Work Text:
When it's all over and everything turns to dust, Uraraka is the first one to visit Katsuki in his small apartment.
Katsuki, who is equally as adept at wallowing in guilt than he is at fighting, stubbornly refuses to open the door, but Uraraka is the only person in the world who is patient enough to wait.
Years ago, in a moment of vulnerability, Katsuki had implied that he had feelings for Uraraka to their group of boys over drinks, and Kirishima had laughed so hard he’d cried.
“Oh, man, she's too good for you,” Kirishima had told him, like Katsuki hadn't already known.
“I think you were made for her,” is all that Deku says, quietly, and Katsuki is perceptive, but he still hasn't managed to figure out what Deku had meant by that.
She's still waiting outside the door. Maybe, that's what he’d meant. Deku was always an emotional drunk.
Katsuki shuffles over to the door, tidying up on his way. Passing a mirror, he flicks the dirt off of his face.
“You haven't visited,” Uraraka says petulantly when he opens the door. She has an overnight bag in her arms—if there is a quality that the two of them share, it’s determination. “Anyway, I volunteered my apartment for some of the not-so-injured so I'm staying here tonight.”
Katsuki doesn't have it in himself to argue, especially because so many of those injured bodies were a result of his stupid fucking actions. Guilt and resentment builds up in his throat again. Again, and again.
Yet, he doesn't bother to offer to take the couch. They’d share the bed, they always would. Especially in war, it had hurt to be alone in the times that they could be.
Still, the thought of being in the same bed as Uraraka (a real bed this time, one with pillows and shit, not one of those fucking threadbare blankets) sends an odd feeling through him.
Uraraka busies herself in the kitchen, like she does everytime she comes over. She doesn't think Katsuki eats enough when he's alone (which could be true, but he doesn't really care much).
“You didn't visit,” she repeats. “Kirishima asked for you.”
Of course he did. Kirishima didn't know when to leave him alone.
“How's that fucker doing?” Thinking of Kirishima’s injuries made his stomach twist; this was his fault.
“Better. They all are. Kaminari, Todoroki, Yaoyorozu, Iida, Midoriya. We haven't lost anyone,” Uraraka reassures.
“Aizawa-sensei,” Katsuki corrects, thinking of the man (thinking of his grave).
Aizawa’s death is his fault too. The whole fucking war was.
“Aizawa-sensei,” Uraraka agrees. She's making udon out of the ingredients in Katsuki’s fridge that she keeps there and he never eats. “You should visit them. Midoriya wanted to know how you were doing.”
“I don't fucking care how Deku is doing,” Katsuki hisses. He sits down on the dining chair. It creaks under him.
“Yeah, you do,” Uraraka hums. She never fails to call him out on his bullshit.
He slams his head into the dining table. Uraraka knows. She knows too much about how he feels and knows exactly how to make him talk.
“It's not your fault. If it's your fault, then it's Midoriya’s too, and God knows no one blames him for this,” Uraraka replies.
She's right, she always is. Katsuki will probably go with her to the hospital in the morning. She knows exactly how to make him do what she wants.
Kirishima will probably laugh at him tomorrow. His fucking best friend, confined to a bed for at least two more weeks, laughing at him. For what? Being in love?
Goddammit, Kirishima will probably still fucking laugh even though Katsuki knows for a fact that he has it just as bad for Deku (Deku, out of all people, but Katsuki isn't sure that he has the right to blame him).
Katsuki will probably still go with Uraraka to the hospital in the morning.
Uraraka brings the udon over when it's finished, and they eat in silence.
Uraraka falls asleep in an instant. Katsuki forgets to close the blinds, so a slice of bright moonlight is falling over the two of them and Uraraka is already curled around Katsuki’s arm.
Her lips are chapped and beautiful and Katsuki is twenty years old but hasn't kissed anyone before.
He's never wanted to, until Uraraka had spun into his life, and Katsuki had wondered why anyone saw a fragile little girl in her.
