Work Text:
He stands at a precipice.
The winds of change slam against his back and force him closer to the edge, the dark, murky waters of uncertainty clashing on the rocks below. There’s a voice in his mind that’s been whispering that time’s almost up , after this it’s all over , and he had been willfully ignorant of the implications until the inevitability of time caught up with him, overtaking all the plans he thought he had. He plants his feet, still impervious to the elements for a few more scant hours and grasps desperately at the tendrils of warmth slowly snapping one by one from a heart that longs to hang on for a little while longer.
Distantly, the sound of an amplified voice, followed by the muted roar of applause reverberates out across the blurry expanse before him, and all at once, he’s brought back when someone claps a hand on his shoulder and gives him a little shove.
“Hey, you’re up,” they say, shouting a little to be heard over the ruckus.
“Huh?” he responds, and everything is very bright and very loud.
“Kirishima,” a low, bored voice calls from above, and he tilts his head up to see Aizawa’s expectant face peering down at him. That face softens a little when Aizawa sees how confused the boy is, and he sighs, making a little hand gesture to move forward. “Come on, it’s your turn.”
Eijirou Kirishima looks out around him again, and gone is the dissociative cliff, replaced in shocking clarity by the massive UA stadium. Before him is a raised stage, and upon it stands the school faculty, all in formal clothing and all staring down at him.
Their graduation day had come upon them faster than the blink of an eye, and Eijirou thinks it was just yesterday that they were bushy-tailed first years hungry for their first taste of heroics instruction. The three years have been short, and yet he feels like they were all so young then, the majority of them so untested with hearts ready to serve and bodies ready to be honed. Eijirou’s first year uniform was loose on a frame that had yet to hit its growth spurt even at fifteen and trying to fit into it now at seventeen would be a laughable pursuit, his bulk primed and ready to make the transition from boy to man in the coming months. He’s not the only one either.
“The fuck are you doing, Kirishima?” comes an irritated rasp from somewhere behind him. Instinctively, he turns back and is suddenly met with the furious gaze of Katsuki Bakugou. He leans out from the line - in order of their seating chart respectively - and fixes Eijirou with a look that conveys both his confusion and impatience. He has also grown, not as tall as some, but still cuts an imposing figure from where he stands in front of Midoriya, who fidgets with his too-short jacket sleeves. “Move your ass!” Katsuki hisses, as if anyone in a hundred yard radius couldn’t hear his distinctive voice even when he’s making an attempt to be quiet.
Right, he needs to get his diploma and he’s holding up the line. “Sorry guys!” he tells them before scrambling up the stairs onto the platform.
Aizawa sighs at him and gives a crushing handshake that Eijirou returns with enthusiasm. “About time, Red Riot,” he tells Eijirou with a half-smile playing on his lips. “Congratulations. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, Sensei,” Eijirou replies, warding off the choked up response that accompanies the rare praise. His eyes start to prickle and he nods at his teacher before crossing the stage to get his certificate. Nezu is so small below him as the principal raises the diploma up in one, tiny paw and Eijirou gently accepts it. This is it, this is the culmination of all his hard work, this is the last time he’ll exist on this campus as a student among his peers.
That burn behind his eyes intensifies, but he won’t cry. He’s had enough time to cry and he won’t do it again, not here, not in front of his friends. Now is the moment to embrace change when it’s presented in this positive, palatable light and celebrate with the people who have become a second family to him. Someone in the chairs on the stadium lawn cheers especially loud for him, and when he looks down he sees Fatgum standing a few rows from the front like a proud parent, Eijirou’s mother beside him with a face streaked with happy tears.
He contemplates the certificate in his hand, the weight of it there, the way the smooth, cool paper slides over his fingertips as he rotates it, then he raises it up in the air with a triumphant cry of elation that catches in the microphone and echoes around the stadium.
He feels it again when he descends the other side of the stage: the weight of time on his shoulders. Eijirou glances at the line while he makes his way to his seat, seeing how it moves smoothly now that he’s come down to earth. Sees how Katsuki watches him from his place a few paces from the stairs while he waits for Hagakure to take her turn. They look at each other and Eijirou flashes his teeth in a grin, and Katsuki returns it - full and real like Eijirou has never seen before - before it’s his turn to walk and he positively saunters up the stage like the ceremony is for him and him alone. That smile stays in place and his attention remains firmly fixated on Eijirou until he reaches Aizawa.
Eijirou only finds it in himself to exhale when he reaches his seat.
It’s the last breath before the wave hits.
…
…
…
That night to celebrate, much to the chagrin and reluctant understanding of 3A’s families, everyone makes the trek across town to one Shouto Todoroki’s house. He had let slip with as much unfettered glee he was capable of that his semi-estranged father was no longer living with him, and, as his sister was staying at their brother’s home, the massive estate belonged to the graduates for the evening.
There are few licensed students among them, so everyone piles into the available vehicles, packed like sardines and, according to Iida’s overburdened nagging, “illegal in every way.”
Eijirou gets the brunt of it in the third row of an aging minivan, pressed against Iida and all of his expired class-representative borne opinions. Tokoyami is blessedly quiet on his other side, and some of the safety rant is drowned out by the four girls one row up. He dissociates and wonders where Katsuki ended up, if he was even planning on attending the party at all. Eijirou had overheard his mother giving him an earful about participating in his class’s bonding experiences so it would be to no one’s surprise if he declined purely out of spite.
Still, he can hope his friend will be there with him for this last hurrah. Can allow himself to exist in this temporary reality for a few more hours before he moves forward into the future.
His compartmentalization has gotten really good over the past year and his overactive brain had long ago anticipated how bad it would get at the end. He’s been able to make the appropriate amount of space within to shuffle away all of the Big Sad stuff: all of the thoughts and words he can’t quite unpack lest it ruin his entire graduation. Eijirou identified he can be a major buzzkill if he gets too into his head, and though he is emotionally aware enough to know he has to feel his feelings, he is determined to feel them after celebrating.
Eijirou is not certain who is driving - there are simply too many bodies between him and the front seat - but his car gets separated from the caravan when they need to stop for gas. This makes their arrival time ten minutes after everyone else and the driver struggles through the trials of street parking in a boujee, gated community not suited for such a thing after finding the driveway already full.
The Todoroki estate looms over his head as Eijirou slides out of the stuffy van and lets the cool March air chase away the sheen of sweat that had started to bead on his forehead. He’s never been here, on friendly terms with Todoroki but not fully initiated enough into the private boy’s inner circle to have visited him at home. As it stands he has only heard stories about how big the house is from Katsuki during their internship days, and it seems there was no exaggeration in his words. He cranes his neck to see the way the structure climbs skyward, all traditional architecture and neatly cultivated landscaping.
Todoroki appears promptly in the front doorway when they all file up. “Welcome,” he says in that endearing deadpan voice. “Come in, please.”
Iida immediately bows. “Thank you for inviting us to your home, Shouto, it is very beautiful and—“
“Please stop that,” interrupts Todoroki, holding the door wide open for everyone to file in. Eijirou smiles warmly at him on the way by and receives nothing in return but a slow, catlike blink. Interesting guy.
The scent of incense drifts through the air in conjunction with some kind of vaguely woodsy candle off to the side. Eijirou takes it all in, slowly making his way through the entry and into the house proper, appreciating how the traditional aesthetic of the place extends inward tenfold. He follows the sound of Denki’s voice to the kitchen and finds him setting up the counter with a startling amount of liquor.
“Yooo, Kiri!” Denki greets and promptly shoves a cup of something into Eijirou’s hands.
Eijirou sniffs at it and, while it burns his nose and he needs to keep a clear head, he takes a cautious sip. Pure chemicals. “Dude, what’s in this?” he asks.
”Little bit of…a lot. Gimme it back if you don’t want it. There’s beer and other shit in the fridge.”
He takes Denki up on the offer and Denki immediately throws back the cup like a shot. Eijirou fishes out a beer and pops the cap off with the top of a hardened finger, sending it flying across the kitchen. Denki whoops at him, probably already in some kind of altered state based on the size of his pupils alone. He assumes that if he were to go searching for Kyoka, Hanta, and Hitoshi, they would be in similar states. All bets are off tonight, it seems.
“You seen Kat?” he ventures to ask after taking a pull of the easily identifiable, safer drink.
“He was in the car with me but I’m not...I’m not so sure where he...went after.” Denki slurs, shrugging, and yeah, he’s definitely on something . “Oh, shiiit , wait, man I think...he went with Mido to get some fucking…” He squints as he tries very hard to collect his thoughts and his hands make small, rapid circles in front of his body. “ Food !” he concludes at length at a far louder volume than is necessary. “Yeah! Food! Him n’Mido went to pick up some grub ‘cause there’s like, nothing normal here to eat and Kitty Kat was like suuuper fucking pissed about it.”
Eijirou thinks that, while Todoroki should have had the foresight to plan food options for his guests, it is fairly on brand for there to be no food in the house suited to a party. If he understands correctly, when Todoroki’s sister doesn’t cook, there are staff members still employed by their father that prepare food for them, and he supposes that their upper-class-fancy-dishes wouldn’t be suited to such an event. On the upside, at least the alcohol portion had been sorted.
Eijirou forcefully rubs at Denki’s back and the heat that radiates off his body melds with Eijirou’s fingertips. “Alright, buddy, let’s make sure we’re drinking water, okay?”
“Sure thing, daddy,” Denki answers cheekily, turning towards the sink and filling the cup in his hand with tap water. Eijirou makes sure he finishes the water before he makes his exit from the kitchen.
He looks this way and that, lost here in Endeavor’s massive estate and unsure of the places he’s allowed to go. He stands in the threshold to the living area to find that the majority of his class has already naturally broken up into their default groups, a few here and there involved in close, one on one discussions. Eijirou assumes that, by the end of the night, many of them will have vacated the common areas in search of a more private setting.
Eijirou’s about to try his luck and venture deeper into the house when the door slams open and a familiar voice proclaims with raucous confidence, “Pizza’s here, fuckers!”
He turns with the collective group to see Katsuki in the doorway with pizza boxes stacked high in his arms, Midoriya close behind with just as many. The two of them make their way to the kitchen amid the overjoyed cheers of their peers. While the former rivals’ civility towards one another is neither new nor unexpected at this point in the game, it still warms Eijirou’s heart.
The mass exodus to the kitchen begins immediately and Eijirou lets everyone ahead of him while he takes a leisurely lap around the living room. He takes in the expensive decor within, marvels at things that probably cost more than his mother makes with several month’s wages. Although, if he possessed pockets with the depth of Endeavor’s, bad familial reputation aside, he would probably spend a lot on dumb stuff too after all the important stuff was taken care of. Something to look forward to, he supposes.
He drinks again and turns—
—to be met by Katsuki standing less than a foot away.
Eijirou startles and nearly spills his drink down Katsuki’s very nice, very fitted shirt, prevented only by the quick hand halting his wrist. The liquid sloshes precariously close to the top of the bottle but does not splash out. Disaster averted.
“Hey,” he greets, a little breathless, a little on edge.
Katsuki arches an eyebrow, apparently unimpressed. “How much of that shit have you had on an empty stomach?”
Eijirou snorts and plants his free hand on Katsuki’s upper arm, giving it a lighthearted squeeze as he speaks. “Just this. Denki peer pressured me into it.”
”Of course he did.”
Despite how big the bicep under his grip is, his hands are still bigger. Katsuki, to his credit, does not flinch away now, or rather, does not flinch away as much as he used to . Eijirou lets his thumb drift down over the fabric of Katsuki’s shirt sleeve. The muscle underneath tenses and makes the now-familiar feeling buzz to life in Eijirou’s stomach. He’s a live wire in these moments, alight with proximity and possibility. “Let me get you one? And some food?”
The disinterest on Katsuki’s face doesn’t drop, but he seems to wrestle with the idea for an instant before huffing, “Whatever.”
Eijirou beams and returns to the kitchen with Katsuki trailing along behind him, finding Denki in the same spot with Hitoshi perched statue-still on the counter beside him, a predictable vacancy about him. They’re passing a bottle of vodka between them like it’s water while the rest of the liquor has become a free-for-all.
“Really?” Eijirou laughs as he fishes in one of the massive refrigerators for another bottle.
Katsuki sidles up to Eijirou, a hairdbreadth away and craning his neck to peer into the fridge. He pokes Eijirou’s shoulder and points at a different case below the beer that holds colorful malt drinks. “Grab me one of those,” he requests lowly, voice gritty at the softer volume. He’s close enough that Eijirou hears him swallow against it and notices the body heat at his back.
“Kacchaaan, that’s not gonna do nothing bro!” Denki informs, ever the misguided public servant. Hitoshi grins around the bottle and doesn’t comment, clearly possessing a higher tolerance for it.
