Chapter Text
Everyone knew it but them— how very much in love with each other they were.
No one could rightly say when it happened exactly, only that when it happened, it was impossible to miss. Only that it had happened and was happening all at once.
Which was to be expected because those who know them best would say that neither of them had ever been good at hiding what they truly felt.
Despite their best efforts.
Their friends knew it, of course; the peers that they spent the most time with knew it, but that was to be expected.
What truly cemented to the universe, the gods of love, to fate, to happenstance that brought them together or whatever you may be prone to believe in, was that everyone else knew it too. Not just close friends (who waited, delighted and intrigued for Katsuki and Ochako to realize what they meant to each other), not just family (who fought every living urge to intervene because they, like everyone else, were all tired of hearing the other one yammer in their ear about this person who was a friend but clearly so much more).
But, in defense of the young lovers who did not know they were lovers, their lives were such an odd mix of intimacies, of admirations, of blood and sweat, and tears shared in the heat of battle that they were all family without being family, all blood without being blood, they loved each other in ways that couldn’t be contained by words.
So was it any wonder that they wouldn’t know that their bond was different, that the intimacy they shared was a shade different?
Especially when they were so close to it.
Was it any wonder that they didn’t notice what so many others did?
One of the first to notice was Chiyo Shuzenji.
She was often the first to see things, a quiet observer of the lives of her students because they were her students as much as they were anyone else’s. It was the job of their teachers to see the students as more than kids, and it was her job to remind them that they were, in fact, still kids.
Still fragile kids,— despite their power—every last one of them.
She knit their bones back together so they could go back out and live a life that would land them right back in the infirmary with her.
She kept count of their breaks, scars, their wounds, both emotional and otherwise.
She was the first to see so many things.
And when Katsuki Bakugo- no stranger to the infirmary- hurried into the infirmary, it was with the awkward panicked gait of someone who wanted to run faster than he was able due to the cargo in his arms.
Ochako Uraraka.
Her screams only barely muffled into the crook of his neck.
“Oi!” he barked, carrying her toward a bed. “Get over here!"
Chiyo did not normally allow herself to be ordered about…by anyone, let alone an angry, foul-mouthed future hero who still had to live his life on a curfew. But, she knew her students as well as anyone else. And she knew the different shades of Katsuki’s anger- she knew when it was anger, when it was stress, when it was worry, and when it was panic.
And Ochako’s scream made the boy’s whole body tense, made him surge forward to grab her hand.
Chiyo saw things, so she knew Katsuki was on his way to being an incredible hero. She knew his compassion was hard-won and worked for over these few years. But still, the way he held her hand, the way he surged to press his other hand to her forehead, the way he leaned in close to her ear to mutter soothing words…
“All right, Cheeks, you’re gonna be okay, all right,” he whispered, brushing his thumb against the sweaty hair of her bangs. “I know this fuckin’ hurts like hell; just scream it out, okay?”
Well, if Chiyo wasn’t currently staring down a clearly broken femur, a broken bone visibly pushing up against the Ochako's skin, she might have thought something of it at the moment, but as it was…
“What happened?” she asked, feeling around the tender area only for Ochako to kick out her good leg and thrash on the bed. Katsuki’s eyes slammed shut as if her pain physically hurt him. He turned toward Chiyo, his eyes briefly going to Ochako's leg and then back up to Chiyo’s eyes, taking a steadying breath.
“We were both training in Gym Gamma; she was working on her moon jump, and she released her quirk too soon.”
Yes, she supposed that would do it.
They were still just kids and still so fragile, and their quirks destroyed their bodies in ways that humans, maybe millions of years in the future, will have adapted for, but they hadn’t got there yet.
So she set Bakugo’s shoulder regularly.
She healed Deku’s broken bones.
And she could heal a broken femur.
Something she knew that Katsuki knew.
“Fuck!” Ochako screamed out, tears streaming down her eyes. Even as Chiyo set to her work of healing her student, she didn’t miss the way Katsuki let Ochako dig her nails into his hand, the way he guided her face to look at him and away from the injury- his forehead pressed to hers without an ounce of uncertainty or insecurity.
Chiyo knew everything- kids got very chatty when they were on pain meds.
She would have heard if they were together…likely.
“Just hold a little longer, Cheeks; she’s gonna take care of you….”
She whimpered and nodded, letting out a pained breathless laugh.
“I…I…shouldn’t have gone that high,” she squeezed out.
“Yeah, you should’ve,” he answered firmly. “You were a fuckin’ badass out there. You almost had it, Uraraka; you’ll get it next time. Pretty soon, you’ll be jumping around faster than fuckin’ Deku.”
Chiyo didn’t scold him for swearing because she was close enough to see what Katsuki himself didn’t even know…he was panicked. He was afraid.
Which was irrational.
And, despite his rage, Katsuki Bakugo was deeply rational.
This would be an easy fix- despite the pain.
In her care, Ochako would be out there jumping over buildings by next week.
And Katsuki knew this in his rational mind.
There was no reason for him to stay with her through the night.
No reason for him to bring her breakfast in the morning and fuss and cluck around her like a mother hen.
But even that on its own wouldn’t have been enough to pique her interest.
They were warriors, all of them, and their peers were their family in battle. They risked their lives for each other long before it should have been asked of them. Katsuki wasn’t the first student to sit vigilantly by a bedside- not in the least.
It wasn’t even his first time doing it.
But not for injuries like this.
An injury that would have been devastating pre-quirk healing but was now easily treatable.
And that was her sign…her sign that something was different as she watched the boy hover around Ochako's leg, as though he was qualified to check Chiyo’s work, asking her questions about recovery time and any necessary accommodations.
The sign wasn’t that Katsuki Bakugo cared - she knew him too well to think that was an anomaly. It wasn’t that he didn’t care; it was that he cared too much and so fully; he could only release it in the most dire of circumstances.
Which meant for him, on some level, he considered this— her tears, her pain, her recovery, an injury to Ochako Uraraka, one that Chiyo could heal in a few days— to be dire.
And that meant something; even Katsuki Bakugo didn't know it.