Chapter Text
He’s too light.
De—he shivers like each drop of rain is a stone. He might just crumple like tinfoil if Katsuki doesn’t get him indoors. Civilians churn around them. Most scatter, limping for safety, but a few fight to get closer.
Katsuki turns his face up. Thank fuck, he moved quick enough to catch him. He’s out cold, pale and thin, limp and weak against Katsuki’s chest, yet stiff in ways that don’t feel right, and he shakes like what strength he has left is scattering too, running away when he needs it most.
“Deku? Oi!”
“Is he okay? Oh god, I didn’t mean to, is he okay?”
“I found him. We need a car—he’s messed up—” Katsuki tips him forward until his face meets his chest instead of being slapped by rain. “What did you people do?”
“—We’re en route!”
“—We h-hit him, but he already seemed disoriented when he found us and then h-he passed out!” The filthy-faced man wrings his hands. “We were being controlled—I didn’t mean it!”
No one ever seems to mean it. Their faces get older, and the world gets grayer, but he never holds a cruel word against it or lets it touch his smile.
Why was there ever a time that Katsuki hated him for that?
An anxious pair of hands try to touch him then flinch away. Katsuki forces the lips back over his teeth, trembling with something downright Vesuvian, he might entomb everything in a five-block radius.
“We should get rid of him,” one of the remaining civilians snarls, and Katsuki almost shoots her before he registers that she’s facing away, looking down at a pile at her feet.
Only then does Katsuki remember the piece-of-shit villain lying there with a dented skull. The civilian grips a section of pipe, and Katsuki swallows a surge of rage, wondering if it’s struck the body in his arms.
“What if he wakes up and comes after us again?
“I d-don’t know,” the man loitering nearby says with a doubtful, bruised face, his voice almost carried away by rain. “Wouldn’t that make us just as bad—”
“He deserves it! After all the things he made us do—” she ends with a sob.
Katsuki almost lets her do it. “Leave him,” he says and wonders if he’ll have to shoot the civilian after all when she twitches around with a glare like she might turn the pipe on him. “Prez, we got a villain that needs pick-up.”
“Understood! How’s Midoriya?”
“You have no idea what he would’ve made us do to your friend if you hadn’t come,” she says, and Katsuki wishes she hadn’t, because he has an idea now, now having looked and seen shadows of fucked-up stories in her eyes.
“Bakugou?”
Now he wants to take up the pipe himself. His quirk would make it too quick. The man at the side has become silent, fearfully looking down.
She sneers at Katsuki’s hesitation and says with empty satisfaction, “Give me one reason I shouldn’t.”
Katsuki could say a lot of things. That the law will punish her, and it’ll give her nightmares, but what is the law worth now and what is one more nightmare?
“Bakugou!”
“It’ll hurt him.”
The pipe clangs across the asphalt and jolts to a halt in the curb on the other side of the road. She sits heavily, drained of poison, and left with nothing else to hold her up.
“Is he okay?” she asks.
Katsuki doesn’t know. Clamping his phone between his chin and shoulder, he flattens his hands to his back, trying to drive away the shivering with his quirk, but he’s limp like a sack of brittle twigs. Katsuki knows some of the shaking is his own because he’s fucking scared. So much that he can’t even lie to himself about it.
“Prez, how long?”
“We’re almost there,” he says, and Katsuki can hear his fear too. “What does he need?”
“I d-don’t know, he’s real sick, he’s cold and he won’t stop shaking and—and he’s too—” his voice cracks. He has no right to be holding him this close or touch him at all, but it’s not like he can leave him on the cold, wet ground. Even touching Katsuki has to be better than that.
He’s almost dizzy with relief when he sees the red sports car screech up.
“Deku-kun!” Round Face, Prez, and Half-n-half come hurrying out before the flashy car has fully parked, their faces identical in worry.
Hawks’ mercenary face slackens, but what right does he have to be worried or relieved when he and his brilliant band of bastards authored this outcome? He must read his condemnation because that asshole slides into a grin.
The rest come bursting out of the bus, squeezing closer to get a better look before Prez wards them off. With Round Face’s help, Katsuki gets him strapped into the passenger and reclines the seat until it hits the back row.
