Work Text:
The apartment was quiet these days.
Katsuki forces himself out of bed and into the shower before making it to the kitchen. The smell of coffee hits his nose as he lets the machine start, uncaring about the lingering taste of minty toothpaste on his teeth before biting into a protein bar Kirishima left for him. It was chalky, strawberry flavor, but it would do the job. He’ll just have cup noodles for lunch, since he’ll be under a mountain of paperwork, anyways. Katsuki doesn't patrol much these days. He walks to the trashcan to throw away the wrapper, pointedly ignoring the empty ceramic cat food bowls. A thin layer of dust has collected on them, but he can’t bring himself to wash them.
The calendar, untouched for a year, catches his eye. It’s a special edition calendar Shouto made with Kirishima for his 27th birthday—he’d been so excited about it, to give it to Katsuki for his birthday. His messy handwriting still remained on the pages, even if a little faded now from the sun leaking in through the window. A pink pen circles tomorrow’s date with sloppy hearts, marking their 4th marriage anniversary.
March 28th. Today is March 27th, meaning it’s been 364 days since the worst day of Katsuki’s life.
364 days since Shouto died, his mind supplies unhelpfully. Katsuki swallows the lump in his throat and walks past to leave for work.
Katsuki had been away on a mission overseas when he’d gotten the call. Deku on the other line, heaving and sobbing into the phone with what sounded like Uraraka in the background trying to console him. Deku, who’d been on scene when it happened. Who had gotten seriously hurt trying to save his best friend. He’d lost all function in his left arm due to getting trapped under the rubble. Shouto’s death was honorable, because of fucking course it was, and a little girl has gotten to see her 11th birthday due to his sacrifice.
It’s been almost a year, and Katsuki still hasn’t learned how to handle Shouto’s death. Sure, he gets up and goes to work, puts on a brave face the few times he’s seen in public, and he’s always freshly showered and well-put together. Like he always has. Everyone thinks he’s doing well, that he’s learning how to adjust to his new way of life.
The reality is that Katsuki hates his fucking life, and hates himself even more. Hates himself for letting Shouto in all those years ago. For letting himself fall in love. To let himself become more than just a hero. Let himself build a life with someone he couldn’t imagine living without, and yet. Here he is.
Because maybe if he hadn’t let Shouto in, hadn’t let himself fall in love and hadn’t built a life with the two-toned bastard, Katsuki would be mourning a colleague instead. A fellow hero. A former friend. Maybe it would hurt less.
Who is Katsuki kidding? Shouto could never be anything less than the love of his goddamn life.
Katsuki looks at himself in the mirror as he passes it. He looks like shit. He’s lost weight, a drastic amount, and he can’t quite care. Shouto would be pissed to see the state of him, the state of their apartment as a whole. Katsuki can’t find it in himself to undo all the things Shouto did the day before he died. The blanket thrown haphazardly onto the couch, the pile of candy on his bedside table (even though Katsuki hated it when Shouto ate in bed. He’d give anything to sleep in crumb-ridden sheets again).
Katsuki tears his eyes away from the mirror, letting his eyes linger on the lone photo of them on their graduation day tucked in the lower right hand corner before snatching his keys from the table below and ignoring the heaviness in the air.
Work is nothing special. He sits at his desk, ignores whatever Deku’s going on about in the chair across from him, eats lunch with Kaminari (who, by the way, doesn’t even work at Katsuki’s agency), and files paperwork. So much fucking paperwork. But it’s mind numbing enough that he can ignore the pain in his chest. The air conditioning unit buzzes in his ear and the fan blows cool air on his face as he files another report, makes another patrol schedule, orders replacement hero gear, the same old.
At 5pm sharp, he goes home. Katsuki has fallen into the same routine everyday: wake up, go to work, come home, drink a few beers, wash the dishes, shower, and go to bed. Rinse and repeat. It’s not a healthy lifestyle for his mind or body, but it’s not like he’s got much reason to care anymore.
Tonight is no different. He stops by the store on the way home, makes himself fried rice for dinner, and washes the dishes. As he’s putting away a plate to dry on the drying rack, he sees Shouto’s favorite mug. It was his first piece of pottery he’d made successfully, along with the cat bowls collecting dust. Yellow and bumpy and uneven with a poor excuse of a bumblebee painted on the front. It was so ugly, it always made Katsuki laugh, but he couldn’t dare move it. Too afraid he'll break it.
