Archive of Our Own ^beta

He remembers asking for someone. The first time Katsuki had woken up, he had asked for someone. He’s sure of that. 

It was all a bit of a blurry, groggy mess if he’s being honest. One minute he was floating in a quiet darkness of nonexistence and the next he was awake, staring numbly into the ceiling of a hospital room.

The beat of a heart monitor. Nurses walking by. A chair screeching against the floor suddenly. A quiet gasp.

He remembers his dad crying really loudly. A doctor might have come in to check up on him, he’s not exactly sure. Weirdly, he thinks his mom had actually hugged him, a gentle and foreign thing. Super fucking weird. Also, for some reason everything looked really fuzzy.

But he definitely remembers asking for someone. Katsuki just doesn’t remember who.

He remembers trying to sit up, an urge to leave - to search - suddenly taking hold of him. That was followed up with sharp pain shooting through his right arm. Shit, that had fuckin’ hurt.

Firm hands had held him back from sitting up any further, guiding him back down onto the bed. The mouth that had belonged to the hands had said: “You fucking idiot, Katsuki, stay down.” Probably his mom.

“Katsuki, you’re on a lot of meds, okay,” another mouth had told him, “You just got out of surgery, so you need to take it easy.” Probably his dad. And then -

“Wh’re’s,” Katuski remembers his own mouth mumbling deliriously, the words slurring together, “Wh’re is he?”

“Who, son?”

But after all that effort he put into trying to sit up, Katsuki was left too tired to speak. He had just huffed irritatedly, letting his head flop back down onto his pillow. He remembers closing his eyes, pissed off at his inability to fully articulate whatever the fuck he had wanted to say, and falling back into a slumber without dreams, the phantom of a name still on the tip of his tongue.

When Katsuki wakes up for the second time, he is only awake for a brief, slightly less delirious period of time, but it’s long enough to remember who he had been asking for.

For the first few seconds, existence is just darkness, dull soreness, some annoying ass whispering and a shit ton of medical care piled onto his body. Katsuki doesn’t have to be able to see to confirm that last one - he can feel its presence everywhere: a firm cast that hugs stiffly around his right arm; itchy bandages wrapped around his right eye, his neck and his chest; an IV that’s hooked up to somewhere on his left arm; one of those annoying ass nasal cannulas shoved onto his face. 

And also a shit ton of drugs that makes every muscle in his body feel like dead weight.

“Shh-shh I think he’s waking up!” Katsuki can hear someone whisper not so quietly from his left. He attempts to open his eyes to see who the fuck is making all of this noise - he unfortunately has a good suspicion about who it is - but he finds that his damn lids are heavy and unwillling to cooperate with him, so for a second darkness just flickers sluggishly.

“Should we hide or something?” another person asks. “And then pop out like it’s a surprise party?”

Silence.

“God, how did you even make it through kindergarten?”

“Hey!”

“Guys, shut up!” 

Katsuki opens his left eye long enough to be met with three people - collectively a fever dream incarnate - staring down at him with faces frozen yet eager. He’d open his mouth to tell them off for making so much noise, but that just feels like too much of a task. So with all the strength he can muster, Katsuki just blinks tiredly at them, hoping they can tell how grump and annoyed it’s supposed to be. Plus, his throat feels too swollen and sore for him to speak, a broken thing that matches his broken arm.

Practically his whole damn broken…

Oh. Shit. He remembers now. It’s a slow thing, like whatever the fuck is dripping into his veins from the IV right now, but Katsuki remembers.

A coffin in the sky. A death. A resurrection. A push.

It slides heavy over his chest, and Katsuki is suddenly more aware of his heartbeat than he has ever been before, but he puts that off for a second because there are two things slightly more important than that.

The first thing being his idiots who are standing over him to the left of his hospital bed. There’s Shitty Hair, who is standing closest to him with a ripe purple bruise blooming on his right cheekbone and a bandage taped over the crease of a cut above his eyebrow. Racoon Eyes is next to him with a bandage plastered over her chin and wrapped all around her hands. Dunce Face stands at the end of the bed beside her with the deepest fucking eye bags Katsuki has ever seen. Honestly, they could probably rival Aizawa’s. 

They all stare at Katsuki like he’s a deer they don’t want to scare off, waiting for him to make a move.

 Katsuki’s glad they’re okay - really he is - but he still shoots them a weak glare for being so noisy. They all give him a sheepish look back.

“H-hey, Blasty,” Mina says, lowering her voice carefully. She gives him an up and down. “You’re…you’re looking good!”

“Mina, don’t lie to him, he kind of looks like shit right now.” Katsuki doesn’t even have it in him to feel offended - he feels like shit right now.

“Denki!” she hisses.

“What!” he exclaims defensively, “We all look like shit! Not just him!”

“Bro…”

“You look fine,” Mina interjects, “you just look…really tired. Which makes sense given…well…everything.”

The second thing. Everything.

It’s not actually everything, but sometimes Katsuki finds himself feeling like the bastard in question is. (Don’t ask him what the hell that’s supposed to mean or how he feels about that - he doesn’t fucking know). The remembering comes as easily as breathing, and Katsuki remembers who he had been asking for when he had first woken up. He has half the urge to try to sit up again and leave the room in search of him, but that feels kind of fucking impossible in this state, so he just settles for a futile glance at the empty doorway. 

There’s no one there, which was expected. But somehow, it still leaves Katsuki waiting. Wanting.

“But we know you’ll bounce back soon enough,” Kirishima continues, ignorant to the silent war that has officially been waged in Katsuki’s medication-filled, sappy brain. “You’re way too manly to let that hold you down.” 

“I am surprised you haven’t cursed Denki into oblivion for saying you look like shit though,” Mina says with a laugh in her voice. Katsuki puts the war down for a second to huff frustratedly and point to his throat, shaking his head weakly. 

Then someone passes by the door, and Katsuki’s eyes follow immediately. Just a nurse. Not him.

“Wow, this is like - a once in a lifetime moment,” Denki says, with an energy that does not match the exhaustion in his face. “We can say anything and Bakugo can’t do a thing.”

Mina huffs out a laugh that doesn’t nearly sound opposed enough to the idea for Katsuki’s taste. “We…we’re not going to do that,” she says uncertainly, “because…” he shoots her a look that says ‘try me, I dare you.’   “Because that would be wrong! So wrong and- and unjust! Not herolike at all!”

Conversation floats easily in the air after that, like nothing had ever gone wrong, like they’re all back in the dining hall having lunch together before class resumes. Denki is saying something about the nasty ass hospital cafeteria food. Mina says something about how “at least they have decent desserts.” Kirishima interjects enthusiastically about daily protein intake or some shit. Katsuki just listens quietly, giving a roll of his eyes or a furrow of the brow or a tired blink as his response. 

Honestly, he feels like a few blinks and he’ll be knocked the fuck out again by whatever pain meds they have him on. The only thing that’s really keeping his eyes open is common courtesy for his stupid ass friends and this weird sense of commitment he feels to waiting. An uneasy waiting for something you have no idea when could arrive.

Someone passes by the door again, and Katsuki once again can’t help himself. He never had a chance in this type of war - he gives the doorway another glance. The mistake is fatal, because not only is it not him, but Katsuki’s glance doesn’t go unnoticed.

Kirishima, whose head is evidently not full of hair, had apparently been watching Katsuki a little too closely. Katsuki watches in dread as he furrows his brow in confusion and follows the phantom of Katsuki’s gaze, turning toward the empty doorway behind him. This causes the other two to pause their conversation on whether being a lunch lady or a janitor is the better job in order to look back, too. Fuck. 

“I…I didn’t want to point it out,” Kirishima says hesitantly, looking back at Katsuki with a wince in his eyes, “but you’ve been looking at the door like every 40 seconds, bro. Are you, like, waiting for some…” but he trails off, face falling into some sort of realization. “Oh.”

Apparently Katsuki is really fucking obvious. Caught red handed, he looks away to his right with the strongest glare he can muster - which currently is just a tiny bit weaker than his usual. 

From the corner of his eye, he can see how they all give each other a weird look, then look down at Katsuki with an even weirder look, which pisses him off. If he wasn’t feeling so out of it, he’d...do whatever the fuck he’d normally do when he’s angry. Thinking about that takes too much energy.

Mina speaks first.

“You don’t have to worry, Bakugo,” she says reassuringly, with a sympathy in her eyes. “Midoriya’s okay.” 

Katsuki huffs, immediately hating the way that they didn’t even have to wonder - they already fucking knew. 

“Yeah,” Denki chimes in earnestly, “we saw him a little while ago, he’s doing fine. Well…kind of.”

Kind of? Katsuki’s brows furrow questioningly, willing his face to speak the words “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? ” for him. They all give each other that weird look again.

“He’s just,” Kirishima says slowly, waving his hands in the air like he’s trying to grasp for the right words, “He seems like he has a lot on his plate. But he’ll…he’ll probably tell you once he comes to see you.”

Katsuki gives the doorway one last glance in some dumb hope that Izuku will just happen to pass by. Or maybe, Katsuki quietly imagines, he’ll come here deliberately. He’ll enter the room with a few bandages scattered all over him - definitely on his arms, if Katsuki knows anything. He’ll give Katsuki a relieved smile, and in that awkward, nerdy way of his, Izuku will ask if he can have a moment with him. Then he’ll sit down and then for a second maybe they’ll just look at each other, sitting in the silence, existing in the aftermath of it all.