A few flying feathers pull the frayed mask further down to bare his neck. Oh shit. Several of them gasp and then fall into harsh silence.
“Ah, sepsis. I thought so,” Hawks says, incidentally, and Katsuki wants to season and slow-roast him like a turkey. “Bakugou, you sit with him.”
Everyone else pauses … and looks at Katsuki like it’s the weirdest idea ever to give him the only open seat in the car, and it is, but there’s no fucking time to hold a fucking raffle so Katsuki takes the fucking seat behind Hawks and the rest of the class nabs the villain and runs to the bus.
Hawks takes off with a stomp on the accelerator. “Keep his head still. Use your quirk. Low body temp is not a good sign.”
His face is clammy under Katsuki’s quirk-warmed hands, but he keeps shivering and Katsuki wants to rage. What fucking good would Katsuki’s hands do? His neck is slashed and swollen and a furious red and pus leaks from a crusty, rotten-smelling wound. The whining cavern in Katsuki’s chest shudders.
Hawks turns the heat up to max. Hot air blasts from the vents until the car is baking, but it doesn’t help. He still fights the seatbelt, trying to curl up and defy physics until he’s occupied a tenth of the space he should. He looks so damn small and pale, it’s wrong.
When they reach UA, Katsuki almost wishes they hadn’t.
Just inside the gates, aching with impatience, he holds him while Round Face shines with the purity of her conviction and speaks to a mob; made vicious and ugly by fear, and he keeps silent. He watches her change animals back into people, with her sincerity, and he keeps his anger tucked away.
Katsuki knows it won’t leave him. It doesn’t obey physics. He can fold it and fold it and fold it, but when he no longer keeps it clamped down, it will spring back uncrumpled and uncooled by time. He suspects it’s a failing he won’t ever outgrow.
A hand finds his shoulder. He looks to the side to see Shitty Hair watching him with worry. “I won't fuck it up.”
He frowns. “I wasn't saying you would. You—”
“Shut up and let her talk.”
If you wanted an escalation, you came to Katsuki. If you wanted meaningful human connection and to help De—
Katsuki keeps quiet. And he keeps on keeping quiet when they place him on a stretcher and rush him away. Recovery Girl’s wrinkled grimace of worry pulls them all along. The entire class holds their breath outside the infirmary doors.
It’s dark by the time Recovery Girl lets them know that he’s fine. He’s fine.
He’s fine.
And the silence stops smothering Katsuki.
She tuts. “He’s still a bit dehydrated and unintelligible due to fever, and he resisted when we tried to take off his costume off, but—”
A crash has Katsuki flying past her. A stupid, green dumbass has his leg half out the window. He turns as Katsuki grabs him by the shoulders and presses him back onto the bed. A snarl bursts through his chipped respirator, then he blinks up at him through his ragged mask.
And stares, and goes still. Katsuki backs off him, weirded out when his fever-bright eyes don’t leave his face, not even when the rest of the class comes running in.
“He’s well enough to leave. Apparently,” Recovery Girl says tartly, her cane poking at a yanked IV. “Perhaps you should escort him to the dormitories for a hot meal and a long rest.” And with that, the entire class forms an iron cordon around the bed.
“Deku-kun,” Round Face says with a sweet, angry smile and Katsuki feels a laugh coming on for the first time since forever.
“Midoriya, bruh.” Dunce Face claps a hand on his filthy left shoulder; the grip is loose but stays too long to be casual. “You stink. Like, both figuratively and literally. Let’s get you into the bath!”
Vacant-eyed and floppy-limbed, he lets them drape him with a few sheets and march him across campus, keeping far away from the civilian areas.
The entire time, he keeps looking over his shoulder at Katsuki like he's checking that he’s still there. Unbothered by his silence, Dunce Face and Elbows chat non-stop and help him take off his iron soles and shoes when he just stands there in the genkan, then they push him into the bathroom. When Katsuki walks through the door, he walks into his fixed green gaze too. It’s … weird.
“Say something, Midoriya,” Elbows sighs, reaching for his mask. “It’s not like you to give us the silent treatment! Let’s get this off you—”
Everyone is on the floor. Katsuki bursts up through a mad tangle of Blackwhip and grabs a skinny ankle before he can slip past him out the door.
