Archive of Our Own

SATURDAY

Katsuki Bakugou woke up with the sun. Kissed his husband, Eijirou Kirishima, on the cheek, smiling at his still-sleeping grunt, and then got up. He made smoothies, left one out for Eijirou, and went on his morning run. Ran the neighbourhood, said good morning to his neighbours, stopped to pet Barkugou, Izuku’s dog, who was off-lead and waiting to go out on his own run. Returned home to find Eijirou cooking breakfast; ate, showered, got dressed in his hero costume, walked to the agency.

He patrolled, filed paperwork, ate lunch with Kaminari and walked home afterwards, watching the sunset as he went. Cooked dinner for Eijirou, watched three hours of Takeshi’s Castle because Eijirou loved it, went to bed afterwards and fell asleep.

SUNDAY

Katsuki Bakugou woke up with the sun. Kissed his husband on the cheek, smiling at his still-sleeping grunt, and then got up. He made smoothies, placing the second in the fridge for Eijirou, and started out on his morning run. He ran the length of the neighbourhood, said good morning to his neighbours, and stopped to pet Barkugou, who was out with Izuku. When he got back, Eijirou was making breakfast. They ate together, showered one after the other, got dressed in their hero costumes and walked to their agencies.

He patrolled, filed paperwork, ate lunch with Sero and walked home afterwards, watching the sunset as he went. He cooked dinner for Eijirou, then watched three hours of Takeshi’s Castle, before going to bed and falling asleep.

MONDAY

Katsuki Bakugou woke with the sun. Kissed his husband on the cheek, smiling at his still-sleeping grunt, and then got up. He blitzed two smoothies, stored the second, and went on his morning run. He ran the neighbourhood, said good morning to his neighbours, and stopped to pet Barkugou, who was out with Izuku.

Katsuki paused.

Barkugou barked.

Izuku’s face scrunched up in confusion as he watched. “You alright there, Kacchan?”

“Y-yeah.” Katsuki blinked. He looked around. They were outside Izuku’s house – the one he shared with Uraraka; Izuku hadn’t gotten very far on his run yet, only just leaving. He could see Uraraka through the window, hair up, washing rice at the sink. His other neighbours were all still out, on their school runs, taking out the trash, that old lady three doors down getting started on her garden.

Hadn’t she been there yesterday morning too? On her knees by the petunias?

He shook his head. “Just déjà vu, I guess.”

“You like routine,” Izuku said, cheery as ever. “One of these days, it was going to happen! I’ll see you later!” Katsuki watched him start off in a jog with his dog, and then finished his run.

Just déjà vu, he said to himself, returning home to find Eijirou in the kitchen making breakfast. Together, they ate, then he showered and changed into his hero costume, waiting in the living room for Eijirou to change too so they could walk towards the city centre together, where their agencies waited.

At work, he patrolled, filed paperwork, had lunch with Ashido, and then walked home when the day was done, watching the sun set as he did so. He cooked dinner for Eijirou, then watched three hours of Takeshi’s Castle, before heading to bed. Instead of falling asleep immediately, like usual, he watched Eijirou get changed and wash out the hair gel, the spikes falling soft and loose around his shoulders.

“Do you ever feel like you’ve lived a moment before?” Katsuki asked.

Eijirou raised his eyebrows. “Not really. Though a couple of times I could’ve sworn I had dreamed about something before it ever happened.”

Katsuki hummed. Had he dreamed it? Was that where the weird feeling was coming from?

“You good?” Eijirou asked, towel drying his hair.

“Yeah,” Katsuki said. He reached out a hand, looping the fingers around the soft fabric of the t-shirt Eijirou was wearing to bed, red and worn with some decayed graphic image on the front. He tugged Eijirou closer, until their mouths met. “I’m good.”

TUESDAY

Katsuki Bakugou woke with the sun.

He stared at the ceiling. He couldn’t remember going to sleep – but was that something that he usually had a memory of? He couldn’t recall. He sat up, glanced down at Eijirou, and kissed his cheek, smiling at the still-sleeping grunt he made.

