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“Sometimes,” Izuku says quietly, “I wake up fearing you’re still dead.”
The honesty burns on his tongue. He’s not used to this—Kacchan, laying on the floor back at his childhood room, listening to the words whispered in the darkness. Kacchan hadn’t been in his house since they were six; now, it’s been two weeks and he hasn’t left. Auntie comes often to see how he’s doing, but she doesn’t insist on taking him back to his own home.
(Izuku heard Auntie Mitsuki talking to his mom by accident. She said, “This kid would go around the house all night long. I thought maybe being with him would help. He won’t say it, but he’s worried”.
So his mom has allowed him to stay as long as he wants. Izuku fears he won’t be able to let him go, when the time comes).
The silence extends for so long Izuku wonders if he’s already asleep. It’s for the better, if that’s the case; he doesn’t need to hear all of this. Izuku’s unfiltered thoughts. Him, laying with his heart sliced open, bleeding all over his childhood bed.
There are so many things he doesn’t know how to navigate, when it comes to him. The newfound calmness. The quiet. He misses screaming and fighting not because he doesn’t value the person Kacchan is trying to be, but because he doesn’t know what to do with it.
“I’m not,” Katsuki ends up replying, voice gruff and low.
“I know that,” Izuku says, and his mind provides, but I see your dead body in my mind sometimes, and I can’t put the image away no matter how hard I try; but whenever you’re not in my line of sight I fear any moment we’ve shared after that happened was just a dream. But, but, but. “It’s—It’s irrational. Forget it.”
Katsuki groans as he gets up. Says, “Don’t give me that crap,” moving to sit down at the edge of Izuku’s bed.
Then he takes him by the wrist. Tight but careful. The force used to hold him is calculated; it stops short of hurting. His hand is so, so warm.
He presses Izuku’s open palm over his chest, lets him feel the way it rises and falls with each breath. Izuku finds his eyes in the darkness, his lips parting, but no words come out. He can feel his heart beating.
Of course he survived. Katsuki has always been a figure of strength, after all. Of course his heart wouldn’t give up that easily.
“Do you feel it?” he asks. Thump, thump, thump. Izuku follows the steady rhythm of his heartbeat in his head. He wishes he could control his own heart, make its beat match his. “You were dumb as fuck, if you thought you’d get rid of me so easily.”
Izuku wants to laugh. He also wants to cry a little bit.
As if he would ever want to exist in a world without him. As if he knew how.
He wants to say, they could’ve taken you away from me. He wants to say, I don’t know what I would’ve done if they did.
He thinks nothing would’ve ever filled the hole caused by his absence, if that happened; he would’ve spent the rest of his life bleeding through a gaping wound in the deepest part of his soul.
He takes a hold of the fabric of his shirt, clenches his fingers over it. Katsuki takes a deep breath and Izuku is trembling because he’s so lucky to have him here, to feel his heartbeat, to watch him breathe. He’s so, so lucky that Kacchan is stubborn, that he never knows when to stop fighting, that even Death couldn’t win against him.
He really doesn’t know what to do with all of this.
“It’s late,” Izuku muses, even though it’s not, they’re just in bed because Kacchan goes to sleep irrationally early and Izuku decided to follow him because what other thing is there to do, really, when his mom can’t quite look at him without wanting to cry and Izuku can’t find a way to console her. Not that she would want him to. “We should sleep.”
He lets go of his wrist, but Izuku stays with his hand on his chest for a second longer before bringing it away.
Katsuki lies down beside him. Izuku, once he overcomes the surprise, moves slightly so they both can fit.
They don’t get too close. Izuku doesn’t curl up against him, he doesn’t dare, but he can feel the warmth emanating from his body. That means he’s here, and that’s enough.
“You need to stop overwhelming yourself with things that don’t matter,” Katsuki says. Like dying is not a big deal. Like it didn’t tear Izuku apart—like it didn’t change him, too. “Live the present.”
This is what the present looks like:
Kacchan, helping Izuku’s mom cook, wrestling against him to get the remote when they both want to watch T.V., kicking him out of the bathroom in the mornings, and throwing a fit whenever Izuku uses his glass because what the hell, Izuku, there are like twenty other glasses for you to use.
Kacchan, letting him feel his heartbeat, laying on his bed, speaking to him in the privacy of his room.
And it’s not perfect—he will still have nightmares about finding his best friend’s dead body for many nights to come—, but they’re both here.
What else could he ever ask for?