With an alarmed hiss, he punches down at Katsuki then stops a few inches short. Green lightning jumps across to shock Katsuk’s cheek. He shifts, struggling to kick off Katsuki’s grip then freezes like a scruffed dog when Katsuki tightens his fist on his leg.
“You crazy?” Katsuki demands hoarsely, breath still coming back, bad shoulder screaming where it hit the tile, but he forces himself up and gets a firm grip on his skinny shoulders. “What are you doing!?”
For a second, he looks back at him, lips curving up subtly like he’s about to smile. But then his eyes get lost and he pulls the mask back over his head.
“Shit!” Katsuki’s dragged off his feet as he tries to run. His harsh, skittering eyes fall on the others coming up behind him, and he lashes out with a spray of black.
This unbelievable fucker! Katsuki snags his shitty rabbit ears as he makes another attempt for the door. “Deku!”
There’s a harsh rrrip as the worn costume fabric loses to Katsuki’s boiling rage. The entire hood tears off in his hands.
The whips fall limp and writhe on the floor like a washed-up jellyfish. He looks at the scrap of smelly cloth in Katsuki's hands, slaps a hand over his face and fuck.
A choked sob comes out of him, he claws at his chest. “Wh-where is it?”
“Midoriya?” Prez asks, hushed and careful.
Kaminari whispers, “Where’s what?”
His dirt-tipped nails dig into his forehead and he turns to face the wall, crouching down like he can’t bear to look at anyone or let anyone see him, and soft, hurt sounds spill out.
“Everyone. Get out,” Katsuki says.
Prez starts. “But—”
“Get out. He’s out of his mind with fever.” Katsuki jerks his head at the door. He wouldn’t want anyone to see him like this.
They leave in a line, faces tight and worried, but not one of them questions it; why Katsuki should be the one who stays behind. Not when he keeps sneaking looks over his shoulder—at him.
Giving Katsuki a slow nod, Prez bends down to pick up his broken glasses, then leaves last.
But now, alone with him, Katsuki doesn’t know what the fuck to do—because why me? Why are you looking at me like I got all the answers?
“Hey,” Katsuki tries.
He doesn’t answer, still crouched toward the wall, but he jerks at Katsuki’s voice and clamps his hands tighter over his face. His awful noises haven’t stopped; soft, doomed whimpers, like a small trampled thing is slowly suffocating in his throat.
There's a second trampled thing trying to scratch its way through Katsuki’s chest to meet it. His eyes sting and he turns around. The ragged mask clenched in his hand feels too heavy. Katsuki’s gone and ruined something of his again.
“Are you going to take it off, or do you want me to do it?” Katsuki turns to his locker, places the mask aside, and starts to undress. “Don’t try to leave. Everyone is waiting outside the door.”
Stung by the following silence, Katsuki turns to see that he hasn’t moved to strip, but he’s staring at something cupped in his hands. There's only a tiny glimpse of red before he tightens a fist over it when he notices Katsuki looking. It crinkles like cheap packaging.
“... Deku?”
He ignores him. His face has gone neutral, and he’s no longer making those terrible noises, which is probably not the positive sign you might think it is with the way he’s clutching the crinkle like it’s a ticket out of hell.
Whatever. He’ll deal with the psycho-shit later. Katsuki strips the rest of the way, then starts in on him. He stiffens up, fevered eyes sneaking to Katsuki’s face; big, surprised, then resistant as Katsuki’s hands near him. Just like old times.
“C’mon. You don’t gotta … you’re still a hero without it,” Katsuki tries some more. It sounds reluctant and fake coming from his mouth even though it isn’t.
Katsuki’s never known how to manage his words and look where it got them; a traumatized nerd; filthy and shivering in a corner like some fucked-up rodent that had chewed itself out of a sticky trap.
He looks … scared, almost hunted when Katsuki carefully pulls the respirator and cape over his head, trying to avoid brushing his neck.
Swallowing down something spiked and deserved, Katsuki pushes on his shoulder to turn him around. He tries to sidestep—
The lockers make a ringing thud when Katsuki slams his front into them. “You really want to start?”
—and he … relaxes into it. Like Katsuki beating him up is preferable to whatever bizarre shit he just tried.