And because life hasn’t laughed in his face enough, Katsuki trips over the old worn mat in front of the sink. He flails his arms and grabs onto the counter to catch himself, bringing down the entire drying rack with him. His knee cracks against the tile, it’s fine, he can handle it, and he braces his fall with his side. The sound of ceramic shattering makes his blood run cold, and he’s afraid to look. Everything happened so fast he couldn’t stop it, and now…now he might’ve destroyed the one thing he swore he’d keep safe.
He pushes himself up, seeing the remains of the plate he’d just washed, feeling his heart sink. A few feet away, is the mug equally as shattered. Except for the stupid, wobbly painting of the bumblebee on the front of the mug. Part of the wing had chipped off in the massacre, and Katsuki’s bottom lip began to wobble. A sob rips out of his throat and he punches the floor, uncaring about the glass that gets stuck in his hand or the blood dripping down his arm. He reaches for the one piece of the mug he could save. Can still cherish, and look at. With the surviving shard in his hand with the bumblebee, Katsuki finally pushes himself off the floor, ignoring the searing pain in his knee, chest, hand and everywhere else he’s in pain and decides he wants to go to bed.
The empty bottle of tequila on the coffee stares back at Katsuki hauntingly as he walks past. It’s not an unfamiliar sight these days. Sometimes, the buzz in his veins is the only thing that keeps him going. Is that a problem? Probably, but he doesn’t really care.
Is this really who Katsuki’s become? A shell of who he used to be?
Katsuki stares at the overflowing closet. Shouto’s half remains untouched, his dirty clothes are still in the hamper. Is that disgusting? Probably. But he can’t wash Shouto away. He can’t.
He digs through the clothes until he lands on a sweater. It’s baby blue. It’s so ugly. It’s Shouto’s favorite. Was. Was Shouto’s favorite. He wore it all the time, made Katsuki’s skin itch. But it complimented Shouto’s rosy cheeks and his eyes. He was so beautiful in this sweater. He holds it to his nose, taking a long inhale and instantly chokes out a sob. It smells dusty, but the faint smell of Shouto lingers. Lavender and peppermint fill his senses, and he feels home again. Just for a moment, until he looks up to see the lifeless room surrounding him and reminds him what reality is.
Katsuki pulls the sweater on without much thought, ignoring the instant itch along his arms and back. It’s fine, because it reminds him of Shouto. It’s a little after eight o’clock now, and Katsuki slips into bed. Shouto’s side remains unmade, because he never made his side of the bed in the morning. He always opted to get up, draw back the curtains, and open the window. He’d start the coffee pot for Katsuki while making himself a herbal tea and a bagel, always with strawberry jam. It’s his favorite, you know?
A toy mouse sits at the foot of the bed still. It always annoyed him so much, when the cat would wring her drool-soaked toys into the bed with them. “She’s old, Katsuki,” Shouto would scold. And yet, the old, crusty toy makes him cry a little too. They’d adopted a senior cat shortly after they got married. She was fifteen and had missing teeth and three legs and she was blind in one eye. She was perfect, if not a little mischievous. Princess, Shouto had named her. Princess died a month after Shouto, and it destroyed Katsuki. Sometimes, it made Katsuki feel better knowing Shouto didn’t feel that grief. That he’s not so alone anymore where one is. Who knows, maybe Touya is keeping him company. Katsuki’ll find out one day when his time comes.
He falls asleep with the smell of lavender clouding his senses and tears staining his cheeks and hugging the shard of glass to his chest, hoping that maybe he’ll get to see Shouto in his dreams.
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Katsuki wakes up the next morning, sun warm on his face and weight in the bed. He sits up, confused, because who is in his bed? Maybe it’s Deku, he’s not keen on letting Katsuki stay alone these days. He rubs his eyes and blinks to let his eyes focus, before jumping out of his own skin. Because sitting next to him, in the flesh, is Shouto. Shouto looks like he’s seen a ghost, horror written all over his face. But it can’t be him. It can’t be.
“Shouto?” Katsuki’s voice is fragile, strange to even his own ears. He’s afraid to move, sure his face is mirroring his husband’s. He moves a shaking hand to grab Shouto’s that hangs mid-air, feeling the soft warmth of his skin. “Shou?”
Has this just been a long, fucked up nightmare, then?
Shouto’s voice hits his ears and he can’t help the sob that rips out of his chest. It’s painful, but he can’t help it. “Katsuki? What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean?” Katsuki asks, wiping his tears with the sleeve of his Shouto’s sweater with the hand not holding Shouto’s. Huh, weird. The cut on his hand is gone, so is the blood staining his skin, and the sweater. “I had a bad dream, thought you’d died on me. Bastard. Don’t you know I can’t live without you?”
