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He understands it’s starting to get bad once he finds himself sniffling in the shower.
Not that the universe hasn’t given him a thousand signs before this. Really, Izuku does it to himself.
Somehow over the years he’s failed to learn how to stop chasing. If he doesn’t have what he wants constantly in his hand, it could slip away from him. Wise or not, he can’t stop putting one foot in front of the other.
Something about Kacchan never makes him able to learn that he might not want Izuku stumbling behind him.
Izuku shivers as the water slips a few degrees colder. It should clear his head, but the shock creeps over his nerves like misery. He twists the handle warmer, fighting the chatter in his teeth. He’s too tense.
The problem, he supposes, is that sometimes Kacchan feels like he does. Want it, that is. Or at least, he tolerates it enough that Izuku can’t help himself from reading into it.
There’s no good reason for it to ache so much tonight. Izuku tips his head back, and closes his eyes under the spray. Kacchan hasn’t really done anything out of the ordinary, because he’s been cooking for the two of them since before they’d even started sharing a space together. But Izuku’s been sensitive, or he’s had a long day, and something’s been keeping him from remembering all of that.
For a moment there, when he’d come home, aching and sore from too many twelves in a row, he’d seen Kacchan positioned in front of a cutting board with his back to the door, and thought about it. It crossed his mind, even when that impulse in particular is something he’s told himself to learn to live without.
He’d pictured slipping up behind him, and insinuating himself into his space. Setting his chin on his shoulder. Wrapping his arms around him, and stretching those scant few inches just to watch him work.
Like a lover would. Which, Izuku decidedly is not.
The tile is ice cold against his forehead. Izuku’s own arms around himself don’t feel anything like another person’s. He’s maybe a little touch-starved, so that’s probably why any memory of Kacchan’s touches in this general area hurt so much. Sometimes, if he’s lucky, Izuku will get a hand at his waist. It’s fuel to an ever-kindling fire, and Izuku tends to it with all his unwilling hope.
His throat is clogged up with years of this same emotion, that longing. He’s starting to think he’ll never learn to not let it build it back up again. Izuku will break his heart over and over on Kacchan because the thought of a life with any more distance between them is worse.
He wouldn’t know how to give up on this closeness. He’s wanted it his whole life.
Kacchan will come banging on the locked door soon if Izuku doesn’t work his way out. He’ll use up all the hot water, and their food will grow cold.
Izuku sighs. It’s silent under the noise of the spray, but he can feel it shake. He can feel the warmth behind his eyes, the stuffed feeling in his face.
It hurts. Crying helps push back the doom, but it doesn’t fix.
…
The problem is that after Izuku climbs his way out of the shower, he’s still present in the body he wants Kacchan to touch. That’s always the crux of it – Izuku goes about his day and does what he needs to do, he fills his day with work and his friends and caring for himself, and he comes home and still wants to be loved by Kacchan.
His focus, his attention, the words from his mouth. Izuku wants it all in his direction, freely offered. He wants Kacchan to want him to receive it. It’s a cling he can’t shake from his skin. He thinks it’s woven itself in the junctions.
There’s a tiredness that comes with the mundane now that he’s acknowledged the person he wants to share it with. Izuku can’t pat his freshly-cleaned face with moisturizer without wondering if Kacchan’s fingertips would feel the same. He closes his eyes in the face of his own naked body because he can’t stop trying to see it through Kacchan’s eyes. Dressing himself in soft clothes feels wasted when he’s the only one to feel them.
The mirror is thankfully fogged. He struggles enough with the parts of himself he can see without it. He knows what this reflected vessel wants, he knows the longing etched into its expressions. He’s exhausted and humiliated from living in a mind that won’t see reason.
Kacchan isn’t interested, there’s no use wanting. It won’t believe him of that until he hears it from the mouth he aches to own, and hearing it would split his heart in half and fracture the careful life he’s built into jagged, irreparable pieces. It’d break him and that’d be worse, to be broken over Kacchan, to force Kacchan to know that everywhere he isn’t seeing Izuku is a place Izuku is hurting over him. Invisible pain he creates by existing without loving Izuku back.
It’d be Izuku’s fault. He can’t shut it off, and that’s a weakness that burns under his skin. He carries around a burden he doesn’t want and can’t set down. Unseen, because its visibility would make it someone else’s to bear. He’s made a problem of himself, when all he wants is to be palatable.
It’s all exhausting. Izuku is tired.
The bathroom tiles are freezing under his feet. The cold makes his limbs feel weighted, and the drain forces a thick fog between his ears. He hates this line of thinking, not least for how genuine it feels in the worse moments. He wants to share this life with Kacchan. If he can’t, he doesn’t understand what he’s building towards.
Wanting this much makes him feel dulled.
…
He obtains socks from his room, and dons house slippers for good measure. Kacchan bought them for him, and Izuku thinks he gets secretly pleased to see him making use of them. Maybe not for the principle of the gift giving, but because Kacchan likes to think something he’s done serves a purpose. He didn’t just buy Izuku a gift for nothing – Izuku uses it.
Izuku trudges his way back to the kitchen, and he doesn't want to go out of his way to make sure Kacchan notices how off he’s feeling, but he’s sort of, shamefully, hoping he does.
Acknowledging the want sort of sours his stomach. He hates that he doesn’t want to just bear these things quietly, because it’s directly at odds with every part of him that feels like he should.
It’s the principle of the sharing. Izuku knows, but like every other thing he logically-and-very-carefully knows, it doesn’t stop the sick feeling. Like there’s something wrong with him.
It’s worse that he gets worse when he’s tired, because he knows in those moments how genuine it is. That it’s something he’s buried and has to let out when the walls come down – when he’s run out of stored energy to hold them up. Izuku wants Kacchan to know when he’s tired and care when he’s tired and insist it be fixed, not because it means Izuku is slacking and needs to rest and heal so he can keep performing at his best with Kacchan – but because Kacchan cares. Because he pays attention. Because he wants Izuku to be well, as much as Izuku wants Kacchan to be well.
Not to perform well in the field. Not to be a good hero. But because he’s so fond of him, to let him be anything otherwise would be unthinkable. He can’t help but expend the energy.
In weaker moments, he thinks he’d give it all up just to be loved by Kacchan. To get to love him, and share a little life with him. He’d ask for nothing else.
He just – wants Kacchan to return that a little bit.
Not just a little bit. He knows it’s a big ask – but Izuku feels so deeply, and he knows Kacchan can feel so deeply. Can’t he feel so deeply, for Izuku?
…
It goes like this, because it most always does. Days Izuku gets home later than Kacchan, he’ll find Kacchan in the kitchen. Kacchan knows when his shift ends and knows he prefers to drop straight home after the end of solo days rather than regroup at the agency – it’s something he’s long past chiding him about. Losing battle, of the sort which Kacchan has slowly learned to acknowledge. He’ll get his gripes in occasionally just to remind Izuku how he really feels.
Brainless asshole. They have healers there.
Like Izuku doesn’t know the difference by now. Mostly. Kacchan’s only had to drag him back out of the apartment by his ear to see somebody maybe – three times now, max.
Kacchan does the once-over pre-shower. Their compromise.
It is absolutely, without a doubt, one hundred percent part of his pain. He gets home and Kacchan’s waiting for him and he’s learned to time their dinner together based on the approximate end of Izuku’s shift and his travel home and all the minutes they need to determine Izuku fit to be here and for Izuku to get himself all washed up and ready to eat. Kacchan inspects him like Izuku’s body is something he borrowed for the day to go out and complete his shift in, and he’s brought it back home to the person who cares most about what sort’ve shape it’s in.
It’s torture, because in Izuku’s twisted head, it feels like going through the motions of the exact sort of fantasy he wants to live.
Oh how he wants to be a body owned by this man. He wants to borrow himself for temporary use and come home and be fixed up and it’s unthinkable, really, to think he could be doted on, by Kacchan and as himself, but he thinks about it all the time.
It’s selfish, he thinks. To want so badly to be cared for, when he knows the script of caring for himself. He knows he’s his own responsibility, just like everyone else is theirs. It feels wicked.
He doesn’t know if it’s consolation that he wants to care for Kacchan too. His own desires still sit front and center in his brain. Everything he wants.
…
Izuku can sort’ve tell he’s taken noticeably longer than usual in the shower, because Kacchan’s farther ahead with preparing for them than he’s used to seeing when he enters the kitchen. He’s already begun to plate everything, and his shoulders are tight around his ears, which Izuku knows well enough to know he’s bothered, and working on decompressing about it.