Maybe that’s exactly what he wants. Because if he'd wanted someone who’d shower him in kindness and warmth, he would’ve asked Prez or Half-n-half.
He knew best of all that Katsuki wasn’t built for that shit. And if you’re cold, if you stay cold, you don’t have to fear walking back into the storm.
Chewing on his tongue, Katsuki finds the zipper in the frayed edge at his nape, pulls down—and stops. His voice, when he finds it, crackles like eggshells. “What … the fuck did you do to yourself?”
He flinches. But doesn’t respond.
“Not gonna talk to me?” It’s bitter and nagging and Katsuki immediately wants to take it back. “Little bastard.”
The rest of the reeking costume comes free, falling to his ankles, and what’s underneath doesn’t smell any better. He’s whipped and crossed with new scars, and mottled in bruises everywhere. Recovery Girl had patched the holes, but a few lumpy scabs hang on while others flake off, stuck to the fabric.
He’s feverish now instead of chilled. Simmering in a sullen blush while the antibiotics flush out the rest of the infection. The wound in his neck lies closed and flat and looks tiny for something that almost killed him.
He’s at least fifteen pounds lighter. Muscles stringy like jerky. Katsuki can count every rib and his vertebrae make a severe ridge between his sharp, bird-bone shoulder blades. Thinner than he’d ever been as a runty middle schooler, and if you put the two of them in a ring, Katsuki would place money on the old him, who’d had hungrier eyes than this sad, starving sack, his quirks-galore be damned.
And he’s dirty.
He ducks his head, keeping his fist closed over his crinkly secret when Katsuki grabs the back of his twiggy neck and marches him into the showers.
He shudders as the warm water falls over him, but watches Katsuki with dim incomprehension, and makes no move to clean himself, and Katsuki is out of patience.
Avoiding his eyes, Katsuki dumps soap on him and scrubs with a hand towel. He tries to go softer on his remaining wounds, but there are too many and the dirt needs a little pressure to come off. He doesn't flinch even when a weeping scab comes off his shoulder.
Shit. Katsuki watches the scab circle the drain and disappear.
Even though Katsuki’s a shit nanny, and his shit charge just stands there, rigid like a plank, Katsuki doesn’t stop until his skin is freed of packed dirt.
Then Katsuki forces him onto a stool. He curls over his closed fist as Katsuki rubs three rounds of shampoo into his scalp, and battles the tangle out of it with his fingers and conditioner.
It’s fucking weird that he’s touching him like this and even weirder to notice the hot thrill buzzing in his chest when he sees some of the old him shine through once the grease and city grime wash out and leave his hair bright and green, but the frail silence, and the strange, uncertain eyes watching him prod the remaining delicacy out of his actions.
Heart pounding, he gets it done fast and leaves a small handful of green knots clogging the drain.
“You gonna clean your asscrack and dick or you want me to do that too?” Katsuki grits out, finally scaring him into twitching and taking hold of the hand towel.
Katsuki turns his back to him and cleans himself triple-time. He isn’t in the greatest shape either after ignoring his physician to pull a three-week hunt through the streets, treating the rain as his shower, stealing naps on a bus seat, and eating on the move, chasing that fucking too-fast, there-again, gone-again, blip on his phone, and only seeing him in the grateful faces he’d left behind. Slow again. Slow again.
His shanked shoulder and abdomen twinge in time with his pulse, and his head throbs with a blooming tension headache.
He went out there looking for Deku.
What the fuck did he do with the mute, scared creature he’d found?
When Katsuki turns around, he’s watching him, the fist hiding his crinkly thing held close to his chest. Katsuki turns off the shower. He’d like to soak the aches out, but he’s on nanny duty and his charge is already at risk of passing out without getting dunked in hot water.
When Katsuki pushes him out of the showers, there are clean clothes for both of them waiting on the bench by his locker.
He sits hunched, still watching with that dumb, vacant look to his eyes as Katsuki towels him dry, tacks on a few bandages, and gets his underwear, shorts, and a dorky Sheets Shirt on him.
Katsuki can’t help thinking of the last time they’d been alone with him in this same shirt, punching the shit out of each other. Katsuki pulls back, even though the urge to keep his hands on him, to hold him down so he couldn’t leap ahead, is even stronger than it was then.
