Archive of Our Own

ｔｈｅ ｓｗｏｒｄｓ

🃚 

Katsuki had never believed in fortune tellers.

He didn't believe in psychics, ghosts, spirits, curses, tarot cards, crystals, astrology, karma, or any other explanation people reached for when they couldn't accept that life was unpredictable. People hated not knowing what came next, so they invented answers. They drew cards, read palms, watched stars, assigned meaning to coincidences, and convinced themselves that the universe had a plan because the alternative was admitting that sometimes terrible things happened for no reason at all.

Which was why he was already regretting letting Denki drag him into a tiny occult shop wedged between a convenience store and a nail salon on the edge of Musutafu.

"This better be worth it," Katsuki groaned as Denki pushed open the door.

A bell chimed overhead, and a cloud of incense rolled out to greet them, making Katsuki wrinkle his nose. Purple curtains covered the windows, keeping most of the evening light outside, while shelves crowded every wall with candles, books, jars filled with dried herbs, polished stones, little statues, and enough crystals to convince him the owner had robbed a geology museum.

Denki, naturally, looked delighted.

Katsuki looked at him.

"You have five minutes."

"Five minutes for what?"

"For you to realize this place is bullshit and get me the fuck out of here."

"You haven't even met her yet."

Denki laughed and guided him farther inside before Katsuki could turn around. 

At the center of the shop stood a round wooden table with two chairs in front of it, and behind the table sat a woman who looked to be in her forties, her dark hair falling over one shoulder as she studied them over the top of a deck of cards.

Her attention went to Denki first, then Katsuki.

"You brought someone."

"Yeah." Denki dropped into one of the chairs. "This is Katsuki."

"I know."

Katsuki stopped beside the table.

"No shit, genius. My face is always all over the news."

Denki caught Katsuki by the wrist before he could make it to the door. “Don’t start.”

“I’m not starting anything.”

The fortune teller arched one eyebrow and then gestured to the chair across from her without saying a word, as if Katsuki hadn’t already made his position clear. He looked at the chair, then at her, and for a moment neither of them moved.

“No.”

“Katsuki.”

“You said we were coming in, so we came in. You got your money’s worth.” He tugged his wrist free from Denki’s grip and looked back at the woman. “I’m not sitting down so you can tell me I’m going to meet some mysterious stranger who changes my life, or that I have to watch out for a tall man with dark hair.”

Denki snorted. “Why’d you make that so specific?”

“Because that’s what these people always say.”

“I haven’t said anything yet,” the woman pointed out.

Katsuki gave her a look. “You were about to.”

“I was going to ask what you wanted to know.”

“Nothing.”

“Katsuki,” Denki said again, quieter this time.

He hated that tone, mostly because Denki knew exactly how to use it, and because Katsuki knew he was going to give in anyway. 

He glanced toward the table, then at the cards arranged in neat rows beside the candle, and finally back at Denki, who was watching him with the patient expression of someone who had already decided Katsuki wasn't going anywhere.

“Five minutes,” Katsuki said at last. “That’s it.”

Denki grinned. “Fine.”

The fortune teller waited until Katsuki took the chair before reaching for the deck. “You don’t have to believe in tarot.”

“Good.”

“You only have to answer honestly.”

“That’s less good.”

Denki laughed under his breath, and Katsuki shot him a look before turning back to the woman. She shuffled the cards with practiced hands, never looking away from him for long.

“Tarot isn’t about predicting the future,” she said. “It’s about interpretation. The cards can show patterns, choices, things you may already know but haven’t put into words.”

Katsuki folded his arms across his chest. “So you’re guessing.”

“I’m listening.”

“To cards.”

“No,” she said with a smile. “To you.”

He opened his mouth, ready with another argument, then stopped. The woman had already placed the first card face down between them.

“Let’s see what you’ve been avoiding.”

Katsuki looked at it, then at Denki, and wondered for perhaps the hundredth time why he'd agreed to come here in the first place. He should have listened to his instincts and left when Denki started talking about how getting his fortune read would be “good for him” because it was clearly not good for him.

“The Eight of Swords,” the woman said.

Katsuki leaned back in his chair. “Sounds promising.”

“It usually represents feeling trapped by your own thoughts.”

“I don't.”

Denki made a quiet noise beside him, the bastard already looking entertained. “You absolutely do.”

Katsuki didn't bother looking at him. “Shut up.”

The woman studied him over the edge of the card, and Katsuki had the distinct feeling she'd been waiting for that answer. She didn't rush to draw another card, either. Instead, she watched him with the kind of patience that made him want to leave even more.

“You think too much,” she said.

“That's all you got?”

“You think about what you should have said, what you should have done, and what might happen if you make the wrong choice. You keep most of it to yourself because you don't like anyone knowing when you're uncertain.”

Katsuki's fingers tightened around his knees exactly when the woman decided to pick up the deck again and slip another card free. “This one represents your present.”

She placed it beside the first and turned it over.

“The Lovers.”

Denki inhaled so hard that Katsuki immediately looked at him.

“Don't.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I wasn't, I swear.”

Katsuki turned back to the table before he said something that would get them thrown out. The Lovers sat between them, its faded figures staring up from the yellowed card, and he hated how quickly his mind supplied a name.

Eijirou.

It had done that for years.

He'd known Eijirou since they were kids, back when neither of them had any idea where their lives were going to take them. They'd grown up, become heroes, survived enough fights to fill several lifetimes, and somehow, through all of it, Eijirou had remained the person Katsuki looked for first whenever he walked into a room. Now they were twenty-three, both working as professional heroes, both exhausted more often than not, and they still went home to the same apartment at the end of the day.

Katsuki knew Eijirou's habits without thinking about them. He knew which mornings he needed coffee before he could hold a conversation, which takeout place he ordered from when he was too tired to cook, and how he rubbed at the scar near his left eyebrow whenever a case had been bothering him. He knew when Eijirou was pretending he wasn't tired and when he wanted company but didn't want to ask for it. He knew what Eijirou looked like half-asleep on the couch, what songs he played while making breakfast, and exactly how long it took him to get ready when they were running late.

He'd known all of it for years, and, apparently, the fortune teller had noticed enough to make him uncomfortable.

“You're thinking about someone,” she said.

“No.”

The answer came so quickly that even Denki went quiet.

The woman raised an eyebrow.

Katsuki frowned. “What?”

“I didn't say anything.”

“I know what you were doing.”

“I haven't done anything.”

Denki covered his mouth, but the laugh still escaped.

Katsuki kicked his chair.

“Fuck off.”

The woman looked between them, then back at Katsuki. “You care about this person.”

“I care about plenty of people.”

“Not in the same way.”

He stared at her but she didn't look away.

Katsuki hated her.

Not because she was right, even though that would have been easier. He hated her because she'd managed to say in less than a minute what he'd spent years refusing to admit, even to himself when he was alone.

“You've kept this to yourself for a long time,” she continued.

“Can we move on?”

“We can.”

She drew a third card, but instead of turning it over immediately, she rested it face down beside the others.

“This one represents what you're afraid of.”

Katsuki stared at the back of the card.

Then she turned it over.

“The Moon.”

Denki stopped moving.

Katsuki frowned at the picture. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You don't trust what you can't see.”

“I can see just fine.”

“You know how you feel about him,” she said. “You don't know how he feels about you.”

Katsuki went still, and for a moment, the room seemed smaller than it had a second ago. He could hear the faint hum of traffic beyond the shop windows, the soft crackle of the candle between them, and Denki breathing beside him. 

None of it helped. 

If anything, hearing all those ordinary sounds made the woman's words worse.

“You're afraid of losing the friendship,” she said.

Katsuki looked away because that was the real problem, wasn't it?

Not the cards. Not the stupid fortune teller. Not even Denki, who was going to be insufferable about this for the rest of his life.

Eijirou was the problem.

Because if Katsuki said it out loud and Eijirou didn't feel the same, there was no way to take it back. They shared an apartment. They shared a life. Eijirou was the person Katsuki trusted when he didn't trust anyone else, and losing him wasn't a risk Katsuki had ever been willing to take.

“If I tell him,” Katsuki said eventually, his voice quieter than he'd intended, “and he doesn't feel the same, then what?”

The woman watched him for a moment.

“Then you'll know.”

“That isn't an answer.”

“No,” she said. “It's the truth.”

A bitter laugh escaped him.

He pushed his chair back and stood, already reaching for his coat. “I'm done.”

“Katsuki…”

“You got your five minutes.”

Denki glanced at the clock. “It's been twelve.”

