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It happens on Katsuki’s day off.
Their morning starts normally enough; Katsuki, rising before the sun, though today it hides behind gloomy clouds. Sipping his way through coffee and frowning through every single one of Izuku’s alarms as that dumbass fights for his life just to get out of bed.
After approximately twelve snoozed alarms, Izuku stumbles into the living room they’ve spent the past three years decorating together, stubbing his toe on the couch in his search for breakfast and ultimately collapsing right into Katsuki’s lap.
Katsuki has always been a creature of habit. For this reason, he falls into the same trap Izuku has laid out for the past one-thousand-two-hundred-seventy-eight days they’ve woken up next to each other: a series of whisper-soft morning kisses initially disguised as a peck, scarred arms wrapped around his neck.
“I get off at six,” Izuku murmurs between kisses. His curls, overdue for a trim, tickle Katsuki’s brow. “Can I ask a favor?”
“You’re runnin’ out of ‘em, nerd.”
“Can we have katsudon today?”
Everything about Izuku is near impossible to say no to. But Katsuki is a strong man. A formidable hero, fierce and—
“Please?”
“Fuck,” Katsuki grumbles. “Fine. But you’d better not be late.”
“I won’t!”
Katsuki should already know he will be, with the way those eyes doubt themselves as he says that. But as usual, he waves away that sharp discomfort scratching at the walls of his chest.
“Love you, Kacchan,” he sings as he wraps that ancient tattered All Might scarf around his neck. Next are red boots in dire need of a replacement. Then, a forest-green rain jacket, because the clouds hanging in the sky look unforgiving.
If Katsuki were a stronger man, he wouldn’t have kissed Izuku goodbye in his haste to catch the train. If he’d known it would be their last, he’d rather it have been a hug.
But for Katsuki, things never go according to plan. He should’ve accepted that years ago.
Katsuki picks up fresh pork at the market. In every person that rounds the corner, he sees a threat, the potential for curled fingers around his neck, every sound is the tipping point of a villain ambush. Something’s not right, and he’s wavering on the edge of it.
It’s on TV before the emergency contact call even reaches his phone.
It’s become a habit, staying glued to the TV while he’s off and Izuku is working. Just in case. Just in case anything ever happens, and Katsuki needs to snatch the suitcase resting on the balcony and soar his way to wherever Izuku needs him.
“—civilians still inside the crumbling remains of what used to be the remains of Kamino Mall—“
In mere seconds, Katsuki is flying off the balcony.
Under the yellow hospital lights, Izuku’s skin is pallid. He looks just as he actually is: closer to death than life.
Compound fractures in every single limb, Quirk overuse, second-degree burns spanning his legs, a spinal fracture-dislocation and a shattered orbital bone. Medically dead for forty-seven seconds. A machine breathes for Izuku, expands the transplanted lung inside his chest.
The doctor, having treated Izuku twice this year already, warns him that CT scans show severe brain swelling and signs of bleeding. The healers have done their absolute best for the day, and will call in for nurses with specialized tissue-rebuilding Quirks tomorrow morning.
There’s still blood crusted at his temple. Brown flakes crusted on the stark, stiff white sheets. This is the cost of their career.
In Katsuki’s own chest, his lungs collapse from the weight of Izuku’s longest coma yet, from the uttered warning that he may need to prepare to say goodbye, and his world pauses. With no oxygen to supply his blood, the room spins and spins and spins, and inevitably, he wakes up in a bed right next to Izuku.
Eijirou brings him his hospital bag and explains how he found Katsuki and screamed hell until the nurses came. Even his smile is missing its usual sharpness from his perch at the foot of the bed, eyes dimming every time he looks over to Izuku. It just sinks Katsuki lower.
Sixty two days, nine hours, forty minutes and seventeen seconds. Katsuki is released but lives in the hospital anyway, taking every single spare second to search Izuku’s face for a sign of waking up.
Katsuki loses thirty pounds. Fights and fights and fights any single soul who dares drag him from that room, away from the boy he’s died for. Keeps his eyes glued on a comatose face, as calls and texts pile and pile, and the sun rises and sets in a monochrome blur.
On day seventy, Izuku finally wakes. Fully healed and with half of the muscle mass he worked so hard to gain over the years, he smiles at Katsuki around his breathing tube like they’ve just woken up next to each other in bed on an average morning.
