🦑

puppyboy!yuji who’s crushing on you??

the comment just slips out of nobara’s mouth like it’s nothing. “honestly, he’s like a dog.”

you blink. “who?”

she levels you with a bland look. “who do you think?”

she nods her head to yuji, who’s walking past with megumi. he’s all smiles and as if summoned by the universe itself, he looks up, eyes landing on you. his smile softens, he waves.

your heart does an embarrassing little somersault.

nobara leans in. “exhibit a.”

“i don’t see it,” you say weakly.

“if he had a tail, it’d be wagging right now. he likes you.”

“…no, he doesn’t,” you mumble unconvincingly.

“please. he’ll start bringing you sticks if you asked.”

you feel heat creep up your neck. “you’re exaggerating.”

nobara snorts. “am i? call him a good boy, see what happens.”

“i am not doing that,” you choke.

she just hums, already bored with your resistance. “suit yourself. you’re missing out on prime entertainment.”

so, naturally, later, when you and yuji are asked to pick up supplies from storage (extra training mats? you weren’t quite sure), nobara’s words linger in the back of your mind.

he grabs the boxes without complaint, and reaches over to add the ones you had in your arms to his pile.

“i got those,” he says, easy and bright.

“yuji, you’re already carrying like—five.”

he grins. “six isn’t that different.”

your chest does that stupid flip again, and: “thanks,” you say softly. “you’re such a good boy.”

silence.

yuji freezes mid-step, and you immediately regret everything.

“i didn’t mean—i mean, i did mean it, but not like—i just—” you start rambling, heat flooding your face.

he turns to look at you, and oh.

if nobara had been exaggerating before, she isn’t now.

his ears are bright red, eyes wide, and his smile, that usual easy grin of his, has gone all shy around the edges.

“i—what—” he stammers, voice cracking. “wha—did you just….”

you briefly consider faking your own death. “i just meant—”

his expression softens, deepens, turns warm and a little dazed. “say it again,” he blurts.

you blink. “what?”

“th-that,” he says, flustered. “what you just said.”

your pulse is loud in your ears. “…good boy?”

if possible, he gets even redder.

“man,” he laughs nervously, ducking his head. “that—uh—felt really nice.”

your heart melts, reduced to a puddle on the floor.

“it wasn’t, like…weird?”

“no!” he blurts immediately. “i, uh—you can say it again. only if you want to! just—yeah.”

he looks at you with those soft brown eyes, that gentle smile.

nobara was right.

you smile despite it. “c’mon, good boy. let’s drop these off.”

you don’t miss the way his entire face lights up this time “right!” he says, grinning. “i got it!”

being unsure of your own sexuality is one thing. having your crush be the one to find out is a whole different disaster.

it happens on a completely normal saturday, the kind where you do nothing but lie on your dorm bed with a stack of magazines you definitely pay too much for at the convenience store, flipping through quizzes about which sorcerer technique matches your personality and whether your ideal partner is “spontaneous” or “steady.”

except you land, somehow, on a quiz titled “are you sure you’re straight?” and instead of laughing it off and turning the page like a normal person, you actually grab a pen and start answering it.

which is exactly the position shoko finds you in when she lets herself into your room without knocking, because she never knocks, because four years of friendship has apparently erased her understanding of personal space entirely.

“whatcha doing,” she says, already flopping down on the end of your bed before you can even sit up properly, and you very nearly launch the magazine across the room in a full panic, except that would make it obvious something is wrong, so instead you just sort of freeze with it pressed flat against your chest.

“nothing,” you say, in the exact tone of someone who is absolutely doing something.

shoko raises an eyebrow, reaches over and plucks the magazine right out of your hands before you can stop her, and you make a strangled noise of protest that does nothing to help your case.

she looks at the page. then she looks at you. then she looks back at the page, and you watch, in real time, the exact moment she clocks the title. “are you sure you’re straight,” she reads aloud. “question one: who do you notice first: men or women?”

. ˖ ꒰𑁬 detached / k. bakugo ໒꒱ ˖ .

synopsis: haunted by a thirty-second glimpse into the future that showed you exactly how your devotion to katsuki bakugo would end. so to save your own heart, you stopped following him—you pulled back. but you didn't realize that breaking the timeline would turn the invincible bakugo into a desperate, sleepless ghost for your attention

tags: katsuki bakugo x f!reader, yearner!katsuki, jealous!katsuki, slowburn, misunderstanding, angst with happy ending, mentioned of other mha characters, tw: detachment

word count: 17.8k (oh my god)

a/n: not thoroughly proofread so grammar errors ahead. this is also my first looooong oneshot posted with this kind of format—gonna do more in the near future

you had always been right behind him. 

for as long as you could remember, katsuki’s back was the view you were most familiar with. it wasn’t an accident, either. every step you took was intentional, a careful dance of showing up in his space just enough to make your presence known but trying not to push him over the edge. 

you’d drop his favorite spicy snacks on his desk without a word, linger by the lockers just to walk three paces behind him on the way home, and offer him those quiet, lingering smiles that meant absolutely everything if he just bothered to look.

but katsuki didn’t look. or, if he did, it was only to turn around and bark at you to get out of his face.

"stop following me, you damn extra," he’d growl, small sparks popping from his palms, his eyes narrowed in that perpetual scowl.

but you’d just blink, smile softly, and take half a step back. you never stopped, though. in your mind, that was just katsuki being katsuki. he was loud, abrasive, and fiercely defensive of his boundaries. you convinced yourself that his harsh words were just his way of processing the attention, a shield he put up because he didn't know how to handle someone genuinely caring for him. 

you told yourself that if you just stayed consistent, if you remained the one constant presence in his chaotic, explosive world, he would eventually soften. you thought time was on your side.

then came the hero internships.

you had been offered to work at a reputable agency in the commercial district, a busy zone where the streets were tight and the pedestrian traffic was thick. it was a routine afternoon patrol, the air smelling of asphalt and exhaust, when the perimeter alarm cut through the noise. the villain was low-tier, panic-stricken and cornered in an alleyway, swinging widely with a quirk that manifested as thin, iridescent rings of violet light spinning from their fingertips.

​your mentor had yelled a warning, but you were already moving to cut off the escape route. in the process, before your quirk could stop it, he got you first. you didn't feel pain when the violet light clipped your shoulder—only a sudden, violent drop in atmospheric pressure that seemed to suck the oxygen right out of your lungs. 

the world didn't blur—it sharpened until it hurt.

​the alley faded, replaced instantly by the harsh, clinical glare of a convenience store window. the air felt entirely different, it was freezing, the deep, biting cold of a late january evening. you were standing on a snow-dusted sidewalk, looking down at your own hands. they were older, slightly scarred, wearing a winter coat you didn't own.

​and there, three feet away under the flickering neon sign, stood katsuki.

​he wasn't wearing his school uniform or his standard hero gear. he wore a heavy dark jacket with the collar turned up against the wind, his blond hair dusted with white flakes. but it wasn't his clothes that made your breath catch in your throat, it was the look in his eyes. the usual explosive irritation was entirely absent, replaced by a cold, flat finality that felt heavier than any shout he had ever directed at you.

​"stop doing this," his voice sounded older, rougher from the winter air, slicing through the quiet night. "i’m saying it now so you finally get it through your stupid head. i don't want you following me. i don't want your notes  i don't want your drinks, i don't want you hovering over me, and i don't want you looking at me like that."

​in the vision, you felt your future self try to speak, a familiar defense rising to your lips, but he cut you off before the sound could even form.

​"i’m not being difficult, and i’m not playing around," he said, his hands deep in his pockets, his gaze dropping to the frozen ground between you before lifting back up, unblinking. "i don't feel anything for you… there's…i’m already looking at someone else. there’s a girl at jeanist’s agency. she’s smart, she actually keeps up with me without making it weird, and i want to pursue her. so stay the fuck out of my way and find someone else to waste your time on because you're really annoying."

​the words didn't just sting, they carried the weight of a absolute truth that you couldn't argue with. through your own future eyes, you saw the tiny, subtle shifts in his posture—the way his shoulders relaxed slightly when he spoke of the other girl, a micro-expression of genuine interest that he had never, not once, given to you. he wasn't angry. he was just completely, utterly indifferent to you, and entirely occupied by someone else.

​with a violent shudder, the snow and the neon light vanished. the cold air was replaced by the humid heat of the alleyway, the sound of your mentor’s boots rushing toward you, and the smell of ozone. the villain was on the ground, restrained, and you were trembling so hard your knees hit the pavement.

the next thing you knew, you were sent into a hospital for a check up. ​

"a temporal displacement quirk," the doctor at the clinic explained later, tapping the medical chart with a dull pen while you sat numbly on the examination table. "it doesn't hurt the physical body, but it projects consciousness exactly into the subject's most probable personal future for about thirty seconds. a highly specific psychological deterrent. are you feeling any vertigo?"

​"no," you whispered, your voice sounding small and hollow in the sterile room. "no vertigo.”

when the internship week finally ended and everyone returned to the standard u.a. dorms, the atmosphere was lively. classmates were laughing, exchanging stories, and complaining about their mentors.

you sat on the common room sofa, your knees pulled tight to your chest, staring blankly at the floor. across the room, the main doors slid open, and katsuki walked in, his gym bag slung over one shoulder, looking as prickly and exhausted as ever.

your habit, deep and hardwired into your brain, urges you to stand up. your feet twitched to walk over to him, your mouth almost opened to ask him how his week with best jeanist had been, to offer him a drink, to do anything to get into his orbit.

but then the memory of the lavender light flashed in your mind. you saw the cold indifference in his eyes from a year away. you thought about the girl he was destined to chase, the girl who would effortlessly get the affection you had spent years begging for with your silent devotion.

so you stayed seated. you forced your hidden eyes down to your arms, your fingers gripping the fabric of your pants until your knuckles turned white.

katsuki paused near the entrance, his sharp eyes scanning the room. his gaze lingered on the sofa, landing squarely on you. he waited for a second. two seconds. three. usually, by this point, you would have already tripped over your own feet to greet him.

when you didn't move, when you didn't even look up to meet his eyes, a small, barely perceptible crease formed between his brows. he let out a harsh huff, muttered something about stupid extras under his breath, and marched off toward the elevator.

you secretly watched the elevator doors close behind him, a heavy, suffocating weight settling into your ribs. the future hadn't happened yet, but the illusion was gone. you had finally stopped following him, but the silence you left behind felt heavier than any explosion he had ever set off.

—

the next morning, the change was instantaneous, though it took the rest of the class a few days to fully register the shift. when the bell rang for lunch, you didn't wait by the door or adjust your pace to fall in behind him. you packed your notebooks into your bag with precise, quiet movements and walked out with some of the girls from the other side of the room, laughing at a joke you barely heard.

