Chapter Text
Katsuki sits in a hospital bed, a tube down his throat and his head swimming with a light dose of sedatives, The Old Hag scolding his ear off.
Usually, he’d bark back, but he's… well, intubated at the moment. Damned villains, making everyone’s life harder, he thinks. This is precisely why he’s going to become a hero; he won’t lose like that again. The sludge villain will be his last loss, mark his fucking words.
Just. Ugh.
Now imagine if Deku had to deal with him.
“Fuck, brat, you really scared me there,” The Hag says. She makes no move to caress his hand like Auntie would to the nerd—good. He’s not into that mushy stuff, like Deku is. He doesn’t need to run to mommy to hold his hand when he gets a boo-boo. “Masaru’s cooking some good-ass salmon with rice, so I'm gonna go eat. Rest up. We’ll be sure to save some for you, Kats.” She reaches for his hair, and Katsuki resists the urge to dodge because, well, he’s fuckin’ hooked up to life support.
His Old Hag would also whoop him dead, but that’s a whole other beast entirely.
Finally, to the blonde’s relief, Mitsuki leaves. Katsuki stares at the ceiling, grateful for the silence. It’s just him and the sweat that clings to his hospital gown, now. He wants to sigh, but the intubation tube shoved down his throat (which, how much more fucking invasive could you get than that?) prevents him from doing so.
Damn. Sitting here reminds him of a time when he was young and dumb, when he and Deku were still friends before his diagnosis. He’d fallen off the playground and broke his ankle like a dumbass, and Deku was the one who ran to Auntie and the hag to get Katsuki to the hospital. Funnily enough, they were both in tears.
Katsuki doesn’t remember the last time he cried.
He thinks of how lively the hospital room was. The nurses had to shoo all his family away—Deku, The Hag, his Old Man, and Auntie, who wouldn’t leave even if he tried to tough it out alone. They never knew, but their presence left his heart warm for the remainder of the day.
Then, Deku was diagnosed quirkless, and...
...
Katsuki looks at the clock. It’s almost his bedtime, he notices. He tries his best to fall asleep despite the unexplainable pit in his stomach.
He dreams of fond memories; of ice cream stuck on the corners of Izuku’s mouth and his own when they were children; of the days they were inseparable and attached at the hip. He dreams of when they planned to become the top heroes of the world, their names up on the ranking list for everyone to see. They would theorize what Izuku’s quirk was, comparing Auntie’s quirk to Izuku’s father’s and mapping out the possibilities of them merging into one.
Katsuki wakes up to an empty room with tears in his eyes.
He blinks. The ceiling is blurry, fragile, watery with the onslaught of the sadness lining his waterline. He makes no move to wipe his tears away. They slide off his face and mix with his sweat, and Katsuki is all too glad that there’s no one around to see his moment of weakness—his moment of vulnerability.
He doesn’t understand how Deku could ever cry so freely.
The clock’s hand is on the seven, and that’s, well, late. Like, really fuckin’ late. Usually, on school days, his body would naturally wake him up at five. The sludge villain must’ve done more of a number on him than he had thought. That makes him pathetic, Katsuki thinks. He doesn’t want to be like Deku: frail, with no backbone to keep him upright. He’ll make it to Yuuei, and this is the last time he will find himself in a hospital room.
He’s… he’s not weak.
Reaching blindly, torso unmoving, for his phone (which is sitting unused on a stack of manga), he vaguely recalls The Old Hag dropping it off on the bedside table, but his memories blurred together after asphyxiating and falling unconscious. That’d do it to you, he figures. Fuckin’ shitty ass heroes who can’t do their job. He’s lucky All Might was somehow in the area, otherwise he’d probably be dead right then.
When he finally lifts his phone to his face and unlocks it, there’s two text messages: one from his Old Man, and the other from Auntie.
That’s... weird. He opens Auntie’s first because she never texts him. They only have each other’s numbers in case of an emergency, so there would be no reason for her to show up on his notifications.
In the back of his mind, yesterday plays again.
“Take a swan dive,” he had said.
His stomach churns.
Please get well soon, Katsuki-kun. Izu-kun and I will have mapo tofu waiting for you! ^^
Hello, Katsuki-kun. Do you know where Izuku-kun went?
Ah.
Surely, the nerd wouldn’t have...
He sends his Auntie a message.
