Chapter Text
He stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling—no water stains, no familiar cracks, nothing he recognized.
Katsuki lay perfectly rigid while his eyes tried to focus. His chest felt heavy, and his ears rang against the silence. He listened for anything—the familiar rumble of traffic, a refrigerator hum, a floorboard creaking—but there was nothing.
A stale mix of burnt coffee and cheap lemon soap hung in the air. The smell was completely wrong. He tried to piece together how he’d gotten there, but his mind hit a wall.
Katsuki sat up, his fingers gripping the bedsheets until his knuckles turned white. He tried to force his mind to remember. Where was he? What was the last thing he remembered?
He stared straight ahead, desperate to trace his steps back to a single familiar detail, but the harder he pushed, the harder his mind hit a blank wall. He squeezed his eyes shut, his grip tightening on the fabric in sheer frustration.
“Tch. Damn it.”
He gripped the edge of the mattress, scanning the room for anything he recognized.
A heavy jacket was draped over the back of a desk chair. A pair of boots stood by the door, lined up perfectly straight. Along the far wall, a cheap bookshelf held a messy stack of rescue manuals and a few books on basic nutrition.
None of it looked familiar. He stared at the walls and the layout of the furniture, but nothing clicked. He didn’t recognize the bedroom at all.
He stood and walked over to the bookshelf. He stared down at the books, his brow furrowing as he read the titles again.
The advanced sports nutrition and meal-prep guides sat neatly wedged between heavy rescue manuals. He reached out, his thumb brushing against the spine of one of the thick textbooks. As he touched the books, a golden glint caught his eye.
He lifted his hand, staring at the ring resting on his left ring finger.
“What the hell…”
He yanked at it. The band caught hard against his knuckle before popping free into his palm. He turned it over under the morning light.
Engraved into the inner curve was a single word: Always.
The weight of the small circle of metal felt wrong, yet his skin felt strangely bare without it. He pressed his thumb against the inner engraving, tracing the word.
His pulse hammered against his ribs because his brain couldn’t find a single face, name, or memory to match the heavy ache building in his chest. His gaze dropped to the bed, tracking the space beside him.
The second pillow was crushed down, molded to the shape of someone else’s head.
His eyes snapped to the chair. A green hoodie hung over the back. The green hoodie didn’t belong to him. His eyes darted straight past it toward the open bathroom doorway. Two toothbrushes sat side by side in a ceramic cup. One red, one green.
The fuck?
Katsuki stood in the center of the room, his chest tightening as he stared at the layout. Someone else lived here. Someone else slept right next to him, and he had absolutely no idea who it was.
His hand tightened around the ring, the edges biting into his palm.
He heard someone walking down the hallway.
He braced himself, ready to attack if he needed to. A quiet click echoed from the doorway.
He shifted his weight to his heels, his muscles tight for whatever was coming through that door.
The handle turned, and the door swung inward.
Izuku Midoriya stepped into the room.
His hair was flattened on one side, messy curls spilling over his forehead. He was wearing an oversized, faded Dynamight shirt, his bare feet making no sound against the floor.
When his green eyes lifted and found Katsuki standing by the bed, his entire face softened, an easy smile already forming on his lips. He started to lean against the doorframe, opening his mouth to say good morning, but the greeting died on his lips.
The warmth vanished from Izuku’s expression the second he noticed Katsuki’s posture—the rigid line of his shoulders, the glare, and the way he was braced as if Izuku were the enemy. Izuku froze, his own shoulders tensing.
Katsuki’s jaw hardened.
“What are you doing here!?”
Izuku didn’t flinch. From where he stood at the door, his gaze tracked straight down to Katsuki’s left hand, taking note of the missing ring.
The happiness left Izuku’s face completely. “This is our house.”
Katsuki let out a short, humorless laugh. “No. Try again.”
“You don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
Izuku stepped just a fraction closer, his voice going soft. “Kacchan, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“What the hell does that matter?” Katsuki muttered, rubbing his temples as his head throbbed. “I remember going on patrol. Some villain with stupid glowing eyes.”
Izuku didn’t move, his eyes tracking Katsuki’s every movement. “And after that?”
“Nothing,” Katsuki spat, the word bitter and sharp. “Woke up here. In this room. With your crap everywhere.” He gestured aggressively with his free hand toward the bathroom door. “Why the hell am I in an apartment with you? Where’s my agency? Where’s my gear?”