Maybe Katsuki will say something profound to him. Maybe something stupid.

But knowing that this is… this is actually fucking stupid, Katsuki just sighs tiredly, looking back at his friends and giving them a quiet nod of understanding.

And then he blinks and is terrified by how hard it felt to open his eyes back up again. Shit, these pain meds are strong.

Kirishima hesitates, before putting a hand on his shoulder. It’s light and Katsuki doesn’t try to shrug him off. “But really man,” he says, voice a bit caught, “we’re glad you’re okay. What you did out there was…it was more than manly.” Mina and Denki nod furiously alongside him, looking more emotional and serious than Katsuki had ever seen them look.

But then Mina’s gaze falters slightly. She opens and closes her mouth a few times indecisively, before saying, “The business course…they caught some of it on camera, and…I mean I didn’t really want to - to see it but…but they showed us. W-we saw.” Her jaw tightens closed and she doesn’t continue.

“We’ve never doubted you, but that,” Denki says soberly, filling the silence she had left. He shakes his head, astonished, “You really are amazing, Bakugo.”

Katuski feels tired. He feels like he’s going to pass out any second, and he feels something that feels dangerously like youth creeping up his throat. So looking at his friends' very exhausted, very emotionally charged faces, he just gives them a firm nod.

We did it. We’re here.

That might have been a mistake, because immediately after, they all break out in bright smiles and rush him, attempting to smother him in a group hug. Katsuki gives them a look that says if they tried that then they wouldn’t be leaving this room alive, which just causes the three of them to laugh. They give him even more smiles after that, tell him that they’ll come visit again, and to “get some good sleep with those grade-A painkillers.”

Once the room is empty, Katsuki doesn’t let those “grade-A painkillers” sweep him off to sleep right away. Instead, he wills his eyes to stay open for as long as humanly possible, keeping them locked onto the doorway.

Just in case, he tells himself. Just in case.

Katuski might have woken up a third time, possibly a fourth time and potentially a fifth. Consciousness feels a bit like radio static and lopsidedness. It feels like a lazy blink. It feels like a Sunday evening that creeps up on you, the end of the day that you thought was further than it actually is. 

He thinks he saw his dad sleeping on the chair beside him one of those times. Some nurses had come in and checked his bandages, probably. 

But none of that matters. Seconds feel like hours and hours feel like minutes. The room is empty. Izuku doesn’t come, and Katsuki is still waiting.

This time - it's hard keeping count - Katsuki wakes up to blazing red light and a foot tapping that he really wishes would stop.

The sun shines down into his closed eyelids with the mercy of a damn warlord, and sleep is a relentless motherfucker who has its clutches on him. All that to say: there’s practically nothing Katsuki wants more than to just slip back into a nice, quiet slumber again. Sleep is just nothingness - he prefers nothingness to soreness, bandages, and thoughts that he can’t really do much with in his current state.

But somewhere to Katsuki’s right the foot tapping has stopped - abruptly - which perks his interest.

It’s a herculean task that takes more strength than expected, but Katsuki manages to pry his unbandaged eye open just a bit - only to be met with an obnoxious, blinding stream of sunlight that floods his vision white. He scrunches his eye closed, still seeing the imprint of the literal big bang on the backs of his eyelids, and turns away from the window on his right with a grimace. 

Sighing irritatedly, he internally curses the sun for ever existing, for ever being born. Fuck the sun. And after a second of contemplation of if curiosity is still a valid reason to wake himself up, he opens his eye again with a tired squint.

Quiet, warm rays fall gently into the room, painting everything from the blankets covering him to the walls on his left in a soft glow of caramel orange. The doorway still quietly taunts Katsuki with it’s emptiness, goading him and saying “made you look again you absolute fucking idiot.” Shadows stretch as far as they can reach under every corner and crevice, and dust just floats aimlessly in those thick pockets of light that come from the window he turned away from. 

The atmosphere is nice, peaceful, and also kind of fucking annoying because it means that the sun is setting and Katsuki has slept through the whole day. What’s the point in waking up if he’s just going to simultaneously lay uselessly in bed and fuck up his sleep schedule? It’s a damn waste in Katuski’s opinion.

When Katsuki turns his head to the right, he is once again bombarded with a blinding, setting sun that makes fractured light dance across his drowsy vision. But somewhere hidden in those crystallized rays and blurry dots, he can make out the shape of a quiet shadow. A figure. 

The foot tapper.

Sleep still lingering in his body, Katsuki brings his left hand up to the bleeding orange sky and kills the sun with a tired grasp, capturing all of its obnoxious light in his hand to make the shadow human. His expectations aren’t as high as before, it’s probably just one of his pare-

The simple sight of him.

Through the thick haziness that is heavy fucking prescription drugs, Katsuki’s heart skips a startled beat. His face goes slack. He blinks - winks? - rapidly, testing if his half vision is telling him the truth; and once he believes it, his mouth starts to pull up at the corners against his will with something sleep filled: a little crooked and languid and utterly unguarded. 

Izuku.

Katsuki’s heart bursts out and out and out - except this time it doesn’t kill him. This time he is alive, so, so alive. Izuku. Katsuki immediately redacts the annoying foot tapping from his mind, because none of that really matters. Katsuki is fine with that fact that he had waited idly by, picking lint off of his hospital bed and waiting for Izuku to come for the pure relief of seeing him here now - all bandaged up but undeniably here.

Last thing Katsuki saw of him was in the blink of a moment; a frenzy with adrenaline as the sole thing keeping him conscious. Izuku, his focus welded onto one single thing, was bloody all over and running like his life depended on it. The last thing Katsuki remembers was putting all the will he owned - all of it - into the palm of his hand and placing it on the curve of Izuku’s back. Go, he had willed, he had wished. Go and do it and come back once it's all finally over. Let it be done, let it be finished so that you can finally fucking learn what it means to rest.

And you know what, if there’s a god out there, Katsuki will thank them, too. Izuku has bandages wrapped around his arms and patches placed all over his face, but he’s okay. He’s here. 

Izuku is sitting right in front of Katsuki’s eyes, and he’s…hmm…he’s-

He is absolutely, unnervingly, silent. 

Katsuki - who is now past whatever that embarrassingly giddy shit was - puts the sun down for a second and rubs his left eye to make sure he’s seeing things correctly. He is. Izuku is sitting on a chair to his right in a white button up shirt and some pants, like he had just come back from school or some shit. His sleeves are rolled up, revealing that he does, in fact, have bandages wrapped all around his arms and his hands. He has a weird bandage placed on the top corner of his forehead, and also one on his cheek.

But most importantly: he is sitting quiet and…and just fucking staring. 

Katsuki just stares back at him, suddenly disoriented and feeling the stillness in Izuku’s body infect him too. No one dares to move, frozen like they both have knives held up against their necks. 

There’s no way he can’t tell that Katsuki is awake now, but despite all that Izuku doesn’t break out of his petrified stare. His face is paler than usual, his jaw is clenched, and sunken bags lay heavy underneath his eyes. Everything about him - from the way his neck holds up his head to the way his hands rest clenched on his knees - is left silent, still and tense. Everything except for his eyes. 

There’s no other way to describe it: Izuku’s eyes are loud. They are as big as an orchestra, opened as wide as a scream. His pupils tremble with the noise of it all - whatever noise that’s in his head that for some reason his mouth isn’t translating into explanatory fucking words yet. Izuku’s eyes are glued onto Katsuki, frenzied and filled with something that is both bewildered and bewildering. 

He looks like he’s in the middle of watching someone crawl out of a grave. It makes Katsuki feel like he is being watched as he crawls out of a damn grave - which is fucking unsettling given the circumstances that brought him to the hospital.

But waking up to a silent Izuku might just be more unsettling than any of that. Katsuki was expecting a warm smile, a bombardment of words that run a mile per minute, maybe - not...whatever the hell this is.

For a moment that seems like it will go on forever, they just stare at each other, both frozen and no one saying a thing. The silence is so thick that it could be cut in half with a fuckin’ spoon. 

Three long, endless seconds pass, and Katsuki - never one to waste time - thinks fuck this. He swallows dry, deciding to be the one to break the unbearable ice - but three seconds might just have been three seconds too late. Because as soon as Katsuki gets his mouth open, Izuku’s stillness finally breaks: his eyebrow twitches. 

It’s like a bolt of lightning hits the room, or like the final crack in a poorly made dam. Whatever the fuck it is, it is sudden, abrupt, and irrevocable. 

Still stuck in a stare, Izuku’s whole face contorts into a desperate, trembling building that is just bound to fall, and his chest starts to flutter rapidly with shallow, panicky breaths. Seemingly impossible, his eyes get louder than before, and as sudden and stinging as a slap in the face, Izuku is shoving himself off the chair and turning swiftly towards the doorway, desperate in his movements.

The chair scrapes across the floor. His footsteps are quick, anxious taps. Katsuki knows this sound -

This is the sound of him leaving.

Katsuki’s heart drops to his stomach.

“Don’t,” he rasps out in panic - and it really is a rasp, because fuck he sounds like his vocal cords got wiped down with sandpaper. Izuku is just shaking his head slightly to himself. Izuku is leaving.

“Don’t go,” Katsuki tries again, calling out weakly from behind him and cursing the hoarseness of his voice. Cursing the weakness in his body, and cursing the desperate, unrelenting want that has infected his damn heart.

