Chapter Text
“Deku, what the fuck?”
“Kachaan, be so for real right now,” Deku, the fucking moron, sighed. “Your lease ends in a week. You have nowhere else to go.”
Deku had shown up unannounced around three hours ago, and the argument they were currently having had started almost instantly. The man had placed the boxes down, told Katsuki to start packing, and had told him who he would have to move in with. Had all but forced him to come to terms with the fact that it was his last option.
“I’m working on it.”
“No you aren’t,” Deku snapped.
Katsuki growled, and said nothing. Unfortunately, and loathe he were to admit it, he really wasn’t. With a week left to move out, he had no place to live lined up, and he was quickly running out of time – with his busy schedule at work taking up most of his attention, he barely even had enough time to pack, let alone go to viewings and tenancy interviews.
“What the hell were you thinking, asking him if I could move in? Hell, I’d prefer living with Dunce Face!”
“Well, unfortunately for you, Kaminari moved in with Sero – and while they have a spare room, I guessed that you wouldn’t appreciate listening to them fuck every night.”
Katsuki sighed, shook his head, and plopped down on the couch.
Those two had gotten together in the beginning of their third year in high school – and they didn’t need to tell anyone they had, because everyone had heard it. It only took two days for Hobo-Sensei to implement sound dampening technology in all of the rooms, pointedly looking at the new couple as he announced the news.
Dunce Face’s embarrassed blush had fed Katsuki’s vindictive glee for weeks.
“He’s open to it,” Deku said after a moment of silence, his voice both resigned, and void of the frustration it had previously taken. “He doesn’t mind. You both have conflicting schedules and he knows that.”
“I’ve lived alone for four years, Deku. What makes you think I want a roommate?”
“The way I see it, Kachaan,” Deku sighed, his hands on his hips and shaking his head, “you really don’t have any other options. Your lease here ends in a week, you don’t have another apartment lined up, and you’re not likely to find one either. Shinsou is willing to add you to his lease. You can afford the apartment he’s in – it’s the same monthly rent as this one, and, may I point out, nicer. Splitting the rent will also make it cheaper.”
“I don’t give a fucking damn if the apartment is nicer,” Katsuki growled, deciding to ignore Deku’s fuck-ass logic for a moment, no matter how enticing it may be. “I don’t want to live with that fucking freak!”
“Like I said, you don’t have any other options. He’s also already added you to the lease, anyway, since we both knew this was going to happen.”
“He what?” Katsuki roared, standing up from the couch and taking a furious step towards the idiot he begrudgingly called his friend.
“You were added to the lease last week,” Deku grinned, uncaring of Katsuki’s ire. “So…I’d start packing, if I were you. I’ll see you at work tomorrow!”
Katsuki snarled in rage, making out to charge at the man’s quickly retreating form.
Fuck. There was nothing worse that he could think of – sans living out of his car, or moving back in with his mother – than moving in with Shinsou fucking Hitoshi of all goddamn people.
The two of them had never been close back in high school. In fact, Katsuki had majorly gone out of his way to avoid the fucker. He’d joined their class in second year after Aoyama had transferred out over some stupid ass guilt complex, and had made friends rather quickly, all things considered. Dunce Face ended up being his best friend, which made Katsuki even more hesitant to move in with him. If that was the company he liked to keep, who knew the type of people he liked to bring home?
But the idea that they would barely interact with one another was definitely sweetening the deal, all things considered. Deku was right. Mind Freak was an underground hero, rarely working in the daylight, and rarely seen for very long at the parties and class reunions Pink Cheeks and Glasses planned every so often, choosing to stay home and sleep off his latest patrol.
Truth be told, it was more likely that Shinsou would get home after Katsuki had already left for work, and vice versa. Aside from their mutual days off – if they coincided at all – they would rarely see each other, despite living together.
It would almost be like living alone, which was exactly what Katsuki needed. Even if he didn’t like the arrangement he had suddenly found himself in.
He’d hated the dorms, though the reprieve from his mother was something he had secretly welcomed with open arms. Now that he’d graduated, their relationship had softened, but he wasn’t particularly keen on moving back in with her, at any rate. And in the dorms there had been too many people bothering him at all hours of the day – he had no escape from his group of idiots other than in the middle of the night. His sleep schedule had taken a hit, back then.
As soon as he’d graduated, he’d moved into a one-bedroom apartment on a four year lease. Now twenty-two years old, he had run out of time. He’d been so busy with villain attacks, raids, patrols and paperwork that he’d completely forgotten the cutoff date to renew his lease, and had missed out. And no other landlords seemed to be taking in new tenants, either.
With a hefty sigh, Katsuki moved away from the door, and started pulling out boxes from where Deku had stored them when he’d walked in earlier that day.