​from across the classroom, katsuki’s hand paused over his desk. he didn't look up immediately, but his brow furrowed as the familiar shadow that usually lingered near his left shoulder simply failed to appear. he caught a glimpse of your sleeve disappearing around the doorframe, surrounded by a group that didn't include him. he snorted, shoving his hands into his pockets. 

finally figured out how to use her brain, he thought, though the silence behind him felt strangely loud.

​but as the week wore on, the silence didn't go away. it stretched, becoming a permanent boundary.

​you stopped leaving things on his desk. the specific brand of sports drink vanished from his locker, replaced by nothing. during hero training sessions at the unpredicted simulation yard, when the class was broken into pairs or small groups, you no longer volunteered to be on his team or stood near his designated area to watch his execution of vertical bursts. 

if the instructors placed you together, you maintained a flawless, entirely professional distance—speaking only in clear, concise tactical terms, executing your support maneuvers with perfect timing, and walking away the exact second the timer hit zero.

then ​one afternoon, during a mandatory strategy review in the library, a small group had gathered around a large oak table. you were sitting next to jiro, reviewing structural blueprints for an upcoming urban combat exam. katsuki was two chairs down, his legs kicked out under the table, his arms crossed over his chest while he listened to iida lecture on positioning.

​without thinking, jiro reached for a highlighter that had rolled toward katsuki’s elbow. "hey, bakugo, pass that over?"

​he didn't move for a second, his red eyes tracking the bright yellow plastic before he flicked it carelessly across the wood. it didn't slide toward jiro—it rolled straight toward your hand, tapping against your knuckles.

​months ago, you would have used that tiny interaction as an excuse to look at him, to offer a quick, bright word of thanks that tried to draw him out. now, you didn't even lift your eyes from the blueprint. your hand moved mechanically, stopping the marker, picking it up, and handing it directly to jiro without a single hitch in your breath.

​"here you go," you said softly, pointing to a sector on the map. "if we seal this exit first, the recovery team has a safer extraction route."

​katsuki’s eyes narrowed. he stared at the side of your face, his gaze burning into your cheek, waiting for that familiar, annoying shift of your eyes toward him—the little look that always told him you were paying attention to him above everyone else. but your profile remained completely still, your attention entirely fixed on the blue ink of the map. a strange, prickly heat started at the base of his neck, not quite anger, but a raw, irritating confusion that he couldn't shake off.

​by the time winter began to set in, the distance between you was an established fact. you had grown stronger, your grades had risen, and your performance on the field was sharper because you were no longer splitting your focus between the exercise and his safety. you had reclaimed all the energy you used to scatter at his feet, pulling it back inside yourself like a shield.

​it was late december when the first real snow began to fall, turning the campus grounds into a quiet, white expanse. you were leaving the support studio after hours, carrying a box of upgraded gear components back to the dorms. the air was crisp, freezing your breath into small clouds before you.

​as you rounded the corner near the gym, you saw him. he was leaning against the brick wall, his hands deep in his pockets, his heavy dark winter jacket zipped up to his chin. the exact jacket from the vision.

​your chest tightened, a cold knot forming in your stomach as you realized the timeline was narrowing. the convenience store where the rejection was supposed to happen was only a few blocks outside the campus gates. you kept your head down, tightening your grip on the cardboard box, intending to pass him by without a word.

​"stop," he said.

​it wasn't a shout. it was the same low, rough tone from your memory, cutting through the quiet flutter of the falling snow.

​you stopped, three feet away, your boots crunching softly on the thin layer of ice. you didn't look at his eyes, you looked at the neon sign of the convenience store that you knew was sitting just down the road, wondering if this was the moment the path corrected itself.

​katsuki straightened up from the wall, taking a single step toward you. his eyes were fixed on yours, searching your face with a fierce, frustrated intensity that hadn't been there in the vision you saw months ago.

​"what the hell are you doing?" he demanded, his voice dropping into a harsh whisper. "you spent a whole year acting like a parasite, and now you don't even look in my direction. you don't say anything to me. you act like i’m a brick wall."

​you looked at him then, really looked at him, and the fear of the future suddenly faded into a profound, exhausted calm. the quirk had shown you his truth, and because you had accepted it so long ago, the sting was gone.

​"i’m just doing what you wanted, katsuki," you said, your voice steady and quiet in the cold air. "i’m staying out of your way. i’m not making it weird anymore."

​his jaw clenched, his teeth grinding together so hard you could see the muscle leap in his cheek. "i didn't tell you to become a ghost."

​"you didn't have to," you replied, lifting your chin slightly, looking at him with the clear, detached kindness that you would offer any other classmate. "i realized i was wasting your time, and mine. you don't have to worry about me following you around anymore. you're free to focus on your work at best jeanist's agency. you don't owe me anything."

​you stepped around him, your movements fluid and unhurried, your boots leaving a clean, solitary set of tracks in the fresh snow.

​katsuki stood frozen by the brick wall, his hands curling into tight fists inside his pockets as the cold wind swept between you. he looked down at the empty space where you had been standing, then out toward the snowy path leading back to the dorms. 

to you, there was no winter convenience store, no girl from the agency to talk about, and no clean rejection left to give. you had already taken your heart back, leaving him alone in the snow with the absolute silence he had always asked for.

—

the door to the common room slammed shut behind him, the force of it rattling the small plastic keychains mina had hung from the message board. katsuki didn't look back. he kicked his boots off with unnecessary violence, shoving them into the cubby before tramping up the elevator to his floor, his shoulders hunched so tight they looked like stone.

he threw himself onto his desk chair, the wheels groaning against the floor. his room was dark, save for the pale grey light of the winter evening filtering through the blinds, casting long, barred shadows across his training mats. he didn't turn on the lamp. he just sat there, staring at the blank screen of his computer, his fingers twitching against his thighs.

what the hell was that?

the words from the courtyard kept looping in his head, distinct and heavy, stripped of the soft, lingering tone he had spent over a year trying to drown out. 

i’m just doing what you wanted. i’m not making it weird anymore.

it made no goddamn sense. he hadn't said anything to you. not recently, anyway. sure, he’d told you to get bent a thousand times during their first year, called you an extra, told you were loud and irritating and that your stupid little smiles were a waste of oxygen. but you had always just laughed it off, your eyes crinkling at the corners like you knew some secret joke he wasn't in on. you had stayed, regular as the clock, always three paces behind him.

and then, overnight, nothing.

he clenched his fists, the skin of his knuckles pulling taut. he should have been ecstatic. for months, the bakusquad hadn't shut up about it. kirishima would give him that stupid, knowing nudge whenever she walked past their table with a bento box, and sero would make some crack about katsuki finally meeting his match in endurance. kaminari had literally spent an hour one night complaining about how katsuki was "squandering the ultimate devotion" while he couldn't even get a text back from a support girl.

now? the teasing had completely died. the kitchen table was just a kitchen table. no one dropped off a specific brand of electrolytes drink in his locker after a heavy blast session, which meant his throat stayed dry unless he walked all the way to the vending machines himself. no one was lingering by the gym doors when he stayed late, pretending to check her phone while waiting for him to finish so they could walk back across the dark campus together.

he was completely, entirely left alone. it was exactly what he had demanded since the day he entered u.a.

"so why the fuck am i so pissed off?" he muttered to the empty room, his voice a low, raspy growl.

it wasn't just that you had stopped. it was the way you had done it—like you had looked at him, weighed him in your mind, and decided he wasn't worth the trouble anymore. the indifference in your face back there in the snow hadn't been angry. it had been hollow. you had looked at him the same way you looked at the support boxes or the blueprint maps—like he was just an object in the room. an obstacle to be stepped around.

downstairs, the kitchen was quiet compared to its usual roar, though the rest of the squad was gathered around the counter.

"hey, man," kirishima said, looking up with a hesitant expression as katsuki finally came back down an hour later, his hands buried deep in his pockets. "you want some of the katsudon? sato made extra."

"don't want it," katsuki snapped, moving past them toward the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water.

sero leaned back against the counter, exchanging a look with kaminari before clearing his throat. "so... uh. we noticed things have been kinda quiet lately. did you finally say something crazy to her, bakugo? because she hasn't even looked toward our couch in like three weeks. mina tried to invite her to the movie night yesterday and she just said she had to study research methods."

katsuki froze, his hand still gripping the plastic neck of the water bottle. his red eyes flared as he whipped around to face them. "i didn't say shit to her. she just started acting like a freak out of nowhere."

"dude, people don't just switch off like that," kaminari said, his tone unusually grounded. "she used to literally memorize your training schedule so she could make sure the recovery girl's office had the right ointment for your palms. now she treats you like you're a substitute teacher."

"i don't care what she does!" katsuki yelled, the water bottle crinkling loudly under the sudden pressure of his grip. "she’s an extra! she’s always been an extra! if she finally realized she was being annoying, that’s her business. stop asking me about her!"

he stormed back toward the elevators, leaving the three of them standing in the kitchen, the silence thick and uncomfortable. none of them had the answer, because whenever they tried to ask you during class, you would just give them a polite, entirely neutral smile and change the subject to the upcoming finals. 

you weren't angry at them—you had just removed yourself from katsuki’s entire universe, and because they were his friends, they had been left on the outside of the fence too.

the weeks crawled by, the winter deepening until the ground was permanently covered in a hard, grey crust of frozen slush.

inside your own head, the weight of the vision hadn't fully lifted. you were still down, a quiet, lingering sadness settling into the corners of your thoughts whenever you caught a glimpse of katsuki’s dark winter jacket in the hallway. you were trying your absolute best to keep everything completely professional, to ensure that no part of your old affection leaked through into your current work. 

it was exhausting, like constantly holding a shield up against a wind that wasn't even blowing anymore. you had to think about every step, every word, making sure your voice stayed flat, making sure your eyes never drifted to the blond hair three rows ahead of you.

then came the late january practical.

the class was lined up in gym gamma, the massive concrete structures towering above them like artificial cliffs. aizawa stood at the front, his yellow sleeping bag slung over his shoulder, his bloodshot eyes scanning the rows of students.

"today's exercise is a standard extraction and containment drill," aizawa announced, his voice flat. "close-quarters combat in a collapsing urban environment. the pairs have been determined by your mid-term performance metrics to balance support and offensive capabilities. when i call your names, move to your designated entry point."

you waited, your fingers curling around the strap of your gear bag. you heard katsuki’s name called with kaminari, a heavy sigh escaping the blonde boy as he grumbled about having to carry the idiot through a concrete maze.

"pair five," aizawa’s voice cut through your thoughts. "todoroki and l/n. entry point south."

you blinked, looking over at the half-hot, half-cold boy standing a few paces away. shoto was already looking at you, his heterochromatic eyes calm and completely unreadable. he gave you a small, single nod of acknowledgement.

