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Eijirou blinks the gravel out of his eyes. It stings.
He’s at the point of quirk exhaustion where he would normally let go of his quirk. Right now, though, Unbreakable is the only thing holding up a collapsed building. More importantly, Eijirou is the only thing between Katsuki and a couple hundred thousand tons of concrete.
“This is cozy,” Katsuki says dryly.
Eijirou glares at him. “What, you’re not comfortable?”
“Try the radio again,” Katsuki says. “Can you—”
Eijirou digs his chin into Katsuki’s shoulder radio. It crackles to life.
“Command,” Katsuki says. Even now, his voice is sharp, declarative, utterly defiant of his situation. “Come in. Command. Can anyone hear me? Riot and Dynamight are stuck beneath the rubble of the Sako tower. Come in. Command. Command—”
His voice breaks.
The radio crackles, sputters, goes silent.
Katsuki exhales.
“Well… maybe they heard us,” Eijirou tries. “They’ve got Jirou, I think, she can locate our heartbeats—ooh, or that new rookie, with the snake quirk, the one that can see heat signatures—”
“Eijirou,” Katsuki says.
“C’mon. Maybe.”
Katsuki looks at him. His eyes go soft. “Okay,” he humours. “How’s your quirk holding up?”
Eijirou wrinkles his face in mock-indignation. “Hey, who do you think you are, asking the Unbreakable Red Riot how his quirk’s holding up? I could do this all day.”
“Sure you could, tough guy,” Katsuki snorts. “Like you haven’t been already.”
“Pfft! Light work. Shut up.”
This is a lie.
The truth is that there is something—probably rebar—lodged into his back, so deep he can’t pinpoint the true depth of it. He’d realized he was going to fall over Katsuki, and dropped his quirk as a precaution. He just didn’t want to hurt him—and he’d only dropped it for a second, if even.
It was enough.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Katsuki dismisses. “Obviously. Got this big lug acting like it’s his fucking job to protect me.”
“It is my job,” Eijirou says. The words spill out like unspooled thread. One long, true, unbroken line.
Katsuki looks exasperated. “I’m three places higher than you, asshole.”
“Yeah, because your ego wouldn’t be able to take it the other way around.”
“Not true. You know you’ve always been number one to me.”
“That’s—”
The rubble shifts. The rebar digs deeper. Eijirou bites down on his tongue and does not scream.
“Eijirou,” Katsuki says softly. “You know I’m not one for giving up.”
“We’re not giving up,” Eijirou says.
“Right,” Katsuki says. “But our radios are down, and we ran off like idiots in the first place, so they—probably don’t even know we’re here. And I can’t blast us out of here without bringing down more rubble, and you have a fucking pipe sticking out of your back.”
Eijirou’s jaw drops. “You—what? How’d you know?”
“Because I can fucking see it, jackass, it’s huge.” Katsuki’s face scrunches. “Stop playing in my fucking face, Ei, just tell me it hurts.”
Eijirou lets out a shuddering breath. Drops his head into the hollow of Katsuki’s neck like he’s a little kid hiding from the monster under the bed.
“Hurts,” he murmurs. “Kiss it better for me?”
“Sure,” Katsuki says. “Turn over.”
Eijirou laughs flatly. His ribs twinge. His back hurts. “Funny,” he says. “You know that’s why I asked you out? Your sense of humour.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious! Your turn, tell me why you said yes.”
“Pity.”
“Hey, there’s that sense of humour that I fell in love with. Seriously, though, tell me. C’mon, it’s not like we’re pressed for time.”
Katsuki cracks a smile. “So you agree with me? We’re going to die here?”
Eijirou frowns. “Why are you giving up so quick?”
“Because I’ve done this before,” Katsuki snaps.
Oh.
A pit opens in Eijirou’s stomach.
“I’ve done this before,” Katsuki says, quiet, in a voice that sounds like rotten fruit, cut open. “I know when it’s over.”
Eijirou tries to speak around the grief. “I just—” He laughs. Chokes. It’s wet in his throat, blurs his eyes. “I thought we’d have more time. That’s all. I want—wanted—more time with you.”
Katsuki’s eyes crease. “Yeah? What would you do tomorrow?”
“Make you propose.”
Katsuki laughs. It’s scratchy, but still sounds pretty. “You’re so fucking spoiled.”
“Hey, I asked you out! Fair play.” Eijirou lowers himself gently, balances on his forearms. The rubble doesn’t move. He exhales.
He’s closer to Katsuki, like this. Close enough to feel Katsuki’s warm breath against his mouth.
“C’mon, hotshot,” he says. “Don’t you want to propose to me? Make me your kept man?”