The expanse of his ribcage tells Izuku he’s taking deep breaths. It’s an exercise he’s worked hard on mastering – the minute calming the mind clicked as a form of self control as useful as honing the body, Kacchan threw his everything into it. He threw every method at every metaphorical wall until things started to stick.
Even now, Kacchan doesn’t like conflict. Not even so much conflict as in interpersonal — he doesn’t like when there’s something bothering Izuku because it means another problem to solve, and that means there’s a crack in the structure they’ve formed for themselves, brick by painstaking brick. If their life is a script, Izuku being stressed about something means someone’s doodling in the margins, and Kacchan hates that sort of mess.
At some point Izuku realized Kacchan felt the same way about the struggles of others that he did – at least, in their distaste for it. Izuku tends to feel first like they’re something he needs to solve. Kacchan tends to first think they’re something that never should’ve existed in the first place.
He’s piling food onto their plates, and Izuku knows he’s receiving maybe a little more than normal. Kacchan adds to it like overfeeding him might cure whatever made Izuku take too long in the shower, or maybe like it might be a good first step.
It could be – Izuku doesn’t know. It probably is, because the worst of it always creeps in when he doesn’t feel good. That’s the problem: when Izuku doesn’t feel good, he wants Kacchan to take care of it.
In his own way, he’s doing it. Which feeds the hope, even if it isn’t Kacchan pressing kisses to the side of his face. Even if it isn’t Kacchan taking him into his arms, asking how his day was. Even if it isn’t Kacchan insisting he spend the rest of the night with brain and body off, to be properly receptive to all the ways Kacchan wants to care for him.
Isn’t that the sickest part? That he wants all that, from Kacchan of all people?
If it didn’t hurt so much, he’d laugh in his own face.
…
It’s a double-edged-sword line of thinking, because Izuku has two options when his mind spirals down that route. There’s disbelief that Kacchan would ever offer that to anyone, which makes him more ashamed to want it, but comforts him for the fact that it doesn’t place Izuku being not-wanted as the central problem.
But it casts doubt on Kacchan’s ability to feel – which – Izuku strays far from that. He knows Kacchan feels. It’d be too close to heartless for him to doubt he’s capable of such a thing.
Which makes the kinder answer the one where Kacchan just doesn’t want to treat him that way.
…
Kacchan is loveliest in their home because Izuku’s one of the few people on the planet who get to see him out-of-costume, under all the grease paint, as time and circumstance transform him into someone wiser in body and mind. It’s the place where Izuku can look past his own adrenaline and see Kacchan for who he’s becoming, without destination.
He’s calmer and human and he lives here. Izuku gets him at work and with their friends and all these precious moments in between, that maybe aren’t precious by objectivity, but really should be. Someone should treasure Kacchan for who he is as he lives and breathes, and Izuku knows it will always be him. He feels greedy to think it – that he gets such a gift, and so few know that he views it this way.
Kacchan’s tank tops look different than they ever used to, before he decided that home could be where Izuku is. The waistband of too-low sweatpants speaks of an intimacy Izuku trembles to think too hard about. He’s safe here and comfortable here and that means he wants Izuku to be safe here and comfortable here too, and feels he is. Kacchan would never accept a living situation where he thrived and the other person did not – Izuku does the complicated math about these things. He knows what they mean.
…
“You’re being weird,” Kacchan tells him, and it’s the tone of voice he takes on that nearly breaks him.
Because it isn’t accusatory. Kacchan doesn’t say it like he’s acting a certain way, not like he’s trying to get under his skin, which he might’ve believed once upon a time before his own perception unclouded and he maybe-hopefully saw Izuku for a little bit more of who he was. He doesn’t even say it like it’s an affront to him, like Izuku’s emotions are imposing on his space and he was comfortable before he came along with them and muddied everything up. He actually says it soft, with something edged like concern, like he’s wondering about Izuku and wants to hear about what might be bothering him.
This part – oh, it’s really the worst part.
In these moments it almost spills from him. He almost wants to say it. He thinks about toeing the invisible line of some boundary that he’s always mentally checking the limits of, and he wants to cross it so badly, not even in a big way, not like it’s something to make discussion of, no pomp and circumstance, but like it’s something that never even existed. Like he was always free to do it.
Like Izuku was always free to love Kacchan, and he was always going to be receptive of it.
It’s not the worst part for the wanting — Izuku already knows he lacks the bravery for it. He doesn’t know if the line is there or where it is or if Kacchan wants it gone so he will never cross it. He will let Kacchan set the limits of their relationship until he builds himself up enough to be braver, because that’s how it’s always been: Kacchan drawing lines in the sand, and Izuku wanting so desperately to still be in splashing distance, he wordlessly obeys the instruction.
It’s not quite so — intense as all that now. Izuku’s never actually been all that good at it. But this is the clearest of the distances between them, and Izuku knows they’ve bounced back from near everything, but something about this feels dangerous enough to crumble everything.
Izuku values him too much to gamble on that sort of cost. It’s not that he ever thinks impulse will win, and he’ll find some sort of confession leaving his mouth.
The worst part is that Kacchan’s expressions of care place him right back at the start of the cycle again.
…
It feels better. That’s the bad part.
Kacchan is worried. Kacchan is talking to him. Izuku is remembering that he made them dinner, and waited for them in their home, and fixed him with those piercing red eyes before he even got himself to the shower – because he cares. Because he does want him around, even if it isn’t exactly in the capacity Izuku longs for so desperately he thinks, knows, it will one day eat him alive.
“Sorry, Kacchan,” Izuku says softly, and it’s the sickest part about him that he already feels lighter. “I’m just tired.”
Kacchan squints at him. Oh it’s sick, it’s so sick that he feels marginally less dead to the world when Kacchan’s watching. Kacchan can’t possibly see all that he’s hurting when he’s looking in his direction, because all of Izuku’s pain wasn’t meant for his observation. It’s something that happens out from under it. It hurts the most when Kacchan isn’t around. When his focus isn’t right on him.
There’s a guilty disappointment that he can’t be more lifeless. Those moments of feeling where Izuku forgets how catastrophic it would be for him to grieve so loudly. Maybe if Kacchan saw his pain for what it is, it’d take the burden off of Izuku’s shoulders. The private weight he carries right in the center of his chest. The moments between the admission and the destruction of Izuku’s life as he knows it must feel like the sweetest, most dizzying relief.
He knows whatever pain he’s going through must be temporary. Whatever it is, there’s no reasonable way he can carry it for life. But maybe he will, and maybe the weight will lessen in time – maybe he’ll build the right muscles in the right places to bear it.
Kacchan’s face shutters. Not in a big way, not as a shutdown, but Izuku knows he’s registered something for filing and that makes him feel as seen as it does anxious, because Izuku does not want his feelings to be cracked open like some unfortunate, unwanted puzzle to solve. The only thing worse than Kacchan learning of his feelings through Izuku would be Kacchan learning of them in private.
Terms that aren’t his own. Processing out from under his eye. He doesn’t think he’d be able to stand the discomfort Izuku wasn’t prepared enough to brace for.
But Kacchan doesn’t look at him like he’s confessed to something earth-shattering. He shakes his head at him, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Okay,” he tells him. “Sit and eat. You’ll feel better.”
…
There are many nights like this. Izuku doesn’t know when they’ve begun blurring together – moments he’s sure he’s at his breaking point, soothed by something Kacchan does that can’t even touch all the things he wants Kacchan to do, but still make Izuku feel loved regardless.
…
He and Kacchan spend a lot of mornings and evenings together. Not always long stretches, but a lot in the grand total of things. It’s just how it works out when Kacchan likes to be home, and Izuku likes to be where Kacchan is.
It’s best to steal those moments, anyhow, he’s learning. Snapshots of peace. Hours where there’s nowhere to be but where they are, and they’re both uninjured and tucked somewhere safe, and lax enough to maybe get a movie in without feeling like there’s something else they could be doing.
Izuku realized a long time ago that between the two of them, there’s always a feeling of something else needing to be done. Rest is less of a luxury and more of a tool, a necessary evil provided to their bodies so the two of them can keep kicking.
It’s nice. When Izuku will make a soft suggestion, and realize Kacchan has slipped enough out of his usual tunnel vision to be amenable. Or Izuku will be atypically still on the couch and find Kacchan has come to sit with him.
There’s always a sort of feeling that takes over when he realizes. Some soft warmth in the center of his chest at the realization that Kacchan might want to be where he is, too. That he could see Izuku curled up on their couch and decide he doesn’t need to be anywhere else either.
