Katsuki realized he was late when the elevator stopped on the third floor and refused to close again because someone down the hall decided to jog for it.

He watched the numbers blink above the door as the seconds dragged by and his patience wore thinner with each floor. Lab didn’t wait, and the professor who ran it cared about punctuality with an intensity that bordered on obsession, so arriving even a minute late usually came with consequences and a headache.

At last the doors slid shut and the elevator jerked upward.

Three minutes late became one, and one could be argued down if it came to that.

He slipped into the lab, pulled on his gloves, and stepped into place as if he had been there the whole time. No one said a word. The professor looked his way once, then continued on, which told him he had gotten away with it.

Katsuki moved to the station where his group was working through a cranial nerve assessment, picking up the reflex hammer and checking pupillary response before testing corneal reflexes.

By third year, med school had worn everything down to what mattered. Long hours, endless material, and the expectation that he would keep up no matter what. He did more than keep up, though. 

The professor hovered near his station halfway through, watching his hands for a few seconds before saying, “You’ve done this before.”

“Read ahead,” Katsuki said, eyes still on the task.

A quiet hum in approval, then the professor moved along.

By the time they wrapped up, the focus burned off and left a dull pressure behind his eyes. He packed slower and his mind was already moving to everything else he had to get through before the week ended.

His phone buzzed as soon as he stepped into the hallway.

He stared at Ochaco’s name for a second before answering. “What?”

“Are you coming tonight?”

He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment. “I said I’d go.”

“You said that last time too.”

He rolled his eyes before asking, “Seven, right?”

“Yes, and if you’re late I’m telling everyone you cried during anatomy.”

“I didn’t cry.”

“You totally did.”

He hung up on her before she could keep pushing.

He checked the time, did the math automatically, and pushed off the wall.

There was enough time to go home, clean up, and still make it there without looking like he had walked straight out of a lab, which felt like the bare minimum for a birthday dinner he had already tried to dodge twice.

His dorm was quiet, kicked off his shoes by the door, dropped his bag onto a chair, and went straight to the shower. The hot water helped more than he expected, easing the tension in his shoulders and rinsing away the antiseptic smell that seemed to cling to him after every long shift.

He changed into something that didn’t scream hospital, dragged a hand through his hair, and checked the time again.

Still enough time to bail, but Ochaco would never let it go, and dealing with her later would be worse than showing up now.

The barbecue restaurant was near campus and busy enough that he had to weave around a couple lingering by the entrance. He spotted the group right away, mostly because Ochaco had a way of drawing attention without even trying.

She waved the second she saw him. “You made it!”

“I did.”

“You’re late,” she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him inside. 

He didn’t argue.

The table was already full, plates scattered between drinks, the grill working through whatever had been thrown on it last. A few familiar faces looked up, some from his year, others from different departments, and a couple he didn’t recognize at all.

“Sit,” Ochaco said, nudging him into the empty spot beside someone new.

Katsuki dropped into the seat, grabbed the nearest glass, and took a sip before even looking up.

Then he did, and suddenly things got complicated, because all he could focus on was red hair and a smile that looked like it appeared often.

His brain froze for a second, and he hated that right away. The guy was fucking handsome, exactly the kind of face Katsuki would have gone for if he had a type.

The guy’s eyes were wide beneath thick lashes, and they were holding the warm blur of a few beers already. They weren’t dull or unfocused, only softer at the corners. It made him look approachable in a way Katsuki usually couldn’t stand, but now it just felt dangerous.

“So,” a gravelly voice broke through the clatter of the restaurant. “Are you the guy who scares every person on campus, or did Ochaco just overhype the reputation?”

Katsuki paused with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth, then turned and met the gaze fixed on him across the narrow gap between their chairs.

“Depends who you ask,” he replied. “If they’re idiots, then yeah, they should be scared.”

A laugh rolled out of the redhead, deep enough to carry through the cramped space between them. Instead of backing off or rolling his eyes, he tipped a little closer and rested his chin on his hand while he studied Katsuki with open interest.

“I’m Eijiro,” he said, paying no attention to the glare aimed at him. “And I’ve heard you’re either a genius or the first new year’s worst nightmare. Since you actually came to a birthday dinner, I’m guessing you just have a serious hobby of being misunderstood.”

Usually, that would have earned an insult and a quick end to the conversation.

But this time, for God knows what reason, Katsuki wanted to hear what came next.

There was something disarming about the way the other guy spoke. He seemed confident enough that he didn’t sound like he was performing, and it had been a long time since anyone looked at Katsuki without bracing themselves first.

“I’m a third year med student,” he said, nudging a piece of cabbage across the grill. “I don’t have time for hobbies, especially the kind that involve people’s feelings.”

“Third year? That’s brutal.” Eijiro lifted his beer and took an easy sip. He looked perfectly content to stay there and listen as long as he was allowed. “I’m just starting. First year. I should’ve been a sophomore by now, but I took a year off and traveled.”

That caught him off guard because most people he knew treated timelines like sacred law, and they charged toward graduation as if any delay meant failure. Taking a year off just because you wanted room to breathe sounded reckless, maybe even stupid, but with Eijiro, it somehow fit. He seemed comfortable with himself, while Katsuki always felt one bad day away from coming apart.

“You went traveling?”

“Yeah. Just me, a backpack, and too many trains.” His eyes creased with the memory. “I needed to see something besides textbooks before I signed up for four years of staring at them. Worth it, though being the oldest guy in intro lectures is weird. Everyone’s panicking over grades, and I’m just happy to have a bed with clean sheets.”

“Grades matter, y’know?” Katsuki said, though the argument landed flat even to his own ears.

“They do,” Eijiro answered. “But so does being able to sit through dinner without looking like you’re planning a murder. You’ve got that face right now, like you’re calculating how many minutes this is stealing from your sleep.”

“It’s a packed schedule.”

“But you came anyway,” the redhead said, smiling at him. “And I’m glad you did.”

Heat pressed off the nearby grill and off the man beside him. 

Katsuki watched the line of Eijiro’s throat when he drank even knowing it was a distraction he couldn’t afford, but he kept looking anyway.

The pressure behind his eyes finally eased after hours. The lab, the anatomy exam, the professor who spent every class breathing down everyone’s neck faded into the background. In their place, he noticed the small scar above Eijiro’s right eyebrow and the way his laugh kept breaking across the room louder than anyone else’s.

“So what’s the verdict?” Eijiro asked, beer-flushed and amused. “Am I the next victim of campus terror, or are we going to eat before everything burns?”

“Definitely my next victim.”

He wasn’t serious, and they both knew it.

Katsuki grabbed the tongs, flipped a strip of meat, then dropped it onto Eijiro’s plate.

“Eat or shut up.”

Conversation came easier after that. 

Really, really easy.

Eijiro launched into a story about getting lost on a hiking trail in Shikoku for six hours, and Katsuki caught himself describing how completely useless his lab partners were without the usual venom behind it.

Listening had never been something that came naturally to him, but it did now, because Eijiro could make anything sound worth hearing, and to his growing annoyance, Katsuki realized he didn’t want dinner to end.

Then the mood broke.

A young woman with dark hair and a bright smile moved between the tables, and the moment she spotted them, her whole face lit up. She stepped behind Eijiro, leaned down, and kissed him on the mouth before he had fully turned. 

“Found you,” she said. “You said you’d be near the front, but Ochaco told me you were hiding back here.”

He blinked once, then broke into a broad smile. “Hey. You’re late.”

“Traffic was awful.” She laughed and reached for a chair.

The room snapped back into focus so hard it made Katsuki’s head ache.

Whatever pull had been there disappeared under the familiar weight of reality. 

He looked from her to Eijiro, who was already moving his chair to make room beside him, and he didn’t wait for introductions. His chair scraped hard against the floor as he pushed back, making a few people glance over, including Ochaco, who lifted her head from her drink with a puzzled look.

“I’m heading out.”

Eijiro looked up right away, surprise plain on his face. “Wait, I didn’t even introduce you. This is...”

“Have fun. And drink some water.”

He grabbed his jacket from the chair and looked at Ochaco instead of the man sitting beside her friend.

“My head hurts, and I’ve got an early class. Happy birthday.”

She looked ready to push back, but one glance at him changed her mind. A faint frown touched her mouth before she gave a short nod.

He turned and headed for the door, keeping his pace quick, but even then, he could feel Eijiro’s eyes on him. Near the end of the table, he looked back once, and the redhead still sat there in shock, hand half-raised near the woman’s arm, lips parted like he had waited too long to stop whatever had just fallen apart.

“See you around,” he said.

They both knew he didn’t mean it.

Outside, he kept walking until the noise from the restaurant faded behind him. 

Reality was easier to handle when it didn’t smile at him across a dinner table.

Human connection had always felt like one more inconvenience to manage or a physical need to deal with and move past. In the weeks after that birthday dinner, though, Katsuki learned how quickly a person could become a problem with no practical solution.

He lived by efficiency. 

People either made things easier or got in the way, and he treated them accordingly. If someone wasted his time, he cut them out. If they proved useful, he kept them close until that changed. It was simple, clean, and it worked. 

Sex fit neatly into the same system. It was release, nothing more than sweat and a body in reach. There were no promises attached to it, no need for careful texts the next morning, no interest in sharing coffee across a kitchen counter while a stranger tried to turn one night into a relationship. He had perfected the exit long ago, dressing while the other person was still catching their breath and locking the door behind him before conversation could start.

