Archive of Our Own

Yaoyorozu and Jirou’s apartment sat high enough above the city that the windows caught the last of the evening light and held it there, warm gold sliding over polished floors, low shelves crowded with records and books, and the hanging plants Jirou insisted were low maintenance while Yaoyorozu still checked them with quiet concern every morning.

By the time Katsuki arrived, the place had already started losing the careful order Yaoyorozu had clearly spent the afternoon forcing onto it.

The first few pairs of shoes inside the entryway had been lined up neatly, probably because Iida had gotten there early enough to make the system everyone else’s problem. After that, the arrangement broke down in familiar ways.

Kirishima’s boots sat half under the console table, one of Kaminari’s sneakers had been kicked sideways near the umbrella stand, and Mina’s jacket hung off the back of a dining chair despite the empty coat hooks three steps away.

Katsuki shut the door behind him with his heel and took in the room because taking in a room had stopped being a habit and become part of his spine years ago. Two exits. Balcony door unlocked, judging by the thin shift of cool air near the curtains.

Kitchen knife block too close to Kaminari’s elbow. Iida already hovering near the coffee table with coasters in hand as if anyone in this room was going to remember a coaster once the second round of drinks hit.

The place smelled like polished wood, expensive tea, fried chicken, wine, and the sugar from whatever Sato had brought in the fogged container on the counter. Music ran low under the talking; some moody bassline Jirou had probably picked so Kaminari could not ruin the night with karaoke before dinner.

Yaoyorozu stood at the kitchen island in a soft cream sweater, adjusting a small dish of olives by less than an inch. Jirou watched from beside her with the flat, fond expression of someone who had seen that dish moved six times and had chosen love over intervention.

Mina leaned over the spread with both hands pressed to her chest. “Momo, this is incredible! I’ve never seen a snack board with stairs.”

“It seemed appropriate for everyone finally being together,” Yaoyorozu said.

Jirou’s mouth twitched. “She dragged me to seven wineries over the weekend. Seven! Apparently, the rich can’t eat cheese unless the grapes come with a pedigree.”

Yaoyorozu’s hand paused over the olives. “Kyoka.”

“What? You did a great job. I’m just saying it was an experience.”

Mina laughed, and the sound pulled a few smiles from the people already settled around the room. Even Iida looked over with that helpless expression he got when he wanted to enforce order and could not find a single rule being broken. Yaoyorozu lowered her gaze with a small smile she tried to hide and failed to bury completely.

Katsuki moved past them toward the living room, already deciding how long he had to stay before he could leave without hearing another lecture about needing to socialize.

An hour, maybe less if Dunce Face started singing or Deku tried to ask someone about emotional growth with his whole damn face.

Sero crossed in front of him with a case of canned drinks balanced against one hip. Jirou’s earphone jack flicked toward the side table.

“Fridge if you want them cold, ice buckets if you want them where people can grab them.”

Sero turned, spotted the polished buckets waiting on decorated stands beside folded napkins and tiny silver tongs, and snorted hard enough to almost lose his grip on the drinks.

“Of course there are tiny tongs.”

Katsuki took the corner of the couch nearest the armrest because it gave him a wall at his shoulder and a clean view of the room. He put his drink on the side table, dragged a bowl of spicy crackers within reach, and settled back with one arm along the couch.

Their old class filled the apartment in layers, the way they used to fill the common room at U.A. without ever admitting they were waiting for one another. Midoriya arrived with Todoroki, the two of them carrying bakery boxes and too many napkins because Midoriya had panicked in the store and bought enough paper goods for a school festival.

Iida came with sparkling water and the grim conviction that hydration was a civic duty. Sato’s cookies vanished faster than he could finish saying they were still warm.

By the time Shouji and Tokoyami brought in the takeout they had picked up for Yaoyorozu, everyone had settled into the room as if no time had passed between them. Kaminari sat on the floor with a plate balanced dangerously close to his knee. Mina had claimed half a cushion beside Jirou.

Todoroki stood in front of the cheese board with the solemn focus of a man deciding whether the arrangement was making a political statement.

Kirishima dropped beside Katsuki, close enough to annoy him and far enough to pretend he had not done it on purpose.

Katsuki let the noise pass around him. It was easier to tolerate from the edge of it, with food in reach and a drink in his hand and no one stupid enough to ask why he kept glancing at the door.

He told himself he was not waiting. He had only noticed she was not there yet, which was different, and if his eyes kept cutting toward the door every time the hallway made noise, everyone in the room could mind their own damn business.

A few hours passed before the door opened just after eight, letting in a brief spill of cold air and traffic noise from the hallway. Conversation bent toward it naturally, someone calling out before the person on the other side had finished stepping in.

Ochako made a soft, relieved sound as she crossed the threshold. “Oh, it’s warm in here.”

Katsuki’s attention caught before the door clicked shut.

She stood in the entryway with her cheeks pink from the cold, scarf looped loosely at her throat, hair wind-tossed around her face. Her agency coat hung open over a pink sweater, and there was a tired set to her shoulders that told him the long rescue rotation Yaoyorozu had mentioned had not let her sleep enough.

She smiled anyway when the room greeted her, bright and genuine, one hand lifting in a little wave while she balanced on one foot to tug off her boot.

Kaminari looked up from the coffee table. “Well, look what the rats dragged in!”

“It’s cat, idiot,” Katsuki said before he meant to say anything at all. He took a drink and looked away from the doorway because Ochako had turned toward his voice.

“If you’re gonna be annoying, at least be accurate.”

Kaminari blinked at him. “What? Since when?”

Ochako laughed under her breath, and Katsuki felt the sound land in his chest with the same old thud he had never managed to train out of himself.

She bent to pull off her other boot, one hand braced against the wall, her sock slipping beneath her heel. The movement should not have held him the way it did. There was nothing deliberate in it, nothing meant for him, just Ochako existing in the warm spill of the entryway light while the cold loosened from her coat and the scarf slipped a little lower at her throat.

Hero work had changed her over the years, packing more strength into the compact lines of her body and sharpening the way she carried herself even off duty. The roundness in her face had not gone anywhere, and neither had the softness around her mouth when she was pleased.

The difference was in the steadiness underneath it now, the quiet center of gravity she carried like a warning. She looked warm and tired and unfairly pretty with her hair windblown around her cheeks, and Katsuki found himself tracking the small things before he could stop: the shift of her weight when she straightened, the flush at the bridge of her nose, the faint press of her teeth into her lower lip as she fought another smile.

He had stopped pretending she was harmless years ago.

The problem was that he had never stopped wanting to put himself between her and anything that forgot it.

Beside him, Kirishima leaned back into the couch and kept his voice low enough not to carry.

“You’re gonna stare a hole through her coat.”

Katsuki took a drink from the glass he had been holding in place.

“Got anything else to say?”

Kirishima’s mouth pulled to one side. “Nope, nothing at all.”

“Then shut up.”

Kirishima’s eyes flicked toward the entryway, then back to him. “You haven’t seen her in a few weeks, right?”

Katsuki’s fingers tightened around his glass with his deepening frown. “What’s it to you?”

“Not really. It’s just hard to miss when you get meaner after patrol.”

“Tch. You got too much free time if you’re tracking my attitude.”

Kirishima almost smiled into his drink. “Your attitude walks in ten minutes before you do.”

Katsuki looked at him then, and Kirishima had enough sense to lift his glass and stop there.

Ochako looked over as Yaoyorozu swept toward her, elegant and warm, already reaching for her coat. Her smile widened when she caught Katsuki’s eye, just for a second before she seemed to remember where they were.

“Hi, Katsuki,” she said.

His mouth went dry, and the curse stayed behind his teeth because letting it out would only give Kirishima more to notice.

It was a stupid reaction. He had worked with her on agency rotations, fought beside her during joint patrols, sat across from her in late-night ramen shops after reports ran too long, watched her steal half his ginger and pretend she had not done it. He had corrected her stance in the gym with his hand at her elbow and her shoulder under his palm. He had let her drag him through cooldown stretches more than once because she said his flexibility was villainously bad, and he had complained the entire time while still showing up the next week.

He knew the smile she used when she was pleased with herself, usually right after she landed a clean throw or tricked him into admitting she was right about something. He knew the smaller one she tried to hide behind a cup after a long shift, the one that came with steam on her cheeks and her shoulders finally easing down from her ears.

This smile sat somewhere between the two, bright enough to welcome him and shy enough to make him want to look away before he gave himself up.

So he did look away, because there were too many people in the room and Kirishima was still breathing beside him like he knew something.

“Hey,” Katsuki said.

It came out quieter than he meant it to. He cleared his throat, reached for the crackers, and pretended the burn in his face had something to do with the whiskey.

Kirishima turned his head toward the window, badly hiding the beginning of a smirk.

Katsuki drove his heel into Kirishima’s shoe without looking.

Yaoyorozu took Ochako’s coat with a pleased warmth that made the entryway feel softer.

“I’m so glad you came! Kyoka opened the plum wine for you.”

Ochako’s expression changed in a way Katsuki wished he had not noticed, pleasure brightening through the tiredness at the corners of her eyes.

“You remembered?”

“Of course. You loved it last time, and Kyoka mentioned your agency had a long rescue rotation this week.”

Ochako’s fingers lingered at the end of her scarf before she unwound it from her throat. Katsuki watched the motion because he had never learned how not to. Her shoulders were still lifted from the cold, or maybe from exhaustion, and the warmth that crossed her face at being remembered made something in his chest turn tight and mean.

He had remembered the plum wine too, which only made the pressure under his ribs sharper. He remembered too many things about her and had no clean place to put any of them.

Jirou called from the living room, “Momo also bought the tea that pairs with it.”

Ochako’s whole face brightened. “There’s tea that pairs with wine?”

“You’re exposed to a lot of things when dating the bourgeoisie,” Jirou said.

Yaoyorozu turned from the coat rack with wounded dignity. “Kyoka, please.”

“What? I said it with love.”

Ochako laughed, tiredness loosening from her shoulders by degrees. “No, wait, I love this. That’s so fancy. Does it taste like plum too, or does it make the wine taste more plum-y?”

“It has a roasted base with a little stone-fruit sweetness,” Yaoyorozu said, visibly delighted that someone had asked. “I thought the warmth might be nice after the wine.”

