Eijirou inked the lines once, then again, then a third time with a finer nib to tighten the edges. He blended the shadows under his collarbone with a water brush, added the faintest tint of scar tissue along the jaw where Katsuki had taken a blast during a mission in Hokkaido. He used three different shades of red for the accents on the hero suit and even let himself use the good gold for the belt buckle—the one he always rationed out because it was hard to replace.
His hand cramped somewhere around the fourth hour. His shoulders ached. He took a break to stretch and came back, not because it wasn’t done, but because he didn’t want to let it go yet. Because something about it felt too intimate to be over so quickly.
But eventually, he sat back in the chair and looked at it—not for mistakes, not for technical flaws, but for something else, some shadow of honesty. Some trace of feeling that had made it through the layers of paper and pigment.
And when he found it, when he felt it hit him low and warm and aching, he flipped the card over and stared at the blank side for a long time, pen poised and unmoving.
It took him five full minutes to write the note.
Tiny, cramped, hidden like a secret under a rug, the kind of writing you only find if you’re looking hard. He scribbled it right along the lower half, where a copyright stamp would go on a real card, tucked so close to the edge that the ink threatened to bleed off the page.
You always hated this kind of thing.
The noise. The photos. The fakeness of it all.
But I hope—if nothing else—that seeing this makes you feel like a kid again.
Like someone worthy of a card, a sticker, a stupid keychain in some gacha machine.
Because you were always my favorite pull. Even before I saw what was under the foil.
– E.
He didn’t say anything the next morning.
Didn’t make a show of it. Didn’t leave it out on the counter or tape it to the fridge. Instead, he slipped the card gently into Katsuki’s bento box, tucked right beside the sectioned-off portion of boiled egg, ginger pork, and the onigiri Katsuki always molded into those little rounded triangles with his palms still damp from the sink. The card bent slightly around the curve of a tangerine wedge. Eijirou had folded a paper towel under it to prevent the condensation from bleeding into the ink.
Katsuki wouldn’t see it until he got to the office. Probably not until lunch. He might not say anything about it at all. That was how he was—slow to react, slow to show, quicker to pretend something was stupid than to admit it made his chest feel full. Eijirou didn’t expect a response. He didn’t even need one.
But that night, when he got home and kicked his shoes off at the door, already halfway through unzipping his hoodie and wondering whether Katsuki had left any soup, he saw it: a sticky note tacked to the fridge with the magnetic bottle opener.
The paper was slightly torn on one edge, and the ink had smudged where a thumb had pressed down too hard.
You drew my jawline wrong.
Keep the pen though. It’s yours.
Thanks, I guess…
-K
Katsuki didn’t mention the card again.
Not that night, not the next morning, not even a week later when the trading cards officially hit store shelves and a limited edition run sold out within four minutes of launch. Fans posted videos of their unboxings with bright, flashy graphics and over-excited voices, squealing when they pulled the glittery Dynamight foil as if they’d won the lottery. Katsuki pretended not to notice, even as their names trended in tandem—#DynamightRarePull, #RedGemPromoArtLeak, #RedRiotFanBoy
Eijirou watched the surge with his cheek in his palm, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth as he scrolled through the chaos, amused by how absolutely furious Katsuki would be if he knew what the internet was saying about his smirk on the card art. (“It’s not a smirk, it’s my normal fucking face.” “You look like you just spotted me walking in and your day got 400% better.” “You wish, dumbass.”)
But Katsuki didn’t bring it up, didn’t seem to react at all, and Eijirou, for his part, didn’t push. He’d learned long ago that Katsuki was the kind of person who hoarded meaning like fire—hot to the touch, dangerous if handled too forcefully, but life-giving if you let it burn at its own pace. So he let it go. Or tried to.
Until one night, weeks later, when Eijirou came home early from a patrol in Yokohama, sweat still drying under his suit, hair wind-mussed and boots tracking bits of alley dust into their entryway. The lights were low in the apartment, the soft amber kind Katsuki only used when he was reading or winding down, and for a moment, Eijirou thought he might have missed him entirely—that Katsuki had gone to bed already, tucked into their too-small couch with a blanket pulled up to his chin like some feral cat pretending not to need warmth.
But as he rounded the corner into the kitchen, footsteps light, voice half-formed on the tip of his tongue to ask about dinner, he stopped short.
Katsuki was at the table, elbows braced against the wood, spine curled forward in that stiff, tense way he got when he was thinking too hard and trying not to admit it. His hoodie was pushed up to the elbows, revealing the long, scarred lines of his forearms. The room smelled faintly of ink and grilled fish. A mug of tea had gone cold beside him.
And in front of him, cradled in the palm of one calloused hand, was a small, familiar rectangle of card stock.
Eijirou blinked.
It was the card. His card. The one he’d drawn weeks ago, hand-shaded and sealed with a note he’d barely had the nerve to write. The corners were slightly frayed now, as if it had been tucked somewhere tight. The surface had a soft crease through the middle like it had been bent, maybe folded to fit into something smaller.