Most people made that easy since they were dull in ways that revealed themselves fast. Some wanted attention they hadn’t earned and confused confidence for substance. Others drifted through life with no urgency at all, content to be average and call it peace. 

Romance, from everything he had seen, looked like a polished excuse people used because they were afraid of their own company.

Then red hair entered the equation and ruined the math.

Everything started as a coincidence at the campus cafe, the only place that didn’t burn the beans or serve lukewarm water. Katsuki sat in the far corner, a fortress of textbooks and highliners surrounding him, when a shadow fell across his table. He didn’t even have to look up to know who it was, because that vibrant energy belonged to only one person.

“Fancy seeing the campus terror in the wild again,” Eijirou said, sliding into the chair opposite him without waiting for an invitation.

Katsuki gripped his pen a little tighter, though he kept his gaze fixed on the diagram of the human heart in front of him. “This is a public space. Don’t get excited.”

“I’m always excited when there’s good coffee involved,” the redhead replied, leaning back with a grin that seemed to challenge the drab gray of the library walls. “And since you’re already here, you can tell me if this chapter on cellular biology is actually written in Japanese or if I’ve just forgotten how to read.”

Katsuki should’ve told him to get lost and study on his own, the way any grown adult was supposed to. That would’ve been his typical response, but those ridiculous doe eyes stayed fixed on him with open expectation, and before he could stop himself, he let out a rough sigh and pulled the textbook across the table.

“Move,” he said, already flipping to the chapter.

Eijirou shifted closer at once, chin propped in one hand as if he were settling in for a show.

Katsuki scanned the page, irritation building as he took in the mess of highlighted lines, bent corners, and scattered notes in the margins. “First of all, the problem is that you’ve apparently been attacking your notes with blind confidence instead of reading it.”

“That sounds like something I’d do.”

“Okay, listen,” he tapped a paragraph with one finger. “Cellular respiration is the process by which the cell converts glucose into usable energy in the form of ATP through glycolysis, the citric acid cycle, and oxidative phosphorylation. If you’d paid attention in class, this would be easy to comprehend.”

Eijirou blinked at him, and, for fuck sake, those eyes would easily kill Katsuki.

He kept going because he was already trapped in it now. He broke down each stage, pointed out where electrons moved, corrected two wrong notes in the margin, and by the time he finished, he was halfway annoyed with himself for putting in so much effort.

Across from him, Eijirou looked thoroughly unimpressed by science.

“Okay,” he said. “Now explain it to me like I’m four.”

For a second, Katsuki only stared at him, then a laugh slipped out before he could stop it, loud enough to surprise them both.

“The nerve you have.”

Eijirou grinned, clearly pleased with himself. “I’ll pay for your next coffee.”

“Bribing me now, I see.”

“Is it working?”

He leaned back in his chair, considering it far more seriously than the offer deserved. “If it comes with a double shot of espresso, maybe.”

“That sounds like a yes.”

“That sounds like you still don’t know what ATP is.”

“Correct,” Eijirou said cheerfully. “But I do know how to buy coffee, so I think we both bring something valuable to this partnership.”

Katsuki clicked his tongue and dragged the book back toward himself.

“Fine. Listen carefully, toddler.”

After that, the days bled into weeks, and the coincidences became suspiciously frequent.

Katsuki told himself he was just maintaining his routine, but the truth lived in the screenshots of the freshman elective schedule he had surreptitiously saved. He knew that Eijirou spent his Tuesday afternoons in the north wing of the library and that he grabbed dinner at the small ramen shop near the train tracks on Friday nights. It was a calculated, borderline predatory habit that made Katsuki feel a flicker of shame, but the hunger for that specific brand of company outweighed the sting of his conscience.

He started showing up at the ramen shop twenty minutes after Eijirou arrived, acting surprised when he saw the shock of red hair at the counter.

“You again?” Katsuki said, pulling out the stool next to him.

“It’s a small city, man. Or maybe we just both have excellent taste in noodles,” Eijiro laughed, nudging his shoulder against Katsuki’s.

That night they lost nearly an hour to an argument over practical effects in old action movies, and neither of them noticed until the second round of food hit the table. 

What started as a casual disagreement turned into both of them talking over each other about squibs, real stunt work, and how modern films cut too fast that left a bitter taste in their mouths. 

Most people took Katsuki’s enthusiasm as hostility, because he pointed with his chopsticks and spoke like every opinion other than his was wrong, but Eijirou only matched his energy and came back harder, naming stunt teams, quoting directors, and defending reckless car chases with alarming sincerity.

“You actually remember who directed The Bullet Train?” Katsuki asked around a mouthful of spicy pork.

“Yeah, because you brought him up last week at the library,” Eijirou said, reaching for another dumpling. “You said no one respects Junya Satō enough, so I went home and watched it that night.”

See, that was the problem: Eijirou remembered everything. 

He knew that Katsuki hated excessive sugar in his tea, that he preferred physical books over digital tablets, and that he tended to tap his left foot when he was frustrated with a complex formula. This level of observation was usually reserved for people who wanted something, but Eijirou seemed to do it out of a genuine, bone-deep kindness. He was sweet in a way that should’ve been nauseating, but it actually felt like a balm against the jagged edges of Katsuki’s personality.

Guilt sat heavy in his gut whenever the girl from the restaurant crossed his mind because he could still see the way she had kissed Eijirou. 

Still, neither of them mentioned her. 

Ever. 

Eijirou never volunteered a name or a story, and Katsuki, greedy enough to take whatever scraps he could get, never asked.

So he kept playing along.

They kept running into each other by chance, except chance had very little to do with it. One rainy afternoon in the library, they sat so close that their thighs brushed under the table. Eijirou was humming a song Katsuki had recommended the day before while his head propped on his hand as he scrolled through a PDF.

“You’re doing it again,” Katsuki said, not looking up from his notes.

“Doing what?”

“Distracting me with your breathing. It’s loud.”

The redhead chuckled, “I’ll try to be more decorative and less functional then. Is that better?”

“Nothing about you is decorative,” Katsuki said, and only realized what he’d said after it was already out.

The look Eijirou gave him changed at once. The easy grin faded, and his attention narrowed until it rested fully on Katsuki. For a second, only a single second, the teasing stopped pretending to be harmless and became an opening.

Katsuki wanted to cross the space between them and see if Eijirou really tasted like the peppermint gum he always chewed, but then the memory of the kiss at the restaurant came back and snapped him out of that trance.

He could be arrogant, loud, impatient, all of that, but he had never taken what belonged to someone else. Even so, when Eijirou leaned across the table to point at a typo in his notes and let his fingers brush Katsuki’s hand for a moment longer than necessary, right and wrong lost a lot of their weight.

He was getting attached to someone already claimed, and Eijirou kept making it easier than it should’ve been.

“You’ve got ink on your thumb,” Eijirou said.

His thumb swept across Katsuki’s skin and smeared the mark away.

It lasted no time at all, but he carried the little touch home with him.

That night he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, irritated by how bright his eyes looked and how crowded his chest felt. He was a third-year med student with the next ten years planned down to the hour, but he spent his evenings learning the train schedule of a freshman who loved old Takashi Miike action films and dyed his hair red in a tiny dorm bathroom.

Three months of these "accidents" had turned Katsuki into a version of himself he didn’t recognize; he was patient, he was attentive, and he was, God forbid, nice. 

As the semester pushed toward finals, the frequency of their meetings only increased, driven by an unspoken need to be in the same orbit. Whether it was a shared bench in the courtyard or a late-night study session fueled by vending machine snacks, Eijirou became the focal point of Katsuki’s world.

The pull between them was real enough to register in the body, but Katsuki knew bodies were stupid in predictable ways. 

Give a person months of restraint, too much work, too little sleep, and no one to drag home for a night, then add proximity to someone he couldn’t stop watching, and the result was hardly mysterious. Brains liked reward and attaching desire to whatever stayed close the longest. 

Chemistry dressed itself up as fate every day of the week.

That explanation should’ve made it easier to ignore, but he kept wanting more of the same. More afternoons wasted in Eijirou’s dorm kitchen while pretending to care about whatever was on television. More arguments that never turned ugly because the idiot laughed before either of them could dig in too deep. More casual contact that should’ve meant nothing, a hand at his shoulder to move past him, a knee knocking his under the table, fingers brushing his wrist when something was passed across the counter.

None of it counted for anything, he knew that much.

Eijirou was like that with people in general. Open where others were guarded, affectionate without calculation, generous in ways that looked intimate until you noticed he offered the same ease to strangers, neighbors, old women at the market, children who waved at him in the street. He had never said a word that could be mistaken for flirting, never held a look too long, never created a private language only the two of them shared. Whatever Katsuki kept reading into those moments had been written there by his own hungry mind.

Which was fucking embarrassing, if he cared to examine it.

Touch starved was a pathetic phrase, but it fit. He had spent months doing little besides studying, going to the gym, sleeping badly, and pretending he preferred solitude because it sounded better than admitting no one interested him enough to bother. Then Eijirou had become part of his routine so gradually that Katsuki failed to notice how much space he occupied until everything else started arranging itself around him.

So this was attraction, period.

Not destiny, not some rare connection, not evidence of hidden feelings waiting to be uncovered. Just deprivation meeting availability, loneliness dressed in better clothes, and desire fastening itself to the nearest person who made being alone feel optional.

He understood every part of it, and none of that understanding loosened its grip.