He almost looks normal, if you ignore the razor jut of his cheekbones and the dehydrated hollows of his eyes.
In the common room, Prez, Round Face and Half-n-half give them a long look, maybe checking to see if Katsuki’s left him in one piece, then take over nannying.
While Katsuki goes to the kitchen, the others get him seated and bundled into blankets on the couch. He drinks sugar and electrolytes, responding slowly to each of them, stumbling over his words. The world colors red. Katsuki takes a long moment to wrestle down a knee-jerk scream.
So he’ll talk to them.
… That’s normal too. If you ignore that their smiles look halfway like crying and some of them turn away to secretly wipe their eyes and they always have someone standing between him and the nearest exit, and half the class is missing, stationed outside the doors and windows.
Someone has started a batch of rice. Katsuki whips up the panko and turns on the fryer. Lunch Rush had taken over feeding the civilians. The rest of them have learned to fend for themselves and Katsuki’s on cooking duty most days since he doesn’t suck at it.
Thirty minutes later, he thumps the katsudon in front of him.
He stares like he can’t recognize food after eating cans and whatever he’s gotten by with for weeks—the band of bastards hadn’t fed him well if they’d fed him at all—probably ramen packs or some shit.
“Ya gonna eat or what?”
Silence.
It fucking stings. “C’mon. Work with me ya fucker. This ain’t like …”
He’s pink with fever, but it looks like a real blush when his eyes are shining like this, and then he’s smiling, and killing Katsuki’s voice. And then he’s catapulting toward the window.
They fight him around the common room, leaving Katsuki in the eye of a storm, overturning furniture and busting holes in the drywall and leaving shattered ice clumps everywhere. Everyone’s shouting their hearts out and trying to knock sense into him—good fucking luck—Shitty Hair locks him in a bear hug while Elbows wraps them both in tape.
“Bro! Stop this! Let us help!”
“Thank you for everything,” he says, powering free with a buzz of lightning that shakes them to their knees. “But I’m fine now. Please just give me some supplies and let me go. I can’t be here. I’ve already stayed too long. It’s dangerous—”
“Where is it safe, Midoriya!?” Ponytail asks in exasperation. Blackwhip deflects her knockout dart, which almost hits Cake Face, who barely dodges aside in time. Conniving little shit. “And please give us some credit!”
“I’m leaving,” he says serenely, “and you guys won’t be able to keep up with me.”
And wouldn’t you know, that anger Katsuki had kept folding down finally springs back up. He’d been keeping back, not wanting to blow up the damn place—he still had to sleep after this—but he’s fed up.
Katsuki throws the katsudon.
His eyes grow huge and offended, and then he’s blurring across the room to catch it and Ponytail ain’t a fuckin’ slouch with that dart gun.
Two darts poke into his shoulder. He has the balls to look betrayed.
“It’ll wear off in thirty minutes,” Ponytail says.
“You hear?” Katsuki says, meanly. “It’ll be cold when you wake up.”
He blinks at him, then takes a meandering step toward the kitchen, carefully holding the bowl.
“And soggy.”
The bowl lands on the counter and a dumbass hits the floor.
Not a grain of rice has dropped. Shitty Hair sighs, having caught his dumb head before he’d cracked it on the wood. “Nice check, bro.”
“Let’s get this genius to bed.”
In a red-yellow-blue dweeb cave, they lay him down and pull the covers over him. Shitty Hair leaves and Katsuki eats his share of dinner while he waits for him to wake up, unable to fill a yawning pit in his stomach.
Katsuki hated to admit it. But they couldn’t make him stay if he didn’t want to. More importantly, how could they get him to trust that he could?
With him out cold, unable to see his weakness with those unbearably bright eyes, Katsuki almost brushes a strand of hair off his face. But he doesn’t have a reason or a right.
Katsuki can’t look away. He’s so soft like this, tucked safe in his bed. Who knows where he'll be tomorrow? Who knows where he’ll be in twenty minutes?
He rubs his face, bottling up a scream of frustration. He wants to punch him, send him down deeper so he’d stay put for longer instead of running around dying of starvation and sepsis and organ failure—Katsuki’s hands are on his throat.
His skin is still too warm and the wound is flat under his fingers.
