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Katsuki assumes he’s dreaming.
The air smells different, fruity like some sort of shampoo. Unusual color scheme, uncharacteristic soreness. Clearly, patrol knocked him flat on his ass.
Then, he remembers. Someone else’s hair is in his mouth—Izuku, restless sleeper extraordinaire. Katsuki has no idea what position he started in, but Izuku is snoring up a storm with a leg slotted between Katsuki’s thighs, dead to the fucking world.
Carefully, Katsuki extricates himself, wobbling. The bruises on his hips tell him exactly why he’s having trouble walking, who’s responsible for the tingle in his spine. As if he needed further proof, condoms are littered all over the floor. Katsuki longs to tidy up, but the longer he waits, the more time he gives Izuku to wake up.
Not an option.
He gets dressed in a hurry, double-checking his pockets. As long as his phone works and there’s no danger of getting locked out of his own apartment, Katsuki doesn’t care what he leaves behind.
Sleeping with Izuku presents problems.
Primarily: Izuku is taken.
Strictly speaking, his relationship wasn’t official. Izuku had gone on a series of dates with Ochako in the name of rekindling the flame, following up on something long overdue. He seemed excited about the whole thing, even if he was nervous, worried about what-ifs.
Which brought Katsuki to the second issue: presumably, Izuku was straight. Best case scenario, Izuku was bi-curious with a demisexual lean, falling into something inadvisable under the influence of alcohol. Depressing, but excusable.
Katsuki bites his nails down to the quick, wondering how he let it get this bad. No matter how pathetic he was, he knew better than to let his guard down. He’s never gotten drunk enough to forget minor details, let alone major ones, like the fact that Izuku was off-fucking-limits.
“Shit,” he snarls at no one, kicking a trash can.
If Katsuki is lucky, Izuku would be baffled by the disappearing act. Proof was littered all over the floor, but anyone could have been beneath him.
Skyrocketing stardom had done wonders for Izuku's popularity.
Realistically, Izuku remembered as much as Katsuki did. Bittersweet reminiscence. Bullheaded dares. A kiss or two or three turned into too many to count, chasing the euphoria that came with friction. Clumsily, Izuku fucked into Katsuki without taking off his clothes, mouthing at the wet spot in Katsuki’s jeans. Katsuki had to cover that with his jacket on the way home, willing people not to look at him too closely.
Still, Katsuki could pass it off. Just a little sex between colleagues, no big deal. Praise be to liquor, the great equalizer.
He’s gotten good at compartmentalizing, prioritizing other people’s needs.
Ochako deserves Izuku. Katsuki doesn’t. Simple as that.
“Izuku?”
He snaps out of the daze with a half-hearted smile, food untouched. “I’m not very pleasant company right now, am I?”
Ochako—fierce, determined, beautiful—smiles back. She waits him out, eager for an explanation. After all, she offered to reschedule, but Izuku insisted upon holding the appointment.
More than anything, Ochako is a friend. A good friend. He owes her the truth.
He hedges for the briefest of moments, picking up his glass if only to put it back down. “I slept with someone else.” Izuku confesses in a small voice. As much as he wants to call it an accident, that comes a little too close to shifting blame. “There’s no excuse I can offer you, honestly. I’m sorry.”
For a moment, Ochako goes blank. Then, confusingly, relief colors her face. “I see.”
Izuku expected follow-up questions. Who? Another woman? I really didn’t mean that much to you, did I? It didn’t matter that Ochako wasn’t that type of person—his imagination ran rampant.
“Y’know, six years is a long time.” Ochako reaches for his hand, squeezing it. “Lots of time to think. To change.”
Tearfully, he nods.
“I like you a lot, Izuku,” she says, a bit glossy herself, “but it’s okay if I’m not your top priority.”
“Mm.”
“Still friends?”
“Always.”
The hug that follows is warm, complete with damp spots on each other’s shoulders. Ochako soothes Izuku through a lengthy bout of tears, encouraging him to let it out.
Afterwards, they go for a walk, noses red in the evening. “Bakugo, huh?” Izuku freezes. Ochako laughs. “Process of elimination. You’ve always been a little,” she pauses for a beat, searching for the right word, “weird when it comes to him.”
Izuku flinches, caught-out. There’s nothing for it but to sigh, breath fogging. “I guess. Didn’t think it was this kind of weird, though.”
