Chapter Text
As it turns out, having a concussion is not fucking fun, thank you very much.
The first two days after he barely remembers, because most of it just consisted of dipping in and out of consciousness in the med bay while guests filtered in and out. He thinks he remembers his mom’s dark eyes, and Kiri and Mina and Kamanari and Sero and Uraraka, and Todoroki, maybe, and maybe—Izuku somewhere in the background of all of it.
By the third day, after Recovery Girl has treated his ribs and his back to the best of her ability, they want him on his feet and tell him to go about his schedule normally. Except they’re dicks for that, because his schedule normally consists of laborious physical activity of which he has been banned from, so as it turns out, he can’t, in fact, return to normal.
He’s stewing about it (literally) in the kitchen when Uraraka finds him.
“Hey, Bakugou!”
Katsuki grunts in response. He’s in the middle of adding a few ingredients to a stew Tokoyami mentioned liking once. “What do you want?”
“Thanks for the warm welcome,” Uraraka says, but she doesn’t sound all that hurt. Katsuki listens to her settle into a stool at the island behind him. “Can I talk to you about something, though?”
Katsuki’s heart drops to his ankles.
She’s here about Izuku. She must be.
Here’s the thing. He and Izuku haven’t really—talked. Is all.
Except—well. Okay. That’s not true. They have talked, just not about “be a Hero Duo with me” and “I think I’m in love with you.”
Katsuki’s been getting the feeling that he sort of dropped the ball with that one, as hazy as the memory is, and the confirmation seemed to come when he got out of the hospital for the first time and Izuku wasn’t on his knees begging to take care of him like he would’ve been after any other traumatic event.
Katsuki would know. He’s had a lot of those.
Since he got out of the hospital, Izuku has been flighty, freaked out, and distant. Which is out of character. But—so is “I think I’m in love with you.”
Katsuki’s trying very hard to pretend that it doesn’t bother him.
Plus, it’s only been half a day. Hence the stew.
At the island, Uraraka tries again when he doesn’t respond. “It’s about Deku.”
“’Course it’s about Deku,” Katsuki rasps, not turning around. Izuku’s name feels foreign in his mouth like that. He hasn’t called him Deku since before he tried to leave UA. “What about him?”
“He thinks you’re mad at him.”
Katsuki drops the stew spoon. He whirls on Uraraka, who doesn’t flinch. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“He—apparently you said something—” Uraraka waves her hands when he bristles, “—he didn’t tell me what! But apparently, when you were concussed, you said something he thinks you’d be… mad at him for?”
There’s a pause. Katsuki squints hard at her. Uraraka’s in her pj’s, a pretty pink set with fingernails to match. Her hair’s half-up. She’s got her chin in her hand, too, like she’s waiting for Katsuki to come to the same conclusion she had.
He does. “Why would he think I’m mad at him for something I said?”
“I don’t know! That’s why I wanted to tell you. You’re the only one who knows him well enough to make him understand how stupid that is.”
The worst part is, after he spends a few seconds thinking about it, he sort of understands Izuku’s train of thought. Had Katsuki been drugged up or blood-loss’d in their first or second years and said some sappy shit to Izuku he would’ve never said stone-cold sober, he’d probably take his frustration with himself out on him.
Fuck.
“Fuck,” Katsuki says. He pushes some hair back from his forehead. “That idiot.”
Izuku is upset because Katsuki told him he loved him. Is in love with him. In a romantic way.
Izuku thinks he’s mad at him because he’d never say that stone-cold sober, and. That only leaves. Well. That only leaves him one option.
“Great!” Uraraka chirps, like she read him. She probably did. She slides out of her stool and picks up the spoon he dropped into the stew by the few inches that hadn’t touched it. “I’ll finish this up for you while you deal with whatever it is.”
“Hah?”
“Yep! He’s sulking and I’m sick of it. Especially when there’s a solution.”
Katsuki stares at her. At the realization of what he’s been left to do. Oh, he feels sick.
Doesn’t she like Izuku? Don’t they like each other?
There’s no way in a million, billion years Izuku would ever feel the same about him.
She doesn’t know what he’s about to fuck up. She doesn’t know what she’s asking him to fuck up.