“That sounds amazing.” Ochako pressed both hands briefly around Yaoyorozu’s before letting her take the scarf. “You’ve put so much thought into everything. Thanks so much, Yaomomo!”

Jirou lifted her glass with a lazy tilt toward Yaoyorozu. “To Momo, then. For making all of us look like we know how to behave in a nice apartment.”

Yaoyorozu’s cheeks warmed. “Kyoka.”

Kaminari raised his can from the floor. “To tiny tongs.”

“To hosting,” Ochako said, laughing as she accepted the plum wine Yaoyorozu handed her. “And to everyone finally having a night off.”

Cups lifted unevenly around the room. Someone’s glass clinked against a paper plate by accident, Mina cheered like it counted, and Jirou muttered something about tea lore and generational wealth that made Yaoyorozu hide her smile behind her cup. The toast loosened the last of the arrival stiffness. Someone shifted to make space on the rug. Mina patted the floor beside her with both hands, and Kaminari reached toward the cheese board until Iida’s stare redirected him.

Ochako crossed into the living room, and the room folded itself around her without thinking.

Kaminari had sprawled one knee into the narrow path between the couch and the coffee table, talking with his whole body, too busy waving his can around to notice Ochako coming through with both hands wrapped around her glass. Katsuki clocked the angle of it before she had to adjust her step, before the hem of her coat could catch or the wine could tilt too close to the rim. His body moved ahead of the thought, boot sliding out to knock Kaminari’s ankle with enough force to make him jolt upright.

“Move.”

Kaminari blinked down at his own leg, then scooted it back just as Ochako passed with her plum wine balanced carefully in both hands.

“Thanks,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Katsuki with a small, surprised smile.

He looked down into his drink before the soft shape of her mouth did any more damage. “Watch where you’re walking.”

“I was.”

“Watch better.”

Her smile warmed like she had heard the shape of the thing under it anyway, and Katsuki hated how much he liked that.

Ochako took a spot on the rug near the coffee table, knees folded under her, plum wine in one hand while Mina immediately leaned toward her with whatever story had been interrupted before she arrived. Ochako listened with the whole of herself, head tipped slightly, mouth curving before the punchline came. The warm light from the lamps caught the curve of her cheek and the soft pull of her lower lip when she tried to bite back a smile.

She was not a girl in a stadium anymore, not the round-faced kid the crowd had underestimated because they had no imagination. She was a grown woman sitting in the amber light with hero work in the strong line of her shoulders and softness still stubbornly alive in her face, gorgeous in a way that made his irritation feel useless. Katsuki had fallen for the fighter first. The woman she had become made the fall feel like something he had never stopped doing.

Katsuki poured more whiskey into his glass.

He meant it to be a normal pour. The bottle tipped too long before he corrected it, amber climbing higher than he needed and catching the lamp light in a way that made the surface look molten. He stared at it for half a second, then drank anyway, because the first burn had taken the edge off the room and the second had made the noise less irritating. This one settled lower, warmer, spreading through his ribs until the tight place behind them loosened by a fraction.

That was the problem.

Katsuki kept most things behind his teeth because restraint was useful. Restraint kept his hands steady, his mouth sharp instead of stupid, his face from giving away anything that mattered. Whiskey did not knock the restraint out all at once. It pried at it slowly, finger by finger, until all the things he usually held down started shifting closer to the surface.

Kirishima noticed the pour, then followed Katsuki’s line of sight. Ochako had leaned forward to rescue a grape from Kaminari before he could drop it into honey. She plucked it out of reach with two fingers, smiling as Kaminari protested, and Katsuki felt his mouth pull before he could stop it.

Kirishima leaned closer, voice low. “Careful. Your Urara-Radar is in full force.”

“Eat shit.”

“Just saying.” Kirishima lifted one hand around his glass, innocent in a way that meant he was absolutely not innocent. “I’m sitting here enjoying everyone’s company, taking in the miracle of all of us being in the same place after so long, and you’re over there looking like a grape rescue just changed your life.”

Katsuki’s eyes cut toward him.

Kirishima took a slow drink and let the rest sit between them without saying it.

Katsuki groaned because the meaning under the words landed exactly where Kirishima had aimed it. “Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not the one making anything weird.”

Katsuki reached for a cracker and shoved it into his mouth, hard enough that Kirishima’s eyebrows lifted. Across the room, Ochako laughed into her cup, and the sound cut clean through him before he could stop hearing it.

Kirishima looked down at his drink and let the silence do the rest.

That was worse, somehow.

Katsuki grabbed the bottle from the side table and topped off his glass instead of answering anything Kirishima had not technically said.

The whiskey splashed harder this time, a dark lick against the inside of the glass. Kirishima’s gaze dropped to it, then lifted back to Katsuki’s face. Katsuki saw the calculation there and hated it, hated that Kirishima could read the difference between him drinking because he wanted to and him drinking because the alternative was sitting sober with Ochako’s laugh under his skin.

His focus dragged back to the room. The lamps had started to haze around their edges, not badly enough for anyone else to notice, but enough that the gold light softened whenever he blinked. Voices came in overlapping waves. Kaminari too loud, Mina brighter than the rest, Ochako’s laugh cutting through it anyway, clean as a match strike.

Katsuki looked at Kirishima over the rim of the glass. “Keep looking smug and I’ll fix your face.”

Kirishima held his stare for a second, then leaned back with the kind of patience that meant he was not letting go at all. “Sure, man.”

The food gave the room somewhere to put its hands. Kaminari kept drifting toward whatever plate Iida had just declared off-limits. Sero sat on the floor with his back to the couch, passing cartons toward Shouji. Todoroki took one tiny sandwich, ate it, then stared at the remaining sandwiches like he was deciding whether they had earned his trust.

Katsuki kept eating because the food was there and because chewing gave his mouth something useful to do. Spicy crackers. Yakitori. Half a sandwich he had not meant to pick up until his hand was already there. A piece of fried chicken Kaminari had been reaching for before Katsuki got there first.

“Seriously?” Kaminari complained.

Katsuki bit into it and stared him down.

Kaminari lifted both hands, palms out, and leaned back from the plate. “Okay. Message received.”

The sound of Ochako laughing into her cup at them pulled Katsuki’s attention immediately, as instinctive as turning toward an explosion.

She gave him a tiny wave with the fingers wrapped around her cup, quick enough that it could have passed for nothing if he had not been watching her like an idiot.

It reminded him of the ramen place three blocks from her agency, the one with the terrible chairs and the chili oil she kept pretending she could handle. She had stolen from his bowl the last time they were there, laughing into the steam when he threatened to bite her chopsticks in half. She looked at him across the table with broth-warmed cheeks and tired eyes, and he had spent the walk home with his hands shoved into his pockets because the part of him that wanted more was getting harder to keep leashed.

Her smile now had the same shape.

Katsuki looked away before it dragged him under and reached for his glass again.

Music threaded beneath the talking. Bottles changed hands. Someone opened the balcony door for half a minute, decided the cold was personal, and shut it again. The city glittered beyond the windows, but inside, everyone had folded back into old habits as if adulthood had only been a long patrol between one common room and the next.

The conversation drifted into school stories because it always did when enough of them were fed, warm, and far enough from patrol radios to pretend hero work had not eaten half their lives.

“USJ alone should’ve gotten us a lifetime homework exemption,” Sero said from the floor, his shoulders propped against the couch.

Iida adjusted his glasses with immediate moral purpose. “That is not how academic credit works.”

“It should be,” Kaminari said. “Trauma-based grading curve.”

“We did have good things too,” Yaoyorozu said, smiling softly as she poured tea into the little cups she had insisted were sturdy enough for company. “Friendships. Internships. Work studies.”

“Sports Festivals,” Mina added, dragging the plural out with enough intent that half the room reacted before she finished.

A few people groaned. Midoriya smiled helplessly into his cup. Todoroki looked up from the plate he had finally committed to, quiet and unreadable in a way that meant he was probably remembering six different emotional catastrophes at once.

“Our first one was kind of insane,” Kaminari said. “Looking back, I cannot believe the school put us in front of that many cameras and said good luck, kids.”

“We obtained valuable experience under pressure,” Iida said, then paused when Sero looked at him. “And also several concerning memories.”

Jirou leaned back against the couch. “You mean like Bakugou going ballistic on national television?”

The room warmed around the memory, laughter spreading in pieces instead of all at once. Katsuki rolled his eyes and took another drink.

The whiskey had started making the room tilt at the edges, not enough to make him sloppy if he kept still, but enough that moving his head too fast felt like a tactical mistake. His vision kept sharpening around the wrong things: Ochako’s fingers on her cup, the curve of her knee tucked under her on the rug, the small shift of her mouth whenever she tried not to laugh too loudly. Everything else blurred softer, as if the alcohol had decided what mattered and shoved the rest of the room out of focus.

He stayed quiet because quiet took less control than talking, and he could feel the alcohol sitting behind his teeth, waiting for a chance.

“That podium had better restraint gear than some villain transports,” Kaminari said. “I’m still saying someone should’ve sued somebody.”

Kirishima snorted into his glass. “You were chanting bite it with the rest of us.”

“I was caught up in the spirit of competition.”

“You were standing on the couch,” Sero said.

Kaminari spread his hands. “Because history was happening.”

Katsuki huffed into his drink and rolled his eyes, but the memory came back anyway: Kaminari’s screeching voice somewhere in the stands, the hot stadium lights, the metal taste of fury behind his teeth, the crowd roaring like any of them understood what the hell they were watching. Ochako laughed at Kaminari’s defense, shoulders lifting around the sound, and Katsuki found her through the noise before he could make himself stop.

“That festival changed everything, though,” Midoriya piped in.

“The internship offers after that were huge. Even people who lost early got scouted if they showed something distinct.”

Sero lifted his drink. “My tape was never hotter.”

“Ew, don’t phrase it like that,” Jirou said.

Yaoyorozu smiled into her tea. “My family still has the broadcast archived. My mother rewatched the cavalry battle repeatedly because she said it showed resourcefulness under social strain.”

“That is the most Momo-family thing I’ve ever heard,” Mina said.

Todoroki glanced down into his drink. “My father had mine archived too.”

