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He gets the feeling it should be beautiful, that some part of him should be awe-inspired, transformed. Instead, all Katsuki can think is that his neck fucking hurts.
A droll hum of voices surrounds him, bouncing off the gilded walls of the basilica and enclosing him in a world of senseless sound. He drags his black surgical mask further up his nose, yanking on the brim of his baseball cap. Every click of a camera makes him flinch.
Above him, the frescoes swirl together in vibrant color, undulating fabrics and perfect golden hair and arms and torsos corded with absurd amounts of muscle. He spins until he makes himself slightly dizzy, trying to make out the vaguely religious story unfolding above his head. He doesn’t get it. Granted, he’s not here to get it—he’s only here to escape the stifling company of the other heroes for a breath—but the thought strikes him, annoying and insistent. Izuku would probably love this.
He wishes he could say the thought arises out of nowhere. That it isn’t the name his mind seems to orbit around: further away some days, swinging close on others, always on the same trajectory.
A glint of sun glances off of one of the frescoes’ golden carved frames and directly into Katsuki’s already exhausted eyes. He backs up a step, cursing under his breath as he nearly knocks a tourist over. Straightening, he rubs out the crick in his neck and turns to mutter in his best English, “Oh, sorry—”
The apology dies on his lips.
Much to his joy, he hasn’t grown a single inch since the last time they spoke, and to his even greater joy, not since their last year of high school. His hair is as delightfully wild as ever, and the second he recognizes Katsuki his hands still hover at his waist, partially in fists, as if his first instinct to take on his anxiety is to do so in a fight.
And yet there’s a degree of difference. Katsuki finds it in his eyes, peering over wire frames so thin they’re almost not there at all. The way he looks at Katsuki has grown muddy and complicated. They are not friends; they are not strangers. They are something much more vestigial than that.
Katsuki says, “Izuku?”
Izuku smiles, not like it’s an action, but like it’s something that just happens to him. “Kacchan,” he says, and laughs, the noise tinged with discomfort. “This is the last place I’d ever expect to find you.”
———
The river has a name. Katsuki’s long since forgotten it, lost in a dense mental catalogue of a million other foreign-sounding piazzas and palazzos. Trees lean over the edge of the retaining wall as if to drag their fingers along the stone walk below, and Katsuki and Izuku stick to their shadows in hopes of escaping the dazzling Roman sun. They walk. The rhythm is slow enough that it’s more of an amble, perhaps even a crawl. Though he is fiercely aware of Izuku beside him—his shoulder one shoulder away from his—Katsuki keeps his eyes on the water, its greenish-blue surface churned white by the milling passenger boats.
“How’s your mom?” Katsuki asks.
“Oh, she’s great. Staying busy, in her own way. Um. How are your parents?”
“Fine. Too nosy. As usual.” Mucky river scent is in his nose; Katsuki sniffs, but it doesn’t clear. “My mom asks about you.”
Izuku coughs. “My mom asks about you, too.”
Silence, the heavy, miasmic kind, penetrated only by the intermittent, harsh calls of the seagulls.
Finally Izuku says, “You’re not supposed to be here, are you?”
As is the case for most things, Katsuki’s first instinct is to be offended. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
Beads of sweat dapple Izuku’s forehead, slicking a few tiny curls to his face. “I thought the conference was supposed to be having lunch at one of the gardens.”
“And I can’t make my own fucking decisions?” Katsuki tears his hat from his head, raking a few fingers back through his hair, his scalp already prickly and warm with sweat. “I did the panel this morning. I’ll be at the dinner tonight. That should be more than enough outreach.”
“Aren’t they paying you to be here?”
Katsuki stops walking, abruptly. “If you want me to leave, just say that.”
“I’m not saying that,” Izuku says. His hands hover again. “I don’t want that.”
Katsuki watches him for a while, Izuku’s eyes the same shade as the river beside them, catching the sun like the ripples across its surface. Katsuki’s chest is tight; any air that enters his lungs struggles to leave them. Time is something palpable, a vacuum, an utterly claustrophobic lack of space. He slips his hands into his pockets and starts walking again. “You’re studying something?”
