Chapter Text
It took a long time for Katsuki to get used to the quiet.
Deku left about a year ago for some mission he couldn’t talk about, which pissed Katsuki off because since when does he keep secrets from him, but then it didn’t matter because Katsuki had other shit to be pissed about like how Deku went from checking up 30 times a day, to barely once a week, to never at all.
It’s because he’s working, he knows that, but it’s easier to get pissed off that Deku isn’t keeping up with the person he theoretically shares rent with than it is for him to admit that he’s worried about him.
Deku always takes on too much for no return no matter the cost, and Katsuki has always been there to back him up or drag him out, so this mission, the big one he took without him, has been a little bit hard to swallow.
And then there’s the quiet.
Katsuki went from living with his parents, to living in the dorms, to living with Deku, and he may not have realized it at first but having someone he tolerates in his shared space is good for him.
And then Deku left, and for the first time in Katsuki’s life he became something close to lonely.
It’s always too damn quiet. Katsuki bought a fan to blast at night because he thought that would help, but it just made the place too cold, and then he started leaving the TV on when he wasn’t watching it, but that just felt like a waste of electricity, and he started talking to himself more because he learned that if he didn’t he wouldn’t talk to anyone at all.
It didn’t take long for Eijirou to drag him out, make him sit at a local hole in the wall for drinks with the other idiots, but bars are loud, and Katsuki is too, but not that kind of loud, and on top of that, everyone kept saying stupid shit like how living alone is a good thing because now he has his own bachelor pad, whatever the hell that means.
He’s not living alone because Deku is coming back, and the idea that somehow Deku being there was keeping him from living his life—never mind the fact that no one once actually said that—was fucking bullshit. You think Deku can stop him from doing what he wants? You think anyone can?
It was better for him to stop going altogether than to lose the handful friends he has, and after enough no’s, Ei finally quit asking, and Katsuki was grateful, but then it was back to the peaceless quiet this fucking apartment’s turned into.
That was before Deku’s check-ins stopped completely.
He isn’t dead. He knows that much, but Deku has always been so goddamn persistent that the lack of communication feels like he might as well be.
It gives him nightmares of the old days, the ones that started with him waking up, and no one letting him see him, and then Deku just gone, a half ass scribbled note left behind in his place.
At least he got to say goodbye this time.
Sort of.
Three weeks, he thought.
Deku told him he was leaving, and Katsuki told him to not get himself blown up while they shared a box of shitty grease-pooled pizza.
Three weeks tops because that’s usually how these things go when you add up travel time there and back, stakeout time, the typical raid, and then the paperwork and cleanup after. It’s fucking clockwork.
A year.
It’s been easier to convince himself that Deku is gone for good than it is to believe that Deku is going to eventually come back, smiling from ear to ear and maybe crying a little bit because he’s a sentimental little bastard who does shit like that.
Katsuki still makes himself cook, refusing to let himself live out of a wrapper or from a delivery box, but no matter how many times he tells himself to not use so much shit every time, he always ends up making enough for two people.
At least he doesn’t have to worry about lunch the next day.
And it’s bullshit.
It’s bullshit because he doesn’t even like tonkatsu, and he still took the time to pound out four pieces of pork instead of two.
It’s been a year, and he still can’t break this stupid habit.
And he knows Deku’s not eating right. He knows the stupid nerd hasn’t come close to eating a vegetable since he took off, god forbid a fruit, and he’s probably replacing all of his water intake with instant fucking coffee, and–.
Katsuki exhales and drops the first cutlet into the egg mixture and scrunches his nose.
Well it’s none of his goddamn business, is it?
He fries the first two and lets the grease drain off before he deals with the others, the ones he’ll be stuck eating for lunch tomorrow because he’s an idiot who still can’t stop making enough food for two people.
Friday night tonkatsu. He’s never skipped it.
He puts the last cutlet in, careful not to splash hot oil all over the counter or himself, and the constant sizzle is almost enough to block out the sound of the front door closing.
Katsuki turns around so fast he almost sends the chopsticks in his hand flying, and he doesn’t stop until his eyes lock onto a field of green.
Deku’s hair is so fucking long.
Katsuki opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He just stares like an idiot because Deku is standing there in his– their living room, and his hair is long, and he’s home.
He’s not sure what he expects to happen. No, he knows exactly what he expects to happen—Deku dropping his things and running at him as fast as he can, hugging him until they both tip dangerously close to the stove while Katsuki yells, and then Deku will burst into tears and tell him how much he missed him.
But the fact that it doesn’t happen convinces him that that was never actually on the table.
