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It’s warm outside. Autumn warmth, fleeting and savored all the more for it, with watery sun and scuffed clouds and birds. Izuku didn’t realize how much he took birds for granted, or how much he depended on the breeze to remind him he’s alive, or how much he missed just being outside.
Hospital stays will do that to a person. Make them forget that outside is a place they can go, where bleach doesn’t sink its smell into their clothes and their clothes are actual clothes. One can only handle the taste of jello for so long.
One can only handle so much silence.
Not that his stay has been silent. People have been in and out of his room during all visiting hours, mothers and adopted fathers and friends from work, from school, from the grocery store down the street from his house. When they have to leave, there’s doctors and nurses and more than a few starstruck interns lingering outside his door, afraid to come in for no reason, desperately looking for some medical excuse to enter and entertain the Number One Pro Hero.
But the one voice he wants to hear more than anyone else’s hasn’t shown.
There’s been no crackling smoke. No angry kindness. No gentle brushes of fingers across his knuckles to reassure that he’s fine, and real, and brave despite how stupid he is sometimes. There hasn’t been a hug or a kiss or a long lecture on what he did wrong undermined by the symphony of pride that he did it at all.
Kacchan has not visited.
Which is strange, since they’re a duo. Since he was there when Izuku took the hit. Since they love each other. It’s strange that he hasn’t visited, and it’s strange that he hasn’t called, and it’s strange that Inko said the last time she saw him, he was fighting cameramen tooth and nail to get to the ambulance Izuku sped away in.
“He was crying,” she said, patting the hand without the IV. She dabbed at her own watery eyes. “Every news station was playing him crying about you.”
Uraraka and Todoroki had come by on day two after surgery with a massive box of cupcakes, homemade and delicious despite the sloppy icing. Izuku had managed to stomach one to their sunny delight, and felt warm for a moment.
“Have you guys seen Kacchan?” He asked.
“He was pacing in the waiting room while you were under the knife,” Uraraka chirped, cheeks bulging with cake.
“He and I came up to see you right after you came out,” Todoroki said quietly. It was solemn, a little sad—a shoe fell. “Just to see with our own eyes that you were okay. He left before I did.”
Izuku’s throat closed. “Oh.” He picked up another cupcake. “Okay.”
Day five had been agency people. HR and the medical staff, PR and a photographer, his fellow Heroes. Reports and instructions and negotiations. It left him exhausted, in his heart and soul exhausted, but the last silhouette in the doorway—
“Kacchan?”
“Ah, no,” Kirishima said sheepishly.
Kaminari peeked in behind him. “Dude, you look like you got dragged by a truck.”
“Kinda did,” Izuku laughs. It feels good. Well, it hurts, but it’s good anyway. “Is Ashido here too?”
“No, she’ll be fifteen minutes late with Starbucks, because—and I quote—‘cafeteria coffee will kill him faster than anything else in that hospital.’ I hope you like white mochas.”
His mother visited every other day. He saw Toshinori more than once, and that earful was about as dadly as it got. Aizawa came too, specifically to chew him out—that conversation actually almost beat Toshinori in dadliness. It was nice.
But no Kacchan.
Now, sitting outside the hospital walls for the first time in weeks, Izuku lets the sun sink into his skin, bruising him with light, filling the cracks in his spirit. It tastes like rain, the chill turned-leaves kind, and he’s so excited to dance in it. He’s so excited to get out of the hospital and the wheelchair and the flimsy fabric cuffs of hospital gowns. Away from the endless parade of people who he should be happy to see, but just break his heart a little more every time they open the door and have the audacity to not be slouched and blonde.
“Hey.”
Behind him, on the bench by the entrance. A leather jacket open over a black shirt, emblazoned with an orange X. The dog tags Izuku got him for their anniversary as a Hero duo, with their code names stamped bold. His hands are shoved deep into his jean pockets and he’s pale—like he hasn’t seen the sun in a month either.
“Kacchan,” Izuku breathes. He can breathe again.
“You’re out,” Katsuki mutters. He won’t look at Izuku. Birds above him, trees behind him, concrete below him, but not him.
Izuku pushes the wheels forward, angles to face him. “I’m out. And I’m fine, see? Job risks and all that.”
“Job risks? J—” Katsuki laughs, short and bitter. “Job risks my ass.”
Izuku can feel the other shoe, hanging by a lace, dangling over the edge. Playing keep-away with the fragile floor. “We get hurt all the time, Kacchan. I did my job.”
