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Kacchan is a girl. Izuku feels like the biggest idiot in the world. In all of his Kacchan studies, he had missed this absolutely fundamental Kacchan fact. How?
Seriously, how?
Truly humbling.
“That’s it?” she asked at the time, staring at him with an open face, eyes wide and confounded. “You’re fine with it?”
“I’m a bit embarrassed, truthfully,” he admitted, sheepish. “I really should have known such an obvious Kacchan fact.”
She didn’t say anything to that. Her body language was tense, face a few shades paler than usual. Was she getting sick? Izuku would need to touch her forehead to confirm either way. Or perhaps it was due to something else. She had been shifting things around the apartment for the past few days.
He decided to start with that, rather than ask after her health. Kacchan often got surly at the accusation of sickness. “Why do you have a packed bag in your closet, by the way? Are you going on a trip?”
Kacchan startled, jerking away from the kitchen counter. “What?” Her voice was raspy. Soft.
“The bag in your closet,” Izuku said. “You packed it up right before this conversation. Are you going out or something?”
She just looked at him. It was a long time that she looked at him. Eventually she said, “No.”
“Oh, okay.”
“You’re seriously okay with this?”
“With what?”
“With— Izuku, I’m transgender. I am a transgender woman.”
He nodded. “Yes! Again, I’m so sorry I missed this. It’s—ah—a real blow to my pride, admittedly.” Understatement. “I’ll need to update all of my Kacchan information…”
Red irises bore into him. Red as poppies, red as cherries. Izuku had memorized Kacchan’s face from a thousand different angles, in a thousand different moods. And yet he had never known he was looking at the face of a woman.
Truly, Izuku has a lot to make up for as a Kacchanologist.
How does one come back from this, as a Kacchanologist, though? Izuku has cataloged all things Kacchan obsessively through the years—everything from the circumference of her chest, to the blast radius of her quirk, to the average diameter of her pupils in various amounts of light.
Yet he did not know she was a her.
In retrospect, flipping through hundreds upon hundreds of pages of Kacchan analysis, he can perhaps see some tells. They’re all dubious, though, hardly straightforward indications of anything as enormous as Kacchan’s gender. Izuku has known Kacchan pretty much his whole life; all of her traits and eccentricities have been part of her. He never thought about them beyond that.
Hesitations, unexplained avoidances, the strangely somber cast of her face in contexts Izuku never recorded. Maybe if he’d organized his Kacchan notes better, made more discrete observations, it would have been plainly obvious. It feels that way now.
This truly is putting a massive dent in his ego. The only way is forward, though.
Izuku dutifully corrects all of his notebooks, updates his online relationship status from “with my perfect boyfriend kacchan <3” to “with my perfect girlfriend kacchan <3,” and moves on.
Simple as that.
Kacchan has been weird lately.
To be fair, she’s less weird than she was before the whole “I’m a girl” thing came to light, but she’s still being fairly weird. By Kacchan standards, Izuku means, which are constantly evolving and—at this time—evolving rapidly at that. She’s stopped shifting things around the apartment and the grocery list is being updated as usual again. The packed bag still sits in her closet, though.
And she keeps giving him this look.
Izuku has yet to properly define the look.
They’re sitting at a restaurant that Todoroki recommended. The menu looks unfortunately bland for Kacchan. Izuku has mentally made a note to quietly never suggest this place again. And even here, on what is ostensibly a date, Kacchan has been giving him that look.
“I’ve been seeing a gender specialist for a year,” she says while they wait for their drinks.
“Oh! That’s great,” he replies.
There it is again. The look. “I didn’t tell you.”
He shrugs. He has no idea why she says that; obviously she didn’t tell him, since he didn’t know.
“I told you I was grabbing drinks with Raccoon Eyes. That was a lie. I was in therapy for gender dysphoria.”
“Ah, okay,” he says.
The look does not abate. “You aren’t pissed about that?”
Izuku blinks, cocking his head. The look follows him. “Why would I be? I mean—I’d rather you didn’t lie about your whereabouts, since that’s a safety issue, but it’s fine. Like, I track you on my phone, anyways. I knew you weren’t at a bar.”
Kacchan’s eyes widen.
“I knew you were at the doctor’s, Kacchan,” he says.
“You knew,” she echoes. “And you didn’t ask me about it? You never confronted me.”