It always comes with a quiet disclaimer, in his head. This is Kacchan’s home, too. Kacchan lives here, so he might just want to sit on the couch. It might not matter whether Izuku’s next to him or not.
But he sits close. And he doesn’t shy away from their bodies touching. Sometimes Kacchan will even make them something — find Izuku and his soft offer to put on a movie and produce two mugs of something warmer, or two bottles of something colder, depending on the energy in the room.
On rare evenings, when Kacchan is relaxed enough to not turn his nose up at it, they might even eat there.
It makes the apartment feel more — lived in. Makes it more of the home Izuku considers it to be. Not just because Kacchan eats and sleeps and breathes and collects himself in this space, but because there’s mundanity. Shared enjoyments. The space exists and they fill it together.
…
It’s small torture to consider his apartment with Kacchan a home. It sets his mind off a one-way track to other things — what really sharing a home might mean. Things like saving for something bigger, planning decorations for joint taste, talking over adopting a pet that’ll never become one or the other’s because it’ll always be theirs, and —
Sharing a bed.
It’s not something they’ve ever really done, beyond necessity. Rare missions and too-late nights at someone else’s place have sometimes necessitated a shared mattress with a wall of pillows down the middle. Izuku doesn’t even take that bit personally, because Kacchan runs hot and he likes his space and the thought of him cuddling with anyone just doesn’t really compute in his brain.
Izuku might be a bit of a thrasher. That particular boundary is for everyone’s safety.
But it doesn’t stop Izuku from thinking about it.
…
It’s the natural progression of things, he thinks. Delusionally, but that’s what all of this is. Kacchan sits next to him on the couch with this wonderfully lazy posture and relaxed face, and if Izuku were to say something to him he’d tip his head in his direction instead of turning it and find him mostly with his eyes.
The expressions he wears are sort’ve the hardest part.
He looks so gentle when his mind is quiet. There’s an ease he radiates in a well-cared for body that’s doing little more than process and breathe. He’s so handsome it hurts Izuku to bear witness to it, and he finds himself avoiding eye contact more often than not because the feelings well up so strongly he thinks they might spill all over his face. The last thing Izuku needs on a quiet night with Kacchan is to become so readable the bubble pops.
For all the years it’s been like this, Izuku should really count his lucky stars that figuring him out is something Kacchan’s always sort’ve struggled with. Even if it was such an obstacle in earlier days, sometimes Izuku thinks it might be the only thing salvaging them now. Izuku gets to suffer through fruitless longing because he’s managed to reel himself in just enough to hide all the parts of himself Kacchan would never want to see.
He knows sometimes Kacchan has sniffed out that Izuku’s lying to him, in some capacity he can’t quite gauge the depth of. But there are silent boundaries they’ve begun to adopt over the years for the sake of not chewing each other up and spitting each other out. Left unchecked the two of them will pick each other down to the bone just for the sake of observation, figuring out exactly what’s making the other tick. Izuku does things that Kacchan can’t help but grind himself to pieces trying to understand, and Kacchan behaves in ways that Izuku can’t help assigning meaning to, accurate or not.
That isn’t to say they aren’t unfortunately still good at it. He knows he and Kacchan have always known each other better than most anyone else in the world, and that won’t change just because they’ve made points to put the microscopes down. Izuku has to keep a tight lock on himself because Kacchan is helplessly very brilliant, and he knows what a guarded Izuku looks like with his eyes shut tight.
His saving grace is that it really – isn’t always torture. It’s like he said before: being under Kacchan’s eye makes it all feel better. There isn’t always much necessity to hiding some form of his hurt, because Kacchan’s focus in his direction tends to shut down all the worst parts of himself into something quieter. More bearable.
When Kacchan is there, and thinking about him, Izuku can forget all the more that he wants from him. He’s getting all from Kacchan that Kacchan offers to the world. Kacchan’s care, and his attention, and his time – there’s no recipient to his affections of the sort that Izuku wants. Kacchan isn’t seeing anybody. Night after night, he comes home to Izuku, and it’s not all Izuku wants to ask for, but it’s the most anyone is getting.
It means something. It isn’t enough, but sometimes — it is.
…
It’s a fortunately-unfortunately common night where Kacchan has his legs thrown over Izuku’s lap. Izuku wouldn’t go anywhere even if he wanted to, because physical contact from Kacchan isn’t rare, not exactly, but there’s an intimacy to this form of it in particular that Izuku can’t help himself from drinking in every time it arises. Kacchan shoving at him, nudging him in some particular direction, maneuvering Izuku’s own body in space to occupy somewhere that better suits Katsuki is something Izuku has gotten near disquietingly used to.
But this is simply to touch him. For Katsuki’s own comfort, sure, but Izuku’s the body he’s in contact with, Izuku’s is the lap he rests in, and that means his comfort is coming from Izuku.
Izuku ignores his body’s needs for far longer than he usually would on these nights. Always in the event that it might be the last time he gets it.
It’s a doomed way of thinking. Izuku knows full well that life will play out the way it will whether he wants it to or not, and spending precious energy panicking and trying to conserve these moments he gets even a taste of all that he craves will make him increasingly desperate. It’s a trap of a cycle.
Izuku will place too much weight on these things – he’ll grow to crave them more – he’ll get weirder about it – there will be more distress in the moments he isn’t receiving them.
Eventually none of it will be enough.
The root is insecurity. He’s had enough time to himself to reflect on that particular source of it. Izuku doesn’t know what this means to Kacchan, doesn’t know if he places a similar sort of importance, so he’s uncomfortably aware that the moments he assigns so much weight to could stop without warning, because Kacchan might not crave them. He might not feel the loss at all.
It makes it so he can never relax, in the good parts. The minutes where he knows he should be grateful the most. All he can think about is when it will end — when Kacchan will leave, and Izuku will be once again alone and wanting.
…
He’s truthfully too tired for a movie tonight — both of them are. Izuku can feel the depleted energy hanging in the air, and like it always does, it stirs up a gentle sort of panic in his lungs. He almost wants to suggest something, just to pull a little bit more time longer with Kacchan. But deep down he knows neither of them are up for it, and Kacchan’s rejection of the time together would only make things worse.
This is another part that kind’ve digs into him, even though he knows it isn’t fair. Izuku is so reluctant to call it quits, even if his eyes are heavy and his limbs are dragging and sleep would fix him into something that is far less sulky and much more appreciative of all the innumerable days he and Kacchan could have together yet.
He doesn’t think Kacchan has the same sort of reservation. He thinks he’s a little more secure in what they are, and the time they have together, or more likely he just lacks that craving to spend every minute possible with Izuku, the same way Izuku wants to spend every minute possible with Kacchan.
It isn’t fair for him to be so torn up about something like that. He doesn’t want Kacchan to feel the same sort of things he does. It’s torture. He wants Kacchan to rest and for Kacchan to sit easy in the knowledge that Izuku cares for him and he’ll be here in the morning and every night, Izuku will come home to him and they will have countless more opportunities to just sit and watch a movie together.
It’s just that — Izuku wants that for himself, too. And while there’s still that painful longing in his chest, that selfish need for more of his affection, he doesn’t ever think he’s going to have it.
So really — since he won’t have that, and this is how it is — he just wants Kacchan to miss him.
…
He knows Kacchan is going to call it quits long before he even does. It creeps over him, tendrils of anxiety wound in his chest, because he’s running down the minutes, and there’s no good solution that doesn’t involve anything Kacchan isn’t too worn out to give. Izuku is too worn, too, but he’d sacrifice it. Stupidly, he’d exhaust himself for just a little more.
Kacchan would never stand for that, though.
He’s wasting all the precious final moments of the night panicking about how they’re being wasted. This is one of the parts that frustrates him most – he wants to understand, logically, that their time together isn’t ending, there’s just another time barrier in between. But it doesn’t click solidly enough for comfort, so Izuku finds himself fighting himself in his head all over again. A repeated battle he never wins.
It hurts. There’s something he knows would fix him, but it’s something he already knows he can’t have. The only way Izuku could truly, effectively make non-temporary peace with the fact that they both need sleep, is if when Kacchan announced he was going to bed, the two of them could go together.
…
It’s such a painful thought. Izuku wants it so badly sometimes, he thinks it could reasonably break him. Every time Kacchan slips his way down the hall to his room, Izuku wishes desperately that he could follow. Agree that it’s time, and make the trek with him.