Izuku hesitates then. He halters to a reluctant, slow stop just a step away from the door, and for a second it looks like he’s about to turn his head to look over his shoulder, to look back at Katsuki - but at the last minute he changes his mind. He doesn’t turn, but even from the hospital bed, even with one eye obstructed by a thin layer of bandages, Katsuki can see how Izuku clenches and unclenches his fists, how his shoulders bunch up, looking painfully tense.

Katsuki just watches as Izuku takes a deep breath, craning his neck and searching the ceiling. What he’s looking for, only the god that may or may not exist seems to know. Katsuki just waits for him to find it, with not a clue in the world of what the fuck just happened, of what the fuck is happening, or of what the fuck is going to happen.

A shaky exhale. “I…I shouldn’t be here right now, Kacchan,” Izuku finally gets out, voice careful and constrained, “I’m - I need more time , and…and I don’t want to make things worse for you when you’re still healing. Y-you should just rest.”

Katsuki - tired, confused, and feeling like he’s lacking a bit of inhibition - croaks out, “I don’t give a shit if you make things worse for me, just sit down.” But still, Izuku doesn’t move. 

Fuck it. He blames it on the drugs.

“Please,” he adds faintly. There’s no room for shame when the stakes are this high.

Izuku doesn’t reply. He just runs a bandaged hand through his hair anxiously, holding himself up like it’s too much of a task. He just stands there and Katsuki has no idea what the hell it’s supposed to mean. It’s so hard to tell what Izuku is thinking sometimes - it’s like he makes himself into a damn mystery when he really fucking shouldn’t.

But all Katsuki knows is that he wants Izuku to stay. To sit down, so that they can talk. So that Izuku can say whatever the fuck he needs to say, and Katsuki the same, until it’s all okay again. Until they can finally sit in the after, and take a fucking breath.

1 second. Two seconds. A third, a fourth, and finally a fifth.

The sixth second enters the room like a whisper, and Izuku walks out just as quietly. He leaves as any leaving would be: silent and without goodbye. 

He comes back with a cup of ice chips.

“I told a nurse you’re awake,” Izuku says, not quite looking Katsuki in the eye as he places the cup down on the bedside table next to him. “They said they’ll come to check up on you soon. I couldn’t find any water, but I found an ice machine, so you can have these.” 

Katsuki doesn’t reply.  He just watches as Izuku sits himself back down on the chair he had left behind, holding himself like it’s taking all of his effort not to dash out of the room again. He keeps himself grounded with anxious hands that keep a tight grip onto the sides of his chair, but since he walked in the room, he still hasn’t looked at Katsuki properly.

First and foremost parched, Katsuki reaches desperately for the cup like a man possessed. Fingers burning from the cold, he greedily digs inside and throws an ice chip in his mouth, relishing in the smoothness, in the freshness of it. And he could cry - ice is fucking amazing. Death really does bring out the beauty in simple things.

But immediately after parched, in close second, Katsuki is kind of pissed. Not the most pissed he’s ever been, because he’s glad Izuku came back - but still indignant. And can you blame him? How was he supposed to react to someone just leaving like that? How the hell was he supposed to know if Izuku was going to return or not?

But he did come back. Izuku pushed his chair away when he left like an asshole and didn’t bother moving it back when he returned, so now he sits here on Katsuki’s slightly impaired side and at a distance that is just - not fucking right. And now Katsuki has to turn his neck a whole 90 degrees to get a good look at him because his right eye is practically bandaged close, and having to turn like that is straining his already weak muscles, and everything is just so damn-

“Whyd you hafta sit so fa’ away?” Katsuki asks offendedly, his mouth cold and full of ice and irritation seeping into his tone. 

He was half expecting Izuku not to respond based on how guarded the whole of him looks, but it actually gets something out of him. Izuku’s eyes dart hesitantly, and he opens his mouth before shutting it closed. Listening to Katsuki’s subtle request, he scoots his chair forwards close enough to where he can rest an arm on the bed if he wants. He doesn’t, but maybe it’s the thought that counts.

The inches that Katsuki was able to win over allows him to study Izuku better with his half fucked up vision, and letting the cool melting sooth his torn up throat, Katsuki takes a good, long look at him.

He's got eyebags, looks like he hasn't gotten much sleep lately. There's something heavy on his face that makes his jaw clench tightly. His shoulders are even heavier. The shape of his mouth is downturned, like it can't help but be a frown.

Katsuki contemplates on if he should say something, looking off to the side and feeling the ice start to burn his tongue. Indecision never lasts him long though, so he crushes that ice into water and tells it to Izuku simply: "You look tired." 

Izuku doesn't look up at him. He works his jaw, silent and with something distant in his eyes.

And then quietly, softly and so fucking vague, Izuku just says, "Yeah." 

Katsuki furrows his brows. Maybe before he would have scoffed and echoed "Yeah? Really motherfucker? Yeah? That's all you got?", but that's not how he wants this to go - he wants something more, something better.

So Katsuki just looks, he just waits. He looks and he waits and he looks and he waits for…something. The something more. An understanding. An explanation. A beginning. Anything.

Silence. Staring and silence, that's all there is. As simple and as quiet as staring out into a horizon, that point where the sky meets the sea, watching as the sun blurs the line between the two. Until everything is all ocean, until everything is all glimmering stars.

You know, Katsuki had actually read somewhere once that before quirks were a thing, when exploration was something that meant something to society, we actually knew more about space than we did the ocean. Still do. He had read that back twice, and then thought to himself, “That makes no damn sense. Space is so far away. The ocean is right here. It’s just water.”

He didn’t understand then, but he thinks he gets it now. You get lost in oceans. Whether oceans are to be crossed or to be tamed - it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you’ll get lost in their turbulence one way or another. And after all of that, after rough sailing on stormy seas, they'll just lay you back on solid ground with a gentle, guiding hand on your back. After all of that, they just come back to the shore to kiss the sand. 

They do all of this, and they’ll never reveal shit as to why. They are silent in their primordial loudness, saying so much yet never enough to give you a good grasp of what it all means. What the ocean is really trying to say, in that weird language of its own. 

They carry so much - so fucking much - yet somehow they still have it in them to refuse to give you a name. Not a time nor a place. No reason. No explanation. You stare and it just stares right back, silent and larger than life.

How many years have we spent studying the sea? How much can we still not figure out?

Katsuki observes the ocean that sits in front of him now, the deep green waters he has known all of his life, who has always been right there, and once again comes to the conclusion that he can’t tell a damn thing of what he’s thinking. 

Because Izuku came back; he handed Katsuki a nice cup of fucking ice chips. Now he sits just here, still and troubled - his eyes like stormy weather despite the calm, mellow glow of sundown - and he won’t even open his damn mouth to explain why he returned. Why, exactly, the face he’s making looks so fucking heavy and convoluted. Why he said he needs more time. Why he left but why he won’t actually leave. 

Katsuki is lost. There are so many possible reasons that could explain this weirdness from Izuku, a whole other sea of possibilities and tragedies to get lost in. But he doesn’t want to get lost - he has shit he wants to say. He has shit he wants to hear from Izuku. All of that requires conversation, so how do you make an ocean speak? How do you get it to talk back in the way only people know how to? 

Because really, the only thing Izuku can seemingly manage to do is stare, and right now, his stormy green eyes are locked onto something below Katsuki’s eye level. Feeling restless and looking for answers, Katsuki shoves a few more ice chips in his mouth, grinds them between his molars, and then follows Izuku’s gaze.

We’re not totally useless though, so we know a bit about oceans. We know that the longest mountain range on earth is located underwater in the Atlantic Ocean - called the Mid-Oceanic Ridge. We know that the deepest the ocean reaches is the at Mariana Trench, at around eleven thousand meters. We know that the ocean is made up of salt water due to millions of years of erosion, and while he may not know every single one of his thoughts, Katsuki knows enough to be able to gather exactly what the fuck Izuku’s doing at this moment.  

Because Izuku has the inside of his cheek trapped between the clutches of his teeth, and has moved his hands to rest uselessly in his lap. But his eyes, focused and heavy, are locked onto the cast that is wrapped stiffly around Katsuki’s broken right arm. 

He’s staring at it like it's his. Like he was the one who did it. But it’s not and he didn’t.

This would have felt unforgivable, before - that’s just an unfortunate, honest truth. If this was happening even just a few months ago, Katsuki knows, like he knows his own skin and bones, that he would have erupted. He would have opened his mouth and screamed bloody murder. He would have yelled loud enough to get himself kicked out of the hospital - injuries be damned - because he would have seen this as proof of what he had convinced himself was the one truth of life: that Izuku looked down on him. He would have done all of that and more just because he knew Izuku would have let him, and because a single look from him is all it really takes to unravel Katsuki.

But Katsuki doesn’t explode now - he just doesn’t have that in him anymore for whatever reason. Instead of that, instead of an explosion, there’s just a tiny, quiet and slightly mortifying thing that happens.

It goes like this: Izuku’s gaze starts to burn through the cast, and before he can stop himself, Katsuki’s arm jerks a bit. It moves, tucking itself further into Katsuki’s side like a child hiding behind the tall, guarding presence of a mother - or at least, it tries to. 