“Well, if it was serious, you’d tell me,” he says. “And now you did, so.”
The server slides their glasses of water onto the table. “What can I get for you gentlemen?”
Izuku twitches slightly at that; what does the server mean? There’s only one man here and Izuku is hardly a gentleman. Unless—
Oh.
His eyes dart to Kacchan. She doesn’t so much as flinch. She orders for both of them, voice soft and even. The words fail to process in Izuku’s head; he is a foreigner in this moment.
Quiet follows them after the server departs. Kacchan’s gaze catches on him. The silence stretches between them, growing thinner and thinner. Then, “I look like a man, Izuku.”
“But you’re not a man?”
She closes her eyes. Pinches the bridge of her nose.
“I—What does that even mean, anyways? Looking like a man?” His questions are genuine. They are also fresh. He’s never thought about any of this before. Kacchan looks like Kacchan. And Kacchan has always been pretty, absurdly so. A sculpture couldn’t do her justice. “Like what even indicates—”
“Shut up, Izuku.” Her voice is low, strangely tired.
Quiet again. Izuku chews on his bottom lip. There’s this distance between them that he’s always felt and it feels wider than ever in this moment. He doesn’t understand her. Doesn’t understand himself, even. Kacchan is upset. He never wants that.
“I’m starting hormones,” she says.
He takes a sip from his water. “Okay?”
“I’m going on estrogen and progesterone. It’s going to change my body.”
His brow furrows. “Change your body?”
“Probably won’t do that much,” she says, a bitter undercurrent sullying her mouth.
He doesn’t know what that much means, exactly. Estrogen is a female sex hormone, he understands that. “Okay?” he says dumbly. “That’s… You want that, right?”
“It’s not about want.” Her words are quiet and tense in that way they only get when she is offended.
Izuku’s heart pounds in his throat. He doesn’t understand why she’s upset.
“You’re okay with this.” She says it not like a statement but rather a question without an answer.
Izuku’s brow furrows. “I— Yes? Kacchan, you need this medicine, right? Why wouldn’t I be okay with that?”
“You tell me,” she snaps.
He blinks. Takes in the tension of her jaw, the slight jut of her lower lip. How her lashes shudder. Vulnerable. Scared.
His heart softens at the recognition.
“I support you, Kacchan,” he says gently, reaching out for her hand. It’s cold under his palm, knuckles little ridges of bone. “Always. Whatever you need, just tell me.”
She opens her mouth, lips working for a few seconds. But she says nothing.
Life carries on. If there’s anything the two of them know intimately, it’s how things continue long past a conclusion.
Kacchan works and Izuku works and they meet up on patrol or after work or sometimes just in bed, on the verge of sleep. Their meetings are sparse, confined to quick meals and morning routines. It’s hard not to feel more like roommates than anything else, lately.
They hardly even kiss anymore. Izuku tries not to feel put out by it. Sometimes Kacchan didn’t like kissing before all this, anyways. She would get weird about him touching her sometimes—would shy away or get this distasteful expression if his hand accidentally landed in what he started referring to as “off limits” areas.
So it shouldn’t be a big deal. They’ve had droughts before. Come and go. Izuku brushes his teeth and crawls into bed and he falls asleep waiting for her, the same as every night for the past week.
A noise rouses him at 4:45 in the morning, per the alarm clock. His face is planted in Kacchan’s pillow, his body stretched across their bed, as he tries to interpret the muddled sound.
Sobbing, he identifies finally. From the bathroom.
He hops out of bed, the world swinging around him as he stumbles to the door, palms landing hard against the wood.
The sound stops.
“…Kacchan?” he ventures.
Quiet. “Kacchan, I know you’re in there.” He swallows. “I’m gonna open the door, okay?”
Shuffling. No reply.
Izuku cracks the door open. The light over the sink is on, casting the room in harsh white. Kacchan stands with her hands clenched on either side of the sink. Her face is wet and ruddy.
His heart sinks. “Oh, Kacchan,” he murmurs, foot hesitating over the threshold. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong with me,” she snaps. “It’s these damn hormones.”
Izuku lets out an unconvinced sound. He can’t help it.
“How can you fucking stand to be with me?”
He frowns, posture straightening. “What?”
She gestures at herself, then at the scattered tubes dirtying the sink. Izuku belatedly identifies them as lipstick and—he thinks—mascara. “I feel ugly,” she says, voice brittle. “I feel like an ugly girl who’s stuck in the body of an ugly man.”