"right," you muttered, your chest loosening just a fraction. todoroki was quiet. he didn't ask questions, he didn't participate in the dorm gossip, and he was efficient. it was exactly the kind of pairing you needed right now—someone who wouldn't try to look beneath the surface of your current silence.

as you walked past the center line to join shoto, your shoulder brushed past katsuki, who was waiting for his own route to be called.

he didn't move out of the way. his head was turned toward you, his teeth bared in a silent, tense scowl that seemed to radiate from him like heat waves. his eyes tracked you as you took your place next to todoroki, his gaze dropping to the way shoto immediately leaned slightly toward you to check the map on your wrist device.

"the terrain is heavy on the eastern flank," todoroki said, his low voice carrying clearly across the short distance between the pairs. "i can build an ice ramp to clear the first three stories if your gear can handle the low temperature."

"it can," you replied, your voice light, regular, and free of the heavy caution you always used when katsuki was near. "the new heat-coils in my boots should keep the ice from freezing the joints. let’s do that."

katsuki watched the way you looked up at todoroki—not with the soft, intense longing you used to give him, but with a comfortable, completely relaxed ease that he hadn't seen on your face in months. you weren't on guard with the half-and-half bastard. you weren't trying to shrink yourself to avoid a fight.

a sudden, violent spark popped from katsuki’s right palm, the sharp snap of the explosion loud against the concrete floor of the gym.

"everyone, pay attention," aizawa snapped from the front.

katsuki didn't look at the teacher. his eyes were still locked onto the back of your uniform as you and todoroki turned toward the southern gate, his chest burning with a strange, dark fury that had nothing to do with the training drill.

—

who knew that a simple paired activity would bloom into something resembling friends had happened without either of you making a conscious effort. todoroki was like a quiet room after a long day of shouting—he didn't require you to fill the silence with explanations, and he never pushed against the boundaries you had so carefully built around yourself over the last two months.

it was nearly eleven at night, and the u.a. dorm kitchen was entirely dark save for the warm, yellow glow of the pendant light hanging over the central island. the rest of the class had gone upstairs hours ago, leaving only the two of you surrounded by open textbooks, scattered sheets of graph paper, and two half-empty mugs of barley tea.

you were staring down at a complex statistical breakdown of hero response times, the numbers blurring together under the weight of your own exhaustion. across from you, shoto was mechanically flipping a page in his notebook, his movements rhythmic and calm.

"you're staring at the same line," shoto said softly, breaking the silence without looking up from his text. "you've been on that paragraph for ten minutes."

you blinked, pulling your shoulders back with a small, self-deprecating laugh. "yeah. sorry. my brain is just a little fried tonight, i guess."

"you don't have to apologize," he said. he set his mechanical pencil down on the wood, the small click sounding loud in the quiet kitchen. he reached for his mug, took a slow sip, and then fixed his heterochromatic eyes directly on yours. 

"can i ask you something?"

"sure," you murmured, closing your textbook halfway. "what is it?"

"what happened to you and bakugo?"

the question felt like a sudden drop in temperature. your fingers tightened instantly around the edge of your notebook, the cardboard bending under your thumb. you looked away, your gaze dropping to the dark liquid in your mug, your chest tightening into that familiar, suffocating knot. you hadn't expected it from him—not because shoto was incapable of noticing things, but because he usually kept his observations to himself.

"i..." you started, your voice catching in your throat. a wave of hot embarrassment rushed up your neck. how could you possibly explain it? how could you tell the top student in your class—someone whose life was defined by concrete reality and immense pressure—that you had altered your entire existence because of a thirty-second vision from a low-tier villain's quirk?

"you don't have to tell me if it's uncomfortable," shoto added, his tone remaining perfectly level, entirely devoid of the mocking edge katsuki always used. "i was just curious. the change was very abrupt. everyone noticed, even if they don't say it to your face."

"it's not... it's just..." you swallowed hard, staring at the grain of the wooden counter. "it's stupid, shoto. you're going to think i'm completely weird. or pathetic. or both."

shoto leaned back slightly in his stool, his arms crossing over his chest. he didn't look amused, and he didn't look judgmental. he just looked at you with that steady, unchanging patience. "i have a father who used a marriage contract to breed a child with specific elements, and i spent the first fifteen years of my life refusing to use half my body out of spite. i don't think you could say anything that would make me think you are the pathetic one here."

the bluntness of his statement brought a tiny, weak smile to your lips, though the sadness behind it remained heavy. you took a deep breath, the cold winter air outside rattling the kitchen window panes.

"during the mid-term internships... i got hit by a temporal displacement quirk," you whispered, keeping your eyes fixed on your lap. "the doctor said it projects your consciousness twelve months into your most probable future. for roughly thirty seconds."

shoto nodded slowly. "are you physically hurt that time?”

"no, i didn't," you said, your voice cracking slightly. you rubbed the back of your hand against your forehead, trying to blink away the sudden prickle of tears that always came when you thought about it too much. "but i saw him. i saw katsuki. it was next winter—i think it was around this time next year. we were standing outside a convenience store in the middle of a snowstorm."

you paused, the memory filling your head with terrifying clarity—the dark winter jacket katsuki wore, the cold finality in his red eyes, the sound of his rough voice cutting through the quiet night.

"he rejected me," you said, the words tasting like lead on your tongue. "but it wasn't like his usual shouting. he was just... done with me. he told me he didn't want my notes, or my drinks, or my smiles. and he told me that he was already looking at someone else. a girl from the best jeanist agency. he said she was smart, and she didn't make things weird, and that he was the one pursuing her."

you finally looked up at shoto, your eyes wet and vulnerable, looking for any sign of ridicule. "it hurt so bad, sho. even though it hadn't happened yet, the version of him in that vision looked at me with so much indifference. he looked at me like i was an absolute waste of his time. and so when i came back to the present, i just... i couldn't do it anymore. i realized that every little thing i was doing, every time i followed him or tried to show him i cared, i was just building up to that exact moment in the snow. so i stopped. i pulled back before he could hate me that much."

shoto remained completely still for a long moment, the only sound between you being the low hum of the refrigerator. he didn't call you crazy, and he didn't tell you that you were overreacting to a future that hadn't even happened yet. he just looked at you, his heterochromatic eyes holding a deep, unblinking understanding.

"that sounds incredibly lonely," shoto said quietly.

the simplicity of his validation broke something inside you. the walls you had built so carefully over the past two months suddenly cracked, and a single tear slipped down your cheek, quickly followed by another. you tried to wipe them away with the sleeve of your sweater, but the movement only seemed to loosen the dam. 

your shoulders began to tremble, the raw, open wound of a heartbreak you were still carrying finally spilling over.

shoto watched you for a second before he slowly stood up from his stool. he stepped around the corner of the kitchen island, stopping a few feet away from you. he didn't look uncomfortable with your tears, he just looked steady.

"would you... like a hug?" he asked, his voice dropping to a soft, hesitant murmur.

you looked up through your blurred vision, your throat tight and aching. you felt so vulnerable, so small in the middle of the dark kitchen, still mourning a love that had never been yours to keep. "is it... is it really okay?" you whispered, your voice cracking. "i don't want to make things weird."

"it's okay," shoto said, offering a small, reassuring nod. "it's not weird."

with a shaky breath, you leaned forward, letting your forehead rest against his chest as his arms came around you. shoto’s embrace was warm and solid—one side of him radiating a gentle, comforting heat that seemed to melt some of the icy loneliness that had been trapped in your chest for weeks. you gripped the fabric of his shirt, burying your face into his shoulder as you finally let yourself weep, the quiet, muffled sobs shaking your entire frame.

during that moment, neither of you heard the faint, heavy scuff of bare feet coming down the stairs.

katsuki was holding an empty plastic ice bag in his left hand, his right hand gripping his shoulder where a deep muscle strain from his afternoon blast-training was throbbing with a dull, persistent ache. he had come down with the sole intention of raiding the freezer, completely unconcerned with whoever might be up late.

but as he stepped past the threshold of the dining hall, he froze.

the kitchen light cast a long, bright rectangle across the dark floorboards, and right in the center of it stood shoto and you.

katsuki’s breath hitched in his throat. from where he was standing in the shadows, he couldn't hear the words you had spoken, and he couldn't see your face. all he could see was the way you were completely tucked into the half-and-half bastard’s space, your fingers curled tightly into the cloth of his shirt. katsuki could see the rhythmic, painful hitch of your shoulders, and the faint, heartbreaking sound of your crying cutting through the quiet night.

shoto’s hand was resting gently on the back of your head, holding you close, his chin resting against your hair as he let you fall apart against him.

the plastic ice bag in katsuki's grip crinkled loudly under a sudden, violent contraction of his fist, but the sound was completely swallowed by the noise of your sobs. a strange, suffocating heat rushed up his throat, turning into a cold, heavy weight right in the center of his stomach.

he didn't storm in. he didn't launch an explosion or yell at you both to get out of his way. for the first time in his life, katsuki felt entirely paralyzed, his red eyes wide as he stared at the sight of you seeking comfort in the arms of someone who wasn't him. you had never cried like that around him. you had never asked him for anything.

realizing he was standing in the dark like a ghost, katsuki slowly, silently backed away into the shadows of the hallway, his boots making no sound as he retreated toward the elevators. his hand was still clamped tight over his aching shoulder, but as he looked down at his own palms in the dim light, the physical pain felt completely distant compared to the raw, jarring emptiness currently tearing through his chest.

the next morning arrived with the heavy, uninviting grey of a mid-winter dawn. the sun barely managed to break through the thick layer of clouds, casting a dull, flat light across the academy grounds.

when the first bell rang for homeroom, the classroom was filled with the usual morning hum. you walked in a few minutes early, your eyes slightly puffy but your posture entirely composed. you had spent an hour in front of your bathroom mirror making sure you looked normal, ensuring that the raw, exhausting breakdown from the kitchen left no visible traces. you slid into your seat, immediately opening your notebook to review your english vocabulary before present mic could start his lecture.

shoto entered shortly after. as he walked past your row, his eyes met yours for a brief, silent second. he didn't make a big deal out of it, and he didn't mention the night before, he simply gave you another one of his small, steady nods before continuing down the aisle to his own desk. you felt a faint, genuine warmth touch your chest. the weight hadn't fully vanished, but having someone know the truth made the air in the room feel a little lighter.

katsuki was already at his desk, sitting sideways with one leg kicked out into the aisle, his chin buried in his palm as he stared out the window.

except he wasn't looking at the courtyard.

the moment your boots had clicked against the linoleum flooring of the room, his entire body had gone completely rigid. from the corner of his eye, he had watched you walk in. he had seen the subtle, silent exchange between you and the half-and-half bastard. his jaw tightened so hard the bone looked sharp beneath his skin, his red eyes narrowing into a fierce, burning glare that remained fixed on the side of shoto’s head.

the vision from the night before was still scorched into his brain. every time he closed his eyes, he saw the yellow light of the kitchen, the way your fingers had been knotted into shoto's shirt, and the muffled, painful sound of your crying. it had driven him crazy all night, keeping him tossing and turning until his bedsheets were a tangled mess.

why the hell was she crying like that?

he wanted to stomp over to your desk, rip your notebook out of your hands, and demand to know what happened. he wanted to corner the icy-hot bastard in the hallway and blast him through the drywall for putting his hands on you. but as he stared at the back of your uniform, the cold reality of the situation kept him nailed to his chair. he had no right to ask. he had spent over a year telling you to leave him alone, and now that you had finally done it, he was entirely locked out of your life.

when the lunch bell rang, the transition was instant. you stood up, sliding your pencil case into your bag with quiet, deliberate movements before walking toward the door.