Katsuki’s tongue pokes out, wets his lips. His eyes run over Eijirou’s face like he’s committing him to memory. He looks hungry, desperate, grief like a red sunrise in his eyes.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it’d be—it’d be the best fucking proposal. Put corny-ass Deku’s to shame.”
Eijirou can’t help the laugh that wracks his body. It turns a little hysterical when pain sears up his spine.
“Careful, idiot,” Katsuki says. “Honestly, a fucking beach, what is this—just googled ‘proposal’ on Pinterest and did the first thing that came up?”
“Uraraka liked it!” Eijirou defends. “He did good, c’mon, it was super romantic. What would you do that was so different, huh?”
Katsuki looks at him like he knows he’s setting a trap and is so unimpressed with him that he’s going to let it catch him, just out of pity. That’s what this is. Eijirou is the lamest hunter of all time and Katsuki is benevolent prey.
“I’d take you to your parent’s house for breakfast,” he says. “We’d all have breakfast together. I’d tell them all before so they’d all get to look at you and be excited for us and laugh about how clueless you were. Let your sisters give me ten different shovel talks and let you defend me. Try and get the hell out before the sunset and take you on a drive by the ocean. Let you roll the roof down and scream your stupid pop songs.”
“Wouldn’t let you turn down your hearing aids,” Eijirou teases.
Katsuki rolls his eyes. “Whatever. We’d hike down to that waterfall we found in third-year. Just swim and cliff-jump and drown each other until it gets dark. Dry off, drive up to the viewpoint, look at the meteor shower—”
“There’s a meteor shower now?”
“Two weeks from now,” Katsuki says.
A heavy stone lodges itself in Eijirou’s throat. “Katsuki…”
“I have the ring at home,” Katsuki says. He’s smiling, all familiar pride, the look that’s held Eijirou captive since he was fifteen. “Hid it in the hall closet. The one you keep saying you’re going to clean out?”
“Shut the hell up,” Eijirou chokes out. “Shut up, you’re—that’s not—”
“You know you’re why I can’t invite anyone over? Place is a mess.”
“You don’t invite anyone over because no one likes you.”
Eijirou can’t see him properly. Everything’s blurry, like a windshield in a rainstorm. “How long were you planning this, huh? You evil, conniving, plotting—”
“Two months,” Katsuki says. “Not long. Arranged the days off with your agency already. Made sure they could cover. Asked your parents when you were on that undercover stint with Kaminari. Took all your sisters on a shopping trip and to dinner and asked after they’d bled my fucking bank account dry. You know the little brat said no? Said she was still holding out on fucking Todoroki because she thinks he’s prettier?”
“Yeah, she’s mentioned that to me,” Eijirou says. Tries not to cry, thinking about his youngest sister with her neat braids, Air-Con hero poster taking up an entire bedroom wall. “Told me it wasn’t too late.”
“Well, it is,” Katsuki says petulantly. “You’re mine. I’d—wait until you were distracted by the shooting stars, and I’d propose. So there. Tell Todoroki to go fuck himself.”
“Hey, wait, wait—that’s—you skipped a bit there.” Eijirou raises his eyebrows, wishes he could poke Katsuki’s cheek incessantly until Katsuki snapped at his fingertips, irritated beyond belief and in love with him anyway.
Katsuki bares his teeth. Close enough. “You’re so needy.”
“C’mon,” Eijirou coaxes. “What would you say?”
“Don’t make me say it.”
Katsuki tilts his head back, eyes fluttering shut. He looks so tired. Eijirou’s heart aches.
“Hey, it’s okay, I already kn—”
“What’s the fucking point,” Katsuki demands. “What the hell was the point of—you deserve so much better than this, it’s so—saying all that just made me think of—” He opens his eyes. They’re shining. One small, perfect, teardrop kisses its way down his cheek. “I wanted it so bad, Eijirou. I really, really wanted this with you.”
“You can still have it,” Eijirou says, blindingly desperate—as always, as he has been since he was fifteen years old—to give Bakugou Katsuki whatever it is that he wants. “We can—we can do it here. The whole thing. The ceremony. The vows. Describe the ring to me. The radio’s still on, someone will probably listen to it if they ever find it. Retroactive witness. Or something. C’mon. Let’s do it.”
Katsuki looks at him. His brows draw together, and Eijirou is thrown back, all of a sudden, to watching him scowl over math problems in high school. It’s grainy, faded, like an old camcorder—Katsuki’s fist balled up around his pencil, his tongue poking out of his lips, the ever-present furrow right above his nose that only deepens when he looks up at Eijirou and catches him staring. Hey, Shitty Hair, you really think it’s a good idea to be slacking off right now?
“Look at that,” Katsuki murmurs. “Guess there are some good ideas beneath all that shitty hair, huh?”
Eijirou smiles at him, too exhausted to offer a witty quip.