Katsuki levels them with a glare. “Well, when you’re getting hauled away in an ambulance with fucking alcohol poisoning, I’ll be standing in the driveway laughing.”
Denki giggles. “You’re so funny, has anyone ever told you that?”
”Good thing my one single aspiration in life is to make you laugh, ain’t it, Sparky?”
Eijirou finally digs out the requested drink from a formerly unopened box and shuts the fridge. With his other hand occupied with his own bottle, he raises it to his mouth sooner than his brain can summon the sense to tell him to stop and uncaps it with one of his bottom teeth.
The cap clatters to the floor and he finds Katsuki watching with an expression just south of perturbed before he snatches it away with a muttered, “Show off.”
Eijirou lets himself lean towards Katsuki, only a little. He will never tell anyone this, not in a million years, but he loves being taller than Katsuki now, loves being bigger in general, not enough to dwarf him, but enough for Katsuki to notice when Eijirou is flaunting the difference. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Sure. Are you impressed ?”
Katsuki is in the process of taking a cautious sip and nearly chokes on it before he catches himself, the result coming as a barely hidden cough. His nose scrunches in distaste at the comment, and all Eijirou can think at that moment is, Cute . “Keep dreaming, shithead.”
Eijirou laughs and shrugs, “Guess I gotta try harder then.”
“Oh my god , get a fucking room already,” interrupts Hitoshi. He reaches out and runs a hand listlessly through Denki’s hair, tugging a bit, making Denki’s eyes roll back into his head. Obviously it is the two of them that need to take this advice, but Eijirou does not say it. To say it would be to acknowledge Hitoshi’s original comment and he does not need to draw more attention to the notion.
Eijirou wills his face not to react to the accusation but he knows it’s a losing game. Katsuki’s ears go a bit red but that’s all that gives him away. Eijirou wisely diverts, “Want food?” At Katsuki’s quick nod in reply, Eijirou grabs him a couple slices of pizza, shoves the plate into his hands, then does the same for himself. They promptly vacate the kitchen.
Eijirou locates their friend group pretty quickly, as all he has to do is follow the sound of Mina’s high-pitched laughter, and sinks down onto a free portion of the couch next to her. He scoots over as far as he can to make room for Katsuki, who starts out perched on the arm while he eats but begrudgingly moves down next to Eijirou once he has finished and disposed of their mutual trash. He consumes his drink at a snail’s pace, barely sipping at the neon liquid each time he raises the bottle to his lips, resting the glass rim there each time for a beat too long, as if he’s deciding whether or not he wants to continue drinking it at all.
They all exist there like that for what seems like hours, reminiscing and spending time in each others’ company. Eijirou loses himself in the warmth, the sensation of being enveloped in such tender sentiment and the press of familiar bodies on either side of his own, even if Katsuki always looks like he doesn’t want to be there. Denki rejoins them after a time, Hitoshi in tow with armfuls of remaining liquor bottles to pass out.
Eijirou has been around the lot of his core friend group long enough to know how they each act when they’re drunk, and tonight appears like it will be no exception. He stays firmly rooted to his spot on the couch, moderately shy of sober as Mina progressively removes more and more of her clothing with Hanta joining her in raucous solidarity. Kyoka sits in Momo’s lap on the floor, facing her and slurring softly to the other girl, blushes on both their faces. Denki has taken up residence of the single, comfy chair near the couch, Hitoshi’s long limbs draped over the arms and around the back of it, crowding in Kaminari in a way that the former doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest if the adoring expression on his face is any indication.
Then there’s Eijirou and Katsuki, not speaking and sitting side by side an awkward distance apart amidst all of this.
He looks over then to see that Katsuki appears to be mentally wrestling with something even with the loud atmosphere swirling around them. He shifts to angle his body towards Katsuki and leans his elbow up against the top of the couch. “What’s up?” he asks, careful not to invade Katsuki’s space too much when he’s like this.
Katsuki’s brow briefly furrows even more before he seems to come to a conclusion and turns his gaze to Eijirou. “You wanna get out of here?”
Eijirou knows that the shock is supremely evident on his face, knows by the way his eyes widen and lips part ever so slightly as if to dispel words not yet formed. He forgets that their friends are surrounding them, the weird lightness in his body blocking out all those other distractions until the one point of focus is the person sitting next to him.
Eijirou leans in closer, drops his voice a little to keep the moment between the two of them. “Sure, you wanna go check out the garden? Looked pretty sick from what I—“
“No, dumbass. Like, away from this house.”
“Oh,” says Eijirou, once again at a loss as he tries not to let his head spin. “Yeah, okay, we can do that. If you want.”
Katsuki’s already standing before he finishes his sentence spurred on by the agreement and evidently not needing to hear anything else. “Cool.” And then he’s fishing a set of car keys out of his pocket that definitely aren’t normally there. “Let’s fucking go then.”
He follows Katsuki and throws some half-baked promise to return over his shoulder to the others and grabs his jacket on the way. As he turns to the door a flash of movement further down the hall catches his eye. Eijirou is met with the sight of Midoriya and Todoroki engaged in a private moment that has a blush heating his face. Midoriya has the taller boy against the wall, caged in by his arms and caught up in a kiss. When they part, Todoroki grabs one of those arms and pulls him insistently into the closest room.
Eijirou’s mouth hangs open for an instant before he snaps it closed and thinks to himself, Huh, good for them .
If Katsuki also notices the display, he doesn’t let it show. He marches out the front door like he owns the place and weaves through the cars in the driveway. “Yo,” says Eijirou when he catches up, conspiratory, “Todoroki and Midoriya were totally sucking face back there.”
Katsuki snorts. “Wow, it’s about fucking time. Surprised it took the nerd this long to get up the nerve. He was bitching about it the whole time we were getting food.” Eijirou wonders privately when the switch had happened: when Midoriya and Katsuki’s relationship had evolved from constant bullying and instigation to bemoaning romantic conundrums. Surprisingly, Katsuki continues, “I told him if he pussied out one more time I’d never talk to him again.”
“Oh, my god?” Eijirou laughs. “That’s so mean!”
“If you knew how long he’s been pining you would have said it too. Shit’s embarassing.”
They approach a sleek black Lexus parked on the street. “Uh...graduation present?” is the first thing Eijirou asks, receiving a confused scowl in return.
“What? Fuck no. My folks would never, they’re frugal as hell.” He unlocks it and they slide into the respective driver and passenger seats at the same time. The interior of the vehicle smells fresh off the lot, all new leather and whatever cologne Katsuki is wearing tonight. “It’s Icyhot’s. He had me and Izuku take it out earlier for food.” The engine purrs to life and Katsuki’s immediately reversing out onto the road in a singular, swift motion that shouldn’t be as effortless as he manages to make it.
Eijirou realizes he had no idea Katsuki knew how to drive at all.
“And he’s just okay with you taking this very expensive car joyriding?” Eijirou asks as Katsuki floors it and speeds down the empty street. The little clock on the display screen says that it’s after 1am, which explains why the rest of the neighborhood has all turned in for the most part.
Katsuki barks out a laugh, driving one handed with the same confidence with which he approaches everything else, refined through both fire and time. “This car is useless to him and he said as much. One of Endeavor’s many attempts to “atone” or whatever the fuck he’s calling trying not to be human garbage. Motherfucker doesn’t even have a license, how’s he even supposed to use it?” He takes a turn very quickly, but Eijirou can tell how well he’s controlling the vehicle with how even the motion feels beneath him.
Despite his apparent comfort behind the wheel, Eijirou can’t resist poking the proverbial bear - and satiating his curiosity - when he asks, “Oh, and you do?”
“You really barely managed to scrape your way into graduation with that smooth brain, huh? Context clues, idiot, I’m not tryna get my ass arrested.”
And like that, the inescapable reality is upon him again. Maybe, he supposes, that’s why he agreed to come out with Katsuki instead of staying in with the rest of their class. Maybe he knows that, in many ways, this is it - that the moments alone with his friend will grow fewer and fewer from here. Maybe he was waiting for this to happen all along.
There’s a weight in his pocket as he subconsciously hooks his finger inside and thumbs the little, flat circle sitting snugly in the corner of the fabric. His hesitancy to form an immediate rejoinder makes Katsuki glance over and lightly backhand his arm, a questioning look on his face.
Eijirou shakes his head to physically knock himself out of the daze. “Oh yeah. That would be bad,” he says lamely and swerves into a rapid subject change. “So, where’re we going?”
“It's a surprise,” is all Katsuki provides as he turns onto the freeway. He must have synced up his phone earlier, because what is very clearly one of his personal playlists lights up the screen on the dash, filling the car with music. Katsuki turns it up to drown out the sound of the highway gusting in through the cracks of the windows, prompting Eijirou to roll down the passenger side further. He lets his arm hang out over the side of the car, hand extended to ride the wind’s invisible waves.
They drive towards the coast, and when Katsuki finally parks the car, it is in a vast, vacant parking lot outside of what appears to be a water park. Wave City , the nearby kitschy billboard reads. It’s an apt attraction so close to the beach.
He exits the vehicle first, standing there by the front bumper and gazing off into the distance with restless hands. Then, he looks down at Eijirou, still in the front seat, and demands, “You coming?”
They have to hop a fence, some aging split rail thing that creaks under their weight but is easy to scale. On the other side, Katsuki moves past a grassy area of picnic tables with closed, colorful umbrellas bursting from the center and walks up onto the huge concrete area beyond. It is empty now, but Eijirou imagines that, in a few short weeks, it will be filled with sunbathing chairs and screaming children. Up ahead, eerie shadows of water slides sit silhouetted against the night sky, a welcoming, nostalgic sight in the day, but in darkness like communing, monstrous serpents in the distance.
The walkway suddenly slopes down into a mammoth, rectangular bowl that reminds Eijirou of a skatepark but, upon further inspection and a helpful sign, it turns out to be the shell of a wave pool. It is clearly drained for the season, but out near the center, some collected rain water sits green and trash-filled. He stops at the mouth of it and watches Katsuki descend halfway down the slope and take a seat.
“Hey, why’d you pick here?”
“Dunno. Just saw the sign and it felt right.”
“So, it’s a surprise to you too,” Eijirou rejoins, sidestepping down the incline and dropping down next to his friend. The surface is cool beneath him without the sun’s rays to warm it. “I remember seeing this place advertised on TV a bunch when I was a kid.”
“Yeah, that song was annoying as hell.”
Eijirou hums an off-key bar of it and Katsuki gives a shove at his shoulder, though the singular light up on a nearby post shows his silent laugh. “You ever been?”
“Nah, my parents didn’t want me out in the fuckin’ sun too much as a kid so we only did outside stuff where there was a lot of shade. Like, a lot of trees and shit. Didn’t really get to swim often.”
“Oh, my god, were you a swim shirt kid when you did?” Eijirou starts to laugh picturing the Katsuki Bakugou in a spandex shirt and waterproof bucket hat, lathered to the gods in sunscreen. By the way Katsuki sighs dramatically, it is clear he has hit the nail on the head. “You totally were! I’m sorry, the next time I see your mom I’m asking for pictures immediately.”
It’s not the glare and the threatening “You better not, you nosy fuck, I swear to god!” that gives Eijirou pause, but the sudden, stark understanding that he doesn’t know when he’ll see Katsuki’s mother again. He balks, laughter dying out and replaced with the sound of the crickets and wind rustling through the trees beyond the fence. They lapse into silence and Eijirou decides that now’s as good a time as any to take a blinding leap.
He pockets his hands and once more thumbs over that small circle within.
“So,” he starts, and his mouth dries out when Katsuki’s head turns from looking out across the barren wave pool to him. He clears away the grit in his throat and drops his eyes to his feet. “I wanna give you something. Um, I meant to do it earlier today at the ceremony but you know how it is.” He pinches the object between his thumb and index finger, holding it in the safe confines of his pocket. When he lets himself raise his gaze to Katsuki again, he has a perplexed furrow to his brow.
“Give me something?” reiterates Katsuki suspiciously. “I don’t…you know I don’t like gifts.”
“No, it’s not like that,” Eijirou amends, closing the little object in his fist and withdrawing his hand from within. “Just…c’mere.” He motions for Katsuki to sidle in closer, and while he regards Eijirou with even more misgiving, he begrudgingly complies, his shoulder pressing into Eijirou once he’s shifted. He lifts his hand, suspending his closed fist in front of Katsuki, and gives a little nod for Katsuki to open his hand beneath. Katsuki unfurls his fingers slowly, baring his palm while Eijirou collects himself, then he presses his hand into Katsuki’s and opens his own fingers.
He pulls away quickly, leaving Katsuki to stare at what he has left behind. The confusion on his face multiples tenfold, the sound of the gears turning in his head almost audible.
“What is this?” he asks tightly.
“It’s, uh –”
“No, I know what it is,” Katsuki interrupts. He closes it into a white-knuckled grip and his head snaps back to Eijirou. “Why would you…Are you fucking with me right now?”