Because logic could label a thing, but it couldn’t simply kill it. Because even knowing it ran one way, he still looked for excuses to stay longer. Because each stolen hour left him wanting the next one more than the last. He kept gathering those moments anyway, storing them where common sense could not reach, and when he was with Eijirou, for once in his life, there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

As they walked out of the library later that evening, the rain having turned into a light mist, Eijirou stopped by the stone pillars at the entrance and asked, with damp hair sticking to his forehead, “Same time Friday?”

Katsuki looked at him, and felt the familiar surge of greed. “Yeah. Don’t be late.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Eijirou said, a wink accompanying the words before he turned and disappeared into the darkness.

He watched him go while his fingers traced the spot on his hand where Eijirou had touched him, knowing full well that he was heading toward a disaster he had no intention of avoiding. 

The weights hit the rubber flooring with a loud thud that echoed through the nearly deserted university gym. 

Marine Day had emptied the university gym to a degree Katsuki appreciated. Most students had escaped for the long weekend, chasing beaches, family houses, or anywhere that wasn’t campus, which was fucking amazing. 

Fewer people meant no waiting for equipment, no packs of idiots occupying benches while they scrolled through their phones, no pointless chatter drifting between sets.

Then, the glass doors opened and Eijirou stepped inside in a faded sleeveless tank that had seen better years and did nothing to hide the work underneath it. His hair was pulled back with a black headband, exposing his face and the grin that arrived the instant he spotted the occupied rack.

“No way,” he said. “I thought I’d be the only psycho in here today. Should’ve known you’d be around.”

Katsuki finished the rep, racked the bar, and grabbed the towel beside him. “Didn’t feel like going home.”

“Fair.” Eijirou said and dropped his bag near the bench press. “Since we’re both here, want to rotate sets? I can even spare you my sparkling conversation.”

The redhead bent forward first, hands braced on his knees, back flexing under thin cotton. Then shoulders, then arms overhead, tank lifting each time and flashing more skin than should have been legal in a public building. Katsuki stared at a stack of spare plates so hard he could’ve burned through steel.

Months of this.

Months of pretending he didn’t notice the size of Eijirou’s hands, the width of his waist, the way muscle moved under his skin when he laughed or reached or lifted. Months of acting irritated because irritation was easier to carry than hunger.

“So, are we gonna rotate or not?” Eijirou asked. “I’ll keep up.”

“You’ll try.”

“Beautiful. That means yes.”

They moved through squats, bench, rows, and presses. Sweat gathered, shirts darkened, chalk dust marked their palms. There was no wasted motion between them. One loaded plates while the other stripped them. One stepped in to spot before being asked. Water bottles traded places on the bench and towels got kicked aside and neither of them needed to speak much.

Katsuki wished talking had been the problem.

The mirrors made everything worse. Every turn offered another angle. Eijirou pressing dumbbells overhead with triceps drawn taut. Eijirou bracing for rows, lats spreading beneath damp fabric. Eijirou wiping his face with the hem of his shirt and exposing a line of stomach that made Katsuki nearly miss his own grip.

When they handed weights back and forth, fingers brushed more than once, and his loose shorts were the only thing saving him from humiliation. Between sets, he paced around, drank water he didn’t need, and adjusted collars that were already secure. He cursed every instinct in his body because his cock was already getting half-hard just from this.

“You good?” Eijirou asked after catching him glaring at nothing.

“Mind your set.”

“That a yes?”

“That’s me telling you to shut up.”

Eijirou only laughed and lay back on the bench.

An hour passed in that ugly state of discipline and distraction. By the time they finished, the room had grown humid from trapped summer air and exertion. Outside, the sky had gone dark purple, swollen with rain. They headed toward the lockers while sweat cooled on their skin.

Then the storm broke.

Rain crashed against the windows in dense sheets, drumming so hard the street beyond blurred into gray movement.

“Damn,” Eijirou said, pulling on a clean shirt that stuck for a second across his chest before falling into place. “That’s serious.”

Katsuki grabbed his own bag and tried not to watch the fabric slide over muscle.

“We can wait it out,” Eijirou went on, “or make a run for it. There’s a 7/11 across the street. I want protein shakes, and those spicy steamed buns if they still have them. I’m paying since you bullied me through those last reps.”

The smart answer was no.

He should go home, take a cold shower, open a textbook and stop thinking about collarbones and shoulders and hands wrapped around a barbell.

Instead, he picked up his bag and followed him toward the exit.

The sprint across the street lasted less than a minute and still left them drenched through to the skin. By the time they ducked into the convenience store, water ran from their hair, their sleeves, the hems of their shirts, collecting in dark spots across the linoleum while the clerk watched with open irritation from behind the register.

Katsuki barely noticed because rain had plastered Eijirou’s shirt against him so completely it might as well have been painted on. Cotton clung to his chest and traced every ridge of muscle across his stomach, outlining the hard slope of his shoulders. A drop slid from his throat and disappeared beneath the collar, and another tracked along his forearm, hanging from the line of his wrist before falling.

It took effort to keep his hands where they belonged.

He locked them behind his back, fingers digging into his own skin, because the need to reach and touch was so insanely huge that scared even him. He wanted to drag his mouth across the salt still drying on Eijirou’s neck from training, to taste sweat mixed with rainwater, to press him against the freezer doors and make him understand what he did to people by existing in public like this.

But instead of doing all that, he grabbed a spicy bun and a bottle of tea.

Eijirou chatted with the cashier while paying, cheerful enough to make the man soften despite the puddle forming at their feet. He thanked him on the way out, grinning like he hadn’t just walked in looking like trouble.

They took shelter beneath the narrow overhang outside the store, backs against the cold window glass. Rain hammered the street and bounced off the curb in silver bursts. Cars hissed past. Somewhere nearby, thunder rolled farther into the distance.

For a while it was easy.

They traded complaints about training rotations, argued over whether one of their professors was incompetent or just cruel, compared playlists. Eijirou laughed with his whole body, head tipped back, one hand around a canned coffee he his body wasn’t gonna hate for drinking caffeine this late. Katsuki said little, then more than he meant to, then enough that he noticed it and got annoyed with himself.

That happened around Eijirou.

Somewhere along the past few months, Katsuki had caught himself saying more than he ever meant to. It never happened all at once. A complaint after class, a story from childhood, an offhand comment about the future, then thoughts he usually kept buried so deep he barely admitted them to himself. Fears about failing, plans he had never spoken aloud, the ugly parts, the ambitious parts, everything that should’ve stayed private somehow kept finding its way into the space between them.

Eijirou always took it the same way, with those attentive pretty eyes and that open smile, like nothing Katsuki offered was too small or too heavy to hold. He listened without flinching, without rushing to fill the silence, without turning the moment back toward himself.

Around everyone else, Katsuki was something to measure against or keep distance from. The brilliant student. The intimidating third-year. The only son with expectations strapped to his back. The difficult one people admired from afar and left there.

With Eijirou, he was only himself.

For reasons Katsuki could never name without sounding pathetic, Eijirou kept coming back, and he always knew that it was easier to keep walls up around people who didn’t care.

And Eijirou cared. A lot.

He was in the middle of insulting a first-year who had nearly dislocated his own shoulder in lab when Eijirou went quiet.

Katsuki noticed how he watched rain gather in a pothole near the curb before saying in a small voice, “I was supposed to see my girlfriend today.”

The bun in Katsuki’s hand lost all taste because there was that word again.

Girlfriend.

Every time it came up, something mean and sour rose straight into his throat. He hated that he reacted to a stranger he had never met properly. Hated that some girl in the city could cancel plans with one text and still own space Katsuki couldn’t even approach.

He tore off another bite he didn’t want.

“She had some project to finish so she couldn’t make it.” Eijirou went on. “It keeps happening.”

Katsuki stared ahead because if he looked over too fast, too interested, it would show. “Then stop making plans with her.”

“Damn, that compassionate streak of yours is really shining.”

“Use your brain. If somebody keeps bailing, they don’t want to be there.”

Eijirou gave a short laugh, but it died before it got anywhere. Rainwater dripped from the ends of his hair onto his knees. “Maybe. Or maybe life’s just busy.”

“Busy people still answer phones.”

That made the other guy shut his mouth and look away.

He glanced over then, caught the way Eijirou’s jaw shifted once before he spoke again.

“We’ve been together since our last year of high school,” he said. “Everybody treats us like we already did the hard part because we lasted this long.”

He picked at the label on the can until it peeled under his thumb.

“I don’t even know when it started feeling strange. I call, she texts later. I ask to video chat, she says she hates screens. I try to go there, she has deadlines. Then another week passes, then another.”

Rainwater ran from the edge of the awning and splashed near their shoes.

“I talk to her and it feels like I’m interrupting something.”

Green flared hot behind Katsuki’s ribs.

He saw it all at once. Some faceless girl choosing not to answer. Letting Eijirou wait. Making him ask twice. Making him explain himself. Wasting what she had with both hands while Katsuki stood five feet away pretending friendship was enough.

He wanted to know her name only so he could hate it properly.

He wanted to ask what kind of idiot got tired of hearing Eijirou laugh.

He wanted to shake him for still defending her.

Most of all, he wanted to drag him home, strip that soaked shirt off him, feed him, keep him warm, and show him what it looked like when someone wanted him more than anything.

But he knew that none of that belonged to him.

He was a colleague. Maybe a friend. Hopefully a friend. But still, nothing that gave him the right to be furious.