“Oh! Speaking of archives,” Mina had already found something on her phone. The blue light lit the underside of her grin as she leaned closer to Ochako and turned the screen just out of reach. “Ochako’s latest hero society panel at the UA university had a lot of Uravity fans! They were more excited about asking about her high school days than listening to the final speakers.”

Hagakure’s sleeves flew up from the far side of the rug. “I totally watched that! The cameraman knew exactly what the viewers wanted with all those crash zooms on the cute college guys.”

Katsuki scoffed into his cup because he knew exactly which event she meant.

The whiskey had softened the edges of the room by then, turning the lamps into warm smears and making the distance between the couch and the coffee table feel longer than it was.

He had been at that panel too, though not because his patrol route had put him anywhere near the university. He had told himself he was already in the district. He had told himself it made sense to check the crowd density around a public hero event. He had stood at the back of the lecture hall with his hood up and his arms folded while students crowded around her afterward with notebooks, phones, bright faces, and too many damn questions.

He had told himself it did not bother him, then spent the rest of the panel with his jaw tight and his arms folded while every laugh she gave those students scraped somewhere it had no business reaching. One guy had stepped too close when asking for a picture, crowding her shoulder with his phone already up, and Katsuki had moved before he decided to move, cutting through the back of the lecture hall until his shadow landed across the kid’s shoes. He had not said a word. He had not needed to. Ochako had noticed anyway, her eyes flicking to him for one startled second before her mouth tucked around a smile she tried to hide.

That had been the problem with her for years. She reacted to him like she knew there was something under all the bite, and he reacted to her like every room had exits he needed to check and every idiot who leaned too close had suddenly become his problem.

“It was supposed to be a career talk about rescue coordination and close-range mobility.” Ochako smiled, awkwardly rubbing at the warmth in her cheek.

“It was for about ten minutes,” Mina said, already grinning like she had been waiting for the exact moment to betray her. “Then one person asked for a picture, and suddenly the whole front row remembered they had phones.”

Hagakure’s sleeves shot straight up. “It was adorable! They formed a line like tiny hero-analysis ducklings.”

Midoriya brightened with genuine professional interest.

“My students are always asking about you, too. They’ve been especially interested in the way you chain zero-gravity assists with grappling techniques.”

Katsuki snorted. “They’d be stupid not to notice.”

The words came out before he could decide whether to keep them in.

The room caught the slip before anyone turned it into a joke. Conversation thinned by a fraction, not enough to stop the party, but enough for Katsuki to feel the attention shift toward him. He did not usually step into this kind of talk. He did not usually offer praise where people could hear it, and he sure as hell did not volunteer anything that sounded like he had been paying attention to who admired her, who asked for pictures, who stood too close.

Mina’s smile tucked itself behind the rim of her cup. Hagakure went still in that bright, vibrating way of hers, and Kaminari looked like he had just watched a locked door crack open.

Katsuki shoved another cracker into his mouth like that solved anything.

Ochako looked down at the stem of her glass, rolling it once between her fingers while the heat in her cheeks refused to settle.

“They were sweet,” she said, softer now. “A little intense, maybe, but sweet. They asked good questions before everyone remembered the internet exists.”

“And then they became tiny gossip monsters,” Mina said.

Ochako sighed. “It’s exhausting sometimes. I know we went through PR training for all of this but there are some days where it all feels more overwhelming than others.”

Shouji nodded from his place near the end of the couch, one of his hands resting around a paper cup he had barely touched.

“It can be difficult when people forget you’re still working. They mean well, but being recognized everywhere turns every quiet moment into another kind of duty.”

A few heads dipped around the room with the tired understanding of people who had learned that lesson in different ways. Yaoyorozu’s gaze softened over her tea. Iida’s mouth pressed into a thin line, probably remembering every time someone had turned a patrol into a photo opportunity. Even Kaminari sobered for half a second before he hid it behind another sip.

Ochako looked relieved by the agreement, shoulders easing as if she had not realized she had been holding them tight. Katsuki noticed that too. Of course he did.

Sero grinned, gentler now, and tipped his drink toward her. “Still, Uravity doing college visits is a pretty big deal. You’re making rescue work look like something people can study, not just something they cheer for after the disaster’s over.”

“That part of it is really cool though,” Kaminari said, pointing at her with his can. “You’re basically building the fanbase and the next wave of rescue nerds at the same time.”

“And admirers,” Hagakure sang.

Ochako groaned again, but the sound came softer this time, warmed by the teasing instead of crushed under it.

“They really do love her at those programs,” Hagakure continued, leaning forward with both sleeves planted on the rug.

“They share everything. Recent hero clips, old Sports Festival edits, posts about the rescue work she’s doing now, pictures from panels, selfies, training footage, even that one rescue exercise where Ochako floated half the debris field and everyone in the comments started calling her baby Uravity.”

Ochako laughed despite herself, the sound slipping out before she could hide it behind her glass.

“Oh, come on, stop exaggerating.” Her cheeks were pink, but the embarrassment had gone soft around the edges. “It was one training clip. You’re all talking like they uncovered ancient Uravity scrolls.”

“They basically did!” Hagakure said.

“They were totally obsessed with the young you, and I can’t say I blame them,” Mina said, scrolling.

“What’s cooler than watching baby footage of a hero you already admire?”

Jirou leaned closer despite herself. “Wow, high school days, huh. How much content did they end up finding?”

Hagakure leaned so far forward that both sleeves nearly brushed the cheese board. “They had her first year Sports Festival match beside that collapse-zone rescue from last month, like, frame by frame.”

Midoriya’s face lit with the helpless focus of someone trying not to start a full analysis and losing.

“That actually makes sense. Uraraka’s early strategy was already built around misdirection and environmental control, but now she layers it with rescue priority and close-range capture. The foundation is the same, but the execution is completely different.”

Mina kept scrolling, eyes bright with the kind of discovery that meant nobody in the room was safe.

“They had the student feature posts too. The ones U.A. made after the Festival, with the awful headshots and everybody’s little classmate impressions.”

Kaminari’s face shifted with the slow dawn of a terrible memory.

“Please tell me they didn’t find the interview sheets.”

Mina’s grin went sharp. “They totally did! It was hilarious seeing their expressions change as they read through them all. It was like they couldn’t believe we’d ever say anything humble.”

A groan moved around the room, warm and embarrassed and fond. The interviews had been a school idea, one of those post-event features meant to make them look accessible after the Sports Festival turned half of them into viral hazards.

They had all been dragged in front of a camera, still bruised, still running on adrenaline, and asked to give impressions of their classmates as if any of them had known what to do with that much attention at fifteen.

Katsuki remembered the lights more than the questions. Too bright. Too hot. Some upperclassman behind the camera telling him to speak clearly, as if that had ever been his problem.

“They made us sound like trading cards,” Sero said. “Strengths, weaknesses, charming quotes.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t frame yours,” Kaminari said.

Sero shrugged, his signature smile sliding into place like he had never met a camera angle he did not trust.

“What can I say? I looked great in the headshot.”

Mina cleared her throat and held her phone like she was calling a meeting to order.

“Anyways! Since the children and the college thirst clubs have resurrected history, I think we should honor it.”

The protest started immediately, which only made Mina look more powerful.

Sero leaned back with the smug ease of a man who trusted every camera that had ever found his face. Kaminari looked like he was trying to remember whether he had said anything legally actionable at fifteen. Iida adjusted his glasses with the grim dignity of someone preparing to be humiliated in a very orderly fashion.

Mina started with the easy ones. Sero’s feature had called him “flexible under pressure,” which made Kaminari choke so hard Jirou had to tell him not to die on Yaoyorozu’s rug. Iida had once described Yaoyorozu’s leadership as “an exemplary model of strategic poise,” and Yaoyorozu looked so touched that he turned red all the way to his ears. Tokoyami’s quote about Kirishima had included “unyielding resolve beneath a crimson dawn,” which made Dark Shadow preen from the corner until Jirou gave him a slow thumbs-up.

Even Todoroki had not escaped. His first-year comment about Kaminari had apparently been, “He conducts himself strangely,” which sent Kaminari flat onto his back while Todoroki blinked at him and said, “I remember thinking it was accurate.”

The laughter passed around the room in warm, uneven waves, landing on old embarrassment without turning cruel. Fifteen had been unbearable when they were living it. From here, fed and grown and soft around the edges with alcohol and distance, even the worst parts looked smaller.

Then Mina’s grin sharpened.

“Bakugou Katsuki’s first-year impression of Midoriya Izuku.”

Midoriya laughed before Mina could even read it, already bracing one hand over his mouth like the memory had found him by the throat.

“Oh no,” he said, shoulders shaking. “I remember this one.”

Mina gave the room half a second to settle, then read in a flat, dramatic voice.

“Small fry below me.”

The room broke open. Midoriya dropped his hand and laughed with them, softer than the rest but genuine, the kind of laugh that came easier now that years had put enough distance between the boy he had been and the pro hero sitting there with bakery crumbs on his sleeve.

Katsuki’s mouth pulled against the rim of his glass before he could stop it. “You were.”

Midoriya wiped at the corner of one eye, still smiling. “Technically, I’m still above you in the rankings.”

The room reacted immediately. Sero made a low ooh into his cup. Kaminari slapped the rug once. Even Todoroki’s mouth shifted like he was choosing not to enjoy it too obviously.

Katsuki’s gaze sharpened. “For now.”

“I’m just saying,” Midoriya said, holding up both hands, grin helpless and a little proud. “Number four is still above number five.”

“That list changes every quarter.”

“And I will cherish this quarter.”

Kirishima laughed into his drink. “Man, he got you with math.”

“He got me with a temporary clerical error,” Katsuki snapped, but there was no real heat in it, and that made the room laugh harder.

Mina scrolled with growing delight. “Todoroki Shouto.”

Todoroki’s expression did not change, but his shoulders made the smallest adjustment, as if bracing for weather.

“Threw the match.”

Mina angled the phone so the nearest people could see the old screenshot attached to the quote. The room lost itself before anyone even spoke. Fifteen-year-old Katsuki glared up from the screen with his teeth bared, eyes wild, hair somehow more aggressive than physics should have allowed, the whole expression twisted into such pure offense that Kaminari made a noise like air leaving a balloon.

“Your face,” Sero wheezed.