“Angel face,” he says, strained.
Uraraka hip-checks him out of the way. “What are you waiting for?”
Fuck.
Fuck.
“Listen,” he says. He’s never been good at using his words. That was a pain to admit when he first had, because he’s supposed to be good at everything, but Kirishima sat him down in one of the colder months of their second year and they had a big talk about it, so he gets it now. Sort of.
He’s still not good at it, is the thing.
“The thing I said. It’s not something I really want to acknowledge.”
Uraraka starts stewing the food for him. “Well, you’re gonna have to, because he—”
“Ochako.”
Uraraka stops. There’s a moment where she’s just staring at the kitchen counter in front of her. There’s a moment where both of them are completely silent.
She turns, slowly, to look at him.
Whatever expression he’s making must be embarrassing, because she immediately drops the spoon again. “Oh, honey, what is it?”
Her voice is too soft.
Katsuki has the horrifying, mortifying realization that something is starting to sting behind his eyes, that his throat is closing up. He says, strained, “You don’t know how bad I fucked up.”
Uraraka takes action immediately. She grabs his arm, brows drawn and eyes big, and shuffles him towards the center island where she was sitting. Katsuki feels like the biggest asshole in the whole world when she makes him sit down on one stool, and sits herself down in the one in front of him. She’s still watching them with those eyes.
She’s still a fucking hero.
She asks, “What did you say?”
Katsuki purses his lips. Damn him, actually, for putting himself in this situation. Damn him for letting anyone close enough to him to be able to do shit like this.
And damn Izuku, most of all, for being so easy to—
“I can’t say it.”
Uraraka’s still watching him closely. She’s leaning down a little to try to meet his eyes, and he’s absolutely refusing to let her.
Katsuki swallows hard. He’s staring resolutely down at his clasped hands and not letting himself feel anything. His vision is getting blurry. He sort of wants to hide, and then he kicks himself for it, ’cause heroes don’t hide when shit gets hard.
His throat clicks. He can’t fucking say it. She doesn’t get it. She wouldn’t get it.
“Oh,” Uraraka says gently. “You love him.”
Katsuki’s gaze snaps up. It’s completely instinctual, and he must look mortified, because Uraraka’s eyes soften even more.
“Is that what you told him?”
Katsuki’s throat is bone fucking dry. “How did you—”
“Honey,” Uraraka says again. “I’ve seen the way you look at each other.”
Oh. Oh. She.
“Don’t you like him?” Katsuki rasps.
Uraraka pauses, just for a second, like she’s processing, before a smile splits her cheeks. In fact, she actually laughs. Right in his face. Like an asshole.
“No,” Uraraka giggles. “Maybe in first year I did? But. No. Izuku’s my best friend. He hasn’t been more than that for a long time.”
Katsuki is fucking flabberghasted. He feels like she just slapped him. She might as well have.
His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“What do you mean, the way we look at each other?”
He’s staring at her all squinty and he hasn’t grabbed her hands back like Izuku or Kirishima or whoever would have. He’s just not like that. He doesn’t know how to be like that.
Uraraka is staring back at him like he just might be the dumbest idiot to ever live.
“Be a Hero Duo with me.”
Something fastens a burning hand around his throat and squeezes.
Uraraka says, “Katsuki.”
He thinks about Kamino, and the war, and catching Izuku up in his arms after he’d apologized. He thinks about the way Izuku had pressed his mouth to Katsuki’s grimy hair when he was so fucking out of it, and how he’d kept him safe like the idea was something fierce. He thinks about fleeting glances and midnight rain and the way they’d never known how to be normal around each other. About what that devotion might’ve meant.
About what Izuku meant by that.
“I’ve seen the way you two look at each other,” Uraraka said.
That thing about Izuku he’s been wondering about since the dawn of time.
Katsuki bolts to his feet. “Oh. Oh.”
Maybe it’s not just that Katsuki is in love with him.
Maybe that’s not all there is.
Uraraka’s eyes are still soft when they follow him up, but her mouth pulls into a grin. She says, “Go.”
She doesn’t need to tell him twice. He staggers, shaky and fucked up a little, because he is the dumbest idiot to ever live. He is.