Eijirou rubs at his neck. “Ah, man, no, I’d never do that! I thought the meaning would be obvious–”
“I know what it fucking means!”
“Then you got your answer!”
A beat.
Eijirou can’t take it.
He starts again, “I...thought it was obvious that I’m kinda really into you? We’re talking since first year? Like, since you yelled at me the first time, and that’s really pathetic to say out loud now that I’m hearing it. But, I’m not a subtle guy, everyone says so, and I had figured that...shit...And - and it’s totally cool if you don’t feel the same or aren’t into dudes or whatever, I just figured I’d shoot my shot before it’s too late, y’know?
Katsuki looks between Eijirou and his closed hand before he finally settles on the latter and opens it again, exposing the shiny second button there from Eijirou’s uniform jacket to the night once more. He raises his other hand and runs the pad of his pointer finger across the grooved surface, pushing it around his palm. He doesn’t speak right away and studies what has been given to him for a moment.
“Do people really still do shit like this?”
“Uh, I dunno? I saw it in a manga one time.”
“That’s a fucking lie, you don’t read shit!”
“It was one of yours!”
Katsuki thinks on it, then laughs and states, “I’d kill to see Electrobitch try to pawn his off on some sucker.” He flips the button over with rapt attention.
“Who do you think would take it?” Eijirou asks. He’s far away from his body and his current comedown from an adrenaline spike makes him vibrate with nervous energy.
“Well,” hypothesizes Katsuki, “I think most of the girls would probably hold out for Icyhot or you so…”
“Oh,” says Eijirou. “I guess they’ll be waiting a long time, then.”
Katsuki awkwardly shrugs his shoulders, puffing out his cheeks and releasing the air slowly. Then, he bolsters himself and looks Eijirou dead in the eye. “They will, ‘cause you’re not getting this back.” He seems to lose his gumption after this because the eye contact ends just as quickly as it had begun. “And for the fuckin’ record, dipshit , I knew you liked me anyway.”
“Oh,” repeats Eijirou as he fidgets uselessly with his hands, then adds, “So, do you also—?“
“ Yeah , alright?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Katsuki sounds about as happy as a kid at the doctor but there’s no sense of hesitation there. “I—you’re not the worst.”
It is easy to reach over and grab Katsuki’s hand then, and when Katsuki doesn’t protest, he interlaces their fingers together. For a long moment, he stares at the sight of their contact and Katsuki, in turn, watches him with veiled uncertainty. Eijirou lets their overlapping digits slip apart, moving the sides of his middle and index fingers along Katsuki’s. The other boy is unmoving all the while, letting the slow drag of skin over skin draw out the silence.
Eijirou can’t help the grin that spreads across his face as he unlaces his fingers fully and simply runs the tips over Katsuki’s rough palm. “Wow,” he breathes. “I didn’t think that would actually work.”
“Shut up,” Katsuki grouses. He reclaims his hand, apparently done with any allusions of tenderness for the time being. He props his arms up onto his knees and presses his chin into them.
They sit there, side by side under the pressure of their mutually inelegant confessions. Eijirou turns his face into the breeze coming off of the neighboring ocean and inhales, filling his lungs with cool air. He managed to do the scary thing and it worked out - his feelings were finally out in the open after years of internalization. It was done.
Katsuki’s voice breaks him out of his contemplation, as always. “I want you to come up with stuff you want to do over the next couple weeks because after that I don’t think I’ll have any fuckin’ time anymore once I start working,” he says. “Much less when one of these agencies come to their senses and sign you too.”
The illusion abruptly shatters.
The sting of impending tears accompanies the sudden drop back to reality and the world goes blurry with it. Eijirou mirrors Katsuki’s posture and tucks his chin atop his forearms.
For a brief instant of bliss, he had forgotten about the shadow of frightening new horizons under the blinding light of his long desired confession. But now in the wake of newfound happiness the grief returns, pressing in on him from all sides and sapping all of the giddy joy from his atmosphere. Everything is all so overwhelming that he knows he can’t possibly hold the truth at bay any longer.
Katsuki doesn’t seem to notice at first, going on, “Fuck it, we can start tomorrow. Pikachu had been talking about this place over in…” Katsuki trails off when Eijirou is unable to hide the muted, shaky breath he takes. “ Huh ?! Are you crying already? Oh my god, it’s been five fucking minutes!” He leans closer to peer around at Eijirou, and Eijirou himself can’t quite make out what Katsuki’s face is doing, but the rough voice softens, accompanied by the unsure pressure of a hand on his arm. “Hey, did I — fuck, did I say something?”
Eijirou shakes his head and swipes away the first, fat tear that dares to sneak out of his eye. He sits back, focuses on a particularly large piece of trash below a moment, then states, “I got signed already.”
He can see a little better now and Katsuki appears confused by the admission. “Well, shit! That’s a fuckin’ relief! Don’t know why you’re cryin’ about it though—“
Another head shake, this one more forceful. It rattles his brain and he cuts Katsuki off before he can think better of it. “No. No, it’s great, it’s really great, I just, uh...I’m actually leaving in the morning. I start the day after tomorrow.”
Katsuki’s eyes - darker here, tamer when it’s only them - widen. The hand on Eijirou’s arm drops and he shifts away. Eijirou tracks his movement, sees the way his mouth is hanging slightly open and how he closes it, sitting there far across the tense cavern the revelation has created between them. When he finally speaks again, his voice is small and hoarse, forming one word. “Leaving?”
Another tear tracks down his face, and Eijirou steels himself for a divulgence that’s been weighing him over the course of the couple of weeks he’s known. He stands on the precipice again, except this time Katsuki is here with him, and the waves below are more daunting and the storm behind him is a hurricane. He swallows against the impossible pressure of emotion in his throat and lets his hands drop, lets his fingers scrape along the ground at his sides.
“Yeah,” Eijirou confirms. “M’going to Sasebo.”
“Sasebo,” echoes Katsuki with no explicit emotion in his tone. The pressure builds in him, growing more when he stands and takes one, two steps away, crosses and uncrosses his arms with his back to Eijirou. He kicks at a nearby plastic bottle, sending it arcing down towards the puddle at the bottom of the incline. When he turns around, his countenance is predictably livid. “When were you planning on telling me this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know ?”
“I…don’t know if I was.”
“So, what, you were gonna…confess your feelings to me and then what? Just fuck off without saying anything? To fucking Sasebo ? What’s even out there?!”
Eijirou tilts his head upwards towards the sky and blinks rapidly, determined that those two tears won’t be joined by anymore. “It’s, um, it’s a new sister agency to one in Nagasaki, I —“
“That’s not – Jesus fuck – that’s not the point!” He seems so much bigger standing there, silhouetted against the night sky with anger rippling off his frame so palpably it’s almost visible. “I don’t fucking get it. Why wouldn’t you want to say anything? Sasebo’s like, fucking, what? Fifteen hours away? That’s so fucking far! Didn’t you get any offers in fucking Tokyo? Or even like Yokohama or some shit?”
His face twists as the light catches the first of his own tears sliding over his skin.
“I know,” Eijirou says.
“Oh, you do ? You know how shitty this makes things?” Katsuki swipes at the tears aggressively with his knuckles and sniffs loudly against the onslaught. “What was even the point of telling me how you feel then, huh? If you’re gonna leave? Lotta good that did you.” Katsuki rubs at his eye again, but that’s all he says to dispute Eijirou’s decision before taking a deep breath and lowering his voice. “Okay, you know what, Eijirou? I’m happy for you, alright? You deserve it.”
“You don’t sound too happy, dude,” Eijirou remarks.
“Oh, I’m fucking ecstatic .”
Eijirou’s agitated fingers start to harden and scrape dissonantly back and forth over concrete. “This is a great opportunity for me to grow and stuff. I did get offers in Tokyo”—Katsuki winds up to speak again but Eijirou jerks up an open palm to stop him—“but I think I need to go. I spent my whole life in the same town and now I have an opportunity to see a whole other side of the country, you know? I...I didn’t want to take it, originally. I didn’t…” He straightens his shoulders, bracing himself again for any sort of unsavory reaction. “I didn’t wanna tell you because I knew it would be easier if I just left, uh, easier on me . Like, if I didn’t say anything all I would have would be good memories to take with me and our last little bit of time together would be like it always is. But — but I should have told you weeks ago when I got the offer, I was too much of a…”
He can’t finish the sentence. Can’t say the word on the tip of his tongue.
Coward .
Katsuki stares at him, just stares , before he sinks down onto his haunches and runs both hands heavily through his hair before bowing his head into his forearms. “Shit, Eijirou,” he mutters into them. When he finally looks up his eyes are sparkling anew. He’s always been an angry crier and Eijirou can’t recall offhand any other time he’s seen that particular emotion from him aside from when he’s mad.
Eijirou shifts up onto his knees, and wraps his arms around Katsuki without asking permission.
It’s a gamble, and he prepares to activate his quirk should Katsuki decide this is the time he blasts Eijirou for taking liberties, but no explosion comes. Katsuki stiffens, but that’s a given even when Eijirou asks for his blessing to touch. Even after all this time, it’s like he can never quite get used to the sensation of someone else’s hands on him, but he makes a valiant effort from time to time with the understanding that Eijirou‘s inherent nature is tactile.
He feels Katsuki’s back muscles seize up under his hands as they smooth over it, up and down in a steady motion. Nosing at the juncture of Katsuki’s neck and shoulder, he breathes in deep that comforting scent, committing it to memory as if this is the last time he’ll ever experience it. Katsuki pulls his arms out from where they’re trapped between their bodies and awkwardly raises them to mirror Eijirou’s action, his chin resting lightly on Eijirou’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Eijirou breathes again and again into his skin, turning his head into the warmth of his neck. “I messed this up, I’m sorry.”
Katsuki’s voice is quieter when he says, “Don’t be sorry.” His fingers forsake ambivalence at last and curl into the material of Eijirou’s shirt, pressing into the firm expanse of his shoulder blades beneath. “Don’t you dare apologize for succeeding, that’s some weak shit. You hold your fucking head high and show those idiots over there how much you deserve this.”
He knows it’s true - hasn’t spent the past three years diligently working through his insecurities to revert to old habits now. And to have this person in his arms who has never asked anyone to pardon his victories succeeds to further remind him of his own growth.
Thank you , is all Eijirou can think but can’t quite vocalize as his lips brush against Katsuki’s jugular unbidden, ephemeral flesh on flesh that they don’t have time to fully explore. Oh, but the little tremble that goes through Katsuki at this makes him yearn for it, though. To see how it would feel to finally have him all to himself. To unravel him the way he’s only been able to do in dreams and to be unraveled in turn.
Desperation makes Eijirou bold, and he lifts his chin, lips drifting along the line of a sharp jaw, drunk on even touching the edge of intimacy. He tastes the salt of tears when he reaches the side of Katsuki’s chin and runs a soothing hand up into the soft hair at the nape of his neck.
“Would you let me?” he whispers like he’s harboring some great secret. He doesn’t have to be specific, because there’s little else he could be talking about, and by the way Katsuki’s residually watery eyes shine almost black in the moonlight, their pupils blown so wide it almost eclipses the red there, Eijirou knows he understands. “I just…wanna know what it’s like.”
And Katsuki, even with all his bullheaded reluctance to concede to any form of human weakness, temporarily lays these facets to rest, raising a white flag and murmuring, “Yes.”
…
…
…
For the first instance in a very long season, time stops.
Eijirou moves away from that precipice, and though the ground below is weathered and sodden from the storm, he is able to distance himself from that terrifying drop at long last and revels in the respite. Suspended in dizzying moment after dizzying moment with Katsuki, he finds solace. Finds comfort under the firm pressure of dangerous fingers and the hushed, private words between them.
When the chill of night grows too harsh, they return to the car, and Katsuki is intent on returning to the party until Eijirou pulls him into the back seat, laughing as their limbs tangle in the minimal space, stealing more moments and refusing to yield. He witnesses in real time as Katsuki opens up to him - opens to touch and taste and vulnerability. Eijirou accepts the yielding with such a deep reverence that it nearly pains him to let it slip from his grasp when Katsuki insists that it’s time to head back to Todoroki’s house.
( “You can’t abandon everyone for me all night,” he says, “You gotta say your goodbyes or they’ll never let me live it down.”
“But I don’t get to kiss everyone else!” Eijirou whines pitifully, as close to Katsuki as he can physically get in the small space, palms daringly mapping out the swells and valleys beneath Katsuki’s shirt.
“You’re such a loser.”)
But when they get there, in an act that shocks Eijirou to his core, it’s Katsuki who crowds him up against the side of the house, right outside the door, and takes the reigns of time into his own control, spurred by a sudden, aching hunger that knocks the breath from Eijirou’s lungs and halts the hourglass sand’s descent once more. He’s all teeth and greedy hands, a tempest of pent-up frustration only long years of denying anyone the right to get too close could create. His is an open doorway of physicality now, a signed permission slip for the brazen experimentation of touch.
