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Katsuki doesn’t cry easily. He can count on one hand how many times he’s shed tears— once when took a nasty fall as a kid and broke his leg, another after the Big Fight with Deku at ground gamma, and most recently, seeing Deku lying in that damned hospital bed that katsuki put him in, stripped of the one thing that he thought would tie them together forever in a constant game of chase.
So, he’s shocked when he feels that unfamiliar lump in his throat and prickle of his waterline as he holds a hanger with a secondhand cardigan under Deku’s neck.
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They weren’t “together” but they were never apart. When the nerd said he needed business casual clothes for school meetings and conferences, obviously Katsuki was going with him (he didn’t trust that fashion disaster to know the difference between slacks and a goddamn tutu).
Izuku's chipper “Thanks, Kacchan!” was followed by a blinding smile so big it made Katsuki’s eyes squint with the sheer brightness. Katsuki always met him outside the UA gates after hours to carpool home together. They lived in the same building, on the same floor, across the hallway from each other. Eijirou called it convenient, and Katsuki called bullshit— he and his parents had to fight landlord into securing both apartments once they graduated UA, not that the nerd knows. As far as Deku was concerned they lucked out when apartment hunting and found places so close.
“Whatever, we should go to some stores on Saturday before the foot traffic.” Katsuki started walking, knowing Izuku would follow. If they were lucky, they could get what they needed early in the morning and beat any weekend slowpokes to the good shit.
“Okay! Can we go by the new thrift store? Ochako told me there were some good finds.” Izuku adjusted the straps of the yellow backpack he still brought to school despite being a whole ass teacher.
“Hah? You can’t afford new shit on two salaries?” Katsuki wrinkled his nose when he thought of the overtime this little workaholic could wrack up in a single week. “Are you overspending or some shit?”
Izuku shook his hands and head in tandem with ugency, “I’m not overspending! I just don’t want to blow my paycheck on a few sweaters.”
“Idiot, you know I can cover whatever you can’t.” Katsuki grumbled, mollified with Izuku’s financial reasoning. “We don’t need to go to the goddamn thrift store.” “But I don’t want you to feel obligated-“
“Shut up, you’re annoying me already. Be ready by 9, I’ll pick you up.”
“Okay, Kacchan,” Izuku finally acquiesced with an exasperated huff betrayed by the upturned corners of his mouth. “I’ll go to the thrift store some other time. Maybe with Shoto and Ochako next weekend…”
Katsuki felt his eye twitch.
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They got a head start Saturday morning— at the shopping mall by 9am sharp when it opened and began their rounds. While Izuku hummed and hawed over designer polos and button ups, Katsuki would silently (and not so silently) nudge him in the right direction.
“What the shit is that.”
“It’s a shirt, Kacchan.”
“It’s a fucking disaster with sleeves.”
“We are in public!” Izuku hissed, bowing to a mother who rushed her son away from the foul mouthed blonde. He turned back to katsuki who was glaring at the garment as though his eyes alone would make it explode on the hanger.
“What’s wrong with green anyway,” Izuku challenged, “you said I looked good in everything.”
It took the willpower of a thousand monks to keep Katsuki’s ears from turning an embarrassing shade of red but he was able to hide the flicker of shame with irritation. A skill he had perfected by being friends with the shorter man for so many decades.
“The words from a drunk fool 3 years ago, you dweeb.” He dismissed and gestured to the lime green polo. “And clearly, I wasn’t considering lime green as a viable option for any fuckin’ garment. No one can wear that shit, I don’t care what you look like.”
“Ashido wore a similar color to the hero gala and I didn’t hear any complaints from you!” Izuku argued while putting the polo back on the rack.
“It was chartreuse, fuckass, and she has pink skin and hair, of course the rules are different for her.” Katsuki countered, bristling as Izuku’s hand hovered above a candy apple red turtleneck. “Alright, that’s enough. You got chinos and corduroy slacks, we should find something to go over your button ups.”