It looked like he had some packing to do.
“You’re moving in with Hitoshi?” Kaminari all but squealed, slapping Katsuki’s shoulder with unparalleled glee. “This is awesome. He’s so cool, dude, you’ll be fine.”
“He keeps you as company, Dunce Face, so he can’t be that great,” Katsuki sneered, shoving him away, grinning at the offended squawk he let out as Katsuki walked out the agency doors.
His group of idiots had already found out, it seemed – likely from Dunce Face, who would have heard it from Mind Freak. Honestly, keeping anything to himself was difficult on the best of days, and downright impossible on the worst of them. He shouldn’t have been so surprised.
He went out for patrol, trademark scowl on his face, and nobody around had any indication that Katsuki was stressed to his fucking core. He’d always been able to hide it well – from everyone other than Deku, really – and he liked it that way. The media already gave him more attention than he fucking asked for.
Back in high school, he thought he’d have liked all the attention. Now faced with it – the nosy ass reporters, the old ladies thinking he was attractive, the kids fangirling over him, parents scowling because he swore on Live TV a couple of times – he realised he hated it. Sure, he was good at what he did, and of course he was.
But he realised and came to terms with his true reasoning for joining the heroics career fairly quickly. And it wasn’t the money, or the fame and attention, or even to get on the leaderboards, really, though he still wanted to be the Number One Hero, at the end of the day.
It was thrilling, being able to fight and know that he was helping people. He loved seeing people share their stories about him online, how he’d saved them or a family member from something deadly, and how thankful they were – despite how stupid that was, considering it was his job.
He liked helping, more than anything. That mattered more to him than any kind of media attention he would ever get.
He was only working for half of his usual patrol, today, having been granted the reprieve in order to move his shit into Mind Freak’s apartment. He wasn’t looking forward to it – moving was always tedious, and tended to use the muscles he rarely did while working. And with how unpredictable his arm had been as of late, he knew he’d have to take some pain killers by the end of the night.
All in all, patrol was a breeze. Three villains had decided to try him, and three villains had very quickly learned why that was a bad idea. He was able to momentarily distract himself from the ire of moving in with someone, from having to deal with another person in his new apartment when all he wanted to do was be left alone.
He was not dealing with this very well at all, and he was ignoring it like he ignored most of his mother’s calls – with frustrated ease.
“Alright, you can get home and pack,” Deku dismissed as he finished off his paperwork for the day. “I don’t know how you have so much shit, but you do, and it’s going to take forever.”
“Whatever, nerd,” he groused, standing up and wincing as his arm twinged. “I’ll see you later.”
All too soon, he was inside his apartment for the last time, piling his life now packed into boxes into his truck. It had taken forever to pack – he did, in fact, have a lot of shit to pack – and all that was left was actually moving it. Which was, for the most part, the tedious part of this whole ordeal.
He was packing the last few boxes into the truck, trying to stack them in a way to make them all fit, when Shinsou showed his face, pulling up at the curb.
“Need a hand?” he asked, leaning on the side of his car with a tired smirk. “I wasn’t expecting you to have so much shit.”
“My mother is a sentimental asshole,” he growled, shoving the box he was holding into the truck. “How are you even awake right now?”
“I have ingested enough caffeine to kill a Victorian child,” the idiot deadpanned. “I’m wired as fuck right now.”
Katsuki rolled his eyes and beckoned him over, already walking back into his apartment without waiting to see if the man was following him. There were seven boxes left, and there was no way any of them were fitting in the truck without having to do another trip for the bed. Which he didn’t particularly want to do.
“Those boxes need to go in your car, the bed won’t fit if I put them in the truck.”
“Sure,” Shinsou shrugged, already reaching down to grab a box. “How big’s the bed?"
“Queen.”
“Of course it is.”
The two worked dutifully, quickly depositing the last of the boxes in Shinsou’s car, and taking apart the bed. It was awkward as hell lifting it out the door and onto the truck, but they managed with the rhythm of two heroes who had seen and done worse things in their career.
“I’ll meet you at your apartment, I have your address,” Katsuki grunted, beginning to strop the bed down.
“Our apartment, and sure,” Shinsou shrugged.
Katsuki just turned back to stropping the bed down onto the truck, ignoring Shinsou at all and not even looking to see if he had left or not.
As soon as he’d finished, he headed over to his landlord’s office to hand his key over, feeling slightly awkward as he knocked on her open door.
“Bakugou! Here to hand in your key?”
“Yes ma’am,” he grunted, dropping it on the desk with a clink.
“I’ll miss you, shockingly enough,” she mused, grabbing the key from where he’d dropped it. “You were a good tenant.”