Izuku took the verbal hit with grace. He didn’t look angry, just exhausted.
“Kacchan… that patrol was six months ago,” Izuku said, his voice entirely too quiet. “The villain you fought had an unlisted cognitive Quirk. It damaged your long-term memory. At first, you only lost small pieces, but it kept progressing. Over the last six months, it started eating through newer memories and older ones until nearly three years were gone.”
Katsuki’s breath hitched. Three years. He wanted to call Deku a liar, but looking at him—the way his voice sounded sad, how different his face looked—it actually lined up. He stared at him, the realization hitting him hard.
“Three years,” Katsuki repeated. He shoved his closed hand forward, exposing the ring in his palm. “Then explain this. Explain what I was doing with a wedding band on my finger and why the hell you’re acting so nonchalant about this?!”
Izuku looked down at Katsuki’s hand, then back up, meeting his stare with heartbreakingly familiar patience.
“Because we’re married, Kacchan. We’ve been married for a year.”
Katsuki’s hand stayed out. The gold ring just sat there like a lead weight. He couldn’t even curl his fingers closed. He just stared at Izuku, waiting for the punchline.
“Say that again.”
“We’re married.”
“Like hell we are.”
Izuku closed his eyes for a long second, his jaw tightening as he swallowed hard. When he opened them, he looked completely wrecked. He just stared at Katsuki’s open palm, his eyes wet and slightly red. He took a shaky breath and forced his hands into tight fists at his sides to stop the trembling.
“Okay,” Izuku said quietly.
“Don’t ‘okay’ me,” Katsuki snapped, stepping forward to crowd the space between them. He brought all his volatile heat into Izuku’s space, desperate to provoke the fierce rival he remembered, not this stranger who was looking at him with care. “I hated you.”
The words hit Izuku visibly. His breath hitched, a small, sharp intake of air that cut off instantly as his entire posture went still. The quiet confidence he usually carried around Katsuki shattered. For a split second, his eyes widened with raw, unprotected hurt—the look of someone who had just had a door slammed in their face by the person they trusted most.
But he didn’t fire back. He didn’t get angry. Instead, Midoriya’s expression locked down, his jaw tightening as he forced the pain down.
“I know,” Izuku replied. His voice was quiet, stripped of all warmth. He stood his ground, but his chest was tight. His green eyes were dark with the realization that the man standing in front of him genuinely felt nothing but disgust for him right now.
“You expect me to believe I just lost three goddamn years?”
“Yes.”
Katsuki’s chest heaved as he tried to process the sheer absurdity of the claim. He searched Midoriya’s face for a lie, an illusion, or a sign of a Quirk at work, but there was nothing but an aching, heavy sincerity that made Katsuki’s stomach twist.
“I chose you? Out of everyone?”
The question didn’t just cut; it stripped away the last of Izuku’s carefully built composure. His shoulders flinched inward, a tiny, fractured movement as if he were physically trying to protect himself from the words. The question struck directly at the deepest, most fragile insecurity he had buried years ago. For as long as he could remember, since they were children, Izuku had loved him—and when Katsuki had finally returned those feelings, it had felt like a miracle he didn’t quite deserve. Deep down, a small, quiet part of Izuku had always remained unsure, terrified that it was all too good to be true, that there was simply no way Katsuki would ever truly choose him.
And now, hearing those exact words weaponized by the boy who didn’t remember loving him back, the old fear tore wide open.
Izuku’s eyes glazed over with tears. He blinked rapidly, his jaw clenching as he fought to keep them from falling. He swallowed hard, his chest hitching on a sharp breath as he forced down the sudden heartbreak of having his worst insecurity validated by the only person who mattered.
Katsuki’s next breath caught in his throat. Looking at the raw grief fracturing Izuku’s face, a sudden, violent jolt hit Katsuki right in the center of his chest. It was an instinctive pull—a sharp flash of regret that had no place in his memory of who Deku was to him. His fingers tightened loosely around the ring sitting in his open palm, a strange urge to reach out and erase that broken expression flaring up. He didn’t know why the tears of a rival made his own chest feel tight, and the unfamiliarity of the feeling only made him burn hotter with frustration.
