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It’s a sick joke, is what it is.
Katsuki stands in the wind-swept entrance of the bar with his hands shoved into his pant pockets, all balled up. On his left side, he’s digging his nails into his palm until the pain digs back. It’s a mechanism meant for the type of people who hold anger in their hands, all that tension pooling under his skin until it needs blood-let.
The fact that his hand also happens to double as a bomb—well. It’s all the same.
He’s good at controlling it now. The rising heat. He didn’t used to be, but it’s easiest when he’s focused on work, and hardest when it’s something like this.
Figures it would be tonight of all nights, the first day off he’s taken in months, and just barely fuckin’ allowed himself to, against his better judgement. It’s already chewing him up inside. He feels like a stranger knocking the door open with his shoulder. He feels like something is bound to fuck up in some catastrophic fashion. He feels the dread.
It’s just drinks, come on, fucker. Denki had texted him a few days ago. Real charm, to that. Of course Sero will end up coming too, roll in sober and feed off of Denki the whole night, ending up drunk by proximity if nothing else. The two of them trying to out-do each others’ stupid.
>Anyone else?
It’d gone unanswered. Funny, how that happens.
>Denki, Anyone else?
If there was a way to drive his fingers through his palm and out the other side, he would’ve found it.
Izuku.
Katsuki makes a move to turn right back around into the street because—well, what the fuck ever—he has beer at home. The kind he likes. Malt and smooth, not something cheap to nurse sip by agonizing sip while Izuku’s there across from him, stuck watching his thoughts balloon exponentially bigger, until they’re growing hearts of their own.
Katsuki would sit there digging nails into his fists, in the silence, but that was never the Izuku solution. He’s not the type to idle. Instead he’d be sitting there twiddling his scarred-up thumbs in endless motion, waiting for Katsuki to open the floodgates.
Jesus.
Just then, Izuku turns his head to laugh at something Sero says, this sickly-clear sound, and even from across the room he knows Izuku sees him.
Of course he’d be the one to catch him in the act of reversing out. Doesn’t miss a fucking thing, when it comes to Katsuki, and it’s downright offensive the way his eyes blow wide. The way his smile reanimates on his face, bigger, hungrier than every singular time before that he’d looked at Katsuki.
It reaches the point that Katsuki can’t ball his fists any tighter without gouging skin. He can’t manage to leave now either, because even that simple act of self-preservation feels herculean in Izuku’s wake, so he braces for it. To be reeled in and plucked from where he stands.
“Kacchan!” It isn’t even Izuku calling out to him, but Denki. And somehow—that’s worse.
Katsuki stalls only for a moment, just enough to reset himself, before he walks toward them like he’d never planned to do it differently.
Izuku’s already looking away as he does. He has the good instinct of remembering where exactly they’d left off, the two of them.
God, does his hand fucking hurt.
There’s a drink for Katsuki on the table already, ice half-traded for condensation on the outside. Sero taps the glass with his knuckle, and Denki asks him what the hell took so long, did his arm finally go all Skynet on him and gain self-awareness, and Izuku is pale, staring at his hands, not saying a fucking thing. He’s pinned diagonally against the dividing wall from where Katsuki sits down in the booth. Izuku and Denki on one side, Sero and Katsuki the other. That initial joy-response from when he’d first seen Katsuki had faded, leaving Izuku rubbing the unease away from his neck like it’ll help any more than Katsuki making his left palm bleed.
“Not funny,” Katsuki answers Denki about his arm, grabbing the beer with the prosthetic to make a point. There’s an almost inaudible tink from the contact. The sound of metal and glass is nice and easy on his ears compared to the first time he’d tried to hold a drink, shattering it on contact.
Everything to its extreme, with Katsuki.
“It’s a little funny,” Denki presses.
“Too soon, man,” Sero cuts in, leaning his elbow on the table while he folds his sleeve up. “At least give it a year.”
Denki is about to say something else, but a waiter scurries past a few tables away. Not fast enough to escape Denki’s needy look and wave, which flags him over.
“Hey, can I get a round of lemon drops for the table?”
He’ll be the only one to drink them.
Katsuki shifts in his seat. Sero’s right, isn’t he? Not quite a year since it happened.
It’s suddenly fucking strange being here. Just eight months ago things were so normal. The routines he relied on to function, like how cars weren’t meant to sit in a garage, unused under a protective sheet, but a system you had to keep warm and moving. Katsuki had never cooled down before. He’d only just stopped waking up in the mornings, only to look down and reel at the negative space where his arm should be.
With the prosthetic attached, pistons and metal joints moving when he wills them to—and yes Denki, some integrated tech—it’s all he needed to start pushing normalcy again. The warmth came flowing back easily.
Izuku, not so much.
It’s comfortable enough to spend time with Denki and Sero without much input, not dissimilar from the way you adopt kittens in twos to wear each other out. Not half as noxious as he’d have them believe.
While they’re bickering and laughing between casual sips of beer—much worse than the beer in his fridge, he decides—Katsuki is busy reading Izuku.
He’s aware of him. How he swallows every other minute. Folds his hands and unfolds them just as quickly. The way he still isn’t talking, when there was a time before that he would’ve rambled out a day’s worth of conversation in fifteen minutes if Katsuki gave him the vacuum of air to fill. Even more than that, Katsuki would let him do it.
“Hey, I fuckin’ love this song!”
Denki slams down the last of the four shots and springs up, gesturing at Sero. There’s enough room for Katsuki to press back against the booth and let him shuffle out, catching a guilty smile from the both of them as they go. There’s barely even a dance floor, just the space between pool tables that nobody is using. Jackasses.
Izuku and Katsuki are left at the table by themselves, funereal silence between them. He almost wishes for the non stop rambling, before doubling down otherwise.
Conceding to Izuku feels itchy. Brooding on the other hand, not so much.
The corner of Katsuki’s mouth twitches left and right. Almost against his will he remembers the last time they’d spoken. Not exactly hard to forget the hospital room you’d left missing a limb.
Izuku arrived after the fact when it was already over, and Katsuki could see it on his face, how much guilt he’d convinced himself was proper to carry. Could barely get any words out before wanting to kill him for it—for all of it, for being the first one to cry, to ask about the future, to humble himself in front of the goddamn doctor like it had anything to do with him. He’d listened when Katsuki told him to get the fuck out. And Katsuki never really managed to let him back in.
Izuku speaks first, now, realizing they’ll sit here all night otherwise.
“They invited me last minute. I didn’t know you’d be here, Kacchan,” he admits, and he looks downright apologetic about that fact. Puppy eyes. Everything about how he says it pisses him off, including the way he’s looking at Katsuki’s right side.
Katsuki clicks his tongue. “Think they planned it, the fuckin’ geniuses?”
On cue they glance toward the pool tables, where the goon squad is decidedly not dancing. They’re staring at the two of them like government-horrors behind a chain link fence, with the understanding that one of them might need to scale it to break them apart if Katsuki needs to be managed.
“Something tells me yes.” Izuku almost smiles while saying it.
“Yeah, well.”
The smile leaves him like a ghost. Izuku continues fiddling with his fingertips, swelling with thoughts just like Katsuki knew he would.
Katsuki waits for him to say something, something chock full of his stupid heart. It’s an inevitability. Makes him feel sick thinking about it, looking at Izuku, both of those things combined. Katsuki starts flexing with his right hand instead of killing his left. The metal is a lot better at distracting him than broken skin, and Izuku glances up when he hears the metallic creaks, his freckles searing.
“I’m sorry.”
And finally there’s the bomb.
“Oh fuck you.”
Katsuki is already on his feet, leather jacket spun over his shoulders in one, smooth whirl. “Whatever. I’m gone.” And he is. He’s out the door, not that he really expects Izuku not to follow him. He’s always been a tetherer at heart. Doesn’t know when to let go or when to pull close, what to do with his fucking hands.
He puts one of them on Katsuki’s forearm when they’re in the street.
“Not in the mood, Izuku.”
Katsuki can only look at the ground. It’s the only place safe from Izuku’s eyes, the concrete acting like white noise as he tries to calm into the static. Trying not to overthink the fuse he’s lit. It’s almost offensive to him, that things between them are this damaged.
“Can I just talk to you? Can I do that?”
Katsuki tugs his arm free but otherwise stays where he is. It’s something of a code with them, when Katsuki is too knotted-up to say anything coherent. No means no, and nothing means okay.
“Kacchan,” Izuku says, and his voice is strong while he’s pleading. He’s well-accustomed to pleading. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Nothing.”
“But there’s something wrong, clearly, I know there is.”
“You don’t know anything. I’m not some fucking puzzle you need to figure out, just leave it alone for once in your goddamn life.” He tries to stop it there, gaze finally rebounding from the sidewalk. He hopes he looks pissed. He is pissed.
Why?
Izuku’s eyes are asking it. Kacchan. Kacchan. There’s not an answer in the world that makes sense. Why didn’t you speak to me after you lost your arm? Why did you take all your hurt and put it into me, what did I ever do to deserve that?
Katsuki wasn’t prepared to hash this out tonight, maybe not ever. Not this. They’d work something out eventually, sure, or maybe Izuku would just—one day act like things were normal, and Katsuki would act normal back, and that’s all it would take for the wrongness to leave them. An unspoken understanding. They’re good at that sort of thing, pinching closed wounds with their fingers.
They used to be, at least.
Denki and Sero are watching them from an actionable distance inside the bar, though not hiding it well enough. Katsuki flicks them a killing look and they scatter like bugs. Some guy on the sidewalk is walking their direction from a block down, hands in his pockets. The street is empty otherwise. Dark, and angry, and empty.
“Izuku,” he sucks in through his teeth. “Go home.”
Katsuki turns to do the same.
“Kacchan-“
“What the fuck did I just say? Get—,” Katsuki flings around, raising his right arm in exasperation, when he’s instantly shoulder-checked by the person coming toward them not two seconds ago. His frustration is redirected, already red-hot from Izuku’s endless prodding. He’s a wild animal jumping at his own nature.
“Hey fucker, you got eyes?”
The man’s face is obscured by his hoodie, but he stops in place, wobbling forward and back. Just drunk, and lost. Oblivious. If only Katsuki could be so lucky.
“Well?”
Any other day, any other time, he would’ve been ready for a strike. Would’ve reacted on instinct with twenty years of experience driving him forth; the culmination of that being how to recognize a threat. The ability to chemically neutralize it.
Everything up to this point had already disarmed him, and Izuku had stripped him of all the rest.
When the strike connects to his throat, it’s open-palmed and fast. Already over by the time Katsuki’s choking for his breath back, rolling his eyes around as he falls to his knees. He hears Izuku exclaim loudly, and then the snapping whip of him teleporting to Katsuki’s side. Behind them both are the clapping footfalls of the man already sprinting away. It’s less than five seconds for all of this to happen.
Katsuki puts his hands to his throat, gasping. Trying to yell at Izuku to fucking forget about him, it just knocked the breath out of his lungs, whatever , worry about catching the man Katsuki can barely even hear anymore. The only noises that come out of him are wet and incoherent. It’ll be too late to find the fucker by the time he can breathe. Seconds are hours when you’re crafty enough to make something of them.
Izuku kneels and reaches out, like he’d never even thought to leave Katsuki in this state, because of their fight. Because of what happened to his arm. Katsuki could kill him. Once he can breathe, he’ll kill him.
It’s a few seconds later when the oxygen finally comes back, and his chest opens up to receive it. His throat doesn’t actually feel like it’d been struck at all, let alone hard, but it must’ve been. He’s just used to processing pain. Nothing’s bleeding. Nothing’s missing from him. Izuku is busy saying a lot he isn’t listening to, and he knows the man is long gone into the night, though he throws a glance backward for posterity’s sake.
Katsuki still needs to breathe more. He can’t seem to tell Izuku to shut the fuck up.
He leans back and takes a few more breaths. Long ones that would’ve hurt if his throat was in any way damaged.
When Katsuki stands up, Izuku follows suit, his hands outstretched to catch any hint of instability.
Shut up, Izuku.
Except he doesn’t actually say it. He’s breathing but nothing beyond that, not a shout, a word, a syllable. Not even a fucking whisper escapes.
He tries again.
The promise of noise starts in the back of his throat but doesn’t build to anything, just gets swallowed back down again. Snuffed out.
He’s not panicking—Katsuki doesn’t panic—but Izuku doesn’t look so good. He’s watching Katsuki struggle, and it’s the same goddamn expression on his face as when he was speaking to Katsuki’s doctor eight months ago, talking in circles over the guilt.
“What? What did he do to you?” Izuku asks.
Katsuki opens his mouth. Closes it. He wants Sero to come out right about now. Wants Denki too, even if he’d be nothing but drunk, and useless, and touchy. Anything’s better than this. The intensity Izuku’s putting off has its own gravitational pull. Katsuki sways in it.
“Something’s broken? You can’t speak?” Izuku hesitates, almost like he wants to check it himself. Wants to put two fingers on Katsuki’s pulse, another hand on his chest to make sure he’s breathing. To move his chin side to side and thumb around for whatever’s been pushed out of place. He’d know enough to tell where Katsuki’s body isn’t right. He thinks that, at least.
Katsuki is still fuming, silent.
You let him get away.
“What do you want to do?" Izuku asks. He doesn’t even realize what he did. What he didn’t do. The man would’ve been strung up by his toes if it was Izuku and anyone else. Katsuki and anyone else.
He tries one last time to speak, and when it feels even more impossible than it did one minute ago, he pulls out his phone.
“We— you should go to the hospital. Kacchan.”
Katsuki ignores him, scoffing at the notion of we and weighing the options himself. He coughs, which is a good thing, he thinks. Getting any sound out at all.
He flips the phone around to show Izuku the plan.
>fuck off. I’ll figure it out
Izuku scrunches up his nose. "Come on, Kacchan. I'm not leaving until I know you’re okay.”
He’s pleading again, devolving to it. Makes Katsuki’s chest hurt, thinking about how it always comes to this, to them, Izuku begging for an inch and Katsuki backing up ten steps further in defiance.
Leaving him now feels wrong, makes it hard to breathe again. As much as he hates it.
There’s an imperceptible flicker from Katsuki’s left palm, the violence dampened just as it starts to appear. His nostrils flare, and he swallows something hard. He wants to hurt Izuku. But he doesn’t.
He wants Izuku to go away. But he doesn’t.
It’s been too long. They’ve never tried to outlast each other like this, forced together now like the same poles of magnets.
Katsuki looks at him, and then types the words before he can even begin to understand why he’s doing it.
>my apartment
Izuku blinks the immediate shock away.
“What about them?” He looks over to the bar’s front window, where Denki and Sero have appeared again to give them four very enthusiastic thumbs up. They see Katsuki and Izuku standing this close and not killing each other, having missed all the important bits in between. Like the man. Like losing the ability to fucking speak.
Katsuki types an addition, ignoring everything else including them.
>now
Surprisingly, Izuku doesn’t say much of anything on the way in. Maybe it’s finally starting to hit him, the reality of how he’d let the man get away without even attempting a chase.
Or maybe he’s in his head about Katsuki, who told him to fuck off all night and then invited him home at the worst of it.
