Chapter Text
The snow came early that year.
It didn’t arrive with violence — there was no sudden storm, no biting wind howling through the mountains. No, this snow came softly, like a lullaby hummed by the gods themselves. Gentle, inevitable. It clung to rooftops like forgotten dreams, blanketed the stone paths with deceptive silence, and kissed frost onto the windowpanes that hadn’t yet remembered how to shut tight.
The entire village moved slower under its weight.
Winter in this part of the country was sacred. Superstition ran through the bones of the people like blood. Old rules, old traditions — ones no one dared to question out loud. In winter, you didn’t raise your voice. You didn’t argue with fate. And you sure as hell didn’t curse the snow.
The village, nestled in a shallow valley and surrounded by thick woods, seemed to shrink inward as the season deepened. Smoke curled upward from chimney stacks like ghost stories, and every footstep left behind a story in the snow.
But there was one place untouched by that quiet, stifling hush.
Inside a modest apothecary at the forest’s edge, tucked between frostbitten birch trees, warmth drifted in slow spirals. The air was rich with crushed herbs and the faint sweetness of dried fruit stewing in honey. Bottles lined the shelves in uneven rows. A fire crackled in the hearth, casting amber shadows that danced across the wooden walls. The whole cottage smelled like comfort.
And in the center of it all stood Izuku Midoriya — omega, herbalist, soulmate, and husband.
His green eyes shimmered like spring caught in snow. A soft hum spilled from his lips, barely louder than the wind pressing against the windows, as he worked. He moved with care, hands stained faintly with thyme and rosehip. A ceramic bowl nestled in his palms, and he ground dried chamomile and lemon balm together with practiced ease.
Everything about Izuku radiated calm — serenity threaded through each movement like it had been carved into his bones. He wore a green knit sweater, thick and worn at the sleeves. It hung off his shoulders, far too big for his frame, slipping with each lean forward as though trying to crawl down his arm and become part of him.
It wasn’t his.
It was Katsuki’s.
He wore it like armor. Like a promise. Like a tether.
Outside, wind hissed along the eaves. The snow had picked up again, soft but steady. The windows fogged at the edges, leaving halos of warmth in the center where light poured through.
A sudden gust hit the front door with a dull thud.
Izuku didn’t flinch.
He didn’t need to.
The door swung open with a bang, snow bursting in like a puff of smoke before a tall figure followed, heavy boots thudding against the hardwood floor.
“Fucking freezing out there,” Katsuki Bakugou snarled as he stepped inside, snow clinging stubbornly to the hem of his dark coat. His blond hair was damp at the edges, sticking to his forehead beneath the hood he shoved down. His eyes — sharp, vermillion, pissed — burned like wildfire behind a scowl. “That nosy old bastard on Willow Lane gave me that look again.”
Izuku didn’t look up right away. He kept working, pressing the pestle into the herbs with rhythmic focus. When he finally turned his gaze toward Katsuki, his expression was placid — warm with amusement, not surprise. “Which look?”
Katsuki stomped the snow off his boots onto the mat, kicked the door shut behind him with a practiced grunt, and shrugged out of his coat with sharp, irritated movements. “The one that says ‘you shouldn’t be married to a goddamn omega if you’re not gonna knock him up and give us ten grandpups,’ or some traditionalist horseshit like that.”
Izuku set the bowl down and walked over, not bothered in the slightest by his husband’s volcanic entrance. “I think that’s more than one look,” he murmured, brushing snow from Katsuki’s shoulders with small, efficient sweeps. “And also incredibly specific.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying. Maybe they’re looking at you because you stomp around like a blizzard with legs.”
Katsuki opened his mouth, ready to snap back. But then he paused. Let out a long breath. The tension in his shoulders eased, just barely, and the frost in his eyes melted around the edges. “They’re lucky I don’t burn this whole village to the fucking ground.”
Izuku tilted his head, the corner of his mouth twitching up. “They’d freeze again before the flames even caught, Katsuki.”
Katsuki looked at him — really looked. Then scoffed and looked away. “Don’t get poetic on me.”