“Well I suppose I’m always studying something. That’s my job.”
He harrumphs. “I mean you’re studying something here, dickass?”
“Yeah. I’m presenting on it tomorrow,” Izuku says. “We’re looking into Roman myths for evidence of Quirk factors. A lot of it is extrapolation, but if we find something concrete—it could mean Quirks existed long before anyone thought they did.”
Katsuki frowns. “That sounds dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Like it would—I don’t know. Change everything about how we understand history. And right now, for that matter.”
Izuku smiles again. There is true joy in it. Katsuki wishes that didn’t annoy him so much. “Is that a bad thing?”
They pass by a sleepy-eyed man selling pastries from a metal cart: colorful tarts and rusks and slices of buttered cake. He says something to them in Italian, which Katsuki does not understand, then English, which Katsuki only somewhat understands. Katsuki raises a hand to wave him off, but Izuku stops, peering closely at one of the cake slices.
He backs up again and utters a string of perfect Italian, gesturing at Katsuki. The man smiles in response, and offers an apologetic shake of his head. With a polite grazie, Izuku starts down the walk again, no explanation, like it’s nothing.
“Kacchan.”
“What?”
“You’re giving me a weird look.”
“I just—” He feels himself beginning to sulk, but it’s like quicksand. The more he struggles not to, the more, in fact, he sulks. “I didn’t know you spoke Italian.”
“I’ve been here for six months. You pick up on some things.”
Katsuki winces. “I didn’t know. I didn’t even know you’d left Japan.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” he says, and after a beat he adds: “Now.”
Briefly, Katsuki contemplates throwing him into the river. It’s only because there are too many witnesses that he ultimately decides against it. “You’re going to regret this,” he snaps. “You already are regretting this. I know that. You can write your papers and go to your conferences but I know in the back of your head you’re still thinking about it. About leading the rescue missions, blasting villains to fucking nowhere, about—I don’t know. Kissing babies. About being a hero, Izuku. About—”
Being beside me. He swallows the words mere seconds before they escape him.
Something in Izuku’s expression shifts towards ruefulness, and all at once Katsuki knows he’s heard the words anyhow. “I don’t want to have this conversation again,” he says. “I don’t really see the point. Look at us! We’re in Rome. There’s centuries worth of more important stuff happening here.”
Katsuki scoffs. “More important than us?”
But Izuku shakes his head. “Oh, there wasn’t an us. You know there wasn’t an us. Not like that.”
Katsuki inhales and it hurts, like someone’s thrust a piece of glass into his sternum. “I—”
“Do you want to know what I would say if we weren’t having this conversation?” Izuku says. “If we were just catching up in a cafe somewhere?”
Katsuki’s lip curls with utter vitriol. “Oh. Do tell.”
Izuku steps forward. Lays a hand on Katsuki’s shoulder, hesitates, lets it drop into his palm. “It’s good to see you,” he says after a beat, and his eyes linger on the cobblestoned ground before lifting to Katsuki’s face. “Honestly.”
Someone calls his name—not his name as he knows it or as Izuku has shaped it but his name as it is to the world: Dynamight? It’s a question and a greeting, teeming with excitement, and Katsuki turns his head to look back towards the bridge. A small group of girls has gathered, waving and holding up their phones, giggling to themselves. Katsuki grimaces, but offers a wave back.
When he turns back to Izuku, he’s no longer there.
———
“No, I am not being dramatic, you are trying to fucking murder me.”
Todoroki, because he’s Todoroki, has no reaction to this searing accusation. In fact, his only response is to pull the tie tighter against Katsuki’s neck, as if to deliberately yank the remaining breath from his throat. “If I wanted to kill you,” he says, dusting off Katsuki’s lapels, “there’s plenty of more effective methods to do so.”
