Chapter Text
The rain had teeth tonight.
It worried at the gutter edges, and gnawed at the streetlights until everything looked jaundiced, like the city was sick.
Izuku Midoriya clocked out of the hospital with that familiar ache behind his eyes, the kind that lived there now--permanent as bone. He pulled his coat tight, and left the familar OR at Hosu General to head out into the night.
A wind shoved him sideways at the main doors, and his umbrella flipped like a startled bird. He laughed under his breath, and continued the trek to his sedan after getting it under control.
His phone buzzed with a news alert he didn’t open--probably another weather warning. His mind was already chewing on tomorrow’s schedule, on bloodwork, and grant paperwork and the quiet satisfaction of being useful.
He reached the road that ran along the hospital’s farthest parking lot, where the security cameras thinned, and the tree line grew thicker.
That was when he saw the shape on the curb, across the street.
At first it was just a collapsed dark mass, maybe a disgarded garbage bag that was soaked through.
Then the heap moved--a shoulder formed, and shifted. A hand, gloved and trembling, clawed weakly at the slick pavement like it was trying to find the edge of reality; or perhaps just to get to the emergency room that was a few hundred feet away.
Izuku stopped, car keys jingling in hand.
He stopped so hard his heel skidded, his heart doing an abrupt, and delighted little somersault that had no business being in his chest at this hour.
No. No, that wasn’t…
The streetlight above flickered, as if even electricity needed a second look. It was!
Spiky blond hair, plastered down and dirty. The unmistakable shape of a hero suit beneath torn fabric, the gauntlet on the nearer arm bent at an ugly angle, leaking something that the rain couldn’t dilute fast enough.
It was, without a doubt in Izuku’s fanboy mind: the number five hero of Japan.
Dynamight.
Katsuki Bakugou, barely alive. Izuku’s breath came in thin, bright slices. His thoughts scrambled, then lined up like good little soldiers.
This was… this was a major responsibility. This was a miracle.
No.
It was a damn gift. And one Izuku was going to cherish forever. One he may even take advantage of in every possible way because if anyone deserved to be selfish, it was Izuku Midoriya.
He took a step closer, careful, like approaching a cornered animal that might bite. (Bakugou was not an animal, but did have a tendency to bite.)
Izuku had seen heroes come through Hosu on gurneys, sedated and stitched and angry at being vulnerable, but always in the glare of fluorescent lights with nurses--only needing him when it involved the heart.
Not tonight.
Tonight, the job was lying in the rain. And he didn’t want to share this one with his team.
Bakugou’s face was turned partly into the curb. His cheek was swollen, split at the corner of his mouth, and one eye was half-lidded when it found Izuku. It didn’t sharpen with recognition so much as irritation, and even broken, he looked offended by everything.
“…tch,” the sound came out wet. “Don’t fuckin--”
“Hi!” Izuku said, and hated immediately how bright it sounded. He tried again, softer this time, like speaking to a patient waking from anesthesia. “Hey. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Bakugou’s eyelid fluttered. His lips peeled back slightly, a half-made snarl. “--who… the hell…”
Izuku crouched, and the rain soaked through his knees instantly, and thoughts started to infest him like a parasite.
He shouldn’t be on the ground. It was dirty, and unsafe. There could be… there could be a lot of things... Diseases, dirty needles, bugs. But Dynamight was here, and Izuku’s body had already chosen what mattered.
“I’m Dr. Midoriya,” he said quickly, as if a title could build a fence around what he was feeling. “From Hosu General. I’ve… I’ve seen you brought in before. I assisted in your heart surgery as an intern years ago.”
Bakugou’s breath hitched. His hand twitched, fingers scraping for purchase, and his gauntlet made a scraping sound against the curb.
“I… I can help you,” Izuku said.
Bakugou tried to push up, and his arm gave out. His shoulder dropped hard, and he made a noise like a growl swallowed halfway down.