Katsuki hesitated before getting out of bed. He kissed Eijirou’s cheek again. His husband grunted, the same soft noise. Almost awake, but not. He kissed Eijirou’s cheek again. A soft grunt, still asleep. Identical. No closer to waking.

Katsuki climbed out of bed and headed to the kitchen. He made two smoothies. He stared at the frozen berries. He couldn’t remember buying them, but maybe Eijirou had. The milk. Did he get that? He couldn’t remember picking it out of the grocery store. Chia seeds because Eijirou insisted there were health benefits. He was opening the packet, brand new – but didn’t he open this packet yesterday?

He stored his husband’s smoothie and left the house, starting up on his run. He ran the same route as always, greeting his neighbours. They were out again, early like always. Taking out the trash, doing the school run, gardening.

Katsuki stopped. Looked. The old lady three doors down was kneeling by her petunias. He watched her movements, the scoop of the trowel, her gloved hands patting down the dirt.

“Morning, Kacchan!”

He spun. A few doors up, Izuku was closing the front gate, Barkugou waiting off-lead. Izuku waited by the gate as Katsuki walked over. Barkugou lifted his muzzle for Katsuki to pet, which he did obligingly.

“Morning, Izuku.”

He looked up at Izuku’s house; he could see Uraraka in the kitchen window. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. She seemed to be washing rice. He looked back to Izuku, who was still smiling.

Neither of them said anything for a few seconds, and Katsuki watched as Izuku’s smile never faltered. Katsuki counted to five, immediately thought What a freak, and then, No—wait, hold on.

He stepped aside.

“It was good seeing you!” Izuku immediately said. “I’ll see you later!” He and Barkugou started off down the street.

Katsuki watched them go, dumbfounded. What the hell is going on?

He cut his run short, and returned home to find Eijirou making breakfast. He stood in the doorway and watched for a moment, eyes skimming across the scene. It felt so comfortable and warm. He thought about walking in, wrapping his arms around Eijirou from behind and hooking his chin over Eijirou’s shoulder. Thought about eating breakfast together, then he could take a shower and get dressed for work. They could walk in together, too—

He considered Izuku, smiling placidly. The old lady in her front garden. He was sure he’d seen her there recently. Sure that she was there, at her petunias, too often.

He said, “Hey Eijirou?”

Eijirou glanced over, surprised. “Morning, sunshine,” he said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Do you ever get déjà vu?”

Eijirou raised his eyebrows. “Not really. Though a couple of times I could’ve sworn I had dreamed about something before it ever happened.”

Katsuki hummed. Had he dreamed it?

He stopped. He held the thought in front of him. He forced his mind back. Eijirou’s hair damp around his shoulders, unlatching the towel from the hook on the door. Katsuki sat in bed, asking if he’d ever felt like he’d lived a moment before. The same words falling from Eijirou’s mouth.

“You good?” his husband asked.

You good? Eijirou asked, towel drying his hair.

“Yeah,” Katsuki said, stepping into the kitchen. “I’m good.”

Eijirou went back to cooking, idly pushing something around a pan on the hob, as Katsuki wandered around the space. He opened the fridge door; the smoothie was gone. That could mean nothing; Eijirou probably had it first thing. He checked the sink but both glasses were missing, as was the blender jug he’d left to soak. He found all three back in their places in the cupboards.

That could mean nothing. Maybe Eijirou washed and dried them. Maybe he was being helpful. It was like Eijirou to be helpful, even if there was a nagging thought in his mind that it was unlike Eijirou to do dishes without having his life threatened first.

He left the kitchen, wandered upstairs, eyes scanning the house. A photo from their wedding sat on the bedside table; the two of them in matching suits, black with red accents. He recalled the moment, the joy, the laughter. He pushed further—he could fathom an image of the wedding itself, but not the sounds, or the movement. He couldn’t remember their vows. Couldn’t remember who was standing beside him. Couldn’t remember what the cake looked like.

He left the bedroom, stopped in the office. Mainly books he knew of but couldn’t recall the plots to filled the shelves. Two desks sat side by side. The room looked used, lived in. He could conjure basic thoughts about using the space, about working from home and filing taxes and answering emails, but he couldn’t produce memories.