Jirou leaned closer, one hand over her mouth. “How did you get your eyebrows to do that?”

Todoroki looked at the screen for a long second, then back at Katsuki with the same calm expression that had once made him impossible to read across an arena. “You did look like you were about to chew through the podium.”

The laughter shifted, not quite fading, but making room for the old shape of it. Todoroki looked down into his drink, calm in the way he got when a memory sat heavier than he wanted to admit.

“At the time,” he said at last, “I was not thinking about giving you the fight you wanted.”

“No shit.”

Kaminari snapped his fingers. “See, this is why the archive went viral. We were a mess.”

Iida adjusted his glasses. “We were adolescents under extreme pressure.”

Yaoyorozu’s gaze softened with the memory. “We also did our best.”

Katsuki drank again instead of saying anything, because his best had ended with him chained to a podium and furious enough to bite metal.

The glass was getting easier to lift and harder to put down. He knew that too. He knew it the same way he knew the room had grown warmer, the same way he knew Kirishima had shifted closer by half an inch, ready to catch something before it fell. Katsuki could still feel the lid on himself, but it was not locked anymore. It rattled every time Ochako smiled.

The laughter kept moving across the room as Mina read through a few more lines. He had called Kaminari a charger with legs. Sero had been tape elbows with decent instincts. Kirishima, apparently, was loud but hard to knock down, which made Kirishima grin into his drink like he had won something.

Every insult landed softened by time and familiarity, worn smooth by the years between who they had been and who they had become.

Then Jirou, who had been quiet long enough that Katsuki should have been suspicious, tipped her cup toward Ochako.

“Did everybody’s make it into the archive?” Hagakure asked.

“Mine didn’t,” Sero said, tipping his drink toward Kaminari. “Probably because my answers were too charming for print.”

“I really doubt that.” Kaminari leaned back on his hands, squinting like the memory still offended him.

“They cut half of mine too. Apparently, ‘please don’t put this in the paper’ was not the kind of quote they wanted.”

“It looks like they kept Bakugou’s because half the comments were already about him,” Mina said. Her grin shifted toward him, not cruel, but sharp with the kind of fondness that knew exactly where the old bruise lived. “People were calling him everything from future number one to walking lawsuit.”

Katsuki’s jaw worked once. “They were idiots.”

“Some of them,” Kirishima said, easy and warm. “But you were intense, man. Loud, mean face, big mouth, all of it. People didn’t know what to do with the fact that you were also a great hero.”

Katsuki looked away.

Jirou tipped her cup toward Ochako, eyes narrowed with sudden interest. “It’s not all bad, though. Pretty sure Ochako made it into his interview and made it out unscathed.”

The room caught on that at once.

Hagakure’s sleeves lifted. “Wait, really?”

Kaminari straightened like someone had just handed him gossip with a handle. “I don't believe that for a second. No insult at all? That's not the Bakugou I know.”

Mina’s eyes landed on Bakugou with a wide grin, delighted and careful in the way only a friend could be when she knew she was about to press on an old bruise.

“Bakugou Katsuki’s first-year impression of Uraraka Ochako,” she said.

She glanced down at the screen, and something in her grin shifted when the quote kept going longer than the others had. “Oh wow, she actually got an entire paragraph.”

That made the room lean in.

Katsuki’s grip tightened around his glass.

Mina read, her voice losing some of the performance as she went. “She came in nervous and used it to her advantage. Most people see the soft face and think they know what they’re getting, but she had a plan before the match started. She kept moving, kept watching, kept trying to win even when her body was giving out. Main takeaway: her guts are respectable.”

The teasing loosened at the edges. Kirishima’s grin eased into something quieter, and even Kaminari stopped looking like he was waiting for the punchline.

Ochako’s thumb slid once along the stem of her glass, slow enough that Katsuki caught it. Her gaze had dropped to the rug, but her mouth had softened in a way that made him remember the weeks after the Festival: the new bruises on her arms, the sharper set of her stance, the stubborn little tilt of her chin when she came back from Gunhead’s agency like learning how to get thrown through a mat had given her a new language.

Midoriya looked between the phone and Ochako, interest brightening through the old embarrassment. “That was right before your Gunhead internship, wasn’t it?”

Ochako’s shoulders lifted around a small laugh. “Kind of.”

Mina turned toward her. “Wait, did angry first-year Bakugou accidentally give useful career advice?”

Ochako’s cheeks warmed, but she did not deny it. “He noticed I needed more close-range options. I already knew that, but hearing it from him after that fight made it hard to ignore.”

Tsuyu’s eyes moved from Ochako to Katsuki, calm and knowing over the rim of her cup. “Ochako-chan worked really hard after that, ribbit. She still does.”

Ochako glanced at her. “Tsu.”

“It’s true.” Tsuyu’s mouth curved. “She trains with Bakugou pretty often now. He’s been teaching her how to read aggressive fighters better, and how to stop giving ground when someone stronger tries to crowd her.”

Katsuki’s jaw tightened before he could stop it. He hated the way the room’s attention shifted toward him, hated more that Ochako did not look away from him when it did.

“He’s helped a lot,” Ochako said, her voice quieter but steadier than he expected. “I mean, he’s a total drill sergeant about it.”

Kirishima snorted into his drink. “Sounds about right.”

Ochako’s smile tugged at the corner, soft with memory.

“But he sees things other people miss. He doesn’t let me get away with bad habits, and he never treats rescue work like it means I shouldn’t be able to hit back.”

Her fingers brushed the side of her glass, and Katsuki watched the small motion like it mattered more than the whole room.

“I’m a better hero because of it.”

The words hit him with more force than they should have. Katsuki looked down into his glass, scowling like the whiskey had personally betrayed him.

Katsuki hated how fast the air changed. Hated that Kirishima’s grin eased smaller beside him. Hated that Ochako had listened back then, not because he had been gentle about it, but because he had seen her clearly enough to say something worth keeping.

“Tch. Not like I was wrong,” he muttered.

His tongue felt loose. Too loose. The alcohol, the heat of the apartment, the old memory sitting too close beneath his skin, all of it had started working at the tight seam where he kept himself shut. His thoughts were not scattered. That was the worst part. They were clear, specific, meanly honest, lining up behind his teeth like they had been waiting for the second his control slipped.

He should have stopped there.

He knew he should have stopped there because every instinct he had was starting to bare its teeth, not at anyone else, but at the part of him still trying to pretend he could keep wanting her quietly.

He drank before the rest could come loose. The burn did nothing to put the words back where they belonged. It only dragged them closer.

Beside him, Kirishima went alert in that quiet, careful way that meant he had noticed the shift before anyone else did. Katsuki felt the attention land and ignored it because looking at Kirishima would mean admitting there was something to stop, and the drunk, furious part of him did not want to stop.

Ochako forgot about the cup in her hand. Katsuki could see it in the way her fingers loosened around the stem, the way her mouth parted before she pressed it closed again.

Mina looked down at the phone again, her grin twitching at the corners.

“And then in a later interview,” she continued, already fighting for her life, “he said, ‘her roundness is acceptable.’”

Kaminari made a strangled sound into his fist. Sero turned his face toward the couch like the wall might save him. Someone whistled low from the far side of the rug, and Jirou’s eyes sharpened with immediate, dangerous interest.

“I’m sorry, Bakugou,” Kaminari said, beaming with the reckless joy of a man sprinting toward his own funeral, “but can you clarify which round part of her was acceptable?”

Jirou jabbed her earphone jack into the side of his head. “Knock that off.”

Mineta, unfortunately, looked like someone had opened the gates of heaven directly in front of him. His eyes bulged. His fingers twitched.

“Bakugou,” he whispered, reverent and doomed, “I didn’t take you for a man of culture. You… you understand.”

The laughter came too quickly for him to separate one voice from another. Kaminari lost his fight with a cough. Sero bent forward with his cup near his mouth, shoulders shaking.

Mina’s grin went wide, then wider, and Ochako’s blush rose so fast she had to look down into her wine like the surface might give her somewhere to put her face.

His palm sparked once against the glass, a hot little crackle that made Yaoyorozu’s eyes flick to the side table.

He smothered it. “Wasn’t a damn joke.”

The words cut the laughter unevenly. A few smiles stayed, uncertain now, caught between teasing and the first realization that he was not defending an old insult. He was defending an old truth.

Mina looked from him to Ochako, and the grin on her face shifted into something sharper.

“Oh yeah?” she said, slower now. “Then what did it mean?”

Katsuki could have answered Mina. That would have been safer. Easier, too, because Mina was across the room with her phone in her hand and that sharp little grin on her face, waiting to see how far she could push before someone stopped her.

But Ochako was the one looking at him.

Her hand had settled beside her cup, fingers resting lightly against the rug, and the flush on her cheeks had changed since the laughter started, less embarrassed now and more careful. She watched him like she was trying to hear the thing he had not said yet, and the attention pulled at the loose parts of him the whiskey had already unlatched.

His mouth opened before he found a clean way out.

“You looked like everybody’s favorite underdog,” he said.

Ochako went very still.

“You had the round face, the soft voice, the big eyes,” he said. “People saw that and decided the fight before you even moved.”

Mina’s grin vanished into something stunned and delighted.

Katsuki kept looking at Ochako because looking away seemed worse somehow.

“Then you made every assumption in that arena work for you.”

The room had gone too warm around the edges. Not loud anymore, exactly, but full of held breath and shifting bodies, everyone realizing at different speeds that he was not talking about an old quote. He was back in the stadium with dust in his mouth and smoke on his palms, watching her turn fear into strategy while the crowd underestimated her because she looked easy to knock down.

“You made them underestimate you,” he said. “Then you turned the whole field into a trap while they were busy feeling sorry for you.”

“O-oh, thank you,” she said softly.

His attention dropped to her mouth when she spoke.

There was nothing subtle left in him. The whiskey had left the room soft at the edges and her painfully sharp in the middle of it, lips parted around the last soft shape of her thanks, color high in her cheeks, eyes fixed on him like she had forgotten anyone else was listening.

Katsuki dragged his gaze back up.

“You got stronger after that,” he said.

The room shifted around that, a quiet little ripple of interest, but Katsuki barely heard it over the heat crawling up his neck.