“Don’t move,” Izuku said automatically. He reached out before he could stop himself, fingers hovering over Bakugou’s shoulder, then landing gently, the way he’d been taught, like this was just another body with injuries, and not the person who had been plaguing his mind for years.
His suit was torn at the ribs, and something under it wasn’t sitting right--his breathing sounded painful. Izuku’s mind did what it always did when fear threatened to become something else: it made lists.
Check his airway.
His circulation.
Control the bleeding.
Take spine precautions.
“Can you hear me?” Izuku asked, too close now, close enough to smell smoke beneath the sweetness of rain. “Squeeze my hand.”
Bakugou’s gaze slid, unfriendly and heavy, and for a second Izuku thought he wouldn’t comply out of spite. Then his fingers closed, weak but deliberate, around Izuku’s hand.
“Good,” he whispered, not to Bakugou exactly. To the universe, maybe, or the part of himself that wanted to giggle and cry and apologize all at once. “That’s good.”
Bakugou’s grip loosened, then tightened again like he didn’t want to let go, like he didn’t trust the rain not to wash him away.
“You’re… you’re hurt,” Izuku said, which was obvious and stupid, but he needed to keep talking. If he stopped talking, something louder inside of him would start. “I’m going to get you somewhere warm.”
Bakugou’s mouth worked. He tried to speak and coughed instead, a harsh, rattling thing that bent him, coating his lips and chin in gore. His teeth flashed, furious even at his own lungs.
“Hospital,” he managed, “--and no… civ--”
Izuku smiled, a reflex he couldn’t throttle, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re already at a hospital,” he said, “and I’m a doctor.”
Bakugou’s eye narrowed. Even half-conscious, he found the threat in comfort.
Izuku stood and looked around. The road was empty. The nearest security camera was turned the wrong way, peering dutifully at a patch of shrubbery. The night, for once, seemed willing to mind its’ business.
His car sat in the lot across the street, a compact thing with a clean backseat and plastic sheeting tucked in the trunk for lab spills. He’d bought it for practicality. It occurred to him now, with a strange little thrill, that practicality could also be… convenient.
He pulled his phone out, thumb hovering over the emergency number. Call the OR: let them know he was bringing someone in. Do the normal thing.
His thumb didn’t press.
His mind offered images, rapid and vivid: Bakugou on a gurney under bright lights, paramedics shouting, security swarming, reporters catching wind, Bakugou’s name crawling across headlines, and his injuries becoming public property...
A dozen hands on him, gloved and clinical, strangers trying to touch what Izuku had found first. Bakugou’s breathing shuddered. His head lolled, rainwater sliding off his lashes.
“I’ll take you.” Izuku slid his phone back into his pocket. “It’s close. I live close.”
Bakugou made a sound that might have been protest, might have been pain, might have been a curse. Izuku took it as permission.
He moved carefully, slipping his arms under Bakugou’s shoulders and knees. The hero was heavier than he looked, dense muscle under the ruined suit, and Izuku nearly slipped on the wet pavement. Bakugou’s head rolled toward him, forehead bumping Izuku’s collarbone.
Heat, real heat, leaking through soaked fabric. Izuku swallowed hard, his heartbeat too loud, like it might alert the whole street of his secrecy.
“It’s okay,” he told Bakugou again, like he was trying to convince himself. “I’ve got you.”
Bakugou’s fingers snagged the front of Izuku’s coat as he was lifted. The grip was instinctive, and desperate, and it made Izuku’s chest ache in a way that wasn’t professional at all.
He carried him across the street like a stolen relic.
The car’s interior light clicked on when he opened the back door, casting Bakugou’s face in a harsh little halo. Up close, the damage was worse. There was dried blood on his temple. His lip was split. The skin over his knuckles was torn, nails rimmed with grime like he’d been clawing his way out of something.
Izuku eased him onto the backseat with the reverence of someone placing an offering.