"hey," shoto’s low voice cut through the noise of scraping chairs. he had moved up from his row, holding a small stack of reference guides from the library. "the notes for the practical are here. do you want to look over the terrain layouts during the break?"

"yeah, let's do that," you said, giving him a small, tired smile that actually reached your eyes. "the cafeteria is probably packed anyway. we can grab a bench near the support lockers."

as the two of you turned to leave the classroom together, katsuki stood up so violently his chair screeched against the floor, drawing a few startled glances from kaminari and mina. he didn't say a word to his friends. he shoved his hands deep into his uniform pockets and stormed out into the hallway, trailing a several paces behind you and shoto under the guise of heading toward the vending machines.

the hallway was crowded, filled with students from the general studies tracks, but katsuki’s eyes never left your shoulders.

he watched the way you walked next to shoto. you weren't keeping that stiff, professional three-pace distance that you always used whenever you were forced to interact with him. your shoulder brushed against shoto's arm as you pointed at something in the booklet, your laughter quiet but free. you looked completely relaxed, entirely safe within the boundaries of the friendship you were building with someone else.

the prickly, explosive heat in katsuki's palms began to spark, a tiny, muffled pop sounding was attempting to escape inside his pockets.

he hated it. he hated every single second of it. he had wanted the silence, he had wanted the space, but he had never wanted you to look at someone else the way you used to look at him. he had never wanted to become the stranger in the room while the half-and-half bastard got to hold you while you wept in the dark.

—

the days bled into a freezing february, the winter air growing so sharp that every breath felt like inhaling glass. on campus, the new dynamic became a permanent fixture. 

everyone had grown used to seeing you and shoto together in the library, or tucked away on a bench near the training grounds with a shared notebook between you. it was a quiet, easy friendship that required no explanations, and for the first time in months, your chest didn't feel like it was constantly collapsing under the weight of your own thoughts.

katsuki, however, was running entirely on fumes.

the irritation that usually defined him had curdled into something much darker and more volatile. his training sessions became increasingly brutal—he was throwing vertical bursts with so much force that the concrete walls of gym gamma were permanently scorched, his palms raw and bleeding beneath his gauntlets because he refused to stop when the timer ended. his friends had learned to give him a wide berth, the usual teasing completely dying out whenever his red eyes flicked toward the kitchen door.

it was a tuesday afternoon when the rain started—a freezing, miserable downpour that turned the slush on the ground into dangerous, slick ice.

you were walking back from the main building alone, having stayed behind to drop off a research report for your homeroom requirements. the sky was almost black, the streetlamps along the path flickering to life early against the gloom. you had your umbrella tilted forward to block the wind, your chin buried in a thick knit scarf, your boots crunching softly against the frozen gravel.

"oi."

the voice came out of the grey dark, low and rough, slicing through the heavy sound of the rain against your umbrella.

you stopped dead in your tracks. your fingers tightened around the plastic handle as you slowly lifted the rim of the umbrella.

katsuki was standing five feet away, right under the dim yellow glow of a lamppost. he didn't have an umbrella. his jacket was unzipped, the fabric already soaked through and clinging to his broad shoulders, his blond hair flattened against his forehead by the downpour. water was dripping from the sharp line of his jaw, but his eyes—wide, bloodshot, and fiercely intense, were locked entirely onto yours.

"katsuki?" your voice was small, instantly swallowed by the wind. your heart did a familiar, painful flutter against your ribs, but you forced your expression to remain completely neutral. "what are you doing out here? you're going to catch a cold."

he didn't answer the question. he took two heavy steps forward, his boots splashing through a puddle of ice water, closing the distance between you until he was standing just outside the perimeter of your umbrella. the smell of wet wool and faint ozone drifted over to you.

"why him?" he demanded.

the words were raw, stripped of all his usual arrogant bravado, sounding more like a snarl than a question.

you blinked, your brow furrowing under your wet bangs. "what?"

"the half-and-half bastard," katsuki spat, his fists clenching so hard inside his pockets that you could see his forearms shaking beneath his wet sleeves. "i saw you. in the kitchen. two weeks ago."

your breath hitched, the air freezing in your throat. the memory of that night—the crying, the warmth of shoto’s embrace, the absolute vulnerability of your breakdown rushed back into your mind, making your face turn hot despite the freezing wind. "you... you were there?"

"i saw him holding you," katsuki whispered, his voice dropping into a harsh, ragged register that sounded completely broken. he stepped even closer, his shadow falling completely over you, his red eyes searching your face with a kind of desperate, angry confusion that you had never seen in him before. 

"you were crying into his goddamn shirt like the world was ending. you've never looked at me like that. you've never asked me for a single thing, but you let him touch you?"

you stared at him, your heart hammering against your chest like a trapped bird. for months, you had run yourself ragged trying to maintain the perfect, professional distance, trying to convince yourself that he was better off without you. and now here he was, freezing in the rain, looking at you like you were the one who had torn him apart.

"it has nothing to do with you, katsuki," you said softly, your voice trembling slightly as you tried to steady your grip on the umbrella. "shoto is just my friend. he was helping me."

"like hell it doesn't have to do with me!" he roared, the sudden explosion of his voice making you flinch. he took another step, his face only inches from yours now, the heat radiating from his skin cutting through the freezing air. "you spent a whole year suffocating me, and then you just fucking walked away? you look at me like i'm a piece of furniture in the room? what did i said to make you act like this? i didn't tell you to go find someone else to cling to!"

"you told me to get out of your face!" you finally snapped, the collective weight of the past two months breaking through your calm exterior. your eyes filled with hot, furious tears, staring straight back into his angry gaze. "you told me to stop. you told me i was annoying! i was just finally giving you exactly what you wanted!"

"but i didn't want you to look at him!" katsuki yelled back, his chest heaving as he stared down at you, the rain pouring down his face like tears he would never allow himself to cry. "and i…i didn't want you to stop!"

the silence that followed was deafening, filled only with the heavy, rhythmic drumming of the rain against your umbrella.

katsuki froze, his own words hanging in the freezing air between you, naked and unfixable. his jaw worked silently, his breath coming in short, white plumes as he realized what he had just admitted out loud. he didn't want the silence. he had never wanted the space. he had just been too stupid, too proud, and too angry to realize that the orbit he had spent a year complaining about was the only thing keeping him grounded.

you looked at him, the tears finally overflowing and running down your cheeks, mixing with the damp mist of the storm. you saw the dark winter jacket. you saw the snow starting to mix with the rain. it looked so much like the vision, but his eyes were entirely different—there was no indifference here. there was only a raw, terrifying desperation.

"it's too late, katsuki," you whispered, your voice breaking as you lowered your umbrella slightly between you, creating a wall of plastic and wire. "i can't do it anymore. i'm too tired."

you turned around, your boots crunching heavily on the ice as you walked away toward the dorms, leaving him standing completely alone under the flickering yellow light, the freezing rain soaking him to the bone.

after you walked away, katsuki didn't move.

the freezing rain continued to pelt his face, turning the blond spikes of his hair into a heavy, dark mat against his forehead. his hands remained jammed deep inside his uniform pockets, his fingers curled so tightly that his short nails bit into his palms until the skin nearly broke. he stood perfectly still under the flickering yellow glow of the lamppost, watching your silhouette grow smaller and smaller until the dark silhouette of the u.a. dorms swallowed you entirely.

the silence you left behind was heavy, suffocating, and louder than any explosion he had ever set off.

when he finally dragged his feet back to the building, his boots were waterlogged, leaving dull, muddy streaks across the linoleum floor of the entrance. he didn't check his cubby. he didn't stop in the kitchen, ignoring the quiet murmur of voices coming from the common area where the rest of the squad was sitting.

"hey, baku—" kirishima started, lifting a hand from the couch, but the words died in his throat the moment he caught a glimpse of katsuki's face.

katsuki looked like a dead man walking. his skin was pale, his lips slightly blue from the cold, and his red eyes were fixed entirely on the floor ahead of him. he walked straight past them toward the stairs, his wet clothes dripping onto the carpet with a slow, rhythmic pat.

inside his room, he didn't turn on the lights. he didn't even bother stripping off the soaked uniform jacket. he just dropped down onto the floor, his back sliding against the wood of his closet door until his knees hit his chest.

his whole body was shaking, but it wasn't from the freezing rain. it was from a violent, roaring panic that he had never felt in his entire life.

i didn't want you to stop.

the admission still tasted like ash on his tongue. he had said it. he had let the words slip past his teeth, naked and pathetic, and it hadn't changed a single thing. you had still looked at him with those tired, watery eyes. you had still drawn that umbrella between you like a border wall and walked away.

he pulled his hands out of his pockets and stared at his palms in the dark. they were white, wrinkly from the water, and completely cold. for the first time since his quirk had manifested, he couldn't even manage a single spark. his sweat glands felt frozen, his chest tightening until every intake of air felt like a physical struggle.

for over a year, he had treated your presence like an annoying background noise, a constant that he could push away whenever his pride demanded it because he assumed you would always be there when he turned back around. he had thought he was the one holding all the power, the one granting you permission to exist in his space.

but as he sat alone in the dark, the freezing dampness of his jacket seeping into his skin, the truth stripped him bare: he had never been the one in control. you had given him everything voluntarily, and the moment you decided to take it back, his whole world had tilted on its axis. he had gotten exactly what he asked for—absolute, unbroken silence—and it was killing him.

by the next week, the weather had hardened into a bitter, unchanging frost, and inside the u.a. halls, your voice seemed to vanish entirely.

if you had been quiet before, you were a shadow now. you still showed up to class early, your uniform perfectly pressed and your books organized, but the small, polite smiles you used to give the other girls had completely disappeared. during lectures, you kept your head down, your pen moving across the paper with a mechanical, frantic speed that looked more like an escape mechanism than note-taking. at lunch, you didn't even go to the cafeteria anymore, you just sat on the stairs leading to the roof, staring down at a cold bento box you barely touched.

shoto noticed the change on the very first day.

he sat two rows behind you, his eyes tracking the slight, tense slouch of your shoulders. when you walked together toward the training grounds, you didn't talk about the strategy maps or joke about the terrain anymore. you just walked, your gaze locked onto the concrete three feet ahead of you, your face completely blank.

it was a thursday afternoon during a study period in the library when shoto finally decided to push past his usual reserve. the room was empty save for the elderly librarian three rows down.