Nothing that let him say mine.

So he bit down on the inside of his cheek and tasted blood.

“You don’t have to fix it,” Eijirou said after a moment. “I know I’m being pathetic.”

“You’re not being pathetic,” Katsuki replied, but then he added, “maybe a bit dramatic, but that’s it.”

A crooked smile appeared, then faded just as quickly. Eijirou tipped his head back against the glass and stared up at the gray sky beyond the awning. Rainwater slid from his hairline to his temple.

“I think I’m trying so hard because everyone expects me to,” he said. “We’ve been together since high school, so people talk like we’re already set for life. Like it’s obvious we’ll end up married, have kids, tell embarrassing stories at reunions, all that crap.”

He laughed once, but it didn’t last more than three seconds.

“And when enough people say that stuff, you start repeating it to yourself too. Like if everyone believes it, then it has to mean something.”

Katsuki kept his eyes on the street. If he looked over now, he might say something reckless.

“It’s good when we’re actually together,” Eijirou continued. “But the second we’re apart, it’s like we disappear from each other. Calls don’t happen. Messages get shorter. Days pass, then another week passes, and it starts feeling like we were never together at all.”

The words came quieter now, more to himself than to Katsuki.

“It didn’t used to be like that,” he whispered. “So I keep trying, because that’s what people tell you to do, right? Relationships take effort. Long distance is hard. Busy schedules happen. If you care enough, you push through it.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face and gave a tired huff.

“I just don’t know when effort turns into dragging around something that’s already dead, and I don’t know when you’re supposed to stop trying,” he said.

He was ready to say now it’s the perfect time, even knowing it would crack something between them and leave it changed for good. The words had already risen to the back of his throat when Eijirou turned to look at him. The same familiar openness was still there, clear as ever, but something dimmer rested beneath it that night. Fatigue, maybe. Or disappointment worn smooth from handling too often.

“I can say this stuff to you,” he said. “Everyone else either tells me we’re relationship goals or they tell me to be patient. You just call me an idiot.”

“Because you’re one.”

“Probably.”

He crushed the empty can and dropped it into the trash beside the door. “Still better than bottling it up.”

Katsuki wanted to ask if he talked to her like this. Wanted to ask if she knew how lucky she was to be trusted with the messier parts. Wanted to ask if he ever thought about someone else while waiting for her to call back.

Instead, he said, “If it feels like work all the time, it’s bad.”

Eijirou blinked. “That’s your expert opinion?”

“I think it’s basic common sense.”

“Maybe.”

The answer was practical, and it was clear that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He slapped both hands on his thighs, pushed off the window, and grinned in a way that didn’t fool Katsuki for a second.

“Rain’s easing up. Race you back?”

Before Katsuki could answer, he was already splashing into the street.

And he followed.

He would always follow.

They ran through puddles and across crosswalk paint slick with water. Eijirou laughed whenever a car sent spray across the curb, then looked over his shoulder to make sure Katsuki was still there. Every few strides he threw an arm out for balance and nearly wiped out, then recovered with stupid athletic grace.

Katsuki’s chest ached for him.

By the time the dorm entrance came into view, both of them were breathing hard and water dripped from their sleeves onto the concrete landing.

“That was good,” Eijirou said, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “I needed that.”

He stayed there another second, eyes on Katsuki, as if deciding whether to say something else, then he smiled, an easier one this time. “See you tomorrow?”

There should’ve been pride in refusing how quickly he answered.

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

The redhead gave a quick wave, then slipped through the doors and disappeared inside, and Katsuki stood there for a long time with the bitter taste of Eijirou’s confession still on his tongue.

The transition into autumn happened with a brutal suddenness that usually sent Katsuki into a foul mood for the better part of three months. 

He detested the way the air turned thin and biting, the way the wind seemed to seek out the gaps in his clothing, and especially the way his joints felt stiff when he woke up in the mornings. 

Being a third-year med student meant his schedule was already a logistical nightmare, so when his alarm failed to go off and he realized he was fifteen minutes behind for a study session, the resulting scramble was nothing short of chaotic. He shoved his textbooks into his bag, grabbed his keys, and sprinted out the door, only realizing once the elevator reached the lobby that his heavy coat was still hanging on the hook behind his dorm.

The walk to the café was a miserable exercise in endurance as the September wind sliced through his thin social shirt. By the time he reached the familiar storefront where Eijirou was already waiting, his hands were shoved deep into his pockets and his teeth were practically vibrating from the chill. 

He pushed through the door, a scowl firmly etched into his features, and headed straight for the corner booth where a shock of red hair was visible over the top of a massive biochemistry textbook.

“You look like you’re about to declare war on the weather,” Eijirou said, looking up with a grin that immediately made the room feel ten degrees warmer. He didn’t even wait for Katsuki to sit down before he started unzipping the thick, oversized gray hoodie he was wearing over a t-shirt. “Forget your jacket in the rush?”

“Shut up,” Katsuki replied, dropping his bag onto the bench. “The radiator in my building is a piece of crap and I didn’t check the forecast. It’s a mess.”

Without asking or making a spectacle of it, Eijirou pulled the hoodie off and tossed it across the table. “Here. Put it on before you start shedding ice cubes on my notes. I’m already wearing two layers, so don’t even try to argue. Seriously, just take it.”

Katsuki stared at the heap of fabric for a second, his brain screaming at him to refuse, but the cold was winning, and the scent of Eijirou’s laundry detergent was already wafting toward him. 

He pulled the garment over his head, and the warmth hit his skin in a wave that made his shoulders finally drop an inch. It fit him almost properly, since their builds were close enough, but Eijirou’s broader shoulders stretched the fabric wider across the top and left the sleeves falling just past Katsuki’s wrists. 

Wearing something that had just come off Eijirou’s body made his pulse kick up a notch. 

“Better?” Eijirou asked, leaning his chin on his palm while he watched Katsuki settle in. “You actually have some color in your face now.”

“Fine. It’s fine,” Katsuki grunted, pulling his notebook out and flipping to the section on metabolic pathways. “Now, stop staring and show me what’s confusing you about the Krebs cycle, because if you fail this exam, I’m going to look like a terrible tutor. And I don’t do ‘terrible’.”

“I’m not staring," Eijirou laughed, sliding the textbook toward the center of the table. “Look, this whole section on oxidative phosphorylation? It’s like the author decided to write it in a different language halfway through. I’ve read it three times and it’s still not sticking.”

“That’s because you’re trying to memorize the names instead of understanding the flow,” Katsuki said, grabbing a pen and pulling a stack of napkins toward him. “Think of it like an assembly line. If one guy drops the ball, the whole thing stops. Look here.”

They spent the next three hours buried in the complexities of biochemistry. Despite the gaps in their years of study, the chemistry between them in a workspace was effortless. Katsuki was a demanding teacher, refusing to just give the answers and instead forcing Eijirou to work through the logic of enzyme catalysis and thermodynamics. 

He found that Eijirou was a visual learner, so he spent a good portion of the time drawing elaborate, jagged diagrams on napkins and margins to show how the molecules shifted and transformed.

“Wait, so the proton gradient is basically just a battery?” Eijirou asked, his eyes brightening as he followed the line of Katsuki’s pen.

“Exactly. It’s potential energy. You’re finally using your brain for something other than memorizing gym routines,” Katsuki said, though there was a hint of pride he couldn’t quite mask.

“Hey, my gym routines are very calculated,” Eijirou joked, leaning in closer to look at a diagram of the mitochondria.

Eijirou was the kind of student who paid full attention when someone explained something, those wide eyes tracking every movement of Katsuki’s pen across the page. Whenever he focused, he leaned in without noticing, closing the space between them until their shoulders brushed over the open textbook. 

Each brief contact forced Katsuki to school his expression and remember what should have been obvious by then; Eijirou was tactile with everyone. 

He hugged Ochaco in greeting, slapped hands with the barista downstairs, threw an arm around classmates, and moved through the world with an ease Katsuki could neither understand nor ignore.

That was the problem.

Anything that might have looked like flirting could just as easily be Eijirou being Eijirou. The way he laughed at Katsuki’s insults instead of taking offense, the way he remembered some minor detail about a surgery Katsuki had mentioned weeks earlier, the small smiles that appeared when Katsuki said something particularly interesting, or the way he never seemed eager to leave once their study sessions ended.

Katsuki hated himself for wondering whether the brush of Eijirou’s fingers when they both reached for a highlighter meant anything at all, or whether it was nothing more than two people sharing a table that was too small.

And then there was the girlfriend.

He knew she existed. He couldn’t forget it, no matter how rarely Eijirou mentioned her after that night in the rain. She stayed lodged in the back of Katsuki’s mind anyway, an unwelcome presence in every moment he was stupid enough to hope for more.

“I think I actually get it now,” Eijirou said, cutting through Katsuki’s train of thought. “The way you explained the electron transport chain makes way more sense than the way the professor did it. You’re actually a really good teacher, man.”

“I know,” Katsuki said while packing his pens. “You need to promise you’re gonna pass this exam. Don’t make me regret spending my afternoon on this.”

“I will! I promise. And because of that, you’re not paying for a single thing today,” Eijirou declared, sliding out of the booth before Katsuki could reach for his wallet.

“I told you I’ve got it, don’t be a martyr. I’m the one with the clinical rotations, I can afford a coffee,” Katsuki snapped, reaching for his bag.