He thinks he hears her laughing as he bolts towards the stairs, begrudgingly reminds himself that racing up them isn’t allowed with his injuries, and slams his fist down on the elevator call button. He thinks Uraraka might laugh again when she realizes.
Fuck her, though. Fucking. Be a Hero Duo? Okay.
He only has to get as far as the second floor, so the elevator ride goes fast. His palms are itchy with sweat.
He doesn’t let himself think about it. He moves until he’s standing in front of a door he’s only willingly visited a handful of times. (Once was mid-panic-attack, during second year. Izuku had dragged him inside and held him until he stopped breathing so awfully, and then they never talked about it again.)
Katsuki exhales. He knocks hard.
There’s a shuffling from the other side of the door.
It cracks open, and Izuku stands there rubbing both of his eyes, an All Might blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “’Chako,” he’s saying, before he looks up. “I told you, I—”
Green eyes meet red. Izuku goes stiff, knuckles frozen on his face. Then he jolts. “Kacchan!” He says. “H-Hi? Are you—hi! It’s good to see you! Did you need something—?”
Katsuki stares at him. This stuttering, nervous Izuku is different from the one trapped with him just a few days before. He’s not being fake, though it’s a close thing; Katsuki realizes: this is both of them with a filter. That’s the one thing that had been missing before.
“Can I come in?” Katsuki asks, oddly subdued. He’s nervous, he realizes. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Izuku blinks at him. Katsuki sees the gears turning in his head, working out what he’s looking at like Katsuki is a problem worth solving. He always has been, to Izuku.
Katsuki loves him.
“Yeah,” Izuku says, softening his voice in a way Katsuki would’ve hated two years ago. He steps back a little to give him room. “Yeah, of course.”
Katsuki steps inside, head low. He fights the urge to wring his hands together. He doesn’t, because he’s cool.
Izuku follows him with his eyes as Katsuki moves past him. He shuts his door with a soft click. “Is everything okay?”
Izuku’s room isn’t as bad as it was in first year; he’s still got a fuckton of All Might posters and merch, but Katsuki can actually see his walls behind all the posters and shit, which has never happened before. He thinks he sees a pair of prototype Ingenium merch socks in the crack of his drawer. There’s a Shouto figurine on his desk, too, but it looks handmade.
And. There’s. On his nightstand, right next to his alarm clock, is a framed picture. Katsuki picks it up slowly. It’s from Christmas last year; it’s a photo Katsuki had initiated, which might’ve surprised both of them at the time. He’s the one holding the camera, ‘cause his arm’s outstretched, and he’s making a stupid fucking face he thought was cool at the time. Izuku’s grinning, surprised, and he’s leaning into Katsuki’s arm around his shoulders. The dorm’s Christmas tree sparkles in the background.
Behind him, now, Izuku lets out a little nervous laugh. “Sorry,” he says, like he’s got anything to apologize for. “I just—that’s my… favorite picture.”
Katsuki wants to tell him it’s fine. It’s all fine.
“Are we not gonna talk about it?” Is what Katsuki says instead, like an asshole.
Izuku pauses. “You— want to?”
“Fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“You never want to talk about stuff like that after it happens!”
“What, did you write that in your notebook next to my page, or something?”
Izuku goes ringingly silent. Katsuki finally turns to look at him, and he’s just staring at him again. In this dim lighting, Katsuki sort of sees a blend of images for a second. He sees Izuku, here, as he is, and he sees the outline of him in that dark hollowed out place. They’re making the same unreadable expression.
Katsuki surprises himself when he says, “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You’re right,” is what Izuku says.
Katsuki startles with a scratchy sort of laugh. “What?”
This fucking guy.
Izuku grins at the sound. He walks towards Katsuki, having gained some confidence, and takes the picture frame from him. He studies it, holding himself still, before setting it back down on his bedside table. When he looks up at Katsuki, Katsuki realizes they’re a lot closer than they usually are. They’re almost toe to toe. He could reach out and—
“I wrote it in our first year. On your page.” Izuku tells him. “I think it says: ‘avoid emotional conversations at all costs. Danger level: 100%’”
Katsuki laughs again. “You fucking asshole.”