Even Katsuki doesn’t know how to follow that thread.
Katsuki clears his throat, trying again to make something work itself out of him. He’d been attempting to triage the whole way here. The only answer he’d come up with is: it’s gotta be temporary. He’s never heard about a quirk that could take someone’s voice, not from any active villain.
Once inside, Katsuki lines his boots up against the wall heel-first, Izuku following suit with his sneakers. Barefoot, he stops there at the step, unwilling to go any further without Katsuki’s lead.
It would be ridiculous if he wasn’t still pissed at him, seeing Izuku act like a polite stranger with him. Like a stray dog he brought in that was used to dodging rocks and doesn’t know the first thing about hospitality.
Katsuki thinks he hates this stage the most when they fight, because Izuku isn’t like this, timid and bending himself in knots to keep the peace. He can take the whole of Katsuki’s fury. He’s the furthest thing from a stranger, capable of almost sickening familiarity, that most of the time Katsuki still doesn’t know what to do with. It’s brimming there now, waiting for Katsuki’s go-ahead.
He throws his keys on the kitchen counter. If he was alone, he’d have unlatched his prosthetic and laid it across the loveseat. With Izuku here, he thinks he’d like it to stay on.
Katsuki goes to speak. It’s easier than you’d think to forget your voice is broken, and that it hurts somewhere deep to try. He shakes his head side to side afterward like he’d been bitten.
When Izuku looks at him, all fucking concerned, Katsuki scoffs and casts a nod toward the hallway. He wants to change. The cigarette-smoke notes in his clothes from the bar are making him want one too much, and the last thing he needs is more shit in his throat.
In his room, stripping off his smoke-infused shirt, he suddenly wants to try and call someone. Anyone else. Aizawa, or Shoto, just to see if whatever’s wrong with him is because of Izuku, because who the fuck knows how the quirk works.
He checks the time and decides against it in the end. The old man’s probably asleep, and explaining it to Shoto would be miserable. The thought of calling Denki or Sero after how they’d left is equally unappealing, almost nauseating. Part of him already knows none of it would change a thing.
Izuku has crept into the open living space by the time Katsuki is back, still not quite feeling comfortable enough to sit.
That stray dog, waiting for the rocks to come sailing.
Katsuki looks at him, wondering what spectacular bullshit he’d been simmering with for the past half hour, and when exactly he’s going to unload it onto Katsuki who, for once in his life, can’t fend it off.
Instead, Izuku says this. “I pinged a description to Shoto, and they’ve already sent the night shift scouting for that guy in a circle around Rose Street. He’ll let me know.” Izuku presses his mouth into a line, looks up. “I’m sure it’s temporary, Kacchan, we’d have a profile if he was out there making a name for himself.”
Katsuki looks at him.
“Huh? Oh, right. Um. You can text me, or-?”
Katsuki blows a puff of air at his bangs, not sure what to make of Izuku when he isn’t exactly pissing him off, anymore. Although it might just be the exhaustion setting in. Doing nothing all day is worse than a 24-hour shift on Katsuki’s muscles, and having to deal with this is compounding it, whatever the fuck this is. Losing his voice and stringing Izuku along to compensate for the noise-debt.
He wonders why he’d even asked Izuku to come. It seemed to make sense, in the moment, that when Katsuki was being thrown unknowns he’d take the closest thing to him hostage. Izuku is in his shadow soaking Katsuki up, all that volatile uncertainty. Like a lightning rod.
Makes sense now, too, why he doesn’t want to give him up.
Katsuki pulls his phone out of his pocket, mulling over it. His stubbornness is at the forefront of his decision making, like always, but Izuku is right behind it. A constant. He’s good at this sort of thing, inserting himself where he doesn’t belong. Making Katsuki question the rotten cores his grudges wind around.
Even so, he can’t let it go so easily. It always comes back to the hospital, to the look in Izuku’s eyes. The way he took hold of Katsuki’s lowest moment and adopted it, made it into his own problem to solve and grieve over.
How he doesn’t apply even a fraction of that same worry toward himself.
I can figure this shit out myself.
Izuku shifts, anticipating in the background while Katsuki tries a revolving door of ways to write something to the effect of: leave.
>you should go
>I’m fine
>I’m okay
>I’ll be okay
>I don’t need you
>I don’t need anything
>tired
>doesn’t hurt
>thank y
>t
>izuku
>I’ll call y
>I’ll text you in
>izuku
He freezes.
>Izuku
It gets harder to find words, to the point that he’s suddenly uncertain how far the quirk altered him. Nothing sounds right, or natural. Katsuki started the night off carrying this resentment tight to his chest, and now he can’t even stand his ground on it.
And Izuku’s here, again, while Katsuki loses something of himself and tries to get it back.
After too long, Katsuki turns his phone around and shows Izuku what he wants to happen.
>couch
Izuku looks down to identify it, then back up, like there’s something obvious he’s missing. Yes, Izuku. The couch. The fucking couch. Katsuki’s already regretting it enough without having to grind more words out, to push him into the cushions until he understands what Katsuki needs.
Izuku startles when it makes sense. “Oh. Yeah?” There’s a distinct deer-in-headlights look to him. Katsuki’s head feels heavy at the sight.
He types while Izuku tries to recalibrate.
>need anything, take it
Katsuki points towards the kitchen, and cracks a closet door full of unused linens on his way back to the hallway. It’s good enough for him. Izuku would sleep on the floor if it meant staying the night, if it meant Kacchan not leaving his periphery.
Katsuki’s bedroom is tucked around the corner. He’s just opening the door when Izuku calls out.
“Kacchan?”
He stops inside the frame. Something about the inflection makes Katsuki’s hackles raise, renders him unable to turn and face whatever godforsaken thing Izuku’s about to ask him. It’s enough he can’t say a single word to him. It’s enough he’s intruding on Katsuki’s peace, making him question where they even stand.
Should’ve left you in the street.
Izuku says, “maybe leave the door open?”
Katsuki breathes out and kicks the door shut.
7 a.m. hits a lot like a brick wall would.
My arm—
Katsuki hasn’t woken up like this in a while, grabbing for the limb that isn’t there anymore. Finding air instead of the comfort of holding onto his own skin. It’s strange how your body can rewire most things but still leave you yearning on a primal level.
When he comes to terms with it, remembers it all, the groggy panic slowly begins to neutralize.
He checks the pager on his bedside table out of habit, throwing it back when it has nothing to say.
Izuku.
That’s a new one. Takes a second to remember why in the world he’s thinking Izuku’s name, and then it hits him harder than his arm did. Last night, the man, the quirk, his voice. That Izuku stayed. Here. Izuku.
Katsuki springs out of bed, suddenly feeling like time is being wasted, and it’s important that it isn’t. He goes to try out his voice—or lack thereof—every way you could think of. Yelling, whispering, singing, saying nonsense. Saying hello in Chinese. Doesn’t make a difference no matter how badly he wants it to.
He’s fucked, isn’t he?
Katsuki still doesn’t panic, but he does get angry, and clumsy from that juvenile breed of anger. Something he’d never quite managed to grow out of completely.
He throws on clothes, only strapping two of four buckles for his prosthetic straps. When he opens his bedroom door with more force than he needs to, he finds Izuku leaning back in the hallway to avoid the swing, like he’d been waiting there since he heard the muffled sounds of Katsuki waking up. Who knows how long.
There’s an indiscernible look he passes to Katsuki’s right side. Katsuki stares back with enough dryness to wither him.
Creep. Izuku must know it. In the same breath he both apologizes and asks if Katsuki’s voice came back.
The lack of answer, is the answer.
Izuku starts rambling shotgun-style when he realizes, and this time, Katsuki would prefer uncomfortable silence to it. Like wildfire he goes and goes.
“What do you think the quirk is? Did it feel different when he pushed you? Did it hurt? I’ve never heard of anything like it, I have no idea. Ah. Maybe it’ll take a few more days to wear off, that’s gotta be it, there’s no way. There’s no way, right? Kacchan, what if you don't get your voice back?"
Katsuki zones out in an almost-haze, coming up with a plan in his head. But he’s ripped back to reality when Izuku asks if he can look.
Look?
Right. Katsuki closes his mouth and jerks his hand palm-up in question.
"Maybe… I don't know. I'll see something."
Katsuki blinks, realizing exactly what he means. What he wants. It’s the same as last night, Izuku’s barely-suppressed urge to put his hands to what’s broken.
But Katsuki can eat, drink, cough, and breathe. Whatever's wrong with him is deep down in his vocal folds where Izuku can't see, let alone do something about. There’s a chance it’s invisible. Izuku knows all this.
It makes Katsuki feel strange, thinking about letting him do it.
What exactly are the downsides? A minute of discomfort? He’s already living through more than that. At least he’d know.
The sensation of time wasting is ever-present in Katsuki’s thoughts, perching him on the edge. He wants to fix this, figure it out before he goes stir-crazy trapped in his head with no way out. Katsuki knows all too well what it’s like to be muzzled, and it runs contrary to the way he works, not being able to bite back. To feel things out with his teeth.
Even the simple act of having to think about how he’s talking to Izuku is unnatural. Word by word is not compatible with them, he’s quickly realizing. His edges are being ground down and sanitized, and it’s wrong how everything feels with no opposing force, how awful and easy.
Anything is better than this.
Katsuki looks at Izuku, and that’s as much as he gives him.
No means no, and nothing means okay.
"Okay,” Izuku sounds like he was holding his breath. He gets right to work, quickly—eagerly—flipping on a standing lamp in the hallway and dragging it closer to them. The rubber base slides uncomfortably against the hardwood floor. Katsuki flinches at the noise, squinting as the brightness draws near.
The cool fluorescent shining on his face makes this feel almost medical, like an examination, which is good. That’s what it's meant to be. Izuku stands a few inches away, rubbing the top of his hand.
Katsuki’s not about to ease him into it, he’s the one who asked for this.
After a second, Izuku’s eyes are full of intent. He approaches not in that polite, stray-dog way from last night, but knowing exactly what he needs to draw out from Katsuki.
“Kacchan?” He reaches a hand out, tentative. “Open for me, please.”
Izuku doesn't even seem to realize he puts his thumb on Katsuki’s jaw to steady him until Katsuki jerks from it, nearly recoiling. But despite the immediate heat of his fingers, and the closeness, Katsuki relents. It’s by choice. He’s in control of this. He’s getting answers. If he lets it happen, they can be done with it all.
Izuku tips Katsuki’s head back toward the lamp until his canines catch the light, sparkling. A close grip holds him there. Katsuki’s eyes are in the fluorescent too, but he’d do anything to not close them. It feels important to look pissed, noncompliant, while Izuku’s getting his way. He braves the afterimage it’s burning into him. When he blinks, there’s an outline of Izuku swimming in his head.
Fuck this, he wants to say. There’s nothing to find. Katsuki already knows it, knew it deep down when he agreed, but a blip of uncertainty still remains, and being sure is more important than feeling good about it.
If nothing else, Izuku’s intuition is just as sharp as Katsuki’s. He can hold a flame to this grudge and tell Izuku to go to hell, hating his guts in fleeting moments. But when it all comes down to it, he still listens to him. Still trusts him.
Even while saliva pools under Katsuki’s tongue, eyes throbbing in the light, Izuku’s presence is the binding agent keeping his feet planted right where he is. It’s the only option he wants to concede to.
When he feels the pressure of Izuku’s thumb edging at his gums, it’s like a scalpel. But it’s under that same halo of trust. It stretches wherever Katsuki pulls back. It says—naturally—Izuku will make this right.
He swallows. Izuku watches that too, logging whatever information he takes from it somewhere in his encyclopedic head.
Freak. Katsuki can’t even look at him straight. It’s too raw. Seeing Izuku like this, he can’t help but think it’s not the first time. A memory from when they were younger is suddenly dredged up to the surface—Katsuki sprinting like mad with reckless abandon and tripping, hitting the asphalt hard. After catching up to him, Izuku took one look and asked to see the scrape on his knee. His eyes were wide and glossy. Katsuki scoffed and expected him to be all empathetic about it, but instead Izuku had knelt down, reached out, and pressed his thumb in the fresh blood as gently and seriously as he’s holding his jaw this very second.
Katsuki had flinched, trying to not let it show how much it stung. How much it shocked him.
When the bandaid went on, Izuku was still rubbing red between his fingers.
The concentration on Izuku’s face now is similarly unknowable. He’s breathing in and out while he thinks about how to fix Katsuki, to be the one to do it.
“Can you mouth words? You can move your tongue like you’re talking, right?”
He loosens his grip and Katsuki breaks free at the chance, rolling his neck and shoulders to reset himself. Izuku watches him, and Katsuki feels even more bare than when his mouth was open. He turns to shield his right side on instinct.
It takes a second to catch onto what Izuku was asking for. He’s waiting for Katsuki to provide a visual confirmation, which turns out to be a very easy to interpret, soundless, Fuck you.
Izuku sighs, reaching back. His hand is already on Katsuki’s jaw. "Can you open, again?"
His thumb catches on Katsuki’s lip.
"Please?"
Katsuki’s eyes go wild. He refuses to do anything at first, temples throbbing, but he didn’t realize how hard it’d be to navigate Izuku without words. How much of it relies on raising his voice and pushing. He’s not about to blast Izuku through the wall, either, although it would simplify things.
He asked for this.
After making a difficult noise, he opens his mouth and refuses to look anywhere but the wall. He doesn’t focus on Izuku’s face or how close it is, how he’s looking at him, pressing his thumb against his teeth.
Katsuki blinks hard and becomes acutely aware of the sunlight rising. Losing time. The morning is already hunting them through the living room windows, and Katsuki’s jaw goes lax under Izuku’s prodding, eased into his touch.
Katsuki clenches his fist, driving his blunt nails into his palm, again. It feels like his bones are being gnawed on, like he’s giving them willingly for that purpose.
Izuku is thorough. So whatever that quirk was, it left no physical trace, and Izuku tells him as much while still bracing his chin, guiding the angle.
Alright-
Katsuki tears away from him. He feels the unresolved momentum spin in his chest, winding down ‘till it clatters.
When he can bear to meet Izuku’s eyes, he looks like he knows what option they’re left with now, but doesn’t want to be the one to say it.
They’ll be here all goddamn day if he doesn’t.
"Hospital?" Izuku asks, seeking permission to even suggest such a thing.
Katsuki bites the inside of his cheek. The whole fucking point was to avoid this conclusion. Izuku was supposed to tell him what needed to be fixed so Katsuki could fix it.
He’s wishing he went through with calling Aizawa just to talk him down, to impart some tired wisdom of how to navigate your voice being taken from you. With only Izuku to bounce off, Katsuki isn’t half as grounded as he needs to be. He’s coming untethered. There’s nothing left for him to bind to. Ending up in a hospital room alone with Izuku might reach his theoretical breaking point.
What would Aizawa tell him? Katsuki wonders, gritting his teeth when it manifests.
You’ll get through it. Doing things you hate isn’t so out of the ordinary for you.
By the time Izuku starts gently trying to convince him, Katsuki is already grabbing for his keys.
Izuku waits in the car.