“Yeah, sorry for missing the deadline,” he groused, rubbing the back of his neck. “I got swamped with patrols and shit, completely forgot about it.”
“It happens,” she quipped, sounding amused. “You found a place, at any rate.”
“Yeah, sure did,” he grumbled. “Thanks.”
“Have a good one, Bakugou!”
“Yeah, you too.”
Driving to the apartment took too long and also took less time than he had hoped. He was wired, agitated in a way he hadn't felt in a while, unsettled by the new environment he was about to enter. He’d never been overly fond of change, and this change was massive.
Moving in with Shinsou was going to test his patience, that he knew. The man looked like a dead man walking half the time, barely sleeping and likely not eating regularly either. Sure, they would barely even see each other, so he wasn’t likely to even notice most of the time, but regardless.
Deku had all but sprung this on him a week ago, and he hadn’t been able to get out of it. There really hadn’t been any other options, and once he’d been forced into this one, he’d stopped looking.
Moving in with the fucker wasn’t something he’d wanted. He liked living alone, having his own space to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted. Having to be considerate of another human being – especially during the day, when the man would be attempting to sleep – was going to take a while to get used to.
Katsuki had never been quiet. He was abrasive and loud, dickish on the best of days, and could become downright cruel on his really bad days, which thankfully didn’t happen as often anymore. Sure, he’d mellowed out, but there was nobody in the world who would ever describe him as nice.
He pulled up to the apartment to see Shinsou trudging up the drive, box in hand. From a quick glance, his car was already empty.
“We’ll do the bed first,” Shinsou said, walking to where Katsuki was untying the strops. “Get that put back together in the room, and then we can bring all your shit in. If it doesn’t all fit, there’s a weirdly large closet in the hallway I don’t use.”
“Whatever,” Katsuki muttered, tugging the last strop off. “Just help me get this shit off.”
“Sure thing, your majesty,” Shinsou smirked.
Katsuki rolled his eyes, and beckoned him over, and again, they worked with practiced ease, moving all of his belongings into the apartment. As painful as moving out had been, he was happy to note that moving in was easier. The apartment was clean, the room empty, and he had plenty of space to put all of his belongings – many from his mother, however, were shoved deep into the hallway closet.
As soon as all the boxes were out of their cars and into the apartment, Katsuki pushed the tired man out of the room, wordlessly beginning to unpack his life for the second time in four years.
It, unfortunately, did not take that long. He hated to admit it, but his new apartment was nicer, clean and chic in a way that his old one hadn’t been.
He walked through the place next, getting himself accustomed to his surroundings, memorising where everything was. Shinsou’s room – and, considering he’d uprooted the man’s life moving in, he decided that he should at least try to use the man’s name – was right across from his, the bathroom at the end of the hall.
He walked into the main space, immediately checking out the kitchen – and, fuck, it was nice. All new appliances that looked like they hadn’t been touched, plenty of bench space, huge fridge. He opened it, and was both unimpressed and unsurprised to find it basically empty, save for a few things.
“Do you even eat?” he grumbled, shutting the fridge with a click.
“When I’m awake enough to not cook without burning myself,” Shinsou replied, yawning through his words. “Which, I won’t lie, is not very often.”
“How the fuck are you alive?”
“Spite, mainly,” Shinsou laughed. “Proving the people who said I’d be a villain wrong is oddly satisfying.”
“Whatever,” Katsuki mumbled, taking a second to gain his bearings. “What are the rules here?”
“Rules?”
“Like, what should I avoid doing if I’m not working and you’re getting your half an hour of beauty sleep?” Katsuki snapped, shaking his head.
“Well, for your information, I sleep more than that,” Shinsou replied, “and, honestly, it doesn’t matter. You could be as loud or as quiet as you can manage and I’d still wake up anyway. I swear, a bird could fall out of a tree a block away and it’d wake me up.”
“Again: how the fuck are you alive?”
“Caffeine,” Shinsou quipped, smirking. “What about you?”
“I don’t fucking know,” he muttered, moving around to lean against the kitchen bench. “I’ve lived alone for four years. I’m not used to this.”
“That’s fine,” Shinsou dismissed. “I’m not loud when I move around, really. It’s kinda hard to get rid of all the conditioning I did for stealth.”
“Whatever. Just,” Katsuki sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Let me have my space, or whatever. I liked living alone, so I’m not overly happy I had to change that.”
“You already know I work underground,” Shinsou mused, “so it’s not like you’ll be seeing much of me, anyway.”
“And thank fuck for that,” Katsuki grumbled. “I don’t want to see you every goddamn day. I’d go insane.”
“Yeah, you won’t be,” Shinsou nodded, “unless I end up on leave again.”