( “Was gonna confess to you too, y’know,” he admits into Eijirou’s ear in a mutter like gravel, lips followed by his tongue. “Was gonna tell you…but then you had to go and fuckin’ one up me, didn’t you?”
Eijirou’s hands slide round the curve of his back, then dipping lower, hoisting him closer, needing him closer. “I feel like,” teases Eijirou, slotting their bodies together against the side of the house in a way that has Katsuki’s breath hitching, “that’s something you should have said way earlier.”
Katsuki burns for him, burns molten beneath the thin barrier of his clothing, scrapes the raised points of his bottom canines up the column of Eijirou’s throat again, journeying towards his mouth, “Doesn’t matter now.”
And yeah, Eijirou thinks when lips descend on his own and the press of a hard body makes stars burst behind his eyes , it doesn’t matter . )
The majority of the occupants of the Todoroki’s estate have long yielded to complete drunkenness by the time Eijirou and Katsuki pry themselves away from the wall and re-enter the house. Someone has passed out on the floor in the entryway, and a quick flick of the lights reveals that it’s Aoyama, curled up on the floor mat like a sleeping cat. They covertly step over him and make their way further in.
Music still plays from somewhere, but there’s little movement to accompany it. The living room has become a sea of bodies, spread out in an innocuous sleepover fashion with a few notable absentees.
“See? They probably didn’t even know we were gone,” Eijirou whispers.
Katsuki scoffs, not disagreeing, and grabs Eijirou’s wrist, tugging him down the hall. Many of the rooms are closed up, and while, statistically, they can’t all be occupied with the amount of people out in the open, neither of them want to risk walking in on something, and so they continue on until they find a truly empty option.
There is no light this far into the home, the dull moonbeams streaming through the small, cloudy window their lone source of light as they shut themselves into the room. Greedy hands find each other again immediately, and this time, blanketed by ever surging thoughts that this is all they’ll have , they shed the barriers of their clothing and let the private purgatory of early morning consume them.
…
…
…
The goodbye is neither tearful nor long.
Katsuki, as is his way, insists he drive Eijirou home when the sun has risen and they have pulled each other from the scant few hours of sleep they had afforded themselves. They creep from the room to the soundtrack of a silent house - everyone else is still dead to the world with the lone exception of Todoroki himself, who, upon seeing the two of them and perceives their intentions, escorts them from the house.
”Need your car again,” Katsuki tells him even though he still has the keys.
”Okay,” agrees Todoroki. “Keep it for as long as you like.”
Eijirou opens his mouth to speak but Katsuki beats him to the point. “This one’s leaving.”
Todoroki tilts his head. “Yes, Bakugou, you implied that when you asked for the car.”
”No, uh,” Eijirou says, “I’m moving. I got signed across the country.”
“Oh.” Todoroki nods, contemplating the statement for as long as he’s able. “Congratulations. Should I go wake everyone up to send you off? I could set off the alarm system, though it might alert the police so maybe I should—“
”No!” interjects Eijirou too loud, then lowers his voice. “No, that’s okay. I’m not good with goodbyes I — I’ll just message them all tomorrow.”
Todoroki, in his own awkwardness, seems to understand. He offers his hand, but Eijirou, having none of it, pulls him in for a firm hug instead. It is only when he releases him that he sees a few hints of hickeys sticking out from the top of his collar. He chooses not to comment on it, but their embrace must have shifted Todoroki’s clothing enough for Katsuki to notice as well, because he has no such qualms.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Izuku,” he mutters, then snatches Eijirou’s arm and steers him away. “Later, Peppermint.”
Todoroki stands in the driveway and Eijirou watches his silhouette grow smaller and smaller as they drive away. For a brief instant, he almost tells Katsuki to turn around - to take him back so he can struggle through a proper goodbye. Mina knows, but he hasn’t told anyone else, and he worries that the others will think badly of him that he didn’t deign to wake them up as he left but —
“Hey,” drifts Katsuki’s voice. He drives with one hand and reaches over to grab Eijirou’s shoulder with the other. “No one’s gonna blame you. You want me to tell them you were sick?”
Eijirou shakes his head but does not offer up an alternative suggestion.
By the time they arrive at Eijirou’s home, it is well into the morning. He sees the packed moving van his future agency had provided parked in the driveway alongside his mother’s car and a pit of dread develops in his stomach. Suddenly, he’s unsure whether or not he can actually do this. Whether he can move his entire life all the way to Sasebo. Whether he can allow the sand to start slipping through the hourglass once more after the night he has had.
Katsuki’s face is stony as he too perceives the van.
The rest is a blur, flashes of moments that Eijirou won’t quite be able to coherently string together later as he’s seated alone at his airport gate:
Katsuki walking inside with him. His mother’s joyful reaction to seeing him come home. Looking at a bare childhood bedroom while Katsuki stands in the hallway beyond. Pulling Katsuki inside, crowding him against the wall, claiming his mouth, forgetting everything for a couple breaths longer. Sitting with his mother and best friend reminiscing on the past year over a full plate of late breakfast. His mother’s face crumbling when he tells her it’s probably time to go to the airport while Katsuki’s face remains exactly the same despite it all.
Ultimately, it is his mother who drives him to the airport. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You better fucking call me when you get there,” Katsuki mumbles into his shoulder before he leaves. A last embrace. “You better — just call me when you get settled, okay? Wanna know you’re alright.”
”I will,” says Eijirou, hugging him tight. “I wish I—“
”No you don’t,” Katsuki interrupts. He scans Eijirou’s face as if committing every little detail to memory. Every little line and freckle. Every errant hair that has escaped his hasty attempt to tame it earlier in the day. The way his lip wobbles as he once again denies the tears from surfacing. “You’re gonna get in that car and you’re not gonna look back. I better not see anything other than the back of that shitty head, okay? And then you’re gonna get on that plane and start the rest of your life. You hear me?”
”Yes — yeah. I will.” He swallows, sees past Katsuki where his mother has turned away to give the guise of privacy. “And I’ll call you. I’ll call you every day if you want—“
Katsuki cuts him off with a hard shove to the chest to disentangle them before turning on his heel and stomping away towards the Lexus. Full stop.
When Eijirou is seated in his mother’s car, he does as he was told. He does not turn when they pull out of the driveway, does not turn to see Katsuki standing in the street, hands in pockets, expression schooled into indifference now. No, he keeps his gaze forward, but the side mirror’s view of Katsuki’s vanishing frame is something he cannot control.
One thing is for certain, though, If he knew how long it would be until he and Katsuki would face each other again, he would have defied Katsuki’s order in a heartbeat.
He would have looked back to see him for real.
…
…
…
Time is a fickle thing, and the very same second that it seems it has been encapsulated, it begins to pass again with a vengeance.
Eijirou adjusts quickly. Forces himself to. He’s seventeen in a new city on the other side of the country, fresh out of school without any real experience living on his own, and he knows that if he doesn’t start treading water among the waves, he’ll sink. He sets up his new apartment that’s only a few minutes away from his new agency with ruthless efficiency, knowing he doesn’t need all that much at the end of the day, merely a place to lay his head and a closet in which to store his clothes.
His mother comes a few days later, her scant time off work not allowing for much more than helping her son with his basic living transition but her presence is appreciated nonetheless. He hangs the punching bag from his dorm in an empty living room at first as a finishing touch, but it inevitably comes down as the months pass and the agency’s training facility proves far superior.
He talks to his friends every day, trading work stories with the ones that are working and reminiscing on past times with the ones who aren’t. Sometimes he has video calls with them, group affairs that last late into the night, his face the lone occupant in a screen next to one filled with his friend group all together. He’s the only one who left, after all. Katsuki is always oddly absent from these, as Eijirou had always assumed he would be, and his communication is few and far between. He’s never been a good texter, a harsh juxtaposition against Eijirou’s overzealous, emoji-filled correspondence, but in the growing suffocation of this newfound isolation, it’s all the more pronounced.
Maybe, he thinks, they should have formally DTRed before Eijirou left, then maybe he could use the boyfriend card instead of the “guy who I confessed to and hooked up with on graduation night and then dipped out on” card. Perhaps he’d thought those stolen moments meant something more than they had - that the kiss in front of his house before he got in the car that day had meant they were something to each other. But…for all intents and purposes, they’re not dating, so to speak.
He’s not even sure they’re probably friends anymore after weeks of no contact go by.
He knows they’re not friends anymore when Katsuki leaves all of their various group chats.
The notification of his departure sits in harsh relief against the white backdrop of the message thread. BigDickBlasty has left the chat , it says with his assigned chat name courtesy of Kaminari a glaring emotional contradiction, and while this has happened before, there was no prompting it this time, and so no one re-adds him. Eijirou texts him after it happens, the new message just another addition to the multiple, delivered ones he’d previously sent, but this one is different. This one indicates that it’s not delivered . He turns off his wifi, turns on his data, tries to send another message: the same result.
With a spike of panic, he calls the number, and lo and behold, ‘ The number you are calling has been disconnected ’ echoes through the speaker.
And through it all he wonders: had it meant anything ? Had it meant nothing ? Had a confession three years in the making only mattered when his physical body was there to form it?
When he asks Mina if she knows what happened - asks if she’ll talk to Katsuki for him - she tells him to leave it alone and does not elaborate, as if he is the one who caused the issue. A heart he always told himself would be the one part of him that would never harden calls his bluff.
He sends a final text to Katsuki’s number before he deletes the now-useless contact and the thread altogether.
…
…
…
A year passes. Eijirou turns eighteen and is formally taken onto the agency’s roster. He throws himself into work, tacking case after case and, with every new soul he saves, a shard of his cracked emotions is glued back into place in a poor imitation of kintsugi.
While the fissures remain, and while the wind behind him is a constant, dull roar, he heals with each day’s steady forward motion.
He assures he’s too busy to face any residual feelings on the topic, a hard line his therapist rebukes but it’s the one thing he won’t touch. Eijirou made his choices and he’s living with them. He doesn’t go home often - doesn’t have the time to, really - and gradually, the regular contact with his school family lessens as he surrounds himself with an entirely new group of people.
One year turns into two, and two to five, and in no time at all, a decade has come and gone.
His mother moves across the country to live closer to him, further negating his motivation to visit his old city. He witnesses her age with the creeping anxiety that comes from accepting she’s the only blood relative he knows. She’d had him later in life, after all, and the lot of her family is already gone so he cares for her in their absence. It is what he’s supposed to do.
The effects of the invariable passage of time caravan past eyes that have long lost their brightness when no one can see him. When he’s Red Riot, he’s the same stalwart, endlessly optimistic force, breaking multiple prefecture records and cementing himself as a shining force of good in Sasebo.
And when he’s out of costume among his new friends, when he’s just Eijirou, he’s the irrepressible life of the party and a shining beacon of camaraderie. He goes out to bars after work with his peers and spends off days with non-hero familiars exploring and eating and pouring every ounce of affection he has to give into others. He wakes up every morning to his longtime partner’s serene, sleep-slack face and feels so lucky to have this little slice of life to call his own, making them food before he leaves for the agency.
But when the sun goes down and the bars close and Sora has to work late again at their bureau’s office, Eijirou goes back to a dark apartment and drops the mask that used to be real.
He doesn’t let himself call it complacence.
…
…
…
When Eijirou Kirishima’s thirtieth birthday is looming on the horizon, Toshinori Yagi, beloved former symbol of peace Allmight, dies at sixty-five, and it is his funeral that finally births Eijirou’s formal homecoming to Musutafu.
He hears about it on the news before anyone tells him and his agency insists he attend. The affair is to be an intimate one, with only a handful of people invited by Allmight’s estate, including Eijirou’s class since most of them had maintained lasting relationships with him. His health had evidently declined quite drastically over the past few years until he finally succumbed to his final rest.
Mina tells Eijirou on one of their infrequent video calls that follows the news that both Midoriya and Katsuki will be speaking at the service and manages to quell any sort of reaction, remaining blasé in the face of the revelation. Long after their call is through, it stays with him, gnawing at the recesses of his brain as he comes back from his lunch and does as much distracting paperwork as he can manage before his shift ends.
He’s finally gotten to the point where his mind doesn’t stray to memories of Katsuki anymore, the wound long-healed and now existing as a distant, phantom ache. They were young the last time they were together, and so much time has passed that their shared experiences and the words they said are starting to blur. Eijirou supposes that’s why it hits him so hard: the reality that he’ll have to see Katsuki in the flesh and potentially reopen old wounds. The scars may have grown tough with age but a sharp enough knife can break any skin.
Eijirou receives a week off but decides he doesn’t need that much time and resolves to do the trip in no more than four days so he can return to work and put the inevitable duress this event causes him back to bed where it belongs.