Katsuki levelled his breathing. “What the fuck is going on?” he muttered, squeezing a hand around a photo sat on Eijirou’s desk. A Christmas photo, Katsuki and Eijirou, both of their sets of parents, the six of them in gaudy jumpers and paper crowns. He couldn’t remember Christmas. Couldn’t remember unwrapping presents or setting up the tree or hanging lights on the outside of the house. Couldn’t remember spending any with Eijirou – not since their days at Yuuei when they were teenagers still calling themselves by their last names.

In fact, he could remember those perfectly. Sound and smell and movement. Could recall conversations, the stupid Christmas outfit and being chased around by Ashido desperately trying to force him into it. Could remember the war and everything it contained, the classes and the exams and graduation. Could remember—

“Kats!” Eijirou called from the bottom of the stairs. “Breakfast is ready!”

Katsuki turned and went downstairs, accepting his plate from Eijirou. They ate breakfast together, talking idly about what they were going to do today, about what they wanted for dinner after work. Eijirou mentioned Midoriya was going to visit Katsuki for lunch, to which he nodded and said okay.

At the end of breakfast, Eijirou said, “Go jump in the shower. I’ll clean up.”

He had his shower, got changed into his costume afterwards. Waited in the living room for Eijirou to change after his shower, and then walked side by side to work. When they hit their separation point in the city, Eijirou said, “I’ll see you at dinner. Be safe.”

“You too,” Katsuki called, already turning towards his agency.

Once there, he started patrol for the morning, dealing with petty crimes and helping a woman carry her groceries after the shopping bag broke. He filled out paperwork, and at lunch, he and Izuku went to a nearby restaurant for noodles, talking about work and Uraraka and Eijirou. No one seemed to mind the two pro heroes in the room, and later they went separate ways again to finish their workday.

He watched the sunset as he walked home, and changed before cooking dinner. Eijirou got back just in time to eat, and the two of them did so before Eijirou turned on Takeshi’s Castle, telling Katsuki that he would be on the show one day, just mark his words, and watching three hours’ worth before yawning, stretching and announcing it time for bed.

Only when Katsuki was sat on the edge of the bed, watching Eijirou wash the final remnants of the hair gel from his spikes over the side of the bath in the ensuite did he stop to think. His eyes wandered to his wedding photo, and as he tried to reminisce about the day, he couldn’t recall it.

Who was his best man? Were either of them walked down the aisle? Where was his mother standing?

Thoughts from earlier that day flooded his mind. Shit, fuck, of course. It was like he’d entered some state, unthinking. Like he could only follow the motions of the world around him, couldn’t fight against the call of breakfast and shower and routine routine routine.

He didn’t love routine this much. It wasn’t about it being part of his day—something was doing this, surely. Something – someone – had him following the motions, unable to question his actions.

And the memories—why were they missing? Would having them back reveal to him what was actually going on?

“Shit,” he muttered, pushing to his feet.

Eijirou, in the bathroom, turned the tap off, squeezing out his hair over the bath. He turned, grabbed the towel from the door and flopped it over his hair.

“Forget something?” he asked, blinking at Katsuki.

“No,” he replied. “Yes. I’m not sure.”

Eijirou stood in the doorway to the bathroom, towel drying his hair, watching. He said nothing. Katsuki counted to five. His expression didn’t change. Was he a figment of the trap? A piece of the prison, twisted and confused and holding Katsuki tight? Or was he trapped here, like him, but simply not figuring it out?

Not noting the moments that looped, repeated.

Katsuki stared at him for a beat longer. Eijirou Kirishima, his husband. He loved him, he felt that. And he recalled their school time together, the first few years of being rookie heroes, working their way up the rankings. All of that was real, tangible in memory. He could remember the teenage crush, the repression and bottling. He searched—couldn’t remember the confession. The first kiss. How could he forget the first kiss? How was that possible?

Surely his first kiss with Eijirou Kirishima would be carved straight into the brainstem.

Unless whoever was holding him here didn’t want him to remember.

He had to try and break Eijirou out of it; they had to escape together.