Katsuki shoved his arms into his coat. “Then you got twelve.”

The fortune teller gathered the cards from the table, putting them back into the deck one by one. She didn't try to stop him when he headed for the door.

“You'll have to choose eventually,” she said.

Katsuki stopped with his hand on the door.

“Choose between what?”

She looked down at the deck in her hands, then back at him.

“Keeping what you have, or finding out what you could have.”

“Keep your cryptic bullshit to yourself,” Katsuki spat, his fingers digging into the brass handle. “You don’t know a single damn thing about my life, so stop pretending your cheap party tricks mean anything.”

The woman didn't flinch at his tone. Instead, she set the deck down and leaned forward, her dark eyes locking onto his with an unreadable intensity. The faint amber light in the room seemed to bend toward her, pooling around her fingertips as she stretched her hands across the wood.

“You guard your tongue because you are terrified of the shadow your words might cast,” she said, her voice dropping into a resonant cadence that seemed to echo inside his skull rather than the room itself. “You refuse to see what sits right in front of you, and you refuse to speak what burns in your chest. So let me lighten the burden for you.”

Katsuki opened his mouth to tell her to shut the hell up, but the words caught in his throat. A strange, prickling heat crawled up the back of his neck, making the air feel thick enough to choke on.

She began tracing a circle in the dust of the tabletop, her gaze never leaving his face. “If your eyes will not look, they will be made to observe. If your voice will not yield, the truth will carve its own path. You will walk through the fog you created until the haze clears, whether you are ready for the view or not.”

“What the hell are you babbling about?” He snarled, fighting off the dizzying pressure blooming behind his temples. He rattled the door handle impatiently. “You're out of your mind.”

“Consider it a nudge,” she murmured while a shadowy smile touched her lips as she closed her palm, snapping her fingers together with a dry crack that sounded like a breaking bone.

The pressure in his head vanished instantly, leaving behind a cold ringing in his ears.

Katsuki didn't wait around for an explanation. He yanked the heavy wooden door open, the bell overhead clattering wildly, and stepped out onto the sidewalk, shoving his hands deep into his coat pockets.

“Hey, wait up!” Denki called out, scrambling after him as the door slammed shut behind them. “Katsuki, hold on a second!”

“Get lost, Dunce Face,” Katsuki barked over his shoulder, throwing his stride into an aggressive pace down the street.

“Come on, man, she was just telling the cards! You don't have to blow a fuse…”

“I said back off!” Katsuki snapped, spinning around for half a second to glare at him with enough heat to stop Denki dead in his tracks. “I’m going home. Don’t follow me.”

Without giving Denki a chance to argue, Katsuki turned on his heel and cut down the alley, taking the fastest route back to the station, but no matter how fast he walked, he couldn't shake the bizarre sensation of someone standing right behind his shoulder, waiting for him to look up.

But he didn't.

He just kept walking without looking back. 

ｔｈｅ ｌｏｖｅｒｓ

🀢

By the time Katsuki made it back to their apartment building, the cold had done nothing to get the fortune teller out of his head. He took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator, more because he needed to move than because he was in any hurry, and by the time he reached their floor, he'd already decided that the whole thing had been bullshit. 

Three cards on a piece of cloth didn't know shit about him, and some stranger who'd spent twelve minutes staring at his face certainly didn't know who he loved or what he was scared of. She'd thrown out a few guesses, he'd reacted to them, and she'd built the rest around that. People paid for this crap because they wanted to believe it meant something.

That was all it was.

He stopped in front of their door, dug the key from his pocket, and let himself in.

Except the apartment didn't look the same.

Katsuki stood in the entryway with one hand still on the knob and looked around, trying to figure out when the hell they'd acquired a plant.

A big one, too, with leaves spilling over the side of a ceramic pot in the corner where the broken umbrella stand had been sitting for months. There were photographs on the wall above the light switch, arranged in a grid inside dark wooden frames, and every single one had either him or Eijirou in it. A few were from agency events, but most had clearly been taken when neither of them had been paying attention. One showed Eijirou laughing at some food stall. Another had Katsuki glaring at the camera while Eijirou stood behind him with both hands on his shoulders. There were pictures from weekend trips, dinners, stupid convenience store runs, and one particularly embarrassing shot of Katsuki asleep on the train with Eijirou's jacket folded under his head.

“What the fuck?”

He stepped farther inside.

The living room had changed, too. Their old sofa was still there, but a guitar had been propped beside it despite the fact that neither of them knew how to play. There were books on the coffee table, a blanket thrown over the back of the couch, and a collection of little things that made the apartment look lived in rather than like two exhausted new pro heroes happened to sleep there between shifts.

Katsuki stared at the photographs again.

Then it clicked.

Eijirou had been complaining about the apartment for months, saying that it looked depressing and that they needed to buy actual furniture instead of whatever happened to be cheapest and easiest to clean. He'd had today off, too. Katsuki knew that because Eijirou had told him twice last night, then reminded him again over breakfast because apparently one conversation hadn't been enough.

So he'd spent the day shopping, and that explained the plant, although Katsuki wasn't sure it explained anything else.

Katsuki kicked off his boots, shoving them haphazardly under the wooden bench before stripping his heavy coat off his shoulders. He hung it up on the rack, cleared his throat, and threw his usual loud greeting toward the back hallway.

“I’m home!”

Heavy footsteps immediately sounded against the hardwood, moving quickly out from what was supposed to be Katsuki’s private bedroom.

Eijirou rounded the corner with a bright grin, completely shirtless and wearing nothing but a pair of loose gray pajama pants resting low on his hips. Katsuki raised an eyebrow, opening his mouth to yell at his best friend for walking around like a total moron in the middle of winter when their apartment unit possessed the single worst, most unreliable heating unit in the entire district.

But before Katsuki could get a single insult past his teeth, Eijirou closed the distance between them, leaned right in, and kissed him. 

Straight

On

The

Mouth.

Just like that.

Right on the mouth.

It lasted barely a second, and there was nothing hesitant about it. Eijirou did it with the same ease he used when stealing food from Katsuki's plate or dropping onto the couch beside him after patrol, like this was an ordinary part of coming home, then he pulled back just an inch, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Welcome home,” Eijirou said cheerfully, immediately thrusting his brightly lit phone screen straight into Katsuki’s face before he could even process the sudden warmth still lingering on his lips. “They finally answered!”

Katsuki stood completely frozen, his heart hammering violently against his ribs while his brain scrambled to process what the hell had just happened. His lips were still tingling from the physical contact, his mind completely clouded by sheer panic, but his reflexes took over before his mouth could fail him entirely.

“Who answered?” He blurted out, his voice sounding raspy even to his own ears.

“About the free days!” Eijirou replied instantly, speaking with total enthusiasm as if Katsuki should have known exactly what he was talking about. He paused for half a second, taking in Katsuki’s completely stunned, bug-eyed expression, and let out a light laugh while tossing his phone onto the entryway table. “For us to visit my parents in the US.”

Katsuki stared at him, his limbs feeling absurdly heavy while his pulse raced out of control. 

He couldn't wrap his head around any of this, nor could he find a single logical explanation for why Eijirou was casually tossing out phrases that sounded like a fever dream. The room felt unreal, but the weight of Eijirou’s hand brushing against his elbow was entirely solid, totally undeniable, and horrifyingly real.

“Right,” was what Katsuki's mouth managed.

Eijirou's eyebrows went up. “Right?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.”

Instead of standing there looking like a complete idiot, Katsuki pushed past him, marching straight into the kitchen because cooking dinner was something concrete that he actually knew how to do. If he kept his hands busy with knives and chopping boards, he wouldn't have to explain why his brain was currently frying itself from the inside out.

He yanked a thick wooden cutting board out of the drying rack, slammed it down onto the counter, and began pulling vegetables out of the refrigerator.

Eijirou followed him into the narrow space, leaning his bare hip against the edge of the counter while Katsuki furiously chopped onions into razor-thin slices. “Fatgum was totally fine with it. He gave me the whole week off without even arguing, so now we can finally book the plane tickets and lock down the dates before the prices skyrocket.”

Katsuki kept his eyes glued to the blade, slicing through the vegetables with terrifying precision while his thoughts spun out of control. 

The spell from that bizarre woman in the back alley was the only explanation that made any sense at all, but admitting that meant accepting that he had somehow been dropped directly into a twisted reality where every single thing he had ever hidden in the dark was suddenly out in the open.

Eijirou kept chatting aimlessly about flight times, baggage limits, and local weather in the States, but after a few minutes, he seemed to notice that Katsuki hadn't uttered a single grunt in response.