It is a movement that can be named nothing else: it’s called shying away, an instinct Katsuki never thought he could possess. It’s what you call when your arm tries to move on its own, looking to hide its brokenness from someone’s big ass, overly concerned eyes. But there’s something else called no escape that leaves everything out in the open. Exposed and bare and broken.

It makes both of them freeze: Izuku not tearing his gaze from Katsuki’s arm but holding his neck still like he fucking knows, like looking away would prove that he was staring in the first place; and Katsuki clenching his jaw, keeping his arm right where it is, not daring to move it another inch. But frozen, Katsuki still has the audacity to let a sappy ass thought pop up in his mind - that he has never been more in sync with Izuku than in this moment. At least they’ve both been caught in the sin of being able to be seen and be seen vulnerable.

They both sit in it, trying to pretend like they’re not. It’s pretty damn horrible.

So now there’s a bunch of shit stomping its way over Katsuki’s sanity, making his mouth feel loose and unlocked and stupid and desperate. It’s the way the sun prickles warmly on his skin; it’s Izuku’s unbearable silence. It’s the way that warm lazy glow of sunset makes the room feel as smooth as a song; it’s the cool kiss of water that sits nicely in his throat from the ice chips that Izuku brought him. It’s the fact that after so many visits to the hospital, Katsuki supposes he should try to be more appreciative of the simple things in life. 

It also might just be the meds.

But all of that leads Katsuki to engage in something he never thought he would engage in. Something that is actually unforgivable. A solution to the oceanic problem at hand that might not even work.

“Dunce face said that the cafeteria food sucked ass,” Katsuki says abruptly, ripping the silence in two, “But Raccoon Eyes said the chocolate cake wasn’t too bad. You tried it yet?”

Every word that escapes Katsuki’s mouth is a new death, because small talk is akin to murder itself. But what can he say - death has made him desperate. Death waved its big ass hands in front of Katsuki’s bloody, dying face and told him flat out, “You think about holding his hand more than you do your own mother. You should probably do something about that.”

Izuku, the vast, incomprehensible ocean that he may have been, turns back into a boy through Katsuki’s sheer and clumsy determination. He blinks once, then twice - the first being out of pure confusion, the second in pure disbelief, and while he doesn’t actually look up at Katsuki, his eyes are now too preoccupied to worry about Katsuki’s cast. 

He tilts his head right with a perplexed, tired brow and his tongue running along the edges of his teeth. It’s the most life Katsuki has seen out of him since he walked back in the room.

“Have I…” Izuku says, baffled, looking like the words in his mouth don’t quite taste right. “Have I tried…the chocolate cake? From the hospital cafeteria?”

Katsuki musters all of the dignity and grace he has left, and says: “...yeah.”

A beat.

“N-no I haven’t.”

Another beat.

“Well…I guess we’ll never know if Mina is a liar or if she just has shitty taste.”

“Yeah, I…I guess not.”

Oh shit, this weak ass attempt at conversation is dying - the silence starts to become deafening again and the conversation is dying. Katsuki can see it start to flicker out right before his eyes.

But then Izuku opens his mouth. God exists and has blessed Katsuki, because Izuku opens his mouth to speak. “I…” he tries, with apparent difficulty, too, “I went to the cafeteria earlier though. I saw your parents there.”

“Yeah? How are they?” Katsuki asks, an eagerness in his voice that is not because he wants to know how his fucking parents are doing, but due to the fact that Izuku didn’t leave him hanging. 

“Good,” Izuku answers earnestly, the tension lightening his face a bit. He even manages to look in the general vicinity of Katsuki’s face - somewhere near his shoulder. “They’re doing good. It was weird seeing them though, after so many years. Your mom hasn’t changed at all. ”

“Yeah, she hasn’t,” Katsuki grumbles. “And what about your mom? How’s she doing?” 

Izuku looks away again. “She’s…she’s okay now. She was really shaken up, obviously, but…we talked.”

Katsuki nods silently, racking his brain desperately for more. ”You seen All Might yet?”

Izuku takes a deep breath and Katsuki’s heart immediately drops to his stomach.

”He’s…resting. But he’ll be okay.” Oh thank God. Thank you God. If Katsuki knew how to pray, he’d promise he’d pray every night. 

“And the rest of our classmates? How are they holding up?” 

“Most are fine. Some are still getting treated. Out of everyone else, I think Uraraka-san and Todoroki-kun got it the worst.”

Okay. Okay enough beating around the bush. Katsuki’s going to do it. It’s not that hard.

“And,” he says hesitantly, “and what about you?” It’s a genuine question. It’s true and honest - Katsuki wants to know. It’s at the top of his list of shit that he wants to know.

Izuku blinks at that like he’s taken by surprise. For a second he gets quiet again, and he leans back in his chair with a look in his eyes that says he is putting in some serious thought to the question. Katsuki, pleased with how well that seemed to work, silently pats himself on the back.

But then Izuku works his jaw, and Katsuki immediately recognizes that this was a loaded fucking question. 

“I’m not here to talk about me,” Izuku says, voice suddenly hard and face guarded even harder, leaving Katsuki with all his options exhausted.

Katsuki couldn’t have stopped himself, even if he tried. “Then why the fuck are you here?” he asks exhaustedly, immediately cursing the harsh way it came out. 

“I don’t-”

Izuku sighs exasperatedly, running a hand over his face tiredly. “I-I don’t know Kacchan!” he exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air. Something wavers in his eyes. “I don’t...” but he trails off and doesn’t say anything else. No one says anything else after that.

Bitter silence hangs heavily in the ai-

Nevermind. Nevermind, it’s not entirely silent, because now Izuku is back to tapping his fucking foot. Great. Katsuki reaches back into his cup and silently curses after finding nothing but some cold fucking water. Perfect. Also his bandages are starting to get really itchy. Fuck this life.

Izuku is fidgeting anxiously to his side, the only noise that obstructs the tense quiet. God, why does everything have to be so shitty between them? Why can’t it just be easier? This is a silence you can only get with a relationship like this: so much time spent knowing each other, never actually talking. This is them trying. This is them failing miserably. Katsuki has never been the type to just hang the towel, but he honestly has no clue what else he should do or how to fix this. Whatever the hell this is.

An oppressive, thick silence, a sinking feeling and some foot tapping. But then, unexpectedly -

Izuku opens his mouth, stopping at the crest of an inhale and searching for something in the air. “I’m,'' he chokes out, throat small and constricted. He exhales shakily through his nose and bounces his knee harder, turning his head away sharply towards the wall.

“I-I’m glad you’re okay, Kacchan,” he confesses weakly, voice caught and breaking at the ends. 

There it is.

This is more along the lines of what Katsuki was expecting, but for some reason it hits him harder than he thought it would. Izuku, jaw taut with tension and something sad pulling at the corners of his eyes, makes the start of a step, the olive branch reaching out, the beginning of dealing with all this traumatic shit they have been through, and -

Katsuki finds that he can’t bring himself to say anything. He doesn’t trust himself. It’s all too raw. Because when he really thinks about it… shit. He really did almost kick the fucking bucket. Katsuki was going to die. 

He did die, if only temporarily. But if someone asked him how death felt, he could explain it. He’d really rather not, but he could. He remembers.

“But I’m…” Izuku swallows, continuing with something wavering in his voice, “I’m kind of upset right now. A-at a lot of things.”

He tries to get the words to come out of his throat, but words don’t seem to be working for him today, so Katsuki just replies with an awkward and hoarse, “Ok.” 

And then a beat. A quiet before the storm. A moment before the tipping point. 

The foot tapping gets louder and that moment ends.

“You promised me,” Izuku strains, staring hard into the wall, “You promised.”

I know I can’t promise you a lot, but I’ll promise you one thing: I’m not gonna die.

Katsuki’s face falls with realization. Of a promise half broken by a promise fulfilled.

Still gotta win, right?

“I told you I was scared and you told me it would be okay. And then you- you almost…even after…in your room…”

Izuku lets out a shaky breath, his profile scrunched in a painful, heartbroken expression. “I thought we’d never get to...hang out like that again,” he says weakly. "Like real friends."

Now, there’s a few responses Katsuki knows he could have and probably should have given to Izuku in that moment.  Words fitting for this type of thing. Something with tact. He could have said, “I’m sorry for making you worry, and I’m glad you’re okay, too.” He could have said, “We were kind of totally screwed back there, so I didn’t really have a choice.” Which would have been followed up with, “But I thought I could do it, so despite all that, I tried anyway.” Or he could have even - impossibly - told Izuku, “I said your name. In the delirium of death, I said your name like a promise, like a goodbye. I held it next to my heart when I died.” 

He could have said all of that, and it all would have been true.

But Katsuki, a bit high on medication and thinking of some other type of truths, just says like a fucking idiot, “I can move over and make some space for you right now if you want.”

Izuku sniffles, sounding half amused and half pissed off. “No! No, Kacchan th-that’s not what I meant, I…” he trails off, looking a bit flustered. He opens his mouth, struggling for the right words.

“Y-you’re,” he exhales. 

A pause.

“You’re an asshole,” Izuku just says, weakly and weary. Katsuki supposes that’s fair.

“I know.”

“A-and you shouldn’t have promised me anything if you were going to be so willing to sacrifice your life like that.” 

“I know.”

“And…” Izuku trails off, voice tight. 

A beat. 