Katsuki hasn’t told him to go home yet, so he doesn’t. Hasn’t told him he doesn’t want him here, either, so Izuku stays.
The doctors tell Katsuki, in not so few words, "it isn't going away."
“I’m sorry.” Izuku looks down, away from his eyes.
Katsuki’s been waiting for him to say it, so it’s a relief when it hits, really. Lines up with the Izuku he‘s come to expect.
Katsuki has to give him some props for keeping it in so fucking long, what’s it been, a whole twelve hours? Must’ve nearly killed him, bearing that cross with nowhere to drive it in.
It’s late evening. They’re outside the ground floor fire exit of Katsuki’s agency, after Katsuki had come out brewing a personal storm overhead. Izuku’s keeping his distance, and Katsuki’s sitting on the curb of the sidewalk where it meets the parking lot. Time doesn’t feel like it’s wasting anymore—just stopped. He’s breached new territory to suffer through.
Izuku shifts behind him.
I’m fucking stuck with you, huh?
Katsuki had driven straight here after the hospital, Izuku in tow, not knowing what else to do but work. To plan for contingencies in the back of his head the whole time he’s working. It was a good idea—the same one he’d implemented after his arm—to throw himself into the normalcy-vat where he could go right back to kicking and screaming at villains.
The agency’s board, however, thought it would be a bad look to let him ride it out with so many unknowns. A liability, even more than he usually is.
Katsuki sits on the curb, hunched forward with his knees to his chest and his arms crossed on top. His prosthetic is warm in the sun, conducting against his cheek when he leans into it.
He thought he’d be angrier, seeing Izuku’s face after being cast out on a mandatory leave of absence. Until a minute ago he was wound tight enough to blow a car up in the lot, or something similarly drastic. Now he stays still and quiet by choice. Not because he’s mute. Especially not because the doctor told him to limit speech attempts to once a day, until they had a more nuanced picture.
Katsuki can feel Izuku’s presence over him, wanting to reach out, to say more than that. He doesn’t. They haven’t exactly buried whatever was going on between them, and it feels like the complexities are growing, not shrinking. Izuku solely bearing witness to the whole thing is part of that.
Izuku’s hands in his mouth is another.
He kills that thought immediately, like smearing a lit cigarette under his boot. Which reminds him.
Katsuki digs the pack out of his pocket, almost forgetting Izuku’s behind him until he speaks.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Kacchan, considering. And anyway.” He kicks the sidewalk. “You know how bad that shit is for you.”
Katsuki laughs, sharp and loud, scratching his throat like it clawed its way out of him. Hurts even more than trying to talk, which makes the whole thing funnier. It’s like everything’s finally met at a single point: the absurdity, the pain, the fact that Izuku’s telling him what’s bad for his body’s longevity. Izuku. Katsuki croaks again.
“Hmm,” Izuku pouts. He doesn’t push it, but he would if they were copacetic. He’d try to fight it out of Katsuki’s hands.
Katsuki slides a cigarette up with his metal thumb, grabbing it with his teeth when there’s enough give. It sits pretty between his lips for a moment. He glances up at Izuku to make a point, provoke him into something more physical, but his heart’s not truly in it. Katsuki is shelled-up, beat back to the ground. Literally. It’s a position he’s been in more times with Izuku than he wants to think about, at least any more than he has to.
His hands cup around the business end of the cigarette, poised to light it. The prosthetic hand itself is built to amplify every spark from Katsuki’s left one, drip-feed it nitroglycerin like a tap. He’d initially been opposed to anything that could mimic his quirk, attempt to replace it, and Aizawa was eventually the one to reason him through using something even conservatively efficient. Not the same, not better, but useful.
Katsuki sighs, pushing the cigarette neatly back in the pack. He does something useful now instead of destructive, texting Shoto about the man and if they’d found anything worth a damn yet. The message sits unread for a minute before Shoto’s dry replies filter in. Katsuki appreciates the lack of tact that Shoto has with him. He knows Katsuki wouldn’t accept whatever condolences he could manage to give.
Shoto tells him no, but they’re looking and won’t stop. They’re certain they have a trail. Their best tracker is assigned to it.
Then he asks if Izuku’s still with him.
Katsuki’s mouth twitches, wondering how the hell he even knows, before realizing Izuku must’ve dropped that tidbit. He can’t find a moment of peace anywhere.
>yeah
>>Oh
>??
>>Meeting now, I’ll call later
One second passes.
>>Well, I’ll call Izuku.
Katsuki grits his teeth. Bastard. He doesn’t have time to send profanities back before Izuku calls his name. That in combination with Shoto’s message snaps Katsuki out of whatever stupor he’d been in since meeting with the agency, pulling him up to his feet.
His hands go to his pockets. He looks at Izuku, slouched, waiting for him to say more.
“I can take the pack if it’ll make it easier.”
Katsuki narrows his eyes, pushing it back into his pocket himself.
Izuku sighs. “Okay then. I guess—I guess I’ll go, Kacchan. You don’t need me for the rest of this.”
Katsuki could kill him.
Why in the hell are you always trying to decide these things for me, he wants to ask, throttling him in the process. It drives Katsuki up a wall. Nothing he extracts from Izuku would even begin to explain it, the whiplash he creates doing shit like this. Saying shit like this. Katsuki doesn’t know what he’d be looking for in an answer.
Go?
Not a chance now. Maybe, once upon a time, Katsuki did want Izuku to keep the fuck away from anything that borderlined difficult. But in this moment he’s okay with it, with him, and the fact that Izuku’s both inserting and removing himself at-will is pissing Katsuki off more than not being able to yell at him for it.
He groans in frustration. Making the noise hurts more than the laugh did, but less than choices being made for him. Less than letting Izuku walk away.
Katsuki considers what he wants, and the idea of typing out some half-baked reason for Izuku to come back with him. There’s plenty for them to do. Strategizing and pulling up mugshots, exhausting every detail for Shoto to reference. Trying to talk. Trying not to talk. Izuku rambling enough for the two of them, pinching closed their wounds, until the rocky comfort of him being there begins to make sense while everything else doesn’t.
Izuku quirks his head, and Katsuki doesn’t know how else to do it than knock him with his shoulder. Make another indecipherable noise. If anyone should be able to read through the layers, it’s Izuku.
“Ah, What? Did I forget something?” He asks.
Katsuki stares at him with the answer until he understands.
It’s grating on Katsuki, being purposeful with his words. Two whole fucking days of it. He’s used to saying the equivalent of a lit match and flicking it, watching it spread. With Izuku, that was the default setting. He was never really given a good enough reason to change it.
It doesn’t exactly have the impact you need it to when you type "Fuck off," or "Fuck you." Which is something that only becomes more apparent the longer Katsuki lets Izuku stick around.
It’s an exercise in resolve, he tells himself, keeping Izuku close by where he can do the least damage. Out there running his mouth wild with Shoto or Denki or—God-forbid—Aizawa, Katsuki would never hear the end of it once they got a hold of him.
Katsuki walks over to his kitchen and opens the freezer, doling ice into two glasses. He pours water into one and Coke into the other. They clink together in his right hand as he carries them back to the couch by the rims.
“Thanks,” Izuku says to him, grabbing it when offered.
Katsuki watches him set it down on the coffee table without reaching for a coaster first. He’d make a big deal out of it, needle him about his goddamn manners, but he’s just glad Izuku isn’t acting like a fawn stepping on ice anymore. It’s good to wring some normalcy out of him. No more of that careful separation, just the two of them, and all their baggage piled around them in droves.
“Does it feel any different right now?” Izuku asks. Katsuki sits down on the opposite end of the couch, leaning forward.
He shakes his head once.
“Okay. It’s okay. We’ll figure this out.”
There he goes again, making them into a collective. Katsuki scoffs.
We.
“Did the doctor give you any exercises to try? Maybe it’s like relearning to walk or talk or—“ His eyes flicker to Katsuki’s arm. “Or something.”
Katsuki pretends he didn’t see that. He takes a sip of water, consciously aware of every movement in his throat now that Izuku’s prodding it.
The basic functions don’t feel any different. The rolling reflex of a swallow, or a vibration to clear his throat. He pulls out his phone, opening their messages while his fingers twitch.
>nope
“Do you want to try? To talk?”
Katsuki goes to type the same thing, but there’s a knock of pain ringing hollow through his body when he does.
Like the act of communication itself is the trigger.
He felt something a little like this before, with his doctor, with his agency consultants, shrugging it off as a fluke. It’s the same now when he tries to write a word, but the pain goes on longer. Makes him feel in need of something that he doesn’t have a name for.
“Hurts?” Izuku guesses when Katsuki stays idle. He wants to say no. It’s an instinctual response to anyone looking too hard at him for answers, but it’s such a strange sort of discomfort he can’t work around it coherently.
“What does? Your chest? Your throat?” Izuku asks more, taking the silence as a yes and finding it right to play doctor. Katsuki frowns, annoyed at him and still feeling the pain throb from nowhere and everywhere, whether he decides to type or not.
>strain
“Don’t try, then. Kacchan. You don’t have to say anything. I know.”
Katsuki rolls his eyes.
Izuku smiles back, and a different sort of pain comes rushing with it. “I’ll talk, then. I sent in an information request for a list of all registered voice-modifying quirk users yesterday. But we still don’t have an ID, and I didn’t want to miss anything, you know? It could be something else, like the ability to change anatomy. Maybe he’d twisted your vocal folds, or blocked them, so I requested that, too—anatomical modification—and then I thought, that it could be something on the microscopic level, which would make sense because—”
Katsuki should already be reaching his word-limit, shutting Izuku down before he goes and rambles them into the apocalypse. But he isn’t. He doesn’t.
He pictures the man who’d done this to him, not for the first time, trying to manifest details with ritual concentration. The man’s face shrouded under a hood, similar height to Katsuki, but scrawny as Denki. Those brown, ratty bangs.
The image is clear in his head, and even more the actions that followed them. The man walking down the street, past Izuku. The shoulder-bump and confrontation. Then, right there, he’d shoved Katsuki back with his left hand, directly in-between his collarbones where his jugulars meet. There was barely any force behind it.
Look at what it’d done to him, still.
“Kacchan?”
Katsuki is pulled back to the present, still not done looking for answers. He glares at Izuku. Wants to yell at him, really, for things beyond his control that he had no part in orchestrating, for being the one to see it through, everything that happened that night. It could’ve been someone Katsuki could manage. Ururaka, maybe, with her pink cheeks, pink whorls on her fingertips, offering him a gentle hand he doesn’t take. Or Shoto, checking in with a useless nod and going after the man immediately, propelling himself away with fire and ice in the air. Not wasting time. Not kneeling and pushing the whole of his emotions into Katsuki’s head, sending out ripples.
Katsuki can dream of alternatives but it’s Izuku who had the honors. Izuku’s pupils blown wide with worry, Izuku’s hand making its way to him. It went the way it always seems to end with them—Izuku running to Katsuki like they’re thirteen goddamn years old again, flailing while they look at each other. Like they’re incapable of anything else. It makes Katsuki dizzy, to think about it too much.
Izuku keeps talking quirk semantics while Katsuki reaches for his phone, again.
Shut up, he types, flipping it around.
Flinching, Izuku closes his mouth and cuts himself off mid-sentence. The abruptness has him staring off at Katsuki’s wall instead of at him.
Katsuki sighs. He meant it to be harsh, but he also didn’t. It would’ve sounded right if he said it out loud. Izuku would’ve understood the multitudes of Katsuki telling him to shut his mouth while still looking for more of him.
Dinner, he adds. He’s ignoring the throbs of pain that are still rapping with every word.
Two messages are already enough to make him want to stay silent for the rest of the night, which of course means he has to fight out one more. For posterity.
>Katsudon.
Izuku offers to order them both take-out, on him. The goddamn martyr. Katsuki gives him a look that would kill a lesser man, one Izuku instantly understands means that Katsuki will be cooking, and Izuku will be expected to cut the vegetables he’s handed, and not fuck it up.
He does okay with it.
Katsuki cleans his plate.
It’s later, much later. Katsuki isn’t keeping track of the time, but it’s definitely past the hour for Katsuki to be corralling Izuku out the front door and into the street.
He’s had enough of it, of Izuku. At least he’s telling himself so, over and over ‘till he’s fucking convinced of it.
Katsuki’s never had to be persuaded to boot Izuku to the curb before. They’d usually reach a natural endpoint, followed by one, swift kick and a yelp. Always with the mutual understanding that Izuku would be back later, pawing at the door.
When Katsuki thinks about being alone afterward, though, his throat spasms. The hurt comes back. It’s part of the quirk wreaking havoc in him, he’s sure of that much. How trying to speak feels like a thousand small cuts, but when he doesn’t try anything, it’s like the sickness is left to swell under his skin.
He can’t stop trying. And something’s telling him that Izuku is the path through which it should flow.
Katsuki’s washing the remaining dishes from dinner in the sink, wearing big, orange rubber gloves up his forearms. His prosthetic is waterproof, but they told him not to put too much stock in that terminology.
Izuku leans against the counter nearby. He offered to clean up and didn’t know what to do with himself when Katsuki shook his head no. Katsuki would be scrubbing one-handed if Izuku wasn’t still standing there, ready to take notes on his dexterity.
Katsuki knows he would, even unconsciously. He’d made peace with it, the way Izuku works through things, or at least he did before. Izuku’s thinking up a storm right now, staring at the gap between the gloves and his shirt sleeve.
Just fuckin’ say it, already.
“I know I messed up. I’m not stupid,” Izuku says, which isn’t exactly what Katsuki expected, but he rolls with it. Quirking his eyebrow at him.
“I really was going to chase that guy, but, I don’t know. I heard you gasp and it felt different. All the times we’ve been hurt there’s blood and yelling, and swearing, but you didn’t do any of that. It scared me. I made a choice. Maybe it was the wrong one.” He furrows his brows, rubbing his hands together. Katsuki has been rinsing the same plate over and over. Top to bottom, flip, repeat.
“Shoto’s team will catch him. I’m sure of that. But I’m sorry if I should’ve done it differently. The last thing I want is, is you, for me to—“ Izuku struggles with it, choking himself up ‘till he can’t finish.
Katsuki pulls his gloves off and lays them over the faucet, reaching over and touching Izuku’s wrist with his right hand. Fury in his eyes. Without a voice, it’s these instinctual movements that have started winning out beyond himself.
He’s not sure what to make of them.
The touch causes Izuku to shiver, even though the hot water had warmed the prosthetic to equal his skin.
There are things Katsuki wants to say, things he doesn’t. He’d already messaged Shoto again while the noodles seared in the wok, asking about progress. Not much had been made. But Katsuki’s too stubborn to plan for any other possibility, only success, roaring or otherwise. Maybe that’s his whole fucking problem.
When he was texting Shoto, it felt like a bee’s stinger was in his throat, pumping venom with each letter he typed.
With Izuku it’s a constant, searching ache. And it isn’t going away.
Katsuki draws his hand back and watches Izuku smile weakly, breathing out. Katsuki is almost jealous of him, right at that moment. How he can say these things so freely, gawk at the world through his heart and make peace with the way it scars it. No protective edge. Not a thought over what it’s doing to him.
It’s infuriating how simple he makes it seem.
