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Katsuki slowly woke up in their bed, noticing that Izuku was shaking a bit in his arms which woke him up. Katsuki knew that meant Izuku would start crying in his sleep because of a bad dream so he gently pressed a kiss to Izuku’s hair, shaking him slightly until he woke up. Bleary green eyes turned and looked up at him, unfocused but slowly gaining the light back into them. Once they were full of the life he loved so much, he spoke, “Hey nerd, this is the third time this week you woke me up. Ready to talk about whatever is bothering you?”
“Sorry Kacchan.” Izuku mumbles, shifting around to face him and moving in a bit closer to press his face into Katsuki’s chest. “I think I can now.”
“You need to talk and I’ve let this go long enough so talk, Deku.”
“You remember that incident last week, the one with the fire?”
“Remember I had to go to that shitty conference in Europe while you stayed behind to keep everything safe. Weren’t you one of the first responders to that disaster? I remember calling you when I saw it in the news, since you were too worried about bothering me to do it. That conference ended up being a waste of fucking time since they screwed up the scheduling so I was stuck there for a week instead of just a couple days with nothing important to do.” Katsuki started to run his hand through Izuku’s hair, enjoying the feel of it and how it obviously relaxed Izuku. He had taken to doing this during talks like this, the two of them in bed talking about things that couldn’t be said outside of this safe haven.
“I didn’t want to distract you from important work, Kacchan, that conference was about improving cooperation among heroes internationally and you couldn’t afford to be distracted. And yes, I was first on the scene. I had focused on evacuating everyone, given how unstable the apartment building was but didn’t finish before that villain made his next move. He was setting other buildings on fire and I couldn’t stop him before he got one person that was running out of the neighboring building. I think even he was surprised by it because he stopped what he was doing before continuing to set everything nearby on fire. I finished what I was doing and went to go stop the villain because other heroes that could deal with the fires arrived but I couldn’t save that person. I keep thinking about it, what could I have done differently, how can I truly be a hero if I can make a mistake like that and cost someone their life. Surely I would’ve been fast enough to take the villain down first and then save everyone from the apartment building.”
“Deku, nobody blames you for that, not the media, not your friends, not even the victim’s family. I thought those fears had faded, this isn’t the first time you didn’t save someone and it was nobody’s fault but the villains that one person died. You didn’t kill them, if you hadn’t been saving those people in that apartment building, it could’ve collapsed and killed off who knows how many people while you were busy with the villain.”
“I try to tell myself that but I can’t stop dreaming about it in my sleep. The dreams always start off the same way, I’m always saving someone from a room while the villain is getting away then hear a scream and look outside the window to see someone on fire. The worst part is sometimes it’s people I know. It was you every night while you were away and even that first night when you came back home.”
“I fucking knew something was wrong that first day I got back. I was missing a bit of makeup and knew you must have used it but you didn’t have any press appearances scheduled for that day so you normally wouldn’t bother. I should’ve known you were covering up those god-awful dark circles you get when you don’t sleep enough. You also kept doing that one thing you do when you lie whenever I asked if you were fine while we were apart but I thought it was because we haven’t been apart that long since we first started dating instead of keeping something like this secret.”
“What thing do I do?”
“I’m not fucking telling you, obviously I need that for times when you won’t tell me about stuff like this. I wish you had just told me then instead of keep this secret until now, I’m your partner in every way, how can I help you if you don’t talk to me?”
“I didn’t want to dump this all on you since you were so busy trying to deal with rescheduling the conference and dealing with all those interviews our agency forced you to go to for damage control.”
“None of that shit matters near as much as knowing you are fine, stupid Deku. I was worried that whole time because I knew you were keeping something secret. And then when I came back to you acting like that, I was worried that something had gone horribly wrong. After that first night where you screamed in your sleep was when I knew something was wrong but forcing you to talk is fucking hard as hell. The only other time I heard you scream like that was when we both got badly injured.” Katsuki pressed his face into Izuku’s hair and breathed in slowly. That was one of his worst moments, hearing that heartbreaking scream come from Deku back then, jolting up in his sleep to that and thinking Deku was dying. He settled for looking briefly to the nightstand to see their two rings sitting there to shake off that memory before he could go back to comforting Deku.
“I did?”
“You did. I had to hobble over to your bed but once I started to pet your hair, you stopped and it never happened again so I figured you were fine.”
“I think I remember that, I woke up slightly at one point and felt you running your hand through my hair. I felt safe and knew you were too so I fell asleep happy.”