Why the fuck would Deku be happy to see him? He went a whole year without saying a word to him.
Katsuki turns back around, refusing to show how chafed he is and looks down at the aggressively crisped cutlet staring back at him. Shit.
“When’d your flight get in?”
“Just now,” Deku says. “I took a cab here.”
“Shoulda told me,” he says. “I would have picked you up.”
“I didn’t wanna bother you.”
Katsuki frowns just out of sight. Since when?
“Yeah, well airport taxis are fucking expensive.”
“It’s alright,” Deku says. “You’re making dinner?”
“Yeah,” Katsuki exhales. Enough for two people. “You eat yet?”
“Oh,” Deku says. “No, but I was just going to–.”
“Put your shit down and come eat,” he says. “It’s not gonna be any good if it gets cold.”
“But you–.”
Katsuki looks over his shoulder and scowls. “You need to eat, nerd.”
Deku’s shoulders sag, and he moves his jaw like he wants to argue, but he doesn’t, and Katsuki breathes out when he sees him turn and go back towards his bedroom.
Deku’s bedroom.
It’s probably all stale and dusty because the door hasn’t been opened in a year, but if Deku wanted it to breathe, he should have come home faster.
He knows he couldn’t have. He knows he didn’t have a choice.
But he could have said something.
Anything.
He didn’t even call when he got off the goddamn airplane…
Deku comes back in, staying on the far side of the kitchen, but he’s at least technically in the same room as him. Katsuki doesn’t need him closer, he doesn’t, but not having Deku dangerously up his ass like he doesn’t know what getting burned feels like isn’t something he’s sure he’s okay with.
“Can I help?”
“You can get me some bowls and put the rice in them.”
“Where–,” he starts before Katsuki looks at him, and he sees Deku flush slightly. “Right.”
“You live here, idiot.”
“I know, I just–.” Forgot. “Thought you might have moved something.”
“Everything’s where it’s always been,” Katsuki says. He doesn’t like change. He never has. This feels like change. He reaches up into the cabinet and hands the bowls to Deku himself. “Here.”
Deku swallows and takes them from him. “Thanks.”
“I’m sure you know what the rice cooker looks like.”
He sighs at that. “Yes, Ka–.”
The rest of the name doesn’t come out, and Katsuki jerks his head in surprise, but Deku is already busy taking care of his one task, stiff in the shoulders like he stopped himself on purpose and is too aware of it.
What the hell was that?
Deku sets the filled bowls onto the counter, and Katsuki assembles the rest, swallowing back whatever he might have to say about it. Deku can call him or not call him whatever he wants. It makes no difference to him.
Dinner is about as shitty as it could be.
Deku sits at the table across from him, chewing slowly like he doesn’t like the food, and that’s bullshit because everyone in the whole goddamn world knows it’s his favorite. Everyone. There’s a picture of it at the bottom of his hero stats dot com page next to the early sketches of his bunny mask and his support shoes. The Deku starter kit.
It’s still too fucking quiet.
It’s not supposed to be anymore.
“You get ‘em?”
“Yeah,” he nods, still picking at his food.
“Can you talk about it yet?”
“A little bit,” he says. “Do you remember that villain group we busted a couple of years ago? The one with the squid guy.”
“The fucker who squirted ink in my eye?”
“Yeah,” he says, and where Katsuki expects amusement because everyone always laughs about that, Deku’s seriousness doesn’t change. “I thought they went quiet because we caught them, but it turns out they just went somewhere else and started recruiting.”
“For a whole year…”
“Has it been that long,” Deku laughs sheepishly. Katsuki raises an eyebrow. “I was undercover.”
Katsuki sits back. That explains the radio silence. “Oh.”
“I pretended to be a small-time criminal with a smokescreen quirk, and it took me a while to get them to trust me,” he says. “I had to work at a restaurant for a few months before I could get anyone to talk to me enough to invite me to meetings and stuff. Had to act like I was just happy to be around people who spoke Japanese.”
“Couldn’t have been that hard to fake.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Deku laughs. “But now I know a whole buncha new food words if we ever go on vacation.”
Katsuki hums.
“I can cook now, kind of,” he says, almost hopeful. “I can’t make tonkatsu like you can, but they let me pull the ramen. It was fun.”
“Ramen shop, huh?”
Deku nods. “Not exactly like we have here, but the locals liked it. We sold a lot of gyoza.”
“Gyoza.”
“Yeah,” he laughs.
The corner of Katsuki’s mouth twitches. ”Fancy shit.”