He’s furious. He’s devastated. Deep in his chest, something dark crests to replace the weight that rushes from his lungs. A flurry of nurses rush in to check vitals and run strength tests.
In the reflection of the window behind Izuku, a hollow, defeated boy stares back at Katsuki. Someone frail, who carries failure in the slope of his shoulders. Someone who is not Katsuki at all.
Izuku’s voice rasps from weeks of disuse. “Sorry I was late, Kacchan.”
And in that moment, he decides to protect him.
“I’m not doing this anymore.”
A slow blink. Izuku clenches his jaw.
“What do you mean?” he asks, as if he doesn’t already know.
For three years, they’ve dreamed in the same bed, shared the same colds, exchanged hundreds of fears and kisses and beyond. Molded from the same earth, they’re always on the same wavelength. A step ahead of each other, ready to carry what the other drops.
In high school, Katsuki’s apology sparked the wick of what would be an incredible friendship. It would go on to fill their cracks with gold and ignite the embers of the feelings that were always hidden just under their surfaces, then eventually spread into the full-on flames of their relationship.
In this life they’ve built together illuminated by the warmth of their love, Katsuki blows that fire out.
“You live like your only purpose is to die.”
Izuku winces. Whether from his words or an ache, Katsuki keeps his hands to himself this time.
“I know,” he whispers.
Angry now, Katsuki stands from his chair so harshly that it skids back, and his vision spots. “You really don’t have anything else to say to that?”
Izuku’s eyes well with tears, but all Katsuki sees is blood pearling from new wounds.
“I don’t think I can stop.”
Cold tears dripping down his jaw, that darkness plateaus and cracks a fissure across Katsuki’s chest.
“Alright then,” he grunts through the tremors. Katsuki stands and drags his rooted feet to the door. It goes against his very instincts, but if he stays, he’ll never leave again.
“You’re still alive. Don’t take it for granted.”
“Kacchan,” Izuku cries after him. “Kacchan, I love you, you have to know that. I’m so sorry.”
For the first time in over a decade, Katsuki leaves Izuku alone in the hospital.
Hours bleed into days into weeks. Katsuki’s mission success rate hiccups. In each civilian he digs from rubble, he’s reminded of the person who showed him the strength in saving. Katsuki sees only in one dimension—mostly in shades of green.
Food—his escape, his comfort—loses its taste. Rice, once fluffy and familiar to him, becomes rubbery and stale. The loud notes of coffee are silenced into flatness. Spices, once thrilling, become nothing more than an ache that sits at the bottom of his stomach.
Katsuki has Eijirou and Shouto move his things out, and trusts them to know what things are Izuku’s to leave behind. The lease still has six months left on it, but he doesn’t give a shit about paying the rest. Being there will send him right back into that shell of himself that he was in the hospital, so he signs for a place as far as possible from their old home.
Life as he knows it dims. Even as Katsuki hates what this is doing to him, it’s the same ache that rings from the twin scars over his shoulder and stomach, the kind he’d throw himself into again and again. The kind that doesn’t taste like regret, but vindication.
He tries because that’s what he does: tries and tries and tries until he masters something. Meets Eijirou for beer, hides how his sweatpants barely hang onto his hips. Throws empty jabs at Denki, even if he’s already used them all before. Lets Shouto into his new apartment, pretends like he listens to his new cat’s name over the echo of the ache in his chest.
Somehow, six months pass. Izuku is everywhere. In each civilian on the site of a villain attack. Green, green, green in the climbing vines in his mother’s garden. The white of his skin in that hospital bed whenever he looks at the clouds.
And Katsuki, as much as he wants to bleed with rage, is numb.
He catches his mom crying in his bathroom when she sees how bare his new apartment is. It’s only been a few months, he’s still getting around to it. Working is so much better than staring at the blank walls. Mitsuki tries to wipe her tears away, but it’s too late.
“I get why you two broke up,” she sits him on the couch and grips his face between her hands.
Once upon a time, those hands tucked him into bed and flipped the pages of his favorite All Might bedtime story. Cleaned his wounds from adventures, always with Izuku. Once upon a time, they absorbed any hint of fear or pain.
Today, they shake.