“Too late.”
They stood there for a moment — close, but not touching.
Katsuki’s jaw was clenched, his gaze flickering toward the fire like it might challenge him if he stared long enough. Izuku simply existed in the moment, glowing like morning sun on fresh snow — soft, stubborn, inevitable. The air between them was warm from the hearth but warmer from something deeper, older.
On their wrists, the soulmate marks pulsed in quiet rhythm.
Izuku’s mark resembled a scarlet explosion — jagged and wild — its edges curling into the delicate shape of a vine that climbed toward his pulse point. Katsuki’s was a starburst inked in deep green, like pine needles woven into fire.
They hadn’t asked for them.
One morning, they’d simply appeared — scarred onto their skin like the universe had finally gotten tired of waiting for them to figure it out on their own.
The village had gone silent for three days.
Not from scandal. Not from outrage.
But because fate had spoken.
And no one, not even the most bitter elder crouched in the square with cracked lips and older fears, would dare question fate out loud.
It wasn’t that they were both men.
It was that the world had tied them together anyway.
And that was harder to argue with than love.
Izuku’s gaze finally drifted away from Katsuki, calm and unhurried, as he turned toward the stove. He moved like he had all the time in the world, the sleeves of the too-big green sweater slipping past his knuckles again as he reached for the kettle.
Steam curled in lazy spirals, catching the firelight. The scent of chamomile and lemon balm drifted between them, warm and grounding.
Katsuki shrugged off his coat with a grunt, the weight of it sliding from his shoulders like tension being scraped off bone. He tossed it onto the nearest chair without looking and stomped the last clinging bits of snow from his boots.
“Tea better be done,” he muttered, voice still rough from the cold — and something else quieter, raw around the edges.
“It’s always done the moment you stomp in,” Izuku replied without turning, pouring the hot tea into two worn ceramic mugs. His voice was light, his smile audible even from where Katsuki stood. “It’s almost like I know you.”
Katsuki snorted, but it was softer than his words. “You know too much.”
Izuku turned, cradling both mugs in his hands as he offered one without hesitation. His eyes met Katsuki’s with something gentle, unshakable.
“You love that I do,” he said.
Katsuki took the mug, fingers brushing Izuku’s for the briefest second. He didn’t answer.
He didn’t have to.
Katsuki didn’t respond. Instead, he stared into the rising steam like it might hold answers or maybe just some peace. After a long moment, he muttered, “Thanks,” the word rough and almost reluctant, like admitting it cost him something.
Izuku leaned against the counter beside him, tilting his own mug back for a slow sip of the fragrant tea. The warmth seeped into his fingers and heart alike. After a beat, he asked, “Do you remember the first dream?”
Katsuki’s lips pressed into a tight scowl. “No.”
Izuku’s lips twitched in a knowing smirk. “You do.”
Katsuki’s eyes darkened, a shadow passing over them that wasn’t just from the firelight. He swallowed hard, jaw clenched like he was trying to trap a memory before it could slip away.
It had come one night — years ago — when everything was different. When their hatred was fresh, raw, and utterly unmanageable. Katsuki had jolted awake, heart hammering so fiercely it threatened to break free. His fists were clenched tight, knuckles white against the sheets. The dream had left a strange heat simmering beneath his skin—too warm, too tender, and impossible to ignore.
In the dream, a hand had traced his cheek, delicate and sure. A voice, soft as winter snow, whispered his name like it was the most precious thing in the world.
Izuku’s hand.
For a long time after, both of them tried to deny it, tried to shove the dreams into the shadows where they couldn’t find them. But fate doesn’t care about denial.
They’d both failed.
“I thought I was broken,” Izuku said softly, almost too softly, like the words had to sneak out or else he’d swallow them back. His gaze was distant, lost somewhere beyond the steam of his tea, somewhere deep in the snow outside or the past inside him. “When I realized it was you. That the dreams meant something. That fate had picked us. I thought… maybe the gods made a mistake.”
The quiet that followed wasn’t empty.