“Nothing wrong with fatal attraction,” she teases.
Izuku huffs out a laugh; couldn’t have put it better himself. “Seriously, Kacchan is gonna kill me.”
Brazenly, Ochako points, gaping. “Then, you were—and he was—”
“Not so loud,” Izuku hisses, desperate to maintain privacy. It’s bad enough that he told her his secret. He doesn’t need anyone else knowing about it. “We were so inebriated, it barely counts. I don’t remember whether I asked questions or if I just did whatever I wanted to.”
Roughly, she claps him on the back. Izuku splutters. “Well, now’s the time.”
If only it were that simple.
They manage to avoid talking about it for two months, then Todoroki invites them to a party that is nigh impossible to refuse, a gala-adjacent shindig complete with endless refills and stuffy suits.
“It’s amazing the way women flock to him,” Todoroki murmurs, which is quite possibly the most hypocritical thing he’s ever said.
Izuku snorts. “Other heroes like Kacchan well enough. It’s the civilians he has trouble with.”
On paper, Katsuki is appealing. Wealthy, fashionable, attractive. If he would close his mouth and mind his manners, Izuku, Todoroki, and Togata would have stiffer competition.
It’s only a matter of time before Katsuki gets fed up with their fishing, storming over. “I hate this bullshit so much,” he grouses, at-ease around them the way he isn’t with anyone else.
Izuku plays at normality, offering Katsuki snacks. They sip at their champagne, indulging in idle chatter. Eventually, someone drags Todoroki off, leaving them alone in a crowded room, close enough to brush elbows.
“I broke things off with Ochako,” he says, startling Katsuki so badly that Katsuki chokes on his wine, positively gobsmacked. “I wanted you to be the first person to know.”
Katsuki snaps at a passing waiter, demanding another drink. He is nowhere near sober enough for this. Izuku bites his tongue, desperate to tell Katsuki to stop—he doesn’t want to do this again—but he’s a coward when it comes to Katsuki.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
Valiantly, Katsuki resists the urge to break the flute on Izuku’s face. “Bastard. You absolute bastard. After everything I did—”
Izuku closes his eyes, equal parts irritated and sad. “I know, Kacchan.”
He knees Izuku in the solar plexus, deftly slinking into the shadows. Izuku keels over, refusing assistance. No investigation. No pressed charges.
Rumors buzz, but the incident flies under the radar.
Todoroki swings by Katsuki’s place so often Katsuki threatens to charge him rent, but his bark has always been worse than his bite and Todoroki knows it, offering Fuyumi’s food.
As always, it works like a charm. Katsuki mutters feverishly, scarfing the meal down, grilling Todoroki for the recipe. Anticipating this, Todoroki forwards Fuyumi’s text, complete with screenshots of her notes and approximate measurements.
Arms crossed, Todoroki gets to the point. “Feel like talking about what happened at the party?”
Immediately, Katsuki’s face falls. “Should’ve known this was a trap.” He leans back in his chair, scowling at the ceiling. “Izuku’s an idiot.”
“Must’ve been one hell of a fight.”
“Wasn’t a fight.” A fight would’ve been fine. They fought all the time. These days, their spats are inconsequential. Quickly forgiven, water under the bridge.
Now, Katsuki knows what Izuku’s tongue in his mouth feels like. He’s had Izuku’s cock in his ass. Deliciously uncomfortable. Lewd. Better than he thought it would be.
He slams a fist on the table, seething. “I swear, he’s determined to ruin his own life.”
“…Meaning?”
Dead-end decisions. Toxic selflessness. One of these days, Izuku is going to write himself out of his own story. Katsuki would sooner die than let that happen.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll deal with it.”
Todoroki purses his lips, concerned. “Midoriya told me what you said, y’know. Take your own advice.”
Katsuki dismisses Todoroki with a snort.
He’s been callous his whole life. Katsuki’s a bigger man. A better one. Or, at least, he’s trying to be.
All Might invites him to go on a hike.
Katsuki stares at the screen, debating getting the text framed. On one hand, that’s stupid. On the other, Katsuki's nerdy brain freaks out remembering that All Might has his number. They do things like this sometimes. Hang out, visit mountains.
Except.
The invitation was extended to Izuku, of course. All Might invited them as a unit. He would be disappointed to find out that they were on the outs, the worst state they’ve been in since their first year at UA. It’s Katsuki’s fault, really, but he doesn’t know how to fix it.