“But at what cost?” Mitsuki gasps. “Katsuki, look at yourself!”
Oh, does Katsuki look at himself. At that broken boy in the mirror, hollow, hurting, setting a suitcase on the balcony, memorizing maps so he’d know exactly where to go in the blink of an eye, glued to the TV screen, trembling by hospital beds.
He knows damn well that he’s just half a man right now. But after that day, Katsuki remembers that he needs to fill that gap.
At the one year mark, he agrees to room with Ei. As much as Katsuki hates admitting defeat, he’d do the same for his best friend in a heartbeat, and he’s currently lucid enough to know that shit needs to change.
“Maybe a change of setting would help,” Ei suggests over dinner one night. His cooked meals are never as extravagant anymore, but frankly, anything impresses Ei. Katsuki almost feels well enough to snicker at that thought. “I bet being around all these memories doesn’t help, huh?”
For all the stupid shit that’s ever come out of Ei’s mouth, he just might have a point. Because Katsuki is well past his boiling point; sick of seeing a shadow out of the corner of his eye everywhere he goes, of hearing his childhood nickname whispered in crowds, of continuing to sleep on only the left half of the bed, of making katsudon on Friday nights in muscle memory and breaking down into tears once the finished product sits in front of him.
That night, Katsuki smacks his pillow in the middle of the bed and sleeps right there. He sleeps and sleeps and sleeps, even if his pillow turns wet and his fingers itch for freckled skin to touch.
The next Friday, Katsuki stops himself from making katsudon. Instead, he makes the world’s most horrendous drink, and subjects Eijirou to the experimental cocktails he stuffs into the space left behind by the katsudon.
Slowly but surely, he gains his weight back. Old sweatpants fit him again, but at the memory of crooked fingers petting over them, he donates them and buys a new rotation.
As much as Katsuki tolerates Shouto, it burns when he visits. In the gray eye, Katsuki sees his own truth; ash left behind after fire, fingers clutched white around the rails of hospital beds. In the blue he sees Izuku, smiling at his own gravestone.
He’s too kind for his own good, likely visiting the both of them and doing his best to ensure they’re doing okay. Stuck in the middle, like he always was. Katsuki’s fingers itch for answers that lie just a question away, but he’s too weak to let them leave his lips and Shouto knows better than to provide them unprovoked.
Shouto sits on the couch and prattles on and on about his cat so much that his voice blends with the beat of the raindrops on the roof. He is so much stronger. Izuku deserves that.
Oddly enough, something old sparks in Katsuki that night. In the reflection of the window overlooking the glowing city lights of Tokyo, he sees the kid that loved being on top of the world, and decides that he deserves a chance again.
Two years later, Pro Hero Dynamight takes a six-month leave, claiming burnout. Media outlets and fans alike praise him for knowing his limits, for setting an example to younger heroes. For reminding the public that even heroes need to nurture their hearts from the highs and lows of wins and losses.
One seventeen-hour flight later, he touches down on a new continent.
Just over a mile away atop the Acetanango Volcano, Katsuki witnesses fresh lava spew from Volcano Fuego. Earth’s molten core hardens into igneous rock, and he learns that the people of Guatemala mold their lives around it. Villages let the hardened lava be and in it, shrubs and insects that are capable of surviving the toxic volcanic gases will gather and grow, blissfully unaware of the destruction caused by its eruption.
It’s grounding, being reminded of nature. How it exists so freely, how humans study its patterns. If he were a braver man, he’d let his jaw drop to the ground with the rest of his hiking group. But all he feels is relief from witnessing a disaster he doesn’t need to fix for once.
For the first time, Katsuki doesn’t look over his shoulder.
On that foggy volcano in Antigua, Guatemala, absolution melts into his skin in the humidity of dewdrops over his cheeks. The scar tissue in his chest and abdomen scream with the change in altitude, stretch with every stride up. But he still hikes.
Floating on a kayak at midnight in Punta Cuchillos, Katsuki watches in awe as bioluminescent algae glows in the seawater with each paddle. It’s pitch black outside, and the waves rolling from the ocean shine a cyan blue. He dares to dip a hand into the water, and when he lifts it, it glitters. Despite his nausea from bobbing atop the tides, the smile that spreads on his lips feels strange yet familiar.