Katsuki brushes him off, leaning against the bathroom sink, its exposed porcelain bowl biting into the small of his back. The bathroom is dark and close, all deep black marble and gold accents, the floor checkered like pool tiles. The syrupy sound of jazz trickles in from the main ballroom, and Katsuki regards Todoroki a bit warily, tugging at his grenade-shaped cuff links. “You say that like you’ve thought about it.”
“I have once or twice.”
Katsuki raises his head, two seconds from snatching Todoroki by his starched collar. “Oh, you ass—”
The bathroom door opens and promptly bonks Katsuki in the temple with just enough force to remind him he has a skull. Kaminari pokes his head in, reads the look on Katsuki’s face, and shies back again, holding the door in front of him as his shield. “Are you two done yet? We’re getting absolutely swarmed by paparazzi in there, and if I have to answer one more question about my favorite Italian food, I swear, I may fry my own brain for good.”
Katsuki’s teeth grit into a deranged smile. “What if I do it for you? Free of charge.”
Kaminari shudders and springs across the room, grabbing Todoroki’s arm. “Gah! He’s doing it again. The Murder God thing. Save me, Shouto?”
As if he’s just been roused out of an episode of deep thought, Todoroki says, “Tiramisu.”
Katsuki frowns at him, then at Kaminari. “Is he casting a fucking spell on me?”
“No,” Todoroki continues, a hand to his chin. “Tiramisu, the dessert. A lot of desserts are too sweet for me, but if it’s done right I find—”
Katsuki pulls the door open and the noise rushes up at them—an incoherent babble of Italian and Japanese and everything else in between, all set to the soothing countermelody of a saxophone over the speakers. “Save it for your adoring fans,” Katsuki snaps, waving Kaminari and Todoroki in before him.
To his dismay, Kaminari is right. With dinner long since served and the last plates of panna cotta cleared, the venue’s transformed into a glittering, glorified press conference, dots of heroes dancing through masses of writhing cameras and microphones like circus performers. Katsuki is already planning his escape route when he’s accosted by a bright-eyed Italian journalist, holding one of those small fuzzy microphones in his face. Something something hero ranking. Something something enjoying Rome? Something something the future. The future. That one he doesn’t know. He never thinks about it—no; he is always never thinking about it. There’s too much of the past he’s yet to trace over.
He murmurs a few answers and forgets them the second they leave his mouth. His interpreter’s somewhere around here, but he’s lost track of her, and he welcomes the excuse to not understand anyone. He waves a hand and retreats to a table at the far left corner, white tablecloth and a tower of rainbow confections. Tiny pears covered in pearl glitter, wax pumpkins and oranges in muffin tins, a carrot the size of his thumb.
Katsuki takes one of the miniature pears, soft as clay in his fingers, its underside dusted summertime red. Here it is again, swinging into its periapsis: Izuku would love this.
It’s surprisingly chewy, sweet and pliable like gnawing on a gob of fondant. He would enjoy it if not for a distinct, nutty flavor he recognizes from the last time he tasted it: in a seemingly innocent sugar cookie that bubbled hives in his mouth so fat he could not breathe around them.
Katsuki’s hand goes to his throat, as though he can scratch away the itch climbing down the inside of it. His tongue is thick, heavy, moving it the same as pushing a great damp stone around his mouth. He shoves the sleeves of his suit up, itching at his fire-hot skin until it cracks and bleeds.
Kaminari’s joined him at the table, though Katsuki can’t remember when he got there. “Marzipan?” he says, picking up one of the tiny oranges and holding it to the light. “I’m surprised Murder God Dynamight himself would put something with this much sugar in his body.”
Kaminari pauses then, narrowing his eyes. “Hey, man. Are you okay?”
“What?” His voice is insubstantial and gravelly. “Yeah. Just—need a little fresh air.”
It occurs to him that he’s wheezing. He turns his back to the room, scrambling to loosen his tie—even a centimeter would be enough, just a centimeter more air would be enough. His fingers tremble too badly. He coughs, coughs again. The third one is quieter.
Water. He’ll drink water and rinse his mouth out and sit down somewhere, wait until it passes. Because it’ll pass. It always passes.