It’s like he doesn’t want to. It’s like he just can’t help it. Izuku’s eyes gravitate rightwards, reaching for where he knows Katsuki to be, and his head follows with a weight to it like it’s being pulled along with them. Izuku slowly and hesitantly turns to face Katsuki, tears welling up in his eyes and lower lip trembling, and the instant they lock eyes it’s already over for him. His face crumples sadly. It shatters.

“And I’m…I’m sorry,” he chokes out, eyes filled to the brim, overwhelmed and taking in Katsuki’s face like it’s a reminder. A haunting. “I’m sorry, Kacchan, I’m sorry. I-I’m so sorry .”  

Katsuki's lips pull downward. “Stop, Izuku, don’t -”

“I’m sorry,” Izuku cries desperately, wilting over the hospital bed in heavy repentance. His head falls weakly into the crooks of his arms, his wrists being held up like it’s an offering. “It was my fault. Wh-what happened to you was my fault, I’m sorry. I-I got there too late, I was too late. He knew. He knew I would- that I-“

“Stop, okay,” Katsuki tries again, sounding more nervous than he’d like to, “ I mean it, s’not your-” 

“He knew,” Izuku continues frantically through the tears, his guilt a thing of its own now, “A-and when I got there, he…he said something to me, Kacchan. He said that he left a present for me, and it was- it was you. You were there, you were lying on the ground and- and I saw it, Kacchan. I-I saw the card, your blood was on the card a-and I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I'm sorry, I’m so sor-”

“Stop,” Katsuki just says weakly. It’s half of a pleading, but the sound dies in the back of his throat. Each sorry echoes in his ears, leaving his heart pounding harder and harder until Katsuki is unsure if what’s beating is even a heart anymore. He doesn’t want to make Izuku cry, or to make him feel like he has to take on another thing. He doesn’t want to think too much about dying. He’s not sure if he wants to know how he was found, how he looked when he was…

Things are rarely too much for Katsuki but this is…this is a lot. 

But Izuku has become something possessed, too, reaching forward and clutching anything of Katsuki that he can while still carefully avoiding his injuries.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he cries, his face buried into the cotton of the bed with a bandaged hand curling around Katsuki’s hospital gown - desperately, yet tenderly all the same. Katsuki can feel how his hands tremble against his side. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I'm sorry,” Izuku sobs, over and over and over again until the words blur together, becoming a senseless and unintelligible thing. Until his cries start to sound like a mumbling, like a prayer, like a religion in all its entirety.

Katsuki stares at the crying, shaking mess before him that is Izuku and has no fucking clue what to do. His heart just continues to pound loudly in his ears - a roaring reminder of the death he had cheated his way out of. It thumps unceasingly in his chest, in his fingers, in his throat - and it’s all just the screaming, singing voice of the life he had stolen back from that fucker called fate.

He’s glad he can hear it - his heart. He’s…he’s glad.

Katsuki slowly sits up a bit, inadvertently pulling Izuku’s hand with him. Izuku doesn’t let go. His voice just fills the room, an anguished sound that was born from a moment Katsuki was there for but didn’t see. 

Is this how it’s going to be like from now on? Is this how grief and sacrifice will leave Izuku - haunted and repentant? 

Katsuki swallows uneasily, and decides that this is not how it’s going to be. He won’t let it. 

With a gentleness he didn’t know he had in him, he leans over to hesitantly place his good hand on Izuku’s sad, sobbing shoulders. Izuku startles at that, his breath hitching, and when he feels Katsuki’s fingers hug tighter around that tense muscle and bone, he just cries even harder. But with the hand that currently doesn’t have its clutches on Katsuki, Izuku latches desperately onto that too.

It makes Katsuki’s face do something weird, and it feels all sad, like Izuku’s pain is his now - which makes no sense at all.

Katsuki leans as close as he can to Izuku’s ear in this state, feeling so out of his depth, his heart still pounding. “Izuku,” he says in a quiet, softer tone over the mumbling and cries, squeezing his shoulder again. “Izuku, stop. Please. It’s okay. I’m…I’m okay.”

It falls on deaf ears. Izuku doesn’t stop, he just grips Katsuki’s hand harder. Not too hard though, almost like he’s reminding himself that Katsuki is actually there, like Katsuki is a ghost who will float away if he lets go.

But then Izuku says something. Muffled, Katsuki can pick up some of it - it’s really fucking sad.  He catches a “I thought” and a “never” and a “see you again.”  Izuku’s voice sounds so raw, so disturbed by whatever he had seen, and his words weave themselves into something small that pierces Katsuki’s heart right through.

Katsuki swallows thickly. “I know. I know, okay. But you don’t gotta- I don’t want you to apologize. That shit wasn’t your fault.”

Izuku peels his face from the bed to finally look up again, face wet and eyes raw from the tears. He wears a grimace, sniffling still, and gives Katsuki a disbelieving look that says ‘How could it be anything but?’

Katsuki just continues, rubbing his thumb absentmindedly on Izuku’s shoulder to try to get him to calm the fuck down. Maybe to calm himself the fuck down. “I could’ve run away or let someone else handle him, but I didn’t,” he tells Izuku, “I’d never back down, you know this.”

The disbelief in his eyes waver.  “Y-yeah, I know,” Izuku agrees weakly. His brow suddenly furrows in frustration, “I know, ” then back to a mournful desperation, “I-“

Katsuki doesn’t give him the chance. “So then don’t do that to yourself. Save your damn apologies, nerd, because I don't want them - don’t need them either. I don’t blame you and I don’t regret doing what I had to do. It’s just what happened. That’s that.”

Izuku sniffles, his lower lip wobbling. When face starts to crumple again, Katsuki rolls his eyes and huffs. Got to do things the hard way he supposes.

He removes his hand from Izuku’s shoulder - much to Izuku’s suddenly grabby dismay - and shifts on the bed. 

Maybe that was a mistake, but he was caught up in the moment okay.

“Shit!” he hisses after putting a little too much pressure on his right arm. 

Izuku stands up alarmedly. “K-Kacchan, stop what are you doing!?!” he exclaims, still half crying.

“I’m,” Katsuki winces, “trying to - fuck - I’m trying to move over. Wait actually, you should come to this side, he fucked up my right.”

Izuku just stands there bewildered, with tears still welled up in his eyes as Katsuki shuffles on his hospital bed. “Damn,” he breathes out once it's done, “That asshole got me good.”

Then Katsuki turns to Izuku, patting the empty space to his left he had just created and giving him a beckoning gesture with his head. When Izuku - who still just fucking stands there with a literal tear sliding down his face - doesn’t move, he pats it again harder, throwing him a look that he hopes reads “Are you stupid? Come over here!”

Izuku, his breaths hiccups at this point, just stares at the empty space on the bed, then looks to the door cautiously, then back again, seemingly caught in some internal conflict over what Katsuki knows he wants and whatever else opposes that.

But apparently it wasn’t going to take much for him to decide, because a second later Izuku wearily moves around to the left side of the hospital bed, and after sparing one more glance behind him, he lays himself down next to Katsuki.

It’s way too fucking small, but Katsuki couldn’t care less. Izuku lays half curled on his side so that there’s enough room, and while he doesn’t cling onto Katsuki like before, he does gently press his knuckles up against his forearm. He just stares fixedly at that, his focus put into trying to slow down his labored breathing.

Katsuki, feeling a bit more calm again, just waits patiently with his back half reclined on his pillow, head tilted downwards towards Izuku.

”You good now?” Katsuki asks after a few minutes, nudging the hand against his arm.

Izuku, the damned nerd, just looks up at Katsuki with the saddest, roundest eyes in the world and gives him a little nod.

“Then why the fuck are you looking at me like that?”

Izuku just frowns confusedly. ”Like what?” he asks, his voice a bit hoarser than before.

”Like,” Katsuki says exasperatedly, “like if you blink for too long then my heart’ll stop or some shit.”

Izuku sighs heavily, his frown deepening on his face. “It was just,” he says quietly, “it was hard. Seeing you like that. When I got there...you were on the ground, and for a second I thought you were just passed out. But…but your eyes, Kacchan - th-they were…” He purses his lips, shaking his head.

Katsuki looks away pensively for a second, staring into his own hospital gown and realizing that this shit is going to be hard to live down. He doesn’t want to be a living ghost. He hopes Izuku won’t be reminded of death everytime he looks at Katsuki.

He wonders how it must feel to see someone like that. Twice. He doesn’t want to find out.

”Well, I’m fine now,” Katsuki says firmly, looking back, “so just get that shit out of your head.” 

Izuku doesn’t answer, his silence something ruminative and tired as he just stares at his hand, tapping random patterns onto Katsuki’s skin with the backs of his finger bones. He looks like the energy has been drained out of him, except this time him being quiet isn’t as unnerving as before. It makes a little more sense, a something that just exists without having to explain itself. Katsuki figures whatever happened, however this had all ended, must have left him exhausted as shit. Actually, speaking of that-

“I passed out right after I pushed you,” Katsuki says, looking to fill the gaps in his memories, “and no one has really told me all the details of what went down.” Izuku’s hand has stopped. “I remember you running, but after that I’m blanking. What happened with Shi-”

“Don’t ask me about him,” Izuku interrupts, voice and face devoid of anything and everything. 

A beat. 

“Please,” he adds in a softer, more apologetic tone. Katsuki sees it loud and clear - this is a warning.

”Yeah…yeah ok, fine,” he says carefully. “That’s…that’s fine.”

