#step2

This is Tony Love

From the game- our life beginnings and always

The images are a different step

Frog one is Step 1(age 8)

The bee one is Step 2(age 13)

The purple shirt one is Step 3(age 18)

And the last one is Step 4(age 23)

Here's the picrew

"Don't--don't fucking finish that sentence," Katsuki cuts in, shuddering violently like the word would break him if he let Izuku utter it. "I've never thought you as family, so don't call me that. We're nothing like that. "

Izuku's heart squeezes something fierce. "We’ve known each other our whole lives, we live together under the same roof since we were five, and our parents had just recently remarried each other," he says quietly. "How else am I supposed to look at it?"

A slow crooked smile spreads across Katsuki face, showing too many teeth and the edges cut too deeply for it to not hurt. "Like I'm a man," he answers, pushing Izuku up against the wall. "Now look at me and tell me that this still fucking give you that warm fuzzy familial feeling."

With arms bracketing on either side of Izuku, Katsuki leans into his space till they're nearly sharing the same air, but he doesn't touch him. Doesn't lay a single finger on Izuku, yet he can't help feeling pinned, trapped, under Katsuki's fierce gaze and the ghost of his touch.

"K-Kacchan," Izuku forces out, the name is his benediction and a curse all at once. "You're," he swallows, turning his head away, "not playing fair." His body feels like it's on constant tenterhook, like he'll crumble in Katsuki's arms with just the wrong breath.

"Ha!" Katsuki laughs abruptly, cutting through tense air between them. But it's not funny and they both know it. The sound that passed his lips is hoarse and as dry like he has to dig inside of himself to drag that noise out. "Like you ever been fucking fair to me. You ruined me for anyone else," he spits out, eyes set like twin flames that would burn Izuku on sight

It's dangerous, this heat.

Izuku feels caught, trapped in the firestorm of Katsuki's feverish desire and torment but, closing his eyes in a flutter of a second, he isn't afraid despite pulsing beat of his heart.

This, whatever it is, feels dangerous, but Katsuki isn't. Izuku has never been afraid of him. Not then, and certainly not now because how he could when Katsuki's face is drawn like an open wound and Izuku is the one who is tearing him apart with his bare hands.

How did he not see it before? The power has always been in Izuku's hand and he is the only one who can end Katsuki's suffering. To wipe clean of this troublesome baggage that had haunted him since. "Kacchan," he breathes, "I--I'm sorry. I wish I could do something for you."

Katsuki snorts humorlessly. "Yea?" he says wryly, stepping backward enough to give Izuku room and freeing up all the space that had taken up in Izuku's head. "You're gonna fix me then? Gonna fix the fucked up parts of me so you can have your perfect little family, huh."

Lurching forward, Izuku clasp both hands on Katsuki's cheek and pulls him down to his level. "Don't. Don't you ever say that about yourself," Izuku insists heatedly. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with you! You're amazing just the way you are. I-I don't want you to change."

Then Katsuki smiles, still too many teeth but this one has an undercurrent of intent and a burning note of something else that make Izuku shivers. "You want me to stay like this," he muses, breaking Izuku's hold on him to pressed up against him the wall once more. "To be hopelessly bound to you isn't that right?"

Caged within Katsuki's arms and the burning desire of his unquenchable flames, Izuku flinches. "N-no, it isn't like that! I just--" he shakes his head, "I want to give you some peace."

"Like the one you give me?" Katsuki says, raising a brow as he raises a hand up and runs his knuckle across Izuku's cheek in a mockery of a caress, but his thumb lingers purposefully on Izuku's skin like a long lost lover reuniting for the first time.

Oh, how it burns.

Izuku's legs tremble, nearly giving out from the weight of Katsuki's feelings. His skin suddenly feels like it's on fire, like Katsuki had infected with whatever had been ailing because he's running feverishly hot from where Katsuki had first touched him.

It hurts to breathe. To even look at Katsuki and not see the raw edges of his emotion. He's burning alive under Katsuki's unfiltered desire but he wonders then why does his heart suddenly speeds up at the thought of being at the center of that profound obsessive fixation? In that moment to realize he ignited the flames that started it all and set Katsuki on the course of no return, Izuku never felt more powerful and more terrified than right now. Because this? Is not what he was expecting. He knew now what it was like to be in the eye Bakugou Katsuki's storm.

And it scares him, but not in the way he should be.

He gazes up at Katsuki and sees all the wretched emotions playing all over his face and knows he's the root of it all. If he could alleviate Katsuki's pain, his suffering than they could return back to how it was back then.

But, his hands balls into a fist at the thought of letting Katsuki go and have someone take his place beside him. In that moment of clarity he thinks selfishly to himself, ah, I don't ever want you to look like that, but I don't know if I can bear it if you look away from me.

I got my scores back yesterday and was really excited to see I scored really well! (>255)! I had to share some tips for Step 2 since I was barely stressed when I studied, worked out each day, went out to dinner often enough. It was basically the opposite experience of Step 1, thank goodness.