He should have stopped. He knew he should have stopped because Kirishima had gone still beside him and Jirou was watching him over the rim of her cup like she could see the cliff coming.

Katsuki took another drink anyway, or tried to. The glass was lighter than he expected. Almost empty. He stared into it, annoyed by the betrayal of that, then tipped the last mouthful back because leaving it there felt like weakness. The room shifted when he lowered the glass. Not much. Just enough for the lamplight to smear gold across Ochako’s cheek and make his hand tighten uselessly around nothing.

“I shouldn’t be talking,” he muttered.

“That might be the safest thing you’ve said tonight,” Jirou said.

“Didn’t ask you, Ears.”

Ochako’s gaze flicked to the glass and back to his face. Concern moved through the embarrassment, sharpening her expression in the way hero work had trained into all of them. It should have annoyed him.

It did annoy him.

It also made something in his chest twist because even now, with the whole room pressing in and his mouth making a disaster out of him, she was checking whether he was okay.

“How much have you had?” she asked.

“Enough.”

Kirishima leaned forward carefully. “It’s been a lot.”

Katsuki looked back at Ochako before he could stop himself.

She pressed her lips together, trying to hold in whatever reaction had risen behind her teeth. It only made the flush down her throat worse. Only made the soft curve of her mouth more obvious. Only made him remember every time she had looked at him like that across a training mat, irritated and amused and ready to tell him exactly where he was being an idiot.

Kaminari put his plate down with great care, like any sudden movement might kill him.

Ochako stared at Katsuki, her fingers still hovering near her mouth. “W-what?”

Katsuki shut his eyes.

The room erupted before he could answer.

Mina folded into Jirou’s shoulder, laughing so hard no sound came out. Sero dragged both hands down his face. Kaminari looked like he had been given information too powerful to survive. Yaoyorozu pressed her fingertips to her lips, scandalized and trying very hard not to smile.

Katsuki opened his eyes and glared at all of them. “What?”

Kaminari made the fatal choice to speak. “You can’t say something like that and then ask what.”

“I said what I said.”

“We know,” Sero said, voice strained. “That’s the problem.”

Ochako lowered her hand slowly. Her eyes searched his face, and that was worse than the laughter. That softness. That careful attention. Like she was trying to decide where the alcohol ended and he began.

He hated how much he wanted her to know there was no clean place to separate them.

His jaw worked once.

He could have snarled. He could have made it funny by force. He could have tossed Kaminari into the nearest houseplant and bought himself enough chaos to get his face under control.

It should have embarrassed him enough to stop. Instead, the truth hit the air and made room for more. Katsuki felt the heat crawl up his neck, furious at himself for giving the room this much, furious at them for hearing it, furious at Ochako for looking at him like she wanted to understand every word and might actually survive doing it.

He kept going anyway, because apparently wanting her quietly had never made him any less gone.

Katsuki could hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. The soft brush of Jirou shifting against Yaoyorozu. Kirishima’s breath catching in his chest. Ochako’s swallow.

The apartment felt too bright, too warm, too full of people who knew him too well and still had never seen him stripped down like this.

His anger snapped inward, turned on himself, and his voice came lower.

“You take care of everybody before yourself,” he said. “Always have. And you’re the first to give something up if someone else needed it more.”

His mouth twisted, rough and too honest. “You think nobody notices that shit? I do.”

The words landed between them with enough force to make the room disappear for him.

Kirishima was still there beside him, suddenly too quiet.

“I thought about that fight for months,” he said.

“How pissed I was that people talked like I should go easy on you. Like you hadn’t earned the right to get hit back.”

The fall came back to him in pieces: the hard drop of her body into the dirt, the crowd’s roar swelling too late, the way his palms still smoked while she tried to force herself upright on strength that should have already been gone. She had wrung herself dry in front of the whole stadium and still looked furious that her body had reached its limit before her will did.

He remembered being angry afterward because too many people acted like the loss was the whole story, when that had never been the part that stayed with him. What stayed with him was the way she had come at him with everything, and the fact that he had still been thinking about it when the bruises faded.

“And then you kept doing it,” he said.

Katsuki could feel Kirishima watching him, as well as Jirou and Mina going quiet in that sharp way people did when teasing started turning into something they were not sure they had permission to hear, even if neither of them looked remotely ready to leave.

It should have stopped him. A smarter version of him would have bitten down on the rest of it and let the night crawl back toward noise.

“Then you came back from Gunhead all bruised up and full of confidence,” he said, the words rougher now, edges catching where the whiskey dragged them through.

“Fuck, that was good.”

Ochako’s eyes widened, and her fingers tightened where they rested near her knee.

A crooked, disbelieving breath left him, almost a laugh and too sharp to be one.

“You wanted another shot at me,” he said, gaze fixed on her. “And I would’ve given it to you. Any time. Every time.”

The room broke.

Sero folded forward so fast his cup nearly tipped, one hand clamped over his mouth like he could physically hold the laugh in. Kaminari collapsed sideways onto the rug, both hands over his face, shoulders shaking so hard his plate slid toward disaster.

Mina turned fully into Jirou’s side, silent with laughter, one hand smacking blindly at the couch cushion because she could not get enough air to speak.

“I can’t!” Sero wheezed, dragging one hand down his face.

“Bakugou, you’re killing me! You should drink more often!”

“Where have you been hiding this version of you, man?” Kaminari managed, voice cracking with tears streaming down his face.

Kirishima’s smile had slipped into something helpless and warm beside Katsuki, like he was watching his best friend bleed out emotionally in the middle of Yaoyorozu’s living room and still wanted to cheer for him.

Ochako did not seem to hear any of them. Her attention stayed on Katsuki, wide-eyed and flushed and caught on the part he had meant more than all the rest.

“Katsuki,” she whispered, her voice soft enough that it almost did what the whole room could not and pulled him back into himself.

“I appreciate the…positive feedback. But maybe you should have some water, okay? Or some air. You’ve had a lot to drink.”

Her eyes flicked once to the glass in his hand, then back to his face, and the concern there sat right beside the blush, tender and mortifying all at once.

His gaze dropped to her mouth.

A smirk tugged at him before he could stop it, crooked and too pleased, the kind he would have worn into a fight if he knew he was about to win.

“Yeah,” he said, low and rough, swinging a lazy finger to point to her. “That too.”

His mouth kept moving because he had no sense left and because some part of him had been waiting years to say it badly, honestly, in whatever shape survived coming out of him.

“When you say my name like that,” he said, the smirk still there but starting to fracture around the heat in his voice, “I want you to keep saying it.”

The apartment went dead silent.

Kaminari’s mouth fell open. Sero’s hand shot out and covered it before he could make a sound. Mina’s eyes went enormous above the rim of her glass. Jirou turned her face into Yaoyorozu’s shoulder like she had been physically struck by the audacity of it.

Ochako did not look away.

Her hand rose to her mouth and stopped there, fingertips hovering near her lower lip. She looked embarrassed, yes, bright with it all the way down her throat, but there was something else under the heat in her cheeks. Something startled and pleased and careful. Something that made Katsuki’s pulse kick hard enough to make his vision sharpen around her.

He swallowed and kept going, quieter now, the words dragging out of a place alcohol had only unlocked, not invented.

“You stopped flinching before hits landed,” he said. “Saw it happen. One day you were bracing like you knew it’d hurt, and then you just... didn’t. Like fear could wait its damn turn.”

His fingers curled against his thigh.

“And when you save people, you get this look.” He swallowed, throat rough, eyes fixed on her because looking anywhere else felt impossible now. “Like the ground’s personally insulted you. Rubble, floods, roads split open, doesn’t matter. You look at it like gravity’s being a pain in your ass and you’re gonna win because you’re too stubborn to let anybody fall.”

Ochako blinked fast, her lips parting around a breath that almost became his name again.

“When you say my name like that,” he said, the smirk still there but starting to fracture around the heat in his voice, “it does something stupid to my head.”

Katsuki leaned forward by a fraction, caught by the shine in her eyes and too drunk to hide that it mattered.

“I want those pretty lips to keep saying my name.”

The silence after that was different.

No one laughed this time. Sero’s hand stayed clamped over Kaminari’s mouth, but even Kaminari had gone still beneath it. Mina’s eyes were huge over the rim of her glass. Jirou had turned into Yaoyorozu’s shoulder and stayed there, one hand pressed hard over her own mouth like she knew better than to let a single sound loose.

The old interview line scraped back through him, ugly and insufficient now that she was sitting there flushed and real in front of him.

“No,” he said, answering the memory more than her. “Acceptable is wrong.”

Her expression flickered.

Panic cut through him cleanly.

“Better than that,” he announced, rough and urgent. “Dangerous. And beautiful. And pink and round and fierce and—”

“You... you can stop now, Katsuki. Please.”

Ochako’s face went hot enough that Katsuki could see it spread down her neck.

“N~o.”

The word came out too fast, too sure, dragged straight from the most combative part of him. Katsuki’s jaw set as if she had challenged him in a fight.

The room understood, finally, that they were too close to something private. Even Kaminari shut up.

Ochako looked at him sitting there with whiskey warm in his blood and honesty burning through his mouth, still scowling like he could fight his way out of tenderness if he hit hard enough.

“Can we maybe... move this somewhere else?”

Katsuki stared at her until the room blurred around the edges again.

“She’s the best,” he said.

Katsuki’s head snapped up, eyes cutting across the room like someone had challenged him. His face had gone hot enough that he could feel it under his skin.

“What?” he demanded.

No one answered.

Kaminari, unfortunately, made the mistake of making eye contact.

Katsuki lurched forward and caught the front of Kaminari’s shirt in one fist before Kirishima could get both hands on him. The motion was clumsy, more drunk offense than real threat, but Kaminari still squeaked as Katsuki hauled him close enough to smell the sugar on his drink.

“What,” Katsuki said again, louder now, furious color burning across his cheeks, “you don’t agree?”

Kaminari’s hands flew up. “H-huh? I didn’t say anything!”

“Are your eyes just for decoration?”

“W-what? Wait, no!” Kaminari said too fast, palms fluttering against Katsuki’s wrist like he was trying to calm down a grenade with manners.

“I-I agree! You’re totally right! She’s the best. She’s a cool hero. Seriously cool.”

Katsuki’s grip did not loosen.