He thinks he’d know calm that way. Trailing after Kacchan to a room they’ll share in a bed they’ll share, and Izuku thinks it might even help if there was still that wall of pillows there, even if they couldn’t touch, but the want for Kacchan to take him in his arms burns so intense in the center of his chest he thinks it might split with his longing.
It’s a shame that borders on invisible humiliation. It isn’t anything beyond private knowledge, that Izuku’s body yearns so deeply to be held by Kacchan, but just as Izuku can look at himself and see all he achingly wants staring back at him, he worries that there’s something bereft about him that anyone could pick up.
He wonders if it’s obvious. That there’s something from the world he wants but isn’t getting. It isn’t a yearning he could look anyone else in the face and bear witness to, and it’s so isolating in its own way. Is he the only person in the world that wants this sort of love so much, everything else feels secondary? Is there something inhuman in his desires, a depth to it that sets him apart from the rest of the world like so much else about him once has?
If he feels it this much, too much, it’s just another confirmation that Kacchan will never be able to match his affections. And sometimes, when the hurt claws into him deep enough, he thinks nothing short of identical devotion will settle the gnawing hunger inside him.
So that’s that, really. Izuku will never get reprieve from the agony that plagues him every minute he isn’t soaking in Kacchan’s attention, and he will just have to learn to breathe through it and be grateful for the small moments he’s allowed that any normal person would already know how to be grateful for.
…
It’s painful to watch him go. Even anticipating the feeling does very little for actually processing it, that moment where Kacchan breathes out heavy like he’s bracing for something, and Izuku’s pulse jumps because now it’s his turn to be bracing for something. It’s not quite long-suffering as it is acquiescing — Kacchan finally made the decision, and now he needs to put it into motion.
Izuku tries to look at him, and ultimately fails. He keeps his gaze low, because that slack look on his face bears a mouth he can’t bring himself to watch move, for all he wishes from it. Words and contact of the sort Izuku has no right to ask for. Kacchan looks so wonderful when he’s tired, and Izuku knows intimately the steps of his nighttime routine, and he’s looped it enough times in his brain to imagine just where he would fit in if only he could.
He can’t look because it makes him want to chase. If he has to actually watch Kacchan walk away from him, he doesn’t trust his body not to trace through the motions just to keep himself one step behind him, to follow where Kacchan leads. They don’t do nighttime routines together unless they finish a shift together, and are too tired to do anything more than crash out and regain consciousness some odd hours later. No patience for waiting.
There’s little intimacy even there. Those nights, the bulk of their tasks are completed before they’ve even left the agency.
“I’m headed to bed,” Kacchan tells him, like Izuku doesn’t know his tells well enough by now to already know. He likes that he says it regardless. That announcement, rather than Kacchan just vanishing — like it matters to tell Izuku where he’s off to. “You should come too, soon.”
And —
Fuck, that hurts.
It’s the whole damn combination of the thing. It’s Kacchan caring enough to even inform him, and expressing that he thinks Izuku should do the same. He might even be able to see how tired he is, in fact, Izuku’s sure he does. But even if he couldn’t read him Kacchan might make the same suggestion because it matters to Kacchan that Izuku gets enough sleep and in the moments he’s reminded of that it doesn’t matter to Izuku what the source of it is, only that he does and Kacchan’s care holds a value Izuku couldn’t assign numbers to if he tried.
Worst of all, it’s the way he says it. It’s not meant as an invitation but it sounds just like one, like bedtime is a shared destination and Izuku would be going with him instead of to a separate room at opposite ends of the same hall. It almost sounds like Izuku really could ignore his own bed and his own door and just keep walking, find Kacchan’s door and Kacchan’s bed and Kacchan’s body within all of it. Like he really could follow.
It burns like fresh hell in his throat. Behind his eyes. He wants it so badly, he feels himself splitting from the inside out. Those few long, agonizing seconds.
He swallows and nods to the floor. “I will,” he says quietly. So quiet, with such little force, his voice won’t be able to break. “I’m tired too,” he adds, a truth to blanket the whole truth, an explanation for any new way he could be acting weird that a more alert Kacchan would surely zero in on. “I will soon.”
It’s just enough. Kacchan nods at him, satisfied that Izuku will take care in the way he’s going to and that he’s done all he needs to to make sure he does so.
…
He leaves, and Izuku can hear all the evidence of his progress. Creaking floorboards, a running sink, the opening of cabinets. It’s always too soon that he hears his door shut for good. Anything before that is the space where he’s losing him, but Kacchan is not yet gone. He’s making his way towards somewhere he hasn’t gotten yet, and the journey still involves noise of the proof that Kacchan is awake and in motion. Touchable, still. Izuku could call down the hall, and he would answer.
He never really does.
…
The space after is where Izuku keeps pretending. Those variable minutes from when Kacchan has gone to bed and Izuku hasn’t and he sits still, curled up on the couch, nothing but longing that’s planted itself within his mind and body. He thinks of nothing else but what it might be like to get up, get himself ready, and find Kacchan in the space that isn’t his but he wants so desperately to be theirs.
He pretends he could. That Kacchan is up, still, lying in his bed and waiting for him. Decompressing in the before-Izuku time, and tucked in the knowledge that it won’t always be a before. That Izuku will be on his way. That when Izuku said I will he meant I will be coming to you.
It’s so good, and so terrible. The time he spends convincing himself. He always ends up sitting there far longer than he reasonably should, just to delay the acknowledgement that it’s a fantasy and not something real. If he keeps pretending, he can’t remember that that’s all he’s doing. Actually going to bed means facing truth.
Kacchan has just gone to bed. He’s not waiting up for Izuku. Like he will continue to do again and again, he’s gone somewhere Izuku can’t follow.
…
In their own home isn’t even the limit of where Izuku manages to get his hopes up. Kacchan is wound into every corner of his life, which means Izuku wants just a little more from everything he has. There’s a longing he sits through that’s nothing short of inescapable.
In public, one-on-one, and in private. Everywhere Izuku is, he’s always wanting Kacchan. There’s always something Kacchan is or isn’t doing that leaves him aching. Under his attention or out, Izuku still pines for him.
…
Around their friends, he becomes hyper-aware of some connection between the two of them that transcends anything most other people seem to share.
It’s sort of – part of the problem. Not that everything isn’t, but he and Kacchan do share an untouchable history and Izuku knows that. It feeds his delusions in weaker moments, because he works it over in his head and always draws some patchwork conclusion that he and Kacchan were always going to be drawn together. There are missing links in the places he wants affection to be, but it’s the sentiment he claws at over and over again. Kacchan is his most important person. He gets pieces of Kacchan that Kacchan never gives to anyone else. Is it circumstance for him, or does he feel the same pull that Izuku does? If Kacchan could, would he choose Izuku?
Izuku would choose him. He would. Over and over, Izuku would choose Kacchan.
…
Kacchan sits closest to him than he’s ever seen him sit with anyone else. At least, by his own doing. His own personal initiation. There’s a lot of closeness and physical affection Kacchan allows but doesn’t seek out, and he’s long past the person who would shrink under it, but he doesn’t reach first.
The allowance is close enough to admittance that he enjoys it for anybody. It’s good enough. Kacchan is loved for who he is by many, and that makes Izuku so happy, he feels fit to burst with it sometimes.
The thing about it is, he doesn’t want anyone loving him more. He doesn’t want them to get to. He wants this careful distance that Kacchan places between himself and everyone else, this reasonable thing for good friends that sits as a comfortable and acceptable barrier, something understandable, and he doesn’t want anyone to ever breach it.
Izuku always steals his small notices away for his heart, because he can’t help but do anything else. He watches.
Kacchan sits by him. Kacchan doesn’t move himself away if their thighs touch. If it’s crowded in a booth, Izuku’s are the shoulders his arm will sling around, for the sake of his own comfort, and if Izuku leans back to take up the space he needs for himself, too, Kacchan will never act like it’s weird.
He glows far too loudly under it. He knows he does. His people, they’re used to seeing him happy enough to typically not spare it a second thought, but Izuku’s feelings are private but not quite secret. There’s a few who know, and are kind enough to keep hush.
But he sees the flash of eyes in acknowledgement. He watches them catalogue these things just as closely as Izuku does, and sometimes it’s that recognition that makes his chest feel a few sizes too small just on its own, because he doesn’t want anyone else to think about it. He doesn’t want any confirmation for or against his own thoughts. It all gets tangled in the hope he struggles enough to control with his own effort, and any sort of sway from the opinion of anyone else threatens the highly precarious grip he keeps on his own sanity.