“Ugly?” escapes Izuku, baffled. “Kacchan isn’t ugly.”
“Yeah?” Kacchan doesn’t look at him. Her eyes are hooded. “You don’t think I look ridiculous in lipstick, then? You don’t think I look like a man playing dress up?”
This line of questioning makes no sense to him; Kacchan looks good in anything she wears. She’s Kacchan. Kacchan is Kacchan. He looks at her and he sees everything he’s ever wanted.
The truth is, Izuku has always loved Kacchan independent of everything; his love transcends man or woman or person, even. It’s Kacchan. It’s only ever been Kacchan.
“That doesn’t matter to me, Kacchan,” he says, sincere. “Kacchan, when it comes to you, I don’t even see gender. I don’t care if you’re—”
“Maybe I just need a little fucking reassurance, Izuku!” she snaps, eyes bright with tears. “Shit!”
His mouth hangs open, unsure how to respond. Reassurance. “R-reassurance of what?” he manages.
She grimaces, twisting away from him. “Fuck, I feel so pathetic,” he hears her moan.
“Kacchan?” he says. “Kacchan, you’re not pathetic. Kacchan, what kind of reassurance do you need?”
She slams the door.
Izuku listens to the lock click. He listens to her cry. He considers knocking on the door, considers asking again. Kacchan, what do you mean? Kacchan, Kacchan, talk to me. Kacchan, can you explain? Kacchan?
He thinks better of it.
“Izukkun.” Obasan’s voice crackles through the phone.
“I don’t know what to do,” he confesses, escaping him in a rush.
There’s no response for a moment. Then, “What has she done now?”
“Nothing! Nothing, Obasan, Kacchan has been great. She’s just… I’m not sure how I can help her, I guess. She’s been weird. Um. Kind of standoffish? Maybe? Ever since, y’know, the, um, the woman thing.”
“…Right. Yeah, I can see that. It’s been hard,” Obasan says. “Has she talked to you about it?”
“A little,” Izuku replies, readjusting his phone on his shoulder. “I don’t really see what the big deal is. I love Kacchan and this doesn’t change anything.”
“You’ve told her this?”
“At least a dozen times.” He frowns. “The other night, she asked me if I thought she looked…ah, I’m not sure. She asked me if she looked like a man playing dress-up or something. But I just told her the truth, that I don’t care about if Kacchan is a man or a woman. She’s always beautiful.”
Obasan mumbles something.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Men are so stupid.”
Izuku blinks. “Huh?”
“Nothing. Please, if you can get her to talk… Do it. It might be a hard conversation. But you need to have it.”
“I want to,” he says. Even if it’s hard, maybe especially. That doesn’t scare Izuku. He and Kacchan have been through everything together. “She’s just… I feel like she’s shut me out. And I don’t know how to get past that.”
Obasan’s sigh is abrasive through the line. “Keep trying,” she says.
Izuku takes a short breath. Holds it in the center of his chest. Thinks of Kacchan, the curve of her cheek, the slope of her shoulders, the steadiness of her heart under his ear. “Yeah,” he promises, voice hoarse. “I’ll keep reaching out.”
He tries sweetness. Genuine observations, genuine compliments. Kacchan balks.
He tries neutrality. No feedback, no opinions. Kacchan withers without his attention.
He tries just watching, trying to gain intel, but Kacchan notices. Kacchan slams cabinets with tense arms and keeps her back to him, head low, spine a loaded bowstring. Don’t fucking look at me like that.
Kacchan has always been a puzzle to Izuku. Someone he’s longed to vivisect in a multitude of worshipful fashions, to bare her for his appreciation and consumption. It’s selfish and foolish in equal measure, but at the end of it all, Izuku wants to have Kacchan as much as he wants her to have him.
Izuku fancied himself a Kacchanologist, but he is barely a student of Kacchan, he is realizing now. More research is required, but the subject is reluctant to share her own insights.
Talk to her.
If only it were that simple. Izuku tries to coax Kacchan into talking, but she’s a wall and he isn’t sure if she actually wants to keep him out or hopes he’ll scale her.
He tries to mind the gap. Lets the distance strain, lets it fester. Just in case that really is Kacchan’s design. He isn’t sure. He feels like he knows her, but he’s felt sure about a lot of things regarding Kacchan over the years and that’s all called into question.