It was heavy — so heavy it filled the space between them, pressing against the walls, wrapping around Katsuki’s ribs like vines.
Katsuki looked at him then. Really looked. Not just at his face, which was all soft curves and tired eyes and freckles that always made him look too young, too gentle for this world — but at the way Izuku folded into the moment like he didn’t know how to be anywhere else. The way his fingers trembled, just slightly, around the mug. The way vulnerability slipped from him not like weakness, but truth.
“You think I didn’t think the same damn thing?” Katsuki asked, voice low, rough with something too close to guilt. “That I didn’t wake up every goddamn day for weeks wondering if fate had gotten drunk off its ass and scribbled your name across mine by mistake?”
Izuku looked up, blinking slowly. His smile came without effort, as if the ache of those early days only made the present more sacred. “You told me to fuck off for three months straight.”
Katsuki made a sound in his throat — somewhere between a scoff and a groan. “You kept smiling at me.”
“It’s what I do,” Izuku said with a shrug, like that was explanation enough.
And it was.
It always had been.
Katsuki shook his head, stepping closer. His fingers reached out without thinking, catching the oversized sweater’s loose collar where it had fallen again from Izuku’s shoulder. Gently — more gently than anyone would ever believe — he tugged the fabric back into place. His fingers lingered there, tracing the seam of the knit before settling against warm skin.
“You still shouldn’t have married me,” he murmured. Not as an accusation. Not even as a warning. Just truth.
Izuku blinked up at him, head tilted. “Why?”
“Because I’m an asshole,” Katsuki said, like it was obvious. “You deserve someone who isn’t a walking fuckstorm of aggression and bad decisions.”
Izuku’s face lit up like a hearthfire. “You’re my asshole.”
“Gross,” Katsuki muttered, rolling his eyes with half-hearted disgust.
“True,” Izuku said, undeterred. His smile was sunshine breaking through overcast skies.
And Katsuki — who had once raged against the world and every soul in it — laughed. It was short, low, and a little gruff, like laughter had to climb up out of his chest just to be heard.
They laughed together. Quiet and tangled and private, like the sound belonged only to them — like it couldn’t exist anywhere else but here, between shared mugs and fading scars.
Outside, the wind howled and curled around the corners of the apothecary like it wanted in. But it was shut out. Inside, the storm had a different shape: warm hands and crooked grins and two people learning how to belong to one another again and again.
Izuku turned and padded over to the sofa, tucking his knees beneath him as he curled into one corner, mug cradled against his chest. “C’mere,” he said, voice drowsy but sure.
Katsuki sighed like he was being asked to run through a snowstorm naked. “You’re such a clingy little shit,” he grumbled — but his steps were already moving, carrying him to the couch, sinking down beside Izuku without resistance.
Izuku didn’t even bother responding. He just shifted, moving with slow, sleepy precision until his head found Katsuki’s lap. He settled there like he belonged nowhere else, breathing already slowing into something gentle. His curls spilled across Katsuki’s thigh like ivy, and Katsuki’s hand found them instinctively, sinking into green and gold and warmth.
He ran his fingers through them without thinking. Over and over.
It calmed something in him he hadn’t known was awake.
“Villagers can stare all they want,” Izuku murmured, already half-asleep. “But we’re fate-tied. They can’t fight that.”
“Damn right,” Katsuki said, his hand still stroking gently, rhythm steady as a heartbeat.
Izuku smiled into his sleeve, lashes fluttering. “I love you.”
Katsuki glanced down, and for a moment, he didn’t say anything. His chest felt too full, like something inside him might crack under the weight of being seen like this.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered finally, voice low but sure. “I love you too, dumbass.”
The fire crackled beside them, casting slow-moving shadows across the floor. The wind outside danced and howled, but its fingers never reached them. Their bond pulsed beneath their skin—a living thread of color and heat, tied by dreams, weathered by fear, sealed in choice.
And still, the snow kept falling — soft and endless and quiet.
Like maybe fate had decided that even storms deserved to be held.