“Again? The fuck do you do out there to end up on leave so often?”
“Undercover work,” Shinsou sighed, leaning back on the couch with a muffled groan, his lips around a mug full of now room temperature coffee. “Usually, they won’t keep me in my position for more than two months – maybe three, if they really need me to, and they can safely deduce that I’m not in mortal danger. Depending on the case, I’ll go on leave for two weeks to a few months almost immediately afterwards.”
“As long as you don’t bother me, I don’t really care,” Katsuki admitted. “Hero work is unpredictable even without unprompted roommates thrown in the mix. I wasn’t expecting to end up here.”
“Neither was I, really, but you’re a better option than Kaminari and Sero, at any rate.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love the moron, but I can’t live with him again. I've never felt myself go insane so fast. Especially with Sero mixed in.”
“That is what I think the professionals call: the consequences of your own fucking actions,” Katsuki sneered, smirking at the deadpan look he received in return. “You’re the one who befriended him in the first place.”
“You’re one to talk, having both Midoriya and Kirishima as friends.”
“Deku and I grew up together,” Katsuki reasoned, “and Kirishima is a fucking leech. I couldn’t get rid of them no matter how hard I tried – and I tried fuckin’ hard.”
“Loner,” Shinsou scoffed.
“No,” Katsuki bit out, “I just don’t like being around people that fucking often. Especially people with the energy levels of a racoon on crack.”
“That’s fair,” Shinsou nodded. “Alright, I need to sleep if I want to make it through work without falling off the roof of a building. I’ll see you later – grab whatever you want from the kitchen, we can get groceries delivered tomorrow.”
“Whatever,” Katsuki muttered. “Don’t die in your sleep.”
“Aw, you do care,” Shinsou teased, walking through the hall. “Don’t blow up my kitchen!”
Over the next week, Katsuki ordered and delivered a metric fuck-tonne of groceries to their apartment, thoroughly filling their fridge and pantry, reorganising the both of them to be more efficient than Shinsou’s clear method of place it wherever it fits.
He’d laughed his ass off when the man had finally woken up and gone to grab something to eat, surprised and a little confused to see both a full fridge, and an organised one.
“When the hell did you do that?”
“An hour ago,” Katsuki shrugged. “I cook all of my meals, and I have a system. It’s better than whatever the fuck you were doing, at any rate.”
“I’m usually never awake to get groceries delivered in time,” he admitted. “I think the first year after graduating I was mainly living off of instant noodles and takeout.”
“That’s disgusting,” Katsuki scoffed, shaking his head. “That shit has no nutritional value.”
“Well, I don’t know if you’d heard, but drug addict chic is my preferred aesthetic for undercover work. Helps me blend in.”
“Oh, I’m sure it does,” Katsuki grunted. “Doesn’t mean you have to turn to method acting.”
Shinsou chuckled good naturedly, and the conversation fizzled off.
It was weird living here, Katsuki thought. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d worked it up to be – Deku and Shinsou had been right, they really didn’t see much of each other. He was left almost floundering at the realisation that he didn’t hate it, the change being something he wasn’t accustomed to accepting so quickly.
The apartment itself was also quiet in the way only a city that rarely ever shut up could manage. It was in a residential area, pushed far back enough that they had both a front and back yard, and their neighbours seemed to keep to themselves. No doubt, Shinsou’s general vibe had swayed them to stay away – something Katsuki would never be mad about.
And the security was top tier shit. Camera’s everywhere, both a number lock and a key lock, a gate that locked at the front of the drive. Nobody could get in or out of the gate unless they let them in.
The level of security settled something in his mind.
He was a little pissed off that Deku had been right, however, that living here wouldn’t be that bad. He wouldn’t be thanking him, at any rate, but he could begrudgingly admit that there were worse places to move into than this apartment. His mother being a top contender.
As a side effect, he felt himself starting to relax, as well. They paid rent weekly, and the leftover money from not covering the entirety of the bill helped him soothe something in his soul. He no longer had to worry about the little things, like if he could afford as much gas as he wanted, or little personal things that he enjoyed to buy and use.
He was sprung out of his thoughts by Shinsou loudly exclaiming: “What the fuck?” from the kitchen, a mug of steaming hot coffee now in his hand.
“What now?” he groaned, looking over. Shinsou was just staring at him, and it was making him uneasy. “Spit it out, Mind Fuck, I don’t have all day.”
“You hit the Top Ten today,” Shinsou deadpanned, holding his phone out. “You’re the first one from our class to make it past the Top Twenty.”
“No shit?” Katsuki asked, pulling out his phone. Upon checking his notifications, and the hundreds of missed messages from the group chat he’d muted ages ago, he found that Shinsou was telling the truth. “Huh.”