It’s when he’s packing the night before his flight is scheduled to leave that he realizes how long it’s been since he’s truly taken a personal trip. Sora helps him, their patience a balm to his frayed nerves as they dutifully fold and pack various clothing items and essentials into the suitcase next to their own things. Eijirou has never told them about Katsuki, and though they know the two of them were once friends, he hasn’t ever really expounded further past that general fact in the four years he’s lived with Sora.
Why should he dredge up a past that never became anything more than a fleeting memory? Why drag Sora into something that happened before they knew each other? A single exposure at the end of the long film roll capsulizing his high school experience. A cosmic blip .
No, that would be foolish.
Except, now he’s inevitably going to have to see Katsuki again in two days time and he’s not certain that he’ll be able to keep it from Sora at that point, especially considering they will be accompanying him.
Eijirou drinks by himself after Sora is asleep and works to convince himself that he’s making a bigger deal out of the prospect than he needs to, reasoning that Katsuki has likely moved on with his life as well. He’s been notoriously tight-lipped about his private life as his career has progressed, though Eijirou had stopped seeking out information after the first couple years, only hearing bits and pieces from news outlets and the occasional comment from mutual friends.
He drinks and drinks until the world is dizzy and any remaining anxieties have been quelled - until his skin is warm with it and his eyelids grow heavy.
Everything will be just fine.
…
…
…
Nausea roils anew in his gut when he steps off his flight’s loading bridge into the Musutafu airport and the first thing he sees is a humongous Dynamight wall billboard. Eijirou approaches it slowly, comfortable enough in the disguise of his civilian clothing to pause in the ever-moving rapids of traveling bodies and take in the sight of Katsuki Bakugou’s dirt-streaked face glaring back at him, adult now, devoid of seventeen’s waning adolescence and overlaid with an explosion of sparks and dust.
It’s an insurance ad , of all things.
“You know him, right?” Sora asks from his side, their voice soft amidst the ruckus around the pair. They must see something on his face - they’re a journalist by trade, after all, and painfully perceptive. He has never been able to hide anything from them.
Eijirou can’t look away, finally faced with the undeniable fact that he can’t escape this man any longer. The seconds tick by and he knows it has been too long, his gaze too-lingering upon the new little details of age that the billboard editors didn’t arbitrate to remove.
“I used to,” he says.
…
…
…
The funeral is being held in a seldom-used auditorium on the UA campus - while not as glamorous as one would expect, the school still remains one of the most secure places in the city, making it the reluctant default choice, he is told.
Eijirou made sure that the hotel in which he chose to stay is close to the school, right on the outskirts of the downtown district. He splurged on accommodations, selecting a more upscale establishment so he and Sora can at least make a small vacation out of an otherwise dismal pilgrimage. He’s made all the relevant preparations ahead of time: where they’ll eat, what they’ll do, which of his old friends he wants to see and properly introduce to Sora outside of passing greetings at the service. It’s all far too organized for him, this amount of forethought for someone who is historically impulsive, but if Sora notices, they don’t say anything.
He’d bought a new suit jacket for the occasion when he’d realized it had been so long since he’d worn his old ones that they no longer fit. Age has made him broader, having long foregone the obsessive calorie-counting-gym-rat mentality of his youth in exchange for quirk-appropriate mass, and so his early-twenties formal wear had to be replaced. This new suit - some designer brand in deep charcoal - is exactly what he needed to give his constantly fluctuating sense of self a positive kick in the ass. The fit is immaculate and if he is confident about one thing, it is that he will look good for this unfortunate homecoming.
Eijirou leans forward over the hotel vanity and runs a hand over his jaw to assure he didn’t miss any spots shaving like he’s liable to do, then he takes a good, long look at his face.
His index finger probes at the premature age lines that have started to pull at the corners of his eyes. An adverse product of his quirk, his physician had said. He trails down to his nose, a bit crooked now from when he’d broken it at twenty-two during an emergency in Kumamoto. It had never realigned quite right, something he doesn’t really notice under normal circumstances, but now under the harsh glare of the bathroom light, it’s an aesthetic blight and he regrets all the times he’s turned down a rhinoplasty over the years.
The scars that mar various parts of his skin do not receive that same consternation, rather grounding him as his fingertip traces the corner of a long-healed gash off to the right of his bottom lip. They are a reminder of his strength and duty in a way that other facial flaws can never be.
Sora wraps their knuckles lightly on the door before peering inside, catching him in the act. “What are you doing?” they ask.
“Oh, shit, is it time to go?” he deflects. His face softens when it is no longer under his own scrutiny. “You look nice.”
“And you still have a scrunchy in your hair,” counters Sora, stepping fully into the bathroom and craning up onto their tiptoes to free the section of Eijirou’s hair he’d pulled up before he’d shaved and then forgotten about. They run careful fingers through the strands, smoothing the framing pieces into place. Eijirou closes his eyes, tilting his head down to give them better access. “There,” they say when they’re satisfied. “Now you look nice too.”
…
…
…
The service is about to start when they arrive. Most of the seats are already occupied so they slip into one of the rows closer to the back. There’s a flurry of movement from further up, several frantic arms waving to get his attention that turn out to be Kaminari, Sero, and Mina, all seated together.
“We saved seats for you guys,” Mina hisses in a stage whisper, causing several people to stare admonishingly in her direction. Eijirou is quick to comply, apologetically moving past already seated attendees with Sora to take up residence beside his old friend group. He gets a good look around on the way, catching sight of countless familiar faces that fill him with both warmth and an odd sort of emptiness.
Who are they now ? What did they become ?
Mina throws herself over him as soon as he sits down, burying her face in his chest to muffle her voice against the solemn atmosphere blanketing the auditorium. It is the first time he’s seen her in quite a few years, their schedules not aligning the last time they’d been near the same location, but the combination of her scent, still the same, and the warmth of her seeping through the fabric of his shirt is a comforting harmony. When she draws away, she immediately launches into a bout of cooing and doting upon Sora, before now of whom she’d only seen brief flashes in video calls. Sero and Kaminari are more subdued, though the latter is just as touchy as Mina when given the opportunity.
They all know Mina is overcompensating - they all know this funeral is hard for everyone. Especially without any real viewing to be had.
While Sora makes polite, quiet conversation with his friends, Eijirou lets his gaze sweep the auditorium, resting again on each of the people he used to know so well. People he used to consider family but people he didn’t deign to inform he was abruptly moving across the country. And while his guilt at the emotional dichotomy has waned and transformed into logic with his own maturity, still nothing is able to prepare him for the moment when he distinguishes a blond figure at the front.
He sits statuesque in the front row next to an equally solemn Midoriya until, at long last, never turning fully. The most Eijirou sees is a flash of a side profile when he turns to speak to the man beside him - he’s focused, that much is obvious, shoulders a tense line against the back of the chair. Eijirou can do nothing but stare until Sora takes his hand and pulls him out of it. They want to show him something in the service program, they have a question for him. When he glances up past them at Mina, she is pinning him with a knowing look that he is unwilling to fully acknowledge.
The service proceeds like many do. Music, opening statements, obituary reading, all televised live, of course, because what better way for the Hero Commission to get those last, organic viewer royalties for All Might’s likeness than his funeral, right? What should be a tender ceremony is tainted by - albeit limited - media presence and Eijirou is once again forced to reckon with his own age and shifted opinions on Commission practices. He wants to stand up and demand the reporters show more respect, but when the time comes for speeches, all motivation to speak up dies in his chest.
Because he’s finally faced with the sight of Katsuki Bakugou in the flesh after thirteen long years.
He’s on the stage by Midoriya’s side, all stone faced and silent as the funeral officiant introduces them both and indicates All Might had requested both of them by name to speak at the service at the end. Eijirou gets it, All Might had no living family, and the two former rivals were as good as sons to him, but the prospect of his first reintroductions to them in person being a literal eulogy sets him on edge nonetheless.
It does not help matters when Katsuki is first, giving Eijirou little time to visually reacquaint himself with the man without the pressure of focusing on his words. He steps up to the podium with a handful of notecards, looking every bit the consummate professional he is expected to be at such an event, but, even after such a long time, Eijirou can see those same small ticks flicker like sparks as he composes himself. Jaw twitch. Weight shift from foot to foot. Tongue probing at the singular crooked tooth inside his mouth. Some things never change.
Yet still, he’s so beautiful, Eijirou thinks even as Sora’s fingers press against his own again. Age has been kind to Katsuki, that much is undeniable - Mitsuki Bakugou’s DNA has put in the work and kept her son’s face flawless against his unwavering penchant for frown lines. Not like Eijirou’s own face. He appears ten years older in comparison by now and Unbreakable has caused his hands to become unsteady. Even now he curls the fingers of his free hand around his knees to stop the shake - even now he counts his breaths. In and out , over and over. A mantra to keep the quirk-drawbacks at bay.
“Good afternoon, my name is Katsuki Bakugou,” Katsuki begins, all traces of Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight temporarily banished from his lexicon, it seems. His voice is deeper and grittier through this professional persona, and the news broadcasts truly cannot do it justice. Cannot capture the rawness of it through the filter of the camera. Eijirou has the wild notion that he pities the people who have to hear that voice coming from a television screen. Through the speakers of a phone or car radio. The restrained authority is lost outside of the room.
“So,” he continues, “when Izuku told me Yagi wanted me to speak at his funeral the first thing I thought was, ‘ why would he want that ?’” He clears his throat, shifts again, looks out over the audience and then at the cameras at the mouth of the room. “I mean, everyone knows I’m not the most eloquent even when I try and I swear like a motherfucker - yep there it is. I’m sure my PR team is having a conniption somewhere right now. Sorry.”
There’s a brief pause as scattered laughter blankets the auditorium. Kaminari sighs out a wistful, “Classic Kacchan,” before Katsuki goes on.
“Um, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Yagi is that he saw things in you that you might’ve not even known were there, so…I wanted to give it a shot for the old man.” He shuffles his cards and finds the one with which he wants to begin.
His reading voice is slightly softer, a bit quicker than what would organically come out. “I formally met Yagi when I was fifteen and it seems crazy to say that now because that’s over half my life ago now. I had begged my parents to go to this All Might meet and greet when I was a kid, and even though I saw him that day, I don’t really count it because I’ve never been able to equate the person on TV or media events with the person I knew in high school. Yeah, there were a lot of similarities - they both stood for integrity and restoration and making stuff right in the world, they both loved teaching the next generation, and they both were basically Izuku’s dad—“
More scattered laughter - Midoriya gives a watery giggle of his own from behind Katsuki.
“—And that’s not to play down his accomplishments during his time at the top or anything, but, today, I don’t wanna talk about All Might the hero, and instead, I wanna take a couple minutes to talk about Yagi the person.”
He flips a card, really makes a show of placing the finished one down on the podium as if to reinforce to his publicist that he is, in fact, sticking with a script.
“Yagi was the type of guy to have tea already made for you when you had a meeting or were even just visiting. He loved that stuff. And he knew I did too. He learned my favorite kind and kept some in the back of this cabinet, especially for me.” He looks up and his eyes land somewhere near Eijirou, and for a dizzying moment he thinks Katsuki might see him, but it doesn’t happen. “It — it made me feel special. Not many people knew little things about me like that back then because I didn’t let them. But he had this way of disarming you enough that you wanted to tell him things and he was so considerate. Even when he didn’t have to be the Symbol of Peace anymore.”
“So, he would sit with me in the teachers lounge and we would drink our tea and just talk. I was such a degenerate moron, I didn’t wanna listen to anyone, thought I was god’s gift to humanity one second and hated myself the next. But Yagi always was so patient with me despite the gigantic chip on my shoulder. He made me think and question everything without even trying, and that meant a lot to me, y’know? Having someone I’d idolized spending dedicated time with me, listening to the shit come out my mouth that didn’t even matter ? We’d sit there and I’d rant and rave and then he’d make one little comment that would rock my world. He wasn’t even trying to be wise or noth— anything , that’s how he was.”
“And his stories, man. The amount of stuff this guy had done even before he was famous was insane. He did this whole mentorship program for delinquent youth in America during a semester in college - he was always so effortless in his generosity. That always resonated with me, even as some badass kid, that someone could care so much about making sure the next generation came up with a chance at going down the right path. At being okay. A lot of people only saw All Might in him, the larger-than-life guy on TV, and don’t get me wrong, he was larger than life, he was…a literal universe, but Yagi was much more concerned about things behind the scenes when it came to preventing people from going down a bad path in the first place. It is both an inspiration and a weight on my shoulders - on all our shoulders, really - to make sure that the good we’re doing in the world and the efforts of our positions make even a small piece of Yagi’s impact on society.”
There is scattered, respectful clapping throughout the auditorium, though it doesn’t last long when the perpetrators realize no one else is joining them. Katsuki flips another card, scans the page for a moment, then places the stack down onto the podium, his attention fully on the sea of faces before him now.