Kaminari’s eyes darted helplessly toward Sero, then Mina, then anywhere that was not Ochako’s bright red face.

“And, yeah, I mean, she’s super hot too, so that’s another plus.”

The words reached Katsuki slowly, not because he had failed to understand them, but because every ugly, possessive part of him needed a second to stand up.

His eyes narrowed. “Say that again.”

Kaminari’s smile died on arrival. “The... cool hero part?”

“You been lookin’ at her?”

Kaminari swallowed. “You just told me that I should be! Besides, everyone with eyes can see it, too.”

“You’re about to lose yours.”

“Kacchan,” Midoriya said, standing halfway with both hands already lifted, his voice gentle in the way that meant he thought feelings could be approached like an evacuation route.

“I think Kaminari meant that Uraraka is admired because she’s an amazing hero.”

Katsuki’s unfocused glare cut to him.

Midoriya froze for half a breath, hands still lifted. “No one’s disrespecting her, Kacchan. Kaminari phrased it badly, but everyone here knows how incredible Uraraka is.”

Katsuki’s lip curled. “Don’t dress it up.”

“I’m not,” Midoriya said, quieter now, nervous smile fading into something careful.

“I’m saying you don’t have to defend her from us.”

Katsuki stared at him before his gaze snapped back to Ochako as he shoved Kaminari away.

The front of Kaminari’s shirt snapped against his chest, and Sero caught him by the shoulder before he could decide whether surviving meant laughing.

“Like everybody gets to look at her and talk about her like she’s some damn—”

He paused when his gaze met hers. She was still flushed, still sitting near the coffee table with her body angled toward him, but the embarrassment had sharpened through her expression.

Her brows drew together. Her mouth pressed into a small, warning line. The look she gave him was the one she used on reckless civilians and panicked kids, soft enough not to scare them and firm enough to make them stop putting themselves in danger.

He continued to stare at her like she had grabbed him by the front of his shirt without touching him. And damn did he like it.

“Pisses me off,” he muttered, but it came out too soft to mean anger. “How pretty you are when you glare at me.”

Ochako’s look cracked under the force of her own mortification, but she did not let it go. Her fingers curled at the base of her throat, and she held his gaze like she was trying to drag him back from the edge by will alone.

“Katsuki, please,” she said, and it came out barely above a whisper.

The name hit him hard enough to shut him up.

He stared at her, red-faced and defiant and undone, still breathing like he had been ready to fight the entire room on her behalf.

“Yeah,” he said, rougher now. “That. S’what I mean.”

Kirishima shifted closer. “Okay. That’s enough.”

“No.” Katsuki pushed at his hand without force. “M’not done.”

“Yes you are,” Kirishima said, louder than necessary as he stood and got both hands under Katsuki’s arm. “Let’s go. We’re getting you home before you start another incident.”

“Lemme go.”

“No.”

Katsuki tried to plant his feet when Kirishima hauled him upright, but the rug shifted under him and his balance went sideways. Kirishima caught him before he could hit the coffee table, bracing an arm around his back with the grim patience of a man who had known, somehow, that his night would end like this.

“Ah! Careful!” Yaoyorozu said, jumping to her feet.

“M’fine.”

“She’s not talking about you, idiot,” Jirou chided. “Don’t break our furniture!”

Katsuki shoved weakly at Kirishima’s arm, offended by the rescue and using most of his remaining balance to pretend he had not needed it.

His shoulder knocked into Kirishima’s chest, his heel caught against the edge of the rug, and his hand shot out for balance too late to look like anything but failure.

Kirishima tightened his arm around Katsuki’s middle and hauled him back into place before Yaoyorozu’s furniture could become collateral damage.

Katsuki pointed at Kaminari, though his hand landed somewhere near the ceiling.

“You piss me off.”

“Why am I the target?!”

The room tried not to laugh and failed in smaller, safer ways. Mina ducked behind her glass while Jirou covered her mouth with the back of her hand. Yaoyorozu’s attention kept flicking between Katsuki’s unsteady feet and the very breakable coffee table, visibly calculating whether concern or furniture triage would be needed first.

Kirishima started steering Katsuki toward the entryway before the answer became both.

Katsuki went with him for three uneven steps, then twisted so abruptly Kirishima nearly lost his grip.

“Wait.”

Kaminari made a tiny sound and immediately silenced himself under Sero’s hand.

Kirishima tightened his hold. “No waiting.”

Katsuki looked over his shoulder at Ochako, and whatever sharpness had lived in his face all night softened beneath the whiskey, exhaustion, and the humiliation he would hate himself for in the morning. His hair had gone messy from every time he had dragged a hand through it. His cheeks were hot. His mouth, usually so hard with restraint, had gone loose around a complaint he could not quite swallow.

“I’m goin’ back with Cheeks,” he protested again, small crackles popping down his arms.

Kirishima made a noise somewhere above him that sounded like a man begging every god he had ever heard of for patience.

“Enough of this.”

Katsuki felt Kirishima shift, and the room tilted in a way that had nothing to do with the whiskey.

Kirishima caught his legs with one arm and hauled him over his shoulder like Katsuki weighed nothing more than an overstuffed duffel bag.

Kaminari and Sero choked out loud laughs while Mina’s phone flashed up in her hand, the lens angled toward the disaster with the shameless speed of someone who had been waiting years for this exact blackmail.

“Put me down, Shitty Hair.”

Katsuki snarled into the back of Kirishima’s shirt, but the sound had too much whiskey in it to land with dignity. The blood rushed strangely in his head from being slung over Kirishima’s shoulder, the apartment swimming sideways in warm streaks of gold lamps, moving bodies, and the blur of Ochako stepping closer.

Her face came into focus slowly, like the room had decided to give her back to him one piece at a time. Pink cheeks first. Wide eyes. The soft line of her mouth fighting between concern and embarrassment.

Her palm settled gently on his shoulder, and the world changed under her touch. His body went light in a clean, impossible rush, gravity peeling away from him.

Kirishima adjusted instantly, swearing under his breath when Katsuki became too easy to carry.

“Warn a guy,” Kirishima said.

“Sorry,” Ochako murmured, though she did not take her hand away.

Her fingers slid from Katsuki’s shoulder down the line of his sleeve until she reached the exposed skin of his forearm where his sleeve had ridden up during his useless struggle, and Katsuki shivered.

“Let Kirishima help you,” she said, voice low enough that it threaded under the laughter instead of cutting through it.

His mouth pulled into something dangerously close to a pout. He glared at the floor because glaring at her would have required moving his head, and moving his head might make her hand stop touching him.

Ochako’s fingers tightened carefully against his forearm when his shoulder twitched like he might start fighting again.

His scowl hardened. “Tch.”

Something in his chest folded easier for her than it had for anyone else, and that made him furious in a distant, useless way. He could feel the shape of it even through the liquor, the humiliating truth of how quickly he yielded when her voice went soft.

“Fine,” he muttered.

Ochako’s eyes widened slightly, like she had not expected obedience to work so cleanly.

Kaminari leaned around Sero with a snicker.

“See ya later, lover boy.”

The whole entryway went bright with held-in laughter.

“Come on,” Ochako said, the smile still trembling at the edge of her mouth. “I’ll ride down with you.”

She stepped into the hallway beside them, fingers still wrapped around his forearm. The warmth of the apartment spilled out behind her, catching in her hair, turning the flush in her cheeks soft around the edges.

“O~i!” Katsuki lifted his head just enough to point vaguely into the room.

“Don’t let Dunce Face touch my chicken.”

Ochako’s laugh broke again, helpless and bright, and Katsuki felt his mouth try to answer it.

The door shut behind them with a click as the apartment’s noise broke against the other side of it in one muffled wave.

Kirishima carried him down the hallway with one arm locked around his thighs and the other braced across his back.

Ochako walked close on the other side, her quirk still threaded through his body, her hand sliding away from his forearm only when they reached the elevator. The loss of her touch made his stomach drop harder than being set down ever could.

“Don’t let go,” he muttered.

Ochako glanced at him, startled. Her mouth softened around a smile she tried very hard to hide. “I promise I won’t drop you.”

Katsuki stared at her, and the hallway lights cut soft gold across her face. Everything still blurred in streaks, but her expression stayed steady in the middle of it, embarrassed and kind and still looking at him like he had put something breakable in her hands.

His voice came out lower. “You know you’re the best, right?”

“Not again,” Kirishima muttered. He pressed the elevator button with one knuckle and stared very hard at the glowing numbers above the door. He sighed heavily, finally letting a breathy laugh slip out from his mouth.

“Pretty sure she knows by now, buddy.”

“Cause ya are,” Katsuki continued.

The elevator arrived with a chime. Kirishima stepped inside and finally lowered Katsuki to his feet.

Katsuki landed heavily and immediately leaned sideways into Kirishima’s shoulder.

“Best damn person in that room.”

The elevator sealed them inside with the soft slide of its doors and carried them down through the building’s hush.

Ochako’s cheeks were still pink when she looked at him through the elevator’s warped reflection, but the corner of her mouth lifted anyway, soft and embarrassed and dangerously fond.

“Yes, yes, okay, Katsuki. You win,” she said, like she was trying very hard not to laugh. “I’m the best.”

His head turned toward her at once.

She pressed her lips together, but the smile escaped around the edges.

“Maybe I should put you in charge of my next campaign. If you keep talking like that, you’ll get me into the top five.”

Katsuki stared at her with the grave intensity of a man being handed a mission.

“Yes,” he said. “I will.”

Next to him, Kirishima choked out a laugh.

Katsuki had one hand clamped on the rail and the other fisted uselessly at Kirishima’s sleeve. Without Ochako’s quirk threaded through him, weight returned in a rush, dragging him back into his own body.

The elevator dinged, doors sliding open as cold air slipped in from the revolving doors and brushed across Katsuki’s face like a slap.

The lobby was quiet around them, all marble floors, soft lights, fake plants, and an expensive little couch under a huge abstract painting that looked like someone had spilled soup on canvas and charged rent for it.

The city gleamed through the glass doors in damp streaks of white and red. Somewhere outside, tires hissed over wet pavement.

Katsuki stared at her, and the anger could not find anywhere to stand while her voice was still soft in his ears.

He wanted to stay there with her a little longer.