“...Do you not care, like, at all?” the man demanded, coming around to sit on the floor, for some reason, his back leaning against the opposite couch.
“Not really,” Katsuki shrugged. “I didn’t become a hero for the fuckin’ attention. I get enough of it as it is, actually. Too much of it.”
“Dude. We literally became war veterans at sixteen years old. The media is up all of our asses, all the time,” Shinsou snorted. “It’s one of the reasons I don’t go out much – not only am I recognisable wherever I go, people only remember me as the kid from UA that fought on the front lines.”
“Yeah, well, at least you aren’t dealing with batshit fans all the time,” Katsuki grumbled, leaning back in his seat. “I had someone come up to me and ask me to sign a photo of a screenshot from right after I’d fought All for One. Mangled arm and all.”
“They didn’t,” Shinsou all but gasped, looking at him with nothing short of abject horror.
“She was literally in her fuckin’ fifties, too,” he shuddered. “Apparently, I’ve become desirable to many older women.”
“Oh my god,” Shinsou snorted, covering his mouth in a very poor attempt to hide his mirth. “You must be disappointing so many people. Sorry, guys, I’m not into cougars. What the fuck.”
“Not into women, more like,” Katsuki scoffed. “Honestly, it’s not like I hide that I’m fucking gay. People are just blind.”
“No shit,” Shinsou scoffed. “You got called the picture of masculinity in an article the other day.”
“Gross.”
Having an easy conversation with the man in front of him was dislodging something inside of him, something he refused to examine right now. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, it was nice. Conversation was easy-going and cheerful, filled to the brim with sarcastic quips and a dark humour Katsuki could absolutely get behind.
Shinsou really wasn’t that bad after all, apparently.
Shinsou was tasked to go undercover for about a month almost two days after that day, leaving Katsuki alone in the apartment – something he, when he originally moved in, would have dreamed about happening.
Now he felt unsettled. He couldn’t lie to himself anymore – the man had been gone for almost all of the month, now, and Katsuki fucking missed him. He’d barely been living here for over a month, and Shinsou had managed to worm his way into Katsuki’s life in a way he hadn’t experienced before, not expected. It was strange that Katsuki didn’t end up hating that fact.
As he walked around the apartment, off from work with nothing to do, he began to think. He was noticing things about and around the apartment that reminded him of Shinsou: the coffee mug that he hadn’t gotten around to putting in the dishwasher yet, the TV remote where he’d left it, the photos of him and his friends all around the apartment.
As the memories flooded in – laughing with the man in the kitchen when he’d spilt his morning coffee, sitting on the couch and scrolling through social media in comfortable silence, the way the man tried to exit the house as quietly as possible when he left for work – Katsuki let himself groan as he sank to the floor, back sliding down the hallway wall.
He was catching feelings, and he was falling fast.
There was a brief stint in high school, back when they were seventeen, where he could imagine a life with him. And in true Katsuki fashion, he had ignored it, and it had gone away. At least, that’s what he’d thought had happened. It was becoming incredibly apparent that his little crush had not, in fact, disappeared like he’d hoped.
Standing up with a groan, he dusted off his pants, heading for the door, ready to go on patrol.
It was a nice distraction – doing his job, doing what he loved, feeling needed and wanted in the career he’d worked tirelessly for, saving civilians from villains and other things throughout the day. He was able to relax, to put his small crisis into the back corners of his mind for the time being, focusing on the task at hand.
Until that didn’t work anymore, and he found himself getting distracted, thinking about Shinsou and how he genuinely missed having him around, missing the sarcastic remarks and dark humoured jokes that had so quickly become part of Katsuki’s routine.
He’d gotten so distracted he miscalculated in a fight, taking a nasty hit to the shoulder that renovated through his body with a loud pop, and if the winces and gasps that surrounded him were any indication, the fucker had managed to pop Katsuki’s shoulder right out of its socket. Fuck.
He finished the fight and groaned, holding his elbow as still as possible in order to not aggravate his injury. Of course it happened to be his right arm, the one he’d all but damn near ruined during the war, that still wasn’t quite right. Right now, he was feeling shooting pains right down his shoulder to his finger tips, and he had a quick, fleeting and panicked thought that he’d truly fucked it up this time.
It wasn’t long until one of the police officers who’d arrived on scene had shooed him into an ambulance to get his shoulder checked out.
“You’re lucky you didn’t injure this arm further down,” he said, handing over a prescription for pain killers after popping his shoulder back in place. It was placed in a sling, flush against his body to minimise movement. “If you had, you’d be benched for a month minimum, rather than only two weeks.”
Katsuki wordlessly grabbed the prescription, nodding at the Doctor’s words.
