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The sun doesn’t rise anymore.
That’s not true, it goes like this: the sun does rise. Every day just as it goes down every night. Izuku is not presumptuous enough to suggest the sun cares about their tragedies down here. But despite the stubborn fact that the sun hasn’t stuttered in its scheduled rises and falls by the edge of the horizon, nobody’s granted the sight of sunrises and sunsets. Not since a thick cloud of soot and dust settled over Japan’s heavens. Days look no different from nights with no light to shine down on them. It’s like the chaos from the streets rose to the skies in a blanket of smoke.
Izuku attributes his lack of sleep to this.
That’s not it, though. Of course it’s not. That would mean the problem isn’t him.
He became no stranger to sleeplessness after ceaseless nights spent giving chase to villain after villain on the fractured concrete that held up the city’s ruins. The restless itch under his skin essential to staying vigilant. So much so it became wired into his system, his body growing resistant to the very idea of rest.
But he’s not out there anymore. He’s back within UA walls whether he likes it or not, and he can’t sleep. That anxious buzz doesn’t drain away easily from his veins.
He can’t share any of this, though. Wouldn’t be able to stand the worried glances of his classmates and know he keeps burdening them with concern. So he explains it away. The muddy gray of the sky is mixing up his internal clock, he says. I’m fine.
Way back then, lifetimes ago when they had all first moved into Heights Alliance, he took to sneaking up to the roof after hours of staring at the ceiling to watch the sunrise instead. He’d sit, bare feet dangling over the edge as weary eyes squinted at the glare of the sun breaking over the treeline, and let the sight serve as a comfort. Yes, he’s wakeful, but he wouldn’t have been able to peak at the sunrise otherwise, he reasoned. Small mercies, glass half full, etc. It’s what he’s always done.
But the sun doesn’t rise anymore, not from behind the thick layer of soot and dust, at least. Yet he still comes up here every scheduled dawn and sits, worn and tattered sneakers dangling over the edge. Similar in small ways, but not enough to kindle comfort. Not with the sky smearing a vast reminder of everything he’s shouldering.
Maybe that should be reason enough to stop coming up here. He’s not usually one to wallow in his grief, after all. And maybe he wouldn’t, if not for the pair of thick leather boots swinging aside his own feet.
The sun doesn’t rise anymore, but Kacchan makes up for the absence of sunlight. Always shining twice as bright wherever he goes.
Izuku never learnt when to look away from the sun.
He actually isn’t sure how Kacchan came to find his way up here, but he probably shouldn’t be surprised. Sometimes, it feels like Kacchan knows him better than he knows himself. And since returning to UA, Izuku rarely finds himself outside his childhood friend’s immediate line of sight.
He doesn’t know how he should feel about it. For as long as he can remember it’s been the other way around, his eyes trailing after Kacchan the way seafarers look at lighthouses. But now he finds himself pinned to the other side of that crimson gaze and– maybe he should feel put off. He knows Kacchan probably was for most of their lives. Maybe this was his version of lighthearted payback. But Izuku can’t find it in himself to do anything but swaddle himself in the blanket of comfort that turning and finding Kacchan already looking his way drapes over him. It’s like he comes home every time they meet eyes.
He had missed him. Missed him too much. Missed him the way you miss a phantom limb or the gentleness of childhood snacks on your tongue. Missed him enough to stay away, because that is why he did it. Kacchan, everyone was safer without him around to paint targets on their backs. He’d let Kacchan come along once and it earned him two stabs clean through, so he had to do the unthinkable. Izuku had to leave Kacchan behind this time.
He should’ve known, of course, that Kacchan wouldn’t settle for that. Kacchan never goes down without a fight, Izuku had only hoped he’d be the one to win this one.
But he was too weak, Kacchan came victorious throwing his own sentiments back at Izuku like life vests. Saving him. Never giving him the chance to save Kacchan in return.
Losing strangely feels like sitting side by side before a hidden sunset. They don't say much, never do. Having Kacchan by him has always been enough and more. But as they sit on the edge, he also knows today is different. Today, in a few hours, they will finish this War. He knows as well as Kacchan does that this might be the last time they get to look skyward together.
That’s probably why he’s not surprised when Kacchan nudges the silence. “You remember what I told you?”
Stop trying to win this on your own. “Yes,” He won’t be making the mistake of forgetting twice.
Kacchan grunts. “Good. I don’t like repeating myself, De-Izuku,”
“You don’t have to call me that,” He quietly reminds.
“I want to.” Kacchan insists. “Unless… you don’t want me to,”
That’s not it.
Lightning shoots down his spine at the very sound of his name falling from Kacchan’s mouth. A feeling older than OFA’s electric static on his skin but just as exhilarating. It’s a weightless thrill, makes him feel voltaic in the heart. Shocks it back into bloody motion.
His name, still unfamiliar in the shape of Kacchan's voice, never fails to overwhelm him. Makes him feel everything all over again, but never as much as that first time. Kacchan seemed to have made the rain itself pause mid-fall with the way Izuku’s heart crashed to a halt before jumpstarting again at twice the speed. Words that nearly brought him down to his worn knees.
Hearing his name roll so softly on Kacchan’s lips when he had felt so stripped of every little piece of self that wasn’t the symbol, Hero Deku who Always Does His Best, was like a baptism under warm rain. Just like that, if only for that moment, it all got washed away. And underneath all the blood and mud and expectations he found he could still be Izuku.