No. I’ll keep you updated.
He opens the other text messages.
Get well soon. We left some manga for you in case you get bored. We will come by around noon to check up on you during her break. Your absence has been excused. =)
Katsuki-kun, do you know where Izuku-kun went? Inko-san called asking about him.
Subconsciously, unable to physically, Katsuki grits his teeth. Where the hell did the nerd go? He was doin’ just dandy after grabbing his stupid notebook back. Katsuki doesn’t know why he still worked on it when it was already so torn up. Fucking idiot.
He pulls up Deku’s contact; the only messages he sees are from one inviting the other to dinner. Damn Old Hag, always wanting Deku over, thinking they’re still friends even after his diagnosis. Ugh. Fuck.
He begins typing.
Deku. Where the fuck are you? Auntie won't shut up about you. Get your ass back over here before I come for it myself.
Deku. Where the fuck are you? Auntie won't shut up about you. Get your ass back over here before I come for it myself.
Deku. Where
Deku. Where
Nerd. Auntie keeps nagging about you going missing. Holler your ass home. I'll kill you if you don’t
Nerd. Auntie keeps nagging about you going missing. Holler your ass home. I’ll kill you if you don’t
Nerd. Forget what I said today. Auntie won’t fuckin’ shut up about you. Come home.
Nerd. Forget what I said today. Auntie won’t fuckin’ shut up about you. Come home.
Nerd. Auntie’s worried about you. Come home.
Nerd. Auntie’s worried about you. Come home.
Delivered 7:00PM
He stares at his screen. No response. He hasn’t even read it. Usually, Deku responds immediately, but this time, he doesn’t. Katsuki doesn’t want to think of why.
He drops his phone back onto the bedside table with a clatter and blindly picks up a volume of manga. He tries to read, but the words blur into each other, and his wrist is starting to get sore from holding all his shit up over his shitty intubated fucking head. He puts it back and decides to lay on his bed with nothing to do (as someone with a tube down their throat with thoughts swimming sedatedly in his head does) until the hag comes back.
--
Katsuki awakens to the sound of a door opening with a high pitched creak. He blinks the bleariness of his eyes out and sees his old hag at the door with Masaru behind her.
He reads the clock above the door and finds that it reads three in the afternoon. That is way past the scheduled time they were supposed to be here. Katsuki isn’t worried, though. Even though his family is known to be punctual. Of course he’s not. Even if both adults have their usually spiky hair even more distraught and tangled than usual with bags under their eyes, he is not concerned.
Hello, Katsuki-kun. Do you know where Izu-kun went?
His eye twitches.
“Hey, kid. Sorry for being late,” the hag says. He doesn’t like the lack of fight in her voice. “Had some business to take care of.” She takes a chair and drops into it with a muddled thump. The Old Man stays, takes another and sits in his seat more gracefully than his more abrasive counterpart. “You sure you don’t know where Izuku-kun went, brat?”
Katsuki stares at her.
She sighs. “Yeah. Figured.” She runs a hand through her hair. “We filed a missing person report. I’ve never seen Inko-san so... mad. Those fuckers didn’t give a shit about Izuku-kun, since he’s quirkless.” The hag drops her hand and clenches it, knuckles white. “It was only when they realized who I was did they get their shit together. Damned two-faced bastards!”
The Old Man rests his hand placatingly on her shoulder. “We’ll find him, Mitsuki.” His eyebrows furrow, his shoulders tensed. Both, as unsettling as it is, are on the verge of tears. Katsuki’s tongue somehow grows more dry despite there being a tube already shoving oxygen down his throat.
Oh, they’ll find Deku alright.
Katsuki’s just not sure it will be the nerd or a corpse to bury.
Wait, no. The fucker wouldn’t actually take his advice. That would make him a coward. What happened to him (foolishly) wanting to go to Yuuei? He can’t even try if he’s dead. Deku was ballsy enough to write his truly desired career path on his sheet of paper when he knew the teacher would say it out loud. There’s no fuckin’ way the nerd would… listen to Katsuki. The idiot totally knew he didn’t mean it, otherwise Katsuki wouldn’t have said shit.
Fuckin’ hell. There’s no way that it’s his fault the nerd’s gone missing.
“You’ve got something to say, brat?”