“Now, you need to be careful, especially with your medical history,” the Doctor warned. “It may just be a dislocation, but they can cause nerve damage, and especially in shoulder dislocations. Keep an eye out for anything that could be amiss, and come back if anything gets worse. I’ve done you a favour and booked you in for physiotherapy in a week, and you can take the sling off tomorrow.”
“Will do, and thanks,” Katsuki grumbled, groaning as he stood up. Deku was waiting for him in the hallway, soft smiles and worried eyes as he walked over to him, informing him he’d already grabbed his shit from the agency, so they could head right home.
The drive was a silent one, Katsuki silently fuming that he’d gotten distracted and injured himself, not used to feeling so unsettled over a person before. Deku didn’t make him talk – the idiot was able to read him well, and knew he needed to stew in his own misery for a minute.
He could tell he was worrying him, however, as he could feel the constant worried looks the man was sending him when he wasn’t looking at the road. He felt scrutinised – and always had, when Deku got like this, or Katsuki had gotten himself injured – and wanted nothing more than for it to simply stop. There was nothing to talk about, really. He’d gotten distracted, and had reaped the consequences. Sure, he’d injured the already messed up arm, and that it was killing him in a way it really hadn’t before, but it would heal. It always had.
All too soon, they’d arrived at the apartment, with Katsuki dutifully opening the gate to let the man in, walking to the front door as he parked and got out of the car. He wasn’t surprised that Deku had stayed, truth be told. In fact, he would be more shocked if he’d just turned around and left.
Deku followed him into the apartment, opening the doors and telling him to sit down as he started making the both of them coffee. Katsuki sighed as he sat down, turning on the TV and keeping the volume low, just to have something to fill the silence that had cascaded over the apartment.
“I haven’t seen you get that distracted before,” Deku worriedly quipped, hanging the mug of coffee over with a frown. “Are you sleeping fine?”
“Eh, kinda,” he sighed, grabbing the mug with a muttered thanks. “Just…I don’t know. I didn’t think I’d get so used to living with someone else until I was suddenly alone again.”
“You miss him, don’t you?” Deku asked, a small smile taking over the frown. When Katsuki said nothing, he chuckled a bit, looking down into his own mug of coffee. “I get you’re worried, Kachaan. But Shinsou is one of the most capable heroes I’ve ever met. He’s going to be fine.”
“I know that,” Katsuki snapped. “I’m not worried. I’m just not used to him not being around, is all.”
“Honestly, Kachaan,” Deku laughed, “you sound like you’ve fallen for him.”
Katsuki said nothing, and he knew that was enough. Deku could read him like an open book – there was no way he wouldn’t pick up on the non verbal cue that he was putting out, desperately hoping that he wouldn’t have to actually speak it into existence. Admitting it to himself was hard enough. Admitting it to Deku was even harder.
“Oh my god,” Deku breathed, “you really have fallen for him, haven’t you?”
“No need to sound so shocked," Katsuki grumbled. “I’m pretty sure the two of us have long since established that my type is sarcastic assholes.”
“That we have,” he laughed, shaking his head. “I can’t say I’m surprised, either. I just thought it would take you longer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kachaan, I’m not blind,” Deku deadpanned. “I watched you fall in love with him at seventeen, and then watched you decide that it was a future you problem and ignore it. You may have either forgotten, or decided not to think about it, but I remembered.”
“...You sound like a fucking stalker when you do that, you know,” Katsuki muttered, exasperated yet small smile decorating his face. “It’s a little creepy.”
“Yeah, well, you’re stuck with me, unfortunately,” he grinned. “And don’t even lie, you love it when people don’t put up with your bullshit. He certainly won’t.”
“He literally hit me for tipping out his coffee.”
“You deserved it.”
“It was cold.”
“He would have just heated it up!” Deku defended, grinning from ear to ear. “Shinsou drinks black coffee, it can be reheated.”
“It loses its taste when you do that,” Katsuki retorted. “Just make a new one, at that point. It’s not like we can’t afford it.”
“Yeah, well, you’re both idiots,” he scoffed, leaning back. “But in all seriousness, Kachaan, it’s not as life-changing as you think it is – don’t even start that with me, I know you better than you know yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Katsuki mumbled. “Are you going to give me your words of wisdom so I can finally kick you out, or what?”
“Whatever,” Deku chuckled, before getting serious once more. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Now that’s not to say I wouldn’t spring this on him as soon as he walks back in the door–”
“Hey now, who said anything about telling him?” Katsuki demanded, shooting a venomous glare towards the man in front of him.
“Kachaan, if you don’t tell him eventually, I will,” Deku threatened, entirely too serious for Katsuki’s liking. “You truly don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Unless he rejects me, and then I have to flee the country.”