“Too late, I already tapped my card at the counter while you were in the restroom earlier,” Eijirou called back, already heading toward the door with a triumphant look on his face. “Consider it a ’not freezing to death’ tax.”

He held the door open, the cool autumn air rushing in to meet them as they stepped back out onto the sidewalk. 

The sun had begun to sink, washing the pavement in long orange shadows as the air turned colder by the minute. Near the edge of the café patio, Katsuki stopped and reached for the hem of the gray hoodie, already pulling it over his head so he could give it back before they split off toward their separate dorms.

“Wait, take this back,” Katsuki said, his head halfway through the collar, his words muffled by the fabric.

“And let you freeze to death from hypothermia?” Eijirou asked, reaching out. 

His hand landed on Katsuki’s forearm to stop the movement. The touch was firm and warm through the fabric, and for a second, the busy street noise seemed to fade into a dull hum.

Eijirou was smiling, that same easy expression that had been haunting Katsuki’s dreams for months, but there was something softer in his eyes now, something that made his breath hitch in his throat.

“Keep it,” Eijirou said, his thumb brushing against the sleeve of the hoodie. “It’s freezing out, and I’m already halfway to my building anyway. You can just give it to me next time we study. Besides, it looks better on you than it does on me.”

Katsuki stood frozen, his hands still gripped on the fabric. 

He wanted to say something, to demand an explanation for why Eijirou was being so undeniably sweet, or to ask if he realized what he was doing to Katsuki’s sanity. He wanted to ask about the girlfriend and the long distance and why he was spending all his free time with a grumpy third-year med student instead of his friends.

“Whatever,” was all Katsuki managed to say, his heart doing a frantic rhythm against his ribs. “If I lose it, don’t come crying to me.”

“You won’t lose it. You’re too organized for that,” Eijirou said, his smile widening. “See you around, Katsuki. Stay warm.”

He gave Katsuki’s arm a final, friendly squeeze before starting walking away with his hands stuffed into his pockets, leaving Katsuki standing alone on the sidewalk.

Katsuki watched him go until he was nothing more than a red speck at the end of the street. Only then did he pull the hoodie tighter around himself, tucking his nose into the collar where Eijirou’s scent still clung strongest. It was greedy, and he knew it. Worse, it was dangerous. Every small indulgence made the drop waiting for him that much farther.

Still, when he turned toward his apartment, he kept the sweater on.

He walked through the cold wrapped in a layer of someone else’s life, carrying warmth that had never been meant for him. Somewhere between one block and the next, a bitter thought settled in. 

For all his talk about romance being for idiots, no one had played the fool more thoroughly than he had.

The room felt smaller than it actually was, mostly because the floor had disappeared beneath a scatter of medical textbooks, loose notes covered in cramped handwriting, and empty takeout boxes that still carried traces of ginger and soy. 

By the end of September, Katsuki knew the layout of this dorm as well as he knew the bones of a ribcage. It lacked the sterile order of the labs he spent most of his time in, but that difference had started to matter less than he cared to admit.

This was a lived-in place. 

A sock stuck halfway out from under the bed. Gym supplements stood in a neat row on top of the dresser. Someone had clearly made an effort to clear a path before he arrived, which meant Eijirou remembered how little patience Katsuki had for mess. The rest of the clutter remained, though, and somehow that made the gesture feel more honest.

A low indie song played from the speaker on the desk, blending with the scrape of pens and the turning of pages. The clock had already passed nine-thirty, later than Katsuki usually allowed himself to stay anywhere on a weeknight, but leaving no longer felt urgent.

Eijirou sat beside him on the floor in a thick oversized jumper that made his shoulders look even broader. One leg was folded under him, the other bent carelessly, head tipped as he worked through a dense paragraph on cellular respiration with the concentration of someone trying very hard not to miss a single word.

Every few minutes he shifted, and their shoulders knocked together over the open books.

Katsuki kept his attention on the notebook in front of him, correcting a chemical formula Eijirou had ruined earlier, though his focus drifted more than he liked. They were close enough that one turn of the head would bring them face to face, and he should have moved away, but he didn’t.

“I think my brain is actually melting,” Eijirou’s voice broke the silence, followed by the sound of him dropping his pen onto the open pages. “Is it possible for a human being to physically run out of room for new information? Because I feel like if I learn one more thing about mitochondria, I’m going to forget my own phone number.”

Katsuki didn’t look up, though a small smile appeared on his mouth. “You’re not melting. You’re just realizing that your high school teachers lied to you about how hard university was going to be. Keep going. If you stop now, you’ll lose the momentum and we’ll have to start over on Monday.”

“You’re a tyrant, you know that?” Eijirou laughed, shifting again so that the heat of his arm was unmistakable against his side. “But the Chinese food helped. Good call on the extra spicy noodles.”

“I didn’t call it, you just bought them because you know I hate bland crap,” Katsuki replied, finally closing the notebook and setting it aside.

The room had gone quiet in the comfortable way silence sometimes did around Eijirou. For a few minutes, the endless demands of the medical program and everything waiting outside the dorm walls seemed far enough away to ignore. Katsuki let himself glance sideways, taking in the line of Eijirou’s jaw in the low light and a possessive kind of affection gripped him, stronger than it had any right to be after months spent pretending there were lines between them he respected.

That peace shattered when an insistent knock echoed through the room.

The sound was out of place in the hallway, and before Eijirou could even scramble to his feet, the door swung open. 

His girlfriend stood in the threshold, her hair a bit windblown and her eyes slightly glassy as she leaned against the doorframe for support. The smell of cheap cocktails and autumn air rushed in with her, instantly clashing with the scent of old paper and lukewarm tea.

“Surprise!” She chirped, though her voice carried a slight slur that betrayed exactly how her Saturday night had been going. 

She stumbled forward, dropping a small bag on the floor before wrapping her arms around Eijirou’s neck in a way that looked more like she was hanging onto him than hugging him. “I missed you so much. I told the girls I couldn’t stay for another round because I had to see my boyfriend.”

Eijirou looked caught between concern and a deep, simmering embarrassment. He steadied her with a hand on her waist, his eyes darting toward Katsuki, who was already in the process of gathering his things from the floor. “What are you doing here? I thought you were at that gallery opening.”

“It was boring,” she sighed, finally pulling back enough to notice the person sitting on the carpet surrounded by academic debris. Her gaze drifted over the books, the diagrams, and then landed on Katsuki with a look of half-baked amusement. “Oh. Are you actually studying on a Saturday night? Man, that’s lame. Is that why you’re not going out with me and our friends anymore, Eiji? Because you’re too busy being a nerd?”

The word felt like a slap in the quiet room. Katsuki felt the temperature of the moment drop as he stood up, and he didn’t look at her, focusing instead on zipping his bag and making sure his pens were accounted for. 

The domestic warmth he had been basking in ten minutes ago had been replaced by a hollow feeling in his gut.

“Don’t,” Eijirou said, his voice carrying a warning that wasn’t directed at Katsuki, but at the girl leaning heavily against his chest. He looked back at her, his expression uncharacteristically strained. “I’m going to take you to the bathroom. Do you think you can take a shower all by yourself or are you going to fall over?”

She blinked her eyes slowly, a flirtatious grin spreading across her face as she reached out to toy with the collar of Eijirou’s jumper. “You can come with me if you’re worried. We haven’t done that in ages.”

Katsuki watched out of the corner of his eye as Eijirou froze, his entire posture becoming rigid. The air in the room felt suffocating, and that entire scene was a private drama that Katsuki had no business witnessing.

“I’ll take care of you when you’re out of the shower,” the redhead said, his words sounding forced as he gently steered her toward the small bathroom door. He grabbed a clean towel from the rack and handed it to her, as if he were trying to usher her out of sight as quickly as possible.

She disappeared behind the door, the sound of the water turning on providing a harsh white noise to the silence left in her wake. Eijirou stood in the middle of the room, his shoulders slumped as he turned back to face Katsuki. He looked exhausted, and the guilt on his face was so prominent that it made the situation even more unbearable.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low and cracking. “She didn’t mean it like that. She’s just had too much to drink and she gets... Like that.”

Katsuki shrugged, slinging his bag over his shoulder. He felt like a trespasser in a life that was already full, a temporary fixture that had stayed too long. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal.”

He walked toward the door, but paused when he realized Eijirou was still watching him with that same devastated expression. The urge to lash out was there, to say something cruel, but it was overshadowed by a sudden, weary desire to just be gone.

“You know, she’s right,” Katsuki said, his gaze landing on the messy pile of textbooks they had been working through. “You should probably go out a bit more. It’s just your first year and you’re always stuck in here studying with me. You’re missing out on the stuff you’re supposed to be doing.”

It was a lie, a form of self-sabotage that felt like cutting a limb to save the body. 

He wanted Eijirou to argue, to say that studying with him was exactly where he wanted to be, but he was prepared for the alternative. He was prepared for Eijirou to realize that Katsuki was a burden he didn’t need.

But Eijirou didn’t look at him. 

His gaze moved to an empty space on the wall just above Katsuki’s head when he said, “Maybe I don’t want it,” he whispered, the words so soft they were almost lost to the sound of the shower. “Maybe I’m exactly where I want to be.”

Katsuki felt a surge of something that felt dangerously like hope, but he suppressed it with a ruthlessness born of months of practice. He was tired of the guessing games and the shared looks and the ghost of a girl in the next room. 