The chatter trailed off, replaced by the soft rustle of fabric as Eijirou stepped up directly behind him. Before Katsuki could step away, two arms wrapped securely around his chest, pulling his back flush against a bare, warm torso.

He went completely still, the knife hovering a millimeter above the cutting board.

“Are you worried again?” Eijirou murmured softly, his breath brushing against the side of Katsuki’s neck.

“I’m not worried,” Katsuki grunted out, forcing the words through his clenched teeth even though he was currently spiraling into absolute madness. 

He was definitely worried, just not about meeting anyone’s parents in America.

“I told you already, they’re gonna like you,” the other man said, pressing a brief kiss against Katsuki’s right shoulder blade before letting his cheek rest comfortably against the fabric of Katsuki’s shirt. “They already do. My mom asks about you every single time I call her.”

Katsuki swallowed hard, his hands shaking slightly as he forced himself to lower the kitchen knife back onto the wooden board. 

He felt like an intruder in his own skin, trapped in a life he had wanted so badly for years but had no idea how to navigate now that it was actually happening.

“So,” Eijirou continued, his chest vibrating directly against Katsuki’s back as he spoke, “how was hanging out with Denki? Did he drag you to another useless arcade?”

Katsuki stared blankly at the wall, struggling to figure out how much he was even allowed to say. He didn't know if telling the truth would break whatever crazy spell was holding this illusion together, but keeping quiet felt even worse.

“He took me to some shady fortune teller,” he murmured, staring intensely at a spot of grease on the stove. “She said a bunch of stupid crap about me being emotionally constipated.”

The moment the words left his mouth, Eijirou burst out laughing. It started as a low chuckle before turning into a full-blown, body-shaking laugh, the deep rumble pressing straight through Katsuki’s spine and sending a wave of bittersweet torture through his chest.

Eijirou laughed until he was nearly breathless, his arms tightening around Katsuki’s middle while his forehead knocked gently against his shoulder. “Man, you paid someone actual money to tell you what I’ve been saying for the last eight years?”

“I didn’t pay her a single yen, idiot,” Katsuki growled, though there was zero real heat behind it.

When Eijirou finally let go, still chuckling while sliding his arms away to give him space, he felt the sudden drop in temperature almost instantly.

“I’ll go grab the laptop from the bedroom so we can check out those flight deals before dinner’s ready,” he said, giving Katsuki’s side a playful nudge before turning on his heel and walking out of the kitchen.

The moment the redhead vanished around the corner, Katsuki grabbed his phone and jammed his thumb against the screen, pulling up Denki's contact and dialing the number before he could talk himself out of it. 

The call went through, ringing once, twice, before the audio connected with a static click.

“Where did that witch go?” He growled, keeping his words quiet while keeping an eye on the hallway doorway.

“Who? The nice fortune teller that you treated like shit?”

“What did she do?”

“Uh,” Denki grunted, sounding completely baffled on the other end of the line. “She read your right palm? Said something about you opening your own path soon, like in four or five years. You said she was probably talking about your own agency, but then you got angry and left.”

Katsuki pressed his knuckles hard against the edge of the kitchen counter. “She didn't read my palm. She read the tarot cards.”

“No, dude, she doesn't do tarot reading, I asked.”

A massive headache was already forming right behind Katsuki's eyes, making him want to slam his forehead straight into the tile wall. Before Denki could start asking a dozen questions about why he sounded so unhinged, footsteps drifted back down the hallway floorboards.

Eijirou strolled into the kitchen, carrying an open laptop in one arm. He had thrown on an oversized black sweater that Katsuki was ninety-nine percent sure belonged to his own closet, considering the sleeves covered half of Eijirou's palms.

He immediately ended the call without saying goodbye, shoving the phone straight into his front pocket to stop this whole mess from escalating into an absolute disaster.

The redhead didn't seem to notice the abrupt movement, wandering over toward the base of the cabinets. He dropped down onto the floor, sitting cross-legged near the pantry so he stayed entirely out of the way while Katsuki managed the hot stove burners. Opening the laptop across his lap, he tapped at the trackpad and immediately launched back into a rambling explanation regarding round-trip airfare, layover times in Los Angeles, and baggage allowances.

Katsuki pretended to pay attention, tossing wooden spoons into the pan and stirring the bubbling sauce, but his mind was miles away from international flight schedules. He was furiously running through every back alley shortcut he knew, trying to figure out how to track down that specific storefront tomorrow morning. He needed to drag that woman out by her collar, force her to reverse whatever sick trick she had pulled, and make sure she never messed with someone's mind like this ever again.

Because this reality, no matter how ridiculously good it looked on the surface, wasn't real. 

It was a fake shell built on top of the life they had spent years building together, taking all his unspoken desires and forcing them into existence without any of the work, any of the courage, or any of the actual truth behind them. 

It felt manufactured, like walking through a house where all the furniture was in the right spot but the foundation was completely hollow underneath.

The timer on the oven buzzed loudly, snapping him out of his spiraling thoughts. Katsuki turned off the burners, reached down, and extended one hand toward the floor to help Eijirou up while holding the hot handle of the pan with his other hand.

Eijirou grabbed his forearm for balance, pushing himself up off the tiles without closing the laptop screen. He set the computer down on the counter, grabbed two ceramic plates from the cabinet above, and helped spoon generous portions of food onto both dishes before carrying them over to the small kitchen table.

They sat down across from each other, the small space instantly filling with the familiar routine of sharing a meal after a long day.

Eijirou picked up his chopsticks, then paused, looking across the table with a genuine frown pulling at his mouth. “Are you sure you're okay? You've been staring into space since you walked through the door.”

Katsuki dug his fork into his own food, avoiding eye contact. “I have a small headache, that's all.”

The other man hummed in understanding, nodding his head while chewing. “You should take a hot bath right after dinner then. Don't worry about the mess in here, I'll take care of the dishes tonight.”

It was the exact same expression Eijirou always got whenever Katsuki came home bruised up from a rough patrol or exhausted from pulling overtime shifts. He always cared too much, always watched every tiny shift in Katsuki's posture, and always jumped at the chance to take over chores when things got rough.

In fact, the only actual difference between this dinner and the thousands of dinners they had shared over the last few years was the subtle weight under the table. Eijirou had his legs stretched out, his right knee resting lightly against Katsuki's outer thigh, maintaining an effortless point of contact that felt completely natural to him and utterly overwhelming to Katsuki.

They finished their food in relative quiet, the sound of silverware scraping against ceramic filling the silence while Eijirou flipped through a few more flight options on his screen.

As soon as his plate was clean, Katsuki pushed his chair back, stacking his dish on top of Eijirou's empty one before setting them both neatly inside the sink. He didn't offer to help with the washing, nor did he stick around to check the plane tickets. He walked straight down the narrow hallway toward the back of the apartment, grabbed the brass handle of his bedroom door, and shut the door firmly behind himself.

The temporary relief vanished the instant Katsuki turned around to look at the space he was supposed to sleep in.

The room was completely different, transformed far beyond the slight decorative additions he had noticed out in the front hall. His old narrow single frame had been replaced by a massive double bed taking up the center of the floorboards, covered in dark gray sheets that were rumpled on one side. Two matching wooden nightstands flanked the headboard, though their surfaces belonged to two entirely different human beings.

The table on the left was meticulously organized, holding a single lamp, a sleek alarm clock, and a neatly stacked pair of books aligned precisely along the wood grain. The table on the right looked like a small bomb had detonated over it, cluttered with an untidy pile of agency report drafts, a coiled phone charger cord, half-empty bottles of daily vitamins, and a dirty glass with dried water spots near the rim.

Katsuki stared at the mess, his vision blurring as his mind spun out of control because this was way too much, way too specific, and way too terrifyingly real to process. 

His body began to tremble again, fine tremors rippling down his forearms and making his hands shake violently at his sides. The overwhelming urge to shove his boots back on, bolt out the front door, hail the first taxi that drove past, and sit on the cold pavement outside that creepy fortune teller’s shop until morning hit him with full force. He wanted to scream at that woman, grab her shoulders, and force her to undo whatever twisted illusion she had thrown over his life, but he couldn't move a single inch.

He was completely trapped.

He had no idea if this reality was a temporary hallucination, a full-scale magic spell, or some bizarre, delayed-activation quirk that he had accidentally triggered on his way back home. 

Admitting the truth to Eijirou felt impossible, because he couldn't predict how this fake world would react if he broke the script and admitted he didn't belong here, and the unknown consequences kept him rooted to the floorboards.