Izuku says, “Alright, then.”
The words float in the air like he’s ready for them to be swatted down. Izuku’s expecting Katsuki to send him home after that. It’s the perfect moment to do so, now that there’s some finality to the matter.
Katsuki goes for his phone to get it the fuck over with.
One, swift kick.
His fingers hover over the keys.
He’ll finally be left alone. Nothing but quiet. No one to make faces at, straining, trying to convey it all through expressions and some semblance of Izuku knowing what he wants.
You should go. I’m fine, I’ll be okay, I don’t need you anymore. I don’t need anything. Just fucking tired. Doesn’t hurt. Well, it hurts a little. Less with you. Fuck it, I’ll call y— I’ll text you in t— I’ll. Do something.
Izuku.
“Kacchan?”
He looks up, then back at the screen. He’d been holding his phone for two minutes and hadn’t typed a thing.
Izuku looks suddenly horrified, trying to mask it. He’s bad at pretending.
“It’s getting worse?”
Katsuki doesn’t think so. He types nope, showing him as proof while something flutters under his tongue.
“Then what?”
Katsuki shrugs.
“Should I call someone else?”
At that, Katsuki has to glare at him. Bastard. He hates it, he’s never had so much trouble telling Izuku to leave it alone and stop picking.
Someone else, he spits in his head. Even if he daydreamed of Shoto being with him when it happened, it isn’t Shoto he’d want here now. No one would be this keen to understand Katsuki, to ground him, Aizawa included. He’d rather sit quietly the whole night and let him ruminate. But Katsuki knows that staying silent carries its own pain.
Fuck it all.
Katsuki turns away from Izuku, shutting him out.
He retreats to the hallway, already undoing his prosthetic’s buckles through his shirt. One pair of support straps wraps around his chest wall, and the other threads above his left shoulder for stability and rotation. But wearing it too long, it starts to dig in.
He wants to be comfortable in his own goddamn home. It’s all coming to a head.
Once he undoes the straps, the whole arm falls downward, and he somewhat cradles it in his left. The relief is instant.
When he gets to his bedroom door, he looks over and catches Izuku holding onto the back of the couch, watching him intensely. Taking notes in his head.
Katsuki could’ve waited until he was in his room to strip his arm off. He didn’t. He didn’t want to.
Creep, Katsuki thinks, again. but his stomach is spinning. Like a waterspout it winds up into his throat, and while he steps into his bedroom and lays his prosthetic in its indented case, he’s still trying to choke it back down. The ache. The need to say something anchored to the very center of him. It feels so real he tries to speak aloud in his empty room, almost terrified when it doesn’t work because he was so sure, this time, it would.
When he exits his room, long-sleeved shirt hastily thrown on, Izuku is still in the open living space. Still here at all. It was a toss-up whether he’d be scared off by Katsuki’s indecision, something he’s never really been subject to. Izuku either does what he’s told, or doesn’t.
Katsuki isn’t sure how to feel about this outcome. It’s out of his hands, which is what he wanted.
Right?
When he swallows, there’s still a lump in his throat.
Katsuki goes and sits down on the couch next to Izuku, not making eye contact just yet. Not until he’s ready to field it. It’s usually the tipping point, seeing Izuku welling up with all that unfiltered emotion, knowing damn well its intended destination.
Izuku’s staring hard at him, though.
At where his prosthetic was five minutes ago.
Katsuki rips out his phone.
What? he asks, putting it in Izuku’s face to answer.
It takes Izuku a second to pull something together. “I’m—“ He looks down, fiddling with his fingers. Thirteen fucking years old again, can’t even look at him when it was all he’d been doing before. Katsuki feels like he’s taking charge of a neglected animal, seeing it pacing back and forth, wondering what it’d done wrong. What it can do to make it better.
Izuku raises his head, still messing with his fingers. “I know it’s not the right time, or circumstances,” he says, “but I’m happy I’m here. I’m happy I'm with you.”
Katsuki looks right at him, fierce. He’s never said anything like it, before. Maybe he only feels safe enough to do so because Katsuki can’t say anything back.
It’s a realization that makes the pain of staying silent multiply.
Katsuki melts back into the couch.
At some point a movie was put on, rolling to the end credits until auto-play picked another in the dead of night. Katsuki wakes up slowly in the TV glow.
His phone says 4:30 a.m., which makes sense. It would’ve been about time to wake up and get ready for the shift change. The one he’d been categorically banned from working.
He stretches his arm, knocking against a couch cushion. Except it’s hard like bone, and moves back.
When he raises himself up from his sprawled position across the couch, he sees Izuku. Still here, sleeping. Katsuki’s head ended up near Izuku’s outer left thigh, laying horizontal, while Izuku had passed out neatly-sat with his cheek smashed against the back cushion.
It was his knee that Katsuki pushed into. After stirring for a few seconds, Izuku returns to sleep.
Katsuki’s head lolls against the same cushion as Izuku, while the TV flickers between shades of light. It paints their skin muted colors.
Allowing himself this, and still half-asleep himself, Katsuki watches him for what feels like a long time. How Izuku’s chest rises and falls in slow motions. The way his nose twitches from his dreams.
The sleep-sweat is making the tips of his bangs darker. Below that, soft pink, are all the freckles the sun had deposited. More than Katsuki remembers being splattered across his cheeks eight months ago.
It’s only fucking fair, Katsuki thinks, after all the times Izuku had studied him. To give him a taste of his own medicine.
At least Katsuki’s not goading him, asking the kind of questions that social contract usually keeps inside people’s heads. Although something tells him Izuku wouldn’t hate it, if it came from Katsuki, like Katsuki does when it comes from him.
The longer he looks, the more that Izuku-specific ache starts to stir in his throat. Every time he swallows, it bumps the intensity, the extent of its reaches, until he feels it everywhere. That choking-down sensation.
He wants to fucking say something, he needs to shake Izuku awake and let him know something. Something, he doesn’t know what.
The quirk, the fucking quirk.
There’s an overwhelming urge to get up and leave before something spasms out of his control. The richness of his hurt isn’t going away. None of this is.
Katsuki pushes himself up from the couch and messily grabs the pack of cigarettes from the counter, putting his slippers on while he knocks open the front door and into the dark.
It’s a quiet neighborhood he lives in. At pre-dawn on a Sunday, everything is still. The birds haven’t even woken up yet, waiting for the first taste of sun.
Katsuki shuffles to the concrete stoop, going down two steps and sitting at the top of them. He rolls the pack around his left palm before going through with it. Just one. Izuku would be frowning at his decision, which is precisely why he does it.
But pulling smoke doesn’t make him feel any worse. Or better. Or get him to stop fucking thinking about Izuku.
Katsuki keeps the lit cigarette between his teeth and takes out his phone, almost going to Shoto again, before thinking better of it. He taps Denki’s name instead. The last messages are from Friday, trying to hook Katsuki to get him out for the night. Come on, it’s just drinks, fucker. Katsuki’s mouth twitches, but he commits.
Denki’s probably working the first shift. Katsuki usually runs into him at some point or another, making rounds, and they’d share a five-minute break on a choice rooftop together where Katsuki could still keep vision.
As he types, a pain rattles around his chest like loose change, but it goes unacknowledged. He’s had plenty of practice in doing so.
>hey
No less than a minute passes. It’d be more like an hour for Denki to answer, if there weren’t extenuating circumstances attached to Katsuki’s name.
>>look who finally checked in
>>we had to hear about everything from Shoto like a couple of trainees
>>it was embarrassing
Katsuki scoffs, already regretting his choice of conversation.
>pay more attention next time
>>to whatever you and izuku got going on? no thank you
>>like watching a telenovela
His forehead goes hot. This is the last thing Katsuki needs, to talk more about Izuku. He almost leaves Denki on read.
>don’t act like you didn’t invite us for that exact fuckin reason
>>maybe we just like you both
>>i promise no one’s trying to piss you off
Katsuki stops responding, whittling away the rest of his cigarette. The wind is laughing at him, pushing smoke back at his face. He’ll still smell like it by the time Izuku wakes up, make Katsuki answer for his crimes.
There’s a series of dings.
>>fine
>>bad plan
>>very bad
>>and about everything that happened, i’m sorry. what a nightmare
>>anyway, about to survey. Shoto paged for the west side
Katsuki perks up, jerking his head in that direction like he’d be able to see a thing from this distance.
>a lead?
>>think so. gotta go now
>>love ya
>loop me in
>>yessir
Katsuki pinches the cigarette out between his fingers, dropping it in the makeshift ashtray on the stoop. Even smoking one every few days, the top of the ceramic pot looks like a microcosm of a littered, city-side beach. His throat is starting to feel sore too, even more so when he quietly re-enters his apartment and is reminded of Izuku’s sleeping figure on the couch.
A muted cough ekes out of Katsuki. Izuku’s probably right about smoking during this, though he’d never admit to it.
Katsuki breathes out heavily. It’d make sense to turn off the TV and head to his bedroom, wait for Izuku to bother him first thing. Katsuki pushes off his slippers and heads that way, but stops in front of the couch where he blocks the light. A movie he doesn’t recognize is barely audible behind him. Izuku hasn’t moved an inch.
The remote is somewhere on the end table, he remembers vaguely. Katsuki doesn’t reach for it. Instead he’s sitting down on the couch, making sure it’s not hard enough to rebound.
He takes one last confirming look at Izuku, that his eyes are still closed, and repositions himself exactly how they were. Going so far as to inch closer until he feels the press of Izuku’s thigh against the top of his head. Only then does he turn and curl into himself.
After a minute, Izuku’s hand comes to rest face up near Katsuki. His fingers are half-bent, limp. He isn’t awake. The TV backlights old scars running the length of them, and Katsuki watches them go fuzzy in the glow.
Instinctively, Katsuki throws his hand below Izuku’s, far enough away to still be separate.
He digs all four fingernails into his palm, swallowing that ache.
The pain rocks him to sleep.
When he wakes up, he notices two things immediately. One is the smell of rice and miso, another is the sunlight blazing through the windows and across the floor.
He’d slept too long. Katsuki jolts up and reaches for his phone, cursing in his head when there’s not a single notification to show for it. Fucking Denki. Fucking Shoto.
There’s a third thing he notices, sitting up straight and alert. Which is Izuku in the kitchen, still here, cooking. And most glaringly, wearing one of Katsuki’s shirts.
He knows it is. Izuku hasn’t owned a single piece of black clothing in ten years.
It makes him feel strange, and full of grit.
Katsuki ducks away in his bedroom to re-strap his prosthetic while Izuku’s back is turned at the stove, not about to be bare around him every god-given second. Especially now.
When he returns, Izuku is plating breakfast for the two of them at the countertop, like nothing’s amiss.
Katsuki pulls the kitchen chair back across the wood, the sound scraping loudly through his ears. Izuku is busy concentrating. He says good morning, Kacchan, while he seems to be measuring their portions down to equal grains of rice, he’s so careful about it.
The shirt fits him loosely.
Izuku’s not going to acknowledge it. He’s like that, polite about some things and territorial about others, like a dog with its favorite person. Katsuki would rather not write a paragraph to Izuku about how insane it is, finding Katsuki’s shirt hanging to dry on a line out the window and pulling it in. It’d hurt to use so many words. It hurts now.
Sometimes it’s easier to just let Izuku ride.
The food he’d made looks edible enough. Steamed rice with an egg cracked over it, a small bowl of miso soup on the side. Hell, Izuku had even dipped into the onion greens sprouting in Katsuki’s window for garnish.
He’s not about to thank him while looking at the shirt.
Katsuki adds soy sauce and starts beating around his bowl to incorporate the egg, reminiscent of how violently he brushes his teeth.
When Izuku sits down he looks pleased with himself, but doesn’t start his usual thousand question backlog. Katsuki eats half his meal, waiting for a bomb to drop. Maybe breakfast was supposed to serve as an apology. Maybe he’ll mention the shirt after all.
Maybe Izuku wants nothing more than to encroach into Katsuki’s life, inch by inch, wondering when Katsuki will finally stop him. Why in the world he hadn’t already.
Katsuki swallows the last bit of rice. He starts swimming his spoon around in the miso, pulling it up full and letting the liquid drip back down. Something about the noise makes him squirm. He’s on his phone before he knows it.
>???
It’s enough to get the point across. Izuku smiles downward, and Katsuki knows he’s about to say whatever bullshit he’d cooked up with breakfast.
“I thought there might be a refractory period, and the more you try to talk, the longer it takes to come back.”
Katsuki shakes his head immediately, knowing it’s wrong. Not knowing how he knows. Just that it makes him feel unwell, to think about not having any sort of back-and-forth with Izuku. He’d never looked at him and had nothing to say. Nothing but expletives, maybe.
Izuku sighs, getting the wrong idea from his rejection. “You’re right, it could be the other way around. Does it still hurt?”
>never said it hurts
Izuku looks at him.
>I can handle it.
“Bad?”
Katsuki goes back and forth with himself, wondering if he should say it. What good it would do.
>hurts when I don’t talk to you
“To me?”
>to anyone
“Keep talking then. As long as you can. See what happens.”
He looks serious, all of a sudden. Katsuki wouldn’t normally follow orders, especially coming from Izuku’s thought-threads, but nothing’s felt normal for days, now.
>whatever
Then, after a couple more spoonfuls of soup:
>this is alright
“Really?”
Katsuki nods before remembering the plan.
>good enough
>furikake and an extra egg
“Next time.”
>you didn’t tell denki or sero
Izuku looks blindsided for a second. “No, I guess not. I meant to, but they weren’t really my priority.”
>they have a lead on him
“Shoto let me know.”
Katsuki digs his nails into his palm.
>you’re wearing my shirt
“Oh. Yeah.”
It’s starting to hurt more now. Thinking of what to say is like being seized by a muscle cramp, trying to work through it. Even the words themselves feel involuntary. All his body knows is what soothes, and what doesn’t.
>Izuku
“Kacchan?”
I’m so tired. Why does it hurt differently with you?
Izuku reaches his hand across the table, asking for cooperation. For anything. Even to be slapped away, which Katsuki would’ve considered the first course of action, before.
But it gives him goosebumps, looking at Izuku’s outstretched palm. The ache is worse than last night. Even resting his a few inches away, it still might be too far to calm it.
Katsuki leans forward in his chair and takes Izuku’s wrist with his right hand, pushing his thumb in the center of his palm with the other.
He has no idea what expression Izuku is making when he does so. He refuses to look, to be plagued by that image. Again Izuku’s name comes through involuntarily, stuck in his throat, and he traces kanji to let it out the only way he can think to.
Izuku’s voice sounds strange. “I can get a notepad.”
Katsuki shakes his head. It hurts less, like this. The direct contact. Tracing words into Izuku’s hand feels coarse, purposeful, how ten thousand years ago people would’ve made cave scrawl, pushing stone against stone before language even existed. Katsuki uses the pad of his finger to do something similar. His words have never been so soft to the touch.
Katsuki could dig his nails into Izuku’s palm until that same rock-white color raises up on his skin, but he reserves that infliction for himself. It’s enough to do it this way, as the ache eats him slowly.
Izuku’s holding his breath throughout.