And as Katsuki lifted his other hand, pencil between his fingers, Eijirou realized—he was redrawing it.
Not tracing. Not copying. Just… referencing. Studying it the way he studied mission maps or villain profiles, dissecting each angle with the kind of obsessive, quiet focus he usually reserved for training footage. There was a sketchbook open in front of him, pages thick and clean, and across the center spread was a half-finished drawing—his face. Eijirou’s face. Rendered in Katsuki’s jagged, mechanical linework, like an engineer trying to capture something too fluid for schematics. It wasn’t perfect, not even close. But it was… sweet. Earnest. Awkward in the same way first confessions were awkward. And the fact that Katsuki hadn’t torn the page out or scorched it from embarrassment felt like something seismic.
Eijirou didn’t speak for a long time. He just stood there, heartbeat louder than it should’ve been, watching as Katsuki paused, frowned, rubbed at the edge of the drawing with the heel of his hand, and then, without lifting his head, muttered—
“Don’t you dare say anything.”
The words weren’t cruel. They weren’t even sharp. If anything, they were soft. Defensive. Like he’d already run through the potential teasing in his head and was bracing for impact.
Eijirou swallowed around the heat in his throat.
“I wasn’t gonna,” he said, voice gentler than he meant it to be, like the moment might break if he spoke too loud. “It looks good.”
Katsuki grunted. “It looks like shit.”
Eijirou padded into the room, dragging his fingers through his hair, and dropped into the seat across from him, letting his eyes fall to the drawing. “It looks like me.”
“No, it fuckin’ doesn’t,” Katsuki snapped, though he didn’t sound mad. Just… frustrated. With himself. “Mouth’s off. Nose is wrong. You’ve got those… stupid sparkly eyes and I can’t draw light reflections for shit. Tried three different pencils and none of ’em work.”
Eijirou felt something twist low in his chest. A slow, fond ache.
“You kept the card.”
Katsuki’s hand froze. Just for a second. Then he snorted, low and defensive, and flipped the sketchbook shut with more force than necessary. “Only ’cause I needed reference. Don’t get weird about it.”
“I’m not,” Eijirou said, grinning in spite of himself. “I just thought you threw it out. Or, I dunno, recycled it. Used it to level a table leg or something.”
“Shut up.”
“Did you keep the foil one too?”
Katsuki side-eyed him with all the menace of a man caught mid-vulnerability and still pretending he wasn’t emotionally compromised. “I’m gonna kill you.”
Eijirou laughed. He leaned forward across the table, chin propped in his palm, and let the warmth of it all settle over him—the hum of the apartment, the smudged pencil marks, the lingering scent of Katsuki’s tea.
“You’re a good artist,” he said softly.
Katsuki scoffed. “No, I’m not.”
“Well,” Eijirou said, tipping his head to the side, “You’re trying. Plus, you’re you, so you’re kinda good at everything. And that’s already, like, a hundred points above most people.”
Katsuki didn’t answer right away. His eyes dropped to the closed sketchbook. His fingers tapped once against the edge of the card, thumb catching on the bent corner. And then, barely audible—
“I wanted to get your nose right.”
Eijirou’s breath hitched.
He reached out, slow and open-palmed, and gently nudged the card back toward Katsuki, watching as those stubborn hands received it like something breakable.
“You did,” he said, voice low. “You got it perfect.”
It didn’t happen on a special day. There was no anniversary, no campaign win, no celebration to pin it to. Just a morning like any other, the kind that slipped in quietly through the gauzy kitchen curtains, full of soft light and low sounds—the hum of the fridge, the faint gurgle of the rice cooker, the muffled rustle of socks against wood flooring. The kind of morning that could easily go unnoticed, folded into the blur of all the others. But that was exactly what made it feel significant, maybe. That it didn’t need to be exceptional to matter.
Eijirou had woken up first, rare as that was. The city was still half-asleep when he padded into the kitchen, hair sticking up in wild spirals, hoodie sleeves too long around his fingers. He moved quietly, not out of necessity, but habit, grounding himself in the domestic rhythm they’d built together—turn on the kettle, wash the leftover bowl from last night’s snack, count the eggs in the fridge and think, Yeah, this is enough. He didn’t even look at the little stack on the counter until after he’d sat down, chin in one hand, staring blankly into his tea like it might whisper the weather forecast.
The cards were waiting there—no wrapping, no ribbon, just a neat rubber-banded bundle of hand-cut rectangles, edges slightly uneven in that way that spoke of long nights and deliberate effort. Each one had been laminated by hand, pressed and sealed and trimmed down with craft scissors that now lived in the junk drawer beside the spare batteries and expired coupons. There was no note. No explanation.
Eijirou recognized them instantly.
He blinked at the top card. Then again, slower. His mouth tugged into something soft and breathless as he reached for it, fingertips brushing over the clear film like it might smudge.
