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The sheets were damp where his body had pressed into the mattress, a patch of cooling sweat that made the fabric cling to his shoulder blade. Izuku opened his eyes to the grey pre-dawn light filtering through the curtains. The dream was still clinging to him, thicker than the sweat—the ghost of a voice against his ear, a voice that had cracked on his name in a way that made his stomach tighten even now, awake and blinking at the ceiling.
"Izuku..."
Not the bark he was used to. Not the grenade-pin growl. This was something else. This was the sound Katsuki when exhaustion had sanded every edge down to something vulnerable. In the dream, Izuku had been close enough to feel the vibration of it through his own chest. Close enough to see the way Katsuki’s mouth shaped the syllables like they were precious, like they cost him something to let go.
The moan that followed had been soft. Pretty. A sound Izuku had never heard in waking life but which his sleeping mind had conjured with devastating precision—a breathy, half-caught thing that slipped out as Katsuki’s hips shifted under his weight. In the dream, Izuku’s hand was braced on Katsuki’s stomach. He could feel the muscle there tensing, the heat bleeding through the thin fabric of a tank top. Katsuki’s fingers were twisted in the front of Izuku’s shirt, pulling him closer, and that moan was still hanging in the air between them like a question Izuku was about to answer with his mouth.
He didn’t get to. The dream had dissolved at the exact moment before contact, leaving him with a pulse thudding low in his belly and the ache of unfinished business in his bones.
Izuku sat up slowly. The room was quiet. The apartment was quiet. The kind of quiet that had a texture, a weight that pressed against his eardrums. He ran a hand over his face and tried not to think about the way his body was still half-interested in the dream, still thrumming with the memory of Katsuki’s breath on his throat. A wet dream. About Kacchan. He should feel embarrassed. He didn’t. He just felt hollow, scooped out and left to dry.
The shower was too cold. He let the water hit his chest until his skin went numb, then turned it off and stood dripping on the bath mat, staring at the fogged mirror.
His reflection was a blur.
That felt right.
The morning routine helps. Muscle memory. Feet on cold floor. Water on face. The mirror shows him someone he barely recognizes—eyes hollow, cheekbones sharper than they were a year ago. He’s lost weight. He knows this. His mother mentioned it last week, her voice tight with the kind of worry she tries to hide. He told her he’s just busy. Teaching. Grading papers. The usual.
The usual is a lie he’s gotten very good at telling.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand. A text from Ochaco: Coffee at noon? I’ll be in the city.
He stares at it for seventeen seconds. Eighteen. Nineteen. His thumb hovers over the keyboard, and he can feel the weight of every conversation they’ve had this month, the careful dance of two people circling something neither of them wants to name. She’s been so patient. So kind. Her voice still catches sometimes when she says Toga’s name, and Izuku recognizes that fracture because he carries his own.
Twenty seconds.
He types: Sounds good. See you then.
The apartment is too quiet after he sends it. He used to fill the silence with hero analysis videos, news reports, the constant hum of a mind that never stopped cataloging quirks and strategies and possibilities.
Now the television stays off.
The notebooks are in a box somewhere.
A flash of orange out the window—a kid’s jacket, some neighbourhood child running past the building—and suddenly he was sixteen again, standing on the edge of a mock battlefield, watching Katsuki launch himself skyward with explosions popping like firecrackers. The memory arrived uninvited, bright and sharp.
“You gonna stand there mumbling or are you gonna try to keep up, nerd?” Katsuki’s grin had been all teeth and challenge, sweat sheeting down his temples, the gauntlets on his arms still smoking. Izuku had laughed, something bubbling up from his chest that felt like joy and terror braided together. He’d launched himself after, green lightning crackling along his legs, and for a few seconds they’d been neck-and-neck in the air, suspended in that perfect equilibrium where nothing else existed except the two of them and the speed.
That was a good day. He could still feel the windburn on his cheeks if he concentrated.
Izuku set the mug in the sink and watched the dregs swirl down the drain.
A memory from high school surfaced next, softer. Late night in the common room, everyone else asleep, and Katsuki had been sprawled on the couch with a bag of frozen peas pressed to his shoulder. Izuku had been too wired to sleep—post-training adrenaline, the familiar hum—and he’d wandered in to find Katsuki glaring at the television, some old All Might documentary playing on mute.
“Sit down or get out, you’re blocking the subtitles.”
Izuku had sat. On the other end of the couch, careful to leave a cushion’s worth of space between them. They’d watched in silence for twenty minutes before Katsuki spoke again, voice low and rough with something that wasn’t anger.
“You ever see that live?”
“Only clips.”
“I was there.” Katsuki had turned his head just enough for Izuku to catch the profile of his jaw. “Dad got tickets. It was the day I decided.”
Decided what? Izuku hadn’t asked. He’d just watched the flicker of the screen play across Katsuki’s face and felt something shift in his chest, some tectonic plate of understanding grinding into a new position. They’d shared the couch until Katsuki’s peas thawed and Izuku’s eyes started burning. Neither of them had said goodnight.