Katsuki swallows, and then tries something else.
Shifting, he swaps his left arm out for his prosthetic. Katsuki was right-handed, before, and the fine strokes come back shaky but quick. It’s something you don’t forget, like riding a bike, but more integral than that. How to use your limb when it was still attached to you.
Izuku, he writes his name, metal to skin. Then draws the sun, a circle and all its lines.
“Kacchan?” Izuku is confused, flushed on his shoulders, but it’s not just that. It goes deeper. Further than Katsuki ever would’ve thought to dig. He only sees it because he isn’t busy snapping at Izuku, lamenting the way he works. Instead he’s drawing him in and rolling with the implications that follow.
Izuku looks at his prosthetic like there’s a need to become familiar with all parts of him.
It makes sense.
You want to examine it. Same way you examine me.
The way Izuku has been watching him with his prosthetic, noting exactly how Katsuki uses it and the times that he doesn’t. Before that, Izuku wanting to inspect his mouth. To be the one inside it. It’s all the same.
Katsuki feels boneless, once again ripped back to that day when they were younger. The scrape on Katsuki’s knee and Izuku stamping his finger in it, in the blood. The look in his fucking eyes. He’s always been a tactile learner. He needs to dissect apart his favorite things, and Katsuki is one of them.
Izuku knows the limits, though. He needs even a half-valid reason to convince himself to push them.
He needs Katsuki to do it first.
Katsuki had stopped moving his finger after all the sun’s lines were in place. He rubs the sensation away from Izuku’s skin with his knuckle, erasing it. Katsuki holds his gaze.
Then he turns his right hand over, and slides the paneled metal down Izuku’s palm, even when the edges catch against his calluses. It’s natural as anything, to touch him like that.
Izuku moans. Moans. Like something came over him that he couldn’t control, something primal, even older than cave scrawl.
It only takes a millisecond for Izuku to look horrified about the reaction. “I’m sorry,” he says, trying to pull his hand away. Katsuki pinches it to the table with his index finger, holding it there like a tack. It’s easier looking at him now than any other time in the past three days.
Katsuki asks him with his eyes, Why?
A phone call suddenly interrupts them, making them both flinch. Katsuki would’ve let it ring indefinitely if it weren’t for what Denki said earlier. He keeps flat pressure on Izuku’s hand, reaching for his phone. The expression on Izuku’s face is swirling, searching him back.
It does turn out to be a call from Denki. Another call cascades in from Aizawa after the fifth ring, and Katsuki doesn’t hesitate picking between them. He puts the phone to his ear, holding eye contact with Izuku while he listens.
“Katsuki,” he hears. He appreciates Aizawa calling him directly, despite not being able to say a thing back.
He listens intently. The one-sided conversation only lasts about a minute, although Katsuki at least finds himself able to hum in response.
Making the noise should be stinging him, but it’s hard to feel much of anything. He’s almost numb, Aizawa speaking in his ear while he’s watching Izuku gather himself, still trying to look interested in the phone call and not the metal hand weighing his to the table. For once in his life, Izuku’s the one being made to squirm.
Katsuki lets up just enough for Izuku to flex his fingers.
Almost immediately, they thread through his and squeeze.
It’s the worst Katsuki ever felt the ache.
Aizawa finishes his spiel. He’s telling him now, “If you want to do this, stay quiet for a moment. I need you to know it's either going to be a decent idea, or a terrible one. But it’s your choice.”
Katsuki doesn’t know how much longer he can take it. Any of it. He squeezes Izuku’s hand back, hard, until common sense tells him he’d reached an upper limit. Izuku wouldn’t ask him to stop otherwise. He’d let Katsuki crush his very bones.
It’s silent on the line.
“Okay, Katsuki.”
Aizawa and Katsuki stand together, peering in through the one-way glass spanning the shared wall. On one side are the two of them, and a joint police-hero agent at the door. On the other side is the source of all Katsuki’s woes.
He’s altogether normal looking, brown hair and dark eyes, tired but well-kept like a salaryman. The only name he’d given is fake, but they’re rolling with it in hopes he slips up eventually. Masaki. No surname.
Masaki had refused to say much of anything after two hours of interrogation, either asking for a smoke or asking if they’re going to bring the one he’d muted.
His fingerprints didn’t match any criminal record. It’s either not the sort of thing he does often, or it went unreported when he did. Maybe for the most obvious reason.
Aizawa had called Katsuki when the options started looking grim. His quirk is unregistered, an unknown they’re forced to account for now. They have his hands cuffed behind him, assuming that’s how he does it, by touch, and he’s not about to pull a wild card.
Shoto had dropped him off personally, and quickly had to leave for an emergency halfway across town. Although he’d offered to come too, Izuku couldn’t take any more urgent time off work and Katsuki wouldn’t want him here, anyway. Dealing with both Masaki and Izuku at once would’ve needed surgical concentration. To be so fucking pissed at one, and still reeling from the other.
“We’ll wait longer, first. The standard is to leave them alone for two hours with their thoughts. It’ll be his idea to tell you by the time you walk in.”
Katsuki looks from Aizawa to Masaki in the sterile grey room. Inside, the fucker’s sitting in an uncomfortable, metal-bodied chair. His head is tilted all the way to the back of his neck, while he’s whistling away at the ceiling. Another two hours might break him somewhat, but Katsuki himself will break long before then. He’s clenching his teeth, more than ready to finish it.
He shakes his head in the negative. Aizawa shrugs. “Mm, can’t say I blame you. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Aizawa catches Katsuki’s eyes. “Don’t take that too literally. I convinced them you wouldn’t make a bigger problem, my problem child.”
If he could speak, he’d make a point of fighting that moniker.
Katsuki grunts instead, steeling himself to go in and fix the rest without the help of anyone.
Aizawa offers a small whiteboard and dry erase marker for him to use. It’d feel demeaning from a stranger, from someone lesser than him. Aizawa waits for Katsuki to concede, leaning on his cane, a thing that’d grown on him over the years to the point of overemphasizing it. His foot and Katsuki’s arm both came from Mei. The cane was thrifted.
Katsuki takes the implements from Aizawa and heads in, not a clue what he’s going to say to Masaki. Bargaining isn’t exactly his strong suit, and with violence off the table, his best weapon is nullified.
Masaki only straightens his neck when Katsuki has been fuming for a minute on the other side of the table, standing there rigid. He won’t sit down for this.
He writes his first words to him since that night.
>fucking bastard
Masaki reads it and goes quiet himself. Looking so smug about it. Twenty questions and expletives follow suit from Katsuki, with no answers to show for it.
It’s a wholly unproductive conversation.
Until, all at once, it isn’t.
After what feels like half an hour of negative progress, Katsuki looks back at the one-way wall. He can feel Aizawa there, patiently impatient, waiting for Katsuki to figure out how to break through. He won’t intrude unless absolutely necessary. Even then, maybe not, letting Katsuki bear the lesser consequences.
Suddenly Masaki laughs, cackling at something Katsuki isn’t privy to. It’s a messy sound, delighting in all he’d wrought. Katsuki drives his fingernails into the plasterboard table so he doesn’t blow up the whole goddamn room.
Masaki clears his throat, finally ready to lay out his big, fucking secret for him.
“That’s enough fun, whaddya say, kid?”
Katsuki doesn’t even blink.
“You’ll be able to talk again. Hell, you could do it now, nothin’s wrong with ya. Just gotta choose your words right, that’s all, that’s the thing about it. Whatever needs to come out the most.”
What the fuck does that mean? A truth-saying quirk? One that makes you spill your deepest, darkest thoughts? Why’s it so fucking specific?
Katsuki’s initial read of the explanation is that it’s a shitty, no-good quirk, that’s goddamn antithetical to how Katsuki deals with his demons.
Masaki smirks. “You looked real pent-up when you fuckin’ snapped at me. I’ve never seen anyone who needed it so bad. Call it my Reality Check.”
Katsuki is about two seconds from actively bloodying him. If Aizawa wasn’t watching, if he hadn’t made hopeful promises about Katsuki’s behavior, he might’ve already turned him into smithereens.
Katsuki scribbles something on the whiteboard. His handwriting is forged from angry, elongated strokes that are barely legible on a good day. Nothing like what he put to Izuku’s palm.
>like a magic word?
>tell me what the fuck it is then
“It’s not that simple, kid. I don’t even know.”
>how
“I’m not a fuckin’ mind reader. Hey, don’t look at me like that. If I’m not talkin’ even after your little police dogs offered their deal, then I don’t have the fix. Just take a long, hard look in the mirror or somethin’. You’ll find your eureka.”
He pauses.
There’s something else he isn’t saying.
Katsuki pounds the table to wring it out of him, cracking the corner in his pursuit. It falls to the floor in a handful of dusty pieces. Aizawa will read an apology from Katsuki later for it, one he won’t believe for a second.
Masaki doesn’t look scared of him. “Heh,” he chuckles, “Or you could always try to outlast it.”
Katsuki flinches. The idea of going through this any longer than he has to makes his insides go rancid.
He’s adaptable enough, there’s proof of that from his right shoulder down. But at a certain point it’s not just him. It’s Izuku being part of the loss. Part of Katsuki working through it. How it already feels like something had changed between the two of them, and he’s not sure it’ll come back the same way once he can speak.
Katsuki’s at his whiteboard. It says something of his training up to this point, that he’s still dealing with words and not blows.
>how long?
Masaki smiles at him.
“However long you’ve been holding it in.”
Katsuki takes in the sights and sounds around him, flushing out everything else.
It’s around 8 a.m., the nighttime coolness only just now starting to be displaced in the woods, under the trees where it hangs the longest. There are bird songs and branches playing against each other in the wind. It had rained just yesterday, evidenced by humidity still dampening the air and mushrooms bursting alongside the trail. The only peace Katsuki can find anymore is here.
He’s not breathing that hard, despite not hiking for the better part of a month. His boots crunch the rocks and twigs underfoot.
“Do you always go this fast?”
Katsuki turns around and carries on walking backward up the hillside, eyeing Izuku and how out of place he looks at this moment. All that strength he has doesn’t preclude stamina, but he’s not used to it like Katsuki is. It’s not like Katsuki ever pulled him along before, giving him a reason to work toward it in order to keep at his heels.
He’s better suited to somewhere quiet and intense, like a classroom, or a library. Like Katsuki’s apartment in the night.
Katsuki’s been trying to keep communication to a minimum. At this point his options for getting his voice back have all but dwindled to either time, or brute force. It’d be an obvious choice to make, if brute force didn’t also mean he’d need to go on a goddamn soul-search for the answer. It’s been making patience look more and more like a virtue, for once. He’s taking it by the day.
Today was supposed to be patience.
Katsuki begrudgingly types a message on his phone, knowing it’d hurt if he didn’t. That it’s been increasingly painful when Izuku is the one looking at him for more.
>the point’s usually to blow off steam
>before i do something stupid
He looks at Izuku like he's something stupid.
Further up the hill, it starts to plateau. The trail splits off into different directions, all of which Katsuki has walked the length of, knowing which one serves what purpose. One short and steep, one long and winding, another that ends at a small pond under an even smaller, dribbling waterfall. Katsuki takes the overlook trail, needing nothing but perspective.
It’s about 500 meters until a scenic edge starts to take shape. Katsuki doesn’t look back at Izuku, just spots the large ginkgo tree he uses as a landmark and drops his heavy backpack down underneath. Another hundred meters past it and they could spot the city from the hilltop.
Katsuki sits down at the base of the tree, finding a place where the roots aren’t protruding just under the soil.
“Do you wanna be alone?”
Katsuki looks up at Izuku, who’s standing ten feet away clutching his backpack straps.
Why the hell would I let you come if I did?
Katsuki lets him figure it out, reaching in his backpack for his wired earbuds and Walkman. Usually, he’ll let a whole album play out before moving on from the spot, and even then he might start again from zero. Alternatively, there’s chucking rocks and large sticks down the hill and listening to them clatter. It depends what he needs, how destructive he’s feeling.
He doesn’t particularly enjoy the thought of Izuku watching him throw things around.
Izuku comes over to the tree when it’s clear Katsuki isn’t moving on. He drops his bag next to Katsuki’s but stays standing, thinking too much about their intrapersonal politics. About whether to sit directly next to him or give Katsuki the space he thinks he needs.
This sort of overthought only seems to matter to Izuku sometimes, magically. He’d like to know where it was when Izuku took his shirt, or pulled open his mouth to look inside.
Then again, maybe he wouldn’t.
Tch.
Pinching the left earbud, Katsuki holds it up to Izuku while finding his CD of choice. Izuku knows what he’s signing up for if he takes it. Whatever Katsuki puts on won’t cater to his tastes, more rooted in 80’s city pop than anything Katsuki wants to hear.
Izuku slides down next to him, nestling alongside a large, woody root. The CD snaps into place and Katsuki pushes a few buttons, turning it loud enough that Izuku couldn’t speak over it if he wanted to. He seems content, though. Maybe he’s starting to learn the merit of silence as much as Katsuki is.
Their shoulders are touching, Izuku’s right and Katsuki’s left. It isn’t unwelcome, the contact. He’s warm from all the exertion.
The album is under an hour long, and Katsuki feels every minute of it, next to Izuku. Every transition from the end of one song to the beginning of the next.
He doesn't know what to think of them; Izuku and him. Of what’s happened since the night he lost his voice, churning them into something different than any neat, familiar label they’ve taken before when things weren’t being tossed into oblivion and yanked back.
Katsuki doesn’t even remember what it’s like to be apart from him, like those eight months have faded from his consciousness, bleached to nothing in the sun. It feels easy, letting Izuku in. He’s the same. But different.
Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it never did.
Katsuki’s phone lights up with a call from Aizawa, and he doesn’t even turn the music down to keep him at his other ear.
“I’ll talk. Just write.”
Katsuki hums, smooth as gravel.
“They didn’t get anything more out of Masaki. I know you’re wondering. He’s sticking to what he told you, and is giving every indication that he’s telling the truth.” He sighs, and Katsuki can imagine him pulling down at his eye bags with the pads of his fingers. “It’s like he says, I guess. Reality Check.”
>Fuck that
“Indeed,” Aizawa clears his throat, serious with his next words. “Do you feel like you can do it, Katsuki?”
It’s an earnest question. One Katsuki has to think about.
Over the past week he’s made attempts to figure it out, exhaustively so. Even with Izuku there, somehow, never mind the constant chest-ache dealing with him, sleeping on his goddamn couch.
But alone, too. Katsuki’s been stealing time to meditate on it. What he needs to say the most.
What he’s been clutching onto and needs to let out.
Apologies had come to mind first, the most obviously lacking piece of Katsuki’s speech patterns. None of them went further than the bare idea of saying sorry.
Maybe the quirk saw the inauthenticity in it, he thought. So he tried to be sorrier—real fuckin’ sorry about everything under the sun—conjuring up names to go along with it. The same names he’d lopped to the next idea when it didn’t work.
Then came appreciation. Surely that was it, because he meant them well enough this time. As much sincerity as Katsuki could muster. Thank you and you’re welcome and so on, and on. The names grew bigger here, started to claw at his throat to come out. Aizawa. Shoto. Denki. Uraraka.