Katsuki rips his hands away and stares at them. Great. This fucker has finally driven him insane.
Otherwise, why else would Bakugou Katsuki scramble like this? Aching for any excuse to touch him and make sure he was real. Cook, coax, and squat naked in the bath, gut hurt, shoulder hurt, and wash the feet of his lifelong rival like a—
Fuck. There wasn’t any room for his ego right now, even shrunken down with his burning ambition doused and rightfully tossed aside like the hobble it had proven itself to be.
What could he say? Katsuki knew what he wanted to say, but would that change anything? He’d proven, rigorously ensured over the past thirteen years, that anything Bakugou Katsuki had to say wasn’t worth a damn in his ears.
When he wakes up, Katsuki hands him the katsudon before his eyes have finished opening.
“Mom’s?” he whispers, sitting against the pillows and cradling it with both hands.
He’s pinned him for now.
“The old man’s been using her recipe for years,” Katsuki admits. “It’s the only one I know for it.”
His scarred fingers tighten on the porcelain. “Thanks for keeping it warm.”
Katsuki waits for him to finish eating, thankful that he seems to be savoring every individual crumb of panko. It gives him time to go over all the ways he’ll slow him down so the others could contain him when he burst out the window. Hands in his pockets, he fingers a few darts. He didn’t want to use them unless he had to. Sepsis did a number on the liver.
“Thank you for the meal,” he says, placing the empty bowl on the bedside. He wipes the tears from his face and smiles. “And thanks for not telling her.”
Katsuki had thought about it, but the band of bastards had some things right. There was no reason to break her heart twice if her son was just gonna leave again.
“How long are you staying?”
He smiles. “Are you asking so the others know when to come stop me?”
“I’m askin’ so—”
Dammit. Fuck. Katsuki furiously rubs his head.
“I can’t for long,” he says apologetically. “Even if The civilians can’t be at ease with me here.”
Katsuki looked up. “You heard them?”
“No ... but I didn’t have to.”
“Fuck ‘em. They don’t own UA.”
He just smiles again, eyes going distant, and just like that, he’s not here anymore. He’s already back on the streets driving himself to death again and Katsuki couldn’t let that go on.
Maybe he couldn’t change anything, but—chest and stomach trembling, turning over like he’s got nausea and heartburn and shitty bees, Katsuki digs down to find his tiny supply of sincerity.
It doesn’t shine. It’s dusty and neglected, stuffed under the floorboards and hidden like contraband.
But under the dust, something’s been building strength for a long time, no matter how he’s tried to deny it light or smother it time and again, and if you split it open, you’d find something green and tenacious and he couldn’t stop it anymore than he could stop this fucker from leaving.
“You remember what I told you when Shigaraki stabbed me?”
He flinches like he’s been electrocuted, but he’s listening, watching. “I … don’t …”
“Stop trying to win this on your own.”
I’m here aren’t I? I’m here. You’re miles ahead. You’ve always been miles ahead. I hated being left behind, and I still do. I hate it. But from now on, I’m gonna stop running in circles and lying to myself that that’s better than running after you. I’m gonna chase you. I’m gonna keep chasing you, you stupid fuck, I’m just askin’—
Let me. Please.
It’s like pulling ribs out of himself, but he keeps going because he finally looks at him with eyes less like a scared animal, or a fuckin’ machine, and more like … like Katsuki’s peeling another mask off him and something old and stale rips free of Katsuki too.
“Izuku.” The shape of it feels complete in his mouth. “I’m sorry for everything I’ve done.”
Izuku doesn’t speak for a long, fragile moment, but then his hand trembles open to reveal a dirty palm and what looks like a shitty red candy wrapper. And with tears rushing down his face, he raises it up to Katsuki’s face, right next to his right eye. Then he starts laughing and it’s unhinged.
“It’s not even close.”
Not even close. To what? To—
… What the fuck? Seriously?
Katsuki almost laughs too. And it would probably sound just as insane. He rubs a hand over his mouth. He didn’t want to let his ego into the moment, but it comes out anyway, because when did it ever know its place?
“Fuck you.”
Izuku’s laughter tapers into sniffling.
“You’d rather carry around a piece of trash than … You—” An acid sting hits his eyes. He hates it and he hates this fucking idiot too. “Fuck you.”