In the downy-soft sherpa of a llama at Machu Picchu, Katsuki finds forgiveness.
From the hanging bridges in La Fortuna, he dares again, between stumbling feet and curses as the wind swings the bridge back and forth. For once, the rain pelting the hood over his head doesn’t feel like an omen, but a promise. On top of the world, Katsuki grips the ropes that support the bridge and looks down. Even if it stings, the boundless green of the jungle below doesn’t render him breathless anymore.
With a keel-billed toucan perched on his wrist in Dominical, Katsuki remembers that his hands are capable of much more than hurting. As the tour group bursts into hushed laughter, he pets a gentle finger over the white spot on its chest in reverence.
Freshly brewed coffee in Bogota, Colombia burns Katsuki at first eager sip. Mocha and tobacco explode over his tongue, vibrant in notes he didn’t know he was still capable of naming. The beans were harvested that same morning and ground by Katsuki himself; in the throb that follows the scald, he accepts.
Accepts the way he accepted that hand over ten years ago. Layers and layers of scar tissue and the instinct to protect.
With the frisk tides of Playa Blanca lapping around his aching knees, forgiveness comes too.
Most importantly, Katsuki forgives himself.
Three years later, Pro Hero Dynamight announces that he’ll now be a part-time hero, specializing only in internationally threatening operations. It’s to save his energy and prioritize his expertise, he tells the media. There’s a strong new generation that’s more than capable of handling the rest. Katsuki likes to think that his lower back and knees will thank him for that decision, too.
In his sudden increase of free time, he takes up knitting.
Within weeks, a mysterious unmarked package addressed to Pro Hero Shouto appears at his penthouse mailroom, not a label or trace of its sender in sight. Several bomb squads and a hero with an X-ray Quirk are called in, and Katsuki rolls his eyes at the melodramatic headlines online.
Soon after, Shouto posts a picture of his fluffy calico cat wearing its new sweater. Half-white, half-red, to match that stupid hair of his. Katsuki grins at his phone screen like an idiot.
He’s not sure when exactly food started to taste good again, but it was somewhere between his tour of Central America and now. With his travels, Katsuki brought back local spices to test in the kitchen. Mild recipes he translated from chatty old women, family staples shared in hotel lobbies.
Katsuki can’t stop now. Coffee is too bold not to have every morning. Matcha too smooth not to enjoy in the afternoons, sake too warm not to share with his friends. The breeze of wind on his skin as he runs at six in the morning is too crisp not to bask in, and the skyline view at his new apartment is his favorite of all.
At night, he happily sprawls over the entire bed like he did as a teenager. Thinking of his name doesn’t hurt anymore. Instead, he’s curious, but not enough to download social media again. In his heart, he knows Izuku made it out okay—he always does. That’s an improvement if Katsuki has ever seen one.
(And dried chiltepin from a street market in Guatemala is too smoky not to add depth into miso. If it’s hilarious to watch Denki choke on its intensity, then so be it.)
Some things never change, Katsuki supposes.
According to the news, Pro Hero Deku has completed yet another high-profile rescue mission in the United States and will receive an accolade named after himself. The Heart of Hope, the American military calls it. There’s not a single injury or death to report on. It’s a complete victory in its purest form, solid enough for Katsuki to sink his own teeth into.
Maybe some things do change.
Katsuki watches, like he always has.
There’s an awful lot to think about in the hours that he’s not working.
Like how he’s supposed to hang these holiday lights by himself. Atop a ladder on his generous balcony, Katsuki frowns at the logistics of having to hang the lights, climb down, shimmy the ladder over, then start all over again.
Years ago, Izuku would Float up by the ceiling and hang them like that. Katsuki would feed the string up to him, and that was that; flawless team effort, despite inappropriate Quirk usage. On the privacy of his balcony, Katsuki allows himself a fond smirk.
And how it’s always sucked cooking for one. Too many leftovers, not enough hungry mouths to lick plates clean. There’s nobody to bounce dinner ideas off of, to throw the decision to. A lack of pleased hums and awed compliments uttered around a full mouth.
Sometimes he fills that part by bringing leftovers to Shouto, who still never actually learned how to cook. He’s not animated enough for Katsuki’s liking, though, so sometimes it’s Ei, who pounds on the table when it’s especially good.