“Bullshit,” Katsuki spits. “You promised me—”
“I promised I’d keep myself safer,” Izuku retorts. He’s practiced this part in his head already. For a month. “I never promised not to try, I never promised not to get hurt at all—”
“You promised me,” Katsuki growls. He takes one long step into Izuku’s space, looming over the arm of the wheelchair like the smoke trail of a firework before the explosion. The bags under his eyes are darker than wine. Has he slept at all since Izuku got hurt? “You promised you’d stay out of situations you couldn’t save.”
“But I did.” Izuku sits up straighter, refuses to back down. Katsuki still won’t meet his eyes. “I did save them. I did.”
“No, I did!” Katsuki’s hands turn to fists in his pockets, his shoulders shake. “I saved them! You laid in a broken not-breathing heap on city pavement! The EMTs picked cigarette butts out of your hair, you—there was blood everywhere—fuck. Fuck.”
Katsuki shoves a hand through his hair, paces one step, two. Spins on his heel to finally, finally look Izuku in the eyes. Fear and horror and fury. It’s awful. “You died in the ambulance. Did they tell you that? You died.”
Izuku blinks away tears. “For six minutes.”
“Six minutes,” Katsuki sneers. “Six minutes where you were dead. Six minutes between me and the hospital, and you were dead for all of them. I fucking beat the ambulance here and if I hadn’t, the ER malpractice-suit-in-charge would’ve called you DOA.”
Izuku is very still. He can feel his heart beating, too fast too fast too fast, but he can’t feel his fingers, his toes—he can only feel his chest splitting apart. Katsuki’s standing in front of him saying he was really, actually dead, and the only reason he didn’t stay that way is because—what?
“Did you yell?” Izuku asks softly. His voice trembles. Is he angry about this? “Did you scream at that doctor?”
“Wh—” Katsuki grinds his heels, resisting the pacing valiantly. He leans into Izuku’s flushed face and snarls. “Is that what you wanna hear? That I shrieked like a widow until they took pity and tried to shock your heart back to life? That I kicked and wailed and cried like the Devil had his pitchfork up my ass until they had to sedate me so I wouldn’t punch a nurse? That I lost it on national TV because you had the audacity to leap into a hit that made your chest concave?”
Izuku stares up at him, brow furrowed, nails biting into his palms so he doesn’t shake. “Did you?”
Katsuki retracts an inch, distress and shock combining on his face into bitter, panicked pain. It hurts Izuku in his already-hurting heart.
Katsuki puts unsteady hands on the back of the wheelchair, arms on either side of Izuku’s head. His shoulders are so tense—he looks sick. Peach fuzz dusts his chin, his lips are chapped, his eyes are red and shot. Exhaustion.
“Yeah, I did,” Katsuki whispers. Izuku breaks under him, the frustrated tears spilling over into angry grief. Katsuki grits his teeth, trying not to break too. “You died, and I lost it, because you promised me you wouldn’t.”
“That’s not what I—”
“That is absolutely what you promised me.” Katsuki’s lip quivers ever so slightly. It makes Izuku look away, look at the ground—look beyond, with silver eyes and steel bars slamming down in his chest. “Do I have to fucking recite it to you?”
Izuku startles. “You... memorized it?”
“You don’t need the whole thing again since you’re the one who wrote it, but maybe you’ve got selective memory about this one bit near the end,” Katsuki snaps. Izuku puts his hands on Katsuki’s shoulders and shoves, but he refuses to budge, instead reciting: “‘Our lives are not simple and our lives are not safe, but with you, my choice is simple, and with you, my heart is safe.’”
“Stop,” Izuku rasps.
Katsuki grips the chair tighter, rattles it with the sheer force of his grip. “‘I promise you complexity. I promise you danger. And I promise you that I will be the refuge from both.’”
“Kacchan, stop.”
“‘I, Midoriya Izuku, promise you, Bakugou Katsuki, that I will—’”
“I said stop!” Izuku plants his foot in Katsuki’s stomach and kicks him back a step. Not hard enough to even bruise, but the look on Katsuki’s face... it’ll scar. Izuku swipes burning tears away. “I never promised I wouldn’t take risks. Look at what we do for a living, Kacchan! I couldn’t promise you that!”
“‘I, Midoriya Izuku,’” Katsuki repeats, voice cracking, “‘promise you, Bakugou Katsuki, that I will never hurt you.’”
Izuku blanches.
“What you did,” Katsuki hisses, “was so unbelievably stupid. Brave and selfless and heroic and so fucking stupid. And you knew that—you knew you’d take a hit you might not come back from.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is, don’t you fucking lie to me. You always know. I taught you that battle sense my damn self.” Katsuki clenches his fists, relaxes his fingers, clenches them again, over and over in a desperate little comfort. “You were fully aware of what would happen and you did it anyway. You promised me you wouldn’t do that anymore. Not the getting hurt part that I know, I know we can’t avoid, but the conscious choice part. The ‘I have nothing else to do’ part. The ‘I will die for this’ part!”