Determined to escape his own head before he completely lost his mind, Katsuki crossed the room toward the adjoining bathroom. He reached down, grabbed the metal tap on the side of the deep porcelain tub, and gave it a hard turn, letting hot water roar out of the spigot to fill the basin. 

Turning toward the vanity, he leaned his weight against the marble sink and looked straight into the mirror. The face staring back at him was entirely his own. The small jagged line near his jaw line remained unchanged, his red eyes were bloodshot from stress, and his spiky ash-blonde hair looked just as messy as it had when he woke up this morning. Nothing on his body had been swapped or altered, which somehow made the surrounding reality feel ten times more disorienting.

He grabbed his toothbrush, spread a line of paste across the bristles, and scrubbed at his teeth with furious motions while the tub slowly filled to the brim. Once he spat into the basin and rinsed his mouth out, he stripped off his clothes, tossing the pile into the corner hamper before stepping over the high porcelain edge and sinking deep into the steaming water.

The heat soaked into his tense muscles, forcing his shoulders to drop an inch, though his heart kept hammering against his ribs in a chaotic beat.

The bathroom door suddenly swung open without a warning knock, and Katsuki recoiled so fast he slipped backward, splashing water over the tiles while nearly choking on a lungful of steam. His instinctual reaction was to cover himself up, a sudden wave of embarrassment washing over him even though they had shared communal showers at the academy and changing rooms at work for literally years.

Eijirou didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to Katsuki's complete panic, nor did he glance at the awkward posture Katsuki had frozen into beneath the bubbles. He simply walked over to the corner shelf, grabbed the bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and knelt down on the bath mat right next to his head.

“Let me wash your hair,” he said quietly.

Before Katsuki could gather enough air to yell at him, ask what the hell he thought he was doing, or demand to know why he was intruding, Eijirou leaned down and pressed a soft kiss against his damp temple.

“I’ll do that scalp massage that usually helps with your headaches,” the redhead added, his voice completely casual as he popped the plastic cap off the shampoo bottle.

Katsuki’s initial refusal died right in his throat because it was an incredibly tempting offer, especially considering how badly his head was throbbing from the mental exhaustion of the last two hours. 

When it came to normal people, he was stubborn, aggressive, and entirely unyielding, but when it came to Eijirou, he had always been pathetic, weak, and entirely incapable of holding up his defenses for long.

Shifting in the deep water, Katsuki adjusted his position, resting his upper back against the sloped porcelain wall to give the other man easier access.

Eijirou worked in silence, squeezing a dollop of soap into his palms before working it into a rich lather between his hands. He leaned over the rim of the tub, gently working his fingers through blonde locks, applying a rhythmic pressure against the base of his skull and along his temples.

The familiar scent of citrus and pine filled the small space while Eijirou’s thumbs worked through every tight knot along his neck. Katsuki kept his eyes squeezed shut, trying with every ounce of willpower he possessed to control his breathing, keep his hands from shaking beneath the surface of the water, and act like this was just another ordinary Tuesday night in their lives.

Eijirou didn't try to force conversation, because even without a magic spell or a bizarre quirk altering the timeline, he had always known when to push and when to let Katsuki sit with his own thoughts.

So Katsuki let himself sink into the sensation, allowing his tired body to accept the physical closeness and the soft touch of hands that belonged to a version of himself in some alternate universe where he actually had the guts to say what he felt. It felt like borrowing time from someone else's dream, a brief, bittersweet glimpse at a life he had convinced himself he could never truly have.

Eijirou leaned down to scoop fresh water over his hair, carefully rinsing away every trace of soap before smoothing the damp strands back off his forehead. Satisfied with his work, he stood up from the floor, his knees popping softly from the awkward angle, and placed the plastic bottles neatly back on the corner shelf.

He walked over to the clean linen closet, pulled out a pair of dark sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, and laid them neatly across the marble counter right next to the sink.

“Take your time, love,” Eijirou said, pausing at the threshold to look back over his shoulder with an easy smile. “I’ll be finishing some reports in the living room.”

The door clicked shut behind him, leaving him entirely alone once again in the humid room.

Katsuki sat completely frozen in the tub, staring blankly at the dark wood of the bathroom door while that single, final word echoed over and over inside his head like a broken record player stuck on a loop. 

Love.

Love.

𝙇𝙤𝙫𝙚!

His mind refused to move past it, wrapping itself around the endearment while the steam dissipated from the air, the bathwater grew lukewarm, and his skin began to wrinkle from staying submerged far too long.

He stood dripping on the bath mat, grabbing a thick towel from the rack to dry off. Shoving his arms into the long-sleeved shirt and pulling the sweatpants up over his hips, he stared at his reflection again, then leaned against the sink basin, closing his eyes while he forced a sigh out through his nose.

If this was a spell, an illusion, or some stupid dream that was going to evaporate the moment he opened his eyes tomorrow, then fine. 

He was done fighting it for the night. 

He was too tired, too burnt out from overthinking every single detail, and too damn exhausted to keep his guards up when every step he took felt like sinking into quicksand. He would let himself have this, greedily taking whatever fake comfort this night offered, because tomorrow he would go back to being the guy who kept his mouth shut and watched from the sidelines. 

Just for a few hours, he would stop trying to solve the puzzle.

Crossing the threshold out of the bathroom, Katsuki walked barefoot down the hallway, the cool floorboards pressing against the soles of his feet until he reached the living room archway.

The low lamp in the corner threw a soft ring of amber over the space, illuminating a messy stack of agency paperwork spread across the low coffee table. Eijirou wasn't working on the reports though. He was sitting on the floor with his back propped against the front of the sofa, holding that dusty acoustic guitar across his lap while his teeth tugged absentmindedly at his lower lip in concentration. His fingers were clumsily picking at the steel strings, producing a sequence of metallic twangs that echoed through the apartment.

Katsuki padded across the rug, dropped onto the cushions directly above him, and immediately jabbed his freezing big toe into the back of Eijirou's bare arm.

“What are you doing with that dirty thing?” He grunted, resting his chin on his palm while looking down at the  red head below him.

Eijirou let out a light laugh, dropping his hand from the neck of the instrument to grab Katsuki's cold foot, tucking it right beneath the fabric of his own warm thigh without hesitation. “Remember this song?”

“You need to be more clear.”

“The one that was playing in Hanta's beat-up old car last summer,” Eijirou said, adjusting his grip on the wooden body of the guitar. “When he had to drive me to the emergency room because I stupidly tried to catch that falling street sign with my face and broke my nose.”

A snort escaped Katsuki before he could stop it, the memory hitting him with startling clarity. He remembered every single second of that night, because he had been completely terrified while it was happening. He had shoved himself into the narrow back seat right beside Eijirou, pressing a wadded-up, ruined gym shirt against Eijirou's face while blood poured over his own knuckles and stained his sleeves. 

Hanta had been driving like a complete maniac through the city streets, Denki had been rambling nervously from the passenger seat, and Eijirou had been sitting there laughing like a total idiot despite his nose being completely crooked. Katsuki had lost his mind on all of them, screaming at Hanta to step on the gas and telling the other two idiots to shut their damn mouths before he blew the car up himself.

The shirt had been ruined, the floorboards of Hanta's car had taken weeks to clean, and Katsuki's hands had been shaking so badly he couldn't even unlock his own phone, but when he had yelled at Eijirou to hold still, Eijirou had just looked up at him through swollen eyes, smiling right through the pain while some repetitive pop song blared out of the broken dashboard speakers.

“I only remember because you kept singing it for months after,” he said, staring at the back of Eijirou’s neck.

The redhead picked at the strings again, strumming a simple four-chord progression that sounded surprisingly clean despite the dusty instrument. “I knew I liked you way before that day, but I realized I was completely in love with you right at that exact moment.”

Katsuki went entirely quiet, his throat locking up as the room seemed to shrink around them.

Eijirou played through the short pattern one more time, letting the last chord ring out until the sound faded completely into the quiet apartment. He turned his head around, resting his chin against the couch cushion right next to Katsuki's knee, a familiar smile pulling at his mouth as he looked up. “And still to this day, that's literally the only song I know how to play.”

Katsuki's heart was hammering violently against his ribs, because that memory wasn't created by a spell. It wasn't an illusion or a piece of magic cooked up in the back of some dusty shop, because every bloody detail of that drive to the hospital belonged entirely to them. 

It had actually happened, exactly the way Eijirou had just described it, except in Katsuki's world, nobody had ever said the word love out loud when they got back home.

Now Eijirou was sitting right here, leaning against his legs, looking at him with total honesty and dropping words that he had spent almost a decade starving to hear.