“Yes,” Izuku said, his voice dropping even quieter.
Katsuki looked down at the ring resting in his palm, the metal heavy and real against his skin, his mind warring with the inexplicable ache in his chest. “Prove it.”
Izuku gestured toward the open hallway. His hand shook noticeably before he dropped it back to his side, locking his fingers into a tight fist to hide the tremor. He swallowed down the rest of the emotion, forcing a fake smile onto his face to keep from breaking entirely.
“Come with me.”
He turned before Katsuki could give him an answer, his bare feet moving silently across the floorboards. Katsuki followed, his jaw clenched, keeping his pace tight behind him as they left the bedroom. Framed photos lined the hallway wall, a blur of faces and unfamiliar places, but one specific frame made him stop dead in his tracks.
It was the two of them, clearly older and out of uniform. Izuku was caught mid-laugh, his head tilted back, while Katsuki stood right beside him, wearing a small, relaxed smile that he didn’t recognize on his own face.
Katsuki stared at the glass, his breath hitching as a cold weight dropped into his stomach. He looked at his own eyes in the photo. It was just him. A version of himself he had absolutely no memory of being.
“This… this isn’t real,” Katsuki whispered, his voice cracking slightly as he backed away a step, his eyes wide. “I don’t know this. I don’t remember any of this.”
“It’s from our reception,” Izuku said from just behind his shoulder.
“Shut up.” The command completely lacked its usual heat, replaced entirely by hollow, staggering disbelief. “Just… shut up.”
Katsuki turned away from the wall, his chest heaving as he moved into the kitchen, desperate to find something, anything, that made sense. The morning light stretched long across the table, illuminating two plates already set out next to a bowl of fruit. It looked so incredibly normal.
Izuku followed him into the room, his movements slow and careful, as if he were trying not to spook a wild animal. He pulled a thick stack of papers from a drawer and slid them across the counter.
“Proof.”
Katsuki’s hands shook slightly as he grabbed the papers, his thumb flipping through the pages. It was a marriage certificate bearing both of their names, stamped with a date from a year ago, followed by a joint apartment lease and legal insurance forms. His eyes locked onto the signatures at the bottom. The aggressive strokes of his own handwriting were unmistakable. It was his signature. He knew the exact way he looped the letters, the exact pressure he put on the pen.
He dropped the papers onto the table, his hands flying to his hair, gripping the blond strands tight as he stared at the documents in absolute horror.
“No,” Katsuki said, his voice dropping into a panicked whisper. He looked from the papers up to Izuku, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “No, no way. This doesn’t make any sense.”
A photo strip slipped loose from the papers, fluttering down onto the floor. It was a sequence of four candid shots: Izuku leaning in to press a quick kiss to his cheek, and Katsuki standing entirely too close, his arm hooked securely around Izuku’s waist.
“What the hell is that?”
Izuku bent to pick the strip up from the floor. He looked at the glossy paper for a moment, a small smile crossing his face before it faded entirely, and he set it back on the table between them.
“Why can’t I remember?” Katsuki asked, his voice cracking slightly.
Izuku exhaled. “The villain you fought had an unlisted cognitive Quirk. It damaged your long-term memory. At first, you only lost small pieces, but it kept progressing. Over the last six months, it started eating through newer memories and older ones until nearly three years were gone.”
“It’s been happening for a while,” Izuku said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Small pieces at first, over these last few months. Just recent memories tied to me, things we did after the attack to try and catch you up.”
His gaze dropped back to the table, staring at the scattered papers. “This time… it looks like it took everything.”
Katsuki’s fingers dug into the edge of the wooden table, the reality fracturing beneath him. “And you just let it take everything?”
The accusation hung heavily in the space between them. Izuku flinched, the word “let” striking a nerve that cut right through him. He closed his eyes for a brief second, his chest rising as he took a ragged breath, fighting down the intense swell of emotion.
When he opened them, his green eyes held a mix of fierce frustration and deep, agonizing helplessness.
“I didn’t ‘let’ it do anything, Kacchan,” Izuku said, his voice shaking but rising in volume for the first time. He stepped closer to the table, his hands gripping the opposite edge so hard his knuckles matched Katsuki’s. “We’ve been fighting this for six months. We went to every specialist, every Quirk counselor in the country. You made me promise—you literally screamed at me not to treat you any differently, to keep our routine exactly the same because you didn’t want to lose what we had.”