He knows the mirth when he sees it. The amusement like there’s some secret he hasn’t been let in on, or the soft pity. Izuku doesn’t want any of it, because he loves them and they love him and Kacchan loves them and they love him but none of them know Kacchan like he knows Kacchan, and none of them understand just how bad it is.
They don’t know. So he’s not interested in anything they have to think or say about it. He just wants to sit pretty under Kacchan’s arm and pretend Kacchan might feel called enough to lean over and press a kiss to his temple.
Any minute now. He could do it.
…
He wants a lot from these moments that aren’t acceptable. None of it ever is, genuinely, but when he’s pleased and happy are some of the moments he finds himself most disgusted with his own desires. Knowing that he’s wanting more than anyone should reasonably ask for because he should be plenty satisfied with all he’s been given.
The way Kacchan acts in public when he’s comfortable and contented only fills up the part of him that’s convinced Izuku’s something like his. It’s exactly that arm around Izuku’s shoulder that his mind can’t help but file away as possession, and he’s said he doesn’t want anyone looking, but at the same time it’s something he wants to be able to tell everyone about.
He wants to press it in people’s faces. He wants them to see it, and know what it means. He wants that to be the meaning, and he wants it confirmed, and he wants there to be no doubt what the significance of he and Kacchan showing up together and sitting together and leaving together really is.
He wishes he could say something like, I’m Kacchan’s and he is mine. Even if he wouldn’t say it like that. Even if they aren’t words that would truly leave his mouth, and it might even come out a little bit unnecessary, because it’s something that goes without saying.
He — really wishes it could be something that goes without saying.
He’s tired of having all these pieces that look like they could mean something and don’t mean something. He wishes he could look at the whole picture and draw a conclusion that’s something he could be sure of. He wishes it weren’t even possible for this sort of equation to have a solution that isn’t the one Izuku wants, but he knows two people could have all these things and still only, tragically, be friends.
He knows it’s possible. There’s no assumptions to comfortably make.
He and Kacchan are nothing more than that until stated otherwise. And it hasn’t been stated.
…
Izuku’s almost entirely sure he knows Kacchan better than anyone.
No, he is sure, and that’s why he’s thought it.
Kacchan’s is a mind he’s had near unfiltered access to since they were teenagers, and while others may get pieces of him, there’s still no one that Kacchan has invited in enough to touch all the things Izuku has held in his hands about him for most all of their adult lives.
It’s that sort of acknowledgement that makes him sure that if Kacchan were bearing the evidence that his feelings might in any way match Izuku’s, he’d have noticed it.
At least, that’s his conviction when he’s struggling most with all of it. Logically, Izuku knows he’s been successful in hiding his own true feelings from Kacchan. It borders egotistical to think that Kacchan couldn’t be experiencing anything that Izuku wouldn’t simultaneously recognize and comprehend. Kacchan doesn’t strictly feel and express things in a way that will only align with actions Izuku will understand.
They’re two different people. Izuku, technically, only has his own frame of reference.
It doesn’t stop him from trying to fit Kacchan’s behaviors into it.
…
Kacchan leans in close to his ear, and his breath is so warm, Izuku fights against the urge to close his eyes. How he wants just a little less distance between them. His mouth isn’t so far away — if Kacchan were so inclined, he could get what he wanted.
It’s so loud, the bar they’ve crowded themselves into, their friends along the round table, and the racing thoughts in Izuku’s head, he almost misses it. Kacchan squeezes around his shoulders, and talks barely loud enough for it to register to his ears.
“You wanna get out of here?” he intones, just shy of playful, driven by the good mood of a gathering he genuinely wanted to attend, and it’s like the universe insists on spitting in Izuku’s face.
The things he’d give to hear those words from Kacchan’s mouth in a context that isn’t what he knows he means.
The answer is yes, regardless. His heart’s been racing too hard between his ribs from the constant contact with Kacchan, and it’s doing nothing short of exhausting him. He needs to be out from the watchful eyes of their friends and in the space where it’s safer to think about Kacchan too loudly, because the normal person he holds together who isn’t devastatingly in love with his best friend is sort’ve bursting at the seams.
He nods at Kacchan without looking his way. Kacchan nods back from the corner of his eye, and knocks the rest of his beer back. Izuku rarely drinks at these outings and Kacchan rarely has more than just that, but it wouldn’t matter anyway with the short walk back to their apartment.
They arrive together, they agree to leave together, they walk home together. Izuku wishes going home with Kacchan meant infinitely more than it does.
What’s new.
…
The sniffling in the shower isn’t something that goes away.
He should’ve maybe known from the increasingly-persistent growing knot in his stomach, but hitting a breaking point isn’t something Izuku’s ever been very good at acknowledging. It isn’t exactly ideal if he’s forced to admit that silently pining for Kacchan for years has a time limit shorter than he’s anticipated. If it won’t be something he’ll manage to strengthen himself around, to carry properly.
Because it means change of the sort he’s not exactly prepared to endure. It likely means the loss of the thing he’d fought so hard to keep through it — this closeness that was so hard-earned and so unfortunately sabotaged by Izuku’s helpless need for more.
He can’t imagine Kacchan will want to continue sharing a space with him when he’s finally aware of what all exactly it means. What Izuku privately wants when he catches sight of him in the places he’s meant to feel safest. Constantly aware of desire burrowing under his skin and a discomfort that will eventually, undoubtedly make it impossible for Kacchan to relax around him.
Which means it’s only a matter of time where Izuku’s heart will break fresh, and it won’t break even, won’t split itself down clean in half. He knows well enough that the parts of him that love Kacchan are the parts of him that live and breathe and grow and rebuild themselves every waking and resting minute of every day. All the cells in his body have learned to love Kacchan, produce it like energy, like something found within his very lifesource.
He’ll splinter into a thousand pieces. It will shatter him wholly. He knows it isn’t healthy to have nursed something so devastating his full life, but he’s known so intimately the joy in loving Kacchan. It’s a luxury he’s so dreaded ever having to give up.
…
There’s still a soft hope within him that it’s the final stretch of agony before the relief. That the pain will become so great, his body will cut off that particular source of emotion to protect the mind and keep him entirely, blissfully intact.
And he can still be happy as Kacchan’s roommate.
Even when he considers it seriously, he knows it’s only wishful thinking.
…
Just as often as he spirals and doom-thinks, Izuku wakes up refreshed many mornings and decides he’s been over-dramatic.
Really, it’s hard not to. With the newly-rested body comes a clear head away from all the creeping anxieties he always feels he should know much better than to take any stock in. He knows he has a tendency to draw up worst-case scenarios away from the watchful eyes of anyone who might be able to inject some rationality into him. Izuku’s one-track mind is both a blessing and a disturbingly formidable curse once he works a subject over by himself for too long.
Usually, it’s Kacchan’s brand of simplification that manages to steer him out of whatever rabbit holes he manages to fall down. Izuku trusts Kacchan more than most anyone in the world, and his perspective is a quick yank back to center when he shifts too far off track.
Kacchan helps ground him, when Izuku gets like this. But he can’t, here.
Not with this.
The only thing that manages to fix Izuku is a mood improved by a blank slate of a body. Those blessed hours kept occupied enough to stray far from the thoughts he’ll circle. If he’s lucky, his schedule will demand so much from him that that inevitable drain will never arrive to slip down.
But it always does, eventually.
…
He feels silliest in the moments with Kacchan that just feel good.
They don’t get many days off together. They get enough, but in the grand scheme of Izuku’s desires they hardly get any at all. Usually they’re spent with chores in mind and grocery runs to make because heroes still have to cook and eat and clean just like everybody else.
Izuku doesn’t mind that.
He really doesn’t mind that, because it’s just another example of all the ways living in the same space with Kacchan makes it feel like home.
They make lists together. They go shopping together. Izuku could text Kacchan to pick up milk after his shift and he would do it, because that’s what it means to have identical keys on identical-but-distinctly-decorated rings.
It also means Kacchan waits by the door while Izuku puts on his shoes, because their fridge and their pantry are bare and it’s time.
…
There’s a terrible impulse that takes over Izuku when they walk down crowded aisles illuminated by painful fluorescent lighting. It’s half-sappy and half-comfort-seeking in nature, because walking around shopping for a home they’ll both be coming back to makes something outright soften and rot in the center of Izuku’s chest, and he dislikes the walls-closing-in feeling of getting groceries in public just as much as he’s sure Kacchan does.