Katsuki staggers to the beverage table, swaying somewhat on his feet, and nearly pitches over. By then his tongue hangs out of his mouth, every breath a thin whistle, like he’s breathing through a straw.
Sounds melt together, the clink of a glass is a cymbal crash, the high whine of a violin is a human cry. Through the fog, a hand digs into his shoulder. Green eyes bore into his, deep and moving as a river. “Kacchan,” Izuku says. He takes him by both shoulders. “Kacchan. What did you eat?”
Katsuki tries to speak, but he can’t—his words are only a weaker and weaker sputter.
Izuku searches for something in his inside pocket. Katsuki can’t look at his face, so he watches his hands instead. Scarred, deft, purposeful.
He catches a flash of yellow and orange plastic before he hits the ground, too weak to stand. Izuku’s leaning over him, and the music is quieter, and the voices are louder. The camera flashes have stopped.
“Can you breathe?” Izuku asks him.
His only response is a cough. He can’t remember when the room got so dark.
A thick needle sinks into his thigh. It’s a hot flash of pain, and then, blissfully, nothing.
———
Katsuki’s eyelids droop over his eyes, heavy as lead. It’s a physical strain to lift them, and he regrets it the second he does—a sickly yellow light lancing into his corneas. He opens his mouth with a gasp. The back of his throat is pockmarked and raw, as if someone’s sanded it down with a pumice stone.
“Kacchan?”
Katsuki turns his head on the pillow, blinks until his vision clears and he recognizes Izuku’s worried face. The second their eyes meet, Izuku lets out a sigh and crumples at the bedside. “Kacchan,” he exhales. “Oh, thank goodness.”
Katsuki stares at him for a second, mapping the perfect whorl of his wild hair from the center of his head. Izuku’s jacket is missing, his dress shirt wrinkled, glasses resting haphazardly on the edge of the side table. The pieces are coming back to Katsuki now—the dessert tower, the aptly timed epinephrine injection, what must have been a hasty ride to the nearest emergency room. They’re hemmed in by papery curtains, an urgent symphony of Italian voices just on the other side of the veil. Katsuki’s eyes trail from the thin needle at the nexus of his elbow, up the slim clear pipe and to the IV drip. His entire life is a slow green beep on the screen behind it.
“I’ll go get the others,” Izuku says. “They’ll want to know you’re okay.”
“Izu—” His voice sounds like someone grinding stones together. He clears his throat and tries again. “Izuku. You kept it?”
He stares at him blankly for a moment until his expression flickers with realization. “The EpiPen?”
Katsuki nods.
“I…” Izuku shakes his head, his eyes scraping the tiled floor. “I don’t know. I guess I…I just. Got in the habit of carrying it everywhere.”
Katsuki grips the bedsheets tossed over his legs, the backs of his hands still red and angry. He can see it now. They’re sitting on the floor of Katsuki’s bedroom, in the soft little puddle of light left behind by the cheap IKEA lamp on his nightstand. Izuku holds the clunky device in his hand, pressing it gingerly to the outside of Katsuki’s thigh—plastic case still on, needle stowed. It’s weird. Katsuki asks him, What’s weird? Izuku frowns and says: That I have to stab you to save you. At that, and at the genuine distress on Izuku’s face, Katsuki just laughs. But you would? If it came to that?
Izuku says, In a heartbeat.
Izuku, now, pushes back from his chair and gets to his feet, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. “Look, forget about all of that. Where the hell was your EpiPen?”
Katsuki looks away. “Forgot it.”
Izuku narrows his eyes at him with unapologetic skepticism, an expression Katsuki pretends not to see. “And why the hell were you eating marzipan?”
“Is that what it was? It just looked…I don’t know. Colorful.”
“Kacchan, you—” Izuku groans and drags his hands into his face. “You have to take this more seriously. I don’t care if you’re embarrassed about it, or whatever it is, but it could kill you. It almost did.”
“It’s nothing I can help,” Katsuki snaps. “I’m not fucking embarrassed about it.”