Izuku doesn’t say anything more about that and neither does Katsuki. He’s not that much of an asshole, so he won’t push it, but you can’t blame Katsuki for feeling a bit more concerned about…whatever the fuck that was. 

Now that he thinks about it, maybe he had judged wrong, maybe Izuku isn’t just exhausted as shit. Maybe it’s something more. He looks a little worn down yeah, and a little off, but also…wait - 

“What the fuck?” Katsuki blurts out suddenly.

“What?” Izuku asks concernedly, turning so he's laying half on his back and looking up at Katsuki.

“You’re hair?!”

Katsuki reaches out and light grazes a small part near Izuku’s forehead. At first he thought it was just a forehead injury, with the bandages that covered the area - but no, Izuku’s hair is fully shaved in a weird skinny strip, with bandaged running through the middle like a hairline.

“Oh…yeah.”

“You gonna cut it or something?”

Izuku scrunches his brows in thought. “I don’t know,” he says contemplatively, “What would I even change it to?”

Hmm. Katsuki stares hard at him for a second. It didn’t look too bad when he wasn’t focusing too much on it, but now that he’s really paying attention up close, it looks like his barber had held a very personal, decades long vendetta against him. Katsuki’s not much of a hairstylist, so he doesn’t know of a damn thing that could fix this without just getting rid of all his hair - and he doesn’t really want Izuku to do that.

“Mohawk,” he blurts out, that being the first thing that came to mind. Izuku makes a face at that.

“A mohawk?” he echos in distaste. Yeah, Katsuki hates that idea too.

“Well, one side’s kinda gone already, so…”

 “I’m not getting a mohawk Kacchan,” Izuku says dryly.

“Ok, go bald then,” Katsuki exclaims. “I don’t give a fuck!”

Izuku actually considers this for a second. “Would I even look good bald?” he asks.

Katsuki scrunches his brows, trying to picture a bald Izuku instead of the Izuku he’s always known with fluffy, curly hair.

He can’t picture it, so he reaches out a hand and carefully pushes back Izuku's hair with his left hand, struggling to hold it all in one place since there’s just so much of it. Katsuki leans back and squints his eyes like it’ll make it look more realistic, but honestly it looks like someone is just…pushing his hair back. Izuku stares up at him surprisedly, a bit wide eyed like the damned nerd he is.

But with his hair out of the way, Katsuki can see just how much his face has changed since middle school. He used to look all scrawny and his eyes would always look ridiculously huge for his face. His eyes are still really big, but he looks like he’s grown into it now. Hmm… Katsuki supposes he wouldn’t look too bad with shorter hair, since it puts his freckles on spotlight and kind of makes his face look more chiseled. Or maybe he can just let it grow out and change his hair part, that way it’s not always falling over his dumb face. That might look good on him. Also, somehow his eyebrows look darker than before, and it makes his eyes look weirdly striking when h-

Oh shit. He’s been staring too long. Way too fucking long. 

“Yeah,” Katsuki coughs out, shoving Izuku’s face away and letting the hair flop back down over his forehead. “Maybe with a buzz cut, not too short.”

Okay, Katsuki was definitely staring too long. Because Izuku doesn’t say anything, he just stares at Katsuki with the same surprise as before and…something else. 

Nervousness? Contemplation? The look Izuku gets when he’s about to word-vomit all over someone? Katsuki can’t exactly tell - the only thing he can really see is that he is now searching Katsuki’s face intensely.

Looking like he’s gathering up all the bravery and impulsion he has, Izuku abruptly opens his mouth, breathes in like he’s about to say something, keeping Katsuki on the tip of his toes, and -

And then nothing. He closes his mouth shut, his jaw clamped like a vice. He exhales through his nose and glances away. He says nothing. Katsuki is left confused and concerned and entirely lost again. 

He was pretty shaken up by seeing Katsuki like…like that, so maybe that’s still what’s wrong with him. But he already told Izuku, he’s fine, and from what he was saying, everyone else seems to be fine, too. So what else could there be?

Maybe he’s just feeling fucked up about his hair?

“If you go bald,” Katsuki finds himself saying, “I guess I can shave off my hair too.” 

That gets a muted laugh out of Izuku. A slight quirk of the lip. A quiet, small thing. Not quite right, though.

“You’d shave your head, too?” he asks, a kind of tiredness in his voice. “But your hair is so spiky, when it grows out it’ll stick out like someone rubbed your head with a balloon.”

“Wh- you don’t fuckin’ know that, shitty Izuku.”

“Well, you don’t know either, Kacchan. When’s the last time you even changed your hairstyle?” 

The answer is never, it’s always been too spiky, but Katsuki just says, “I could ask you the same thing.”

And for some reason Katsuki can’t really grasp, that causes something quiet and nostalgic to fall over the boy next to him. Izuku’s face softens, looking at nothing in particular but seeing something. “I cut it pretty short one summer,” he muses softly, “I looked like an elf.”

Katsuki furrows his brows. “I don’t remember that.”

“It was the summer after third grade,” he replies, the shape of his mouth made languid by the wonder of recollection. “My mom got a little heavy handed with the scissors, cut it shorter than usual.”

Summer…third grade? 

Katsuki barks out a laugh. “Wait, I remember now,” he says, huffing out in amusement. “You looked like even more of a dork than you do now, with your big ass ears. Yeah, I think I saw you right before we left to stay with some family that summer.”

Katsuki witnesses the memories pass through Izuku’s eyes like a star shower.

“I…I watched All Might videos that summer,” he says distantly. Lost in something. Katsuki honestly can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a sad thing. “I wrote until two notebooks were full. My mom took me to…an amusement park. The beach. A…a playground.”

Katsuki hums. “Was it nice?” he asks, his words trying to be the tinder that is added to slow burning fires when you don’t quite want them to die out.

Hesitation. A flash of melancholy. Softer eyes, a brow that is just slightly furrowed in thought, and downturned lips. Something that looks a little bit like grief.  “I don’t know if back then I would have said it was,” Izuku’s mouth says slowly. “But to me now, I’d say yes. It was…it was nice.”

This is the moment where tinder becomes not enough, when the winds are too strong and the fire dies out anyways. Because somehow they've reached the line, and in the most silent of ways they have crossed it. There is no plausible deniability anymore. Despite Katsuki trying to look past it, trying to prolong this weirdly normal conversation they’re having, he fucking knows. There’s something else wrong. Something that has its clutches on Izuku. Something is lingering that definitely doesn’t have to do with Katsuki.

It’s in his eyes. Izuku’s eyes are still too…too heavy right now.

Katsuki almost doesn’t want to. He wants to keep talking to Izuku about summers and memories and haircuts and stupid, useless shit like that. But he places hesitant hands on the lid of Pandora’s box anyways. He pries it open. He asks:

“What’s wrong?”

Izuku glances up at Katsuki. “Hm?”

The box is empty. The box is overflowing. The box doesn’t exist: Izuku's eyes are guarded and open, spilling and contained. They are oceans that Katsuki still doesn’t know shit about.

“You’re hiding something,” Katuski says, studying Izuku with a concerned brow.

Izuku apparently still has just enough in him to try and feign innocence. He clenches his jaw in a small, tight smile, his eyes scrunching curiously like he doesn’t know what Katsuki is talking about - and it looks wrong. It probably even feels wrong, because it only lasts for a few seconds before that face fades seamlessly into something more conflicted. He just stares at Katsuki with a weird, contemplative look, like there’s a few words on the tip of his tongue that are just waiting to be spilled. 

But in a weird way, Izuku kind of looks scared. Like he doesn’t want those words to escape into existence. Like he wants more time.

Something in him relents, something in him lets go, and Izuku’s gaze finally falters. With a slight frown on his face, he turns on his side again, tucking his hand under his cheek. He lies there, wordless and thoughtful beside Katsuki.

And he's silent for a while. A long while. Katsuki doesn’t let anticipation get the better of him, and he chooses not to interrupt. From the way he looks through Katsuki’s arm like he’s not even there, he can tell Izuku needs it.

Izuku just breathes. In this crystalized moment in time, with the sun slowly falling into an orange slumber, Izuku breathes. In and out of his nose, quiet and soft and rhythmic. His chest rises slowly with something heavy: like each inhale is painful, like each exhale is a loss.

Katsuki doesn’t know how long they waited, but somehow he knows that both of them were waiting. They were waiting until finally -

“It’s gone,” Izuku says, voice a quiet puncture wound to the silence. “One for All is gone.”

It hits him with an echo and then a pang. Gone? What the fuck does that mean, gone? Then Katsuki’s face falls soberly, and his heart pounds painfully.

It’s gone. 

For a moment he is just silent, face stuck in a stupified shock and the right words refusing to make their way into the forefront of his mind. 

Gone.

He should say something. God, this is so fucked up and unexpected. He- he needs to say something. Anything.

“Fuck,” is what he rasps out.

”Fuck,” Izuku echoes numbly. This is the second most shocking thing that has come out of his mouth in the last 60 seconds. Katsuki is shocked. He’s never heard Izuku say fuck before.

But things are starting to make sense, the waters are becoming clearer. Now he can see why Izuku came into the room like…that.

”And…” he tries, but the words feel awkward and strained in his mouth - god he’s fucking floundering. Not knowing any other way to phrase it, Katsuki asks, “And how are…how are you feeling - about that?” 