"you're writing the same kanji over and over," shoto said, his low voice breaking the heavy silence of the corner table.

you paused, your mechanical pencil hovering over the paper. he was right. you had scribbled the same vocabulary word in the margin of your notebook until the graphite had torn through the page.

"sorry," you whispered, your voice sounding thin, like paper that had been left out in the sun too long. "i'm just... a little distracted today."

shoto didn't look back at his own work. he leaned forward, closing his book with a soft thud, his heterochromatic eyes fixed entirely on your face. the dark circles under your eyes were prominent, and your fingers were trembling slightly against the plastic casing of your pencil.

"did something happen?" he asked, his tone steady but carrying a rare, distinct edge of worry. "with him again?"

you didn't answer right away. you looked down at the torn paper, your throat tightening into that familiar, painful knot. the memory of katsuki standing in the freezing rain, his face soaked and his eyes wide with that desperate, broken anger, rushed back into your mind. you had tried so hard to protect yourself from the future rejection, but the present felt just as messy, just as ruined.

"he saw us," you murmured, your voice barely audible. "that night in the kitchen. he saw me crying."

shoto's brow furrowed slightly, his posture shifting. "did he say something to you?"

"he cornered me in the rain a few days ago," you said, a single, shaky breath escaping your lips. "he was angry. he asked why i let you hold me when i never asked him for anything. he told me... he told me he didn't want me to stop following him."

you finally lifted your eyes to meet shoto's, and the sheer, exhausted misery in them made the half-hot, half-cold boy's chest tighten.

"it doesn't make sense, shoto," you whispered, a hot tear finally spilling over your lashes. "the quirk showed me what he's going to say next year. it showed me that he's going to find someone else at best jeanist's agency and tell me to clear out. so why is he saying this now? why is he acting like i'm the one breaking his heart when he's the one who doesn't want it?"

shoto listened to your words, his heterochromatic eyes tracking the slow path of the tear down your cheek. he didn't interrupt, nor did he offer any hollow platitudes. he simply sat there, a solid and unmoving presence in the quiet library corner, letting the weight of your confusion settle between you.

"because he doesn't know what he wants until it's completely out of his reach," shoto said finally, his low voice carrying a cold, grounded logic. "bakugo has always lived in a world where everything belongs to him by default. his quirk, his spot at the top of the class, and your attention. he thought your affection was a fixed rule of his universe. now that you've broken that rule, he's panicking."

you let out a wet, shaky breath, leaning your forehead against the cool wood of the library table. "but the vision... the timeline is already happening. the weather, the clothes, the best jeanist internship. it’s all exactly the same. how can he be panicking now if he’s just going to reject me like a stranger next year?"

"the quirk showed you the most probable future based on who you both were two months ago," shoto countered gently, his hand moving slightly across the table, not quite touching yours but remaining close enough to offer comfort. "it didn't account for what would happen if you walked away early. you changed the variables. you forced him to face the silence before he was ready, and now he’s breaking."

you didn't answer. you just closed your eyes, the image of katsuki in the rain—shouting, desperate, and entirely stripped of his armor—refusing to leave your mind. you had pulled back to save your own heart, but it felt like you had accidentally triggered a different kind of landslide altogether.

the final bell for the day rang an hour later, signaling the start of the weekend. the classroom emptied out quickly, the students eager to escape the suffocating heat of the u.a. radiators and the freezing slush waiting for them outside.

you walked back to the dorms a few paces behind shoto, your eyes fixed onto the frozen gravel of the path. when you entered the common room, the atmosphere was thick.

katsuki was sitting on the main sofa. he wasn't looking at his phone, he wasn't yelling at kaminari, and he wasn't looking at a training manual. he was just sitting there, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands loosely clasped together as he stared blankly at the dark screen of the television. his uniform jacket was gone, replaced by a simple black shirt that showed the tense, rigid line of his shoulders.

the moment the front door clicked open, his head snapped up.

his red eyes bypassed shoto entirely, locking onto your face with a fierce, burning intensity that made the breath catch in your throat. there was no anger in his gaze this time—only a raw, sleepless desperation that made him look completely hollowed out. the dark circles under his eyes matched yours perfectly.

you immediately dropped your gaze, your posture freezing as you tried to step around the back of the couch to reach the elevators.

"hey," mina called out from the kitchen island, holding up a flyer. "the support department is doing a gear showcase tomorrow morning in ground beta. a bunch of us are going to look at the new armor specs. you want to come with?"

you stopped near the elevator button, your fingers tightening around the strap of your bag. before you could answer, you felt katsuki's presence shift behind you. he had stood up from the couch, his whole body turned toward you, his chest heaving silently as he waited for your response. he was practically vibrating with the urge to say something, his jaw clenching and unclenching in the tense silence.

"i... i think i'm going to pass, mina," you said softly, your voice small and careful as you kept your back turned to the room. "i have a lot of reading to catch up on for my research methods class. i'll probably just stay in my room tomorrow."

the elevator doors slid open with a soft chime. you stepped inside, quickly hitting the button for your floor.

as the metal doors began to slide shut, you finally lifted your eyes. through the closing gap, you saw katsuki standing right at the edge of the carpet, his hand extended slightly forward as if he had reached out to grab the air you had just left behind. his face was twisted in a silent, agonizing frustration, his red eyes wide and pleading as the doors clicked shut, locking him out once again.

the next morning, the u.a. dorms were quiet. by nine o’clock, most of the class had already headed out to ground beta for the support department's showcase, their loud chatter and heavy footsteps fading down the driveway until only a heavy, winter silence remained in the hallways.

true to your word, you hadn't left your room. you were tangled in your blankets, the blinds drawn tight to block out the harsh, white glare of the snow outside. your head was throbbing with a dull, persistent ache, and a sudden wave of nausea had hit you the moment you tried to sit up. the weeks of constant stress, sleepless nights, and the exhausting effort of keeping your walls up had finally caught up to your body, leaving you completely drained and lightheaded.

downstairs, katsuki had been pacing the common room like a caged animal since dawn. he had refused to go to the showcase, ignoring kirishima’s repeated attempts to drag him along. his mind was completely fixed on one thing: you were up there, alone, and for the first time in months, the half-and-half bastard wasn't trailing behind you.

this was his chance.

he took the stairs two at a time, his heart hammering against his ribs with a violent, erratic rhythm. by the time he reached your floor, his palms were sweating, the familiar chemical scent of his quirk faint in the cold air of the corridor. he stopped outside your door, his fist hovering over the wood for a long, agonizing second before he finally let it drop, knocking three times.

"oi," he called out, his voice rough and unpolished, stripped of its usual volume. "open up. we're talking.”

there was a brief rustle from inside, followed by the sound of the lock clicking. katsuki braced himself, his jaw tightening as the knob turned and the door swung inward.

"i told you, i brought the non-drowsy kind so take it—"

the words died instantly in katsuki’s throat, his red eyes widening in a sudden, violent shock.

standing on the other side of the threshold wasn't you. it was shoto. the dual-colored boy was holding a white plastic cup of water in one hand and a small blister pack of medicine in the other, his expression completely flat as he looked directly into katsuki's furious gaze.

"what the fuck are you doing in here?" katsuki snarled, the blood rushing to his face so fast his vision swam. the explosive heat in his palms sparked instantly, a sharp crack echoing in the narrow hallway. he tried to push past shoto’s shoulder, his entire frame vibrating with a dangerous, volatile rage. "get the hell out of her room, icy-hot!"

shoto didn't flinch. he shifted his weight, his broad shoulder completely blocking the doorway, keeping katsuki on the outside. "keep your voice down, bakugo."

"i don't give a shit! why are you in her room?"

"she texted me because she was nauseous and lightheaded," shoto replied, his low voice entirely steady, acting like oil on katsuki's roaring fire. "i went to the recovery girl's office to get her something for the fever. i was just handing it to her."

"she could've asked anyone else," katsuki hissed, his teeth bared as he stepped closer, his chest pressing against shoto's boundary line. his voice shook with a raw, ugly jealousy that he couldn't hide anymore. "she doesn't need you playing nurse. she didn't ask you for anything."

"are you her boyfriend? because if it's not me, who then? you?” shoto countered, his heterochromatic eyes narrowing just a fraction, matching katsuki's intensity with a cold, protective gravity. “also, if i'm not mistaken, you made it clear you didn't want her. so stop lurking in her hallway like you have a right to be angry."

"you don't know shit about what i want!"

"you're right. but i know what you did, bakugo. you hurt her.” shoto said plainly.

the words hit katsuki like a physical blow, his jaw locking as he stared at the half-and-half bastard. from the bed inside the darkened room, a small, weak voice finally cut through the rising tension.

"shoto...?" you murmured, your head peeking out from beneath the blankets, your face pale and your eyes wide with anxiety as you saw katsuki standing in the doorway. "what's going on?"

shoto glanced back over his shoulder, his expression instantly softening. he looked back at katsuki, then back to you, taking a slow, deliberate breath.

"it seems that bakugo wants to talk to you," shoto said quietly, turning around to set the water and the medicine down on your desk near the door. "i'm going to go back to the ground beta. take the medicine if the room starts spinning again."

you swallowed hard, your fingers gripping the edge of your blanket as you looked past him to katsuki, who was standing perfectly still in the hall, his red eyes fixed on you with a desperate, pleading look that looked almost painful.

"okay," you whispered softly. "thank you, shoto."

shoto gave you a single, reassuring nod before turning back to the door. as he brushed past katsuki to leave, he paused for a brief, silent second, his voice dropping so low only the blonde boy could hear it. "don't make it worse."

katsuki didn't answer. he waited until shoto's footsteps faded down the corridor and the elevator door clicked shut before he finally stepped into your room, closing the door behind him with a soft, careful click that felt entirely heavy in the quiet space.

the silence returned, thick and suffocating. katsuki stayed by the door, his hands deep in his pockets, his broad shoulders slightly hunched as he looked at you sitting on the edge of the mattress. without the rain or the classroom grid between you, the distance felt incredibly fragile.

"you're sick?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly on the words, sounding completely stripped of the anger from a moment ago.

"i'm just tired," you said softly, keeping your eyes fixed on your lap, your hands tracing the pattern of the blanket. "my head hurts. why are you here?"

he took a slow, hesitant step forward, his indoor slippers making no sound on your rug. he looked down at the small blister pack shoto had left on the desk, then back to the pale curve of your face.

"i came because you wouldn't look at me," he whispered, the admission coming out raw and unbidden, his red eyes wide and entirely vulnerable in the dim light of your room. "and because i can't goddamn breathe with you acting like i'm dead."

he took another step closer, his indoor slippers finally coming to a halt just a foot away from the edge of your mattress. the towering, invincible shadow he usually cast over everyone felt completely different right now, it was heavy with a desperate, sleepless weight that seemed to match the quiet twilight of your bedroom.

you didn't lift your head. you kept your eyes fixed on the small white pills sitting on your desk, your voice barely louder than a breath. "like i said before, you told me you wanted space, katsuki. you told me i was suffocating you. i'm just doing what you asked for. i'm not trying to make you miserable."