Looking at him through his fingers, Izuku asks, “You work with Todoroki pretty often, don’t you? Doing patrols and stuff?”
“What the hell does Icy Hot have to do with this?”
“Answer the question.”
“Yes,” Katsuki allows, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He feels strangely lightheaded all of a sudden. “Yes, I guess we do end up on a lot of the same missions.”
“And in a lot of the same interviews. And in a lot of the same circles. You’re friends. Right?”
Katsuki’s lip curls—this is a dangerous word to him, but lucky for Izuku he doesn’t have the energy right now to argue against it. “Why are you asking me all of this?”
“He had no idea you had a nut allergy, Kacchan. He told me as many times as you’ve eaten together you’ve never brought it up. Kaminari didn’t know either; he thought you were having a bad panic attack. I get the sense that no one knew. No one but me,” Izuku says, and lets the words dangle between them for a moment, thick with accusation. The bubble of silence swells and swells and at last it bursts. “Why? Why the hell would you keep something like that a secret? If I hadn’t been there, Kacchan, you would have…you would have…”
He covers his mouth with a hand and half turns away, the last of his words a small, defeated squeak. Katsuki winces.
“It would have been my own fault,” he says after a beat, his voice still a thin croak. “I don’t need everyone to make a big fuss over it, like you’re doing right now. Nuts are easy enough to avoid most of the time. It’s not a big deal.”
Izuku turns in a slow circle for a moment, contemplating. Finally he returns to the hospital bed, easing down on the edge of it. “God,” he says, and his face splits into a smile, as sudden and quietly revolutionary as daybreak. “I get it now.”
Katsuki scowls. “What the fuck are you on about?”
“You really can’t help anyone if they don’t want to help themselves, can you?” Izuku says. He reaches over, taking his glasses from the table and setting them on the bridge of his nose again. “Sometimes I wonder if we really loved each other. Or did we just want to own each other?”
As if to press away the furrow of skin between his brows, Katsuki reaches out, his hand brushing Izuku’s face. “Either,” he says. “Both. You win, okay? No one fucking knows me like you do, and I am tired of pretending like anyone else ever can.”
Izuku’s mouth parts, his bottom lip shiny with saliva. He covers Katsuki’s hand with his own. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m sorry,” Katsuki tells him. “I’m saying you can have me, however you want me. Just don’t—don’t make me live without you again.”
Izuku watches him without speaking, long enough for the suspense to nearly uncoil Katsuki, leave him in a heap upon the hospital bed. Then Izuku laughs, turning his cheek into their joined hands, pressing his lips to Katsuki’s palm. “If I’d known this is all it would take to get you to be honest for once, I would’ve snuck almonds into all your cookies back then.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“I’m joking,” he says, lowering their hands. “I’m just—I’m so glad you’re okay, and I’m sorry your dessert turned on you.”
Katsuki’s only reply to that is a snort. “As if I’m gonna let some shitty sugar Play-Doh take me out.”
Izuku asks him, “Can I make it up to you?”
“How?”
He smiles. This one is intentional. “I know a place.”
———
The place is a tall red brick building in a quiet neighborhood sequestered away from the city center, its curling black iron railings almost belonging more to Bourbon Street than Rome. Katsuki thinks at first that it’s a hotel, but beyond the front door is a cramped foyer and a towering staircase, winding all the way to the top.
Izuku leads him to an elevator the size of a shoe closet, his hand tight around Katsuki’s, as if he’s afraid he’ll fall over if he lets him go. “I spent so much time here that it actually cost me less to rent a place than to keep booking hotel rooms,” Izuku says as the elevator doors rumble shut, and Katsuki’s not thinking about it, about the half inch of space between their chests, the minty smell of Izuku’s shampoo wafting just underneath his nose. “It’s nothing extravagant, but it’s cozy. You’ll see.”
So it’s out of the elevator and into a dark condo, stars peering in through the windows, one of which is half open, soft wind blowing through. Izuku taps the light switch and illuminates this tiny oasis: a cozy living room, slouching couch and overlapping burlap rugs, a circular dining table covered in papers all decorated with Izuku’s frantic scrawl. A small kitchenette, vintage refrigerator, tea kettle the same lacquered cherry red. A narrow hallway leads away into nowhere.