Izuku doesn’t seem fazed by Katsuki’s unusual lack of grace - he seems too preoccupied for that. But he doesn’t start to cry. His eyes don’t well up with tears, he doesn't break down again. He simply blinks dazedly, opening his mouth and waiting silently for the right words to find him.

Maybe the right words don’t exist. Maybe there’s nothing that can describe something like this.

“I don’t know,” Izuku whispers out, the words sounding so hollow and unsure. He just stares off into nothing, with something quiet and pensive etched into his brows.

The skin on Katsuki’s face starts to tingle faintly like pinpricks. He can’t feel his cast, he can’t feel the bandages anymore. At this moment, none of that exists. It doesn’t have the right to exist - this is surreal. Muscles don’t feel like muscles, bones don’t feel like bones. Katsuki is reduced to eyes and a heart, a brain and cold rushing blood, and with all of that, Katsuki just sits, wordless and disbelieving. 

His eyes look at Izuku, who is curled up near Katsuki’s arm and lying on his side, with nothing but his own bandaged hand tucked under his own bandaged cheek. His brain thinks dully and unhelpfully, ‘There’s no way this is real. It can’t be. It just wouldn’t be fair.’   

The entirety of Izuku just stares and stares like he’s looking for an answer, too. Like he can’t really see much of anything. 

Katsuki’s heart has been made into just a pounding noise, just the footsteps of something that is set to arrive. Maybe it’s always been on the horizon. Maybe it was always coming for him. Something like a reckoning.

Because somehow, it had never crossed Katsuki’s mind that One for All could be taken from Izuku. That one day it would be gone. Despite the ‘for all’ written into its name, to him the quirk felt like Izuku’s and Izuku’s alone. It wasn’t All Might’s and it wasn’t some old forgotten ghost’s - it was something different. It was something that Izuku was making into his own, with that never ending tenacity of his.

And in his bones, Katsuki really felt like he was living in the start of it all. That he was sharing a beginning with Izuku - the beginning. That their lives would just keep intertwining, being woven closer and closer together in a way that Katsuki had never known he wanted, a way they both never had, despite sharing a lifetime together. 

It felt good. Katsuki can admit that to himself now: it felt good. He liked it. It was exciting. This something that was being forged with Izuku was starting to feel a lot like a promise whose words were still being written out.

Still being written out. There’s still so many empty pages left to be filled.

But what do they do with the promise now that Izuku is quirkless again? Quirkless, that’s such a weird fucking word now that Katsuki thinks about it. Less. No Quirk. Why aren’t there any words for people with quirks? Quirkful. Quirkless - Izuku has no quirk anymore. He’s just like he used to be - except things can’t go back to how they were before, because Katsuki has changed too much and from that look in his eyes, so has Izuku.

Izuku has changed in so many ways. He’s a little bit taller now. He can hold eye contact better now - like he doesn’t doubt that he can, like he knows he doesn’t have to look away. Sometimes he starts staring at random corners in the room like there’s too many voices talking to him at once. His shoulders always look heavy. He doesn’t ramble as much anymore - smiles even less. Maybe he never really smiled much at all, actually.

But why won’t Izuku cry? Has he been put through too much to be fazed by this loss? Will he not cry for himself anymore, is that it? 

Izuku cried for Katsuki. Katsuki, who right now feels his chest rise and fall like there are waves crashing down hard onto his lungs. Katsuki, who for some reason feels like his ribs are being bent like hot, burning iron.

It hurts deep, and he knows that it’s not his injuries. He knows what this feels like. It feels a lot like regret. 

No, it feels like something worse. He thought he knew what guilt felt like, he thought he had learned his lessons already, but he was wrong. So wrong, he was so wrong. The guilt is heavier, it’s devastating, it’s immeasurable, and it crushes Katsuki with a weight that screams and screams and screams and screams:

‘I will not let you go.’ 

Katsuki doesn’t want it to let him go - he wasted it. Izuku was given two years and Katsuki thought that sounded like forever, so he wasted it.

No, not just two years. It’s more than that - devastatingly, horrifyingly more. There's no wonder to be felt in this recollection: Katsuki has carved a decade into an ugly, jagged scar.

How long is a decade? How many minutes is that? How many seconds did he spend with something searing in his hand? How many hours did he spend sinking his teeth into Izuku all because he couldn’t grow the fuck up?

A childhood. How long is a childhood? How long is that? Is it too long? 

It’s too long. Katsuki has shared a handful of a life with Izuku, cupped in two pairs of pudgy, childish hands, held in scarred, battered fists. Life just kept getting poured and poured into their hands, and Katsuki is now realizing the full, honest, dreadful truth of it all: he didn’t do it right. He didn’t do any of it right. 

Time, so much time. How long did Izuku have to spend with none of it right? How long would it take Katsuki to really fix things? How many months until he gets it right?

This is…this is selfish. It has to be - Izuku just lost his quirk and Katsuki is being fucking selfish about it right now, but at the same time he’s not. He doesn’t know; the only thing Katsuki realizes is that maybe there are no longer enough months like he thought. Ends are always moments you step into, moments you can’t take back, so what if this moment is it? What if this is why Izuku didn’t want to say it, to say that it was gone? What if this was never the beginning, what if this was the end? The end of the childhood, the end of the trying to make it right. The end of the running and the chasing. What if their lives don’t intertwine again? What if Izuku finally out grows Katsuki? What if they grow apart and Katsuki never gets to figure out why he cares so fucking much about that?

Katsuki’s regret is a creature that no longer remembers the meaning of the word mercy, that claws in the back of his throat. Because time, so much time - he wants to take it back. All of it. Any of it that he can, because he doesn’t think he has ever met a person so deserving of something better, who has been handed - time after time again - the shortest end of the stick possible. Whose tears have now been scorched dry by the searing heat of life. Who won’t even cry for himself anymore. 

Why won’t Izuku just cry?

Spills, trails, pours, sinks. Something is sinking, something is pouring. Something hurts. Katsuki just stares at Izuku, face falling into the shape of something spiraling.

How much? How much is too much? How much is the ocean, how much is the Earth?

How much can it take, how much can it hold? How deep is the heart, how short are the grievances, and how can he still love you regardless?

Does that even matter? How will you ever manage to make up for what you have done to him?

Izuku looks over at him, and suddenly that hollowness is replaced with a panicked concern. 

“K-Kacchan?” he rushes out, sitting up in alarm. Cautious hands float around him, reaching towards Katsuki but not quite touching. 

Katsuki just stares at Izuku. His eyes are rounded and wide and worried. Heavy bags still sit under them, looking like they might never go away. He looks so bewildered. He was so lost and numb just a few seconds ago, but he threw all of that away in the blink of an eye. He looks so concerned. He’s always so full of care for other people. Never saves enough for himself. 

“Kacchan, what’s the matter?”

Katsuki remembers the face Izuku had made when he had told him to…when he had said words that he can’t even repeat in his own mind anymore. He remembers the face Izuku had made when he had cried and told Katsuki that he was scared of losing people, that it would be too much. Katsuki remembers the face of a 9-year old, quirkless Izuku, whose hair was cropped just a bit too short that summer; who watched All Might videos and wrote until two notebooks were full. The unforgettable face Katsuki had met in his first few moments of resurrection: a face that no one had ever looked at Katsuki with before. The face he would see every day on the train home from school. Every face Izuku has ever made. The admiration, the desperation, the simple joy. The frustration, the loneliness, the unrelenting resolve. Is this what it means to know someone? To care about someone? Is this what death was trying to tell him?

“Kacchan?”

It feels like a lot. It feels like more than that. It feels overwhelming, like too much to be held in a heart, too much to be held in a body. Something more pours painfully and rapidly out of Katsuki and it stings on his skin.

“You…” Katsuki finally chokes out, voice thick with emotion, but he finds that his breathing is too erratic and stuttered to continue. 

He must be drowning. He’s surrounded by water and he’s drowning in it.

“Kacchan, you’re scaring me, what’s wrong? Does your arm hurt? Oh no, is it your heart?! Do you need me to call the nurse!?”

“N-no, s’not,” he manages to get out with difficulty, his breathes fucking hiccups for some reason, “s’not that.”

“Then…” Izuku’s face softens, studying Katsuki in confusion. Katsuki frantically takes that in like he’s starving, like he’s drowning - he won’t forget this face, either. The way Izuku’s eyes lay upon him makes him feel like he’s being held, like a scarred hand is cupping his cheek, like a thumb is smoothing out a wrinkle from the corner of his eye. Katsuki holds onto that gaze like a man on his deathbed holding onto life. Like it’s the light before rain. 

But then Izuku, with a gentleness that seems impossible, with all the gentleness in the world, asks him softly and confusedly: “Then why are you crying?” 

He’s overwhelming. He’s an ocean. His eyes, his voice, the never ending care that carries in his soul. Everything. Izuku is an ocean and Katsuki is drowning in him. He is overwhelmed. 

“I-I’m just,” Katsuki answers brokenly, tasting salt water on his tongue. His jaw trembles - because it was always going to come down to this: “I’m sorry.” 

Apparently, it only takes two words. Two words and Izuku’s face finally falls. It’s soft, like the way snow would - Katsuki has seen it once before, it was beautiful. 

But what fills Izuku now is a soft look of dread. He stares at Katsuki in a soft kind of horror, his trembling eyes marked in the shade of a dead man, whose fate has just been sealed.