“Now you’re just being dramatic,” Deku sighed. “You’ll be fine. You’re stronger than you think you are – and shockingly, you were the most emotionally intelligent one in our class. You’re freaking out over nothing.”
“Who said I was freaking out?”
“The fact you didn’t kick me out fifteen minutes ago,” Deku deadpanned, shooting him a look. “Honestly, Kachaan. You’re an open book to me. I can sense your emotions from miles away at this point.”
“Stalker.”
“Idiot,” Deku grinned, standing up. “Think about it at least, okay?”
“Whatever,” Katsuki mumbled, walking him to the door. “It’s not like I’ll have anything else to do, sitting here on my ass for two weeks.”
“Well, I can think of a couple of things–”
“Get out of my apartment.”
“Going!” Deku laughed, running down the drive. “Don’t be too stupid, Kachaan!”
“Fucking die, nerd!”
Shinsou came home the next day, stumbling through the door covered in dirt and blood and grime, swaying on his feet. His eyebags were darker than Katsuki had ever seen them, deep and purple and utterly distracting from the haunted look in Shinsou’s eyes.
It was ten o’clock at night, earlier than Katsuki thought he’d be back by, and he looked like he was about to drop dead where he stood.
Katsuki had just been about to go to bed and was only in the kitchen to grab a glass of water when Shinsou had dragged himself through the front door. After taking one look at the man, his thoughts of water and sleep were immediately forgotten in favour of focusing on him. He walked over to him, looking him up and down to catch any sign of recognition or lucidity, frowning when he couldn’t find much of it at all.
“Mind Fuck,” he mumbled, walking closer. No answer. “Shinsou.”
The man snapped his head up, looking deep into Katsuki’s concerned eyes, his own troubled and barely there, unseeing as he seemed to look through Katsuki, rather than at him. Katsuki sighed, shaking his head and grabbing the man’s wrist, keeping his touch light and soft, pausing when Shinsou flinched minutely.
“Come on,” he mumbled. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
It took a few minutes, but Katsuki was able to drag Shinsou carefully into the bathroom, seating him on the edge of the bath as he began to run the hot water, double-checking to make sure it wasn’t too hot for the man to bear. He grabbed a towel from the cupboard, putting it on the edge of the sink, and left Shinsou for a moment to grab some comfortable clothes from the clean pile of laundry he hadn’t put away yesterday.
“Take a bath, clean off all the dirt and blood. Don’t worry about anything else right now,” he mumbled, putting the man’s clothes next to the towel. “I’ll be on the couch if you need company after.”
With that, Katsuki walked out, closing the bathroom door behind him, a little unnerved by the sheer silence the apartment had encapsulated. He wasn’t surprised – he’d known undercover work was hard, had expected Shinsou to come back drained and tired, had seen how Hobo-Sensei had come back from undercover stints looking worse for wear, not that he’d known the man was undercover at the time.
But he couldn’t help but feel stuck, not actually knowing how to help Shinsou at all, but feeling like he needed to, and most of all, he wanted to. Curse his fucking heart, he really did care about the man, and seeing him looking like a shell of himself was breaking him in ways he didn’t think was possible.
Even if they were only friends, rather than anything else. He was going to lose his mind thinking about it.
Half an hour later Shinsou emerged and trudged into the main living space. Katsuki turned when he heard him yawn, and immediately noticed the man hadn’t done anything to his hair other than clean out the blood and grime. It was still knotted, close to matting in some areas.
He stood up and wordlessly walked past Shinsou and back into the bathroom, grabbing his hairbrush from the shelf on the wall, and gently coerced Shinsou to the floor in front of the couch between his legs – a position that would have made him flustered in any other situation.
Dutifully, and careful not to tug the man’s scalp too much, Katsuki began to brush the man’s hair, soft and gently as he began to work through the knotted areas. He made sure to go slowly, to exaggerate his movements for Shinsou to watch him in the reflection of the TV screen as he did so, not looking up for any other reason than to make sure the man was alright.
“I can do it,” Shinsou mumbled, voice raspy with disuse, lifting a hand as if to grab the brush off of him. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” Katsuki muttered back, gently pushing Shinsou’s hand back down.
Ten silent minutes followed, only broken by the sounds of Katsuki running the brush through his hair, hitting knots and taking gentle care to work them out as quickly as possible, seeing how Shinsou looked to be about five seconds away from passing out right then and there.
He threw the brush next to him on the couch when he finished, moving to gently help Shinsou stand, and walked him to his room..
“Go to fucking sleep, you need it,” he mumbled. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Mm, yeah,” Shinsou whispered, bee-lining to his bed, falling face first onto it.