"well, it's not fucking working!"

the shout slipped past his teeth before he could stop it, sharp and violent, but it lacked any real venom. it was the sound of someone drowning, a sudden burst of panicked air that made his shoulders hitch. katsuki dropped his head, his blond bangs falling forward to shield his face as his hands came out of his pockets. his fingers were trembling slightly, his palms pale and devoid of the usual heat that defined him.

"you think i wanted this?" he whispered, his voice cracking as he looked down at the neat, undisturbed corners of your duvet. "you think i wanted to walk into the classroom every morning and have you look straight through me like i’m a piece of scrap metal? you think i wanted to watch the half-and-half bastard hold you in the middle of the night while you cried your eyes out?"

your heart gave a sharp, painful twist at his words, your fingers tightening into the fabric of your blanket. you finally lifted your head, your pale face and dull, exhausted eyes meeting his frantic, bloodshot gaze. "you were the one who always pushed me away. every single time i tried to show you that i cared, you treated me like i was an embarrassment. like i was a waste of your time."

"because i was an idiot!" he snarled, the raw honesty of the word tearing out of his throat like iron. he took a final, reckless step forward, his knees hitting the hard wood of the floorboards right beside your bed. he didn't pull back—he leaned his forearms against the edge of your mattress, looking up at you from below with a fierce, agonizing intensity that completely laid him bare.

"i didn't know what the hell to do with you," he breathed, his chest heaving under his black t-shirt. "everyone else in this damn school either wants to compete with me or stays out of my way because they're afraid of my blasts.”

“but you...you just kept showing up. you didn't care when i snapped, and you didn't care when i was a bastard. you were just there. and i got stupid. i thought it was a rule. i thought no matter how hard i pushed, you’d stay three steps behind me because that’s just how it was."

he reached out, his hand hovering over the blanket near your lap for a fraction of a second, his fingers curling inward as if he wanted to grab onto you but was terrified that touching you would make you pull away again.

"then you just walked away,” katsuki whispered, his red eyes wide and hollow in the dim light of your room. "no drinks in the locker. no smiles after training. nothing. you pulled the rug out from under my feet, and now i'm the one who's stuck in the dark."

the room fell into a heavy, suffocating stillness, the only sound being the distant, muffled whistle of the winter wind against your window pane. you stared down at him, your head throbbing with that dull vertigo, but your chest felt entirely hollowed out. you had spent two months mourning a future that hadn't even happened yet, running yourself ragged to protect your heart from the cold, indifferent boy that you saw in that thirty-second vision.

but looking at him now, kneeling on your floor, his knuckles white and his face twisted in a raw, frantic desperation—he didn't look anything like the boy from the convenience store. he didn't look indifferent at all.

"the half-and-half bastard told me you saw something," katsuki said, his voice dropping into a low, raspy rumble that sounded incredibly small in the quiet space. his eyes searched your face, pleading for an answer. "he said you're running away because of some stupid quirk during the midterms. tell me what you saw. tell me what the hell i did in that future that made you give up on me."

you swallowed hard, the dryness in your throat making the movement ache. your eyes drifted from his frantic, bloodshot gaze down to his hands, which were still buried in the fabric of your duvet, holding onto it like it was the only thing keeping him anchored to the floor.

"i saw you," you whispered, your voice small and raspy in the dim twilight of the room. "a year from now. it was the deep of winter, just like this, and we were standing outside a convenience store down the road from the campus gates. you were wearing that dark jacket."

katsuki didn't blink. his breath hitched, his chest freezing mid-rise as he hung on every syllable that left your lips.

"i had spent another entire year following you around," you continued, a fresh, hot tear spilling over your lashes and tracing a slow path down your pale cheek. "leaving things on your desk. trying to show you that i loved you. and you... you were completely done with me. you didn't shout, and you didn't explode. you just looked at me so coldly, katsuki. you told me to stop because you didn't feel a single thing for me."

a small, sharp breath escaped you, the memory of that future heartbreak still tasting like lead on your tongue. "and then you told me that you were already pursuing someone else. a girl from the best jeanist agency where you were interning. you said she was smart, and she kept up with you, and she didn't make things weird like i did…and then, a-and you told me to find someone else to waste my time on."

when you finally looked back up at him, your vision was blurred with tears, but you could still see the violent shift that went through his entire frame.

katsuki looked like he had been struck by a physical blow. his jaw dropped slightly, his face going completely pale as the pieces of the puzzle finished slamming into place inside his head. the best jeanist agency. the winter jacket. the absolute, devastating finality of a rejection he hadn't even given yet.

"that's why," you breathed, your shoulders trembling as you pulled the blanket tighter around yourself, trying to block out the sudden, cold draft that seemed to fill the room. "the doctor said the quirk only projects the most probable future. it showed me that if i kept running after you, if i kept letting you treat me like an extra, i was just going to lead myself straight to that night in the snow. that's why i was so hurt, katsuki. and i am still so hurt. so i pulled back. i decided to give you the silence you wanted before you could hate me that much."

"but i don't hate you, y/n."

the words tore out of his throat, raw and desperate, breaking the heavy quiet of your bedroom like shattering glass. katsuki leaned forward, his hands sliding up the mattress until his knuckles brushed against your thighs through the thick layers of the duvet. his head was shaking, his blond bangs swinging wildly as he looked up at you with a terrifying, agonizing intensity.

"that's not—that future is a fucking lie," he raspy whispered, his teeth grinding together so hard you could hear the bone click. "i don't give a shit about some extra at jeanist's agency. i don't give a shit about any girl there. if that bastard in the vision told you that, it’s because he was still a blind, arrogant piece of shit who didn't realize what he was losing you until your silence hit him."

he reached up, his hand trembling violently as he finally broke the boundary, his bare palm pressing against the side of your mattress, just inches from your fingers. the heat was finally returning to his skin, a fierce, radiating warmth that seemed to fight against the freezing winter outside your window.

"i'm not that bastard anymore," katsuki breathed, his red eyes wide, bloodshot, and completely full of tears that he refused to let fall. "you changed it. the second you stopped looking at me, you broke the whole goddamn timeline. i haven't slept in weeks because my head is full of you. i don't want the silence. i don't want you three paces behind me anymore, either."

he took a deep, ragged breath, his forehead dropping down to rest against the edge of your mattress, right against your hand that was resting on your lap, his broad shoulders shaking with the sheer force of his admission.

"i want you next to me," he whispered into the dark fabric, his voice completely broken. "so don't look at that half-and-half bastard. don't look at anyone else. just... stay here. let me fix it."

the heavy wool of the duvet dampened the sound of his breathing, but you could still feel the rhythmic, desperate hitch of his shoulders against your knee. katsuki stayed there, his forehead pressed hard into the duvet, his knuckles white where they gripped the mattress. he looked completely unraveled, stripped of the explosive pride that usually kept the entire world at arm's length.

you stared down at the crown of his blond hair, your head still swimming with that dull, lightheaded ache. the white pills shoto had left on the desk seemed miles away now.

for months, you had carried that thirty-second vision like a death sentence, letting the cold memory of his future indifference dictate every step you took. you had convinced yourself that his nature was an unmoveable concrete wall, that no matter what you did, the universe would always correct itself to that snowy sidewalk outside the convenience store.

but the boy kneeling on your floor right now didn't belong in that vision. the katsuki in your memory had been calm, flat, and entirely detached. but this katsuki was on fire—burning with a raw, agonizing panic that was turning his breath into ragged white plumes in the chilly room.

slowly, with your fingers trembling beneath the edge of the blanket, you slid your hand out from the warmth of the duvet.

you didn't pull away from him. instead, your fingers hovered over his shoulder before gently coming down to rest against the damp black fabric of his shirt. the moment your palm touched him, katsuki went entirely rigid. his breathing hitched, his chest freezing against the side of your mattress as if he were afraid that a single movement would make you lift your hand back up.

"katsuki," you whispered, your voice small and thick with the exhaustion that was still pulling at your limbs. "look at me."

it took him a long, painful second to move. when he finally lifted his head from your lap, his face was pale, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles in his neck looked like wire. his red eyes were wide, bloodshot, and completely glassy, looking up at you with an expression that was so raw it almost hurt to look at.

"i'm not trying to punish you," you said softly, a fresh tear slipping over your lashes and disappearing into the collar of your sweater. "i wasn't doing this to make you beg. i was just... i was so tired of being the only one holding on. it felt like if i didn't let go, i was going to break completely."

katsuki’s teeth ground together, his fingers tightening in the duvet until the fabric creaked under his grip. "i know," he rasped, his voice dropping into a rough, broken register. "i know i'm a bastard. i know i let you carry all of it while i just sat there acting like i was too good for it. but i’m telling you, it’s gone. the second you walked away, the whole damn thing went dark.”

he shifted his weight on the floorboards, his broad shoulders leaning closer until the heat radiating from his skin was cutting right through the space between you. he lifted his right hand from the mattress, his bare palm hovering near your cheek, his fingers twitching with the urge to wipe away the tear that had just fallen.

"let me carry it," he breathed, his red eyes locking onto yours with a fierce, unwavering finality that had nothing to do with the indifference you had seen in the future. "i don't know how to do the soft shit, and i'm probably still gonna be loud and irritate the hell out of you, but i'm not looking at anyone else. there is no one else. it’s just you. it’s always been you."

you looked at his hand, then back into his wide, desperate eyes. the heavy, suffocating knot that had been sitting in your chest since the midterm internships didn't disappear entirely, but for the first time in months, it loosened. the future you had been running from felt like it was finally splintering, cracking under the immense, stubborn force of his current desperation.

"it's going to take a long time, katsuki," you whispered, your fingers shifting slightly on his shoulder, your thumb rubbing a small, hesitant circle into the fabric. "i'm still down. i'm still hurt from what i saw."

"i don't care if it takes the whole goddamn year," katsuki said instantly, his jaw tightening as he finally let his palm settle against the side of your face, his skin warm and solid against your cold cheek. he didn't push, his thumb just resting steady against your skin, anchoring you to him. "i'm not going anywhere. just don't shut the door on me again."

his palm against your cheek was warmer than the radiators humming against the baseboards, a steady, pulsing heat that felt entirely grounded in the present. you let your head tilt just a fraction into his touch, your eyes closing as a long, shaky sigh escaped your lips. 

the room didn't spin anymore—the heavy vertigo that had kept you pinned to the mattress seemed to settle, anchored by the sheer weight of his presence on your floor.

katsuki didn't move his hand. his thumb stayed right beneath your eye, catching the damp edge of another tear before it could track down your face. his breathing was still rough, but the wild, frantic panic in his chest was slowly morphing into something solid—a stubborn refusal to let you slip back into the shadows.