As Katsuki plates his own dinner that evening, he eyes the other plate sitting in his cabinet. A creature of habit, he only ever uses the same plate for himself, and keeps only two plates in his cabinets—it leaves room for more seasonings, after all. Dust is collected on it in a thick blanket and he trails a single finger into it, wondering how he ever allowed it to get this bad.
Katsuki washes the extra plate, and it sparkles in a way it hasn’t in years.
“Will you make her socks, too?” Half-and-Half says around a mouthful of rice. “Her paws get really cold.”
“There’s no way you can’t know cats hate that shit,” grumbles Katsuki. “She needs a better owner.”
“You’re welcome to babysit Sora anytime. She likes to hiss at strangers just like you do.”
He grunts when Katsuki kicks him under the table. The frankly startling amount of plates shake on top of the table when Shouto flinches at the next jab, and Katsuki glares.
More plates are devoured under the dim lights of a restaurant that only ever seats Japan’s elite, and the waiters keep them coming even when Shouto waves a grateful hand. Eventually, the ambiance turns somber.
“He’s back in Japan, y’know,” Shouto says cautiously. “And he wants to see you.”
Suddenly, Katsuki is full. He sets his cup of tea down. “‘Course he does.”
“I could set up a meeting for you. In a public place, so you don’t destroy everything.”
“We wouldn’t fight—“ Katsuki starts, then chokes once he realizes what he said.
The expression on Shouto’s face is a mix of exasperation, hope, and pure, unfiltered obnoxiousness.
“So you do want to see him.”
“I—“
Fuck, did these years do something to him. They tore and stitched him back together. They whittled at the layers around his heart until it was raw and exposed again. Made him cool all that white-hot anger and soothe that hurt, all on his own.
Katsuki, meeting the man who warmed the blood pumping through his heart for the better half of his life. Katsuki, facing the same man who froze it, who trapped him in uninhabitable land. Katsuki, who found a way to live on it anyway. He remembers lava cooling to hardened rock, ready for new life again.
These years have made him drop his old games, too.
“Yeah, I do.”
Katsuki isn’t sure what to expect when the day comes. Maybe a man made mostly of metal and pins and grafts, maybe half a man in a wheelchair.
The sight of those green curls alone at a bench nearly make his heart stop.
But in Nara Park, Izuku Midoriya sits whole if not for the cybernetic hand that cradles a thermos of tea. Regardless, he’s in one piece.
It’s silent when Katsuki sits exactly two feet away from him. His heart hurts, it sings, it screams. With a wobbly smile, Izuku stares, and Katsuki burns under his gaze.
“You look healthy,” is the first thing he whispers. Why that’s the first thing he says after all these years, Katsuki can’t imagine.
If only he knew. If only Izuku knew what it took to get here. Katsuki stares, speechless, in awe of the person who has haunted his dreams for years.
“Kacchan…” Izuku’s voice cracks under the weight of his name, and Katsuki’s eyes burn.
Izuku, ever the flint to Katsuki’s steel, strikes a spark with just that word. True to his core, Katsuki snaps under the weight of what accumulated over the past three years. For the third time in his life, he bares his truth to Izuku.
“I’m sorry.”
Immediately, Izuku’s face falls, and his shoulders sag with the sigh that follows. “I understand. I always did. There’s no need to—“
But the tears running down Katsuki’s cheeks scald like fresh magma, bringing down with them the ecosystem he built to keep this man out.
“It took me three years to forgive you for doing to me only a fraction of what I did to you. Three years, and you gave that to me in a heartbeat as kids.”
A sob etches a crack in the earth of Katsuki’s chest, shifting as the fire presses inside of him. Next to him, Izuku cracks too, face crumpling.
“I searched every corner of the world for the reason. Why. Why me, why you, why us. Why things had to be this way, why the world came down on us. The common thread was that I loved you.”
Sobs wracking his shoulders, Izuku wipes away the tears falling down his cheeks. “Loved? In past tense?”
“Let me finish,” Katsuki rasps, gritting his teeth. “The truth is that it took everything in me to finally accept the way that you are. That I love you, and I can’t change that.”
Silence hangs in a somber fog over them, and dewdrop tears slip down Katsuki’s cheekbones. It’s then that he realizes that he never really left Izuku, never truly stamped this fire out; just dampened them down to embers until they were ready to see the light of day again.