The apartment’s radiator clicked. Izuku blinked and the memory folded itself away, a photograph slipped back into an envelope. His coffee mug was still in the sink. The sky was still overcast.
By midmorning he found himself walking. His feet took him along the riverside path, past the park where kids from the local elementary school were shrieking through some game involving a ball and increasingly creative rule violations. A small boy with spiky blond hair—a shade too light, a texture too soft—sprinted past the fence, and Izuku’s heart did something complicated, a stumble-step in his chest that made him stop walking for a full three seconds. Then the boy turned, and his face was all wrong, round-cheeked and gap-toothed and nothing like Katsuki at all.
Still. The resemblance had been enough to pull another memory loose.
The agency gala. Izuku’s first year as a pro, before the rankings came out, before everything got complicated. Katsuki had been seated two tables over, radiating a forcefield of don’t-talk-to-me that was only partially successful—a junior sidekick kept trying to engage him about patrol routes and Katsuki kept answering in monosyllables that somehow conveyed elaborate threats. Izuku had watched him from across the room, caught in the gravitational pull of that familiar scowl, and midway through the appetizer course Katsuki had looked up and caught him staring.
Their eyes had held for a beat. Two beats. Katsuki’s expression hadn’t changed—still irritated, still sharp—but something had flickered underneath it, something that made Izuku’s fork pause halfway to his mouth. Then Katsuki had raised his glass, just an inch, the smallest salute. Izuku had raised his own, his face heating, and he’d spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out why his pulse wouldn’t settle.
They’d talked later, out on the balcony. Katsuki had leaned on the railing with his sleeves rolled up, the city lights scattering gold across the planes of his face, and he’d said, “Ranking drop this quarter. The press is pissing themselves trying to figure out why.”
“Is there a why?”
Katsuki had shrugged. “Maybe I’m not in a hurry.”
Izuku hadn’t understood then. He’d nodded and let the silence stretch and watched the way Katsuki’s fingers drummed against the railing, restless even in stillness. The night air had smelled like rain coming in.
“We should train again,” Katsuki had said, not looking at him.
“We?”
“I told you, nerd. We’re chasing each other to the top. Can’t do that if you’re stuck teaching while I’m out there winning.” The words had been flippant, but his voice had tightened on chasing each other, a thread pulled just taut enough to hum.
Izuku had said something. He couldn’t remember what. Something deflecting, something casual. The memory ended there, snipped clean, but the residue of it clung to his skin as he stood on the river path, watching children play. That was the conversation where it all started to go wrong. Where he’d begun to build the distance, brick by careful brick.
-
The offer came a week later. Katsuki in the car, the signed All Might card, his face open in a way it almost never was.
The way Katsuki’s eyes narrowed.
Izuku saw him in the rearview.
The way Izuku’s smile felt like plastic stretched over bone.
He’d seen the card first. That’s what the flashback gives him now—the moment before the question. Kacchan put it there, The card. Signed. The one that had been clutched in Izuku’s trembling fingers on a battlefield that smelled like ash and copper, kneeling beside a body that wasn’t breathing, a chest that wasn’t rising, blond hair matted with blood that was too dark, too much, too late—
He’d watched something die in Katsuki’s expression. Just a flicker, a door closing, and then the city came back.
That memory wasn’t good. That one stung. Izuku pushed it away and kept walking.
-
Ochaco is already at the café when he arrives, twelve minutes late. She doesn’t mention it. She’s good like that—too good, probably. She waves from a corner booth, and Izuku slides in across from her, and for a moment everything feels almost normal. Two friends catching up. Coffee and pastries. The afternoon sun slanting through the window in gold rectangles.
“You look tired,” she says.
“Grading papers,” he says.
She nods like she believes him. Maybe she does. Maybe she’s just as good at pretending as he is.
They talk about her work. They talk about Iida’s latest press conference. They talk about the weather, the new hero rankings, the upcoming reunion that neither of them is sure they’ll attend.
They don’t talk about Himiko.
They don’t talk about Katsuki.
“Izuku.” Ochaco’s voice shifts, softer now, and he knows this tone.
This is the are we going to actually talk about it tone. She’s used it before, three weeks ago, when he found her crying in the agency parking lot. He’d sat with her for an hour without asking questions.
“Yeah?” He looks up from his coffee.
Her eyes are searching his face. “Are you... okay? Really?”
The question is so sincere it almost undoes him.
“I’m fine,” he says. “Honestly. Just adjusting to... you know. Everything.”
She doesn’t push. That’s the thing about Ochaco—she knows when to push and when to wait. She’s learned that lesson the hard way, through grief and guilt and the thousand small cuts of surviving when someone else didn’t. Izuku recognizes that because he’s learned it too.
Her hand moves across the table, palm up. An offering.
He takes it.
Her fingers are warm. Steady. Not calloused like—
Don’t.
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” she says quietly. “Talking more. I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
It’s not a lie. He has missed her. Missed the simplicity of their friendship before the war complicated everything, before blood and loss and impossible choices turned them all into versions of themselves they barely recognize. Being with Ochaco feels like reaching for something familiar and finding it mostly intact, even if the edges are frayed.