"you need to take those stupid pills," he muttered, his voice dropping into a low, raspy rumble that sounded more familiar, more like himself, though the sharp edge was completely gone. "the half-and-half bastard left 'em on the desk."

"i know," you whispered, slowly opening your eyes. looking at him from this close, without the armor of his scowl or the distance of the classroom, you could see the fine lines of exhaustion around his eyes. he looked just as drained as you were. "i'll take them in a minute."

katsuki’s jaw clenched slightly, his red eyes dropping to your mouth before lifting back up to lock onto yours. "i'm staying here until you do. and i'm staying after."

he shifted his position, pulling his knees up so he was sitting flat on the rug right beside your mattress, his back leaning against the wooden frame of your bed. he didn't take his hand away until he had to move, and even then, his shoulder remained firmly pressed against the side of your mattress, his body heat cutting through the space like a shield against the rest of the dark, quiet dorms.

"you don't have to stay, katsuki," you said softly, though your fingers didn't leave the fabric of his shirt. "you're missing the showcase. your friends are going to wonder where you are."

"let 'em wonder," he snapped, a tiny, faint spark of his usual irritation flickering in his tone before it smoothed out into a quiet finality. "those extras can take his own damn notes. i told you, i'm not going anywhere. if you're staying in this room today, then i'm sitting right here."

you looked down at the spikes of his hair, just inches from your hand. for months, you had been terrified of the timeline, checking every detail—the weather, the jackets, the weeks as they crawled by—waiting for the inevitable hammer to fall. but as you looked at the small blister pack of medicine shoto had left, and then at the boy refusing to leave your floor, you realized the sidewalk outside the convenience store was gone. you hadn't just protected your heart, you had rewritten the entire map.

"okay," you murmured, your fingers finally sliding up from his shoulder to lightly touch the back of his neck, the skin there warm and damp from the winter air he had carried inside. "then stay."

katsuki let out a short, rough breath that sounded suspiciously like a relief, his shoulders finally dropping from their tight, defensive hunch. he didn't say anything else, because for the first time since the winter had started, the silence between you didn't feel like a boundary. it felt like a beginning.

—

the medicine shoto left behind didn’t quite do the trick. because by mid-afternoon, the room had stopped spinning, but it was replaced by a deep, shivering fever that had you curled into a tight ball beneath three layers of blankets. your throat felt like sandpaper, and your skin alternated between burning hot and freezing cold.

katsuki hadn’t moved from his spot on the floor. the only time he stood up was to drag your desk chair right to the edge of the mattress so he could sit level with you, his large frame hunched over as he watched your uneven breathing.

"you're burning up," he muttered, his rough voice dropping to a low, gravelly register that felt surprisingly gentle in the quiet room. his bare palm came down against your forehead, the intense, radiating heat of his skin usually so fierce, but right now it felt like a solid, comforting hearth against your chills. "fucking extra. you ran yourself ragged over nothing."

"it wasn't nothing," you wheezed, your voice barely a squeak from beneath the duvet.

"shut up and save your breath," he snapped softly, though his fingers lingered against your hairline, smoothing back the damp strands of hair that were sticking to your forehead. "i'm getting you some real food. that half-and-half bastard probably bought these pills from a vending machine."

he left the room for ten minutes, the silence he left behind feeling strangely empty now. when the door clicked open again, the rich, savory scent of ginger and scallions drifted into the twilight of your room. katsuki marched back, carrying a tray with a steaming bowl of rice porridge, some pickled plums, and a fresh bottle of water.

he set the tray on your nightstand, then reached under your arms, effortlessly hauling you up against the headboard so you were sitting upright. his chest brushed against your shoulder, and you could feel the steady, rhythmic thud of his heart through his black t-shirt.

"eat," he commanded, holding a spoonful of the hot porridge right in front of your mouth.

"katsuki, i can feed myself," you murmured, your cheeks flushing a brilliant pink that had nothing to do with the fever.

"you can barely keep your eyes open. just open your mouth before i shove it down your throat," he grumbled, but his hand was incredibly steady, blowing on the steam to cool it down before offering it to you again.

your heart did a violent, fluttering flip against your ribs. this was the boy who usually screamed his way through cooking duties in the dorms, yet here he was, carefully measuring the temperature of a spoonful of porridge just so it wouldn't burn your tongue. 

you took the bite, the warm, savory flavor instantly soothing your stomach. a small, involuntary hum of satisfaction escaped you.

katsuki's red eyes softened, a tiny, barely perceptible smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth as he scooped up another portion. "told you. my cooking is ten times better than whatever garbage they have at the infirmary."

just as you swallowed the third spoonful, a soft, rhythmic knock sounded at the door.

katsuki’s shoulders instantly locked. the domestic, quiet warmth in his eyes vanished, replaced by a sudden, dangerous glare as the door opened just a crack.

shoto stood on the threshold, still wearing his training sweatpants, a small thermos held in his scarred left hand. "i brought some barley tea from the kitchen. it's good for hydration when the fever peaks.”

"she don't need your stupid tea, icy-hot," katsuki growled, his voice dropping into a harsh, territorial rumble. he didn't stand up, but he shifted his chair slightly to the left, his broad shoulders completely blocking shoto’s view of you in the bed. "i already made her food. clear out."

shoto didn't move. his heterochromatic eyes drifted over katsuki's shoulder, catching sight of your flushed face and the spoon in katsuki’s hand. a tiny, almost invisible glint of amusement passed through shoto's calm expression. "she looks a little better. did you actually manage not to burn the rice, bakugo?"

"i'll burn the other side of your face if you don't get the fuck out of her doorway!" katsuki hissed, his left palm giving off a tiny, warning pop that smelled faintly of sweet caramel.

"katsuki, stop," you whispered, reaching a weak hand out from under the blanket to tug at the hem of his shirt.

the moment your fingers touched his fabric, the sparks in his hand died instantly. he whipped his head back to look at you, his jaw clenched in absolute frustration, but he didn't yell. he just let out a sharp, irritated huff through his nose, his chest puffing out as he deliberately turned his back to shoto, effectively sealing you into his own personal space.

"i'll leave the thermos on your table," shoto said plainly, his tone completely undisturbed by katsuki’s murderous glare. he gave you a small, reassuring nod. "get some rest, y/n."

the door clicked shut, and the hallway fell silent again.

katsuki sat there for a long moment, his back rigid, his breathing heavy. "fucking bastard," he muttered under his breath. "always lurking around where he doesn't belong."

"are you jealous?" you asked softly, a tiny, genuine smile breaking through your exhaustion as you watched the sharp line of his profile.

"like hell i am!" katsuki snapped, turning back around to face you. his face was flushed a deep, angry red, his eyes wide and fierce as he shoved the spoon back into the bowl. "i just don't want that idiot getting his germs near you when you're already acting like a weakling. now shut up and finish the bowl."

you let out a quiet laugh, the fluttering warmth in your chest expanding until the cold, grey winter outside your room didn't matter at all. you took the next bite from his hand, watching the clumsy, careful way his fingers held the ceramic, realizing that the future you had been so terrified of had been completely melted away by the stubborn heat of his jealousy.

after you finished the last of the porridge, katsuki set the empty bowl on the nightstand with a definitive click. he reached for the water bottle, twisting the cap off with one hand before shoving it into your grasp.

"drink," he muttered, his eyes tracking the slight tremor in your fingers.

you took a few small sips, the cool water soothing your throat, before setting the bottle down on the mattress beside you. the heavy warmth of the food and the residual heat of the fever were making your eyelids grow impossibly heavy again. you slid a little lower against the headboard, the blankets bunching up around your chin.

katsuki stood up, pulling the desk chair back a few inches. for a second, you thought he was going to leave—to finally go back to his own room now that you were fed and medicated. a tiny, involuntary pang of loneliness hit your chest, your fingers twitching against the duvet.

but he didn't walk toward the door.

instead, he kicked his slippers off, tossed his large frame right onto the edge of your mattress, and propped his back up against your headboard. he didn't slide under the covers with you, but he sat close enough that his thigh was pressed flush against your side through the thick layers of the blanket. his presence was like a heavy, immovable weight, throwing off so much natural body heat that your shivering stopped almost instantly.

"katsuki?" you murmured, your voice thick with impending sleep. "what are you doing?"

"go to sleep, extra," he growled low, stretching his long legs out over the mattress. he reached down, his large, rough hand sliding beneath the top layer of the blanket until his fingers found yours. he didn't squeeze, but his palm closed over your knuckles, enveloping your small, cold hand in his fierce, steady warmth. "i told you i wasn't going anywhere."

"you're going to get sick," you whispered, though your fingers were already instinctively curling into his, holding on tight.

"my immune system isn't weak like yours," he snorted, his thumb rubbing a slow, heavy circle over the back of your hand. the movement was entirely domestic, so uncharacteristic of the boy who usually stormed through life breaking things, that it made your heart do that frantic, beautiful flutter all over again. "now stop talking and close your eyes."

you let out a soft hum, your head naturally tilting sideways until your cheek rested against his waist. his muscle was dense and solid beneath the black cotton of his shirt, but he didn't move away. in fact, you felt his whole body relax just a fraction, his shoulder shifting slightly to give your head a better place to rest.

"hey," he muttered after a few minutes of silence, his voice dropping so low it was almost swallowed by the quiet of the room.

"hm?" you breathed, your eyes already closed.

"the half-and-half bastard's tea," katsuki grumbled, his jaw tightening against the top of your hair. "i'm throwing it in the sink downstairs when you wake up."

a quiet, breathless laugh escaped your lips, your nose nudging into his sleeve. "you're so mean."

"i'm serious," he rumbled, his grip on your hand tightening just a fraction, holding you so close that the cold, snowy sidewalk from your vision felt like something from a completely different lifetime. "now sleep."

and under the steady, territorial warmth of his shadow, with his heart beating heavy and rhythmic against your body, you finally drifted off, the future completely rewritten in the quiet of the dark.

the room drifted into an absolute, heavy silence, save for the rhythmic, soft sound of your breathing and the low hum of the u.a. heating system struggling against the february frost outside.

for the first hour, katsuki didn't alter his posture by a single inch. he sat perfectly rigid against your headboard, his legs stretched out over the edge of your mattress, his red eyes wide and unblinking as he stared at the far wall of your room. the dark twilight of the bedroom gradually shifted into the deep, ink-black shadows of a winter evening, but he didn't reach for the lamp. he didn't want the light. he just wanted to feel the solid, undeniable reality of your head resting against him.

every now and then, your frame would give a small, involuntary shiver as the fever ran its course beneath the duvet. whenever you moved, his grip on your hand would instinctively tighten. his large palm remained wrapped completely around your knuckles, his skin throwing off that fierce, radiating heat that had always defined him. he was using his own body like a furnace, deliberately crowding your side to force the chills out of your system.

look at her, his brain kept repeating, a rough, repetitive chant that completely drowned out his usual thoughts of training regimes and combat metrics. look how small she is when she’s not running herself ragged trying to keep up with you.

it was a jarring, uncomfortable realization for him. for over a year, he had viewed your constant presence as a testament to your stubbornness—something unshakeable, a fixed line on his horizon that he could bark at whenever his temper flared. he had never considered the immense amount of energy it took for you to stay there, to keep smiling when he was being a bastard, to keep leaving those specific sports drinks in his locker when he never said thank you. 

you had used all your strength to build a bridge to him, and the moment you burned it down to protect yourself, your body had simply collapsed under the weight of the wreckage.

a sharp, prickly sensation touched the back of his throat, not quite anger, but a raw, aching guilt that made him grind his teeth together until his jaw thunked.

around eight in the evening, your breathing changed. the shallow, rapid huffs of the fever slowed down, your head shifting slightly against his bicep as your eyelids fluttered open. the heavy, suffocating vertigo had finally lifted, leaving your mind clear, though your limbs still felt like water.