He keeps trying to restore the factory default, but Izuku wants to talk.
So, they’ll talk.
Mercifully, Izuku picks up on the first ring. “Kacchan?”
“You better hope it’s me. If someone else was calling from my number, you would need to submit a trace.”
It’s a long-winded way of saying hello, but it makes Izuku huff, so there’s that. “Are you worried about the hike?”
“Aren’t you?”
It’s harder to gauge expressions via voice, but Katsuki has known Izuku his whole life and it’s easy enough to piece together context clues. It’s late enough at night for Izuku to be in bed, damp curls sticking to his forehead. He’s tired, not exhausted. Straightforward day at school. No issues, no injuries, all-clear.
“Was it,” Izuku pauses, ostensibly to bite his lower lip, releasing it with a pop, “bad, or something?”
The question is so unexpected, Katsuki nearly drops his phone. “What.”
“The sex,” he says, prompting Katsuki to hang up. Unfortunately, Izuku calls back immediately and Katsuki answers impulsively, cursing himself all the while. “It was, wasn’t it? That’s why you’ve been avoiding me. I’m sorry, I’ve never done anything like that before, but I thought—”
“It wasn’t,” Katsuki snarls, cutting Izuku off. He remembers begging for it, ordering Izuku to give it to him harder. Faster. Humiliatingly, Katsuki probably moaned like a little bitch, touch-starved as he was. Izuku could’ve spit on him and Katsuki would’ve busted a nut. “Shit, Izuku, I don’t know. I want you to be happy, for fuck’s sake. Things have gotten better since I gave you that suit. They have, I know they have, don’t try to lie about that. But I can’t fix this. You, giving up on the love of your life over some dumb shit.”
The silence that follows is so profoundly unsettling, Katsuki peels the phone away from his ear to make sure the clock is ticking. Sure enough, Izuku hasn’t terminated the call. Eventually, he breathes. “Oh.”
Furious, Katsuki blasts the device at the wall. The powers that be despise him, though, because his wristwatch is still connected to the internet and all of his devices are synchronized. He receives the next call the same as all the rest.
“Listen, you just—you startled me, okay? I didn’t know what to say. That was a lot to take in. Can you give me a minute? Five, preferably. Don’t hang up, Kacchan. Please?”
Katsuki forces himself to do breathing exercises, peeling his phone out of the plaster. The screen isn’t even cracked. Newfangled fucking support technology.
He has hit the peak meditative state when a tinny voice hits his ears.
“I want you to be happy, too.”
Carmine eyes roll. “You want everyone to be happy.”
“True,” Izuku agrees, “but your happiness and mine aren’t mutually exclusive concepts.”
Genuinely, the thought never occurred to Katsuki.
“I thought I knew what I wanted. Things are simple when you’re little, right? Grow up, get a job, get married, have kids. I thought I wanted a lot of things. I thought being a hero was the most important thing in the world. I thought my life was over when I didn’t manifest a quirk. I got to live my dream, if only for a few years, but dreams end.”
Thickly, Katsuki swallows.
“I’m upset about the way this started,” Izuku murmurs, voice soft and low and sweet. “It doesn’t have to end like this. Give me a chance to do this right.”
Sardonically, with his voice cracking every other syllable, Katsuki makes a humorless joke. “Do what? Date me?”
“Yes.”
The world falls to pieces. Katsuki curls in on himself, laughing so hard he starts crying. “You can’t be serious.”
“You don’t want to?”
“Of course I want to,” he rasps, disbelief rattling through his bones. “Shit. If I wake up and none of this actually happened, I’m gonna be livid.”
This time, Izuku ends the call. Minutes later, Katsuki wipes the grime off of his face, glaring at the intercom. “I’ve done enough talking for one day.”
“We don’t have to talk,” Izuku says, so close Katsuki can taste it.
He lets Izuku in, breathing Izuku in. He smells like soap and sweat, recently washed as Katsuki expected. Izuku is firm and real, clinging, chest heaving.
“I really wanna kiss you right now, Kacchan.”
“So do it, loser,” Katsuki mutters, closing his eyes before their lips meet.
Izuku is reckless with him, unrelenting. Katsuki isn’t a pushover, but Izuku hardly pauses to let Katsuki breathe, desperate to touch him, to grope, sucking at Katsuki’s skin whilst breaching his entrances, eager for everything all at once.