”I guess the whole point of what I’m trying to say is that Yagi dedicated his life to serving others, to making the country, and even the world, a better place. I wanna encourage you to search inside yourself and find the heart to do so as well, it’s what he would say if he were up here so…” He glances behind him at Midoriya for a moment and they exchange a pointed look filled with unsaid words and the heaviness of their unique shared experiences. The microphone catches half of Katsuki’s shaky sigh as he turns back and concludes, “Yeah, I’ll miss him like crazy, I’ll miss his quiet jokes and his loyalty and his warmth. And – and I’ll miss his support. Knowing that even though I’m grown now I could always go drink tea with the guy and listen to him talk. Yagi was one of a kind, and I – I just hope I can continue making him proud. Thank you.”
As Katsuki steps away from the podium, it is so silent that he’s sure he could hear a pin drop.
…
…
…
At the dinner that follows, Eijirou leaves Sora in Mina’s capable hands when Denki and Hanta pull him outside with them for a smoke break before dessert. They lean in a line against a semi-circular, fenced in terrace with a view of the grounds. Eijirou had a stint of smoking a few years prior, but had quit soon after and now stands a respectable distance away from the others to avoid saturating his clothing in the scent.
“I can’t believe this is real,” Denki says. “I thought All Might would live forever or something.”
“I know. Sad as hell,” answers Hanta. “Woulda thought they’d figured something out by this point. Extended his life or something at least.”
Eijirou is silent for a moment, then muses, “Sometimes it’s just someone’s time, though. He did so much with the years he had, it’s…it’s really incredible. Definitely makes you want to try harder, huh?”
Hanta and Denki hum in agreement. “Izuku’s speech had me a little teary, I’m not even gonna lie,” confesses Denki. “Everything about him’s so fucking sentimental, I dunno.”
“You’re just as sentimental as him, dude,” Hanta points out, reaching over to ruffle Denki’s hair. “Little cry baby.”
Eijirou cracks a grin and starts to say, “What do you guys—“
“Oi, Sparky!” barks a familiar voice before Eijirou can finish his thought. His stomach drops; he concentrates particularly hard on a bush below the terrace and his grin drops. “Been lookin’ everywhere for you. There’s some electrical problem in the kitchen. Need you to go zap some shit.”
Denki scoffs and plucks out his cigarette to speak with a dramatic flourish. “That sounds like the perfect problem for an electrician , my guy.”
“Do you want dessert or not? Move your ass, you lazy fuck!”
At the threat, Denki springs into action, flicking the cigarette out into the yard below with Hanta following close behind. Eijirou pivots as his friends leave, rushing past the messenger and leaving the two of them alone. He does not balk and does not turn around and pretend the other person is not there, looking the past square in the face.
And there he is, flesh and blood in Eijirou’s distorted orbit once more. His expression is tight, guarded with the practice of years in a way it never was in their youth. This version of him, this pillar of brutal virtue cast in muted, golden light falling off the building, doesn’t show his cards. This version has schooled his grandiose temperament in the face of unexpected confrontation and faces Eijirou as a venerated pro hero, not his former friend and certainly not his former what if .
“Hey, Katsuki,” he states, and it comes out strangled, the name tasting foreign on his tongue now.
Katsuki’s shoulders tense, fingers flexing at his sides. “Hey,” he echoes flatly.
“That was a good speech you gave. It was – I thought it was really nice.” Another step forward, another breath lost. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
The utter lack of emotion continues to throw Eijirou, the acute memories of Katsuki’s hair-trigger tendencies growing eclipsed in the shadows of the person standing in front of him. “Wow, you know, I’ve been told that I tend to make people speechless, but I never thought I’d see the day when it happened to you ,” Eijirou tries to joke, plastering a forced grin onto his face.
Katsuki’s glare drills into him until he lets it rove away, somewhere higher and ambiguous. “We don’t have to do this,” is his clipped answer.
“Do what?”
Katsuki gestures between them once with a flippant jerk of his hand. “This.” At Eijirou’s continued confusion, he grates out, “Pretend.”
Eijirou runs a hand through his hair, rendering it disheveled beneath fingers that have hardened the barest amount at the perceived dismissal. “I’m not pretending, man,” he tells him, soft in his earnestness.
“Well, neither am I. Which is why I’m not indulging this mopey shit at a funeral. It ain’t about you or whatever you’re about to say to me.” His hands migrate from his belt loops to fully slip into his pockets and he turns and starts moving towards the door. Eijirou takes a risk and rushes after to catch his shoulder, only a few big strides, and the way Katsuki abruptly seizes up is the first outward expression of his typical disposition Eijirou’s seen all night.
“Hey, hold on,” Eijirou says, and surprisingly, Katsuki pauses. Looks right up at him as he wrenches out of his grip. “I wasn’t trying to start anything, swear to god.”
”Coulda fooled me.”
Their height difference is more pronounced now, and while Katsuki is not short by normal standards, cutting an imposing figure these days, Eijirou’s physique is still taller and bulkier by a considerable margin. He breathes out, slow and measured as he commits Katsuki’s face to memory again. He thinks of the airport billboard and it doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing, alive and annoyed and still so reminiscent of the past it’s all Eijirou can do to keep his hands off Katsuki after such an acute rejection.
Katsuki cocks a brow at him, and when Eijirou doesn't clarify his request, he clicks his tongue, says, “Whatever,” and spins on his heel again.
It is then that Eijirou’s prior assertion about not starting anything promptly goes flying out the window.
“You know, you got a lot of balls acting like I’m the one in the wrong when you’re the one who cut me off,” he states matter-of-factly. Because he knows it will get a rise, will keep Katsuki here with him even if it is one more moment.
Right on cue, Katsuki rounds on him, feral and mouth parted as his careful pretense cracks and drops to shatter on the pavement below. Like he can’t believe that Eijirou said the words out loud. Eijirou wonders if he is about to get clocked in the face for it, but the blow never comes and he tempers his instinct to harden his skin. Oh, but he’s the warning shake of a rattlesnake tail, venomous fangs in the form of words as he hisses, “The fuck was that?”
“I think you heard me. It sounds a lot like you’re blaming me for your shitty communication, and, honestly, Katsuki? It’s been way too fucking long to hold a grudge like that.” Eijirou shrugs, braces himself, and adds, “If you wanna be upset, fine, but I’m not going to treat you like a stranger and I’m really not going to waste my energy forcing myself to be mad about it.”
“You—“ starts Katsuki, then scrubs a hand over his face. He makes a low sound in his throat, half-exasperated, half-forlorn. “We are strangers now, dipshit. We’ve been strangers for a really long fuckin’ time.”
“And again, that was not a choice that I made,” Eijirou points out. “You seem like you have a lot you want to say. Might do you some good to air it all out, it’s not good to let stuff build up.”
“No.” It seems as though this is all Katsuki is going to provide and Eijirou does not push, but then he sighs. Takes his turn running a hand through perfect hair and then immediately smooths down the mess he leaves behind. “I didn’t think you would be coming. I didn’t think — you caught me off guard. And now you’re here and you’re…you’re all you . That’s why I’m…I just wasn’t prepared for this.”
The admission should not give Eijirou any semblance of hope. It should not make his stomach do a childish flip, this crux alluding to a deeper issue, one that takes him back thirteen years ago to an abandoned waterpark and a uniform button in his palm. No, in fact, the notion should make him want to leave and never look back - it should be taken as a sign that it was never supposed to happen. That he should have stayed inside with Sora instead and let the night progress without such a confusing interlude.
“What the hell are you even trying for, anyway?” Katsuki demands, arms crossed, biceps bulging obscenely in a too-tight dress shirt. “It ain’t like there’s anything worth salvaging at this point.”
It should hurt. It should break those meticulously repaired walls of his emotional fortress all over again, but if there’s one thing that Eijirou knows with absolute certainty, it is when Katsuki is bluffing. It is when his words are too acute, a red herring to the soft underbelly beneath. All the years and all of the conscientious posturing and his old habits still die hard when Eijirou applies pressure, unintended though it might have been. He braces himself against the wind for the first time in many years and fixes Katsuki with something unwavering and his lips twitch up.
“I thought we weren’t doing this now?”
“Answer the question, Kirishima.”
“Okay, well, believe it or not, I missed you and I’m happy to see you. Am I not allowed to feel that way?”
Immediately, again: “No.” Katsuki sucks in a breath and he’s still close enough for Eijirou to see a flicker of fire in the red of his eyes. The boy he used to know beneath the man reveals himself in pieces at his own staggered pace, no longer so emotionally stunted as to come erupting like lava out of the proverbial volcano beneath his skin. “You were supposed to be mad. Not — whatever this is you’re doing. You’re supposed to fucking hate me.”
Eijirou contemplates the declaration, investigates the nuances behind the words and comes to the understanding that he should have probably expected such a reaction, even after many years’ time. And he can admit that he’s been scared as hell for their confrontation - scared, but not angry. He doesn’t think he’s capable of it with Katsuki, at least not true anger.
“But I…don’t hate you,” Eijirou finally asserts with the same softness as before.
Katsuki doesn’t speak. They size each other up.
“There wasn’t really an electrical problem, was there?” continues Eijirou, dropping his voice even more. “It was just an excuse to get me alone.”
Katsuki’s lips part, damning him, but a door opens and closes before an answer can be verbalized. Footsteps approach. His fingers twitch.
“Eiji?” comes Sora’s voice.
Eijirou lets his gaze linger on Katsuki’s face an instant longer before he’s looking past the man entirely. “Hey,” he says with as warm of a smile as he can manage. “They treating you alright in there?”
“Yeah, your friends are really great. The Todoroki kid is funny, he had so many intrusive questions for me, it was kind of adorable,” they say good-naturedly. “I thought you might have gotten caught up with someone.”
Eijirou wipes suddenly sweaty palms on the front of his pants, sheepish at their admission. Sora notices the tick, par for the course. “Oh, yeah,” he says, then introducing, “This is Katsuki.” It occurs to him that he doesn’t really need to introduce him - he’d given a speech and he’s famous, Sora definitely knows who he is. Katsuki, in turn, examines Sora with a confusion barely north of unfavorable.
“From the billboard,” Sora articulates. It’s not a question, merely a statement of what they’ve seen. “I’m Sora, nice to meet you.”
Katsuki’s face contorts further at the comment and then he gives a curt nod, attempting to wrangle his professional persona back into place but missing the mark under the weight of the current circumstances. “Hey. Yeah, I know who you are, I’ve read your shit before. That article about unethical Commission policies really did numbers in Tokyo when it came out. Had the suits where I’m stationed up in arms for weeks.”
Eijirou realizes he has willfully forgotten Katsuki’s insane facial photographic memory to make up for his penchant for forgetting names. Of course he would know who Sora is, their picture is posted at the bottom of every article they pen.
Sora grins mischievously. ”That’s what I like to hear.” Then, they lean towards him a bit, conspiratorial, “That was some eulogy you gave, by the way. I think Eiji was seconds from crying the whole time.”
If this had been a normal circumstance, if this had been thirteen years ago, the information probably would have gotten a stronger reaction out of Katsuki, but instead of anything concrete he forces an upward tick of his lips and gestures flippantly between the two of them. “This a new thing or…?”
“No,” Eijirou says, while Sora politely states, “It’s been a while, we’re just private about it.”
They move closer to him, positioned between him and Katsuki. Staking their claim, Eijirou realizes. In spite of his own reticent nature concerning he and Katsuki’s short-lived past, something must have permeated through the cracks. He hasn’t spent this long with Sora to not know when they’re digging in their heels, normally benevolent aura notwithstanding. They don’t take anything lying down; that’s one of Eijirou’s favorite things about them.
He relents to the possessiveness, sliding an arm around their waist and pulling them firmly to him. Katsuki’s mouth is a thin line all the while. Sora turns their face into him as he rubs a hand up and down their side, “Hm, you ready to go, baby? I can see my friends again tomorrow.” They give the barest of nods into his shoulder, and finally he looks back to Katsuki. “I’m in town ‘til Tuesday,” he supplies, “if you wanna…”
Katsuki clears his throat, and then, with a lot of weight, he says, “I’ll think about it.”
It isn’t a no.
“Okay, yeah, great,” Eijirou replies. He has to tamp down how much the assertion perks him up.
“You change your number?” asks Katsuki like he expects it of everyone but himself.
“No, it’s still the same.“
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Katsuki maintains, then he’s walking inside without another word.
Eijirou just holds Sora and denies his request.
…
…
…
The next day is filled with tender moments among old friends.
Eijirou and Sora drift around Musutafu with them, the group seeming to grow in numbers every hour. Not everyone has stuck around - Midoriya and Todoroki had to leave that morning for their respective agencies, some had family things, and some simply didn’t find the notion of traipsing around the city with their old high school class appealing, but those that are present are all-in. Denki, Hanta, and Mina alone make it their life’s mission to assure Sora has a good experience and some of the others soon join in.