“I know you’d be a fucking bridezilla. Tell me what our wedding would be like.”
“Not… a bridezilla,” Eijirou defends. “Just—you’d be all—who cares, it’s supposed to be about us—but we’d—we’d need, like—a nice ceremony. Not super traditional, but—I want everyone there. Oh, and a fun afterparty, y’know, like on a rooftop—there has to be a pool—”
It flashes in his mind—Katsuki, wet hair plastered to his forehead, dunking his head underwater in retribution for throwing him in, suit and all—everyone laughing around them, Iida begging people to stop diving, Kaminari and Hagakure gleefully ignoring him—Todoroki and Sero emerging ruffled from inside and ignoring Uraraka’s questions—
“Hey.” Katsuki’s voice is like an apple blossom. “Ei. Keep going.”
“Huh?”
“You were telling me about our wedding.”
Eijirou blinks. Tries to refocus.
Katsuki’s bright eyes, the broken slope of his nose. The line of his jaw, the proud cut of his chin.
Eijirou’s husband would have been beautiful.
“I’m tired,” he confesses. Shamefully. Quietly.
He waits for the familiar argument. For Katsuki’s staunch refusal. No you’re not. You can do this. My unbreakable hero.
This is what they do—what they have done, ever since they met—one says I can’t do this. The other says yes you can. We agreed. We do this together.
“I know.”
“Wh—what?”
Katsuki’s eyes have a look in them that Eijirou has never seen, not once in fifteen years. “You did a good job,” he says. The mercy in his voice is like water to Eijirou’s parched throat. “You saved my life. You’re still—you’re still saving me.”
The rough palm of his hand cradles Eijirou’s face. He touches Eijirou like he’s something sanctified.
“It’s okay,” Katsuki intones. “You did well, Ei. You were perfect for me. You can rest now.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“You’re not. You just—you just ran ahead of me a little. It’s alright. I’ll catch up. We’re still doing this together. Like always.”
“Oh,” Eijirou says. “Okay.”
He shudders, breathing in. His chest rattles. His back doesn’t hurt.
There is no pain, at the end of it all.
He sees the beautiful, ever-familiar tilt of Katsuki’s crooked smile, and he exhales. A kiss, held within a breath.
Wordless relief.
-
His arm itches.
“Careful with your IV!”
Someone touches his hand. It’s soft, gentle. Nothing like the brute force of a building’s worth of cement.
Eijirou blinks.
The room comes into focus. Fluorescent lights, charts on the walls, Kaminari’s worried face.
Hospital. He’s in a hospital bed.
“Careful,” Kaminari says again. “Just take a breath, man.”
“Where’s—” Eijirou coughs. Kaminari offers him a cup of water and he waves it away. “Where’s Katsuki?”
“He’s down the hall. He’s fine.”
“Down—”
Eijirou tries to get out of the bed—manages to sit upright, both feet planted firmly on the ground—and stops, confused, when his left hand refuses to let him actually stand up.
A closer inspection reveals that he is… handcuffed to the bed frame. With what is apparently a quirk-suppressing cuff, because nothing happens to his arm when he attempts to harden it.
“You wouldn’t drop your quirk when they brought you in,” Kaminari says, rolling his eyes. “Hard to put an IV line in like that. I mean, you were out cold, so I don’t even know how that works—anyway. Apparently this is standard procedure for people with quirks that interfere with their healthcare.”
Eijirou tugs at the cuff. “Well, we can take them off now, right?”
“I suggested they stay on,” Kaminari says.
Eijirou glares at him.
“C’mon! You just woke up and you’re already ready to—”
There’s a bang! from the hallway—then an almost musical clatter, like a tray full of instruments falling. Faint shouting follows, and something that sounds like a small explosion.
“Huh,” Kaminari says. “You think he’s awake?”
“Kacchan, please, we told you he’s alright—”
“He might not be awake—”
The door to Eijirou’s room swings open so hard the doorknob lodges itself into the wall.
Katsuki stands there, hands smoking, face twisted into a snarl—right up until he lays eyes on Eijirou.
“Hey,” Eijirou says, waving with his free hand.
Katsuki’s face goes blank. He walks towards the cot, each step small. His right foot keeps bowing in.
Eijirou frowns. “Should you be walking?”
Katsuki doesn’t say anything. Midoriya, wringing his hands in the doorway, shakes his head vehemently and mouths no.
Right.
Katsuki stops in front of him. And then he drops.
“Katsuki!”
Kaminari rushes forward, arms outstretched, but Katsuki swats his hand away.
He’s on one knee, Eijirou realizes. He’s on one knee, and he’s—he’s grinning up at Eijirou, face soft and boyish.
“It’s tomorrow,” Katsuki says, voice drenched in pure, lovely joy. “Let’s get married.”