“Eijirou,” Katsuki said, and his husband’s face changed for the first time in a while, “do you remember our wedding day?”

Eijirou’s face cracked into a smile. “Of course, Kats,” he said, wandering towards him. “I could never forget that.”

Katsuki hummed, and when Eijirou drew close, slipping a free hand around Katsuki’s waist, said, “Tell me about it.”

“What?” Eijirou asked with a laugh. “You were there.”

“I know. But… tell me about it. Like I wasn’t. Like you’re telling a story.”

Eijirou threw the towel towards the hook it usually hung from, missing. It hit the floor. He drew this free hand to Katsuki’s jaw, brushing a line along it.

“Once upon a time, there were two very hot superheroes who were madly in love,” he said, and Katsuki sighed into the sound of it, unwitting. He had to latch onto the thought that this was not entirely real, and hold on tight, as the sweet words lured him back into the promise of it all. “So they decided they wanted all their friends and family come see them promise themselves to each other forever. They wore matching suits and said vows—”

“What vows,” Katsuki interrupted, voice hoarse with the effort of doing so. He felt sleepy, drifting on the story.

Eijirou smiled. “Vows to love and cherish each other for the rest of our days,” he said. “To be loyal and honest and watch each other’s backs.”

“Right,” Katsuki whispered.

Eijirou drew in close, hands on Katsuki, Katsuki’s hands on him. He was solid, firm, warm. “And when they were told to, they kissed. And that kiss sealed their bond forever.”

Eijirou tilted his head down the extra centimetre, pressing his mouth against Katsuki’s. He sighed into the kiss, into the taste, feeling himself be pulled in closer and tighter and warmer.

“I love you,” Katsuki murmured into the kiss.

Eijirou hummed, before pulling back. His thumb drifted along Katsuki’s cheek.

“You look exhausted,” he said. “Time for bed, I think.”

“Yeah,” Katsuki said. “I’m exhausted.”

They fell asleep, tangled in each other.

WEDNESDAY

Katsuki Bakugou woke with the sun.

He felt warm and satiated, and rolled his head to look at his husband, Eijirou Kirishima, sleeping beside him. He pressed a kiss to his cheek and smiled at the still-sleeping grunt he received, before rolling out of bed.

Downstairs, he started making two smoothies. The pack of berries from the freezer was half full. The chia seeds were unopened. For some reason, he felt like neither of those should be true. Katsuki shrugged and made the smoothies, storing the second for his husband to have later.

He started out on his run of the neighbourhood, greeting his neighbours as they went about on their school runs, taking out the trash, gardening. The old lady three doors down was knelt by her petunias. Katsuki thought, Huh, she sure does love those flowers. He stopped to pet Barkugou, greeting Izuku and looking up at the house to see Uraraka, hair tied back, washing rice at the sink.

He asked, “Is Uraraka making breakfast?”

“Sure is!” Izuku said. “I bet Eijirou’s doing the same!”

“Yeah,” he replied, quiet but unsure why. “Sure is.”

He stepped aside and Izuku started off on his jog, dog in tow.

Katsuki finished his run like normal.

When he returned, Eijirou was making breakfast in the kitchen. He joined him, slipping his hands around Eijirou’s waist from behind, hooking his chin over his shoulder.

“Morning, sunshine,” Eijirou hummed. “How was your run?”

“Good,” Katsuki said. “You should come running with me sometime.”

“Maybe I will,” Eijirou said, “though you know running is killer on my ankles.”

“Is it?” Katsuki asked. He didn’t know that, and he didn’t like not knowing something about his husband. The two of them used to go on runs all the time when they got their first apartment together, straight out of school. Sure, it petered off over time with their conflicting schedules, but they still did it sometimes, a sunrise run through the park, or at two in the morning when they couldn’t sleep.

“Yeah,” Eijirou said. Then, “Breakfast’s ready. Get the plates, would you?”

Katsuki unlatched himself to go fetch the plates, then they ate together, talking idly and Eijirou informing him that Uraraka would be joining Katsuki for lunch that day. They showered separately, changed, and readied themselves to go.