Katsuki shut his door and walked away, grabbing the glass of water he’d abandoned and tipped it into the sink, noting that it was nearly midnight, now. He sighed, and headed to bed, sleeping restlessly through the night as his mind was filled with worry and concern over a man he wasn’t even friends with two months ago, who was now someone Katsuki really couldn’t imagine not having in his life.
Dawn broke and Katsuki roused himself with a stuttered groan, stretching out his limbs and wincing when his arm twinged painfully. He headed downstairs to take some meds, pulling ingredients out to start cooking a light yet filling breakfast for the both of them, internally aware that Shinsou would not have eaten much of any nutritional value, if he’d even eaten often at all, while undercover.
He turned to see Shinsou sitting on the couch, staring at his open palms.
“Did you sleep?” he asked quietly, turning to make breakfast – eggs on toast. Quick and easy. Filled with protein.
“No,” the man muttered, just loud enough for Katsuki to hear. “I never do, the day after getting back.”
“Go back to bed, then,” Katsuki retorted. “You look like a strong breeze could knock you out.”
“No, it’s fine,” he replied, blushing as his sentence ended in a yawn. “I won’t end up sleeping anyway. Too…hyped up, I guess. Not in a good way.”
“Alright, then,” Katsuki shrugged, not all that surprised by Shinsou’s refusal. “Are you gonna visit your old man yet?”
“I’ll visit him when I feel like stepping into his house won’t shave ten years off my lifespan,” he mumbled, leaning back into the couch. “I texted him earlier. He gets it.”
Katsuki hummed, nodding as he plated up the food, sitting next to Shinsou on the couch and handing the man’s portion over.
“How bad was it, this time around?” Katsuki asked quietly, looking at the man as he tensed, before he slumped into himself, looking more defeated than Katsuki had ever seen him.
“God, it wasn’t the worst one I’ve ever done, but it wasn’t great either,” Shinsou laughed humourlessly, humming in content as he took a bite of food. “I’m only getting two weeks of leave, this time around.”
“Well, at least you’re not stuck here by yourself,” Katsuki hummed. “I bought myself two weeks of medical leave yesterday.”
“How’d you manage that?” Shinsou asked, clearly keen for a change of subject, and one that Katsuki readily granted, knowing the man likely wouldn’t want to – and couldn’t, legally speaking – talk about it.
“Got distracted and took a blow to the shoulder,” Katsuki sighed. “Fucker dislocated it so easily. And, just my luck, it was my right arm, so now I have mandatory leave and physiotherapy, and I’m probably going to end up on light duties after this two week period is over.”
“You aren’t alone in that, at least,” Shinsou snorted. “I’m going to be on desk duty for a while – probably equal to whatever amount of leave I take, to be honest.”
“That’s mandatory, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Shinsou nodded, putting his now empty plate on the coffee table. Katsuki followed suit, and leant back in his seat. “Leave for a time, then match it to desk duty so you can fill out the paperwork, but also help with cases from the sidelines. It’s just to make sure I’m actually ready to go back to work.”
“Hm, fair,” Katsuki nodded. “I’m going to be lucky if Deku doesn’t request to put me on desk duty for a day, at the least.”
“You’d fight him on it.”
“He’ll get his way,” Katsuki chuckled. “That idiot can read me like an open book – he tends to know what’s going on before I do.”
Shinsou laughed, and he lightened up, relaxing into the conversation and bouncing back into his environment, and the realisation that he’d helped make Shinsou feel more at ease made him want to kiss the man stupid.
He wanted to see the man relax into his touch, wanted to help push the darkest thoughts out of his mind, to rid him of insecurity. He wanted to feel Shinsou’s lips on his, his tongue in his mouth, to be under him as the man took his time and unravelled him in the best of ways. Okay, too far. Take it back a notch.
He was happy that he was back, something deep in his gut settling within the presence of the man he’d missed so much more than he thought he would, able to crack jokes and make dark comments filled with sarcastic commentary, the restructuring of a routine for both of them. He felt himself relax in turn, basking in the moment as he clicked on the TV, scrolling through shows and movies until something caught Shinsou’s interest, turning it on without another word.
He could tell that Shinsou was still feeling unsettled by the way he was picking at his nails, sitting tense and looking around for exits. He knew it would likely take weeks for Shinsou to come back right, yet not unchanged, and he floundered with himself on how to help the man relax, wanting to help yet not quite knowing how.
In a moment of pure instinct, Katsuki settled into the couch and wrapped an arm around the other man’s shoulder, pulling Shinsou into his side as he settled in to watch the show.
As Shinsou relaxed into Katsuki’s touch, he realised there was nowhere else he’d rather be.