He liked Eijirou too much to keep pretending that this was just two guys helping each other with biochemistry.

He reached for the door handle, his hand lingering on the metal for a second. “Give her some water and some of that miso soup powder you have in the cabinet. It’s good for the electrolytes. Helps with the hangover.”

“Katsuki...”

“I’m leaving,” he interrupted, not wanting to hear whatever apology or explanation was coming next. “See you later.”

He stepped into the hallway, pulled the door shut behind him, and walked toward the elevators feeling like his heart was a dead weight in his chest.

The following three weeks were an exercise in surgical avoidance that left Katsuki feeling like he was vibrating out of his own skin. 

He rerouted his entire life, choosing a library on the opposite side of campus and brewing bitter, terrible coffee in his apartment just to ensure he wouldn’t run into a certain shock of red hair at their usual haunt. 

It was exhausting work, maintaining a perimeter around a person who didn’t even know they were being quarantined, but the memory of that night in the dorm room acted like a jagged glass shard in his mind. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Eijirou’s devastated face and heard the muffled sound of a shower running while a girl he didn’t know reclaimed a space Katsuki had mistakenly thought he was filling.

Then, the night of Eijirou’s birthday inevitably arrived. 

The venue was a new bar near the university, all industrial concrete and dim amber bulbs, packed with people who seemed far too happy to be celebrating a first-year student. 

Katsuki stood in a shadowed corner, his back against a pillar while he nursed a drink he didn’t really want. He had spent forty minutes staring at a wrapped box on his desk before leaving his apartment, a high-end fountain pen he’d picked out weeks ago, but the thought of handing it over felt like an admission of a crime he wasn’t ready to confess. The gift remained in his drawer, and he remained in the dark, tethered to the spot by his own stubbornness.

Ochaco and Mina were standing nearby, their conversation a blur of campus gossip and internship complaints that Katsuki only half-processed. He did his best to look engaged, nodding at appropriate intervals and even forcing a dry comment about a professor they all despised, because anything was better than looking toward the center of the room. 

He knew exactly where Eijirou was without having to check because the gravitational pull was still there, a constant tugging at the back of his neck that told him Eijirou was laughing, or drinking, or looking toward the corner with a hopeful, confused frequency that Katsuki refused to acknowledge.

“You’re being weirdly quiet tonight, even for you,” Ochaco noted, leaning back against the bar as she swirled her drink.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Katsuki replied, his gaze fixed on the condensation dripping down his glass.

“Barely,” Ochaco added, her eyes narrowing as she scanned the crowd. “You haven’t even said happy birthday to the guest of honor. He’s been looking over here since we walked in.”

“He’s busy,” Katsuki snapped, his pulse spiking at the mere suggestion of a confrontation.

As the night dragged on and the crowd began to thin, he glanced around the room and noticed how everything had slipped into that late-hour fog where people either grew louder or started filtering toward the exits. Then a thought finally rose through the mess in his head, something that had been nagging at him for hours without taking shape until now.

“Where’s his girlfriend?” Katsuki asked, the question tumbling out before he could filter it. He looked at Mina, who was probably Eijirou's closest friend, with his brow furrowed in genuine confusion.

Mina paused with her glass halfway to her mouth, her expression shifting from amusement to a look of utter disbelief. “Are you serious? You’re actually asking that?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I knew the answer, would I?”

“They broke up almost a month ago,” Mina said, her tone flat as she studied his reaction. “He told her it wasn’t working out because she said some things he didn’t like, and he realized they were just heading in different directions. He’s been single since the end of September. I thought you knew. I mean, you two are practically attached at the hip.”

The floor seemed to tilt beneath his feet, a wave of nausea turning the air in the bar thin and useless. 

He had spent three weeks in self-imposed exile, nursing a grudge and a broken heart over something that had ended the same night he walked out of that dorm room. Now another truth crashed into place. Eijirou had chosen that exact moment to end his own relationship, perhaps because of everything Katsuki had seen before leaving, perhaps because of things Katsuki himself had set into motion without meaning to. 

The thought hit him like a punch to the ribs, since experience had taught him that wherever he went, he left damage behind.

He had stepped into Eijirou’s life, and somehow even that bright and solid balance around him had started to crack.

“We thought you knew,” Ochaco whispered, her hand landing gently on his arm. “Since you’re always with him...”

Katsuki didn’t stay to hear the rest. He pushed off the pillar, his movements jerky and uncoordinated as he shoved his way through the remaining guests and burst through the heavy front doors into the biting October air. 

He needed to breathe, to get away from the noise and the suffocating guilt that was currently clawing at his throat. He started walking toward his dorm, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

“Katsuki! Wait up!”

He recognized the voice at once, and the footsteps pounding behind him confirmed what he already knew. Avoidance was no longer an option. Katsuki didn’t stop, only lengthened his stride as he continued down the empty sidewalk.

“Go back to your party,” Katsuki yelled over his shoulder, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“Why are you running away?”

Eijirou’s shout carried across the courtyard a second before footsteps pounded behind him. A hand caught Katsuki’s shoulder and hauled him around hard enough to stop him in place.

The redhead stood there breathing fast, hair wrecked by the wind, cheeks flushed from the chase. Hurt sat plain across his face, mixed with anger and confusion, and the sight of it scraped at something raw inside Katsuki.

“You’ve been avoiding me for three weeks,” Eijirou said. “No texts. No library. No answering calls. Nothing. Then you show up tonight, spend the whole time acting like I’m a stranger, and try to leave without saying a word. On my birthday.” He took a long breath. “What did I do?”

Katsuki yanked free of his grip.

“You didn’t do anything. That’s the fucking problem.”

The words came out louder than he meant, bouncing off the brick walls around them.

Eijirou stared at him. “What does that even mean?”

“It means why didn’t you tell me?” Katsuki shot back. “Why didn’t you tell me you broke up with her?”

For a moment, Eijirou only blinked at him, stunned less by the question than by the fury behind it.

“When was I supposed to tell you?” He snapped. “You walked out before I could explain that night, then you vanished. I called you. I texted you. I came by your building twice.”

Each sentence landed like a blow.

“I thought you were pissed because she showed up,” Eijirou continued. “I thought maybe seeing all that was weird for you. I thought I’d screwed our friendship and you wanted space, so I gave it to you, and apparently that was wrong too.”

“Our friendship,” Katsuki laughed once, and said bitterly, as if the word itself offended him.

Eijirou’s expression changed immediately. The anger thinned, replaced by something more alarmed.

“Katsuki.”

He turned before he had to hear anything else.

If he stayed there another second, he would say something unforgivable. He would tell the truth, or half of it, and either version would ruin everything.

So he walked.

Fast.

By the time he reached the entrance to his building, he could hear Eijirou behind him again.

“Will you stop for one second?”

Katsuki ignored him, swiped his keycard, and shoved through the lobby doors. The elevator took too long. He jabbed the button twice, but Eijirou came in just before the doors closed, breathing hard again, saying nothing this time.

The ride up was torture.

He stared at the numbers above the panel and felt Eijirou beside him like heat. Every mistake of the last three weeks lined up in his head. Walking out. Ignoring calls. Acting petty, jealous, pathetic. Taking every decent thing Eijirou offered and grinding it under his heel because he couldn’t handle wanting what belonged to someone else.

Except she didn’t belong there anymore.

And Eijirou didn't belong to her.

The doors opened.

He strode down the hall, fumbled once with his keys, cursed under his breath, then got the lock open and pushed inside.

Eijirou followed close enough that the door nearly hit his shoulder when Katsuki slammed it shut behind them.

Neither of them moved for a moment, then Eijirou spoke, quieter now, breathing finally evening out.

“Why are you so mad that I broke up with her?” He searched Katsuki’s face, bewildered more than accusing. “Why does it matter so much to you?”

Katsuki dropped his bag on the floor and spun around, his face flushed and his eyes burning. He felt like a dam was about to break, the three thousand words he had been holding back finally reaching the surface. “Are you fucking blind, Eijirou? Are you actually that dense?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been crazy about you since day one,” Katsuki vomited the words out, the confession sounding more like a threat. “I’ve been sitting in those cafes and those libraries hoping that you would break up with her since the second I met you. And I hate myself for it. I hate that I wanted you to be unhappy just so I could have a chance. And now that you did break up, then what? It’s not like I stand a chance anyway. You’re straight, you’re nice, you’re everything I’m not, and I’m just the guy who helps you with your homework.”

“Katsuki...”

“Don’t say my name like that,” he continued, his voice shaking as the spiral deepened. “I know how this works. I’ve seen you with her, and I’ve seen how you look at people. You’re not into guys, and you’re definitely not into guys like me. I feel like trash for even wishing you would notice me, for thinking that maybe the way you touched my arm or looked at me meant something more than you just being a decent human being.”

He was pacing now, his hands moving erratically as he tried to articulate the sheer scale of his obsession. “I’ve been memorizing your schedule like a stalker. I know when you go to the gym, I know when you eat, I know what kind of gum you like. It’s pathetic. And I’m standing here on your birthday making it all about me because I can’t handle the fact that you’re finally free and it still doesn’t change anything.”

Eijirou tried to speak twice, his mouth opening and closing as he searched for an opening in the barrage of words. Finally, he seemed to snap. He moved forward with a sudden, explosive speed that Katsuki didn’t expect, his hands landing on Katsuki’s shoulders and shoving him back against the door with enough force to rattle the frame.