“You forgot your mask,” Eijirou said as they neared the front door.

Katsuki swore quietly, then darted back upstairs to get it. He’d left it on the side by accident, and as he grabbed it, he glanced over the room for anything else he’d forgotten. His eyes latched on his wedding photo, and he smiled.

He loved the thought of that day. Of their matching suits, of the two of them wanting their friends and family see their promise to each other. Their vows to love and cherish each other, to be loyal and honest and watch each other’s backs.

Katsuki brushed a hand over the frame, righting its angle on the bedside table, before running back downstairs to walk with Eijirou to work.

Once there, he patrolled, filed paperwork, and Uraraka arrived with takeout that they shared in his office. They talked about Barkugou and Izuku and what Katsuki might make for dinner. When they were finished, Uraraka packed up all the trash and threw it out as she headed out of the building.

Katsuki watched her go from the front door.

He turned to go back into his agency, to get on with his afternoon work. But something stopped him. Afternoon work, he thought. What did he have to do? He had patrolled that morning, he had filed his paperwork. He didn’t have meetings scheduled, and although he should be on alert for a villain to appear—

Katsuki couldn’t remember the last villain he fought. Last real villain.

He thought back. There had been the acid lady when he was twenty. Then the second coming of the yakuza, as another group liked to call themselves – but that had surely been before he and Eijirou were married, because Eijirou had been sleeping with Ashido at that time in some no-strings-attached scenario Katsuki didn’t care for, and he’d been irrationally jealous over it. In fact, he couldn’t remember when that ended.

Must’ve been long enough ago to forget and for them to get married, but not so long ago as it felt fairly recent in memory—how old was he now?

He paused. How old was he now?

He stared after Uraraka, walking down the street. No one paid any mind to the famous pro hero among them.

He couldn’t remember his age. He hadn’t fought a villain in a long time, though it felt so recent that he had. He didn’t actually do anything during his afternoons at work.

He ran after Uraraka.

“Uravity!” he yelled, and she turned around, surprised. No one on the street did.

“Oh, Bakugou!” she said. Not Dynamight. Bakugou. He was in costume, they were in public—there was something wrong about that. “Did I forget something?”

“No,” he said, stopping in front of her. “No, I just—”

She blinked, waited. He counted to five. She didn’t move an inch, even as the people wandered around them on the sidewalk.

“How old are we?” he asked.

Uraraka twitched her head to the side. “What?”

“How old are we?”

Her mouth made funny shapes before landing on a smile. “We’re twenty-two,” she said.

He was twenty-two when they fought the yakuza. When Eijirou slept with Ashido. When he was still burning over his inability to tell his best friend how he felt. b

“How long have Eijirou and I been married?”

Her fingers spasmed. “Oh, I don’t know—it’s been so long already! Feels like you two have been together forever!” Uraraka laughed. He did not know her laugh the way Izuku might, or one of the girls—but he knew her. Their messy friendship was solid; their agencies were right next to each other for two years when they side kicked and they went out for drinks or dinner every week – her idea, not his. And yet—

Her laugh was wrong.

Just slightly. A lilt out of place. Too high.

He stepped in closer. She made no move to acknowledge it.

“What do you make for breakfast?”

“What a funny question!”

“What time does Izuku go out for a run?”

“Not sure—about the same time as you, I’d imagine!”

“Why did he call his dog Barkugou?”

“Because he likes seeing the twitch you get in your eye whenever you hear him say the name!”

Katsuki’s jaw locked. He could recall Izuku introducing him to the dog for the first time. Why the fuck would you name him that? Katsuki had yelled, while Eijirou laughed and greeted the dog with all the love and affection one would expect Eijirou to give to dogs. Izuku had grinned at him, though Katsuki felt the need to refer to him as Deku in the memory, scarred and laughing, just the three of them, no Uraraka to be seen. I like seeing the twitch you get in your eye whenever you hear me say the name, he had replied. Come meet Barkugou—oh! There! That’s the twitch!

Katsuki said, “You’re not real.”

Uraraka replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He ran home.