Corned and watched, even if they aren’t. Kacchan’s so good at disguises, you’d never know unless he was staring you down.
He ensures the same for Izuku.
“Do you want those dumb chips again, or are you ready to get over your shit taste.”
Izuku glances up at him, and forcefully reminds himself that no — they cannot link arms.
He really wants to. He scrunches his face up, unseen. “Kacchan, they’re just bananas. They taste like bananas.”
Kacchan scoffs, and drops a bag into the cart. Unceremonious. Izuku reaches his hands in there to make sure too many don’t get crushed. “Textures all wrong. Chips are chips. Bananas are bananas. If I wanted one or the other, I’d just have that.”
“Sometimes you want both,” Izuku says mindlessly, eyes drifting. His cheeks are growing just a little bit warm. He’s got a bit of glowing to do about the fact that Kacchan’s been noticing him eating them, and knew he wanted them even if he didn’t outright say yes. Kacchan pays attention to these things – pays attention to Izuku.
It’s really great.
Kacchan shakes his head at him, and folds his arms over the cart while he pushes. They’d probably feel so nice to hold. “We should go back to that old laundry scent. Or get a different one. New one makes my nose fuckin’ itch.”
Izuku snaps out of it. He straightens, nodding vigorously. “Ugh, me too, I’m so glad you said something. I didn’t wanna complain if you liked it.”
“Tch.” Kacchan flicks his gaze his way, and glares a hole into the side of his face. Narrowed eyes, molten-red, he’s taken to wearing his black hoop earrings again and it’s really doing it for Izuku, oh no. “Dumbass, if you don’t like it, we’re finding a new one. Pisses me off when you do that shit.”
“Just didn’t care enough,” Izuku defends. Weakly, even to himself, but Kacchan’s staring at him hard, and oh, it’s too much, why does he have to die on the hill where Izuku takes optimal care of his own well-being. He wants to take his arm so bad.
“You should,” Kacchan tells him, bristling like a pissed-off cat. He’s wearing a face-mask, so Izuku can’t see the sneer he knows he wears, but he imagines it just fine. Izuku half-expects him to go stomping off to the laundry aisle in protest of Izuku’s own lack of self-advocacy, but that would sort of defeat the whole purpose of choosing a new scent together.
He does push forward enough that Izuku has to pick up the pace or trail after him. Izuku leans around the cart in placation. “I probably would’ve switched it out when you weren’t looking.”
It might be a lie, but they’ll really never know. It inches Kacchan’s shoulders away from his ears anyhow, after a few deep breaths, and that’s a win in Izuku’s book.
Kacchan cools off. They pick something clean.
Izuku never takes his arm.
…
Admittedly, Izuku tends to struggle a bit with the motions of taking care of himself. His body, his possessions, the home he comes back to every night. It’s hard to admit that sometimes hero work drains him more than he thinks it should. It’s less of a job, and more of a way of life he’s chosen for himself — sometimes dishes and laundry and even just showering are tasks that feel mountainous when he throws his whole body into his priority, day after day.
Kacchan would say this is old news. He tends to be a bit better about it because he’s a little more religious about it, treats a good routine like it’s the solution to every road bump.
Izuku’s gotten a little bit better under this influence in the process, in part because he can admit he’s right, and also because picking up the slack means he can take a few things off Katsuki’s shoulders.
Kacchan would do it all if he had to. They’re discomfortingly similar in that regard, in their own ways. But he doesn’t, and Izuku would never ask him to.
They divide up the chores in halves. It rotates, usually, but Izuku knows Kacchan uses cooking as a form of destressing, and lets him handle the majority of their meal preps without complaint, because it’s good for both of them. He can cook just fine, but Katsuki is excellent. And as much as he won’t admit it, he likes to hear it.
It’s Izuku’s turn to sweep the floors. He doesn’t mind this. The task becomes much more simplified when he can simply lift the furniture blocking his path up and out of the way, and hardly break a sweat about it. In a way, he sort’ve likes doing it, because Kacchan gets very pleased knowing of the lack of dirt and dust in places anyone else might not typically reach.
Izuku kind’ve likes it too. When they make their shared space clean, it almost feels like another burden lifted.
And he likes that they do it together.
…
Izuku is doing floors, which means Kacchan is doing laundry. Izuku used to get insecure over this on account of the fact that he knows he tends to dirty his clothes thoroughly, with sweat and grime and occasionally other substances he used to want to drown himself in the shower over imagining Kacchan witnessing.
At least, until he realized Kacchan was just as bad, if not worse. As far as his sweat goes, Izuku has always known he’s produced at least twice as much as the average person, but the implications of that didn’t settle in until he realized just how stubbornly it clings to every article of clothing he’s ever owned.
Not that it necessarily smells bad — there’s a sweetness to it that’s always nullified the worst of it, and that’s why no one’s ever complained about Kacchan over it in any serious way, and actually Izuku thinks he smells sort’ve good, natural musk and all —
But sweat is sweat, and Kacchan’s clothes tend to need two cycles more often than not.
Izuku thinks that’s why he prefers to do this, too. He claims this task in particular for himself on most occasions, and Izuku just had to get used to the thought that sometimes Kacchan would know when he had less-than-appropriate dreams.
…
They keep a few blankets thrown over the back of the couch.
As is common for any household, and they see their fair share of use, so sometimes they get thrown in alongside the rest of the routines. Izuku has a very sentimental and very worn All Might Silver Age throw that Kacchan never ceases to give him shit about, simply for the fact that it’s nearing tatters, but he also never fails to keep it clean along with the rest of them.
And it’s not just that.
Izuku is already showered, dishes washed and surfaces dusted and the floors finally, thankfully clean. There’s something cooking slow in the oven and the bathroom tiles have been scrubbed down and Kacchan is just pulling the last load of laundry from the dryer.
It’s always the blankets. Izuku lounges up against the back of the couch, accepting that he will probably be scolded for letting his hair get the cushions wet, and sips water from an open bottle slow. It’s not impossible work, but this week sort’ve kicked his ass, and he’s sore. He half-dozes, hearing the clang of the dryer door somewhere distant down the hall.
He’s aware of Kacchan padding into the room, but he’s so tired, he can’t even bring himself to peek an eye open.
The next thing he becomes aware of is the warmth.
It’s another routine that is so terribly, horribly bad for his heart.
Each time Kacchan puts the blankets through the laundry, when Izuku’s Silver Age All Might fleece throw comes out, all soft and freshly clean and dryer-warm, Kacchan will wrap him in it.
Always, without fail. Kacchan steals the loosely-gripped bottle from him, tucks the blanket into his sides, and ruffles a hand through his hair. Izuku opens his eyes just enough just in time to watch him retreat to the kitchen.
His chest twinges. Kacchan always does it like it’s nothing.
The blanket is so warm, and Izuku is so very tired. He dozes properly, and Kacchan continues to make their dinner.
…
He feels so looked-after, even in the smallest ways. Izuku wants constantly to become the best version of himself for Kacchan, someone strong and easy to keep track of and capable of standing on his own two feet — someone who isn’t a drain on Kacchan’s energy and resources.
Kacchan always steps in when his balancing act tips, which means bettering himself is good for Kacchan too. It makes Izuku keep pushing — not just in work, but in the delicate devotion of caring for his own fragile body.
Secretly, privately, Izuku cherishes it. Izuku loves how carefully Kacchan keeps watch of him as much as he fears it. He’s always sort’ve expecting the next slip-up to be the last straw, that Kacchan will come to his senses and realize Izuku is a bit too much of a mess to be constantly cleaning up.
But time and time again, Izuku struggles, and Kacchan picks up the slack. They rely on each other in work, and in increasingly prominent ways, through life.
They’re a team. Izuku is growing so comfortable with that.
He worries just how fervently he wants that to be permanent.
…
Sometimes, when Izuku grows sick, even the simple task of filtering through emails and requests can be too much for him.
In his defense, he gets quite a lot.
Most everything is too much for him, if he’s being honest, because Izuku breaking down and admitting he’s sick usually means he’s too exhausted to do much more than leave his bed for the bathroom. Drink water from the faucet, crawl back under the covers, sleep and rot until he can remain upright again.
Kacchan never stands for any of it.
He knows he has more trouble saying no than he should. It’s hard to deny emergency calls and one-off brand deals for good causes and surprise appearances in places that matter to him, when he might not be feeling up to par, but he’s certainly not dying.
Until he is.