“I think I can wrap them in my sleep now.”
“That good, huh? You come back just to take over my kitchen?”
Deku shakes his head with a small smile. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“Good,” he swallows.
“It’s good,” Deku says. “I mean the food. It’s delicious.”
“You don’t have to eat it if you’re not hungry.”
Deku looks down and taps at his food. “I said it’s good.”
Katsuki looks down at his own barely touched bowl and nods. “Yeah.”
After that, Deku fills him in on the mission, his usual trademark animation missing from the story, but Katsuki supposes if he just got off of a thirteen hour flight, he would be tired too.
He can’t tell him much yet, not that he doesn’t trust him, but Deku wouldn’t get very far if every agency in the world assumed he comes with a theoretical plus one.
Not that that used to stop him before…
Katsuki’s stomach twists in a knot, but Deku isn’t fifteen anymore, and neither is he. Deku has no reason to tell him secrets he isn’t supposed to know, and that’s not really something he has the right to sulk about.
They’re heroes now.
It’s time to start acting like it.
“You get your ass kicked?”
Deku actually smiles at him then, briefly, but it’s there, and then it’s gone just as fast as it came, forced back like Deku isn’t supposed to make those kinds of faces at him anymore. Katsuki doesn’t point it out. “I took a pretty nasty kick from a guy with a horse quirk, but one of the healers fixed it.”
“Broken rib?”
“Three,” he says. “I was bruised up pretty bad for a month.”
“A month.”
“Yeah.”
Katsuki swallows and licks the front of his teeth. “So you didn’t just get done then.”
“I was a trial witness,” he says. “Or, I will be, I think. I don’t know, I think the real trial is next year, but they had me talk to a jury about what I saw, and I couldn’t leave the country until we did that.”
“Mm.”
“What?”
“No phone call,” he says.
“I didn’t think– no. Sorry.”
“It’s whatever,” he says before standing up. “I’m gonna wash this shit up.”
“Let me help you,” Deku says, also standing to his feet.
“I got it. You should probably tell all the losers you’re back.”
“Oh,” he blinks. “Yeah, I guess so. Good idea.”
Deku goes into the living room and sits on the couch, texting and calling about a hundred people who missed him, and Katsuki knows they missed him because they wouldn’t stop asking him about him even though he didn’t know shit.
It was really fucking annoying.
He cleans up the kitchen by himself, biting back the bitterness that doesn’t come from Deku being unable to call him, but refusing to.
One text would have been enough.
A postcard.
A twitter DM.
Anything.
“No, yeah, I landed about an hour ago,” he hears him say. “Yeah, drinks sound like fun. I missed you too!”
Katsuki twists his mouth. Of course he’s going out. He’s going to go get shit faced with one of his loser friends, and then Katsuki is either going to be on puke duty all night or spend the night alone again.
Great.
Fucking great.
He sounds so happy to talk to whoever he’s on the phone with that Katsuki has to stop himself from throwing the pan he just washed.
This is stupid.
This is his apartment, and he feels like an asshole for being here.
Katsuki drops his drying cloth on the counter and exhales.
Fuck it. This is his apartment. He has exclusively paid the rent here for the last eight months, and he’s not going to let Deku being happy to go run off again and not be here fuck that up for him.
He walks into the living room and sits on the opposite end of the couch before turning the volume on the TV up, fully expecting Deku to take that as his cue to leave, but instead, Deku just sits with his hands in his lap.
“What are we watching?”
Katsuki sighs and puts the remote down next to him. “I don’t give a shit.”
“Is that drama you like still airing? It plays on Fridays, right?”
“Got canceled.”
“Oh.”
Katsuki takes the remote back and puts on an old recording of World’s Craziest Quirks because guess what, he saved the whole goddamn season for him. Deku gasps.
“I love this show!”
“Uh huh.”
There. Problem solved.
Deku doesn’t go out at all that night. He doesn’t even act like he wants to, content to watch his stupid quirk series instead, and Katsuki watches it with him because he’s the asshole who recorded it for him in the first place.
It still doesn’t feel right.
The old Deku would have hopped towards him at some point so he could talk over the TV about all of his theories and curiosities, and Katsuki would have listened because he has always had a front row seat to Deku’s ramblings and quirk fascination.
But this Deku is completely silent, stiff backed and weird like they just met today and not twenty years ago.
God, all they’re missing now is the uncomfortable small talk.
“The apartment looks really nice.”
There it is.
“It’s so clean,” Deku continues, looking around like he’s never seen his own living room before. “Smells like you.”