The weight of it pressed down on Katsuki's chest until he couldn't think, couldn't reason, and couldn't care about what was supposed to happen tomorrow morning. He reached down, his fingers lightly tangling into the short red hair at the nape of Eijirou's neck as he said, “Can you kiss me again?”

Eijirou blinked, his whole demeanor softening into something remarkably gentle as a faint flush crept up his cheeks and colored the tips of his ears. “It's been a while since you actually asked me to kiss you.”

“Can you just do it or not?” Katsuki grumbled, his fingers tightening slightly in red hair to hide how much his hand was shaking.

Eijirou didn't tease him any further. He set the acoustic guitar down onto the rug beside the couch, shifting his weight until he was kneeling on the cushions right in front of Katsuki. Reaching up, he cupped both of his warm palms around Katsuki's jawline, tilting his head up before leaning in to press their lips together.

It wasn't a quick greeting like the one at the door, nor was it a casual touch shared in passing. It was deep and devastatingly thorough, Eijirou's thumbs tracing small circles over his cheekbones while he leaned his full weight forward. Katsuki let his eyes flutter shut, sliding his hands up his back to pull him closer, breathing in the scent of warm skin until his head spun.

And Eijirou kissed him again and again and once more, parting his lips to deepen the pressure, shifting his mouth against his with a seamless rhythm that felt like coming home after years in the cold.

It was the very first real kiss of Katsuki's life, and the intensity of it was short-circuiting every single logical path in his brain. 

Eijirou held him like someone tracing the constellation map of a sky he had studied for years, moving with a reverent precision that felt almost cosmic. It was as if Mars and Venus had finally aligned after centuries of orbiting in total isolation, drawing them into a gravitational pull that Katsuki couldn't break even if he tried.

For many agonizing years, Katsuki had laid awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling and privately craving the heat of Eijirou’s mouth against his own. Now that he was actually getting it, the experience felt like an overwhelming fever dream.

Driven by an instinct he didn't fully understand, Katsuki shifted his weight, swinging one leg over Eijirou’s thighs and straddling his lap right on the couch cushions. He settled flush against the other man’s torso, his knees bracing against the couch frame while his hands gripped the collar of that old sweater.

Eijirou didn't hesitate for even a fraction of a second. His hands slid smoothly around Katsuki's waist, one palm resting at the small of his back while the other cupped the side of his neck. He adjusted to the new position with effortless ease, shifting his head up to press his lips even deeper against Katsuki’s, matching the sudden rise in heat without missing a single beat.

The casual familiarity of it made his chest ache with a sudden burst of resentment. Eijirou was touching him like he had done this a thousand times before, moving his hands over Katsuki’s back with the relaxed confidence of a man who owned the space, completely unaware that for Katsuki, every single touch was a brand new, terrifying territory. 

He found himself fiercely hating the version of himself who had gotten to live in this reality, the version who had been allowed to have this affection daily, freely, and without the suffocating weight of fear holding him back.

But as Eijirou’s tongue brushed against his lower lip, asking for entry, every trace of bitter envy melted right out of Katsuki’s body. He parted his mouth with a jagged breath, letting the other man take total control of the kiss. 

The friction of their lips, the solid weight of Eijirou holding him, and the rhythmic drag of hands beneath his shirt combined into a sensory overload that wiped his mind completely clean.

The redhead tilted his head, deepening the angle while his fingers tangled into the damp blonde hair at the base of his head, and Katsuki couldn't think, couldn't ground himself, and couldn't pull together a single coherent thought. He had grown completely kiss-drunk, his eyelids heavy, his lips bruised and slick, his entire body pliable and helpless in Eijirou's arms as he let himself be consumed entirely by the dream.

ｓｒｅｖｏｌ ｅｈｔ

🀦

Sliding his palm flat across the mattress, Katsuki expected to feel the thick heat of Eijirou’s back beneath his fingertips. He had fought off sleep for as long as his body physically allowed, remaining awake in the dark just to count the faint sun-kissed freckles scattered across Eijirou’s shoulders while the redhead slept soundly beside him. He had wanted to memorize every second of it before the morning stole it away, but his eyelids had eventually given out under the sheer weight of exhaustion.

His hand met only smooth, ice-cold cotton.

Katsuki’s eyes snapped open, his head jerking up off the pillow as he scrambled to sit upright. The massive double bed, the messy clutter of papers on the right nightstand, and the warm domesticity of the room had vanished completely. He was staring at a stark, overwhelmingly minimalist bedroom, stripped of any personal character or color. A single plain platform bed sat centered against a white wall, flanked by two completely empty wooden side tables, looking more like an unoccupied hotel suite than a lived-in apartment.

Panic surged through him while cold sweat immediately broke out along his skin. He threw the blanket back, sprinted across the cold floorboards on bare feet, and yanked the bedroom door open.

Rushing down the dark hallway, he threw his shoulder against the door that served as Eijirou’s bedroom in the real world, expecting to find the guy sleeping off a late shift or packing a bag. Instead, the door swung inward to reveal a hollow, depressing room. A couple of taped-up cardboard boxes sat stacked in the far corner alongside a dusty exercise bike, a pair of rusted dumbbells, and an old weight bench that looked like it hadn't been touched in months. 

The air felt stale and unused, leaving the entire apartment feeling vast and dead quiet.

Katsuki backed out of the room and hurried toward the bedroom, his hands trembling as he crossed the apartment. He pushed through the door and went straight for the nightstand, where his phone was still sitting. His fingers fumbled around it before he grabbed it and unlocked the screen, immediately pulling up his contacts to find the short entry saved as “Ei.”

It wasn't there.

Scrolling down past the letter E with rising desperation, his eyes caught on a formal, distant line halfway down the screen. Saved under the letter K sat the contact name Kirishima E.

His jaw worked in total disbelief, his pulse hammering wildly in his ears while he pressed the call icon and brought the phone up to his head.

The line rang three long times, every second stretching into absolute torture, until the audio finally clicked open with a faint background noise of shuffling papers.

“Hello? Bakugo?”

Eijirou’s tone was completely wrong; he sounded reserved and deeply uncomfortable, speaking with an unnatural caution that made his stomach drop right into his boots.

“Where the hell are you?” Katsuki demanded, his voice cracking as he gripped the phone so hard the glass casing creaked. 

A long silence stretched over the connection before Eijirou let out an awkward sigh. “Bakugo, we talked about this. You agreed you wouldn't call me directly unless it was an absolute emergency.”

Katsuki froze right in the middle of the empty room, the sheer whiplash of the words knocking the wind clean out of his chest. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Look, I'm at the agency right now preparing for the joint pro-hero briefing,” Eijirou said, his words measured, as if he was worried someone might overhear him. “I'll see you in a few minutes at the meeting, okay? Let's just keep things professional like we agreed. See you in a few.”

The line went dead with a beep before Katsuki could get another word out.

Staring blankly at the dark screen, he felt like the floor was tilting right out from under his feet. The violent shift from holding Eijirou on the couch to being treated like an unwelcome acquaintance was dizzying enough to make him physically sick.

He backed out the contact list, searched for Denki’s name, and dialed the number with a shaking thumb.

The other guy answered on the second ring, his background noise echoing with the sound of a crowded coffee shop. “Hey, man. What's up? Aren't you supposed to be at the agency briefing already?”

“Denki, what the fuck is going on?” He snapped, pacing back and forth across the bare hardwood floor of his living room. “Why is Eijirou acting like he barely knows me?”

Denki went quiet on the other end, the casual noise of his surroundings fading as he picked up the panic in Katsuki's words. When he spoke again, his voice was laced with a pitying tone that made him want to punch a hole straight through the nearest drywall.

“Dude, are you drunk or something?” Denki asked cautiously. “Did you take something before the meeting?”

“I'm not fucking drunk! I'm asking you a simple damn question!”

“Look, Katsuki, you need to pull it together before you walk into the agency,” Denki said, dropping his voice as if delivering bad news to a child. “You know how things are between you two now. You know Ei's fiance doesn't like you hovering around, and you promised you'd give them space. Don't go trying anything weird at the meeting today, okay? Eijirou is happy. Just leave it alone.”

“His what?” Katsuki breathed out, the world narrowing down to a razor-thin point of pure, unadulterated horror.

“I have to go, I'm pulling into the parking garage now,” Denki said quickly, clearly eager to dodge the conversation before it got any worse. “Just... Take a breath and try to act normal for once.”

The call cut off.