Izuku.
Like clockwork, Izuku looks up from fumbling around in his overstuffed hiking bag. He removes his earbud—the album finished for who knows how long—and asks if Katsuki brought instant coffee. Katsuki shakes his head yes and waves him away.
“You’re with Midoriya?” Aizawa asks. He doesn’t continue to pry about the quirk, satisfied more by making Katsuki think about it, than getting his answer.
>Yeah, hiking
Aizawa is quiet.
>What?
“Mm. Nothing. I just never pictured you bringing company when you hike.”
>Stowaway
“In that case, for my sake, don’t kill him.”
Katsuki looks over at Izuku, who’d gotten up and moved somewhere less flammable. He’s beginning to lay rocks in a circle on the ground, making a fire pit, all for the two of them to sip shitty coffee together in the woods.
After tossing a bundle of twigs down, Izuku reads the back of the tin like a newspaper, no-doubt calculating the perfect ratio of instant powder. How much kindling would burn just right for the temperature of the water.
This whole time, Aizawa had let their conversation go quiet. Katsuki feels his neck warm, looking away from Izuku to text back.
>No witnesses out here
Aizawa groans. “I’ve failed as your instructor. We should’ve did more team building.”
>Anything else?
“Maybe trust falls…”
Katsuki makes an impatient noise, like a bull chuffing.
>Anything else for me?
“I suppose I’ll let you go,” he relents. “You have other things that need your attention.”
Before he can type any sort of response, the line disconnects.
“Kacchan? Could I have a spark?”
Katsuki jerks his head over, finding Izuku had set up everything and then some. A meager fire pit, two thermoses placed on a flat rock, and a small metal container for heating water balanced near where the lowest flames would be.
Ridiculous, Katsuki thinks. But he wraps his Walkman up tightly with the cord, tucking it away in his pack. When he makes his way over, his hand is in a fist, drawing out the nitroglycerin. He lowers it in place while Izuku watches.
All at once his fingers snap open, and a reaction comes loose from his palm, igniting the horizontal pile of sticks. Izuku jumps to poke at the fire with an even bigger stick, giving it shape. It crackles and shifts intensity.
When Izuku glances over, Katsuki must be wearing some sort of expression on his face, because Izuku scrunches up his nose, all worried. He keeps it inside until their coffee has been scooped and stirred into the hot water.
“Are you angry at me?” Izuku wonders.
Katsuki takes a sip from his thermos, savoring the metal acidity. He’d usually have a cigarette up here, under the ginkgo, but this works well enough for his purposes.
>That what I look like to you?
“Not really,” Izuku says, “I guess not.”
Katsuki feels the hurt start to creep up. It’s been getting sharper, harder to ignore with Izuku. Always with Izuku. When he digs his thumbnail into his palm, he can’t even distinguish between the quirk-hurt and the kind he’s doing to himself.
Izuku blows steam away from his cup and takes a sip, waiting to see if Katsuki says more.
“I guess I’m still waiting for things to go back to the way they were before. Well, not before before, but right before.”
Katsuki doesn’t know what to say to that.
He’d blown up just about every relationship he’d had, right after losing his arm, and Izuku was just the catalyst. There to take the totality of Katsuki’s rage, almost like he was built to weather it so that everyone else stood a chance. He’d done it enough times that—maybe—Katsuki thought he wanted it that way.
It’s not what Katsuki wants now. He thinks of Izuku and anger isn’t what comes to mind first, it’s something unnerving. Something that manages to make Izuku feel foreign to him. It’s the thought of Izuku’s hands. It’s the pillow now semi-permanently kept on Katsuki’s couch, vegetables chopped unevenly by the wrong kind of knife, sipping coffee on a trail he’d never shown anyone.
“Kacchan,” Izuku says. “I see why you come here, now. This is nice.”
A gust of wind blows and the fire takes it up, spitting back embers at him. Katsuki catches them in his open palm when they fall.
Katsuki is laying flat on his couch when the text tone sounds from his phone. It’s a relief, really, like finally pulling out a splinter that’d only wormed its way deeper when he first tried.
Izuku had been uncharacteristically quiet for a few days. It’s what Katsuki wanted, the peace and quiet. But they’d built up a repertoire, and Katsuki had come to expect him to maintain such a thing, just like before. Not right before—as Izuku’d put it—but before before.
It isn’t him, though.
>>Do you need anything?
Katsuki almost throws his phone to the side, so he can go back to staring at his ceiling, dead-eyed. Which would still be vastly preferable to meeting Shoto’s concerns.
>don’t you start checking on me
>piss me off
>>Then no?
Katsuki ignores him. Judging by the pain that comes from texting him, from not texting him, he isn’t the one Katsuki owes his words to.
>>Okay
>>Izuku wanted me to ask
>why?
>>He’s sick
Katsuki is sitting up, now.
>how sick?
>>He said a small fever
Katsuki lays his phone face-down on his thigh, rapping his knuckles against his open right palm. The sound is hollow, like tapping a steel pipe. He goes until the repetitive pressure turns them red.
It takes about all of five minutes to decide.
And he’s real fuckin’ mad about it on the way there. Izuku putting him in this position. For being made to scroll back through their messages from nine months ago to find his address, and to change out of his shirt that still smells like the cigarette he had after dinner.
It’s a debt collection. He tells himself this. For everything Izuku’s done for him, he owes him exactly as much back—nothing more, nothing less.
Maybe he’ll stop feeling so strange once they’re on a level playing field.
He’s only been to his apartment a few times. Not for lack of trying on Izuku’s part. They both had work schedules that took priority over everything else, and when he did come, it was always for an occasion, or knocking on the door as the last one to show.
First one to leave, too. He has a reputation to uphold.
The door’s unlocked tonight.
Katsuki makes a face at the state of his apartment, even visible from here as he shuts and locks the door behind him. Dishes in the sink, lights left on, clutter on tabletops and spilling into everything else. His red shoes are on the hardwood floor above the small genkan, tipped on their side with scuffs of dirt on them from their hike.
Katsuki unzips his boots and takes them off, plucking Izuku’s sneakers afterward to put them where they belong.
It’s incredible, really, the kind of chaos he can live in when everything else he does is so methodical. Down to the last detail only seems to apply to things like quirk theory, and Kacchan.
Katsuki loiters in the small kitchenette next, rinsing a glass in the sink when he finds nothing clean in the pantry. Lukewarm tap water foams to the top, going clear when he turns the faucet off. He throws one last look of displeasure at the state of things before moving on to find Izuku. Like the mess would shrivel back.
Not knocking on the doors he tries to open seems wrong, at first, but knocking feels just as unnecessary. A formality he’s resistant to adopt. Katsuki isn’t about to be the stray dog that wandered in, the way Izuku was for him. He knows what he’s here for. It’s Izuku who seems to go all wishy-washy.
He peeks into the third room after trying what was a closet, and then the bathroom, giving Izuku plenty of noise to figure out that someone was in here with him. The last thing he needs is to catch Izuku off guard and feel the black whips coil around him.
It doesn’t end up mattering, in the end. Izuku is dead asleep, curled into himself on top of his bedsheets. The sight of him is like a shot of adrenaline in his stomach. Like he’s invading. Katsuki almost leaves, right then, wondering what he’s even doing here.
But Izuku breathes deeply and a moan feathers out, weak and ill, and Katsuki pushes forward.
He reaches out and places a hand on Izuku’s shoulder, shaking him awake. It’s rougher than he means it to be because of his nerves. Because he can’t say his fucking name.
Izuku’s eyes flutter open, and he lazily blinks a few times before turning to look up.
“Kacchan?”
Katsuki feels warm by proximity. The lack of words is nearly killing him, at this point. It’s been escalating all on its own.
He pushes the pain aside to do what he came here to do. The balancing act.
Katsuki picks up the thermometer on the bedside table and unceremoniously sticks it in Izuku’s mouth, staring him down while it beeps in monotones. A flush rises on Izuku’s high cheeks. The fever, that’s what does it. Reads 38.9, when it sings and Katsuki plucks it back out.
“Bad?” Izuku defects to him for the answer.
He'd looked at the thermometer a little too long.
Katsuki makes a face and offers the glass of water in response. Izuku stares at it, blinking, like he can’t quite get himself to work. Eventually he sits up like he wants to, but shakes his head regardless of what his body does. His temples and neck are baked in sweat.
Katsuki furrows his brows at him. Before he knows what he’s doing, he brings the water to Izuku’s mouth himself, tipping the glass slowly against his lips.
Izuku makes a noise that Katsuki curls from. But he takes these little kitten sips, enough to please Katsuki, convinced for now that he isn’t about to dehydrate to nothing in his own bed.
Take care of yourself better. It’s embarrassing.
Katsuki produces two acetaminophen tablets that he’d taken from the cabinet behind Izuku’s bathroom mirror, while he was looking for him. Izuku reaches for the water again with Katsuki’s hand still on it. He swallows both capsules at the same time, mumbling a small thanks. His eyes are opened bigger, just as weary.
Katsuki pulls out his phone.
>front door was unlocked
>there a reason?
Izuku weakly smiles. “Guess I forgot.”
>you went somewhere today?
“Work,” he says, shameless.
Katsuki makes a noise of displeasure.
He thinks for a moment, about how much time Izuku had taken off since he lost his voice. How his schedule waxed and waned according to how Katsuki responded, until it was as full of him as Izuku could get.
He worked himself sick over Katsuki. Which only puts him more in debt to him, to the point that months from now Izuku will still be coming by to collect. Maybe that’s by design. Maybe that’s how they always kept each other moving, and Katsuki had forgotten his end of the deal.
Katsuki sits down on the edge of the bed. Before Izuku can say anything, Katsuki places his right hand on his forehead, pushing to get under his bangs. It’s another instinctual movement brought on by the lack of words, the frustration of it, until the decision is made for him to reach out.
Izuku looks flushed and out of it, leaning forward into the touch. It’s a hard reversal of what’s normal to them. “That feels nice,” he hums. “It’s cold.”
Katsuki is okay letting him have this. Izuku’s too sick to do what he normally would—to try to pick everything raw. To categorize Katsuki into neat little boxes of learned and unlearned, piecemeal. To press his finger into whatever he’d opened up.
“Wanna hear your voice,” Izuku says unprompted, closing his eyes and holding the sleek, metal indents of his prosthetic.
Katsuki looks around the room, when he can’t look at Izuku. It’s easier to make sense of All Might memorabilia and all the mindless clutter. The static of it. On his dresser are pictures of him with Uraraka and Iida, and others with Shoto, and Shinsou. Pictures of the two of them.
Before before.
When Katsuki manages to look back, he wishes he hadn’t. He wishes he never came. Izuku presses his mouth to Katsuki’s forearm, eyes still closed, like he’s already dreaming through the fever. “Mmh, Kacchan…” he trails off, finishing whatever would’ve come after in his head.
Good, Katsuki thinks. Fucking stay there.
His thoughts goes fuzzy no matter where he looks now.
It’s getting to him, again. The foreign feeling.
It feels like shit that I can’t talk to you. Tell you how fucking stubborn you are. How much I hate that about you.
I wanna tell you.
Izuku clutches the prosthetic’s thumb in a weak grip. It breaks when Katsuki moves back.
I’ll fix it.
He fixes the state of Izuku’s apartment, too, while he’s at it.
The less debt he has to carry, the better.
>don’t wanna talk.
Izuku nods. He’s been good, about that. Not pushing it. Even when Katsuki is now under explicit orders to do so, officially from his doctor and unofficially from Aizawa.
He’s listening to the orders of one of them. Mostly.
Maybe Aizawa is right to push it. It’s getting worse. Katsuki feels little else today but the neglect in his throat, the pain, the waning length of messages he can type before it starts to feel impossible. All his free time is spent looking inward, performing some pseudo-bastardized version of mindful meditation until he has enough words to try out.
They never end up landing.
Izuku’s name comes up the most.
That’s the kicker, of all this. Without any sort of conversation or prelude about it, Izuku has been coming to Katsuki’s apartment on a whim. He shows up at his door like a fever to burn, hotter each time so that he can stay longer. Hasn’t even mentioned Katsuki’s visit—if he can even fucking remember it.
When Katsuki goes to turn him away, he realizes it’d mean another night of driving himself crazy. Alone with the same thoughts that’d all add up to Izuku, anyway.
Katsuki puts him to work most evenings if he’s gonna be here regardless. Graduating him from mixing instant dinner boxes on the stove to following a meager recipe. Katsuki grits his teeth and types it out for him instead of finding it online. He tells himself it’s making progress with the quirk’s effect, Izuku being the source of the most distinct pain from it.
Katsuki sits on the kitchen counter as Izuku sautés nearly-even cuts of mushrooms, carrots and cabbage in one pan, and day-old rice in another. True to Katsuki’s request, Izuku hadn’t said much of anything that required an answer.
He almost wants him to. Like everything else, not talking to Izuku is a hurt that keeps growing, and every time he thinks it’d reached an apex it swallows another peak.
Katsuki watches him until something concrete manifests to say it out loud. He’s been trying it this way too, with Izuku in the room to direct words at like a dartboard. At least like this sincerity won’t be the limiting factor.
He starts at the same baseline he did for everyone else. It’s probably his twentieth time in doing so.
Sorry.
Thank you.
You’re welcome.
Katsuki almost recoils from trying to say it, how little there is to them. It’s not right. It’s like he’s going through the motions.
Izuku isn’t any of the other names he’s pushed around. From the beginning, it’s been palpably different trying to speak to him. Like he’s the source.
Katsuki is acutely aware of him, right now, listening to the vegetables hiss and whine in the oil as Izuku stirs. He can feel the shifting balances, the debt.
He digs his nails into his palm. Mixing Izuku with something painful isn’t a new experience to him, but it’s never felt defined in this way, laid out so bluntly. The more something aches, the harder he tries to say it.
There’s a ferocity to how Katsuki tries this time, pushing himself. The hurt starts coming through him in waves.
Izuku
Izuku
I’m not angry
Wasn’t ever really angry, I guess
Not in a way that mattered
But it
I
I can’t just,
You could’ve tried harder when
Bastard
I could’ve
Eight months
Hurts
Hurts to
Izuku
Couldn’t hate you if I tried
I wish there was an easier way to tell you that.
Katsuki waits for it to happen again, the foreign-feeling something from their hike. The answer is there, all he needs to do is unwind it.
It’s just as unnerving, when it finally comes. Like being spit out into dark water, treading where he could always stand before.
The air in the room hangs like stars. Katsuki breathes, transfixed by the way Izuku works his palm against the pan handle, unable to look away from the movement. He needs these details, their importance now more than ever. He can’t even think until he’s followed the scar on Izuku’s shoulder, how it feeds down to his hand and cracks apart like roots on top.
Katsuki whirls at whatever’s pushing against his chest walls, watching Izuku cook dinner. It would be a scene of utter mundanity if it were anyone else. Anyone but him. Katsuki can’t look away, it’s like the last two weeks are squeezing him in place. Every instance of Izuku pawing at his limits, walking them back.