“I’m the only one who’s been in here since you left. Who else is supposed to smell like?”
Deku looks at him, surprised. “What?”
Katsuki frowns. “What?”
“I thought you would’ve–,” he says before snapping his mouth shut and looking back at the television. “Wow, I can’t believe pool balls just drop out of him like that. Can you imagine? That must be so embarrassing.”
“Yeah,” he says, watching him with a slight frown.
Nothing about this Deku feels familiar at all.
And it could just be from being undercover for so long. He may have spent the whole year pretending to be someone else and doesn’t remember how the real him interacted with him, but that’s the logical part of Katsuki’s brain trying to scream over his other thoughts.
The rest of him, the bastard, thinks it’s because Deku didn’t want to come back and had no other choice but to. The bastard thinks he wanted to go to either Cheeks’s or Half and Half’s place instead but didn’t have a way to make sure they were home first.
He didn’t have to check with Katsuki because he has his own key. He can come and go as he pleases because this is technically his apartment too.
Not even technically.
It is his apartment.
Katsuki didn’t change shit about it. He left Deku’s nerd books on the shelves, he left Deku’s All Might posters up next to the TV, even though they make him feel like he’s in high school, he kept Deku’s favorite shows recorded, and when his stupid friends insisted on staying over, he made them sleep on the couch or a futon because no one was allowed in Deku’s room.
He could at least pretend he’s happy to be here. He doesn’t have to act like such a goddamn stranger about it.
“It’s going to take a few days to get the money transferred, but I’ll pay you back the rent I missed.”
“S’fine,” he says. “I was the only one living here, so I don’t mind paying it myself.”
“Yeah, but it’s not right,” he says. “I mean, we agreed to live together because it was the most affordable option, and I left you hanging for a whole year.”
“I do make more money now than I did when we graduated,” Katsuki says.
“That’s true,” Deku says, folding his hands together. “I didn’t realize it had been that long.”
“Yep,” he says with a pop.
“Kind of a long time to have a roommate.”
“I guess.”
“Yeah,” he says, and Katsuki lets his eyes unfocus on some loser with a 3D printing eyeball. Like Momo, but gross.
“Should I move out?”
Katsuki looks at him, eyebrows raised as high as they can go while his pulse pounds even higher. “What?”
“You know, I mean, it’s been years since we graduated, and you’ve got the place looking so nice and clean, and I mean you’ve always wanted your own space anyway. You only moved in with me so you wouldn’t have to live with your parents–.”
Where the fuck did he get that idea?
“–and now you’ve got pro hero money. I mean we both do, I guess, so it makes sense, right? Like, now that I’m back, I should probably find my own place and stuff and start fresh.”
“Start fresh.”
“Yeah,” Deku says.
Without me.
Katsuki’s chest aches something awful, and he turns away before the stinging in his eyes can do something he might regret. “Whatever. Do what you want.”
“I will,” he says, slightly out of breath. “Yeah. I will.”
“Fine with me,” he says, leaning over onto the armrest.
“Great,” Deku says. “Good idea then. Good job, Izuku.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m gonna go shower,” he says suddenly, jumping up to his feet. “That’s fine, right? I can do that.”
“What, you forget how to take a fuckin’ bath?”
“No.”
“Then do what you want.”
“Oh, okay, yeah. Right. I’m gonna go then.”
Deku darts towards the back of the apartment, and Katsuki gnaws at the inside of his cheek until he’s completely out of sight, bathroom door slamming shut behind him.
He leans forward and puts his head in his hands.
Deku doesn’t want to live here anymore.
Deku came back just to tell him he’s moving out, and that’s why he’s acting like he doesn’t want to be here.
He doesn’t want to be here.
He wants to get his own place because they can afford it now, and he thinks the only reason they moved in together in the first place was because it was the cheapest option.
Well, yeah, Katsuki may have thrown that out there as a selling point to keep Deku from making a big deal about it, but he sure as hell didn’t mean it. Yeah, it was nice to get a little independence from his parents from the start, but it wouldn’t have killed him if he had to stay with them for a few years.
He moved in with Deku because he wanted to, and there’s nothing else to it.
But Deku doesn’t want to live with him anymore. Deku left for a year, dropped all contact, and then came back a stranger because that’s what he wants to be now.
He tugs at the hair at the base of his scalp and squeezes his eyes shut, fighting back the urge to scream like he’s fifteen years old again.
He will not cry.
He will not cry.
No fucking way.
He’s not some stupid clingy asshole who freaks out because his roommate who hasn’t even been here in a year wants to move out.