“Yeah.”
Izuku’s got little flecks of gold in his eyes. He has to tilt his head up a little to look at Katsuki like this. The line of his mouth is soft, too. Amused.
Okay. Alright. Fuck everything. He can do this.
“You asked me something back there,” Katsuki says slowly. Izuku’s bed is to his back. Izuku is to his front. Katsuki forces himself to hold eye contact. “I want you to ask me again.”
Izuku isn’t caught off-guard by this. He’s staring at Katsuki like he was waiting for him to say it, and most of all waiting for Katsuki’s non-response to follow.
Izuku says, quicksilver and serious and brave, “Be a Hero Duo with me.”
“I’m in love with you,” Katsuki says the same.
Izuku covers his mouth with his hand. He actually takes a step back. He is staring up at Katsuki like he can’t—like he can’t believe he’d just said that. Katsuki clenches and unclenches his fists at his sides, and forces himself to hold his breath.
Green, green eyes, wide and a little wet, stare up at him in awe.
“What?” Izuku croaks.
Katsuki’s still holding his breath. He’s praying Uraraka is right, and that he didn’t just make a life-changing, earth-shattering mistake.
“I told you to ask me when I wasn’t concussed,” Katsuki tells him stiffly. His ears are hot. So are his palms. “And I’d give you the same answer. I wasn’t. I wasn’t lying.”
It is an answer, wrapped up in the same way as Izuku’s question. A confession in a please, please, please. A confession in a yes.
Izuku takes a few more seconds to just stare at him.
Then, he gets it. He processes.
He starts crying.
“I can’t believe you’re crying,” says Katsuki.
“Katsuki,” Izuku says. Fists in his shirt, body trembling. He’s looking at Katsuki’s mouth. “I—me too. Me too, can I—“
Katsuki would like to say that that’s when he kissed him—another answer tucked away in something else—but, as it goes, he’s just about run out of social battery and clever comebacks and his whole body is still going boneless from Izuku’s confirmation and what he has just given him, what they have just given each other, that Katsuki only manages a nod and an, “mm-hm,” and Izuku kisses him.
For the first blinding second, it’s sort of awkward. Katsuki freezes up with the newfounded realization that Izuku is kissing him, and Katsuki has only ever kissed one person before (Kamanari, last year, when he asked him to practice and Katsuki owed him a favor, but that had been just as if not more awkward and neither of them have spoken of it since) so he doesn’t really know what he’s doing.
Then, he gets with the program. He remembers to tilt his head and scrape his fingers through the hair on the back of Izuku’s scalp, and he makes the press of his mouth a little more insistent and planned, and he feels Izuku’s grip on him tighten. Izuku pulls back to separate them and Katsuki’s pushing forward before he even processed what that meant, but Izuku kisses back the second time just as he had the first. Katsuki goes breathless.
It’s not just that the kiss is good, because it is, if he has any say, but it’s also this—oh, this is what he’s meant to do, actually. This is who he’s meant to be with. This is the something about Izuku.
They pull back at the same time, but they stay close enough to breathe each other’s air. Izuku’s got this dazed look on his face that Katsuki takes pride in putting there, like: this kid is so fucking smart, usually. But all he’s thinking about now is him.
Izuku’s eyes refocus. He paws his way up to grabbing Katsuki’s jaw, angling his face so their eyes are locked like he really wants to get a point across, and then says, “I’m in love with you too.”
Katsuki fights the urge to say, “you’re so embarrassing,” and settles on “you said that already,” and Izuku smiles like he knows what Katsuki means, so Katsuki kisses him again.
Somewhere in the dorm, Uraraka is finishing that dumb fucking stew; and Aizawa-sensei is skimming through their med reports to make sure he knows it all; and Kirishima and Kamanari and Sero and Mina and Shinsou, maybe, are setting up a video game and leaving a spot on the floor for him; and Jirou and Momo and Todoroki are making them both these stupid get well soon cards out of construction paper and pen; and Izuku is smiling against his mouth; and he thinks it’s maybe because they love him.
And maybe it’s because they do.
Maybe that’s the thing about Katsuki.