"katsuki...?" you murmured, your voice small and raspy from the long sleep.

"i'm here," he rumbled instantly, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register that you had only ever heard him use when he was trying not to wake the rest of the dorms during early morning runs. "stop moving. you're still clammy."

you blinked against the darkness, your eyes adjusting until you could see the sharp, pale line of his jaw just inches above your face. he hadn't moved. his back was probably completely numb from supporting your weight for hours, but he hadn't pulled away.

"what time is it?" you whispered, your fingers shifting inside his grip, testing the solid warmth of his palm.

"past eight," he muttered. he reached out with his free hand, his large fingers fumbling in the dark for the water bottle on the mattress before pressing it against your chest. "drink. all of it. you sweat half your weight out while you were out."

you managed to sit up a fraction, using his arm as a brace as you took a long, grateful swallow from the bottle. the cool liquid felt like heaven against your parched throat. when you set the bottle down, you noticed his eyes were still locked onto your face, tracking your movements with a fierce, unwavering intensity that made your chest do that beautiful, fluttering flip all over again.

"the class is back," you whispered, catching the faint, distant sound of laughter and thumping footsteps echoing from the common room three floors below. "you should go down before they start looking for you."

"don't care," katsuki snapped, though the words lacked any real venom, sounding more like a habitual reflex than an actual complaint. his thumb began to rub that slow, heavy circle across the back of your knuckles again, the texture of his calloused skin rough but incredibly grounding against your fever-softened hands. "kirishima tried to text me three times about some stupid support armor. i deleted the notifications."

you let out a tiny, breathless laugh, leaning your shoulder back against his side. "you're going to get a lecture from aizawa-sensei on monday for skipping mandatory training review."

"i can handle the hobo," he grumbled, his head tilting down until his chin was resting lightly against the crown of your hair. the scent of his quirk—that sharp, sweet smell of caramelized sugar—was heavy in the small space between you, completely replacing the clinical, cold air you had been breathing for weeks. "besides... i told the half-and-half bastard i was staying."

your eyes widened slightly in the dark. "you talked to shoto again?"

"he came back up an hour ago while you were dead to the world," katsuki hissed, his jaw tightening against your hair as his fingers tensed inside yours. the hot, territorial jealousy from earlier returned in a sudden wave, making his chest heave against your shoulder. "had the nerve to knock on the door and ask if you needed more of those white pills. i told him through the wood that if he didn't take his dual-colored ass back to his own wing, i’d blow the elevator shaft completely out of the building."

"katsuki!" you gasped, though a warm, helpless smile was already breaking across your face.

"i didn't use explosions though," he grumbled, a faint, embarrassed flush rising up his neck that you could feel against your cheek. "i kept my voice down so you wouldn't wake up. but i meant it. he needs to stop coming to this floor. he’s got his own goddamn room."

"he was just being nice," you softy chided, your thumb trailing up to press against the side of his wrist, feeling the heavy, steady throb of his pulse. "he knew i was scared of the future. he was the only one who listened to me when i was completely falling apart."

the silence returned, but this time it was different—it was heavy with the weight of his understanding. katsuki didn't snap back. his broad shoulders dropped a fraction, his chest collapsing into a long, ragged sigh that fanned across your bangs.

"i'm listening now," he whispered into the dark room, the words sounding completely stripped of his pride, raw and entirely honest. his hand shifted, his fingers sliding up from your knuckles until his palm was cupping the back of your hand, pressing your fingers flat against his chest right over his heart. the beat beneath his cotton shirt was fast, hard, and completely frantic. "you don't gotta go to him for that shit anymore. you don't gotta go to anyone. if you're scared of the snow, then i'll just stay right here until it's over. i don't care how long it takes."

you stared at the back of his hand in the dim light, the rhythm of his heart vibrating against your palm. for months, you had looked at the calendar with a sense of dread, counting down the days until the january snowstorm that would seal your fate outside that convenience store. but looking at the boy currently holding you like he was terrified the dark would swallow you up, you realized that the future had already cracked into a thousand pieces. the katsuki from your vision was gone, replaced entirely by the fierce, clumsy warmth of the boy kneeling on your floor, refusing to let you go.

"okay," you breathed, your head dropping back onto his shoulder as your eyes slowly closed again, the last traces of the sickness finally fading into a deep, domestic comfort. "then stay."

"i am," he rumbled low, his chin settling back against your hair as he pulled the top blanket higher around your shoulders. "now shut up and go back to sleep, extra. i've got you."

the rest of the night passed in a slow, unbroken rhythm. by the time the clock on your desk ticked past midnight, the fever had entirely broken, leaving your skin cool and your mind completely clear. the heavy, suffocating weight that had been pressing down on your chest since the mid-term internships was gone, replaced by the deep, solid warmth of the boy who still hadn’t left your side.

katsuki had finally shifted, sliding down the headboard until he was lying flat on top of the duvet next to you. he hadn't gotten under the covers—his stubborn pride or some lingering sense of boundaries keeping him on the outside—but his left arm was thrown heavily over your waist, pinning you securely against his chest. his face was buried in the crook of your neck, his hot, even breath flaring against your collarbone with every rise and fall of his chest.

he was fast asleep, his usual tense, defensive scowl completely melted away by exhaustion. without the fierce glare or the sharp, barking voice, he looked younger, stripped entirely of the explosive wall he kept between himself and the rest of the world.

you lay perfectly still in the dark, your fingers lightly tracing the fabric of his sleeve. your heart was still doing that soft, erratic flutter, but it wasn't from fear anymore. it was from the sheer, domestic reality of him.

—

the next morning, the room was flooded with the bright, clean light of a winter saturday. the storm had passed, leaving the campus outside covered in a fresh, blinding layer of white snow that reflected the sun through your blinds.

your eyes fluttered open, the dizziness completely gone. you felt lighter than you had in months. when you tried to stretch your legs, you realized you were still completely trapped under the heavy weight of katsuki's arm.

he was awake, too. his red eyes were half-open, blinking lazily against the morning glare, his jaw resting against your shoulder. the moment he felt you move, his grip around your waist tightened, a low, gravelly grunt escaping his throat.

"stay still," he muttered, his voice incredibly thick from sleep, his forehead dropping back into your neck. "you're still healing, extra."

"katsuki, my fever is gone," you whispered, a small, helpless smile breaking across your face as your fingers slid into the messy, blond spikes of his hair. "i feel completely fine. and the sun is up."

"i don't care about the sun," he grumbled, his voice muffled against your skin. "i'm not letting you go downstairs yet. the squad is down there, and the half-and-half bastard is probably lingering by the kitchen."

as if on cue, the faint sound of the elevator chiming down the hall echoed through the quiet corridor, followed by the heavy, unmistakable stomp of kirishima’s boots approaching your room.

katsuki’s entire body went rigid. his eyes snapped wide open, his head lifting from your shoulder as his ears twitched toward the door.

knock, knock.

"hey, y/n!" kirishima’s voice boomed through the wood, entirely too loud for a Saturday morning. "you in there? mina said you were sick yesterday, so we saved you some of the breakfast sato made! also... uh... have yoy seen bakugo? his room is completely empty and he didn't show up for morning training. we're starting to think he got kidnapped by villains again."

your breath caught in your throat, your face instantly turning a brilliant, burning crimson. you looked up at katsuki, your eyes wide with panic as you pointed toward the closet, silently mouthing, get in there!

katsuki stared at your pointing finger, his jaw clenching as a dark, irritated flush crept up his own neck. but he didn't move toward the closet. in fact, the territorial, arrogant spark that usually defined him rushed back into his eyes with full force. he looked at the door, then down at you, a tiny, dangerous smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

he deliberately leaned across your frame, his broad shoulders completely blocking your view of the rest of the room as he lifted his head toward the door.

"stop bothering us, shitty hair!" katsuki roared, his voice booming through the wooden panels with enough force to rattle the doorknob. "and if you don't take your loud mouth back to the elevator in three seconds, i'm gonna blast your hardening quirk right through the floorboards!"

the silence that followed on the other side of the door was absolute.

you could practically hear the gears grinding in kirishima’s head as he stood in the hallway, processing the low, raspy boom of katsuki's voice coming from inside your bedroom at nine in the morning.

"oh," kirishima’s voice finally came back, sounding completely stunned, dropping into a frantic, hurried whisper. "oh, wow. okay. dynamic entry... uh... sorry! i'm leaving! mina, don't come up here!"

the heavy thud of his boots practically sprinted back down the corridor, the distant chime of the elevator doors closing sounding like a definitive punctuation mark to the silence.

"katsuki!" you cried out, burying your burning face into your hands as a mix of intense embarrassment and helpless laughter shook your shoulders. "why did you say that? now the whole dorm is going to be talking about it by lunch!"

katsuki didn't look remorseful at all. he dropped back down onto the mattress beside you, his long arm sliding right back around your waist to pull you flush against his chest again. the heat radiating from his skin was fierce, proud, and entirely unbothered by the chaos he had just caused.

"and?" he muttered, his thumb tracing a slow, heavy line over your hip through the blankets, his red eyes locking onto yours with a quiet, stubborn finality. "let the whole damn school know. i told you, i'm not hiding in the shadows anymore. if i'm staying next to you, then everybody else can just get the hell out of the way."

you looked at his sharp profile, the bright winter sun catching the edges of his blond hair, and you finally let your hands drop from your face. the convenience store, the dark jacket, the cold words from your vision—they were completely gone, melted away by the roaring, protective fire of the boy who was currently holding you like you were the only thing that mattered in the entire world.

"okay," you whispered, leaning forward to press your forehead against his jaw, your fingers knotting tightly into his black shirt. "then we're staying right here."

"damn right we are," he rumbled low, his chin settling over your head as he closed his eyes, finally completely at peace in the quiet of your room.