Katsuki is really fucking good at living by himself actually.
He’s so fucking happy.
“Next up on World’s Craziest Quirks! A woman whose hair is made out of string cheese finds love at her hometown pizzeria! You won’t believe what happens ne–.”
Katsuki mutes the television because if he has to hear one more cringy ass narration, he’s going to put it through the window, and he huffs out a deep breath into the returned sound of nothing.
But for once, as in for the first time in a year, his apartment isn’t quiet. He sits in what should have been complete silence and listens to the pittering of the shower in the distance, the water splashing against the tiles below in a constant stream.
It’s the sound of Deku being home.
Deku is home, and Katsuki is too big of a prideful bastard to ask him to stay.
But if he doesn’t want to then why should he?
It would be a waste of a conversation that would have him coming out looking like a pathetic loser, and he’s not about to let that happen under any circumstances. No way. If he’s leaving this with anything, it will be his own dignity still intact.
And he prepared for this. He didn’t know he prepared for this, but he spent the last year getting used to a silence that has suddenly been all but shattered by the sound of his own shower head.
They only have one bathroom. Their priority for an apartment was convenience by location only, and two bathrooms didn’t matter as much when they both took most of their showers at their agencies anyway, so they saved a little on rent there.
So now Deku is in their bathroom—Katsuki’s bathroom for the last year and probably from here on out—washing the airport out of his hair and using what’s left of the soap he left behind that Katsuki never threw away.
And he listens to him, not because he’s weird and listens to people shower, but because the sound of Deku in there is the most normal he’s felt since he first took off.
It’s kind of bullshit that after everything they’ve been through together, Deku would only come back just to figure out his next step.
Katsuki folds his hands together in a fist and shakes his head. This isn’t his problem, and this isn’t something he’s about to let himself feel sorry for. Deku can do whatever he wants, and if he wants to move out, then fuck it. Katsuki will help him pack. Maybe he’ll turn his room into office space, god knows he needs it.
Fuck it.
Fuck it.
Fuck him too.
Loser ass nerd.
Leaving him like he doesn’t mean shit.
Katsuki sits back, resigned to accept his situation, and that’s when he sees the basket of unfolded towels exactly where he left it.
Shit.
He washed them as soon as he got home because he used the last clean one this morning before going to work, and he set them aside to deal with tomorrow, thinking it wouldn’t matter since he could just grab one off the pile and go.
But now it does matter because Deku didn’t know Katsuki did this because he hasn’t been here in a year, which means he doesn’t know that the towel cabinet in their bathroom is empty and he’s going to get out and track water all over the bathroom, the hallway, and his bedroom, ruining the floors, and then when Katsuki finally says fuck everything and moves out of this shithole years after Deku is long gone for good, he’ll lose his security deposit.
Not on his fuckin’ watch.
Katsuki jumps up and half jogs to the laundry basket and haphazardly grabs a wad off the top, not bothering to fold them if Deku is just going to get them dirty again in ten minutes, and he heads towards the bathroom to spare his stupid floors.
He knocks twice and waits, but Deku doesn’t hear him. He grabs the handle to let himself in, drop them off, and go, but he finds that for the first time since they moved in, the bathroom door is locked.
They never locked the doors even when they probably should have.
His undercover work, he reminds himself. Deku wasn’t living with him.
Katsuki rolls his eyes and bangs on the door. “Fucker, come get this!”
A few seconds later, Deku opens it, butt-ass-naked and pouring water all over the floor, which should infuriate him, but then he catches the way his wet hair clings to his neck and shoulders, which isn’t a sight Katsuki ever thought he’d see, and his mouth goes dry.
He shouldn’t stare like this.
Deku doesn’t shy away from him even if he is, but Katsuki still shouldn’t stare at him.
He forces his eyes up to Deku’s face, his ears and throat burning from how easily he lost focus, but what he finds—the look Deku wears as he stares back up at him—makes him absolutely sick.
Deku’s eyes are heavy, lidded like he hasn’t slept in weeks, but it’s not exhaustion that weighs them. No, Katsuki knows this look and what it means more than anyone.
They’re swollen like he’s tired, yes, but the true tell for what this is is just how green they are, cast in red like he’s been–.
Crying.
Deku’s been crying.
He expected the waterworks in the happy nerd way, he did, but this? Not a million years. Not anymore. Not with them. Not like this.
“What the fuck happened,” he asks, and every thought he’s had in the last hour disappears. “Deku.”
“I tried, Kacchan,” he says. “I don’t think I can do this.”