You wouldn’t be on your fuckin’ death bed every time if you just recognized when you feel like shit and rested, Kacchan has snapped in so many words, more than once. Sometimes, when they’re both lucky, Kacchan will recognize the patterns before the breaking point, and they will avoid the worst of it. He’ll insist, and Izuku will give in.
This time sort’ve snuck up on both of them.
It’s happened many enough times, but this instance is sort’ve devastating. Izuku’s been feeling too good lately, too reckless, like his spiraling had fashioned a brand new pair of rose-colored lenses, and everything Kacchan does feels like a source of evidence rather than more salt in the effing cyclical wound.
Each time Izuku gets sick, Kacchan makes it his mission to care for him.
…
He’s on a rotation of painkillers. Not too much, lest Izuku start to think he’s better too fast and end up making himself infinitely worse. But Kacchan sneers at Izuku’s tendency to try and bear the pain, and insists on just enough to take the edge off.
He’s not allowed to skip meals, or under-hydrate. Kacchan makes clear soup and plain rice and endless, gruff promises of katsudon at the end of the rainbow, once Izuku’s stomach can handle it and so long as he shuts his mouth and accepts everything Katsuki gives him without protest.
It’s Izuku’s lack of proactivity that got him into this mess in the first place, in Kacchan’s words, so clearly he doesn’t know what his body actually needs.
Izuku always lets it happen. He can’t help it. It always does help, and it feels good, in its own way, to be fussed over by Kacchan and looked after by Kacchan and trust that at the end of all of it, he really will come out feeling better.
And also infinitely worse.
He likes it too much. Kacchan’s hand at his forehead, checking for fever. Kacchan swaddling him in extra blankets, and fluffing his pillows. Kacchan refusing to ever do more than a quick grocery run when he’s like this, he won’t even go to work, and why won’t he go to work?
Hero work is everything to Kacchan. Izuku knows all the care he fits into his heart, so he shoves all the connections his mind tries to make straight down. Kacchan is a good person, and an endlessly wonderful friend.
It’s not that Izuku is special.
The sunlight pouring through the blinds is too bright, and his head is pounding.
He really wants to be special.
…
Kacchan confiscates his laptop, his work phone, and his pager when he’s like this. He turns them all off, and he handles telling everyone when he won’t be coming in.
He doesn’t trust Izuku not to brush it off, or cave.
Izuku finds him chewing someone out about it, on a day he’s finally well enough to make his way out of bed.
Eggs frying over the stove, phone in hand, brandishing a spatula like a weapon. The apron he has tied around his waist is so endearing, Izuku has to bite down a smile.
“Fuck all the way off, I don’t care how long you’ve had the shoot lined up,” Katsuki snaps down the line, scraping under an egg with too much force. Naturally, because this is how Kacchan is, it does not break. “You and I both know everyone in that planning room would lick their own assholes for the chance to work with hero Deku no matter when he reschedules. He’s fucking number one.” He listens impatiently for all of three seconds, then spits into the transmitter with finality. “He’s not ducking out, he’s sick, you’re a goddamn moron, and we’ll call you when he’s better. ”
If the phone could be slammed, Izuku’s sure Katsuki would. He instead taps the end call button with excessive finality, and tosses it across the counter. Izuku leans his hip up against the island as he lowers the heat on the eggs, and stamps down any urge he might have to make toast.
He thinks Kacchan might hit him. Izuku stays out of his way instead, and eventually accepts the mug of coffee Kacchan slides his way.
“You deal with fucking assholes. I’m vetting your deals from now on,” Kacchan tells him later, over the eggs. He points his chopsticks at Izuku like a threat, and Izuku is too smart to argue.
“Yes, Kacchan,” Izuku says, and tries to breathe through the pressure in his chest.
He takes such good care of him.
Izuku wishes he could control the source.
…
They go for walks, on mutual days off where the house is caught up and their work is caught-up-enough and he can tell Kacchan is a few small inconveniences away from blowing a proverbial fuse, over the lack of anything in motion to do.
Kacchan doesn’t ever usually take much convincing, when he’s already sort’ve pacing the length of the kitchen and the living room and Izuku clues in that he won’t be amenable to a suggestion like a video game or a movie.
They can work off steam sometimes that way, with something for Kacchan to rage about. Shitty plots and shittier modders and the satisfaction of reinforcing that Kacchan has superior tastes in media and better reflexes than most anyone who gets their hands on a controller.
Izuku knows better today, because that pent up energy is too physical. Kacchan keeps clenching and unclenching his hands.
The gym sometimes helps, but it’s an off-day, and Kacchan takes those seriously.
“We could go to the park,” Izuku suggests, and it breaks through the haze of Kacchan’s building spiral.
He stops in his tracks, and considers. Scrubs over his mouth, and considers their shoes by the doorway.
“I want to run,” Kacchan tells him, and Izuku is already rising to his feet.
“Done deal.”
…
They do this in quiet. Kacchan has enough to get out of his system that they’re breathing too hard to speak, and the pace is less of something that’ll maintain itself and more of something that’ll empty their heads of anything concrete.
Izuku’s lungs burn, and his joints threaten an ache.
He keeps up with Kacchan, and they only stop when Kacchan notices his laces have come untied.
The sun is warm, and the breeze cools his skin, and Kacchan slaps Izuku’s hands away and refastens the knot himself.
“If you didn’t need me to, it wouldn’t have come undone the first time.”
Izuku turns his gaze to the sky, and carefully does not think about all the ways Kacchan makes his life better.
He wishes he could be less greedy.
…
The world does not collapse in on itself.
But every time it gets bad again, Izuku’s outlook gets a little more grim.
Fractionally. Just enough for a panic that lingers.
…
But sometimes, he swallows just enough hope. It stays in his bloodstream, bubbles of maybes and what ifs.
…
Kacchan can be so good to him.
…
In his dreams, he kisses him and kisses him. On the couch, over the kitchen island, atop a comforter he’s long been imagining the underside of. Izuku knows the feel of Kacchan’s cheek under his hand best for the replay of the sensation, brief moments in other contexts he’s likely watered down for the repeat of his own imagination.
Still, he’s never held it in the way that plays out in the recesses of his mind. Acquired sensation is the fuel for a realism that will wake Izuku with an open wound of a stomach, of lungs, a beating heart curtained by those and a ribcage.
Strangely, it’s the dreams that leave Izuku most bereft that he wakes to find Kacchan also distant from sleep.
Izuku feels scar tissue under his fingertips and clandestine softness against his lips. If he could have kept kissing Kacchan, he thinks he might have tried to put his mouth other places, for the sake of appreciation. Just to know if it’s something Kacchan likes.
A warm body beneath his own but the firmness of the hardwood beneath his socked feet. His body struggles to piece together reality and not, in the search for something to soothe his aching throat. Usually he keeps a glass of water by his bedside at Kacchan’s careful insistence, but they both crashed so early tonight after a long shift that anything that came before bed was made to wait.
He thinks he’s hungry, but he’d rather brush his teeth before anything like that. His body still weighs itself with exhaustion and his mind is traitorously declaring itself alert.
Maybe he’ll get lucky, and the water will soothe him enough to put him straight back to sleep.
Then he won’t have to remember it. Kacchan under him. Kacchan absent of intentions to move, and Kacchan accepting the impulses he has for him.
His mouth really does look so soft.
…
It tenderizes him, wanting so much to no outcome. Izuku wants held and he wants comforted and he wants Kacchan to scare all the bad feelings away. It builds so high in the center of his chest, the pressure creeps its way out to the tips of his fingers. Curls in his hands.
He wants to reach out and touch him. So gently.
He imagines the relief it would be to have a place to put all his softest wants. Turn Kacchan’s face to his and press his fondness to that mouth and find somewhere to rest all that he’s carried for him, all his life.
He thinks if he knew Kacchan wanted to touch him, if he knew Kacchan wanted to be touched —
It’d make him brave. He could take care of them.
…
Some other nights, he dreams of sure hands pinning his wrists and knees bent on parting his thighs. Kacchan kisses him like he could take in all the pieces of him, and Izuku allows it so blissfully he finds himself wishing for eternity in each new brush of his mouth.
Like the frames could freeze there. He’d ensure it if he could. Kacchan kisses him and Izuku leans up and chases him, anyway, so it really is like Kacchan is stealing him, taking him with him.
He’s pinned right back down when he follows. Held there, because Kacchan doesn’t want him anywhere else.
He doesn’t know which version hurts worse.
…
Kacchan’s hardly watching the late night reruns by the time Izuku’s body regains enough to control to drift him out past the living room to the kitchen.