Shouto’s expression saddens a little more, and Katsuki doesn’t like it. Because maybe this is the dream, and he’ll wake up in an empty bed and a dusty mug still in the drying rack and a wedding ring still tied on a chain around his neck.
“It’s not your time,” Shouto chokes. “Why are you here? You shouldn’t—WHY ARE YOU HERE?”
The sudden outburst makes Katsuki jump. Shouto is the one crying this time. Tears run down his face, squeezing the life out of Katsuki’s hand, though it doesn’t hurt very much. Not as much as he’d expected it to.
Katsuki’s mouth opens and closes. It’s not his time? What is Shouto talking about?
“Katsuki, you’re in the afterlife.” Shouto finally says, hiccuping through his words, and it dawns on him. Why Shouto’s grip isn’t hurting his hand, why his chest doesn’t feel so heavy anymore. Why he’s seeing, feeling, hearing Shouto in front of him and why Princess is curled up at the end of their bed with her crusty little mouse toy Katsuki hates so much. “You’re not supposed to be here. Why are you here? You had so much life left.”
He looks genuinely heartbroken, and Katsuki doesn’t know how to feel. On one hand he wants to comfort Shouto…but the word afterlife is bouncing around his head. There’s no way he…right? Fuck. Should he be upset that he’s dead? Because he’s not. This is the lightest he’s felt in a year. He feels like he can finally breathe again…not that he can. He hurts for Kirishima and Deku though, and Kaminari and Sero and Mina…and his parents. Fuck. He’s leaving so many people behind. But still, deep down, he finally feels at peace.
“I don’t know what happened,” Katsuki answers, solemnly. “Everything was fine. I went to bed and woke up next to you.”
“It was your heart, wasn’t it? You stopped taking your meds.” Shouto says, and it takes Katsuki off guard. How did he know that? Katsuki did stop taking his meds—all of them—because he just didn’t see the point anymore. Nothing made the pain in his chest go away, and every day felt like he was trying to sprint through quicksand. Shouto points to his chest, where his heart would be. “I could feel it sometimes. It’s weird, because I’m not alive, but my soul is still—was—bound to yours. I could feel it, every time your heart started acting funny. Could feel it when it…stopped, too.”
“I’m sorry,” Katsuki whispers. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, Shou. I, fuck,” he sniffles, looking away before tears fall again. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to live without you. Didn’t know what do with myself. Therapy didn’t help. All I wanted to do was be with you. At any cost.”
“Well, I have an eternity to be mad at you now.” Shouto jokes, resting his forehead against Katsuki, gazing into those beautiful ruby eyes he fell in love with when he was 15. “I missed you, you know. Sucked watching you in pain every day. I’m sorry I left you.”
“You were doing your job,” Katsuki says, squeezing Shouto’s hand once. “It could’ve been any of us. Is Touya here?”
“Of course,” Shouto says, eyes sparkling. “He’s kept me company over the years. It’s been nice to get to know him. In the next life, we’ll eat plenty of cold soba together, or so he says.”
“Of course you will,” Katsuki says. Of course he’d want soba in the afterlife, too. “Will you…will you choose me in our next life, too?”
Shouto stares at him, like Katsuki just asked him a stupid question. Which he did, in Shouto’s defense. Because why wouldn’t he choose Katsuki? “Of course,” he says, “would you choose me, too?”
“Of course, Princess. In every life, I’ll choose you.” Katsuki says, kissing Shouto softly. “Remember what we promised? ‘Til death do us part, in this lifetime and the next. You’re not getting rid of me sweetheart, not this life nor the next.”
Shouto lays his head on Katsuki’s shoulder, ignoring the shakiness of Katsuki’s voice. “I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
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KATSUKI BAKUGO-TODOROKI
HUSBAND. SON. FRIEND. HERO.
XXXX/20/04 - XXXX/28/03
Rei sits on a bench next to Mitsuki and Masaru. She offers an umbrella to protect them from the rain, though their clothes and hair are already soaked through. She doesn’t say anything, just places a hand on Mitsuki’s back. Because there’s nothing she can say. Rei knows the pain of losing a child all too well, all she can do is offer her quiet support . After all, she’s lost two. The burial had been over for hours by now, the rest of Katsuki’s friends having only left an hour or so ago. To give his parents time alone, to give their final goodbyes.
A single red rose lays on top of Katsuki’s grave. “Our boy always did hate the rain, huh?” Mitsuki says, voice shaking. Masaru lets out a sob, hugging his wife closer.