“But enough about then, you need to stop tormenting yourself over this or those things you fear will come true. I can’t always be with you to save your ass until we can start our new agency in a year. We’ll tell everyone to fuck off, we come as a pair after that.”
“Thanks, Kacchan. I can’t wait either! I already have a bunch of ideas on what we can do with the agency, such as…” Baku squeezes his arm gently and bumps their heads together before he can go off and start mumbling up a storm.
“Get some sleep first, nerd. Then we can talk about the agency tomorrow. I’ll get us some water and then you need to sleep. And I better not see any fucking notebooks out when I get back.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“There’s no need, Deku. Unless you still are a bit scared by that nightmare?”
“Maybe…”
“It’s no problem. Let’s hurry up and get the water and then sleep.” Katsuki slowly gets up, holding out his hand to Izuku to help him up before the two make their way to the kitchen. They both grab their favorite mugs, both All-Might themed, and gifts to each other for birthdays and fill them up with water. Izuku slowly nurses his while Katsuki drinks his all in one go, both sitting in silence. Katsuki finally checks the time to see it’s 2 in the morning and nudges Izuku. “We both have a full day ahead of us, let’s get back to bed.” After Izuku finishes his drink, the two put their mugs in the sink and walk hand-in-hand to their bedroom, laying back down with Izuku facing Katsuki in his arms again.
“Is there anything else you need to confess, Deku?”
“How much I love you?”
“Try again. If it was just the one person, you wouldn’t be this bad.”
“…There was this little girl in the building when I was trying to save everyone but she was already dead. When I took her body out, they tested and she died from smoke inhalation. I failed her, Kacchan, if I had been faster she would’ve been still alive.”
“Deku, how long was that building on fire before you got there?”
“Five minutes, why?”
“A person could die in 2 minutes because of the smoke and you would’ve got there as fast as you could, I have not doubt. It’s shitty that she died but you did everything you could to save her and aren’t to blame. There wasn’t anything mentioned in the news about her, why was that?”
“The family asked to keep her out of it…And also blamed me for her death when I tried to go to the funeral to apologize for not making it in time.”
“Those fuckers had no right to blame you! It was fucking tragic that she died but you did everything you could to save her. It was nobody’s fault but the villain’s. You better not be blaming yourself for that too, you hear me, Deku?”
“I’ll try to, Kacchan. But I still feel like I failed and makes me wonder if All Might made a mistake when he picked me.”
“Trust All Might more, he saw one of the best damn heroes there is even when the rest of us didn’t. You’ve always had the makings to be the best hero and together we fucking beat out All Might’s record. Remember, he said we could be the best heroes that save and win, well we fucking did it. Together, like we should do anything important for the rest of our lives. Shitty agency needs to stop breaking us up, if I had been here to help we could’ve save them all.”
“But you wouldn’t have been able to get there any faster than me!”
“Guess that means you should stop blaming yourself, huh Deku?”
“Fine. And this isn’t really sleeping, Kacchan.”
“Well maybe if you stopped getting stuck in your head like this, we would be sleeping.”
“I’m too wound up to sleep now, Kacchan. Take responsibility and do something about it!”
“What the fuck do you want me to do, sing you a fucking lullaby and rock you like a baby?”
“That sounds good to me! I love to hear Kacchan sing.”
“Fine, but don’t you say a fucking word to anyone about this.”
“Of course not, Kacchan shouldn’t be singing like that for just anyone.”
“Only thing I know is that one my mom used to sing, you fine with that?”
“Sure, I think it’s the same one my mom sang.” Izuku cuddled closer to Katsuki, ear pressed against his chest to hear his heartbeat as he sang the lullaby. It was a little tale of a hero trying to get a little child to to go to sleep. The child would find increasingly silly reasons to not sleep, like the moon looking like a villain turned it into cheese so the hero should go stop that or he couldn’t sleep without a certain rare flower that only blooms at midnight. The hero would respond with sillier reasons why it wasn’t a problem, like the moon was always cheese or he already had the flower with him for just this reason. It had always been a favorite of Izuku’s since he was little and he knew Katsuki loved it too or he wouldn’t have the lyrics memorized after all this time.
Izuku’s eyes started to drift shut to the sounds of Katsuki’s beating heart and his voice with the last thing he heard after the song ended being a fond “Good night, nerd.” Katsuki continued to gently rock the boy until he was sure he was asleep before he moved one of his legs between Izuku’s, wrapped his arms tightly around Izuku and started to drift off to sleep himself.