Izuku whipped around, successfully distracted from the complementary color of his hair. “Oh! I’ve been wanting a cardigan or a light sweater anyway. It gets cold in the teacher’s lounge and I was going to send a work order in but…”
He rambled on as they paid and left the store, waving his hands around as he described the problematic nature of UA paperwork. “It’s not even difficult to do! The workers are nice so I know it’s not them, it’s just the bureaucracy that kills me!” Finally pausing to take a breath, Izuku looks up to the shop sign they were standing under and lets in a soft breath, eyebrows slightly furrowed but lips trembling with the effort to stay neutral. “But I thought…”
The blond scoffed haughtily. “Didn’t think I was gonna let you go with the only two morons who give your sense of style a run for its money, did you?”
Thrifting wasn’t his thing but he couldn’t deny it was infinitely more rewarding to find a rare or vintage piece of clothing at a quarter of the original price. Still, Katsuki didn’t find much enjoyment out of the actual activity since it was too unpredictable and it took forever to get to the good shit. Luckily, the beaming smile on Izuku’s face lit a fire under Katsuki and he was determined to prove Izuku didn’t need Cheeks and Icyhot to find the good shit.
Since sweaters were on the agenda, Katsuki absentmindedly swiped through the hangers of lame graphic crewnecks, polyester shein garbage, and ambiguously stained hoodies. After a particularly offensive blazer (seriously, who puts zippers on a blazer??), Katsuki thought he was going to explode without so much as a drop of sweat but something caught his eye before he could detonate:
A cardigan. Yellow, soft, and knit.
The neckline was finely trimmed with a thicker white yarn— not quite as masculine with the trim but certainly not a woman’s article of clothing. The cut was straight, albeit baggy around the sleeve cuffs, and the three wooden buttons were on the left side.
“Oh! I like that, Kacchan!” Izuku’s chipper voice almost startled Katsuki, he hadn’t heard him wander back from the graphic tees. “It looks pretty warm, do you think?”
“Maybe,” Katsuki grunted, holding the hanger up to Izuku’s neck. With another cheesy smile, he tilted his head and stood stock still to let Katsuki assess the match.
It’s cute…
It’s too cute…
Suddenly, the pastel yellow softens the scar on Deku’s face and brings out the warm undertone of his skin. His slightly crooked smile seems to glow like the light reflecting off of the knit onto his chin. Katsuki’s reminded of the ugly yellow tie Deku wears at his UA job where he teaches the next generation of snot nosed brats to be the hero he thought he could never be again. Yellow like the cape on the mech suit Katsuki contributed to and personally helped engineer, designed to protect and defend the only person who understood the weight of that responsibility. Yellow like bruises Katsuki gave him to keep him from killing himself by pursuing heroism. Yellow like the embers that glow within him without a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting stomped out.
The tightness in his throat is both foreign and familiar. Like the pills he had to take during recovery getting stuck without water to wash them down. The prickle in his eyes felt like he was too close to one of his explosions and the smoke blew straight back into his face. The sudden sharpness in his sinuses was worse than any spicy hot pot he’d indulged in before. This was so stupid, it was just a fucking cardigan.
But it was Izuku’s cardigan.
It was his Izuku’s cardigan.
“It’ll do,” Katsuki shoves the hanger into the green freak’s arms and turns away quickly. “Let’s get it and go, I’m tired of shopping.”
“Okay, Kacchan,” Izuku laughs and shoulder checks him on the way to the counter, shaking his head like he knows something Katsuki doesn’t. It pisses him off so he winds up wrestling the guy 3 feet away from the exhausted cashier at the checkout lane.
Katsuki is left half dazed and blinking rapidly as he gets a little green head wriggling under his arm and he sees an arm flailing frantically, a tight yellow ball at the end of it.
He’d have to worry about it later, right now he needs to both strangle and pay for his Izuku.
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