Bakugou’s eyes fluttered open again. The sharp one, the dangerous one, and it focused on Izuku’s face with a slow, suspicious drag.
“You,” Bakugou rasped. “--I know…”
Izuku’s smile returned, too fast. “You do?”
Bakugou’s brow twitched. He tried to lift his head and failed, breath catching. He stared at Izuku like he was trying to detonate him with eye contact. “--green…”
Izuku chuckled. “Yeah,” he said, leaning in to buckle the seatbelt, fingers brushing Bakugou’s shoulder. “Green.”
The seatbelt clicked.
Bakugou’s gaze followed Izuku’s hands, then his mouth, then his eyes again. His expression tightened, pain and anger and something like wariness twisting together.
“You… shouldn’t…” Bakugou started, and then his jaw clenched around the rest. Izuku shut the door before Bakugou could finish the sentence, but not before caressing his soft hair.
The sound of the door closing was final. A soft, solid thunk, like the lid on a box, and there was no turning back now.
Izuku stood in the rain for a second, staring at the car window where Bakugou’s silhouette shifted faintly. He could see the outline of that head, that hair, the curve of a shoulder. He could see the hero breathing--fog forming on the glass.
Inside his coat pocket, his phone pressed against his palm like a conscience, and instead he turned, walked around to the driver’s side, and got in.
The car smelled faintly of disinfectant and coffee and the citrus air freshener he’d bought because it reminded him of clean hands. Now it also smelled like Dynamight, like smoke and rain and blood.
Izuku’s fingers trembled on the steering wheel. He forced them still.
“Okay,” he told himself. “Okay, Dr. Midoriya. Let’s do this right.” In the rearview mirror, Bakugou’s eye was open just enough to watch as Izuku started the car, and the engine purred like it had been waiting.
As he pulled away from the curb, the hospital’s glass facade slid past, bright and distant, and full of rules. The streetlights thinned. The city narrowed into side roads and familiar turns, the kind Izuku took on nights when he needed to feel like he could choose where he went.
Bakugou shifted in the backseat, a low grunt of pain. Izuku’s knuckles whitened on the wheel.
“I’m going to take care of you,” Izuku said, a promise whispered into the hum of the heater as he turned it up. “You don’t have to fight right now.”
From the backseat came Bakugou’s voice, rough and thin, the shape of a warning trying to stand upright.
“…if you’re… lying…I’ll...” Izuku’s smile reflected faintly in the mirror, a pale ghost of a thing.
“I’m a doctor,” he said that like it settled it, like doctors didn’t lie.
The windshield wipers swept back and forth, back and forth, keeping the road clean while the rest of the world blurred into darkness.
Behind him, his favorite hero breathed.
Bakugou’s breathing changed first; a subtle stutter, like his lungs forgot the rhythm for half a second, then tried to bully their way back into it. His head rolled against the seatbelt, chin dipping, the sharp line of his jaw going slack.
Izuku felt it in his own chest like a dropped beaker. “No, no, no…”
He was already pulling over, hazard lights blinking a nervous little morse code. He twisted in his seat, one hand reaching back between the headrests. Bakugou’s skin was hot in a way that meant a body was negotiating with shock, and losing patience.
“Hey,” Izuku coaxed. “Stay awake. Dynamight? Katsuki?”
Bakugou didn’t answer. His lashes stuck together with rain, and blood. His mouth moved like he wanted to spit a curse, but nothing came out except a wet, low breath.
Izuku swallowed; he should turn around. He should head for Hsu, lights and staff and protocols and those blissfully impersonal hands that would take Bakugou away.
His fingers hovered near his phone again. Then, Bakugou’s head slipped sideways again and knocked softly against the window, and he made a sound. A small sound, vunerable, and Izuku’s thumb… didn’t press.
Instead, he turned off his hazards, and continued the drive home.
His house sat at the end of a quiet street, perimeterlined with a thick fence. The garage door rose with a smooth mechanical sigh, and the car slid inside, sealing them away from the storm with a finality that made Izuku’s pulse flutter.