So he tries to withdraw. Tries to lasso his thoughts to the barrier of his mouth. Tries to change quickly in the bathroom. Tries to keep texts brief and light. Tries to wake up quietly after a night terror. Tries to keep the tremor in his hands to himself on the wet days.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watches her do the same.
Their bed feels cold, even with both of them lying in it. Kacchan lies a short distance away, her back to him. The gap between them feels unbridgeable.
It’s been like this for months. Perhaps longer. Perhaps their whole lives.
Izuku stretches his arm across the space, heart loud in his chest. It presses itself against the bars of his ribcage, desperate to get to closer, to climb inside her and to destroy the space that separates them.
He curls his hand around her bicep. It tenses under his palm. The slope of her shoulder cuts a shadow through the dim light of their apartment, a rolling hill. “Is this okay?” he asks. Hates how small his voice sounds. Hates the way Kacchan shrinks under him even more.
“…Whatever,” she whispers.
“I’ve...always felt like you shut me out,” Izuku admits. He swallows. “It always made me so… frustrated isn’t the right word. Or maybe it is, but it’s not the only feeling. Lonely, too. Worried, most of all, maybe. Sometimes we...sometimes we lie in bed almost like we don’t know each other. And that scares me.”
She doesn’t say anything.
Izuku takes a small breath. “I always wanted to understand why, I just… I’ve always wanted to be as close to Kacchan as possible, and that distance, it’s always felt intolerable. When you told me—when you trusted me with that whole...y’know, girl thing—I felt like finally, that barrier was going to come down.”
Kacchan doesn’t move.
“But I… I feel like you’ve only made the walls thicker. And I just…” Izuku’s voice cracks. “I want to know how I can get closer to you. Or if it’s even possible at all.”
It’s quiet. Not silent. Izuku can hear the tick of their clock, the distant hum of the refrigerator. The soft exhale from Kacchan’s lips. Then, “You’re not doing anything wrong.” She sighs. “…It’s me.”
Izuku watches her curl smaller, hates how she turns in on herself, away from him. “I don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t. You—You can’t.”
“Well if you could just explain it to me, then? Because sometimes you get this look—” He has tracked and tried to define the look several times over the years. He has now managed to ascertain that it has to do with this whole trans thing, though he still hasn’t figured out the exact trigger. “—and you pull away and get distant and then when I ask you about it, you just brush me off.” This isn’t what he’s meaning to say. It’s true, but it’s also not the point.
His voice gentles. “I assume this has to do with the trans stuff? You can talk to me about it, Kacchan. You’re my girlfriend and I want you to feel okay; I don’t know why you keep putting up this...distance, I guess, I don’t know what to call it.”
“Because I don’t feel okay, Izuku!” she snaps, voice raw. “I don’t—I feel like a fucking monster, alright? Every fucking day. And that’s not gonna go away because you ‘accept’ me or whatever the fuck.”
A monster. Izuku stares at her silhouette, baffled. A monster. Part of him wants to immediately counter her incoherent claim with a list of verified Kacchan facts that prove that she is very much not a monster.
The rest of him just wants to hold her.
“I’m sorry you don’t feel good,” he says softly, rubbing her back. Muscles twitch under his touch, pure reflex. Strong and beautiful and so, so breakable. “I—I wish I could take that from you. Or lighten the load somehow. Something. Anything.” He swallows thickly, eyes stinging. “Can I… Can I hold you, Kacchan? You can say no, of course, but I…”
She nods. He sees the rise and dip of her cheek and ear.
He shuffles closer, sliding an arm under her waist as he loops the other around, tugging her against the dip in his body. “You’ve always been amazing to me, Kacchan. It’s never… I’ve always tried to see you for who you are. This wonderful person in my life.”
“It doesn’t—It doesn’t go away because of how you see me,” she rasps. “It’s… It’s how I see myself, too. Fuck, it’s just so…” She wipes her nose on her wrist, swallowing thickly. Izuku’s heart twists. “I’ve gone my whole life feeling like this, Izuku. Like some… This isn’t me.” She thumps her fist against her chest. “It’s not me.”
Izuku frowns.