Ah. His eye twitches once again. Can’t say anything when there’s a certain, annoying fuckin’ something stopping him from forming words. He reaches for his phone, lifts it up clumsily, and texts his mother in lieu of speaking aloud.
Nerd‘s probably stuck on a building to write in his analysis notebook or some shit. He hasn’t responded to my text messages for his whereabouts.
She reads the message on her phone. “He hasn’t responded..? That’s fuckin’ weird.”
Yeah, no shit, sherlock.
The hag purses her lips. “Keep us updated. Masaru and I have to go help Inko-san put up missing person flyers.” She stands up and pets his head ,and this time, Katsuki doesn’t even think to avoid her hand. “Get well soon, kid. You’re strong—you’ll be better in no time.” Both his old man and hag look at him with, like, concern? Do they think he’s weak, too?
Masaru stops looking at him and instead gently nudges the hag out of the room. “We’ll give you some space. Remember to text us if you need anything,” he murmurs softly. Katsuki wishes he could scoff. He’ll get up in no time once this lung infection thing (or whatever the hell it was—fuck if he knew) dies off.
Maybe then, he’ll be able to wring Deku’s neck until he wishes he were dead.
Seriously, where the fuck did the nerd go?
--
Days pass. The Old Man and his hag keep coming in to check on him, and Katsuki can no longer see his mother’s eyebags; she has to cover them for her photoshoots, his mind supplies. Masaru, on the other hand... He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the old fart more tired.
There is no longer a tube shoved down Katsuki’s throat. He can finally talk (if the croaking noises resembling words he’s been able to make the hour or two after getting the tube removed can be defined as talking), but his voice is muffled because there is still a mask over his mouth, every breath fogging plastic with steam. His lungs still need oxygen pumped into them. Ugh.
Even as he fights the infection off, Deku makes no appearance. Katsuki clenches his teeth.
--
Katsuki, in this moment, finally knows the comfort of his own bed again.
After more than a week, he’s finally in his own room. He sees his old hag less and less. Sometimes, when he passes by the Old Man’s work room, he catches him staring at fabric, hands unmoving, without realizing Katsuki has stopped, too. He starts sleeping later into the night and waking up in a cold sweat. Ironic, considering that he always runs hot.
His text messages have not been read yet, he finds. Katsuki drowns himself in what-ifs, one scenario being how differently the day could have played out if he hadn’t said those damned words.
He, slowly, but all at once, feels the skin under his eyes sink to the Old Man’s level.
--
It’s his last day of rest when Auntie comes home with swollen red eyes.
Katsuki had been eating salmon on rice (remade—his old hag was on a kick with this, apparently) with his Old Man in silence. Neither had even attempted to make conversation. Usually, the quiet would be comfortable to him, but lately it had been too heavy for Katsuki’s liking. Too suffocating—perhaps even worse than when the sludge villain took over.
They haven’t found Deku. But they have found his damned red shoes, sitting hauntingly on top of an abandoned building with no feet left to fill them. Where building meets asphalt, there is a sickeningly crimson stain that no living man could have produced—or, no man living anymore.
Bile tickles the back of Katsuki’s throat when he hears this.
The Old Hag has to drag Auntie over just to get her to eat. Katsuki doesn’t want to think what would have happened to her if they’d left her to rot in the Midoriyas’ house; he doesn’t want to think of who put her in that position in the first place.
Inko sits in front of him when the hag serves her the portion they had set aside for her, of the salmon and rice.
Katsuki doesn’t dare make eye contact. He doesn’t think he can handle seeing Deku’s eyes in her face. His own rice has gone cold, but he doesn’t care. He can’t taste jackshit. Auntie seems to share the same sentiment, judging from how mechanically she moves her spoon to mouth.
When he washes the dishes, he notices his hands shake. They’re like Deku’s when he went to reach for his own notebook back at the fountain, calloused and soft and frail and...
Katsuki almost drops a bowl on the floor.
Maybe it would have cracked the same way Deku’s bones did.
Maybe the water he hadn’t poured out would have splattered the way Deku’s blood had stained the concrete.
Katsuki blinks. His hands continue scrubbing at the bowl.
He vaguely remembers Auntie being led to the guest room. He doesn’t know how, but suddenly, he’s back in his bed. The lights have turned off. He doesn’t check his phone for a read receipt as usual.
Katsuki does not sleep that night.