The people moved faster, time stretched and strangled him, the cars sped up on the roads. He looked up and the sun was moving too quickly through the sky, racing a path from centre to the horizon.

He would get there faster if he flew. Bakugou ignited, there was an explosion—but no power. No warmth. Nothing changed. He tried again, and again. Crackles and bangs and pops—but no force behind them. No physics, no kinetic energy stored and released through heat.

“What the fuck,” he said, and kept running.

His hands were a light show, nothing more. It didn’t even feel right. No adrenaline kick, surge of heat and satisfaction. He checked his gauntlets – he’d been wearing them all day and there was no sweat stored. Surely he’d used them this morning—

He hadn’t. He hadn’t used them. Patrol was petty crime and helping a woman carry her groceries home after the bag split. There were no villains. There had been no reasons to explode.

He watched the world speed around him, and he felt like he had been running for hours. For too long; for the world to grow darker as the sun lowered to the horizon and the sunset bled out across the sky.

He stopped outside his house, heaving in air, then he slammed into it. Eijirou wasn’t home yet, but was he ever? Katsuki would need to start dinner—no, no. He wouldn’t. No. He wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t—

He stumbled upstairs. In the office were books he’d never read, a desk he couldn’t remember sitting in, a photo of Christmas he couldn’t remember living.

“What the fuck is this place?”

He rummaged through the drawers of the desks, tried to get into laptops that wouldn’t turn on. In the bedroom, he emptied drawers, threw clothes from the wardrobe across the bed. The bathroom held no secrets, the closet held no answers.

“Where am I? What is happening?” He heaved the mattress off the bed. He’d always harboured the thought that Eijirou was the type of person to keep a diary under the mattress—and there it was. A black notebook with his name on the front. Too easy, he thought, before flicking through the 120 empty, blank pages.

Why would he hide nothing?

Or would he hide nothing because there was nothing for him to hide?

Katsuki felt like he was going insane. He threw the notebook down and thundered down the stairs, looking at every picture of a moment he couldn’t recall along the way. He emptied the kitchen cupboards; every dish was in its place. The fridge was stocked, but had he ever gone grocery shopping since he moved into this house? Eijirou hated going alone—actually, Katsuki didn’t trust Eijirou to go alone because he would always forget the things they needed and come back with Hot Wheels that were on sale or a watermelon because he wanted to crush it between his thighs like he saw online.

He couldn’t remember buying a damn fucking thing in the fridge.

The living room, likewise, was a room so lived in and yet so empty to Katsuki. Movies he’d never seen on the shelves, their pro hero posters on the walls—but only the original ones, the old ones. No calendars anywhere, and his phone—

Katsuki patted his pockets. Had he even used a phone recently? He couldn’t remember. Couldn’t fathom it. He searched for it around the house, in his possessions. Did he simply not have one? Why wouldn’t he have one?

He landed in front of the TV and turned it on. The first thing that came up was Takeshi’s Castle. Eijirou loved that show, but—

Katsuki flicked back to the menu. Rolled down the list of shows. All ones he’d seen before. Until—one he hadn’t. He’d just heard of it. It was new out—he was going to watch it. He started it, the title showed, then as the first actor appeared on camera, the screen went black, the electricity cut out.

“What the fuck,” he whispered.

He checked the fuse box under the stairs, flipped the breakers back on and watched the lights return.

“What the fuck,” he hissed, returning to the TV and finding it turning back on, returning to Takeshi’s Castle.

“What the FUCK!” he yelled, throwing the TV remote into the screen, the crack huge and splintering. “What is this place?! What the fuck is this?!”

He picked the sofa up and let it fall onto its back. He stomped his boot through the glass of the coffee table. In the kitchen, he upturned the table and lobbed a chair through the window, out onto the street.

It felt good.

Oh, it felt so good.

He did the same thing with the other dining chairs, the legs cracking off on impact with the road. His shitty light show fireworks didn’t explode things like they should, so he set to tipping the fridge over on its front instead, satisfying himself with the crash. He returned upstairs and pulled each bookcase down in tandem, throwing the laptops out the window and then sending the desks after them.