“You can’t see me.” Her voice creaks under a heavy weight. “Nobody can. Not even I can. With this fucking body, it’s not possible, okay? I don’t…” She exhales harshly. “I don’t have words for it. It’s just bad. It… hurts. To be like this. I feel like a brain trapped in a vat or some shit. What you see when you look at me, Izuku, that’s not me. It’s never been me.”
He turns her words around in his head. He thinks of seeing her above him in the sky, glittering like a supernova, her resurrected body swaying as their eyes met. How beautiful she was. How beautiful Kacchan has always been to him, their whole lives. How every time Izuku looked at her, Kacchan didn’t actually want to be looked at. How, in retrospect, everything feels strangely melancholic.
He thinks of seeing her body in the mud, blood streaked around her slack mouth. His stomach drops just at the memory. He wonders if Kacchan knows that feeling, if she feels it every time she looks in the mirror. Such a beautiful woman, but all she sees is a monster, thinks that’s all anyone can see.
He wonders if she’s right.
“I can’t understand what you mean or what you’re feeling, exactly,” Izuku says, voice muffled against her shoulder. He takes a short breath, taking in the scent of her, the soft feel of her skin against his mouth. “But I know you. N-not just your body. I know you, Kacchan. You’re brilliant and stubborn and fiercely loyal and stupidly competitive and your favorite food is extra spicy curry and you always cry at sad movies even though you try to hide it and you’re amazing at arithmetic and your favorite All Might song is ‘Stars and Stripes for Justice’ and you always stay up for me when I’m working late even though I tell you not to stay up for me every time and...and…” He trails off. He could go on forever, truthfully.
All these things he knows about Kacchan, stored lovingly in his memory like a treasure box of precious artifacts. “I feel like I see you, at least in part. Because you’re...you’re Kacchan. And you’re so, so much more than your body. But you’re right, I don’t… I don’t know.” His throat is thick. Kacchan is warm under him, breathing. He loves her. He loves her shoulders, her face, her hands, her lips, her throat, her chest, her waist, her body. In this moment, he feels despicable for it. Because Kacchan doesn’t love it. Kacchan hates it. “I… I wish you had a body that made you happy, Kacchan. Or even—I don’t know, I just wish you weren’t in this kind of pain.”
Kacchan’s body hurts her. Izuku doesn’t really understand why or how, exactly, but that’s the truth. He thinks of the times they’ve embraced or shared simple kisses, of the times they’ve made love, of every time Kacchan has ever flinched away from him, and his stomach is leaden with a dull sadness.
“I love you,” he says.
She barks out a laugh, caustic and cold. “You say that like it’s simple.”
“That’s because it is,” he replies. “I—You’re right, I don’t… I can’t get some of it. A lot of it. But this—how I feel about you—that’s mine.”
She tenses under him. Then, all at once, she sinks into the mattress with a tired exhale. “You don’t love me the way a man loves a woman, Izuku.”
“You don’t know that. I’m trying not to assume anything about how you feel; you shouldn’t assume how I feel, either.” His heart is loud in his chest. The truth is, he loves her the way Izuku loves Kacchan. It’s deeper than men or women or life or death. But that isn’t what Kacchan needs to hear, right now. “I want to love you right,” Izuku says, hates how he trembles with emotion. “I want to love you in a way that doesn’t hurt you, Kacchan. In a way that lifts you up, that helps you…deal with this stuff. But you’ve gotta tell me how. Because you’re right, I don’t know.”
“What if I don’t know either?” Her voice is soft.
Izuku curls closer to her, tucking his knees under her thighs. His palm cradles her sternum, pressing into the steady beat of her heart. “We’re a team, right?”
Kacchan shifts. Her spine arches into his abdomen. “…Yeah.”
“Then we’ll find out together.” Izuku presses a dry kiss to the edge of her jaw. “I’ll always be in your corner, Kacchan, if you’ll let me.”
Kacchan beats the shit out of him at the gym.
If Izuku didn’t know any better, he’d think she was trying to prove something to him. He does know better, though; she’s trying to prove something to herself. Whatever it is, he can’t really define with confidence. Kacchan is a confounding creature as of late. Or maybe she’s always been confounding and Izuku just never saw clearly enough to realize.
Fighting is a language they are both fluent in, though. Kacchan’s body is most honest when she is doing everything in her power to win. She beats him solidly, though they’re both sporting growing bruises along their chests and legs. A swollen mass on Kacchan’s shoulder catches Izuku’s attention as she takes a swig of water. Her shirt dips slightly, revealing the thick band of her sports bra.