Izuku swallows roughly. “Because it hurts you.”
“You are hurting me,” Katsuki yells brokenly. “You promised me you wouldn’t but you still are because you think ‘I will die for this’ is okay when I love you, you asshole.”
Katsuki sinks to a crouch, head in his hands, shoulders wracked with jolting sobs.
Izuku grips the arms of the wheelchair. They groan, whine metallically, but hold as he leverages himself up—a joint pops, and Katsuki’s on his feet in a blink.
“Don’t fucking get up!” He shouts, the words strangled by anger, garbled by fear. His eyes are wild, his cheeks shine with teartracks, and his hands touch Izuku for the first time in a month only to shove him back down. Izuku hits the chair with a little bounce. He puts his hands up, a silent promise not to stand. Katsuki crumples at it—the arms of the wheelchair are mangled to hell in the shape of Izuku’s palms.
Anger laces tight across Katsuki’s shaking shoulders. When he speaks, his voice breaks breathy, nearly a disbelieving laugh. It’s like a needle through Izuku’s stomach. “How do I still care? How am I so angry at you and still worried? How the fuck am I letting you make me worry?”
Izuku slowly lowers his hands. “Kacchan.”
“Don’t.” He’s quaking in Izuku’s lap, barely holding onto the twisted metal, barely keeping his knees off the pavement. “Don’t say my name like that.”
“Like what? Like I love you?”
“Like it’s an apology,” Katsuki shouts into Izuku’s lap. Splotches bloom on his jeans where tears hit the fabric. “Don’t you dare say my name like it’s a catch-all for your bullshit! Don’t y—that’s not even my name, that’s yours, and I—”
Katsuki hits the asphalt. Bangs weak fists against Izuku’s knees. Izuku’s hands hover over his hair, held back by the ferocity in Katsuki’s voice and the pain coursing through him at Bakugou Katsuki, his other half, his motivation, his sun and sky on his knees with the weight of Izuku.
“That’s yours,” Katsuki says. “Your choice, your life, your career, your power, your future, your save, your win. And I can’t be yours ‘cause I can’t fucking work like this.”
Izuku stops breathing.
“I haven’t left the damn house in weeks,” Katsuki whispers. “I called in every sick day I had. I pulled strings and made teary faces and got people to cover who I owe so many favors they could ask me to level the fucking city and I’d have to do it because I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move with how much it hurt to know you took a lethal hit for nothing. It didn’t do more than distract for seconds. You bought me seconds to stand still and nearly—actually, really—died. Modern medicine’s a fuckin’ miracle and thank God for that. Now I can tell you to your face.”
Izuku’s crying. The silent, unmoving crying of pain so strong he can’t even speak. He gapes at Katsuki, who gets to his feet with a sniffling swipe of a sleeve and stares down at him, mind made up. He drops something small and bright into Izuku’s hands. Izuku starts shaking his head.
“I can’t do my job when you take hits like that,” Katsuki says firmly. “And you can’t keep a promise. So the ones I made are void. You got that? You broke your promises, your body, and me. So don’t fucking say my name like that ever again.”
“No,” Izuku rasps. He keeps shaking his head. Katsuki shuts his eyes. “No, don’t do this. You made promises too, you never say anything you don’t mean—”
“Apparently you do.” Katsuki jabs his hands into his pockets and rocks on his heels, once, twice. He turns, takes a step.
“‘There is no life where I would not find you,’” Izuku recites through the thick tears gumming his throat. Katsuki flinches. “‘There is no mountain I would not climb, no sea I would not cross, no hardship I would not live to be right here.’”
Katsuki takes another step. And another.
“‘I have been in love with you since we were children,’” Izuku cries, “‘I have been in love with you for as many days as I have been alive and I, Bakugou Katsuki, am so incredibly lucky to have lived those days with you by my side!’”
Another step. Two. Faster.
“‘I cannot promise you safety!’” Izuku shouts. He lurches forward, digs his palms into the chair and hauls himself up on unsteady feet. Katsuki still doesn’t stop walking. “‘I cannot promise you a life of peace, but I can and will promise you me, in my entirety, every day for as long as we’ll be on this bitch of an earth!’”
Katsuki breaks into a sprint.
Izuku puts one foot in front of the other and collapses back into the chair, breathing hard. Katsuki rounds the corner, out of sight. He won’t come back—Bakugou Katsuki does not look back.
“‘And that is a love that cannot be promised to anyone but us,’” Izuku whispers to himself, “‘because we were forged in the same fire, and made ourselves stars.’”
He stares at his hands. At the band he twists around and around and around. At the tiny winking star embedded in the wedding ring, twin to his own.