“Calm down,” Katsuki hisses, pushing down the waistband of Izuku’s sweatpants to stop him from scraping his cock against the fabric. “Pick a struggle, holy shit.”
“Don’t wanna,” Izuku retorts, childish and petty. There’s a thrill to that, the disintegration of his façade. This is for Katsuki and Katsuki alone. Bold strides. Careless bruises. Izuku’s hands are on Katsuki’s waist, mouth on Katsuki’s neck, eyes on Katsuki’s crotch. He can’t decide where to start or when to stop, helping himself to whatever he can get his hands on.
Eventually, he slides down the length of Katsuki’s torso, trailing his tongue from a sore, peaked nipple to Katsuki’s navel, swirling it around the rim of Katsuki’s bellybutton before he arrives at Katsuki’s cock. Izuku slobbers on it, imprecise, using his saliva to glide over Katsuki’s taint.
All of it serves to make Katsuki curse like a sailor, peeling Izuku off of him to grab the lube. “Fuck. It’s like you don’t even wanna get your dick wet.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Izuku murmurs, sucking bruises into Katsuki’s calves. “Think I could come if I licked your feet right now.”
Katsuki stares at Izuku, appalled. How utterly deranged.
“Well, don’t,” he mutters, no-nonsense, doing his best to hide an interested twitch. “Either we come together or I ain’t coming at all.”
Izuku lifts an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’re going to last that long.”
“Try me, nerd.”
Challenge accepted.
In the end, it’s a close call. Katsuki’s moans increase in volume when Izuku spreads him open, more whorish and piteous by the minute. Katsuki is point-blank hiccuping by the time Izuku slides inside and he swears Izuku feels bigger. Lack of alcohol, increased bloodflow—some scientific shit, he’s sure.
Izuku manages a handful of thrusts before he unravels, far from deterred by the wash of endorphins. He remains hard under the clutch of Katsuki’s fierce glutes, goaded into picking up the pace. He whines Katsuki’s name, fucking Katsuki hard enough to put a lesser man in the hospital, performing acrobatic feats against the wall. It’s excellent, even better than last time, and both of them are snotty by the end of it, spent in every sense of the word.
As much as it pains Katsuki to do it, he asks All Might if they can reschedule.
All Might is retired, so he agrees.
Thank god.
epilogue
“I’ve been worried about you boys,” All Might says, ruffling their hair like they’re seventeen again. He’s willowy, but well enough, scraping by with state of the art dialysis. “Young Midoriya, you’ve been pouty, and Young Bakugo, you’ve been unusually subdued.”
Abashed, they avert their gazes. Izuku is the first one to crack, red up to his ears. “We’ve been working through something. Everything’s alright.”
“That’s good. I look forward to hearing your stories.”
There is absolutely no way they can tell All Might about the sordid sex they’ve been having, even if they’re only two weeks behind schedule. Katsuki feels like they’re making up for lost time, fucking like teenagers who didn’t have to deal with the impending doom of villains taking over the world.
With Katsuki getting his agency off of the ground and Izuku pulling double-duty, there’s plenty of gossip to go around. All Might’s breathy amusement in the face of anecdotes about Aizawa is heartwarming. He’s incredibly entertained by Katsuki’s infuriated rants about interviews, denying applicant after applicant for lack of drive.
“S’not my fault they suck,” Katsuki grouses, catching himself on a tree branch, determined to watch his footing.
The next time he trips, Izuku catches him by the elbow, lingering overlong. “Hard to find good rivals these days.”
Katsuki smirks. “Careful. Soon as I find one, they’ll come for your crown.”
“Helping people is more important than status,” or so Izuku says, but for a fraction of a second he looks like he’s going to murder anybody who so much as thinks about approaching Katsuki romantically.
Possessive freak. Luckily, Katsuki is into that.
They’re refreshingly winded by the time they hit the precipice, snapping a picture as is customary. At the last second, Katsuki turns to kiss Izuku’s cheek, startling him more thoroughly than All Might, who’s not upset so much as he is surprised, unaware that this is the direction their relationship took.
Izuku fusses at him, embarrassed. Later, he asks Katsuki to send him a copy.
Documenting memories is important.
Proof of Katsuki’s reciprocated affection is a bonus.