Shoving his phone into his belt loop, Katsuki moved through the silent apartment on pure muscle memory, pulling on his hero suit with jerky movements. He dragged his hero gauntlets onto his forearms, secured his boots with quick yanks, and scrambled to unlock his phone once more to find the address for this joint briefing.

An automated calendar invite sat pinned to his notifications, listing a high-rise office complex downtown that Katsuki had never stepped foot in before.

He bolted down the stairwell three steps at a time, practically throwing himself out the glass lobby doors and straight toward the main avenue. Spotting a taxi idling near the curb, he yanked the back door open, slammed it shut behind him, and shoved a thick wad of bills through the front seat partition.

“Run every red light between here and the central district,” Katsuki snarled, his knees bouncing aggressively against the floor mats as the car lurked forward. “I'll pay you double whatever the meter says if you get me there in under ten minutes.”

The driver didn't bother arguing, stepping on the gas pedal and weaving violently through the morning traffic. Katsuki stared out the rain-streaked window because none of it made any sense. 

Last night Eijirou had been kissing him on their living room couch, and now he was supposedly engaged to some stranger who hated Katsuki's guts. It felt like walking onto a stage where everyone else had read the script except him.

The cab screeched to a halt in front of a glass-fronted skyscraper bearing a massive golden logo that Katsuki barely recognized. He threw the cash into the front seat, kicked the door open, and took the front steps at a full sprint.

The automatic glass doors slid open, revealing a marble-tiled lobby buzzing with lower-level staff and security personnel. Before Katsuki could even scan the directory board, a young assistant hurried over, bowing slightly with a nervous posture.

“Dynamight, right this way,” the assistant said quickly, gesturing toward the executive elevators in the back. “Follow me, sir. Everyone is already waiting in the main conference room on the twelfth floor.”

Katsuki followed without a word. 

The ride up was suffocatingly quiet, the numbers flashing on the digital display until the doors finally parted to reveal a long carpeted hallway leading straight into a glass-walled conference room.

Pushing the double doors open, Katsuki walked into a room packed with familiar faces. Denki was leaning against the far wall, chatting nervously with Mina, while several other pro-heroes were spread around a large oval table. Standouts like Nejire were already reviewing tactical maps pinned to the whiteboard, and standing right beside her, fully geared in his red shoulder guards and gear, was Eijirou.

Eijirou looked completely focused, his eyebrows drawn together as he pointed out a specific intersection on the map. As the doors clicked shut, the redhead’s head snapped up, his eyes locking onto Katsuki for a brief, brief second. There was no warm smile, no subtle shift in his posture, and no trace of the open affection from hours earlier. He simply acknowledged the other man's presence with a distant stare before turning his attention right back to Nejire and continuing his sentence as if Katsuki was just another face in the crowd.

Katsuki felt as though someone had slammed a lead pipe straight into his chest, leaving him standing near the doorway while his throat burned.

Before he could process the sheer distance in that look, Mirio stepped up to the head of the conference table, clapping his hands together to bring the room to order. He launched into a detailed breakdown of a joint anti-syndicate operation targeting illegal Quirk-enhancing drug shipments moving through the docks along the eastern border. Mirio laid out the perimeter routes, assigning pairs to cover specific sectors during the high-risk nighttime shifts.

“For Sector Four,” Mirio announced, tapping a laser pointer against the glass map, “we’ll have Red Riot and Dynamight covering the primary warehouse district starting at midnight.”

Eijirou’s shoulders dropped slightly as he stared down at the wooden table surface with an undeniable wave of annoyance. He didn't object to the assignment, but his silence spoke volumes, making it blindingly obvious to everyone in the room that being paired with Katsuki was the absolute last thing he wanted today.

When Mirio finally wrapped up the briefing and the other heroes began gathering their files to exit, Katsuki cut across the room, closing the distance between them in three long strides.

“Eijirou, hold on a second,” he gritted out, reaching out to grab the edge of his shoulder guard to force him to look at him.

The other hero flinched away from the touch, stepping back to put two full paces of distance between, “Katsuki, do not. Please.”

Before he could demand a single real explanation, the glass conference room door swung open with a light knock.

A tall guy in a tailored coat stepped into the room, holding two paper coffee cups. He had smooth hair, an easy posture, and an immediate air of ownership that made Katsuki’s blood boil instantly. The guy didn't even look at the other heroes in the room, his eyes scanning past the table until they landed on Eijirou.

“Hey,” the guy said, a smile spreading across his face as he held up one of the cups. “Let’s go grab some coffee, love?”

As he spoke, the stranger’s gaze flicked over to Katsuki, settling on him with a cold glare that made no attempt to hide his outright disdain. Katsuki stepped forward, his hands curling into tight fists as his mouth opened to demand who the fuck this guy thought he was.

Eijirou cut him off instantly, stepping directly between them and raising his voice to drown out anything he might say. “Yeah, let's go right now.”

Without looking back at Katsuki even once, Eijirou reached out, grabbed the stranger’s free hand, and let himself be pulled out of the conference room. The glass doors swung shut behind them, leaving him standing completely alone near the edge of the large wooden table.

The silence in the empty room felt deafening, crashing over Katsuki like a tidal wave of unadulterated horror.

He had died on a battlefield before, had his chest crushed and his blood spilled across concrete, but nothing in his entire life had ever felt as agonizingly brutal as watching Eijirou walk away from him with someone else's hand in his. The absolute weight of this reality was suffocating, a nightmare twisted out of every insecurity he had ever buried deep inside his own head.

He couldn't stay here. 

He couldn't breathe in this room, couldn't look at Denki’s pitying expression from across the hall, and couldn't sit around waiting for a midnight patrol that was only going to tear him apart further, so he turned on his heel and bolted out the double doors, tearing down the carpeted hallway and past the front desk without slowing down. 

He just ran.

Katsuki rounded the corner of the narrow alley at a dangerous speed, and he didn't bother waiting for a response, shoving the door open with enough force to send the brass bell overhead rattling violently against its frame.

The interior was just as dim and cluttered as yesterday, filled with stacked books and fading tapestries. Sitting right at the center table, calmly shuffling her deck of yellowed cards, the fortune teller looked up without a single trace of surprise on her face.

“Undo this bullshit right now!” He barked, storming across the small room until his gauntlets slammed hard onto the edge of her wooden table. “I don’t know what kind of sick trick you pulled, but you’re fixing it before I blast this entire place into ash!”

The woman set her cards down, leaning back against the high cushion of her chair. She looked up at his flushed face, completely unbothered by the tiny sparks popping aggressively off his palms.

“I haven’t pulled any trick on you, Bakugou Katsuki,” she said, her cadence remaining maddeningly calm. “I simply gave you a glance at two distinct paths. One where you actually had the courage to express what you feel, and another where you chose to remain buried in your own endless doubts and insecurities.”

Katsuki’s teeth ground together so hard a muscle in his jaw throbbed, his eyes narrowing into slits as he leaned over the table, crowding her space. “Neither of those is real! You’re messing with my head, throwing me into fake scenarios that don’t exist!”

“If they are so fake,” she countered, laying her hands flat over the cloth and watching him, “why does it bother you so deeply to see those outcomes?”

“Because it’s complete nonsense,” he snarled, kicking the leg of her wooden chair with the toe of his boot. “You think you can just warp reality, swap my life around, and act like you’re teaching me some philosophical lesson? I didn’t ask for your stupid vision quest. I asked you to fix whatever hex or Quirk bullshit you put on me the second I walked into this trash heap yesterday!”

“You came into my shop looking for answers about a future you were too terrified to face on your own,” the old woman said, uncoiling a thin silver chain from around her wrist. “You wanted certainty without risk, young man. You wanted to know if opening your mouth would ruin everything you built with him, but you lacked the stomach to accept either result.”

“Don’t talk like you know a damn thing about me or him,” he spat. “Eijirou wouldn’t act like that. He wouldn’t treat me like some random coworker he can barely stand to look at, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be with some guy who looks at me like I’m trash.”

“He’s with someone else because in this thread of time, you pushed him away until there was nothing left of your bond to save,” she replied. “You spent years keeping your distance under the pathetic excuse of professionalism and pride. Did you truly expect him to wait around in an empty hallway forever while you nursed your own fear?”

The words hit him like a physical blow, stripping the air right out of his lungs. 

Katsuki opened his mouth to snap back, to hurl another furious insult, but the argument completely collapsed before it could leave his mouth. All he could do was stand there, leaning over her table, unable to form a coherent defense because the brutal logic of her words was cutting straight through his rage. 