He looked directly into Katsuki’s panicked eyes, the raw weight of his words breaking past his lips. “Every time you forgot a piece of us, I had to watch you realize it all over again. And every single time, you told me we’d fix it. So don’t act like I just stood by and watched it happen.”
Katsuki stared at him, the silence stretching between them until he couldn’t stomach the sight of Izuku’s defeat anymore and forced himself to look away.
“…How the hell have you been dealing with it?”
“You told me what to do,” Izuku said. “You said if it ever got this bad, I shouldn’t force it. I shouldn’t push you. I should just show you the truth and let you decide.”
Katsuki looked around the kitchen again, the details finally shifting from alien to agonizingly familiar. There was a faint, jagged burn mark on the counter that someone had tried to paint over, and a messy note pinned to the fridge in hurried handwriting he didn’t recognize as his own.
Kacchan, eat before patrol. Love you.
His hand tightened around the ring, the metal edges cutting deep, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the suffocating pressure in his chest.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice dropping into a rough, low warning.
“Don’t what?”
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m still yours.”
The words were a brutal, desperate attempt to slash through the heavy air between them, a demand for Izuku to face the reality that the person he loved wasn’t standing in front of him anymore. Katsuki needed him to back off, needed him to get angry, because the alternative—the sheer, unyielding devotion radiating off the nerd—was making his stomach twist into sickening knots.
Izuku’s breath caught, a sharp, broken crack running through his voice when he answered.
“But you are.”
He didn’t step back. Instead, Izuku closed the distance, his eyes wet with tears he was struggling to hold back, a devastating, quiet grief striking right at Katsuki’s chest. He looked at Katsuki with a love so fiercely stubborn it bordered on agony, completely refusing to let the void in Katsuki’s memory erase what they had built.
“You are,” Midoriya repeated, his voice cracking completely on the syllables as a single tear spilled over his lashes. “You can hate me, you can look at me like a stranger, but I’m not going to pretend you didn’t choose this. You don’t get to just disappear and leave me alone with the memories in this apartment.”
The sudden urge to comfort him hit like a physical blow, pulling Katsuki forward. By the time he realized what he was doing, he had already closed the distance—standing close enough to feel the warmth radiating from Izuku’s body through the thin fabric of his shirt.
His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, heavy rhythm that didn’t match the logic of his mind. Seeing Izuku’s shoulders tremble and hearing the fragile crack in his voice triggered something deep inside Katsuki’s muscle memory. His fingers twitched with the overwhelming urge to reach out, grab Izuku by the arms, and pull him close just to make the trembling stop. It was as if his own body were actively rebelling against his amnesia, recognizing the agony of the person in front of him and demanding that he fix it.
“I don’t remember loving you,” he said.
“I know.”
“But my body is acting like I know you.”
Izuku looked up, his eyes darting down to Katsuki’s fingers and taking in the heavy rise and fall of his chest.
A soft, broken breath slipped past Izuku’s lips—not a sob this time, but a profound, staggering wave of relief. The crushing despair in his expression shifted. It was the look of someone who had been entirely lost at sea suddenly catching sight of a familiar coastline. Even if Katsuki’s mind was completely blank, seeing that his instincts were still fighting for them was enough to keep Izuku from going under.
“You told me it wouldn’t,” Izuku said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth despite the tears still wet on his cheeks. “No matter what happens to your head… your body still remembers.”
Katsuki studied him, finally taking in the deep shadows under his eyes and the exhausting tension in his shoulders. “How many times have I forgotten you?”
Midoriya looked away, staring out toward the hallway. “A few.”
“And you stayed?”
“Of course.”
Katsuki’s hand lifted on pure instinct, his fingers closing around Izuku’s wrist. His grip was careful, almost gentle, as he pulled him closer. His heart picked up with the sudden, inexplicable need to reel him in completely. He froze the moment the distance closed, staring down at his own hand, while Izuku inhaled sharply but made no move to pull away.
“Did I grab you like this before?” Katsuki asked, his eyes locked onto Izuku’s face.
“Yes.”
“And I wasn’t pushing you away.”
“No.”