He wanted to get out before he said something worse.

He wanted to call her name and hear his own from her mouth the way he did on the rare nights their schedules lined up, when they ended up at the same restaurant after late shifts, tired enough to be soft and still too careful with each other.

“M’gonna message you.”

His voice echoed through the empty lobby, rough and too loud after the elevator’s hush.

Ochako’s eyes lifted to his, and a small smile broke through again.

“Of course,” she said gently. “You can message or call me anytime. But I think what you need to do right now is get some rest. Then we can talk after, okay?”

His jaw worked once.

“Because tomorrow,” she continued, quieter now, “you might wake up and...”

She stopped there, her smile turning small and nervous.

“Anyway, make sure you drink lots of water and maybe grab a bite to eat before going to sleep.”

She began walking backward toward the elevator, reluctant to turn away from them completely.

“Make sure you let one of us know when you guys get home. ’Kay?”

Kirishima lifted two fingers in a crooked mock salute.

“You got it! He’s in good hands.”

Ochako’s smile warmed. “Goodnight, Kirishima.”

Her eyes slid back to Katsuki, and the softness there made his grip tighten uselessly around the air.

“Goodnight, Katsuki.”

“Oi!”

His voice bounced through the empty lobby, rough and too loud against the marble and glass.

Katsuki pushed himself away from Kirishima just enough to face her properly, trying to stand straight and only managing something stubborn and uneven. His brows pulled low. His scowl fixed on her like a challenge with one finger lifted in her direction.

“Remember it!” he slurred, because the first time did not feel like enough and because he was drunk enough to need the words nailed down before someone could move them.

The elevator chimed behind her. The doors opened, spilling clean light around her shoulders, and Ochako stepped inside backward, still looking at him.

Kirishima slapped a hand to his forehead and dragged it down his face like he was physically trying to keep the last of his patience in place.

“You’re number one to me, Ochako.”

Ochako’s smile trembled before it settled, soft and full of affection, her laugh tucked into it so gently that it made his chest ache. She looked at him like he was impossible, embarrassing, and precious all in one messy, blonde package.

“Thank you, Katsuki,” she said. “Get home safe.”

A crooked smirk pulled at his lips, loose at one corner and far too pleased with itself, the kind of look he would have worn into a fight if he knew the other guy had already lost.

“Night, Sweet Cheeks.”

Katsuki kept looking at her until the doors began to close.

Then the floor tilted.

Kirishima caught him before his knees made a full argument. “Okay. Couch first.”

“Don’t order me around.”

Kirishima shifted his grip around Katsuki’s torso before he could slide lower. “I’m preserving what’s left of your dignity, man. Work with me.”

“Now sit down and be quiet before someone files a complaint.” Kirishima steered him toward the expensive little couch under the ugly abstract painting.

“M’fine.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it, buddy.”

He dropped Katsuki onto the cushions, the couch swallowing his weight until his shoulders sagged back against it and his head tipped toward the armrest.

Kirishima stepped away to the vending machines along the wall, keeping his body angled toward the couch like he expected Katsuki to make a break for the elevators the second his back turned. He fed money into the machine, glanced over twice, then came back with a bottle of water already cold enough to fog in his hand.

He held it out.

“Drink.”

“Tch. Gimme.” Katsuki snatched it from him like he had not almost dropped it, twisted the cap too hard, and fumbled long enough for Kirishima’s eyebrows to climb.

He drank too quickly because slowing down would mean admitting he needed it. The cold hit the back of his throat and made him swallow hard. Some spilled at the corner of his mouth; he dragged his wrist over it, scowling at the bottle like the water had chosen humiliation too.

It dulled the whiskey without clearing it, leaving plastic, alcohol, and Ochako’s tomorrow sitting stubbornly on his tongue.

Then his phone buzzed.

Katsuki went still, then dug for it with the sudden, grave focus of a drunk man handling explosives. His hand missed his pocket the first time. The second time, his fingers caught the edge of the phone and dragged it halfway out before it slipped, bounced off his thigh, and hit the polished floor with a flat little slap.

Kirishima leaned down. “I can get it.”

“No.”

Katsuki snatched it up before Kirishima could reach it.

The screen lit in his hand, bright enough to make his eyes narrow, and he saw her name before he saw anything else.

Ochako: You forgot your jacket. I’ll bring it home with me when I head out.

His mouth moved before sound came out. The smile tugged at him slowly, unwilling and helpless, dragging heat back into his face even though she was not there to see it.

Kirishima stood beside him pretending not to notice the way Katsuki’s entire posture had changed around one stupid text.

Then the phone buzzed again.

Ochako: Get some rest tonight. We can still make plans for tomorrow if you want to, okay?

Katsuki stared until the word blurred at the edges.

Katsuki: okya

He stared at the typo with a frown that deepened by degrees, then sent another message before his thumb could betray him again.

Katsuki: oaky

“Fuck’s sake,” he muttered.

Kirishima lowered himself onto the low table in front of him and kept his voice carefully neutral.

Katsuki turned the screen and jerked it back against his chest as if Kirishima had tried to steal state secrets.

“Tch. Don’t read it.”

Katsuki shoved at him with the water bottle, missed by several inches, and sank deeper into the couch with a frustrated grunt. His shoulder slid down the cushion.

He tried to push himself upright, but his hand planted at the wrong angle and his face ended up pressed into the couch arm instead, cheek mashed against the upholstery, phone trapped under his chest.

Kirishima’s hand landed between his shoulder blades, steady and warm.

“Stay down. Give yourself a second to recalibrate.”

Katsuki turned his head enough to glare with one eye.

Kirishima sat back, but he did not move far. The couch dipped when Katsuki tried again to sit up and only managed to slide into the corner of it with his knees spread, water bottle wedged against his thigh, phone clutched tight enough to make the case creak.

Katsuki scowled at the elevator doors.

The lobby was too empty without her in it.

That was the first thought that made it through the whiskey cleanly. The second was that the elevator had taken her upstairs, away from him, where the apartment was full of people who had seen too much.

Katsuki dragged a hand through his hair, messed it further, and let his head fall back against the couch.

Kirishima pressed his lips together so hard his jaw flexed, but the laugh still leaked out of him in rough little bursts.

He turned his face toward the fake lobby plant like that would help, shoulders shaking silently while he fought for his life.

Katsuki’s eyes narrowed. “The hell are you laughin’ about?”

The couch was too soft for him to bother following through with a threat, and the lobby lights were too bright to keep staring at Kirishima’s shaking shoulders. Katsuki closed his eyes with a low, irritated sound, telling himself it was only for a second.

His phone stayed trapped in both hands, screen dark under his thumbs.

The lobby hummed around him. The water sat cold in his stomach. His face burned and his chest hurt, and the last thing he remembered before sleep took the shape of the room away was Ochako saying tomorrow like it belonged to both of them.

When he woke, his mouth tasted like a mix of cotton, regret and vending machine water.

The first thing he saw was Kirishima sitting on the low table in front of him, elbows on his knees, scrolling through his phone with the grim patience of a man who had accepted his role as Katsuki’s emotional hazard containment for the night.

The second thing he saw was a water bottle hovering in front of his face.

“Well,” Kirishima said, “good morning to you.”

Katsuki blinked at him.

His vision came back in layers. Kirishima’s red hair first, then the ugly abstract painting behind him, then the lobby’s polished floor shining too bright under his boots. His skull felt packed with cotton and sparks. The world had stopped spinning, mostly, but everything still lagged by half a breath.

“How long?”

“About twenty minutes.”

Katsuki pushed himself upright on instinct, too fast for a body still full of whiskey and public humiliation.

The lobby slid sideways for one sick second before Kirishima caught his shoulder with one hand and shoved the water bottle closer with the other.

“Slowly. You completed phase one of getting home by passing out in the lobby.”

Katsuki squinted at him. “S’not my lobby.”

Kirishima laughed before he could stop himself. “Exactly. That’s phase two: leaving the host’s building before somebody with an early patrol comes down and finds you still trying to get out the door.”

Katsuki took the water because his stomach turned at the idea of arguing. He drank in slow pulls this time, the way Kirishima’s annoyingly watchful stare suggested he should.

Kirishima held out two small tablets in a torn packet.

Katsuki eyed them. “The hell is that?”

“Gravol. I brought it along expecting the worst. And good thing I did.”

Katsuki took the tablets with a scowl, tossed them into his mouth, and swallowed them down with two hard pulls of water while Kirishima watched like a nurse with terrible bedside manner.

“It’s not a magical hangover cure,” Kirishima said, “so don’t start yelling at me tomorrow if you still feel like trash.”

Katsuki leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. The short sleep had dragged him closer to sober, but not close enough to save him. His thoughts were clearer now, which was worse. They lined up in pieces instead of swimming, and every piece had Ochako in it.

The memory came back in a rush, her face when he said dangerous, her mouth when he said pretty, her hand on his arm, and the soft weight of tomorrow sitting in his pocket.

The horror crept up slowly at first, then all at once. Katsuki shoved both hands into his hair and gripped hard.

Kirishima’s expression shifted with far too much understanding. “Yeah. Welcome back.”

He groaned into his hands, elbows digging into his knees as he sobered up and reality started hitting him with one loud confession at a time.

“Damn it.”

He leaned back, stared at the ceiling, and let out a heavy, uneven sigh that emptied him from ribs to stomach. His hand dragged through his hair again, slower this time, fingers catching in the mess and pulling until his scalp stung.

“I just—that was something, huh?” Kirishima rubbed the back of his head. “I knew you’d crack eventually, man, but I didn’t think it’d be directly to her face with everyone we know in one room.”

The words came back in pieces, each one worse with a little more sobriety attached.

Katsuki dragged both hands down his face, hard enough to pull at his skin. The lobby lights burned through his fingers.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

Kirishima’s grin softened. “Yeah?”

Katsuki stared at the ugly abstract painting across from them like it might give him somewhere to put the damage.

“I ruined it.”

“Ruined is a pretty strong word.”

“I said it in front of everyone.” His voice scraped lower, rough with the first clear edge of panic. “I had years to say one normal damn thing to her, and I did that.”

Kirishima leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You told her the truth, at least.”

Katsuki closed his eyes. “It felt more like detonating myself.”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

His eyes opened. “That was your chance to disagree.”