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he gritted out. “Sitting in your little dark room playing God with people's lives because you’ve got nothing better to do.”

“I’m simply the mirror,” she said softly, picking up her deck once more and cutting it in two clean halves with a crisp paper snap. “I do not create the light or the shadow. I merely show you what is already standing right in front of you. You saw what your life looks like when you let go of your pathetic ego, and you saw what happens when you hold onto it until it rots. You cannot blame the glass for showing you a broken face.”

Katsuki stared down at her hands, watching the cards fall into place, his mind spinning out of control while he tried to find a flaw in her logic. He wanted to blow the table to pieces, wanted to burn every tapestry hanging from the ceiling, but deep down he knew that destroying the room wouldn't fix anything.

“How do I get out of this?” He finally asked as he tried to regain even a fraction of his composure. “Tell me how to undo it. What’s the catch? What do I have to give you?”

A faint smile touched the corners of her lips, though her eyes remained entirely serious as she looked at him. “You already know the answer to that question, boy. The path does not change simply because you demand it to. It changes when you stop hiding behind your armor.”

“I’m not hiding behind shit!”

“Then stop running,” she said, pointing a thin, spotted finger toward the front door. “Close your eyes, accept what you are actually afraid of, and decide which version of your life you are brave enough to fight for.”

Katsuki let out a bitter sigh and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes, shutting out the sight of the fortune teller and her miserable little shop. A vicious headache pulsed behind his temples, making his vision blur whenever he tried to focus. He stayed there for a long moment, eyes squeezed shut as he tried to clear his head and figure out what the hell he was supposed to do next.

When he opened his eyes again, the dusty smell of old books and candle wax was completely gone.

The cold air of the city hit his face, making him blink as he tried to adjust to his surroundings. He was standing in the shadows outside the main entrance of Mirio’s agency. Streetlights cast long beams across the pavement, while the clock mounted on the lobby wall showed a little past eleven thirty.

A silver car pulled up to the curb a few yards away, the engine humming as it came to a stop.

Katsuki stayed where he was, watching as the passenger door opened and Eijirou stepped onto the sidewalk in his Red Riot gear, his shoulder guards tucked beneath one arm. Before shutting the door, the redhead leaned back toward the open window and pressed a quick kiss to the lips of the man behind the wheel, then he straightened and gave him one last smile before the car pulled away, disappearing into the late night traffic. 

He was still standing there when Eijirou turned away from the street.

For a moment, their eyes met.

Eijirou blinked, seeming to register him only then, and then he said, “Let's go?”

He stared at the redhead for another second before looking away and whispering, “Yeah.”

Keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the ground, Katsuki walked beside Eijirou, his head spinning so fast he could barely process the surrounding streets. The city was gradually shutting down for the night, shop shutters clattering shut and streetlights humming softly overhead, but the silence between them felt almost deafening. Eijirou set a professional pace, his arms swinging at his sides while he laid out the operational details of their patrol in a businesslike cadence, completely devoid of the casual banter they usually shared.

He explained which docks were flagged for suspicious cargo drops, which alleyways needed checking, and how they would coordinate with Mirio’s team at the main intersection, but Katsuki barely registered a single word.

They crossed over a wide concrete pedestrian bridge that stretched across the harbor inlet, the deep black water churning far below them under the light of a pristine full moon. The pale lunar glow cast long shadows across the pavement, reflecting off the dark surface of the bay like shattered glass.

As the distance between them and the bustling commercial district grew, the silence became entirely unbearable. The fortune teller's questions echoed through Katsuki's thoughts, demanding to know if he had the courage to fight for what he wanted or if he would simply let this reality crush him completely. His feet grew heavy, scraping against the concrete until he dragged himself to a complete halt right near the bridge's concrete guardrail.

Eijirou took three more steps forward before noticing the lack of footfalls beside him, pulling up short on the wide walkway. He didn't turn around to face Katsuki, keeping his back firmly presented while his shoulders held a rigid posture.

“Are you happy?”

The question ripped out of Katsuki's throat before he could stop it, cutting through the hum of the distant tide.

Eijirou remained completely still, staring straight ahead at the shadowy outlines of the freight cranes lining the opposite shore. “What do you mean?”

“Are you happy?” He repeated, stepping closer until he was just two paces behind him, his palms clenching into white-knuckled fists at his sides. 

The other man let out a sigh, his posture slumping slightly, though he still refused to look back. “Bakugo, don't do this. We agreed we weren't going to talk about this stuff anymore.”

“I don't give a damn what we agreed on,” Katsuki's words scraped roughly in his throat as he struggled to process the distance separating them. “Is this life really what you wanted? Is this supposed to be better?”

“It's the reality we have,” Eijirou replied, his words spoken so quietly they almost vanished into the ocean breeze. “You made your boundaries clear years ago. I accepted them.”

“I was a fucking coward,” Katsuki shouted, the confession tearing out of him like an open wound. “I was terrified, okay? I thought if I let you in, if I let myself have this one thing, I'd lose my focus or I'd end up getting you hurt. I thought keeping my distance was protecting us both, that being best friends was enough, but looking at you now, looking at how you won't even turn around to face me, I know I completely ruined everything.”

Eijirou stood there unmoving for several endless seconds before slowly shaking his head. “You don't get to do this now, Katsuki. You don't get to come to me years later, after I finally put myself back together, and dump all your regrets at my feet like I'm supposed to just drop my whole life to fix your conscience.”

“I'm not asking you to fix anything,” he stepped directly up behind him, the heat radiating off his body clashing against the freezing harbor air. “I'm asking if you actually love him, or if you just settled for the first guy who wasn't too much of a broken mess to give you what you deserved!”

“Don't talk about him like that,” Eijirou snapped, turning his head just enough for his profile to show the painful strain etched into his jaw. “He was there, Katsuki. He stayed when you walked away. He held my hand when I was tired of coming home to an empty apartment after twelve-hour shifts, waiting for a call from you that was never going to come. He gave me peace while you were busy building walls.”

“But you expect me to just stand here and pretend like we didn't mean everything to each other?”

“We did mean everything,” Eijirou said, his words dropping into a raspy pitch that carried the immense weight of years of silent grieving. “You were my entire world for so long that I didn't know how to breathe without checking if you were okay first. But you didn't want me like that. You wanted a teammate. You wanted a sidekick who stayed exactly three steps behind you so you didn't have to risk feeling anything real.”

“That's a lie and you know it!” Katsuki grabbed the heavy red strap of the redhead's shoulder armor, pulling with enough force to spin him around completely. “I wanted you every single day. I still want you every second that I'm alive, and this always scared me. Loving you was always the easiest part, but allowing myself to have this kind of love was the scariest fucking thing I ever had to face.”

Eijirou stumbled back half a step from the pull, his amber eyes finally meeting Katsuki's. The pain in them was so devastating that Katsuki instinctively recoiled. There was no hatred in his expression, no spite or malice, only a sorrow so deep it seemed to strip away the polite distance they'd kept between them, exposing everything he'd buried beneath it.

“Then why didn't you say anything?” Eijirou demanded, his voice cracking as the composure he'd held onto all day finally gave way. “Do you have any idea how many nights I sat on our old couch waiting for you to say literally anything? One word, Katsuki. Just one sign that I wasn't completely crazy for loving you this much.”

Katsuki couldn't answer because the truth left him rooted to the concrete floor of the bridge as Eijirou stepped closer, closing the space between them until he had nowhere to look but into his eyes, where tears threatened to spill. 

“I gave you every chance a person could possibly give,” Eijirou whispered, his chest rising and falling beneath his hardened chest plate. “I threw myself into every danger with you. I stayed by your hospital bed every time you got wrecked, and I loved you so hard it felt like my chest was going to cave in. But you kept pushing me back. You kept treating like your feelings were an inconvenience to your damn hero ranking.”

“I was wrong,” Katsuki reached for his cheek before stopping, his gloved hand hovering between them. “Please.”

“I can’t undo years of moving on just because you finally realized what you lost.” Eijirou’s posture sagged as the anger drained from him, leaving only exhaustion in its place. “I love the life I built now. It’s safe, it’s quiet, and I don’t have to spend every night wondering whether the man I love is ever going to love me back. I can’t break someone's heart just to heal yours.”

“But are you happy?” Katsuki asked again, his voice barely rising above the tide crashing against the stone pillars below. “If I had the chance to go back and do it all over again, would you still choose this life?”

Eijirou looked at him for a long moment, and the moonlight rested across his features, catching the faint tremor in his lower lip. When he finally looked at Katsuki, the tenderness in his eyes was almost unbearable. It was the same tenderness he had given him through every version of their lives, as if some part of him had always recognized Katsuki, no matter what name they carried or what universe had placed them in. 