He knows he’s hardly watching, because his eyes are glassy and unfocused and Kacchan really, really hates this one anyway. He’s not in a huff where he sits motionless, so he’s somewhere else.
Izuku wishes he could slip in, wherever he is in his head. Be there too.
Sometimes Izuku’s favorite moments are the quiet. The still kind, more empty than full of the buzzing that tends to accompany these nights. Sometimes Izuku will find Kacchan and he’ll be brimming with something, so tense where he sits, and eyes so far away Izuku knows he’s gone somewhere he’ll have to come back from on his own. He can’t be pulled.
The best thing Izuku has to offer these nights is his company. Katsuki would do the same for him, and he does. It helps for Izuku just to know there’s someone waiting when he comes back from wherever he goes, someone he wouldn’t have to go looking for. He could reach out and touch them, and remember they’re real.
It helps so much more that it’s Kacchan. Kacchan, who he nearly lost so many times.
Regardless of the form it takes, he knows Kacchan cares for him. He hopes he brings him that sort of comfort too.
…
The Kacchan he finds is contemplative, but not too far gone. He knows well enough by now what that looks like.
It’s not a night Izuku won’t be able to reach him. Selfishly, Izuku is relieved.
It’s not that he would mind being steady, for him – he wouldn’t. He’s just missed Kacchan so much this week, and wants to spend time with him.
Kacchan’s eyes catch his when he moves closer, and for as tired as he is, Izuku still has to bite down a smile.
Kacchan’s here. That means he’ll get to.
A slow hand pats the cushion of the couch beside him. Izuku nods just as slow, and points over his shoulder to the kitchen. Katsuki’s arm falls back down to his lap, and he nods back, eyes falling shut as he relaxes again.
“Do you want some,” Izuku mumbles as he passes, and Katsuki tips his shoulder up to shrug.
He probably already had some. Izuku takes the indifference as affirmative anyway, and grabs two bottles of water from the shelf of their fridge. He isn’t sure he has the coordination for glass in this state.
It’s a strange, terrible craving, having the Kacchan of his dreams in his head as he was, and the real Kacchan in front of him, looking just as terribly soft and warm. He’s in his skull-patterned black t-shirt that long should’ve retired by now, the logo cracked and faded in the front, hardly a shape at all. In a way, Izuku’s grateful to know that Kacchan never really intends to get rid of it. He’s gotten a few others, over the years, but this one has seen the worst of them. It’s a comfort to know it’ll see the best.
Kacchan doesn’t talk as Izuku sits next to him. His eyes are still clouded with something more distant, absently trained on a dimmed, near-silent screen, and Izuku tries not to stare down the curve of his jaw as much as it really is the only thing he wants to be looking at.
He’s so handsome, pulled from sleep like this. Face softened and smoothed and terribly, effortlessly beautiful. Izuku could wax poetic about his cheekbones and the curve of his mouth in a little bound notebook until his hand aches. He refuses to admit to himself on whether he might’ve done something similar, once.
After a few long moments, Katsuki breathes out through his nose. His head tips vaguely in Izuku’s direction, and the crimson-red that peeks through pale blond lashes is so arresting, Izuku thinks his breathing momentarily shifts to manual.
When he looks at him like that, it makes Izuku feel reckless. Terribly so — that gentle gaze and quiet demeanor always tend to make Izuku forget himself, like he could reach out and feel it all with his hands, and it wouldn’t be taken from him. Kacchan shifts his thigh so their knees press together, and Izuku so badly wants him to keep pressing. Sling his leg over his lap, plant his hand on the other side of Izuku’s hip, he wants contact and strengthened attention and a little more closeness and Kacchan.
He watches Katsuki’s brows pull. He’s still in those black hoops, so simply contrasted with that lighter face, and Izuku thinks of brief mentions of poking a needle through his lower lip and wonders how he’d survive it. Kacchan with a new piece of jewelry to toy with, Kacchan with metal Izuku would imagine under the press of his mouth.
“You’re thinking so loud,” Kacchan says quietly, and his voice is dipped so low, so scratched in his throat, Izuku’s whole body sinks and feels bathed in it.
“Sorry,” Izuku mumbles back, and it’s like his mouth moves on automatic. There’s a trance he thinks he’s stepped into, remnants of the corners of sleep and fantasies that made his body feel light.
For all that he tries to pull his eyes away, he can’t take his eyes off Kacchan’s face.
His mouth opened so wonderfully under Izuku’s guidance, in that dream. He watched Izuku with a look in his eyes that really isn’t all that dissimilar to the one he’s wearing, comfortable and lowered in inhibition. The want that wells in the pit of Izuku’s stomach is so painfully strong, the reasons leaning in closer would be such a bad idea are all starting to sound like white noise, blending and fizzling to neutral in his ears.
He should move. Izuku knows, he should run away. He should excuse himself back to his bedroom, take his water he hasn’t yet opened, and try to forget how terribly easy the thought of kissing Kacchan in their living room seems in this silent moment.
It’s so still outside their apartment, the late hour restful for most anything else. Izuku’s thoughts are all but swirling away from him. Right down that reoccurring drain.
Really, would it be so bad, Izuku thinks, not for the first time, but toeing over a tipping point. Hovered over the ledge of a neverending cliff, and buoyed by too many good days in a row.
Time spent together, and that terrible, wonderful dream.
…
Kacchan in his dream smiled like he had so many times before, in their kitchen. Across a crowded room. Following a side comment over paperwork. A small, private thing before all that came to follow, that Izuku’s body still feels in real time.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
…
“What are you thinking about,” Kacchan whispers, and Izuku is watching him so closely, so carefully, he would have had to have lost his line of sight in order to miss it.
He doesn’t miss it.
So slowly, Kacchan’s gaze drops from Izuku’s own eyes. Izuku’s mouth parts on a response that hasn’t formed yet, and those awfully long lashes lower just that fraction still. Kacchan’s body shifts in weight from the cushions of their couch in increments to his direction, the lowering of a shoulder, the tilt of his head. Izuku’s lungs forget how to fill and empty in their entirety, as he moves himself to speak, and watches Kacchan’s now-attentive focus slide the length of his face, down to settle there on Izuku’s mouth, his lips.
Izuku’s breath stops in its tracks.
There’s a thudding in his ears, something he thinks might resemble his pulse. The sight in front of him is a scene his brain has formed for him on an innumerable amount of occasions before this. For one long, stretched-thin moment, Izuku is certain he’s dreaming again.
Then it passes, and Kacchan is still waiting.
There’s something forming there, in his eyes. In the depths of them, unclouding in the pause, collected information drawing connections Izuku’d inadvertently made visible. For all that he’d ever done to mask the true nature of all he’d been feeling, Izuku’s time keeping secrets from Kacchan had run out.
But there’s more to it. This reaction, this coax —
Izuku’s gaining understandings of his own, too.
…
“What I always do,” Izuku admits, finally. It comes out as little more than a breath. Kacchan watches his mouth move as he says it, his own lips parting, fingers curling in against the fabric of the couch.
He leans, just barely.
…
“Is that right,” Kacchan says.
…
It’s too clear, too suspended in time to be a dream, Izuku thinks. His don’t work this way, more flashes of moments, echoes of sensations that linger in wakefulness. He doesn’t think in his dreams that he’s ever been able to count all of Katsuki’s individual eyelashes, or feel every rush of his heartbeat there under hypersensitive, thrumming skin. Kacchan’s demeanor opens up into such a terribly clear invitation, such strong intent, Izuku’s never been more rooted in the reality of anything, and what it all might mean.
This thing Izuku never thought he’d be able to have. This mimicked desire he’d been sure he’d carry alone, and the hope for the depth of a nature Izuku had been sure they’d never be able to breach. He watches it mirrored in an unguarded face, blooming under the echo of his surety, Kacchan realizing how wanted he is, and allowing Izuku to see that he’s wanted, too.
Kacchan is leaning, and Izuku has never been more convicted of his intentions. He never thinks he’s understood Kacchan better.
“Yeah,” Izuku says, feeling guided by his own reel. Kacchan only comes in closer, more consuming, more beautiful.
A breath away, Kacchan’s mouth pulls. His laugh is breathed through his nose, and he grins with teeth. Izuku finds himself echoing it, helplessly, and the relief that floods his body is so strong, the joy, he feels like he’s floating.
Katsuki is never more alluring than when he laughs. Their mouths just barely brush, and he admits, “Me, too.”