Before Katsuki could even draw a breath to protest, Eijirou leaned in and kissed him.

It wasn’t a tentative exploration; it was a devastating, hungry collision that tasted like beer and desperation. Eijirou’s mouth was demanding while his tongue was seeking entrance with a confidence that made Katsuki’s brain completely short-circuit. 

For a long, staggering minute, Katsuki simply existed in the sensation, his hands finding purchase in the fabric of Eijirou’s shirt as he began to kiss back with equal fervor. He let Eijirou devour his mouth, the friction and the heat licking away all the words he had just shouted. He touched Eijirou everywhere he could reach, his fingers tracing the curve of his neck and the solid weight of his shoulders, needing to confirm that this was actually happening.

The reality of the touch, the way Eijirou’s body pressed against his own, was more intoxicating than any drink he’d had all night. It was real. It was happening in his bedroom, behind a locked door, on a night that was supposed to be a disaster.

Katsuki suddenly found a flicker of his usual suspicion and pushed back against Eijirou’s chest, creating a few inches of space between them. His breath was coming in ragged gasps, and his lips felt swollen and bruised. 

“Don’t... Don’t kiss me just because you’re pitying me. If this is some ‘good person’ thing you’re doing because I just had a breakdown, I’ll kill you.”

Eijirou’s eyes were dark, the sleepy haze of the beer replaced by a heat that made Katsuki’s knees weak. He looked at Katsuki with a mixture of exasperation and raw, unadulterated want.

“Oh my god, shut up,” Eijirou said, his voice a low growl.

He didn’t give Katsuki a chance to argue further, lunging forward to capture his mouth again. This time, the kiss struck like an impact, mouths meeting hard enough to steal breath from both of them. It was messy from the first second, teeth catching, lips parting, all the tension of months finding one violent point of release. 

And Eijirou was everywhere at once.

Large hands slipped beneath Katsuki’s shirt, warm palms dragging over his sides, spanning his ribs, settling at his waist as though they had known that shape long before touching it. Their bodies pressed together with no room left between them, hips knocking in an awkward search for balance that sent a hard pulse of want through Katsuki so fast it almost angered him.

His entire life had been built on understanding how bodies worked.

Muscles attached here. Nerves branched there. Electrical signals fired, hormones released, blood redirected, pupils widened, pulse accelerated. He could recite pathways half asleep. He knew the mechanics of arousal, the chemistry of attraction, the predictable responses of skin and breath and heart.

None of it explained this feeling.

No lecture had covered what happened when Eijirou’s mouth moved against his. No textbook accounted for the way thought scattered the moment those fingers pressed into his waist. There was no diagram for the heat that tore through his chest, no clinical term good enough for the ache of finally having something he had denied himself for months.

Eijirou kissed him again, deeper this time, and every neat fact Katsuki had memorized became useless noise.

The redhead pulled back just enough to breathe, forehead resting against Katsuki’s while his fingers dug into the muscle of his sides. “I’m crazy about you, Katsuki. Have been since that stupid birthday dinner when you flipped meat onto my plate and told me I was gonna be your next victim.” Eijirou whispered against his mouth, kissing him again before adding, “I tried to break up with her for months, I swear. Told her I was into someone else, that it wasn’t working, that we were done. She never accepted it and kept saying we’d figure it out, that I was just stressed from school.”

Katsuki’s hands fisted in his shirt, yanking him closer so their mouths met again. The kiss turned messy fast, tongues sliding, teeth nipping at lower lips. Eijirou’s thigh pushed between his legs, giving him something to grind against while those hands kept roaming, one slipping up to thumb over a nipple, the other gripping his ass and pulling their hips together tighter. 

His heart was slamming so hard that he felt it in his throat.

“That night she showed up at the dorm,” Eijirou continued between kisses, words breaking apart as he licked into his mouth again, “she knew. She knew it was you I’d been talking about the whole time, and we fought after you left. I told her I was really done this time, that I couldn’t keep pretending when everything in me wanted to be with you instead.”

Katsuki groaned into the next kiss, hips rolling forward on instinct. 

His cock strained against his zipper, aching, and when Eijirou’s hand dropped between them to palm him through the denim, he bucked hard. The touch was clumsy at first, fingers pressing too firm then easing up like Eijirou was figuring out the shape of him, but Katsuki didn’t care. 

This was probably the first time Eijirou had touched a guy like this, and Katsuki decided right then, with a big hand stroking him through his jeans, that he would be the last man Eijirou ever needed to figure this out with.

“Off,” Katsuki growled, shoving at the other guy’s shirt until it came up and over his head. 

Skin met skin as he yanked his own shirt off too, tossing both somewhere behind them. Eijirou’s chest was warm and solid, muscles shifting under his palms as Katsuki explored every inch he could reach. Their mouths found each other again, slower this time but no less desperate, tongues tangling while Eijirou worked Katsuki’s belt open and shoved his jeans down just enough to free his cock.

The first stroke of bare skin on bare skin dragged a loud moan from Katsuki’s throat. Eijirou’s hand wrapped around him, thumb sweeping over the head to spread the slick already leaking there, and he pumped once, learning the rhythm by the way Katsuki’s hips jerked forward to chase the friction. 

It wasn’t perfect. Eijirou’s grip shifted too much at first, pressure uneven, but the awed look on his face made up for every clumsy slide. 

Katsuki reached down and covered Eijirou’s hand with his own, guiding him into a tighter stroke until they found something that had pleasure coiling hot at the base of his spine.

They stayed like that against the door for long minutes, kissing deep and wet while Eijirou jerked him off. His hands roamed over Eijirou’s back, nails digging into muscle when the pleasure spiked sharp. Sweat slicked their skin where chests pressed together, and every time Eijirou twisted his wrist just right, his breath stuttered and his knees threatened to give.

“Bed,” Katsuki managed when the need to feel more became too much. 

They stumbled across the small room, shedding the rest of their clothes along the way. By the time they hit the mattress, both of them were naked, cocks hard and brushing together as they rolled until Katsuki straddled Eijirou’s thighs. He leaned down to kiss him again, slower now, savoring the way Eijirou’s hands settled on his hips and pulled him closer.

Katsuki reached for the lube he kept in the nightstand, tossing it onto the bed along with a condom. Eijirou watched him with dark eyes as he slicked his own fingers and reached back. The first press of a finger inside himself drew a low groan from both of them. 

Eijirou’s hands settled on his thighs, thumbs stroking absent patterns over warm skin as he watched Katsuki work himself open. When one finger became two, Katsuki drew in a muffled breath and shifted closer. Eijirou pushed himself upright enough to catch his mouth in another kiss, then slid one hand down to join Katsuki’s between his legs, helping guide the slow stretch.

Their fingers moved together until Katsuki was rocking down onto them, breath breaking against Eijirou’s lips.

“Enough,” he said finally, pulling his hand away. He grabbed the condom and tore it open, rolling it down Eijirou’s cock, noticing how the redhead’s breath came fast as he slicked him up, then positioned himself right above that thick cock.

Eijirou’s hands gripped his hips again, but he didn’t push. He waited, eyes locked on Katsuki’s face even as his own cock twitched with clear need. “You sure?”

Instead of answering with words, Katsuki sank down slowly, taking him in inch by inch. The stretch was overwhelming but he kept going, and when he bottomed out, they both groaned. He stayed still for a moment, adjusting, forehead pressed to Eijirou’s shoulder while strong arms wrapped around his back and held him close.

Then he started to move.

It started gentle, with a slow, rolling grind of Eijirou’s hips that let Katsuki feel every thick inch, every ridge and vein as he sank down. But the heat between them built fast. Eijirou met each of Katsuki’s downward movements with a smooth upward thrust, his hands sliding up the sweat-slick line of Katsuki’s back before gripping his ass, guiding him into a deeper rhythm.

Katsuki braced one palm against the other guy’s broad chest, the other buried in red hair, and began riding him harder. Pleasure coiled urgent in his gut while Eijirou’s mouth found his neck, sucking open-mouthed marks into his skin while he fucked up into him with strokes that dragged against that spot inside him almost every time.

His cock rubbed insistently against Eijirou’s stomach with every roll of his hips, and he tried to hold back, he really tried to make it last, but the weeks of tension and the overwhelming feeling of Eijirou pushed him over the edge far too soon.

He came with a shaky moan, spilling all his cum between their stomachs as his body clenched hard around Eijirou’s cock. Pleasure crashed through him in waves, and somewhere distant he felt a flicker of embarrassment at how fast it had hit, but it was drowned out by the way Eijirou kept moving through it, thrusts growing a little rougher, a little deeper, making his eyes flutter shut.

Katsuki rode out the last aftershocks with jerking hips until Eijirou lost whatever rhythm he had left and buried himself deep with a rough gasp. Heat filled the condom, and then the redhead collapsed over him like someone whose bones had given up.

They stayed joined while their breathing tore through the room and then began to ease. Katsuki folded forward, chest pressed to chest, and felt Eijirou drop his head over his heart. The idiot stayed there as if he belonged there, one arm around Katsuki’s waist, the other spread wide across his back.

His fingers slid into damp red hair and combed through it without much thought. Katsuki could still feel him inside, softer now but present, and that small fact did more damage than the sex had. 

This was the dangerous part. 

Not hands or mouths or bodies. 

This. 

The part where someone stayed.

Minutes passed before Eijirou kissed the skin over his heart and lifted his head until their eyes met.