The love was there, and Katsuki could finally see it.

“I’m content,” Eijirou whispered at last, and the words seemed to cost him more than anger ever could. “And that has to be enough.”

Katsuki took a single, desperate step forward, his hand rising to finally touch Eijirou's shoulder before starting to say, “But if I could…”

A deafening, concussive explosion tore through the night sky from the docks below, the force of the blast rocking the concrete bridge beneath their feet.

Before he could even register the blinding flash of orange fire erupting near the water, Eijirou reacted on hardwired instinct. His Quirk activated instantly, hardened rock tearing across his skin and expanding over his chest and arms as he threw himself directly in front of Katsuki to shield him from the flying debris.

A jagged chunk of reinforced steel beam came hurtling out of the smoke at terrifying speed, slamming violently into the side of the bridge structure right beneath them.

The concrete walkway cracked under the immense force of the impact, buckling upward with a sickening crunch. The shockwave threw Eijirou backward into the guardrail, while the section of floor right beneath Katsuki's boots completely disintegrated into dust and falling rubble.

He lost his footing instantly, thrown backward off the edge of the bridge into the open air. The wind whipped past his face as he plunged downward into the darkness, his hands reaching uselessly toward the night sky.

“Katsuki!”

Eijirou's voice screamed out his name from above, and it was the last sound to reach Katsuki before his body slammed into the icy harbor water. The impact drove the air from his lungs as the dark sea closed over his head, swallowing him whole and pulling him into the silence below.

ｔｈｅ ｍｏｏｎ

🀢

The freezing weight of the harbor water vanished in a blinding flash, replaced by the worn fabric of the living room couch against Katsuki’s back. 

He dragged in a breath and bolted upright, his hands gripping the cushions as his eyes swept across the room. He planted his feet on the floorboards and sucked in another breath, then another, as though his body still believed he was beneath the harbor, lungs full of cold water instead of air.

Night had fallen outside, leaving the apartment in darkness, but Katsuki knew this place. The minimalist nightmare from earlier was gone, replaced by the cluttered home he had taken for granted for years. The shoe rack sat beside the entrance, crowded with red sneakers, work boots, and battered hero gear bags. Eijirou’s hoodie hung over the back of a kitchen chair, and the coffee table was littered with half-empty water glasses and patrol logs. 

Every detail belonged to the life they had built together. 

Eijirou lived here. 

He was still here, sharing this space with him, breathing the same air and leaving his things wherever he pleased.

A click broke the silence, followed by the familiar turn of the front door lock. The door opened, spilling hallway light across the dark room as a tall figure stepped inside and reached for the switch.

“Katsuki, I'm home!”

He was off the couch before he realized he had moved, crossing the room in three strides while Eijirou was still working at the laces of his boots. By the time the redhead looked up, Katsuki was already in front of him, both hands coming up to hold his face.

Katsuki’s palms pressed flat against Eijirou’s cheeks, his thumbs tracing over the line of his high cheekbones, the slight roughness along his jaw, and the familiar, tiny scar sitting above his right eye. He needed to feel the solid reality of him, needed to anchor himself to the living, breathing truth of this man.

Eijirou slowly straightened his spine, letting his unlaced leather boot drop back onto the floorboards while his hands rose hesitantly to rest against Katsuki's forearms.

“Is everything okay?” He asked, his cadence soft, almost timid, as if he were genuinely afraid that breaking the silence too loudly would cause Katsuki to snap out of whatever mood had overcome him. 

Katsuki felt a profound lightness spreading through his chest, a sensation so intense and beautiful it practically made his head spin. 

For the first time in his life, the staggering weight of his own feelings didn't feel like a threat or a weakness to be hidden behind iron walls; it felt like a triumph, an immense privilege that he was finally ready to accept with both hands open. 

He had been given the rare, unbelievable gift of a second chance, a clean slate where he could tear down every useless defense he had spent years building and simply let himself love the man standing in his arms.

“Yeah,” he smiled. “Everything is perfectly fine.”

He kept his hands gently resting against Eijirou's warm cheeks, refusing to let go even by a fraction of an inch, knowing with absolute, unshakeable clarity what he was going to do next and how fiercely he was going to fight for this life every single day.

“Welcome home, Eijirou.”

The redhead stared at him, his mouth opening as he processed the uninhibited warmth radiating from Katsuki's smile. The flush on his face deepened into a lovely scarlet that painted his skin from his earlobes all the way down to his collar, but then a breathless chuckle escaped him when he said, “I'm happy to be home.”

🃚 🀢 🀦 🀢

Months had bled into a sweltering July, turning the city into a furnace that beat down relentless heat onto the asphalt until the air shimmered above the sidewalks. Summer had arrived in full force, forcing everyone into sleeveless shirts and thin fabrics while the afternoon sun baked the concrete avenues.

Walking along the shaded side of the street, Katsuki carried a canvas tote bag packed tight with fresh produce from the local farmers market. A plastic cup of iced peach tea sat comfortably in his free hand, the condensation running down the sides and dripping onto his fingers while he took a long sip through the straw.

Beside him, Eijirou was happily tearing through a bright red cherry ice pop, his tongue stained a ridiculous shade of red as he tried to keep the melting syrup from dripping down his wrist. Their fingers were firmly intertwined between them, palms pressed together in a habitual grip that had become as natural as breathing over the past few months. They had spent the entire morning wandering through the outdoor market stalls on their rare shared day off, picking out fresh vegetables, pork cuts, and spices to cook dinner together at their apartment.

Eijirou swung their joined hands slightly as they walked, his athletic tank top showing off the sun-darkened skin of his shoulders while he rambled on about his latest sudden fixation.

“I was thinking about picking up something totally new for my off days,” Eijirou said, taking another bite of his melting ice pop and swallowing quickly before continuing. “Like, maybe I should get a guitar and try to learn how to play it. Denki said he knows a few basic chords he could show me, or I could just look up videos online. What do you think? Would it be cool if I learned a few songs?”

Katsuki tilted his head back, taking another long drink from his cup while an amused hum hummed in his throat. “Just don't practice when I'm trying to sleep.”

“Hey, I'd be great at it!” Eijirou laughed, nudging his shoulder playfully against Katsuki's arm as they navigated around a family strolling in the opposite direction. “I've got great rhythm, man. I could write you a whole album if I get good enough.”

They turned the corner onto a narrow avenue that led back toward their residential neighborhood. The tall buildings cast long shadows over the pavement, offering a brief respite from the brutal afternoon heat.

As they passed a tucked-away alleyway between a flower shop and an old book store, Katsuki turned his head to the side. Sitting right near the open entrance of a dimly lit storefront, perched on a low wooden stool behind a small table covered in yellowed cards, sat the old fortune teller.

When Katsuki met her eyes, a knowing smile crossed her wrinkled face, and her expression brightened when she noticed their intertwined hands. She gave him a small nod, but Katsuki didn't scowl or pull his hand from Eijirou's grip. Instead, he let a faint smile touch his mouth, his chest filling with gratitude.

Eijirou noticed the subtle shift in his pace, pausing his ramble about music equipment to glance over toward the alleyway, his dark eyes blinking in curiosity as he saw the old woman waving faintly at them.

“What happened?” The redhead asked, squinting against the bright light as he looked back and forth between Katsuki and the storefront. “Who's that over there?”

Katsuki brought his cup up to take another sip of his tea, turning his eyes back to the road ahead as he gave Eijirou’s hand a squeeze. “No one.”

Before the other man could ask anything else, Katsuki stopped walking completely, turning his full body to face him on the sidewalk. He reached up with his free hand, his thumb gently wiping away a sticky streak of red syrup that had dripped down near the corner of Eijirou's mouth.

“Besides,” he added, his tone softening into something deeply fond as he showed him his syrup-stained thumb, “there's ice cream all over your face, you idiot.”

Eijirou burst into a booming laugh that echoed down the street, his eyes crinkling at the corners, completely unbothered by the light teasing. He leaned into Katsuki's space, pressing his sticky cheek against Katsuki's shoulder for a playful second before pulling back with a grin that outshone the afternoon sun.

Standing there on the warm sidewalk with the grocery bag in his hand and Eijirou’s laughter ringing in his ears, Katsuki felt his heart swell with an immense, breathtaking fullness.

He had chosen this path with open eyes, and as they resumed their walk toward home, hand in hand under the bright summer sky, he knew with absolute certainty that he would choose it again in every single lifetime.