But when she squeezes his hand, his mind supplies an image he doesn’t want: the same gesture from different fingers. Rougher. Broader. The crackle of nitroglycerin just beneath the skin.
He pulls away to reach for his coffee.
If Ochaco notices, she doesn’t say anything.
-
Late afternoon. Izuku returned to the apartment, his clothes carrying the cold damp of the approaching rain. He hung his jacket on the hook, toed off his shoes, and stood in the middle of the living room with no idea what to do next.
The dream from this morning surfaced again, unbidden. Katsuki’s moan, soft and pretty, a sound he’d never actually heard but which his body remembered with impossible clarity now. The heat of it. The way Kacchan’s hips had moved under his hand. The nearness of his mouth.
Izuku’s breath caught. He pressed his palm flat against his own chest, feeling the heart beneath it, counting the beats. This was the part he never let himself examine too closely—the shape of what he’d felt for Kacchan, the weight of it, the way it had grown in the dark spaces between rivalry and friendship until he couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. He’d spent so long protecting Katsuki from proximity, from his own cursed luck that brought danger to everyone he loved. Keeping him at arm’s length was supposed to be the noble choice. The safe choice.
It didn’t feel noble now. It felt like a stone in his throat.
He walked to the small desk in the corner of the room. The drawer stuck when he pulled it, like it always did, a warped edge catching. Inside were orderly stacks of papers, a few old notebooks, a plastic sleeve.
The sleeve was clear, sealed at the top with a strip of tape. Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded in thirds. He didn’t need to open it. The words were burned into the back of his eyes, memorized in the kind of sleepless nights that left bruises on the inside of his skull.
Kacchan’s handwriting.
Izuku—
You’re an idiot. I’m not giving up on this. We’re not done chasing each other yet, so get your head out of your ass. I’ll wait…
He stopped reading.
The signature was a jagged scrawl, the K sharp, the last stroke trailing off like he’d been mid-thought and someone had called his name. Below it, in smaller letters, the date.
Today’s date. One year ago.
Izuku held the letter in both hands. The plastic was cool and slick, a protective barrier against the oils of his fingers, against the air, against time. He stared at the date until the numbers blurred. The room was silent. The rain had started outside—he could hear it tapping against the glass, a soft insistent rhythm like a whispered countdown.
One year.
Katsuki had died on a Thursday. A building collapse, a civilian trapped, a structural instability no one could have predicted. He’d been number fifteen in the rankings. His smile—the one on the memorial, the one the press kept reprinting—had been ferocious and beautiful and utterly, impossibly alive. Izuku hadn’t been there. He’d been in a classroom, teaching quirk theory to a room full of his students, when his phone started buzzing and didn’t stop.
The funeral was a year ago today.
The letter was delivered three days after, found among his things, addressed in a script that must have taken him hours to get right. Bakugo Katsuki did not write letters. He did not explain himself. He did not leave behind words for people he should have said them to while he was alive.
But he wrote this one.
And Izuku has never read it.
Because reading it would mean accepting that he’s gone.
That the body on the battlefield didn’t start breathing again.
That the hand reaching for his in his dreams is reaching from somewhere he can’t follow.
That he couldn't catch up
He didn’t cried at the funeral. He’d stood in the back, watching the crowd of heroes in black, watching Kirishima’s shoulders shake, watching Aizawa’s jaw set like stone. Izuku had felt nothing then. Just a vast, echoing emptiness where his heart used to be. The emotions had come later, in fragments, in dreams, in the way he’d wake up reaching for someone who wasn’t there.
The letter had arrived three days after the funeral. Katsuki had written it before the accident, before the last patrol, and he’d never mailed it. Someone had found it in his locker, in an envelope addressed to Izuku Midoriya, and they’d delivered it with trembling hands.
I’ll wait.
The rain grew louder.
Kacchan hated rain.
The grey light in the room was fading into something darker, something that matched the hollowed-out cavity behind his ribs.
One year ago today, Katsuki had died thinking Izuku didn’t want him,
Didn’t want the chase.
And Izuku had spent three hundred and sixty-five nights since then dreaming of a voice that called his name like it mattered, a moan that was soft and pretty and invented, a mouth he’d never kiss, a future that had slipped through his fingers like smoke because he’d been too afraid to reach for it.
He didn’t move. The plastic crinkled against his shirt. Somewhere in the apartment, the radiator clicked again, a mechanical heartbeat in an empty room.
The letter waited in his hands, preserved, untouched by time, and Izuku stood at the desk with the weight of a year pressing down on his shoulders and the ghost of Katsuki’s voice still echoing from the dream, and he didn’t know what to do with any of it, so he just stood there, breathing, letting the silence swallow him whole
He closes the drawer.
Returns to bed.
The dreams will come again tonight. They always do. Kacchan’s hands. Kacchan’s voice. The life they should have had, the conversation they should have finished, the words Izuku should have said when there was still time to say them.
I love you.
I’ve always loved you.
Wait for me.
But Kacchan is dead, and Izuku is still here, and the letter remains unread.
Tomorrow, maybe.
Or the next day.
Or never.
He stares at the water-stained window and feels nothing at all.