His eyes drag over the back of Izuku’s head, following the fine, green hairs that curl at his nape, getting stuck on them in particular. He remembers how in class, he always made it a point to sit in front of Izuku, closer to the front where he didn’t have to see him. Has Izuku always looked like this from behind?
Has anything ever been so interesting?
When Izuku flits his head back, he sees Katsuki perched there on the counter, wearing whatever expression had seized him in the end.
“It’s ready, Kacchan,” Izuku says. But it’s still there, that same unknowable something behind his voice, driving everything forth. There’s a dull click as he turns the burner off. Izuku’s standing there gripping their food with one hand, smiling at him fiercely enough that his freckles sear good and pink on his cheeks, and it’s so fucked up, that Katsuki can’t even tell him the world’s biggest open secret when he finally sees it reflected in Izuku’s eyes.
Katsuki tries to, fighting his throat. He has the words. Knows what they need to be. He can fucking taste them, how long they’ve been there on his tongue. Burrowed like cicadas for seventeen years to emerge now in a frenzy of life. Something woven so slowly and completely into the fabric of him, Katsuki doesn’t know when it’d turned him synthetic.
“Kacchan?” Izuku wonders, staring at his open mouth and the silence that punctuates it.
No words are able to come, in the end.
Katsuki is almost convinced they never will again.
He shakes his head and grabs the food from Izuku’s hand to plate it.
Izuku stays, after.
He usually does, now that he’d moved most of his shifts to begin at noon, and spending the night makes more sense than not.
It feels particularly awful this time. Katsuki had otherwise gotten used to the mounting pain, turning it into mantras. That Izuku doesn’t need to make it easy on him. How of course he can fucking take it.
If pain brings clarity, Katsuki should’ve found the answer by now along with a hundred others to pocket.
It’s been hours. He’s laying in bed, turning it over in his mind, those buried words for Izuku. The pain grounds him in this. He hasn’t even taken off his prosthetic, too overwrought.
It’s goddamn agony, being so close to the answer and knowing it, him and Izuku circling around and around each other until he finally gives in to the nature of them.
Katsuki needs a smoke.
For some reason, passing Izuku in order to grab his cigarettes from the counter doesn’t occur to him until he’s already in the hallway. And by then, he’s too stubborn to forfeit his right.
His eyes have long-adjusted to the dark, able to make out shapes from whatever dim moonlight is coming through the windows. It’s closer to sunrise than sunset. Izuku is flat on his back on the couch, one arm hanging off and the other tightly curled to his chest.
Katsuki pauses, noticing the pack on the coffee table instead of the counter by the door. The Déjà vu is pricking at his neck. Izuku breathes softly and Katsuki draws near, trying not to wake either him or whatever’s gone back to being dormant in his chest.
The warmth from Izuku’s body currents the air. Katsuki doesn’t remember if he’s ever realized it before now how hot Izuku runs, even without a fever. If he’d even noticed when they’d fallen asleep on the couch together. Or when Katsuki put himself back.
Part of him feels an urge to replicate that very instance, and another part of him stirs at the thought, hungrier.
So hungry that no amount of nails digging into his skin will push it down again.
A cigarette is not what Katsuki wants.
He shifts to the side of the couch, breathing deeply while his palm and neck bead with sweat.
Izuku hasn’t moved, even with the shadow cast over him. Katsuki wants to say his name, demanding him awake so he can finish what he’d started in the kitchen.
He remembers years ago, Aizawa taught him about a sixth sense people have for being watched, showing him reports of how quickly a person can tell with very little explanation of that mechanism. The eyes are powerful things. He would know this more than anyone.
Though Katsuki never believed it until now.
Izuku’s eyes open, pupils blowing out in the dark. They immediately focus on Katsuki. He doesn’t move as he comes to terms with what he sees, Katsuki standing over him in the middle of the night, and what it could possibly mean, a thing like that.
When he blinks, it’s clear he’d drawn whatever conclusion he’d needed to.
The first thing Katsuki feels is Izuku’s hand, the one that’d been hanging limp, move to his calf.
The second is Izuku kneading it with his thumb in exploratory circles.
Katsuki freezes, waiting for Izuku to be the one to say something. He’s been silent all night, following Katsuki’s orders. Letting his questions build in droves.
Izuku hasn't broken his silence just yet. He’s more than capable of testing waters like this, using simpler means to get Katsuki to move where he wants.
Katsuki feels Izuku’s hand glide up to the back of his knee, while the other reaches for purchase of his hip. He’s firm but wary, like he knows what he’s allowed to do, but also knows how fast it can change with Katsuki. The ambiguity is being passed between them. Izuku is desperate to read it right.
It’s easy to fall where Izuku puts him, riding that out. To be led onto the couch where the only place to fit is seated on Izuku’s lap. He’s feeling the heat again. Firsthand contact with it as he straddles either side of Izuku’s waist, rolling to find a good position. It’s a tight squeeze, a small couch, and Katsuki’s right foot is hanging off the edge while he settles.
He’s still waiting for Izuku to say anything. The longer it goes the less it seems to matter that he hasn’t.
Izuku wordlessly takes Katsuki’s left hand and pulls it to his face, mouthing up and down against the back while he holds Katsuki’s gaze. It does something to Katsuki to see him like that. Reverent to him in the dark. He should’ve expected how much Izuku needs of him, it’s as much a part of him as anything. Windows that he’d already seen through when Izuku was sick and limitless.
It feels right, being slotted here. It feels like control. However much Izuku wants, he can supply it in excess.
Izuku kisses the notch on Katsuki’s wrist and bites it lightly. As he does, his eyes flicker to the right, almost imperceptibly. It’s a curse how much Katsuki can glean from that look, after spending the past two weeks with him. They could’ve been doing this until Katsuki finally saw enough to crack the quirk wide open.
Izuku swallows and moves under Katsuki’s weight, and he’s hard.
Katsuki’s pulse jumps to his ears so fast they ring to compensate. Being quiet was okay, until it wasn’t. Katsuki wants to press him from all directions, to squeeze every last sentiment out of his head.
“Kacchan,” Izuku mutters, breaking first. Katsuki nearly groans in relief, having something to anchor himself to. Izuku’s voice. There’s a flash of pain from all the words he can’t say back, the obscenities he’d be mixing with his name.
Izuku drops Katsuki’s wrist and slows down, eyes flickering to the right again. He lets Katsuki watch as he reaches for his prosthetic, gently cupping the wrist joint. Without any protest, the metal hand is quickly pulled against Izuku’s face in just the same way as his real one.
Katsuki’s bones go liquid at the sight. You want to examine it, he remembers thinking, before.
Same way you examine me.
Izuku travels up the metal grooves with his hands, rubbing along and palming each connecting piece for as long as Katsuki lets him get away with it.
Katsuki shudders like he can feel it all, Izuku innervating him.
When he reaches Katsuki’s shoulder, it transitions to skin, fitted along muscles with criss-crossing straps to his other side. Izuku finds the seam where Katsuki’s body begins under the metal, thumbing along that sensitive ridge. It’s more visceral than anything else he could do. It hurts deeply to moan, to growl, but Katsuki works the pain into the experience, rocking with it on Izuku’s hardness.
When he glances down there’s a sheen to Izuku’s eyes, unmistakable wetness at the outer corner of one. Izuku doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. It’s a side-effect. Just like the fingernail marks etched into Katsuki’s palm, they do it to each other.
It’s kinetic, the way it feels to be with Izuku. Every part of it.
He looks at Izuku, and he knows. He knows it now and maybe he always did. They’re inevitable. Between them is a space that needs pinched closed, the sounds of crashing waves and splintered trees and rain and gunpowder and air, sunlight spinning shadows through the clouds until it can’t anymore. They’re something terrible where they meet, faulted and unknowably raw, and there’ll be no end to it—the ways they’ll swallow each other.
Katsuki starts with Izuku’s lips.
“I’m scared.”
“Kacchan—!”
"I know. I’m not finished.
“I’m scared of this. Us. That I won't be able to not hurt you, like it's all I know how to do.
“That you’ll hurt yourself for whatever reason you think’s good enough, and it’ll be my fault I never told you how fucking important you are. You need to care. You can’t just, not care.”
“It isn’t your problem, to worry about me like that.”
“You made it my problem when you worked yourself sick over me.”
“But—”
“Izuku.”
“I—“
“God, it feels good to talk to you. To say your name.”
“Kacchan.”
“Yeah?”
“You realize how insane it is, that you’re allowed to lose an arm, and your voice, and you’re mad that I’m the one who needs to take better care of myself?”
“Fuck it. Yes.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It was never fair, that’s the whole point. Look—Izuku, look at me.
“It can’t be your first instinct to push through the hurt, the sickness. You can’t just throw it away every chance you get, ‘specially for me, ‘cause what the fuck was any of this for, if you do.”
“Ah.”
“That better be a yes.”
“Can I ask you something?
“Ask me something. Whatever you want. Fuck, Izuku, anything.”
“Are you happy, when you’re with me?”
“What kind of fucking question is that?”
“Sometimes I’m not so sure.”
“Don’t second guess yourself. It pisses me off.”
“Then answer me.”
“…”
“Nothing else comes close.”
“Even when I scare you so much?”
“That’s— it’s why I’m fucking scared. Get it? Sometimes it’s like all I do is break things. You gotta be selfish when it comes to me, ‘cause if you aren’t. I don’t know. I just don’t.”
“I won’t break.”
“Listen to me. For once in your goddamn life don’t think about anyone else. You give too much of yourself. Most people don’t deserve all that.”
“Show me what you mean. Teach me how to do it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you want most? Right now. If there was nothing holding you back.”
“I—”
“Mm.”
"I can’t say it.”
“Can’t?”
“You’ll—you’ll push me away if I do. Like last time. I can’t.”
“That had nothing to do with you.”
“Please, don’t lie.”
“So you won’t say it, then?”
“…”
“You really think I’d lie to you?”
“I don’t know, I don’t like thinking about it. What happened between us.”
“Guess that’s my fault, huh. I’m sorry I let it play out that way.”
“…”
“You wanna hear selfish? Alright, fuck, here it is, then. Your first lesson in it, from a goddamn professional.
“Something happens to you—some shitty, god-awful, unthinkable thing, right. And afterward? You avoid everyone under the sun ‘cause you’ve never lost before. Not like this.
“It’s a foreign concept to you, maybe, but you did. You did and now no one knows what to say to you, they’re scared to even mention it. Acknowledge what it did to you. It’s a taboo subject and you’ve become a taboo yourself, with how visible the damage is. It’s all they can see.
“'Course, you’d rather fuck off into obscurity than deal with one more second of all that noise.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for? You didn’t do that. You wouldn’t have done that to me.”
“Then why—”
“Lesson two. You take it personally, when your anti-social stint pushes away the only people in the world you never wanted it to. The ones who usually stick by you when you’re being difficult. But you do fuck all to fix it, and you’re mad at them now, to top it all off. Real fucking mad. That they aren’t able to read your mind, I guess. Who knows.”
“I thought you needed space, I didn’t want to put anything more on you.”
“Maybe. Maybe I did. But you played the stranger for eight months, Izuku, you didn’t even try to work it back.”
“I didn’t... I didn’t know that I could.”
“…”
“Lesson three. After a few months, some of them are smart enough to see through all your bullshit, and they find their way back to you.
“But not him.
“You think, maybe you don’t deserve him anyway, cause you’d fucked him up like this before. Again and again—your whole life you’ve fucked up. Just. Like. This. And it’s been so long at this point, you know it deep down, he’s not coming back to you.”
“But I did.”
“But you didn’t. Only ‘cause you were there that night, that’s the only reason you’re here with me right now. You saw this whole shitshow happen from the beginning. I couldn’t exactly tell you to fuck off.”
“You tried, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I didn’t listen.”
“That sounds about right.”
“I shouldn’t have listened before, either. I didn’t know what you needed, and I just. I thought you’d give me a sign once you figured it out.
“And when you didn’t, I thought that was the answer. It made sense that you didn’t want me around for it.”
“For the aftermath of having my fucking arm amputated? Yeah, you’re right, I would’ve killed you if you tried to help me.
“But if you didn’t, if you let me deal with it, if you were there. I could’ve worked with that. You gotta give me something to work with.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be.”
“But I am, and I don’t think I can do this, either, what you’re asking me to do. To prioritize myself. Of course I understand, and I’ll try, but—“
“But you’re you.”
“…”
“I gotta do everything my fucking self, is that it?”
“Kacchan?”
“You’re not getting rid of me. I’m not letting you off. You’ll practice with me until you can.”
“Kacchan?”
“You think I’d just give up?”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Say things like that if you don’t mean them.”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“You’re serious? You want to do this with me?”
“I want you to do what I tell you, ‘cause I didn’t go through all this just for you to not listen when I speak.”
“I am listening. I’ll try anything you ask.”
“Good. Now I can work with that.”
“…”
“Kacchan?”
“What?”
“Mmh.”
“What?”
“I just, really missed your voice.
“Oh—! I need to tell everyone, they’ve all been so worried about it. Shoto won’t stop asking about you.”
“What are you, my keeper? I can tell them myself.”
“Oh, right. You’re right.”
“What have you been telling him?”
“That you were okay.”
“I could’ve done that, why the hell did he go through you?”
“He prefers talking on the phone, I think.”
“Sure he does. Bastard.”
“I wouldn’t call him that, he did catch your villain.”
“I guess. Would’ve did it myself, if the agency didn’t threaten to sideline me if I even thought about trying it.”
“Well…”
“Fuck, do I need a cigarette.”
“Kacchan.”
“It’s okay. I’ll wait.”
“…”
“Izuku.”
“Hm?”
“You’re not getting out of it. Don’t think I forgot.
“Tell me what you couldn’t before.”
“What?”
“When I asked what you wanted.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. That’s it.”
When Izuku looks at him, his eyes are green and charged and boring into him. It’s enough for Katsuki to lose any edge he thought he’d gained.
It’s Izuku who stands first, holding onto Katsuki’s metallic wrist joint and pulling them to the bedroom. Izuku doesn’t pause before knocking open the door with his shoulder, invading Katsuki’s space. The couch had its limits.
“Kacchan.”
Izuku’s hand locks between the metal fingers and tugs. Katsuki retreats inside himself just enough that Izuku reaches forward, pushing in where he feels him shrink. On Katsuki’s king bed, they stay so close that a twin would’ve been too much room for them.
They’re still in the darkness. They can see enough of each other, and if they couldn’t, they could hear each other breathe.
Before, Katsuki hadn’t found the right words so much as they found him. He was still sitting on Izuku’s lap when the realization bulleted through.
He’s in full possession of his voice now, but he can only watch Izuku like he isn’t, like he’d been mute his whole life, chasing words just out of reach. Izuku’s leaning forward, dark green curls falling over his eyes. “Kacchan, say something.”
It’s maddening to see Izuku so focused on him. Katsuki swallows. There’s so much he could say, two week’s worth, and still it all comes out to his name.
“Izuku.”
“Hm?” he hums back, taking the hem of Katsuki’s shirt in his hand. Toying with it.
“Be more specific.”
“Is that part of the lesson?”
“I don’t know, you still haven’t told me what you want.”
Izuku pushes under his shirt, palm flat against Katsuki’s abdomen. “I’m listening to you. I’m showing you I can take it.”