With one of the office chairs, he carried it through into the bathroom and used it to beat the toilet to death, jumping back as water sprayed across the room. He took the heavy shards of porcelain and used it to break every photo frame he saw.

The Christmas photo, smashed.

The wedding photo, smashed.

The million random photos from a million random moments he had never fucking lived, smashed.

The moment he turned on the hob in order to burn the house down, the front door opened and Eijirou called, “I’m home!” in the same cheery voice that he must use every day, because it sent shivers down Katsuki’s spine.

He flicked all the hobs onto max, watching each blue flame grow.

Maybe he understood what Dabi was all about for a second and a half, mesmerised by the flame and the idea of burning it all down.

“What’s for dinner?” Eijirou asked.

Katsuki turned. Eijirou was behind him in his Red Riot gear, not a smudge of dirt or effort on him. This was wrong: Katsuki knew it brutally. Eijirou had a knack for wearing himself out, for getting dirtied and smudged with oil or grease or soot every single day, even if he was just filling out paperwork.

This piece of reality was wrong. Starkly wrong against all the other parts that just felt off.

Katsuki stared. Eijirou was smiling, seemingly totally unaware, or totally unperturbed by Katsuki having destroyed their entire house. The windows were smashed and the chairs were on the street, the fridge was lying on its front on the floor and every cupboard was open and emptied, and yet he was smiling.

“What’s for dinner?” Katsuki seethed.

“Ooh, is it that curry I like? Man, I hope so—oh! Or that beef thing you make. I’ll clean up and come help!”

He turned to head upstairs, so Katsuki stomped through the shit on the floor and grabbed his arm, yanking him around.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded.

Eijirou tipped his head to the side, a lost puppy look of confusion.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

Katsuki spread his arms wide, a maniacal look on his face. “The house is fucking destroyed,” he said. “How can you not give a shit?”

“Oh, it’s just a bit of mess,” Eijirou said, waving a hand. Katsuki let out a high-pitched shriek. “You work so hard all day; I’ll clear it up later for you, not a problem.” Eijirou pressed a kiss to Katsuki’s cheek and started upstairs. Katsuki stood there, watching him go. He didn’t even make a sound of surprise at the flooding of the house; the water running down the stairs from the broken toilet in their bathroom.

There was a tiny part of him, as he’d ruined their home, that had been a little worried that this was all real, and he was having a very real mental break that would result in him destroying his life with Eijirou. But now the feelings were clear, solidified.

He collected the tea towels from the ground where they’d been strewn, located the alcohol bottles rolling in the mess. He dampened the towels with the alcohol, stuffing each one in to the bottles, and lined them up on the counter.

There was a sickly smell from the hobs burning with nothing to cook.

“This isn’t real,” he said aloud. “This is all a lie.”

He paced the kitchen.

“This is fake. This isn’t true. It’s not that I’ve forgotten my life—it never existed. We aren’t married. We don’t have a house. Nothing about this is real.”

He considered the series of Molotov cocktails he’d made: bombs to make up for the explosions he lacked.

He sighed, and walked upstairs, and grabbed the towel from the hook on the door and had Eijirou climb out of the shower, the toilet still blasting its fucking piss-ass water. He wrapped the towel around his fake husband in his fake bathroom, and led him downstairs and out onto the street.

Eijirou kept up a steady stream of polite, placid questions about what was happening and what were they doing, and once Katsuki had him situated on the street opposite their house, he said, “Stay right here, okay?”

“Okay, sunshine,” Eijirou said.

Katsuki walked back up the front path, the one littered with furniture and glass and memories he never had, and re-entered the house. He stood before the hob in the kitchen, gathered all his Molotov cockails into one space, sighed, and lit the first one.

The ensuing explosion killed him instantly.

THURSDAY

Katsuki Bakugou woke with the sun.

He blinked his eyes open and cried.

He did not get up to make smoothies or go on a run, and eventually, Eijirou awoke beside him, his fake husband only a shadow of the real thing. He was surprised to see him still in bed, surprised to see him crying.