But maybe a piece of trash and Katsuki don’t look much different to him.
“Why didn’t you wait for me?” He asks and it’s full of all the shitty, soft-bellied emotions he’s kept huddled behind his meaner, armor-plated ones. “I coulda—you were so fucked up. You jank-ass bitch.”
“I hate to point out the obvious but you’d been stabbed, twice—you still don’t look like you're at hundred percent, Kacchan.”
He sounds so much more like himself, it knocks the heat right out of Katsuki’s eyes and sends it running down. And Izuku starts stammering.
“Uh! I-I’m sorry too!” The idiot panics, even though his face is a thousand times wetter than Katsuki’s. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you. E-even if only to say goodbye. I thought you wouldn't …”
“Wouldn’t care?” Katsuki asks, and truly, it’s fuckin’ funny how Izuku’s face falls like he’s only just realized how idiotic he sounds. “Try again.”
Izuku’s gaze fixes on the pucker of scarring on Katsuki’s shoulder, half-hidden by the strap of his tank. “I thought … my letter … would be enough—”
He winces as a laugh bursts out of Katsuki, but at least it sounds pissed instead of crazy. “I tore it up. Bitch, tell it to my face.” Katsuki draws his arm over his eyes. Then he takes Izuku’s shitty red candy wrapper, and he tosses it in the trash.
Izuku’s lips tremble, he half rises from the bed like he wants to dive into the bin after it, and more tears streak down his thin cheeks.
Shit. “It’s just … a fucking wrapper, c’mon.”
“I know,” he inhales fitfully. “It’s just … it helped. It helped and I treated it so badly.”
Katsuki stares. “It's. Just. A wrapper.”
“It wasn’t just a wrapper until just now.”
Katsuki worked his jaw, a jitter on his tongue—the hell, is this what a fucking stutter feels like? Lame.
“I know I made it hard to believe, but … try … again.”
Just once more is enough.
“You don’t need it anymore. You won’t need it ever again. You got it?”
Can he fucking hear him?
Izuku’s smile dazzles, even through a sob. “I got it … I’m sorry I said you guys couldn’t keep up.”
Katsuki’s chest quivers. “Look, if you’re gonna leave—”
“I won’t.”
“But if you do.”
“I won’t go alone.” Izuku squarely meets his eyes, sparkling a little like old times.
The taut wires of Katsuki’s nerves slacken, and he slumps to the floor, suddenly too exhausted to move. He takes his phone and sends off the message to stand down, then lets it clatter to the floor. His eyelids are heavy like bricks.
He’d gotten through to him.
“Are you tired, Kacchan?” Izuku asks in a near whisper. “I promise I won’t leave. You can go back to your room.”
Katsuki scoffs. “No. I can’t.”
When Izuku bites his lip, scoots to the wall, and opens his covers, Katsuki doesn’t think too much, and lets his body move where it wants.
Izuku is too warm, and he’s too light, too bony where he's pressed on him, hip, arm, and shoulder. But Katsuki places his head next to his, and closes his eyes, going over balanced high-calorie meals.
“Gonna fatten you up.”
“H-huh?”
Under the covers, Katsuki grabs his hand. It’s nothing like the one he’s dreamt about for years. Too big. Too tired. Too scratched up and broken with dirt caught in the lifeline.
He’s late.
But at least he isn’t too late.
And that has to be enough.
Izuku squeezes back on his hand. “Kacchan?”
“Hmm?” Katsuki shifts. “What?”
“This is going to sound really weird.”
“You’ve never sounded normal in your damn life so just spit it out.”
Izuku chuckles. “Well, then, can you look at me? Just for a little while.”
Katsuki opens his eyes and Izuku’s fingers come out of the covers to touch the corner of his right. He traces the line of his cheekbone, back and forth, soft enough to tickle with his chapped fingertips, and with the way he’s looking and looking Katsuki suddenly feels like it’d be rude or inconsiderate of him to blink his own fucking eyes or something. Which is weird.
“What is this?” Katsuki can’t help asking gruffly, drowsiness tossed aside and heart about to punch out of his chest.
Izuku’s fevered green eyes expand as he leans forward. “A piece of heaven.”