He’s right—it’s far from extravagant. But Katsuki’s beginning to see that this is exactly what’s so Izuku about it.
Izuku watches his face for a moment, before he leans over and shucks off his shoes and makes for the fridge, laying out various plastic tubs of ingredients on the wooden countertop. “Have you had tiramisu before?”
If he weren’t still so woozy from the flood of antihistamines in his system, he would laugh. “No,” he says, taking a container of mascarpone and turning it in his hands with mild distrust, like it’s something radioactive. “But I’ve heard good things.”
It’s easier than he expects it to be, more assembling than making—a careful layered puzzle of coffee-soaked ladyfingers, cream, ladyfingers, more cream. Izuku piles something into a sieve and hands it to him. “This just goes over the top.”
“Is it peanut dust?” he asks, just to piss him off.
“Of course. Only the finest ingredients for you,” Izuku says, just to piss him off.
With perhaps a bit too much force, Katsuki dusts the cocoa powder over the top, grimacing whenever any of the finely ground chocolate finds its way onto the counter. He’s so immersed in applying this finishing touch that he almost doesn’t realize how quiet Izuku’s gotten. Until he does, and then he can’t stop realizing it. He can sense his gaze on him, burdened with the knowledge that if he turns his head now, they will lock eyes, and everything Katsuki has yet to say will in fact spill out of him, in one way or another.
Izuku says, softly, “Shit.”
It works. Katsuki looks at him: leaned against the countertop, all his edges soft beneath the light, a stray dash of whipped cream painting his cheek. “What?”
“I just remembered,” Izuku says. “Technically this stuff is supposed to stay in the fridge overnight. You know, so the cookies can get all soft?”
The edge of a smile creeps along Katsuki’s face before he can stop it. His voice falls just short of a question: “Is that so.”
The next moments occur too quickly for Katsuki to properly process them, a flipbook with most of its pages missing. He sets the sieve down. One hand is on Izuku’s cheek. The other skims the side of his waist, rests—tentatively and then with purpose—on his hip.
Izuku starts, “Kacchan—?”
“Hang on.” Katsuki swipes a thumb over Izuku’s cheek, catches the dollop of whipped cream lingering there. His eyes never leaving Izuku’s, a silent dare, he licks the cream from his fingers.
“Now,” says Katsuki, wiping his mouth. “You were going to ask me something?”
He does, by gripping Katsuki’s hand and pulling him closer until their mouths collide.
It’s automatic. Katsuki leans into him, his hand rising to cup Izuku’s face, gently nudging his glasses from his eyes. The taste of him is bittersweet, espresso and sugar, pure nostalgia. Sound fills his ears—Katsuki’s unsure whether it’s the breeze or the rush of his own blood.
Izuku turns them, until Katsuki’s holding the edge of the countertop, Izuku between his arms. Katsuki breaks for a moment and smiles, knowing what Izuku’s going to do, as well as if the thought was his own.
Izuku pushes himself up onto the counter, not before politely shoving the tin of tiramisu out of the way, of course. He takes Katsuki by his tie, pulls him back in for more. Katsuki laughs into his mouth.
“Kacchan,” Izuku exhales.
“What?”
“Stay here. At least until the tiramisu’s done.”
Katsuki eyes the layered dessert and its relatively staggering distance from the fridge, and thus from completion. He grins, his forehead against Izuku’s. “At least?”
Izuku says, “At least.”
The fog in his head could be the drugs, the lingering fatigue of an immune system which has just overexhausted itself. It could, though he hates to admit it, be Izuku.
Whatever the reason, his resistance is sapped. He’s been acting all day. Up here, there’s no reason to anymore.
He guides Izuku’s chin up with a gentle hand, relishes for a breath in the simple pleasure that is looking at Izuku while Izuku looks back. He says, “I think I could swing that.”