From Kacchan, Izuku sounded like recompense. Like a reminder that he was more than the ninth holder of One for All... But his chest also warmed at the way Deku had come to sound so fond. Comfortable. Four letters of a lifetime of shared history leading up to this very point.
“I don’t care what name you call me so long as you do.” He admits, voice low but as steady as he can keep it.
Kacchan’s stare feels like he’s peeling his skin back to grab at what’s left of his heart among bones and remorse. “Then stay,” He rasps, a confession of its own. “I can’t reach at empty fucking air, Izuku,”
He… doesn’t know what to do with that. How to hold the words Kacchan just gave him without breaking them in his broken hands.
“Why?” Comes out a torn and aimless whisper, unable to find any other words in the swell of his chest. He’s starting to feel like his seams are undoing again, the familiar alarm blaring that he’s too close to laying himself bare under Kacchan’s eyes. And he can’t, won’t let him see those rotten, selfish parts of him.
The ones that want.
The form of Kacchan’s frown is reminiscent of the war as he grows agitated. Like he also doesn’t know what to do with the threads tangled between his fingers.
“Because I– we need you,” He stresses, words tumbling their way out.
“I know,” He sighs hollowly. It’s all that echoes in his mind nowadays. “The world needs One for All more than ever,”
Kacchan groans, tense knuckles bleaching against the black of his pants as his scowl shapes itself with frustration.
“I’m not talking about One for All. It’s you. I love you,” He snaps.
What?
Izuku hasn't even begun to process the confession before his mouth rejects the very notion. “No you don’t.” He says. There’s nothing to love, he thinks.
“I love you,” Kacchan insists, devastating and beautiful and impossible. “You. Nerdy motormouth with the haunting eyes. Not Hero Deku, or the Symbol of Peace, or the 9th One for All User or the chosen one second coming of All Might– or whatever else you wanna say. I love you, Izuku Midoriya,”
The box buried neath his chest where all the hopeless things he has no right to think lie begins to rattle against its chains. Unraveling. How can Kacchan keep doing this to him? Force Izuku to accept the unbelievable?
All he can think to do is deny deny deny. Because there is no dictionary in which Kacchan’s words make sense. Love. It’s like he’s speaking another language, like he’s spelling his words backwards. All sounds with no clear meaning or beginning, they make no sense to Izuku. They can’t, not when he can barely recognize himself most days like the outline of a person who once was. The fringes reading in dear memory of…
But that’s not what Kacchan sees. Every time Izuku stumbles, Kacchan reaches for that hollow middle and finds something to grasp. Something that he finds lovely.
He has to find it in himself to accept that because Kacchan won’t take being dismissed or doubted. Izuku has no option but to open his battered hands and let these words be placed there. Curl his fingers around every syllable until he learns their shape against the lines of his palms, the scars of his fingers. Until he knows how to trace their edges in his sleep and he can tattoo them back into Kacchan’s skin knowing they will be welcomed.
Kacchan loves Izuku Midoriya. He would’ve never thought that the bleeding swell of his heart is mirrored in Kacchan’s chest.
He’s spent so long pushing back those words, so little and heavy and bittersweet on his tongue, that he doesn’t know how to pluck them from between his teeth. But allowing Kacchan to think that Izuku is anything but in love with him is not an option. Irrationally, unconditionally, helplessly. Again and again and again every day he wakes up and finds new reasons to love him with every fiber of his undeserving heart. Always will. He loves Kacchan the way he breathes air into his lungs at the first blink of the morning. And if the chaos of this world has allowed for this to be truth, Izuku cannot let Kacchan remain unaware of how Izuku’s heart echoes back the rhythm of Kacchan’s pulse.
Kacchan keeps talking, ignorant of all the ways he’s just broken and mended Izuku’s world in one breath. “I don’t need you to reciprocate or whatever. That’s not what this is. Just– stay alive. It’s not victory unless you make it, too, Izuku,”
“I always have victory by my side when you’re with me,” Is the only thing that makes it through the mess of choked-up words stuck in his heaving chest.
“Good thing I’m not going anywhere, nerd,” He says, thumbing away one of many tears dripping down Izuku’s warm cheeks. “We're winning this,”
Izuku can only believe him. He holds onto that, the unwavering fire of Kacchan’s eyes, to keep him centered. As always, Kacchan is the sun anchoring him with his inescapable gravity. Amazing. “And after?”
“Whatever you want,”
His very world has been flipped, turned, and twisted around and again. All of the horrifying things he’s seen and he still finds himself unsure of how to brave a world where Kacchan loves him.
So as he tends to do in times of uncertainty, he borrows a page from Kacchan’s book. Lets his actions speak for him this once and presses his tear-stained lips to Kacchan’s mouth. Meets his useless silence against the lips that breathed life back into him. Not the mangled weapon of his body but the tender pulp of his weak heart.
He’ll have to strengthen it to take on the blaze of Kacchan’s love. Like everything he does, everything he is, it is zealous and wholehearted. He’s beginning to see it, understanding melting into him like rain on welcoming soil. He sees it in the way fire-hardened hands squeeze the curl of his body, in the way his leather boots gently knock against tattered sneakers, sees it in the stutter of his breath against his damp cheek.
He sees it in the way Kacchan looks back at Izuku.
(After they win this war, Kacchan said they can do whatever he wants.
Izuku will look up at the clear sky and see the sunrise with Kacchan by his side. They’ll make that hope a reality, too.)