The words spill out numbly from slightly parted lips. “Don’t…don’t be sorry,” Izuku whispers faintly and pleading, an echo of what Katsuki had just told him minutes before. It’s almost like an ask. He says it in the tone of someone who can’t afford to accept apologies, who will crumble under the weight of it if they hear any more. 

Katuski knows, he knows, but for some reason it just makes him want to push harder. So, ragged and tearful, he says: 

“No, I'm sorry. You- you didn’t deserve anything that I put you through, Izuku. And you don’t deserve any of the shit that’s happening to you right now. After everything, it’s not…i-it’s not fucking fair.”

Izuku has a weariness in his eyes, the weight carving its home in his face like it was always going to be there. Katsuki tries to grasp for a moment that proves this wrong, but he finds that he can’t remember ever seeing an Izuku who is truly at rest.

Katsuki wants to know what face he would make with no rush, no desperation, no stakes. He wants Izuku to know what rest feels like, what it feels like to stop running.

Izuku looks like he’s trying his best to hold in whatever the fuck he has been carrying all this time, and when his eyes start to wobble dangerously, he turns his head away sharply. Through the blurriness, Katsuki can see him raise the back of his hand to his eyes, holding it there and pushing hard. Izuku takes a deep, wavering breath and shakes his head. 

It’s a grief he wants to deny, a grief he doesn’t want to hold.

But then it all starts to crumble before Katsuki's eyes.

Izuku is...he’s dropping his hand and squeezing the nothing in the air. Then he’s exhaling, the type of breath that takes all the air it can, something tired yet resolute.

He’s turning and looking back at Katsuki, the smallest trace of a tear in his eye, something that didn’t want to be seen. He is studying Katsuki, a sad, small smile resting weakly on his face like he knows what's coming next.

And then he’s opening his mouth. He opens his mouth, and firmly, eyes full of bittersweetness, Izuku says it. He fucking says it.

“It’s okay, Kacchan.” 

Katsuki’s heart sinks even more - this time with dread, like he’s watching someone walk themselves off a roof. “N-no, don’t,” he protests raggedly, shaking his head in grave desperation, “don’t do that, Izuku.”

“I mean it,” Izuku says anyways, voice already having reached some sort of solace. “It’s okay. I’m…I’m so glad, so grateful I got this chance, Kacchan. Things like this don’t happen - people don’t just get given quirks like that. But somehow it happened to me. Me , can you believe it? I couldn’t. For the longest time I couldn’t believe it, and part of me still doesn’t. B-but it was real. It was real and it was…it was so beautiful. It was like a dream.”

Katsuki is almost relieved when he sees it, but it still hurts like hell. This is vindication. This is horrible, heart-wrenching vindication. Because despite Izuku’s attempts, he couldn’t stop the tear that welled up in his eyes when he spoke, that silently falls over his cheek now. Katsuki can’t help but want to reach out and wipe away it with his thumb, to prove that it’s there. To prove that the tree makes a sound when it falls by becoming the witness. 

And Katsuki finds that his hand does move. Katsuki's hand moves and Izuku stares at it like it just might burn him. Like he just might let it.

And now there’s a palm resting on Izuku’s cheek, fingers curled lightly around his trembling jaw. A thumb that swipes softly, in that space between his cheekbones and those round, tearful eyes of his.

Another tear falls. A thumb catches it. A teardrop on a thumb: Katsuki holds it in his own hand, feeling Izuku’s ocean of grief soak into his own skin. 

It’s heavy. It’s real. He’ll take it.

Izuku just closes his eyes and breathes in shakily, quietly letting him wipe away the tear. He almost leans into it. Then after a moment, he gently wraps his hand around Katsuki’s wrist, pulling it away.

“It’s okay,” he whispers again, voice faded and weak like lace, but beautiful all the same. “It’s…it’s okay.”

Give.

 It’s magnetic. It’s a black hole. It’s a sun. It’s a gravity of its own. Maybe this is why we know so much more about space.

Give.

Katsuki is overtaken and overwhelmed by this sudden urge to give Izuku something. He doesn’t know exactly what: the whole of himself maybe. The whole of anything and everything. Maybe he wants to give like Izuku gives, entirely and intensely and without hesitation. 

But give give give, he just wants to give, just wants to offer. He wants to replace those seconds wasted with something good for once, something kind and full of a burning feeling that he’s not sure he can put a name to yet. He wants to give to Izuku without anything in return, because Katsuki has already taken so much. Give give give, his heart screams. It travels through his veins and it makes his hands twitch. 

Katsuki has never had the urge to do this - ever - but right now he can’t even find it in himself to feel embarrassed by it: he thinks distantly and impulsively about just lunging at Izuku, wrapping his arm and cast tightly around him just to see how giving like that would feel. 

What would it feel like when their collarbones touched? Would it feel right? Would Izuku hate it? Would he reach back? Would it all feel like forever?

Katsuki thinks that his heart might implode on itself again if he tried that - but still, he wants to give. It kind of feels fucking impossible and so very foreign, but he wants to. He wants to try.

And it’s his eyes. At the end of the day, it always comes back to his damn eyes. 

Katsuki stares at Izuku, the tears in his eyes like crystals. It makes them look like they’re shining, glowing with the setting sun that kisses his face orange. His eyes swallow all the light that the sunset gives him, reflecting green green green. The color of the sea kissing the sand, clear waters under a clear sky. The color of summer grass that hugs the circle of a childhood playground, mellow and gleaming under the sun. The color of dew on a leaf. Of the glistening mountains after a rainy day. The color of smooth, shiny rocks glinting under the stream of a shallow river.

A color that can’t be found anywhere else in the world, no matter how hard you search for it. Katsuki has already hit gold, he found it in the person he has known since before the word “forever” held any meaning. 

He’s lucky. He thinks that there probably isn’t any color truly like it. It's one of a kind.

“Your eyes are really green.” Katsuki ends up blurting out.

Izuku looks entirely fucking lost and stunned by this sudden declaration. “W-what?” he asks bewilderedly.

Katsuki sniffles, wiping his eyes with the side of his palm.

“Just…thought I’d let you know.” Izuku blinks at him.

“Is that…is that a good thing?”

“Yeah. It’s…it’s a good color. Suits you.”

A beat.

“O-ok, Kacchan,” Izuku says nervously. “They must really have you on a lot of meds, huh.”

“No,” Katsuki retorts immediately.

A pause.

“Maybe. Fuck you.”

And something amazing happens. Izuku’s green, green eyes suddenly crinkle at the sides, his mouth curving and his teeth glinting. Izuku laughs - a breathy and tired thing that has his shoulders shaking and his eyes practically squeezed shut. 

It’s a real laugh. It makes Katsuki grateful to be alive, grateful to have been beaten and battered but so very alive so that he could witness this. He knows victory, but this is something else. This is something better.

Katsuki feels himself smiling, too, and tells himself that it probably is just the shit ton of drugs they have him on.

But then Izuku starts laughing harder, the kind that has you clutching your stomach, the joy so wonderfully painful. He lets out an actual cackle, the damned nerd, and Katsuki’s face starts to hurt from how hard he’s grinning.

”Oi, cut that out asshole,” Katsuki says weakly, shoving his hand over Izuku’s face.

”K-Kacchan,” Izuku wheezes out, “y-you’re, I just realized it, but you’re- are you like, actually high right now?”

Katsuki frowns. He blinks slowly, really taking the time to analyze his current state of being. He’s never truly been high before, so he can’t really tell for certain what it would feel like. He does feel like he’s been saying a lot of shit he normally wouldn’t say out loud, though.

He slowly tastes the air in his mouth. It tastes electrifying and fresh. It’s like the wind blowing in your face, a biting kiss on your cheek when you finally set sail.

For some reason, there’s a name for it on the tip of his tongue. Katsuki almost wants to call this feeling love.

“Yeah, I might be,” he says in a serious, sober tone, “Just a little bit.”

Izuku wheezes again, covering his face in his hands. And then-

And then-

Izuku is leaning forwards and bumping his head into Katsuki’s shoulder. He just rests there, silently and sweetly laughing.

Thick, curly hair tickles the side of Katsuki’s neck. He holds his breath, frozen and stiff.

Izuku sighs, breathing out some more laughter and inhaling in something a little more bittersweet. “You can’t do that again, Kacchan,” he says softly, “You can’t. I don’t have much anymore, just embers, so…so you have to promise me, and- and this time you have to keep it. You have to be…you have to be safe. You have to keep what you have, because you still have so much more to be. My whole life I’ve been waiting to see that, to see what you become - and I still am, so you have to make good on that. But also…” Izuku hesitates.

“But also,” he says slowly and hesitantly, “I’m not exactly…giving up yet. So if you don’t give up, and I don’t give up, then that just means that…that we still have so much more - to be. Still have so much to do. I don’t…I don’t want to lose that, either.”

Still have so much to do.  

He’ll get drunk on those words. This is still a beginning. He’ll do it right this time.

“Okay,” Katsuki answers hoarsely.

Izuku leans back to look at Katsuki in shock - the fucking audacity, even though he had it in him to say all of that.

“Okay?” he asks, breathless and disbelieving.

Katsuki just gives him a silent, small nod. He has never wanted to die, but right now, in this moment, this is the most he has ever wanted to live. He wants to see where this all goes. Where Izuku will take him.

And Izuku smiles at Katsuki. Something soft, something hopeful. Something beautiful.