Love is a terrifying thing, he realizes, because, where Uraraka has candy sugar and kindness, Katsuki has fire running through his veins.
He doesn't want her to burn.
Suddenly more awake than ever, he tries to pull his arm from underneath Uraraka, suddenly worried (irrationally, a part of him realizes) that he’ll spontaneously burst into flames.
She just grips on tighter.
“Uraraka,” he whispers to her, as softly as he possibly can. “Uraraka.” He taps on his wrist. “Uraraka.”
“Bakugou.” Finally, his name drags from her lips, and, for the thousandth time, Katsuki thinks that his name will always sound the best in her voice.
“Uraraka, move, you're on my arm,” Katsuki says but, realizing his lack of tact when Uraraka looks up at him with a blurred sorrow in her eyes, amends his statement. “Please.”
Then, Uraraka bursts into tears.
“Oh my god,” Katsuki says, rushed and panicked. “I’m sorry, I'm fucking sorry, I didn't mean—”
Uraraka just sobs louder and pulls away from Katsuki. He wonders why he’d asked her to move in the first place. “It's not—” she starts, and then rubs her eyes with her sleeves. “I had a nightmare.”
No one knows nightmares better than a soldier.
Katsuki almost reaches out for Uraraka, but then stops, and settles for an apology. It sounds fake and insincere and uncomfortable even in his own ears.
Uraraka doesn't respond for a long time, just lies there breathing hard while Katsuki’s arm burns cold, and when she does open her mouth, it's in the smallest voice Katsuki’s ever heard from her.
“You left me,” she says, and Katsuki feels like he's drowning.
The sick side of Katsuki’s mind imagines her alone, kneeling on the dirt, streaks of blood and tears on her beautifully shaped face, until the image makes him want to retch.
He doesn't realize that he is staring at her until her shaking hand comes up to lie warm on his arm.
“You would never leave me, would you?” she asks warily and the image flickers again in Katsuki’s thoughts.
“I would—” Katsuki starts, but the words don't make it past the lump in his throat. He clears his throat, high pitched and nervous in the dark. “I would always come back for you.”
In the silence, Uraraka’s shaking hand moves to his cheek.
Katsuki closes his eyes. It feels like a twisted sort of dream, a nightmare, maybe, but unlike one he’d have in war.
Her other hand tucks between the pillow and the other side of his face and now she's close enough that he feels her breathing. He could kiss her so easily if he wanted to, and, god, does he want to.
Her thumb goes to brush under his eye but he isn't crying. She just smooths out the skin and this definitely isn't happening. His heart thuds fast and unrelenting in his chest, but he opens his eyes.
Her eyes, warm and open despite the tears still welling in them, cut slices into his bones. She knows exactly how to make him talk.
“I would never leave you,” he says, honesty shredding his words. A small wistful smile curves its way onto her beautifully shaped face. He could kiss her so easily.
“Do you love me?” she asks, simply, and Katsuki thinks that it almost kills him.
He can't answer. He sits there under her shaking hands for a long long minute even though, it's a yes-or-no question, for fuck’s sake, Katsuki, just tell her that you—
“Yes,” he says. “Yeah, I do.”
She's unreadable for half a second, and it almost kills him to think of what would happen if she didn't love him back.
“Do you love me?” he asks in that half-second, and Uraraka’s hands stop shaking.
“Katsuki,” Uraraka whispers forcefully, hands searing hot and unbelievably gentle on his cheeks. “I fought a war for you.”
He could kiss her so easily, so he does.
“Uraraka—” he says, but Uraraka ends it with her lips, soft and chapped.
She’s smiling and he wipes away the remnants of the tears from under her eyes.
“Call me by my first name,” she almost asks. Katsuki obliges.
“Ochako,” he tells her, fire coursing through his veins. “I love you. I'll stay with you forever, I fucking swear it.”
“Ochako,” he says again, like a prayer. “I won that war for you.”