The space between them remained painfully tight, the quiet kitchen filled only with the uneven rhythm of Izuku’s breath. Katsuki’s grip lingered for a second before his fingers finally loosened, his thumb brushing once across the pulse under Izuku’s skin before dropping away completely.
“I don’t like that you’re calm,” Katsuki muttered, the phantom warmth of the contact still clinging to his palm.
“I’m not calm.”
“You look it.”
Izuku let out an exhausted sigh. “I’ve had practice.”
The admission hit Katsuki right in the gut. The word practice implied a cycle—a horrific routine of waking up to a husband who looked at him like an enemy, over and over again, until the shattering heartbreak of it became something Izuku had learned how to manage.
Katsuki forced his gaze away, scanning the kitchen once more and taking in the undeniable evidence of a life built around him.
“This house feels like it belongs to someone else.”
“It belongs to you,” Izuku said softly. “To us.”
Katsuki braced himself as he forced his eyes back to meet Izuku’s.
“If I decide I can’t do this… you’ll let me walk?”
Izuku looked at him, something profoundly sad settling onto his face. “If that’s what you want.”
Katsuki stared at him. The answer didn’t sit well. In fact, it triggered an immediate, ugly jealousy. It was hot and aggressive, blinding him to the logic of his amnesia. Why the hell would his husband—the guy who supposedly loved him enough to marry him and endure all of this—just let him walk out the door without a fight?
The possessive heat of it burned through his confusion, clouding his judgment. He stepped in, closing the space between them completely.
“Who is it?”
Izuku blinked, momentarily derailed by the sudden shift in attitude. “What?”
“Don’t play dumb.” His voice dropped, practically snarling the words. “You’re letting me go that easily—is there someone else?”
Izuku went entirely still, caught completely off guard. “What? Kacchan, no.”
“Then don’t say that.”
Katsuki frowned, the anger faltering as he heard his own words. The jealousy receded as quickly as it had come, leaving him stranded with the realization of what he had just said. It was a completely instinctive, possessive reaction that didn’t line up with a single thing he actually remembered feeling. He didn’t know this version of Izuku, yet the mere thought of him belonging to anyone else had made his blood boil.
Izuku remained motionless, the sadness on his face momentarily overtaken by lingering surprise.
Katsuki looked away, thoroughly irritated with himself. “Tell me our story. Start where I stopped hating you.”
“Okay,” Izuku said softly.
Katsuki pulled out a kitchen chair and sat. Izuku took the seat across from him. A heavy quiet stretched between them before Izuku finally began to speak. Katsuki watched him closely, tracking every shift in his expression, looking for something off—something that didn’t line up with the reality he knew. He didn’t find a single flaw, and that unsettled him more than anything else.
“It wasn’t a single moment,” Izuku began, his hands clasped together on the wooden table, his fingers tight enough to turn his knuckles white. “It wasn’t like you woke up one day and decided we were fine. It took years. After U.A., when we started working at the same agency, we were forced into the same space every single day. You used to yell just to keep me at a distance.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of Izuku’s mouth, his eyes looking past Katsuki, lost in the timeline Katsuki couldn’t reach.
“But then the fights stopped being about pushing me away. They turned into… debates. About strategies, about patrols. You started staying late at the office when I was stuck doing paperwork. You’d slam a coffee down on my desk, tell me I was being pathetic for moving so slowly, and then you’d sit across from me and work on your own files until I was done.”
Katsuki listened. The behavior sounded entirely like him—the abrasive exterior masking an action that was undeniably deliberate.
“The real shift happened during the Kamino rebuilding project,” Izuku continued. “We got trapped under the debris of an old support structure during an aftershock. We were stuck for twelve hours before the rescue teams could dig us out. I was panicking because my Quirk was overused, and I couldn’t clear the rubble without causing a cave-in. And you…”
Izuku paused, finally looking up and locking his green eyes directly with Katsuki’s intense red ones.
“You didn’t yell at me once. You just held onto my shoulder the entire time so I’d know where you were in the dark, and you kept talking. You told me every single thing you hated about my fighting style, every stupid move I’d made since high school, just to keep me awake. When they finally pulled us out, you wouldn’t let the medics touch you until you saw them put me in the ambulance first.”
Midoriya’s expression softened completely. “That was the first time you looked at me like I was your equal. Like we were finally standing on the exact same ground, and you didn’t want to be anywhere else.”
To Be Continued