The sight of him in his element is something else. Izuku concentrates everything on Katsuki, working through these errant, possessive noises as he pulls his shirt off, then his own.
He wanted what’s under it, tugging now at the straps of Katsuki’s prosthetic, crossed across his chest.
Katsuki lets him do it. The sound of each buckle coming undone, metal clicking against metal, overrides him with heat. The socket slides away from his upper arm, cut just above where his elbow would be.
He’s never been bare like this, in front of him. In front of anyone. Izuku takes the prosthetic gently, cradling it over to its open case before returning to the bed, back to him. He has it all mapped out.
Izuku kneels into the mattress, making no effort to avert his eyes, anymore.
“You make me feel crazy,” Izuku tells him.
Katsuki has chills.
“In what way?”
“Every way.” Izuku leans over him, closing the distance. Katsuki tries to keep that space sacred, until his head touches the mattress and there’s nowhere else to go. He meets him head-on, then. Izuku’s hand glides to his hip. “I want to know. What made you think of the words you needed to say?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I really think it does.”
Izuku’s leg slots between Katsuki’s, pushing up until his knee finds something hard pushing back.
“Izuku—“
“Telling me would make me happy.”
Katsuki turns his head left, digging his cheek into the pillow where it can’t betray colors.
“Fuck. I just knew nothing could go back to how it was, after. And I needed you to want that.”
“I want that.”
Izuku catches his lips and finishes what they started, when Katsuki was mute and standing over him in the dark.
Izuku’s hands are all over, calloused and warm, perfectly familiar to him. They seek places he’d never had the chance to touch before, to examine, individual catalogues of what’s open to him now. Katsuki’s stomach. His nape.
His right side.
He feels like static while Izuku kisses him deeper. It’s all pooling from the cracks, the control he had before, the certainty in what would happen with their bodies. Katsuki thought he’d be the one doing the fucking—it made sense that way, abstractly, in the moment. But Izuku’s scarred forearms are locked on either side of Katsuki’s chest, his knee keeping Katsuki’s apart, and it needs to be like this. It needs to be Izuku on top of him. His teeth on his neck. It needs to be a frenzied press of scarred fingers to his mouth, to the skin pulled together and sutured over bone, while Izuku’s voice dips low, and hot, muttering Kacchan over and over and over again.
Katsuki watches him, wanting him so much more when he’s unbridled like this. It’s Izuku who spirals them outward. He mouths along Katsuki’s collarbone and stops there, at his right shoulder, nuzzling it with his cheek and the edge of his jaw like he did to Katsuki’s hands.
Then, he trails down to the pinched end of the limb and does the same.
Katsuki hitches his breath and squirms, unable to find a concrete feeling for it, having Izuku right there. He wants to push him away. He wants to open his legs and hook them around Izuku’s waist, pretend it’s not putting him in a fucking drug-like haze, to give Izuku access to the most damaged piece of him.
“You smell good, you always smell so good,” Izuku mutters. His hand finds the waistband of Katsuki’s sweatpants, pulling one side down halfheartedly while he’s still preoccupied elsewhere.
“That why you —tch— stole my shirt?”
Izuku slides his forearm under Katsuki’s lower back, lifting his hips, peppering kisses onto his sternum. At least it isn’t still the stump of his arm, and Katsuki can breathe right.
“I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“Yeah. You did.”
Izuku smiles, guilty. Katsuki groans as Izuku puts all the pressure between his thighs for a moment, replicating how they were fitted before when Katsuki was on his lap.
“I want to touch you,” Izuku says, tugging the rest of his sweatpants down and going wild in his eyes when he finds nothing else underneath. “Here.”
One hand slides up the inside of Katsuki’s thigh, the other still under him raising his body for access. Katsuki makes a noise when Izuku squeezes his asscheek and spreads it.
“Then fucking do it,” Katsuki says, talking through his teeth. If his hand wasn’t stitched in Izuku’s hair, he’d be driving his nails into his palm like stakes.
“You want my fingers dry? You want me to push inside you right now?”
Katsuki swallows, fisting his curls tightly. He doesn’t answer, finding it easy now to blow up the silence. He wants Izuku to be the one to pop it, to make that decision, so Katsuki can prove he can take whatever comes from him.
Unbelievably, Izuku produces a pocket-sized bottle, either from somewhere in his clothes or grabbed on the way to Katsuki’s room. It spurs him back to words.
“How long’ve you had that?”
Izuku blinks, like he’s surprised it matters.
“I brought it to the bar two weeks ago.”
A rush goes through Katsuki, thinking about Izuku making that choice. “Liar.”
“Kacchan.”
“What’d you think was gonna happen?”
“I wasn’t going to leave until I fixed things with you. I didn’t know what that would look like. I missed you.”
“You’re insane.”
“I told you. You make me feel crazy.” Izuku punctuates his words with his fingers, warm and wet, rubbing between Katsuki’s cheeks. His thumb presses into the soft mound of skin before it, and his index finger glides into Katsuki like a mold.
Katsuki arches into his touch, already forgetting why he was so stunned before. Of course it’d end up this way, between them. He can’t imagine anything different.
Katsuki closes his eyes and pictures how it looks, Izuku pushing inside of him, the scars on top of his hand. The scar on his finger vanishing into Katsuki’s rim, filling that space.
The low whine escapes before he can swallow it.
Izuku gives him more, keeps their bodies pressed together while he adds his middle digit and thrusts in. “Fuck.” Katsuki melts into the bed, suffocating from the attention. From their bodies touching so much to each other they meld.
“Yeah?” Izuku drags his fingers out and pushes them back in, curled.
“Izuku.”
“If you sound like that I’m not going to be able to take my time, and I really want to take my time,” Izuku says. “Please, breathe.”
All Katsuki can manage to do is force Izuku’s head down and kiss him. His lips are feverish, angry that he isn’t being fucked properly. When he breathes it smells like Izuku, a shadow of vanilla and overwhelming salt-sweat. “Stop with your fucking fingers,” Katsuki says, “I’m gonna kill you.”
“This is how I want you, just like this.”
“Ah—fuck you, c’mon.” Katsuki squirms, moving his foot over Izuku’s crotch and digging his heel in, asking for it. Izuku gasps just as he pulls the fingers out of him.
“You need it that bad?”
“Hhn—”
“Here, Kacchan” Izuku says, rolling his pants down and onto the floor, so hard his dick is twitching in the air. “It’s yours.”
Katsuki bites his tongue, looking at the ceiling to focus so he doesn’t go dizzy in need. He looks back when he doesn’t feel Izuku move.
Izuku’s watching him, eyes flickering to the right.
“Put it in, you wanted it.”
Something rolls in Katsuki’s guts, winding them up like rope. He wants it badly enough to ignore the implication of that look Izuku gave.
He curls his legs to the back of Izuku’s thighs and pushes him down, making a deep noise when his hand can wrap around the tip, and he can feel it pulse, see that it’s engorged so red it’s purple.
He squeezes, angles Izuku’s dick where his fingers left an open ache. Izuku doesn’t move organically until Katsuki is cursing at him, rutting forward. Trying to fuck the head into himself with one hand holding it flush between his thighs.
Izuku takes over, burying it in one, long, gentle motion while he holds Katsuki’s wrist away in the air. Katsuki rides that high for everything it’s worth. The feeling of Izuku inside him, on top of him, floods his senses until even a hand cupping his neck is like a live wire. Too much Izuku to do anything except buzz.
Izuku fucks him slow, keeps him lucid enough to not just fall into a pattern of expletives. When Izuku leans down it’s to nuzzle his face into Katsuki’s right side, like it isn’t enough to be this deep in him. Like Katsuki is an additive effect.
“Kacchan,” he moans, all muffled in Katsuki’s shoulder. Teething like a puppy winding itself down.
“Need you,” Katsuki says, his hand going to the back of Izuku’s head again, curling against it.
Izuku is curving his hips in circles, barely pulling out before trying to push in to the hilt. Katsuki’s breathless from it. His dick is pinned against Izuku’s abdomen, deliberate squeezes of pressure when he bears down.
Izuku moves up his throat and kisses him, licks into his mouth. It feels like he’s owed this kind of possession of him. Katsuki offers it up. It’s his choice to be like this, holding all of Izuku’s attention and calling that feeling a victory.
Katsuki kisses him, angry against his mouth. Izuku rolls his hips and seats himself in Katsuki, muttering a stream of affirmations that build and build until Katsuki looks and sees Izuku’s eyes, wet in the corners, like before, and it almost sets him over the edge.
Izuku must feel how Katsuki seizes around him. He touches their foreheads together, moving his head side to side like he’s trying to burrow in. “Wanna make you come,” he says, fucking into him just as his hand goes around Katsuki’s dick, matching that rhythm. Katsuki groans into his mouth.
“Wanna take care of you.” Izuku’s other hand goes to Katsuki’s right shoulder, his bicep, holding his flesh tightly in his palm. Katsuki can’t think, can’t bring himself to pull his stump away.
There’s not a single place Izuku hasn’t touched him. He’s spinning, and Izuku’s saying his name.
“Kacchan,
"Kacchan,
”Kacchan."
“Ah, fuck.”
“Feel good? Tell me, stop biting your hand, tell me when you’re gonna come.”
Katsuki feels insatiable, Izuku’s everywhere and it could still be more. “Yeah, fuck, fuck, Izuku."
“Now?”
“Mmmh.”
He comes into Izuku’s curled palm, shuddering. Izuku rolls his wrist, milking it out of him while he hums, low and pleased.
“You’re perfect,” Izuku says in his ear, driving Katsuki into the mattress, kissing him through the waves. His voice is full. “Let me come in you.”
Katsuki nods, and he does.
Izuku’s eyelashes flutter wet against Katsuki’s cheeks. It feels like they’re something that can’t be unbound, Izuku keeping his mouth on his neck without disconnecting, still inside him until they both go soft. When Izuku finally slips out, Katsuki grabs onto him to roll side-by-side, so they’re facing each other. Looking at him is cloudy, like he’s vapor.
Katsuki wants to hold Izuku right like that, until there’s nothing left of them but a tangled mess of bones.
They sleep like the dead.
Katsuki opens his eyes to a sunlit room, keeping one eye closed until he can adjust to it. The soreness of his body is apparent the moment he tries to move.
As always, he allows himself the barest second to process. That it’s real, his arm is gone, his voice works, and Izuku is pressed against his side, awake and studying him for who knows how long already. Tracing his fingers along whatever piece of Katsuki’s body he can reach.
Katsuki closes his eyes again. He needs a cigarette if he’s going to think any more about Izuku.
“Mm. Don’t talk, Izuku.”
“Kacchan.”
“That’s talking.”
Izuku presses his lips against Katsuki’s shoulder to silence himself, on his right side again. Always with that. Izuku keeps his mouth sealed to Katsuki’s skin, on and on, rocking kisses to it.
Katsuki’s breathing heavily to the feeling of his lips, waking up to them, and how hungrily Izuku drags them along his stump. It’s too much to make sense of. Goosebumps raise on his skin when he tries.
Katsuki throws his forearm over his head, groaning. He shifts his hips, obscenely aware of what Izuku cleaned of him and what he didn’t. It makes him feel hazy to remember, not quite ready to come back into himself. The constant motion of Izuku doesn’t help.
Katsuki opens his eyes and groans again. “You don’t have to do whatever the fuck this is. Giving it attention. Compensating.”
Izuku pauses and peers at Katsuki through his eyelashes, color fresh on his cheeks.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” he says.
“So what the hell are you doing?”
The blush goes deeper, spreading down to his neck.
“I can’t explain it. Not really. At least not without sounding…” Izuku swallows, searching for the word. If it was innocent, he wouldn’t be hesitating.
“Fucking weird? Hate to break it to you, but that ship has left orbit.” Katsuki counters.
“This is different.”
“Come on.”
“Kacchan—”
“Izuku.”
Izuku blinks, sitting up before he breathes again, and Katsuki does the same.
“I like it.” Izuku pulls back, like it’d be improper to touch Katsuki while he explains it. His eyes are serious, watching for reactions. “All of it. The scar. The way it looks without your prosthetic attached, the way you look.”
Katsuki is still. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Izuku swallows, again. “I guess—why does anyone like anything they’re into?”
“Into?”
Izuku half-whines, only realizing what exactly he’d said to him when Katsuki repeats it back.
“Izuku.” His stomach writhes in a flash of heat. “That’s fucked up.”
Izuku looks fucking tortured, about it all. Looks away just when Katsuki wants his eyes the most. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything, because I don’t want you to think, to think I’d, I’m—”
“Getting off on it.”
“Yes. I mean, no.”
“But you are,” Katsuki realizes, and it all clicks it into place. Izuku shakes his head but Katsuki knows it, burning with the implication of every moment before, the stares, the way Izuku couldn’t leave it alone. It wasn’t about wanting to examine his prosthetic, learn how it worked. Maybe that was part of it. Maybe that’s how it started. A cut on his knee for Izuku to press into, until it had to be all of him.
Katsuki leans in, locking his gaze. “You’re thinking about it. The things you could do to me. Holding my left arm down, watching me squirm.” He licks across his teeth. “Is that it? You want to see what my limits are? You wanna bring me there?”
Izuku makes a pained noise but doesn’t refute it. Katsuki knows he’s right, and it falls neatly into line, Izuku’s loyalty to Kacchan and the scientific method. How the two of those things overlap.
Katsuki lowers his voice, digging nails into his palm to stabilize.
“You think I’d let you?”
Izuku makes another repressed noise, like he doesn’t even trust himself to reply.
Katsuki slowly lies back, staring up at Izuku, provoking him into it. It’s exhilarating, to be able to pinpoint him to this extent.
It’s short-lived when Izuku finally responds to Katsuki's blank check.
“I couldn’t do something like that to you.”
A noise of displeasure comes from Katsuki’s throat. “You didn’t seem to have any trouble before, prying my fucking mouth open.”
“That was…”
“Fucked up.”
“Kacchan.”
“The same as this.”
“Kacchan.”
“Yeah, say my name. It’ll make you feel better.”
Izuku surges forward to kiss him, whether to stop himself or start, he doesn’t know. It feels apologetic, the guilty way his eyes scrunch closed.
“Do it,” Katsuki says, “You want it, do it.” The order melts on contact, dripping from his teeth. There’s nothing driving it forth, no power, no anger, just the desperate urgency of his heart to let Izuku take what he wants from him.
Izuku pulls back.
Katsuki studies him now. The expression left on Izuku’s face is intense, flooding his body warm like rain to see.
“Well?”
“You can’t possibly want this. You’re messing with me.”
“Don’t you dare fucking think that.”
“Why?”
Katsuki breathes.
“Izuku,” Katsuki says, pointedly, never so sure of his words. Even the ones that’d fixed him. “You know what I tried to tell you when I got back from the station, after I figured out how to beat the quirk?”
Izuku doesn’t answer, just stares back.
“I love you,” Katsuki tells him, and Izuku startles like all the air had been ripped from the earth. “Didn’t fucking work, though. Couldn’t get it out.
“Guess it wasn’t my big secret. Guess you already knew.”