Izuku busies himself with rummaging through his duffel bag.
“I’m gonna keep getting weaker,” Kacchan says, studying her water bottle with an unreadable glare.
Izuku hums, wiping sweat from the side of his face with his ratty gym towel that Kacchan has threatened to burn eighteen times this year alone.
“This...estrogen and shit, y’know. My muscle tone’s getting worse.”
“Ah.” He nods. “Your upper body strength’s going to deteriorate some, yeah.”
She grimaces at that. Had he said something wrong? He’d just been agreeing with her.
“I mean, you’re having a lot of other changes, too,” he points out. “Kacchan’s chest is super tender, now.” He’d bumped into her getting out of bed this morning and she almost clocked him.
She narrows her eyes at him. “Don’t sound so happy about it.”
Is he not supposed to be happy about that? He assumes Kacchan is happy about it. “I mean, it’s good, right?”
She quiets at that, her face gaining a more thoughtful tone. “It is good,” she agrees. “All the— The other changes. Are good. Yeah.”
Her shirt dips low again. Kacchan started wearing a bra this past week. She’s always been generously proportioned in that area, but with the help of her medication, Kacchan’s boobs are becoming even more resplendent.
“Oh my— You’re such a fucking pervert, holy shit.”
He didn’t mean to say that out loud. Well— At least it’s true. “Sorry,” he mumbles, face warm. “Was that—Ah, I don’t know, is that bad?”
She makes a strange face at that. “…No.”
He blinks, leaning closer. “Is it good, then?”
“Don’t push your luck,” she says flatly.
“Your skin’s getting softer too,” he murmurs against her jaw. “You were already soft, but it’s even softer. I really like it, Kacchan.”
She stiffens under him. Then she grumbles something turning away.
“You’re smelling different too.”
“Oh my— Don’t. Fucking talk about my B.O.”
“I like it, though!”
She shoves his own sweaty towel at his face.
“I never got to be— Delicate,” Kacchan says, the words short and bitten.
Izuku hums, taking a recently washed dish from her gloved hand. He dries it, waiting for her to continue. Or maybe that was the whole thought. He might need to ask for clarification.
“And that’s not. Like, that’s not what makes a woman,” she continues, shoulders tense. “But nobody ever… I never was treated with any…” She stops. “Whatever. I’m being stupid.”
Izuku has always known Kacchan as delicate. The breakable cast of her bones, the uneven gait of her heart. She’s strong, too. So amazingly strong. But he thinks he knows what she means, even if he doesn’t understand. You can’t see me. “I guess there’s a lot to make up for,” he says, the phrasing probably too awkward to be helpful. He is trying to be sincere, but he is groping in the dark.
So much of their past is cast in a new light, now. Tangled and messier, but also clearer at the same time. Izuku still carries that little boy he used to be inside of him, all his hurt and his confusion and his will to please. He knows Kacchan must be the same, that she carries the weight of years. There’s so much unknown about those years, a gaping silence between them that Izuku wasn’t even aware of. So much changing now, or maybe correcting, or maybe something else. But those years remain, no matter their shape. And Kacchan will always be the girl he grew up with.
Kacchan is quiet. Her gaze is pensive, thoughtful. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, probably.”
They’re both full of konbini sushi and have spent the last two hours complaining on and off about aching muscles while they laid propped up on pillows in bed. Somehow this eventually turns into an argument about the casting in the new All Might biopic.
“He hardly looks like him,” Izuku insists, his throat growing hoarse. He isn’t sure how long he’s been going on this tangent; Kacchan stopped interrupting him a little while ago, favoring just watching him.
His voice slowly peters out as his eyes catch on hers.
Kacchan is giving him that look she gets sometimes. Not the bad look he’s seen so often, lately. No. This is the I want you look, the one that makes his veins swell and his limbs lighter with hope. Sometimes something happens when she looks at him like that, sometimes it doesn’t.
When Kacchan’s teeth catch on his mouth, he thinks maybe it’s the former tonight.
Her lips are softer, all of her skin somehow softer and growing softer still, and when he molds his palm to her cheek he feels like he could keep his hand there forever. Sometimes Kacchan flinches away from him here, sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she pulls away a little later when he touches elsewhere, sometimes she doesn’t. He’s learned to follow the boundary lines of her body over the years. All the off-limits and the sometimes-limits and the go-aheads. It makes sense in light of the truth, all the ways Kacchan has had to learn to survive herself. How the tides of her grief lap at the shore of her body.