He killed the engine.
For a second there was only the ticking of cooling metal, and Bakugou’s uneven breathing in the backseat, occasionally cut short by a moan.
Izuku turned, eyes wide and bright behind fogged lenses, and stared at him like Bakugou might disappear if he blinked.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. I can do this.”
He moved fast, but not frantic. This was the part of him that lived at Hosu, the part that could set a broken thing straight, and keep his hands steady even when someone screamed, and everything was chaotic.
He got Bakugou out of the car with more care than he’d ever given anything in his life, bracing the injured arm, keeping his spine aligned, murmuring reassurance that was half medical habit and half something else. Something that was a bit warmer, and without a doubt hungry. Starving, even.
Bakugou was dead weight now, limp against Izuku’s shoulder. The hero suit was stiff with drying blood in places.
Izuku carried him through the hallway, past the framed diplomas, past the spotless kitchen, and past the spare room at the back; the one that didn’t look like a spare room at all.
It looked like a private ward.
A hospital bed with clean rails and a crisp sheet. A rolling tray, monitors, and supplies lined with meticulous order: sterile packs, gauze, suture kits, gloves, saline, instruments in labeled drawers. A portable light with an adjustable arm, and even a small crash cart tucked against the wall like a secret.
People assumed doctors were prepared, but they never guessed how prepared Izuku was for everything.
He set Bakugou down.
“Welcome to my home,” Izuku said quietly, and his smile trembled at the edges, as if it didn’t know whether to be kind or thrilled. “You’re safe here.”
Bakugou made a sound like a growl. His eyes slit open, unfocused, and for a heartbeat, the glare found Izuku.
“Where…” Bakugou rasped.
Izuku leaned in, careful to keep his tone mild, almost cheerful. “You’re home. In mine. You needed somewhere quiet.”
Bakugou’s brow twitched, and confusion tried to assemble itself into anger, but it couldn’t find all the pieces.
“Hospital,” he managed again, stubborn even while half-drowning. Izuku’s hands stayed calm. He cut away the ruined suit fabric with efficient, gentle snips, exposing bruised skin and swelling and a ribcage that rose too shallowly.
“You’re getting hospital care,” he said, like he was explaining something to a child. “Just… without the hospital.”
Bakugou’s eyelids fluttered. He tried to lift his good hand, fingers curling, then his arm fell back like it weighed a ton.
Izuku’s heart gave an excited little kick anyway.
He got to work.
He started with removing the most dangerous parts of Dynamight’s costume--the grenade gauntlets. He touched the pressure release valve, and it opened with a hiss. He clipped the locks, until he could slide them off, and placed it to the side on a nearby empty table.
He did the same with the left gauntlet.
Next, came the straps. Bakugou’s suit came in layers--thick harness straps across his chest, and shoulders, that crisscrossed over his back, and supported his hips. It helped anchor the heavy gear in place.
Once Dynamight was undressed, Izuku started to clean him carefully. He wiped away rainwater and blood with warm cloths, revealing the sharp planes of his face under the grime. He checked pupils, and checked breathing. He checked the ugly angle of the arm and didn’t let his expression change, because changing expression was for people who didn’t know what they were doing.
He moved around the bed with practiced steps, hooking up leads, listening, watching numbers crawl across the screen.
Bakugou drifted in and out, sometimes lucid enough to swear, sometimes so far gone he only made rough sounds in his throat--especially when Izuku reset his arm, and casted it.
At one point, when Izuku leaned close to shine the light over a cut at his temple to stitch, Bakugou’s gaze snagged on him fully. Green eyes to red.
Bakugou’s mouth worked. His voice came out low, cracked, almost disbelieving. “…pretty… green…” And then his eyes rolled, and he slipped away again, like consciousness was a door he didn’t have the strength to hold closed.