It was a drawing. Of him. Not as Red Riot, not the version that graced magazine covers or agency posters or Saturday morning cartoons. Just him. In their apartment. Mid-laugh, one hand flung wide like he’d just said something ridiculous and knew it, eyes half-lidded with amusement, hair tied messily at the nape in a way that only happened when he was cooking or cleaning or fighting with the bathroom mirror.
The art style wasn’t polished. It was rough, scrawled in mechanical pencil and shaded with a kind of untrained urgency that made the whole thing feel achingly alive. The lines were uneven, some too dark, some barely there. But it was honest. And it was unmistakably Katsuki.
Eijirou flipped to the next one.
And then the next. And then the next.
Every card in the deck—thirty in total, if he counted right—was a different version of him. Sometimes with his hair down, sometimes in uniform, sometimes mid-bite with his cheeks puffed out or on the couch half-asleep with a blanket tangled around his legs. There were a few that looked like mission sketches, drawn from memory or security footage. Others were domestic, almost embarrassingly so—him brushing his teeth, singing along to the radio, hunched over the table with marker on his nose and his tongue poked out in concentration. Each one had a different little title in the corner, handwritten in blocky, all-caps pen.
“RED RIOT: SPAGHETTI DEMON.”
“RED RIOT: CRIES AT MOVIE TRAILERS.”
“RED RIOT: THREATENS TO BITE COWORKER (IDLE).”
There were so many. More than Eijirou knew what to do with. He sat with them, spread across the table like a fan of memories, heart thudding so hard he could feel it in the soles of his feet.
Katsuki appeared in the doorway maybe five minutes later, sleep still clinging to the corners of his eyes, hair wild, hoodie riding up on one hip. He had a spoon in one hand and an expression that wavered somewhere between irritation and embarrassment.
“You weren’t supposed to see them yet,” he grumbled, crossing the room without looking directly at Eijirou. “I was gonna put them in that stupid art box thing of yours. Or leave ’em under your pillow or some shit.”
Eijirou didn’t answer at first. Couldn’t, really. His throat felt like it had been filled with the weight of a dozen unsaid things. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse and bright all at once.
“You drew all of these?”
Katsuki rolled his eyes like it should’ve been obvious. “No, I stole them from some middle schooler in Shibuya.”
Eijirou laughed. Loudly, and without shame, the kind of laugh that made his whole body move.
Katsuki looked at him then. Just for a second. Then he stepped closer, dropped the spoon on the counter, and leaned against the edge of the table like he couldn’t quite decide whether to stay or flee.
“I started with just one,” he muttered, eyes fixed on the floor. “That night you left that damn card in my bento. Thought I’d draw it. Try to see what the hell you saw in me.”
Eijirou’s smile faltered—not because he was upset, but because something about the sentence knocked the air out of him, quiet and slow.
“I see you,” he said, not softly, but deliberately, like a statement of fact. “Always have.”
Katsuki let out a low breath. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then reached for the deck, flipping through it with practiced familiarity until he landed on one specific card—an earlier sketch, shakier than the others, where the shading was uneven and the mouth was off. Eijirou remembered that moment. It was the night of the vending machine debacle, when they’d sprinted through the rain to get Katsuki’s forgotten wallet and ended up laughing under the awning of a 7-Eleven, soaked to the bone, high on nothing but sugar and warmth and the knowledge that no one else had ever made them feel that way.
Katsuki turned the card toward him. “This one fucking sucks.”
Eijirou looked at it. Then at him.
“No,” he said. “This one’s perfect.”
He stood. Walked the short distance around the table. Reached for Katsuki’s face like he’d done it a hundred times before—which he had—and tilted it toward him gently, thumb brushing just beneath his cheekbone. Then he leaned in and kissed him. Not urgent, not hungry, just a slow, reverent press of lips to lips, like a signature at the bottom of a letter he’d been writing for years.
Katsuki didn’t pull away. If anything, he leaned into it, hands finding the fabric of Eijirou’s hoodie, curling into it like an anchor. When they separated, barely, Katsuki’s forehead found his shoulder.
“You’re a sap,” he said quietly, eyes closed.
Eijirou smiled into his hair. “Yeah,” he whispered, voice low. “But you love me.”
Katsuki huffed. “You’re lucky you’re hot.”
Later that day, Eijirou found a new note in his bento box.
Written neatly, with Katsuki’s usual aggressive precision, the edges of the paper folded twice and slipped next to a little chocolate-covered chestnut.
You’re the rarest card in the deck.
Don’t trade yourself away.
All mine.
– K.
He folded it three times and slid it into the inner pocket of his jacket, right next to his pro license. He would carry it there for years.
Because he knew, without needing to be told again, that the best parts of Katsuki Bakugou were the ones you didn’t pull on the first try. The ones that came after time and patience and too many attempts to count. The ones that felt like treasure when you finally held them.
One of one. Always.