Katsuki is one of those not among them, though this comes as no surprise. Eijirou is told offhandedly he has work duties to attend to as well. He supposes that’s what happens when one’s hero ranking is in the single digits. When one’s ranking matters at all, really. No one over on Eijirou’s side of the country even cares about that sort of thing, so he assumes that the closer one is stationed to the Commission, the more on-the-radar one tends to be. As it stands, Eijirou does not care about his ranking and neither does his agency so he has no obligations for the duration of his trip.
He lets himself be happy, peels away the layers of uncertainty covering him and steps unencumbered into nostalgic comfort.
“Why do you keep checking your phone, bro?” Denki asks, jabbing him with his elbow when the group has sat down to lunch. Sora is occupied; they don’t hear the comment.
The waiter comes to take their drink orders as he’s halfway through an excuse about his mother contacting him, though it is not her name he is anticipating popping up on the screen.
…
…
…
(The text in question comes in early the next morning.)
UNKNOWN NUMBER 7:18AM
We can meet up tonight.
If you still want to.
ME 7:53AM
Katsuki??
UNKNOWN NUMBER 7:55AM
Who the fuck else would it be.
…
…
…
Katsuki asks him to come alone with an offer to pick him up that Eijirou declines.
That’s really all he says beyond the dinner spot and time and Eijirou does not try to push the conversation envelope.
Although he feels that, if there was ever a time to tell Sora about him and Katsuki’s former relationship - or lack thereof - it would be now, he remains mum on the subject. Thankfully, Sora has some work to catch up on that night and does not protest his absence. Their relationship has never been codependent, anyway, and if Sora thinks anything of the fact that he puts more effort into his appearance than he had for their previous outings with former classmates, they do not comment on it.
The restaurant isn’t upscale as Eijirou had originally thought it would be. In fact, it is reminiscent of the place they used to frequent in their teenage years when Eijirou was unconcerned with his test scores and Katsuki cared too much about them. It’s a casual, hole-in-the-wall place - somewhere that neither of them will be truly recognized, or at least that is what Eijirou assumes before he walks into the establishment and sees multiple Hero faces plastered over the walls. Cheap posters, cardboard cutouts, true idol treatment without the music career.
And amidst the fray of kitschy decor: Katsuki sits at a booth near the back with a baseball cap pulled down over his face and his hands folded stiffly on the table like a death row inmate waiting for his last meal .
Eijirou is far less incognito with his hair out for everyone to see. A glance around informs him he might not need to fret, however, because there is virtually no one else in the establishment save for an old couple near the front and what appears to be the owner’s kid coloring at a table near the register. The latter discerns Eijirou cross the restaurant with recognition but does not pause in her artistic efforts and he slips in across from Katsuki with a good-natured laugh.
“That little girl definitely knows who we are,” he says, inconspicuously jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards her.
Katsuki doesn’t look, his gaze on Eijirou: on the way he has his hair pulled back in a way that reveals the tattoo on the side of his neck, just behind his ear. It’s blown out now, over a decade old, but the kanji is still distinguishable. Courage , it says, as Katsuki’s eyes trace it up and down like he is trying to decide whether he thinks it’s cool or lame. Nineteen-year-old Eijirou thought it was the shit but the almost-thirty-year-old version of himself thinks that he probably should have gotten it somewhere else on his body, if at all. Katsuki, for his part, withholds comment.
”How has it felt being back?” he asks instead, tone carefully neutral. Testing the waters.
”Oh, man, it’s been crazy. You forget how long you’ve been away from somewhere until you start seeing all the spots you didn’t realize you’d forgotten about. We went to that hot pot place, you know the really good one down the street from where Mineta broke his leg that one time? Anyway, it was still good as hell, exactly like I remembered. I had way too much.”
“ You eating a lot? Shocker,” deadpans Katsuki and Eijirou smiles. It’s obvious that he’s trying so hard to be normal about this even though he is the one who initiated this get-together in the first place. “How was…” He squints like he’s trying to recall the specifics of an event. “You all went out last night, right?”
“Yeah, Hanta knew a club where we wouldn’t get photographed. Not everyone went, just core-squad and Sora.”
Katsuki nods, concentrating particularly hard on an errant salt shaker. “I, uh, tried to come. Mina texted me about it but. Work shit. It’s like they can’t function up there without me so I was doing reports ‘til late.”
“That’s okay, it was cool but you didn’t miss much. Everyone got really drunk.” He snorts. “Denki passed out and I had to carry him to the car. I think he tried to kiss me at one point, it was…a lot.”
”Sounds about right.” Eijirou hears him grind his teeth before adding. “But I wanted you to know. I wasn’t — trying to avoid you.”
“I know,” Eijirou says even though he doesn’t. A silence lapses. It’s not awkward , per se, but the restaurant walls start to push in around Eijirou and he draws a slow breath. “Hey, you wanna leave?” he suggests, already shoving out of the booth before Katsuki can have the chance to shoot down the idea. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Katsuki doesn’t protest as they exit the building, following Eijirou across the street towards the river. They descend a staircase down to the long walkway running parallel to the body of water. Eijirou lets the lights ahead pave their way until the riverfront park is upon them. There’s a food truck ahead advertising fried goodness in neon colors and Eijirou does not stop to confirm Katsuki’s opinions on the matter before he approaches and orders. When the worker asks if that will be all, he steps aside and gestures for Katsuki to order, which he reluctantly does without argument.
So it is that, when they have obtained their food, they continue on alongside the river, talking about nothing, talking about everything. Eijirou learns that Katsuki has two apartments he travels between: one in Musutafu near his parents and one in Tokyo, however he’s thinking of downsizing to a singular big place somewhere in the middle. Katsuki learns that Eijirou has been visiting a stylist who can effortlessly color his hair using her quirk for the past few years so he doesn’t have to dye it anymore. Little things, silly things, small talk that precedes the inevitable bigger conversation.
He lets the frivolity linger, though, if only for a few moments longer. He observes the way Katsuki becomes more like himself the longer they talk, the way that his eyes crinkle when a rare smile pulls at his mouth and the way that his laugh comes out almost silent one instance and so loud it startles a passerby the next. The manner in which he always seems in motion even when they stop, how his body still can’t seem to contain his energy, like his quirk is a living, breathing thing beneath his skin.
Eijirou watches all of it, and comes recognize that it has started to feel like the thirteen years apart have waned into mere days. That it feels like that last night they spent together is close enough to touch. It is a dangerous notion.
“Do you wanna talk about it then, or what?” is what Katsuki says that finally shatters the metaphorical glass encasing the topic.
“Mm, not really,” Eijirou answers. “Do you?”
“Not really,” says Katsuki. But then he goes on, “But” - a weighted pause - “if you resented me, I would understand.”
Eijirou finishes the last bite of his food and tosses the trash into a nearby bin. “Does it seem like I resent you right now?” He catches half of Katsuki’s shrug. “I don’t think I have it in me, to be honest. Like, I don’t think I’m capable of resenting you. Especially over something so dumb.”
”It’s not dumb. It’s…it wasn’t fucking dumb.”
Eijirou waves a hand. “No, but look, I get it. I left town, people stop talking because of distance. There’s never been any anger. Sure, I was confused when you cut me off and nervous and — and I wasn’t sure how seeing you again was gonna go, but I was never mad.”
They stop at a viewing platform above the water, scenic during the day but now, in the clutches of night, the river moves almost ominously below them. Across the distance, the lights of a residential district glow warm and welcoming, and Eijirou focuses upon it. Katsuki settles beside him, leaning rigidly on the railing.
“I don’t think you get it at all, actually,” he remarks after a moment.
Eijirou is quick to request, “Then make me understand. I got time, my calendar’s clear.”
Katsuki takes a breath, expression stoic as he gathers himself. He taps restlessly on the metal bar below his palms, the sound reverberating low and tinny. When he does begin to speak, it all comes out at once, like a spigot turned too far to the right. Like a carbonated drink bottle that’s been shaken too much before opening.
“Did you know that I wasn’t into guys before you? Or, like, into anyone ?”
Eijirou hadn’t. They had not talked about things like that, close though they were - Katsuki’s personal life was under permanent lock and key back then.
“I didn’t, I’m sorry,” he says for lack of anything more meaningful.
Katsuki goes on, “Yeah, I don’t think it had ever really clicked for me? Um, wanting anyone like that, I mean. But you fucking — you got into my head stayed there. And even before that night I started thinking that maybe I had a chance to be normal with someone, to — to maybe not have to constantly question myself over every goddamn thing I do. I thought that you could be that person for me. So when you left it really fucked with me. It’s not your fault, I don’t have any right to blame you, but…just so you understand. You had to go. You had a job to do, but after a while I couldn’t take it anymore. I just got so…unsettled, you know? It was messing up my work so I thought the easiest thing to do was cut ties and by the time I realized it was me that was the issue it was too late.”
He struggles in profile, his gaze firmly affixed to some ambiguous point in the distance. Eijirouo wants to reach out and lay a supporting hand on his shoulder, wants to do something , but he doesn’t. He just waits and watches and lets Katsuki say what he needs to say.
“I…have tried so many times with other people, I tried so fucking hard, I…” Katsuki trails off as his voice starts to break unbidden. Shakes his head. Grimaces. He’s evened it out when he continues. “But it’s a waste of time. ‘Cause no matter how hard I try to make myself fit into a box and no matter how many people I use to achieve that, one idiot’s still got more of my heart in his little finger than all those fucking… placeholders , even after all this time. And that’s something I don’t think I can change.”
Eijirou is speechless. He knows his mouth is agape but he can’t bring himself to correct his face. Katsuki looks at him, then off to the side when he sees Eijirou’s expression, making a dismissive gesture in what Eijirou assumes is a misplaced attempt to mitigate any fallout.
“Damn, that was a whole pile of dogshit –”
”Okay. Stop, stop,” Eijirou finally interjects when he gets his voice to work. “It’s alright.”
Katsuki gnaws on his lip, silent for a moment. “I’m sorry that I’m not…I’m just sorry.”
Eijirou nods and speaks gently. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s been – I think it’s been long enough to where all this guilt you’re carrying is unnecessary.” When Katsuki’s face falls further, Eijirou backtracks, lying like he would to a child in a rescue mission because his previous assertion is not what a person driven to the bottle not over someone not three nights prior would say. “No that’s not — oh, man, that came out wrong. I only meant that you shouldn’t feel bad about it. You did what you thought was best for yourself at the time, and I’m not gonna fault you for it. I’m not holding some big secret grudge.”
“Okay.”
“Stop beating yourself up about it. Do you realize how insane it is that it’s me having to tell you that?”
Katsuki just sniffs, rolls his neck. “Yeah, you’re right. Forget it, shit’s embarassing anyway.”
“We’re absolutely not doing that because what you said about me there at the end was really nice.” Eijirou grins, a flash of sharp teeth, letting inherent charisma flow back over him, striving to turn the night around. He turns to face Katsuki, still leaning loosely on the railing. “Flattering as hell.”
“I’ll leave if you mention that again,” Katsuki threatens, but it’s half-hearted at worst.
“Aw, no, Kat, don’t be like that.” Eijirou can’t resist. “That’s not very “ you’ve got more of my heart in your –”
“Fuck off!” Katsuki snaps as he cuts Eijirou off with a hard shove. It’s forceful but it does not dislodge him, instead causing Eijirou’s million watt smile to grow. Katsuki’s brow furrows he tries again, harder this time, stubborn as ever and when he is met with the same result, his gaze drifts slowly over Eijirou’s body, assessing, as if the size of Eijirou’s frame is only now computing to him. It is an invasive, visual crawl that has Eijirou’s tongue darting out to unconsciously wet his lips. “Shit,” Katsuki says, so quiet that it’s almost drowned out by the ambient sounds around them.
Eijirou catches it though. “What?” he asks, bids him to clarify.
“You’re…” He reaches out again, not with the same violent intent, but to press his hand against Eijirou’s arm, against the unyielding muscle there.
Eijirou understands the implication and - cheekily - raises the arm to flex a huge bicep. “They don’t call me the Sturdy Hero for nothing, c’mon.” Katsuki briefly drinks in the sight and then pointedly acts like he doesn’t notice it like an indifferent housecat. “If I tell you how much I’m benching these days will you finally be impressed?”
“Nah,” Katsuki insists, expression as petulant as ever even on the face of a grown man. “Probably ain’t shit.”
“Alright, let’s see yours then.”
”See what? My arm ?”
“Yeah, like, quid pro quo. You want to talk a big game, you better back it up.”
”That’s not how that works.”
”Mm, that’s actually exactly how it works.” Eijirou makes to grab for Katsuki’s wrist, lightheartedly trying to force it up for this spontaneous inspection, but the other man jerks out of reach.
