Work Text:
“I’m sorry I came to die on your doorstep.”
Shouto said, one knee on the ground like a memory that never was, blood pooling at the corners of his mouth, pouring onto the stone of the threshold. Katsuki rushed him inside, a hand pressed tightly to the gash open on his abdomen.
“I’m calling an ambulance.” He rasped out, voice laced with dread. Shouto just smiled at him, eyes the clearest he ever remembered seeing them.
“Don’t. Let me die alone with you. Let me win this one fight.” Shouto spoke slow, dragging the words from his fading mind.
Katsuki’s lip trembled, pushing dual-toned hair back, sticky with sweat and glued together with dried blood.
“Who?” He gritted out, his head pounding, bile growing on the inside of his mouth.
“Let me see you smile. One last time.”
“Shouto-”
Shouto tried to move forward, to reach for him, but Katsuki was there, impossibly close in a second.
“I’m here.” He promised, ghosting warm breath over Shouto’s lips. Shouto had a hand over his heart - a heart beating rapidly, racing somewhere, always rushing, while Shouto’s was slowing down, giving in. Shouto tilted his head for a kiss and smiled into it, an echo of the first time it ever happened, on a dreadfully cold winter’s day. He could feel that cold now, seeping into his bones, making him shiver. Oh, but Katsuki had always been warm, exploding with heat at any given moment.
He always thought his death would be a cold one, the battlefield roaring around him and fading into nothing.
Turns out, death was wet with silent tears, a kiss that would always feel like the first and the backdrop of all those things they ended up not saying to each other just because they thought they’d have more time.