Usually Katsuki would have thrown up a wall, said something stupid, made a joke cruel enough to ruin the mood before it could mean anything. Instead he caught Eijirou by the jaw and pulled him down into another kiss, tasting sweat and salt and the stupid grin trying to form against his mouth.

When they parted, Eijirou looked wrecked and pleased with himself.

“We’re doing that again,” he said. “Soon. Repeatedly. I’m building a schedule.”

Katsuki snorted and shoved at his shoulder. “Shut up.”

He rolled them until they lay side by side. Pulling out earned matching curses, then Eijirou dealt with the condom and came back at once, climbing under Katsuki’s arm as if there had never been another option.

“Yeah,” Katsuki said with a delay, “We are doing it again, don't worry.”

The room had cooled enough to bite at sweat-damp skin. Exhaustion settled into his muscles, but habit never stayed dead for long. The clock in his head started ticking again, and he stood up, but a hand caught his wrist before he got far.

Eijirou squinted up at him with his mouth swollen and sheets low on his hips. “Where are you going? Stay.”

“I’m crossing the room, not enlisting.”

He tugged free and stood. At the desk, he pulled out the package he'd hidden for days, wrapped in dark paper that looked far more embarrassing now than it had in the store.

Back at the bed, he dropped it beside Eijirou’s leg.

The redhead blinked at it, then at him. “You bought me a birthday gift?”

“I bought you something because your notes look like they were rescued from a flood.”

“That means yes.”

“Open it.”

Eijirou sat up, grin returning in pieces, and peeled back the paper with ridiculous care. Underneath was the leather notebook Katsuki had spent too much time choosing, with thick pages, reinforced spine, the kind of thing built to survive all the years ahead.

For once, Eijirou had nothing smart to say.

His big hands ran over the cover, thumb tracing the grain, and then he finally opened it.

Katsuki regretted every decision that had led him here.

He had written the note on the first page after midnight during exam week, when sleep deprivation and sincerity had teamed up to sabotage him.

𝙔𝙤𝙪’𝙧𝙚 𝙜𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙖 𝙗𝙧𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙙𝙤𝙘𝙩𝙤𝙧 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙙𝙖𝙮, 𝙨𝙤 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙙𝙮 𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙙. 𝙄 𝙗𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙫𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪.

Eijirou read it once. Then again, slower.

The look on his face was unbearable.

“It’s just a notebook,” Katsuki snapped. “Don’t make it weird.”

“You believe in me.”

“It says that, doesn’t it?”

“No, I mean you believe in me.”

“Katsuki.”

That was all the warning he got.

Arms wrapped around him and hauled him backward into the middle of the bed, notebook abandoned somewhere near the pillows. Katsuki landed with an offended grunt and tried to shove at the broad chest crowding over him.

“Oi.”

“I’m kissing you for this.”

“You already did.”

“That was before I knew you were secretly romantic.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Get in line.”

He tried to keep him back with both hands planted against his chest, but Eijirou only laughed and leaned in again, and every time Katsuki turned his head, lips brushed his cheek, his jaw, the corner of his mouth.

“You're hopeless,” Katsuki started saying while he was making another halfhearted attempt to push him away, though there was no strength behind it now. 

Eijirou caught one wrist, pinned it above Katsuki’s head against the mattress, and used the other hand to cradle his face with a care that didn’t match the grin on his mouth.

Then he kissed him properly.

No teasing this time, no laughing interruption, no chasing after stolen contact. Just a long, thorough kiss that asked for nothing and took its time anyway.

That pleased look returned at once.

“Thought you were killing me,” Eijirou said against his mouth.

“Changed tactics.”

“Smart.”

“Shut up.”

He kissed him again before another word could come out, because silence suited the idiot better.

When they finally broke apart, Eijirou stayed close enough that their noses brushed whenever either of them moved. His thumb passed once over Katsuki’s cheek absently, as if touching him had already become a habit.

Katsuki hated how much he liked that.

“I never thought I’d get this,” he said at last.

A crease formed between Eijirou’s brows. “Get what?”

“This,” he gestured between them, impatient with the need to explain. “You. Any of it.”

That expression softened into something harder to look at than teasing ever was.

“I didn’t even know you liked guys,” Katsuki added.

A grin spread across Eijirou’s face, bright and immediate.

“I like you.” Then he dipped his head until their foreheads touched. “So much, Katsuki, you have no idea.”

Katsuki stared at him for half a second, then grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him hard enough to cut off whatever smug comment was coming next.

“You're wrong,” he said against his lips. “I do have an idea.”

a decade later

The fluorescent lights of the surgical wing usually felt like a sterile cage for anyone pulling a double shift, but today the atmosphere near the nurse’s station carried a distinct, sugar-coated tension that made the surrounding staff question their life choices. 

Katsuki stood with his back against the high counter, a chart tucked under one arm and a half-empty cup of lukewarm cafeteria coffee in the other. He had spent the last six hours in the theater performing an intricate cardiothoracic reconstruction, a feat that had solidified his reputation as one of the most brilliant and uncompromising surgeons in the city, but his gaze was presently fixed on a fourth-year resident who was leaning far too into his personal space.

Eijirou was in the final stretch of his residency, his scrubs slightly rumpled from a long stint in the emergency room, though he still possessed enough energy to look at Katsuki as if he wanted to devour him whole. 

He had filled out significantly since their university days, his shoulders broader and his face holding the mature lines of a man in his early thirties, but that specific flirtatious grin hadn’t aged a day.

“I’m just saying that if you happen to be free for the ten-minute window while I’m on my meal break, there’s a supply closet with a very functional lock,” Eijirou said, his voice dropping into a register that made a passing intern trip over their own feet. 

He reached out, his fingers tracing a path from Katsuki’s elbow to the edge of his surgical mask, his movements fluid and entirely unbothered by the fact that they were in a public corridor.

“You’re supposed to be checking the vitals on bed four, not trying to seduce an attending in broad daylight,” Katsuki replied, though he didn’t pull away. Instead, he tilted his head toward the touch, the gold band on his left hand catching the light as he shifted his weight. “Besides, I’ve seen your surgical knots, Resident. You still need to work on your tension before you start making demands of my time.”

“My tension is exactly where it needs to be, Doctor,” Eijirou countered, his eyes crinkling with a heat that had nothing to do with the hospital’s heating system. He leaned in closer, his chest nearly brushing against the front of Katsuki’s lab coat. “I can show you a few things about precision that aren’t in the textbooks if you’re interested.”

A theatrical retching sound erupted from behind the counter, breaking the bubble of their conversation. 

Kyouka looked up from a monitor where she had been charting patient data, her expression twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated disgust. She dropped her pen onto the desk and made an exaggerated gagging motion toward the pair.

“Please, for the love of everything holy, just stop it,” she begged, her fingers going to her temples as if she were nursing a migraine. “I have three post-op patients and a broken heart monitor to deal with. I don’t have the stomach for whatever this competitive flirting is. Go be disgusting in your own house.”

“Don’t be like that, Kyouka. We’re just having a professional consultation,” Eijirou joked, though he didn’t move an inch away from Katsuki.

“Professional consultation my ass,” she snapped, pointing toward the elevators. “You’re both married to each other! We all know it! We saw the pictures! Why do you still act like you’re trying to win a date at a university mixer?”

The automated doors at the end of the hall slid open to reveal Ochaco, who was walking toward the station with a stack of folders clutched to her chest. She took one look at the way Katsuki was looking at Eijirou and the way Kyouka was vibrating with annoyance, and a weary, knowing smile crossed her face.

“Kyouka, don’t even try,” Ochaco said, stopping next to the nurse’s station and shifting the weight of her files. “I’ve been asking them to stop doing this for almost a decade. I’ve tried logic, I’ve tried emotional appeals, and I even tried to bribe them with free lunch. It doesn’t work. They’ve been like this since undergrad and they’re going to be like this when they’re eighty.”

“It’s a medical marvel,” Eijirou added, finally pulling back just enough to allow Katsuki to breathe. He looked over at Ochaco with a wink. “The flame just never dies. Science can’t explain it.”

“Science can’t, but a restraining order might,” Katsuki grunted, though his hand reached out to snag the hem of Eijirou’s scrub top, pulling him back in for a second. He looked at his husband, the sharp, defensive edges of his personality softening in a way that only happened when they were within arm’s reach. “Go finish your rounds, idiot. If you’re late for the hand-off again, y'know the Chief will have my head for showing you favoritism.”

“He wouldn’t dare. You’re his best surgeon,” Eijirou laughed, though he finally began to retreat toward the ER wing. He stopped several paces away and turned back, the gold ring on his hand reflecting the overhead lights as he gave a playful, two-finger salute. “I’ll be waiting for you at home, Doctor. Don’t be late. I’m making that spicy curry you like.”

“See you there,” Katsuki said, his voice dropping into a tone that was reserved exclusively for his husband.

He watched Eijirou disappear around the corner before turning back to his chart, the scowl returning to his face with a practiced ease that didn’t fool anyone at the station. 

Kyouka was still making quiet vomit noises into her coffee cup, and Ochaco was already moving toward the pediatric ward, but Katsuki didn’t care. He adjusted the ring on his finger, the cool metal a constant reminder of a rainy afternoon outside a 7-Eleven and a leather notebook that still sat on their nightstand. 

The hospital was loud and the nights were long, but the walk home was always the same, and the person waiting at the end of it was the only piece of destiny Katsuki had ever bothered to believe in.