“You’re a fuckin’ child,” he gripes, but he’s barely able to restrain his own smile. Eijirou tries again and this time Katsuki wastes no time going defensive against the onslaught. Eijirou lets him think he’s won this time. Lets himself be moved shifted against the railing. Lets Katsuki get all the way up into his space, that partial smile blooming into a full one now.
Eijirou can’t resist an insolent grope of Katsuki’s upper arm in response from the new proximity and finds that, even with the size of his hands, they no longer dwarf Katsuki’s bicep, no match for the muscles there. “Wow,” he drawls. “Be honest, how ‘roided up are you?”
Katsuki doesn’t answer right away, but the mingling of their breaths is dangerous nonetheless. He keeps one hand braced on Eijirou’s chest and one hand on the railing beside him in a white-knuckled grip. His right leg is planted between both of Eijirou’s, the side of his designer sneaker is pressed parallel to the worn sole of Eijirou’s boot. They’re far too close. “Glad to see you’re still the same idiot,” he taunts.
“Oh, you know me. Consistent and eager to please. Why else would I let someone manhandle me?”
“Dunno, maybe you fucking like it.”
Maybe I do , he thinks but doesn’t say aloud. Something tells him he doesn’t have to as their eyes remain affixed on each other.
The roller coaster in Eijirou’s chest ascends to its highest point, pausing at the top to give him a terrifying view of the drop below. He exhales, shaky and open mouthed, and dares to say the words, “What is it that you want?”
Katsuki’s face scrunches up with an almost innocent perplexity. ”What do I… want ?” He scoffs, and though Eijirou could break free in seconds, he continues to allow himself to be trapped against the metal bar digging into his back as hands fist into the fabric of his shirt.
Delayed, capricious warning bells have started to go off in his head when a greedy mouth finally ascends upon his own. Relentless, desperate, messy. He feels teeth, the wet swipe of a tongue. And then he opens to it, just for a moment. Just for a moment, a breath, he lets Katsuki kiss him again, pulls him in closer, abiding that long forgotten desire to crawl into his skin. That old obsession made flesh once more. He banishes all the guilt his actions will cause for momentary bliss. Wants nothing more than to melt into the warm presence against him, to be anchored in it. To forget himself fully and be remade in the aftermath.
“Come back to my hotel,” Katsuki gasps into his mouth, too quick, almost indiscernible. “Been too fucking long.”
He entertains it briefly - secretly - thinking that, despite his noble nature and loyalty and almost overbearing sense of right and wrong, he thinks he could indulge this further. Thinks he could go somewhere private with Katsuki and finish what they started so long ago. He’s experienced now, after all, and he knows he could make up for those awkward, fumbling attempts of youth. His heart aches for the chance, his body hums with long-dormant energy.
But it is ultimately too much for him to bear.
The wall goes up again too soon for his body but too late for the integrity of his monogamy.
He tries to pull away and places his hands on Katsuki’s shoulders. Katsuki only doubles down, crowds up into him more firmly, stakes his own claim, in a way: bites down on his bottom lip hard enough that Eijirou anticipates the taste of blood. The spike of pain sobers Eijirou enough to speak.
“We can’t,” he insists, muffled, then repeats, “I’m sorry, shit , I’m sorry. I can’t.” Katsuki finally disengages, breathing heavily. Eijirou leans down. Their foreheads touch in a compromise.
“You asked me what I wanted,” Katsuki says. “This is what I want.”
“I know,” Eijirou murmurs back. He runs his hand through Katsuki’s hair and holds him there, supporting him against the tension in his body.
”You do too.” It is a statement, but the tentativeness in the tone makes space for a question.
”It doesn’t matter what I want,” says Eijirou. He sees flashes of his life with Sora, how it exists simple and easy in the absence of old grief. Their face clouds his thoughts, how they would look if they found out what had happened. How they would fall apart before him, the last years of their lives together a haunting montage.
Katsuki leans forward again, all stilted, hesitant movements, and when he speaks, Eijirou feels it against his mouth. Permits it. “It’ll never be the right time, Red,” he grates.
The forbidden brush of soft lips against his own makes Eijirou face the painful truth of the matter with a coiling, intense anxiety and he yearns for a different life, even if only ephemeral.
All at once, in Eijirou’s mind, this night does not exist, and another decade has come and gone. He’s in a cafe somewhere between Musutafu and Sasebo nursing a coffee, warming himself in the beam of sunlight that hits his table by the window, when in his peripheral vision, he sees someone slow to a stop on the sidewalk. And of course he turns to acknowledge them because, even though he’s passed forty and his Hero ranking is nothing to call home about anymore, he still has a dedicated fan base. And perhaps the person standing there has a familiar face, also older now, crinkled with disbelief through the barrier of glass between them. Katsuki will look upon Eijirou and Eijirou will look back and, amidst the unsaid words and the bustling noise of the cafe, they’ll both nod at each other and decline to pursue any further interaction. It has been too long, after all - it has been almost twenty five years since they were students together.
It’s an idealized scenario. A clean break. Not the unanesthetized teeth pulling into which the evening has devolved.
“I can’t,” Eijirou says again at length. “I’m happy. I’m with someone and” – he wavers only just – “and I’m happy.”
Katsuki’s eyes blaze before him. They pin him in place, heated and hurt and somehow still so utterly longing that the guilt starts to eat him alive before he can even get out of the situation. “Seems more complacent to me.”
Hearing the fact stated out loud shouldn’t emotionally maim him as much as it does, but despite the truth there he says, “No.” Then, knowing Katsuki could always detect his bullshit a mile away, he amends, “I mean, aren’t most people? Isn’t that just what happens after a while?”
“I don’t know,” answers Katsuki. He scuffs his shoe on the ground a few times and the sound of it is discordant between them. “I just think that if you were really as happy as you say, you wouldn’t have shown up tonight in the first place.”
Eijirou disentangles himself and easily breaks away, taking a few steps away, making some much-needed distance. He presses the heel of his hand into the space above his nose as a tension headache begins flaring to life. “Alright, um, let’s just…can we forget this happened?” he requests. He tries to keep it light, sheepish almost, but it falls flat and just comes across anxious.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Katsuki replies, clipped. When Eijirou looks at him, he’s got a hand in his pocket and his features are resolute. “I have – fuck, I was gonna…before this went to shit…” He starts growing visibly frustrated with himself and snatches up Eijirou’s wrist in lieu of more verbal fumbling. Eijirou opens his fingers just as Katsuki takes something out of his pocket and thrusts it into his palm.
He severs the contact then, as if the past happy memories of the night are null and void now. As if he has returned to relegating Eijirou as a stranger in his mind. As if they’ll never be them again.
However, when Eijirou drops his eyes to his outstretched hand, he sees the very same button he’d given Katsuki sitting there, innocuous and dulled with age. He would know it anywhere; his hands had done up his uniform jacket every day for years.
‘ You’re not getting this back ,’ Katsuki had once said, and as they stand there with a new wall between them of Eijirou’s making, something in him rages against the finality of the gesture until it breaks.
“This is…” Eijirou tries.
“It’s mine,” Katsuki says. “It’s – from mine.”
Eijirou’s face crumbles as the pain there materializes, acute and tumultuous from that small sequence of words.
He can only swallow against the knot in his throat and memorize the way Katsuki looks, lit by the park lights at his back, quiet and open and vulnerable before him.
He can only swallow against the knot in his throat and memorize the way Katsuki looks, lit by the park lights at his back, quiet and open and vulnerable before him.
“I should go,” Eijirou breathes with all the solace of a wounded animal. “It’s getting late.”
…
…
…
Sleeping with Sora later that night feels dishonest.
They aren’t as adventurous as they used to be, and so, perhaps to compensate for his own bout of insincerity, he lets them use him in every way they want on the hotel mattress until he can’t even remember his own name. But when the haze of the afterglow has faded, remorse readily sinks its claws back in, and when they begin again, he can’t look at them. Has them face away from him on their hands and knees and fucks them from behind. Holds them down and takes . Gets too rough but they don’t complain.
After they are both sated, he grows distant, untangling himself from their body and immediately showering without a thought to their normal post-coital rituals. He later cites tiredness as his reason for this, when asked.
Sora has passed out when he emerges, and while he knows they’ll be irritated at the mess in the morning, he can’t find it in himself to wake them. Instead, he tucks himself under an uncomfortably sweat-soaked sheet and lies awake with his eyes glued to the ceiling. The loud whir of the air conditioning unit under the window helps lull him into a restless sleep before long.
He awakes an hour later to his phone inches away from his face with three new text notifications lighting up the screen. Groggily, he squints to see who could possibly be contacting him this early when everyone in his life knows he’s out of town, but instead of a coworker or friend, he’s met once again with Katsuki’s unsaved number.
UNKNOWN NUMBER 12:36AM
He y
leavinh fior tokyo in tge morn ing
wanna c u agaln
Eijirou has to re-read the messages several times over, scarcely believing that Katsuki is being so upfront about the matter. But then it hits him: he’s not texting like himself. Even as a teenager he texted like a middle aged man. Full sentences, proper grammar, no abbreviations.
Katsuki is fucking smashed .
Eijirou’s thumb hovers over the empty text box for a long moment and he finds himself unsure of how to respond. It is well past midnight, which in and of itself would be shocking in light of Katsuki’s notorious early bedtimes in their younger days if not for his obviously altered state. Eijirou ultimately settles on playing it safe in the long run.
ME 12:40AM
are you okay??
UNKNOWN NUMBER 12:41AM
y or n
Eijirou weighs his options, then registers that he shouldn’t be conflicted in any sense of the word. He should shut it all down now and crawl back to his idealistic, complacent existence in his own city and forget the night ever happened, because it was just a kiss. Just a kiss and some flirting and tension that even thirteen years couldn’t kill. Tension that has been missing from his life with –
His response must take too long, because Katsuki messages again before he can type a single letter.
UNKNOWN NUMBER 12:44AM
Im stayimg
not far grom you
comR Over
ME 12:45AM
dude.
UNKNOWN NUMBER 12:46AM
you dont wsnt to ?
got the pemthouse N, evreythunh
Eijirou watches the typing bubbles appear and disappear multiple times until another message comes through. At first, he is unsure what he is looking at, but then everything comes into focus.
First and foremost, it’s an image. Katsuki has the phone stretched out in front of him, slightly raised, with an endless valley of bare skin beyond the useless barrier of his shoulders. Dilated eyes stare down the lens, flushed face partially tucked into his free arm but expression severe as always, but the way the minimal light in his room catches the complete bareness of his body cannot be ignored. The way his back curves down into the bed and then up again to his—
Another text comes through.
UNKNOWN NUMBER 12:49AM
not too lat r to s.how me how mich you misesd me
Eijirou lets the dark expanse above absorb him again, allows his imagination to stray a bit, despite himself. And he can’t help it, picturing it now with nothing but time in his possession to do so. He could do it, or at least, this temporary version of himself could do it. He could contradict everything he had said earlier and it would be easy - his reputation is so pristine that no one would be none the wiser about a little slip up. No one would ever find out. The small hours of the morning lend themselves to acts of insanity, after all.
He starts to ask for an address, but when the sentence is sitting there on the screen, he quickly deletes it. He looks over at Sora’s sleeping form, and that same guilt from before returns tenfold. He can’t do it. Won’t do that to an innocent person - they don’t deserve that. He thinks again of cowardice and his own fractured sense of virtue, that perhaps he can be so paradoxically ensconced within integrity that it smothers him.
It is not the sentiment Eijirou wants to have at such an hour and he firmly compartmentalizes it as he sends off an alternative message instead:
ME 12:55AM
get some sleep katsuki
Once again, the bubbles come and go, and Eijirou braces himself for another illicit picture, but nothing like that appears.
UNKNOWN NUMBER 12:57AM
E
need u
All he can think is: You’re going to fucking hate yourself for this in the morning, Kat .
Another text lights up the screen some moments later, but it isn’t from Katsuki. He stares at Midoriya’s name in confusion, then reads the message and feels sick to his stomach.
IZUKU MIDORIYA 1:06AM
Hey, Kirishima, I know it’s late and I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to catch up at the funeral, but if you wouldn’t mind, would you be able to give Katsuki a call, please? I don’t know what happened but he’s not doing well and he keeps mentioning you.
Past aches pulse alive and covetous in his chest: a beating heart with an identity that Eijirou won’t utter. Not in this bed. Not in this life. It’s too much.
The finite nature of time reveals itself again through the way it passes like liquid on its short-lived journey between his fingers. It no longer has texture and it no longer has anything to bind it to his skin. He cannot stop it, and for this reason it does not wholly feel like a capitulation.
So, as he lets it slip - as he lies there staring upon an unanswered text thread - he realizes that maybe love in even its most undiluted form is finite as well.