Kacchan arches into his touch, bends with him until they both flop against the mattress. He’s clumsy as he clambers over her, heart loud and large in his chest. Touching Kacchan has always felt like a privilege; it feels even more so, now.
Kacchan, under him. Kacchan, trusting him. Kacchan, soft and warm and letting out a sweet little laugh when Izuku nips her jaw too hard. Her voice has a high, shy lilt, like a budding flower.
He wants nothing more than for her to bloom.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, pulling back just enough to see her properly. “You’re everything, Kacchan, I love you, I love you, I love you so much.”
She scoffs, face almost as red as her eyes. She doesn’t push him away, though. She doesn’t refute his obviously true statement. Instead, she’s slack. She’s inviting. She’s more liquid than she’s ever been under him, smooth and wanting and bashfully eager in a way that Izuku can’t help but find beyond endearing.
“My wonderful girlfriend,” he marvels. “My beautiful, amazing, extremely cool, smart, wonderful girlfriend, Kacchan.”
Kacchan’s palms are soft under his, fingers interlocked, her blushing cheek pressed into her pillow. Izuku kisses her and kisses her and kisses her.
Kacchan stands stiffly, like she doesn’t know how to hold her limbs. Or like she does know, but she doesn’t know if she should. The dress, of course, fits perfectly. It flares slightly at the waist, falling several centimeters above her knees, accentuating the softness of her thighs.
Izuku wants to grab her around the waist and spin her around. He does not do this.
She keeps nervously picking at her left shoulder, fiddling with what Izuku identifies as a bra strap. He’d watched her get dressed that morning, lying in bed with lidded eyes, half-feigning sleeping. It was utterly mundane. Strange as it may sound, that made it all the more romantic to him. How Kacchan grumbled under her breath as she shoved her legs into her panties and shot him an irritated glare when she hooked her bra. Black. All her underwear was black, always. I don’t care if it’s boring; it’s practical, she’s always said. At least my shit doesn’t have holes in it.
Some things are different now, it’s true, but so much is also the same. Just more. More of themselves, more of everything between them.
Everything feels larger and more colorful, real and solid in a way Izuku never fully appreciated until he had Kacchan fully by his side. Not the walls she had built up, not the face she gave the world, but her.
She’s becoming more herself. It’s obvious to Izuku now just how restrained Kacchan had been before. She’s bigger now, more real. Devastatingly fantastic. He feels a strange grief for all the years they’ve known each other before this, how he had only ever experienced a shadow of the true Kacchan until this point.
The dress suits her, despite her posture. Red. Matches her eyes, complements her beauty, the sharpness of her face, the soft swell of her chest.
“Your dress is very pretty,” he says, ducking his face behind his camera.
Her eyes narrow, the tips of her ears red. “I look stupid as hell.”
“You look cute.” This is the truth.
Izuku may have a lot to catch up on with regards to his Kacchan studies, but he is aware of several key truths regarding her. They don’t contradict anything he knew before, but rather inform and enrich his understanding. He remains a devoted student of Kacchan, as ever.
“Am I supposed to do another pose or some shit?”
“Sure, whatever you want.”
She rolls her eyes.
The truth is, Izuku loves Kacchan as a woman because Kacchan is a woman and Izuku loves her for everything she is, the beautiful and the profane. And Kacchan’s womanhood is certainly one of the most beautiful parts.
That she’s shared this truth about herself—this foundation of her very being—with him is no small act of trust. It’s everything. Izuku recognizes that.
He might not understand all of it. Okay, he really doesn’t understand much of it. But his loyalty is absolute.
Maybe, someday, Kacchan will be able to take that for granted. He hopes so.
“Nerd,” she barks, shifting awkwardly in a dress that she wears well. Kacchan wears everything well. Her ears are slightly ruddy from the wind. She’s gorgeous. “You done?”
Izuku’s fingers twitch over the shutter. “A few more pictures?” he answers, voice canting. “I want to get a nice picture of Kacchan smiling.”
“Are you serious? We’ve been here for fifteen minutes—”
“I’ll take you to that izakaya place you like.”
Her lips quirk.
The camera clicks.