The next words hurt to hear as much as it visibly pains Izuku to say it.
“That sounds like you want to change it.”
“The only part I needed to change was how scared I was,” Katsuki says lowly.
As the years passed, grudges became more and more slippery to hold onto. Katsuki knows all too well how short life can be, how forgiveness is freedom.
“In a way, leaving you was selfish. For that, I’m sorry. But I won’t apologize for giving myself the time to heal from how much seeing you like that messed me up.”
“Kacchan,” Izuku gasps. “You were never selfish. Never . I’m sorry for being so reckless. But… you have to know that I’m not sorry for saving people. The means, how often I did it, and the toll it took on you, yes. But not for giving those people another chance at life.”
“I know.” His next breath leaves slowly, serving nothing more than to lessen the pressure of the cracks in his chest. Colombian coffee scalds his tongue again and tastes like acceptance, bitter and bold. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“I like to think you’d be proud that I stopped doing that,” he says after hesitating. “Going so hard for every single little thing. I prioritize now, by sitting certain things out and letting others help.”
Only took him a war and ten more years to get that through his stupid, thick head. Katsuki fists his hands inside his coat pockets. Anger’s harder to keep in grasp nowadays, too.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Just… tell me what you’ve been up to these days.”
“Kacchan…” And when Izuku worries his bottom lip, fuck, who would’ve known it was possible to miss something like that.
“I don’t want to beat around the bush. I’d love to have you in any way you’re willing. Acquaintances, friends… just coworkers. We’re not meant to live as strangers. Just… let me know so I don’t get my hopes up.”
For a long time, he had nothing left to give because everything was already with Izuku. Daring as the day he crossed that hanging bridge in La Fortuna, Katsuki is honest.
“I’m willing to try again.”
A gasp. What’s there to be surprised about? Molded from the same earth, he must’ve already known. Then, he’s surrounded by Izuku, wet tears smearing on his face and squeezed in the same arms that haven’t held him to sleep in over a thousand days.
“I love you,” Izuku whispers. The words sink into him in blood that never left his veins.
Katsuki squeezes back. The relief washing over him is cool as the waves of the Atlantic ocean years ago. Glows like seawater on his fingers, like the awe only felt atop a dormant volcano. There’s a hell of a lot of things to make up for, but right now, this is all that matters.
“I’ve learned a lot, Kacchan,” Izuku sobs into his chest. “I’ve got so many things to tell you.”
Into the collar of Izuku’s sweater, Katsuki whispers his next promise.
“And I have a hell of a lot of places to show you.”
Two boys—no, heroes—clutch each other and sob for the hurt they’ve caused each other, only to save each other yet again. Katsuki breathes out the smoke clouding his lungs and rests in green curls.
When Katsuki blinks awake, he sees green.
Then red and white—and into his nose, stupid Sora yawns her rancid fish breath.
“Fuck off,” Katsuki grumbles, shoving her closer to Izuku’s side of the bed. With a soft meow in protest, she stretches and settles between their pillows.
Izuku opens one eye. “Don’t talk to a queen like that.”
“Tell your ugly friend his cat fuckin’ stinks.”
“Aww, y’know you love him,” he smiles, shimmying closer to Katsuki. “Beautiful, beautiful Sora-chan. Uncle Kacchan and Deku love you so much.”
Grunting, he pulls Izuku into his arms and tucks into his chest, hiding from the sunlight spreading over their bedroom. Izuku hums and threads his prosthetic fingers through Katsuki’s hair. They’re surprisingly gentle, and if Katsuki didn’t know any better, he’d think they were the fingers Izuku was born with.
Twenty four hours later and exhausted from an entire day spent on a plane, Katsuki watches Izuku’s eyes water with wonder at the sight of Mount Acatenango in Antigua, Guatemala.
As the sun rises over the mountains, he watches the lavender-orange light fill the smile lines by Izuku’s eyes. Together, they watch the same eruptions of Mount Fuego that changed Katsuki’s life.
Katsuki utters what lays at the bottom of his soul into the thin air. “Thanks for being patient with me.”
Izuku smiles and squeezes his hand.
“Thanks for waiting for me.”
And finally, he’s warm again.