Izuku froze. Then a laugh bubbled up before he could swallow it. A little hiccup of joy that didn’t belong in a room with a bleeding hero. He pressed his fingertips to his lips.
Izuku leaned over Bakugou with softness, and brushed damp hair off his forehead. “Thank you,” he whispered, like Bakugou had given him a gift instead of a delirious compliment. “You’re so sweet when you’re not yelling.”
Bakugou shifted again, a pained tightening of his jaw. His breathing hitched, shoulders tensing as if his body remembered it was injured, and resented it.
Izuku’s smile faded into something clinical. “You need to rest,” he said. “Your system’s on fire.”
He reached for what he kept for emergencies: something prescribed, something controlled, something meant to calm a patient who couldn’t stop fighting their own pain. He didn’t linger on the details, and he didn’t speak the name out loud. He didn’t give the night any instructions it could repeat.
He only did what he’d done a hundred times in sterile rooms with nurses watching, except there were no nurses now.
Just him.
Just Dynamight.
Izuku administered the sedative with the same steady hands he used at work, soothing words dripping gentle as honey while his mind hummed with a quiet, pleased certainty.
“Shh,” he said, smoothing the sheet over Bakugou’s chest. “No more struggling. I’ve got you now.”
Bakugou’s body softened as the tension bled out of him. His face slackened, anger dimming into exhaustion, and his breath evened out, deeper now. The monitor settled into a calmer rhythm, Izuku watching it like a lullaby.
For a long moment, he simply stood there, hands clasped lightly in front of him, staring down at the sleeping hero as if he couldn’t believe the shape was real.
Then he whispered the truth. “I’m so happy you’re here.”
The necessary work took time.
Izuku cleaned, and closed what he could close, stabilizing injuries as best as any doctor could in a private room with supplies and determination instead of a full surgical team. He treated Bakugou’s body like it was precious, because it was.
And the whole time, he kept glancing at the door, as if expecting it to burst open and reveal the world’s disapproval.
No one came. Of course no one came, because no one knew.
When he finished the worst of it, and the room finally fell quiet except for the steady beep and the soft hiss of oxygen, Izuku washed his hands for a long time.
Maybe too long.
Water scalding, soap foaming, fingers trembling just a little as he scrubbed and scrubbed like he could wash the guilt off if he just tried hard enough. His reflection in the bathroom mirror looked strangely alive. Eyes too bright, smile too close to the surface.
He shut off the water, and listened.
The beeping was still there, steady and obedient. Izuku exhaled, almost giddy with relief, and padded down the hallway in socked feet.
He didn’t go to bed right away, and instead went to his room.
It was a shrine disguised as a bedroom.
Dynamight posters, glossy and crisp, covering the walls. Collector figures lined on shelves like little soldiers frozen mid-victory. Limited-edition merch, framed magazine covers, a signed glove replica displayed behind glass. Even the comforter had a subtle explosion motif if you knew where to look.
Izuku stood in the doorway and let the sight fill him up, like breathing in after being underwater. His eyes landed on the poster above his bed: Dynamight, grinning like he’d dare the world to try.
Izuku walked to it slowly, reverently, as if approaching an altar, and reached up, pressing a gentle kiss to the paper.
Then he glanced back down the hall, toward the spare room, and his smile returned, soft and secret.
He didn’t sleep.
He brought a chair into the spare room, set it beside the bed, and sat there like a faithful guard dog. He watched the monitor. He watched Bakugou’s chest rise and fall. He adjusted the blanket when Bakugou shivered. He checked the bandages again and again, unable to keep his hands from hovering close.
Outside, the rain kept chewing at the world, and inside, Izuku had his hero.
And the thought that someone might take Bakugou away made Izuku’s stomach twist with something that wasn’t just anxiety, but a sick kind of possessiveness.
He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I’ll keep you safe,” he told him, eyes glittering. God, Bakugou was so pretty when he was hurt, and helpless.
“I’ll be good, Kacchan.”