“I’m not lying to you while you’re emotionally fragile.”

Katsuki stared at him.

Kirishima nodded once. “We can leave that alone.”

“Good.”

They left the lobby after Katsuki finished most of the water and proved, under protest, that he could stand without immediately trying to fight gravity.

Kirishima kept a hand near his back anyway, not touching unless Katsuki swayed too far, which was somehow more annoying than being held.

The night outside had cooled while he slept. Damp air dragged over his face and slipped under his collar. The sidewalks shone under streetlights, thin puddles catching the blurred colors of convenience stores, traffic signals, and late-night restaurants still open for people who had made better choices.

Kirishima’s place was closer than Katsuki’s, which Kirishima announced once and then did not repeat because Katsuki had shown him his teeth.

They walked in mostly silence at first.

Katsuki kept his hands shoved in his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold, water bottle tucked under one arm because Kirishima had made him bring it. His body still felt heavy and too warm from the inside out, but his vision was beginning to clear at the edges.

The street stopped doubling every time he blinked. The lights stayed where they were supposed to. His boots hit the pavement in a rhythm that almost felt like his again.

That made the embarrassment worse.

His balance still lagged half a step behind the rest of him, and when he swayed toward the curb, Kirishima caught up to his quickening steps without trying, matching his uneven pace with the annoying ease of someone sober and built like a wall.

“For what it’s worth...” Kirishima cleared his throat. “I’ve seen worse confessions.”

Katsuki scoffed. “No, you haven’t.”

“I might have.”

“Name one.”

Kirishima opened his mouth, then closed it.

Katsuki pointed at him without looking. “Exactly.”

Kirishima laughed then, quiet and warm, and Katsuki wanted to hate it more than he did. The sound loosened something in the cold air between them.

“Okay… maybe not worse.”

Kirishima walked beside him for a few steps before speaking again, quieter this time.

“You didn’t mess it up completely.”

He kept going before Katsuki could bite back.

“You know, it was going to come out eventually. Maybe not with Kaminari’s shirt in your fist and Momo’s security deposit being compromised, but the thing itself?”

Katsuki glared at him.

“I mean, I’ve known for a long time,” Kirishima said.

“Most of us have. You soften around her, even when you’re being louder to pretend you don’t.”

The wet sidewalk shone under the streetlights. Katsuki kept walking, but his steps lost some of their bite.

“And Uraraka’s not stupid,” Kirishima added. “She understands you differently than the rest of us. She’s always been able to see when you’re being cruel and when you’re just saying something badly because you care too much to make it… easier to understand.”

Katsuki’s hand went to his pocket, where his phone sat heavy against his thigh. He did not take it out. He already knew the message by heart.

“She still said she wanted to meet with you tomorrow,” Kirishima said. “So that’s a good sign.”

Tomorrow.

Katsuki swallowed. “Yeah.”

Tomorrow meant she wanted to talk. It also meant she still wanted to talk to him, after all of that, while the wreckage was still warm.

“Shit.” His stomach tightened. “She’s gonna want to talk about everything.”

“Probably.”

“How the hell am I supposed to talk about—this. Any of this.”

Kirishima’s voice softened. “You already said a lot of it right. Definitely a lot more than you probably meant—”

Katsuki groaned and dragged a hand down his face.

“I’m serious, though,” Kirishima said.

“Sure it was a little messy. And loud. And in front of everyone.”

“Get to the damn point.”

“—But, what you said about her came from somewhere real and I’m sure she gets that. ‘Cause she gets you.”

Katsuki kept walking because stopping made it easier for the night to catch up.

A rough breath left him.

“I sounded pathetic.” His fingers tightened around the bottle until the plastic crackled.

Kirishima stopped a step ahead and turned back slowly.

“Hmm, maybe to you. And I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d say you sounded more in love than anything.”

Katsuki stopped so hard the whole street seemed to pause with him.

Being called out that plainly should have pissed him off. It should have given him something to swing at, something sharp enough to shove the word back into Kirishima’s mouth.

Instead, he could not deny it.

The silence did that for him, spreading hot in his chest where he had been storing every stolen look, every stupid protective reflex, every time he had reached for her before remembering he had no right to ask for comfort from the person he wanted most.

Katsuki looked away, jaw tight, throat working around nothing.

The street hummed around them, distant cars, the soft electric buzz of the convenience store sign ahead. Katsuki stared at that sign until the letters stopped doubling.

When he spoke, his voice came lower.

“She doesn’t know what she does to me.”

Kirishima waited.

The words scraped on the way out, rougher because they were too close to the place Katsuki hated showing anyone.

“Being so good to everyone. Showing up. Smiling when she’s tired enough to fall over. Being endlessly giving when none of it is reciprocated.”

His mouth twisted, anger and tenderness tangling until neither one had anywhere clean to go.

“She’ll give up the last piece of something she loves, something she waited too long to save up for, the last umbrella, the seat by the heater, whatever, like it doesn’t matter because it’s hers.”

He looked down at the bottle in his hand, thumb pressed hard into the plastic ridge.

“Pisses me off,” he muttered.

Kirishima’s voice stayed careful. “Because you want someone to do that for her?”

Katsuki did not answer right away.

The truth sat too close to his throat. He wanted her to get the best piece without having to ask. He wanted her sitting down before her knees started shaking. He wanted crowds to stop taking pieces of her just because she was kind enough to let them close. He wanted her warm before the cold could touch her. Fed before she remembered hunger counted for her too. Safe before the world gave him another reason to be too late.

He wanted her across from him in a ramen shop at midnight, cheeks warm from steam, stealing ginger from his bowl like he had not put extra there for her on purpose.

He wanted tomorrow because she had said it like he had not ruined everything.

“Yeah,” he said, rough and almost angry. “Something like that.”

Kirishima smiled, small enough not to get hit for it.

“You may not realize it, but you’re already that someone doing those things for her.”

They made it another block before Katsuki’s stomach gave an ominous turn.

Kirishima noticed immediately. “Come on, let’s stop by the convenience store first, we might need to restock our hangover supplies.”

Katsuki ended up with a spicy tuna rice ball, a bottle of sports drink, and ginger candy shoved into his hands before Kirishima herded him back outside.

A minute later, they stood under the awning beside the humming ice machine.

The night had gone quieter. Katsuki leaned against the wall under the light of the convenience store sign, peeling the plastic from the rice ball with more concentration than a pro hero should need, and took a bite.

The salt hit first, then the rice, then the brutal fact that he was outside a convenience store with Kirishima at midnight, eating because he had gotten drunk and confessed his humiliating, years-long, all-consuming love for Ochako Uraraka in front of their entire friend group.

His chewing slowed.

Kirishima glanced at him. “You okay?”

Katsuki stared ahead and swallowed his bite down with effort.

Then he made a sound so wounded and furious that Kirishima flinched.

Katsuki dropped to the sidewalk, balancing back on his heels while his elbows pressed into his knees and both hands shoved into his hair.

His face burned so hot he could feel it against his palms, the shame and hope and alcohol and dawning sobriety all crashing together until he wanted to crawl out of his own skin.

The rice ball ended up in Kirishima’s hand by reflex before it could hit the pavement.

“Fuck,” he said again, louder this time, voice muffled by his hands.

Kirishima looked down at him with the rice ball in one hand and the ginger candy in the other.

“Let it out, man. It’s gonna get worse each time as you sober up.”

Katsuki’s groan scraped out of him like physical pain.

The burn in Katsuki’s face changed. It did not leave. It only sank deeper, warmer and more dangerous than the embarrassment.

He dragged in a long, uneven breath, then let it out through his nose. His hand ran through his hair again, slower this time, pushing it back from his forehead before falling to the side of his neck.

“I’m so fucked,” he said.

Kirishima’s smile softened into something quieter, less teasing than it had been a second ago.

“Yeah,” Kirishima said, standing and offering Katsuki a hand. “But you’ve got tomorrow.”

Tomorrow.

Katsuki stared at his hand as he flexed it, then took it with a scowl sharp enough to defend what little dignity he had left.

“Tell anyone about tonight and I swear I’ll kill you.”

Kirishima hauled him upright and grinned. “Relax. Nothing I say is ever going to compete with anything you’ve already said.”

Katsuki’s glare snapped toward him.

“Oi.”

“Sorry man, but you did just declare a lifetime claim over her.”

Kirishima steadied him when his balance tipped sideways again, grin widening despite himself.

“At this point, all you’re missing is a ring and her response.”

It took a moment for Katsuki’s drunk, exhausted brain to catch up.

“Shut up! Are you fucked in the head?!”

“Not currently.”

“Tch. Don’t say shit like that. You skipped about twenty steps ahead, dumbass.”

“To be fair, you skipped them first.” Kirishima’s voice stayed light, but there was something fond underneath it, something steady enough to make the joke land softer.

“Don’t get mad at me for noticing where that road points.”

Katsuki dragged a hand down his burning face, rough over his eyes and nose and mouth, then let it fall with a groan that sounded like it had been pulled from the bottom of his lungs.

“I’m never going to live this down.”

“Yeah, probably not.” Kirishima’s grin softened as he nudged him forward down the wet sidewalk.

“But for right now, you just need to get through tomorrow.”

Katsuki looked away, but his hand drifted once toward the phone in his pocket before he could stop it.

“And who knows,” he added, too casual to be innocent.

“Maybe tomorrow turns into forever.”

Katsuki’s steps faltered. The word settled under his skin, warm and terrifying and stupidly bright.

Forever.

“Just… don’t rely on liquid courage again.”

Katsuki huffed and turned his face away, nose tipped up like Kirishima had offended him instead of landing a clean hit. It might have worked if his cheeks had not been burning all the way to his ears and down the back of his neck.

His mouth pulled into something dangerously close to a pout, awkward and stubborn and too embarrassed to survive eye contact.

The thought came anyway, soft and catastrophic beneath the whiskey. It started somewhere he could almost survive: asking her out, saying it without half their friends howling around them, giving her something steadier than what he’d done tonight.

Then his mind betrayed him and ran further.

A ring tucked hot in his palm. Ochako looking up at him with tears bright in her eyes. His name breaking open in her mouth right before yes.

“Tch. Shut up and keep walking.”

Kirishima only smiled and walked him home.