“Oh, no, shhh,” Eijirou said, gathering Katsuki into his arms. “It’s okay, shhh.” He knew it was fake, but Eijirou was still soft and steady and warm. He was still him. Not—not Kirishima, his version, but something so close, a version held in a trap, in a prison, a mockery of the real thing that got maybe seventy percent right, the surface area correct—and yet that was almost enough in this moment.

Eijirou rocked him, murmuring into his hair, holding him close and tight.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he promised.

“It’s not,” Katsuki croaked. “You’re not real.”

There was a pause in the rocking before it continued. “Of course I am,” Eijirou said. “I’m just as real as you.”

“No, you’re not,” Katsuki sobbed. “You’re a lie. You’re all a lie, and I don’t know how to get out. I don’t know what to do!”

“Shhh, it’s alright,” Eijirou said, seemingly out of ideas—or, perhaps, out of stock answers. Katsuki held him anyway, smelling the familiar scent of him. After a few minutes, Eijirou said, “I’m going to make breakfast,” and pulled away, padding downstairs.

Katsuki stared after him, and then noted the room: everything was back in place. He heaved himself out of bed and checked the bathroom: the toilet was fixed. The floor was dry.

He couldn’t fucking take this.

Katsuki splashed water on his face, and rubbed his skin dry. He hadn’t cried in a long time – probably not since the yakuza. When they’d come back, they’d wanted to come back big, and they’d started by dropping a building on Kirishima – who, arguably, was the best person to drop a building on due to the whole hardening thing, but he’d still been in the hospital for days afterwards, and the stress of it all had resulted in Katsuki crying when he returned to their empty apartment on that first night and he wasn’t there, making the place warm and feel like home.

He'd still gone into work the next day, though. He was a good hero; he was great. He had gone to go and kick the asses of everyone involved with making Kirishima hurt.

Katsuki jumped, hearing the sound of Eijirou in the kitchen. He moved quietly to the stairs, listening to Eijirou get out the pans and open the fridge. Before going down, however, he entered the office, that room he never used, could remember not using, now he searched for it, and looked out the window.

There, on the street: his neighbours, all stood in their doorways, or out on their paths, trash bags in hand, school children paused mid-run to their cars. The old lady three doors down was already in her garden, beside the petunias.

It was all slotting into place in his mind, every morning’s run. He peered further down the street, and there: Izuku and Barkugou. Stood outside the front of their house. Just waiting. In a pose as if they’re just about to shut the gate and get going.

Like NPCs in a glitched game; did they not exist until he came close?

What would happen if he skipped his run entirely? Would they go back inside and hide? Clip out of existence? Would they speed through their day like the sun sped through the sky to make sure he was back at exactly the time he had to be?

Katsuki tried to recall but couldn’t exactly – were his commutes filled with the same strangers walking around him on the street? Did the same cars drive past each morning?

He helped the same lady with her groceries every morning on patrol.

Katsuki heaved in a breath, thought about burning the house down again, didn’t. It didn’t solve the problem to destroy it all, to kill himself. There would be another way out, there had to be. This was likely a quirk, and no quirk was so ridiculously strong that it couldn’t be broken somehow—and that it had never ever been flagged up.

He clenched his hands on the window sill in thought.

What could he remember about the yakuza?

There had been a lot of them, a lot of money flowing through them. They had a compound he hadn’t yet gone to, a few outpost houses he had. He’d gone with Izuku—Deku—and Uravity. Kaminari had helped out, as had Sero and Ashido. They’d been at the hospital, too. They’d sat with Kirishima and told him stories while he sat in his hospital bed, several bones broken and Recovery Girl coming in daily with a host of doctors to set about healing him.

He hadn’t been alone under the building; he’d saved others. He’d held up the ceiling of an entire room for four hours, pushing Unbreakable past every limit it had ever had, and snapping several bones in the process. He’d kept holding up the ceiling anyway.

And Katsuki—Katsuki had been out for revenge.

He’d taken a team into the outposts and demolished them one at a time. They’d been gathering intel on their strongest quirk users. An ice guy. A dude with drills for hands. A woman who could put people into psychic trances.

Was this that? Was this all happening while a battle raged around him? Was his body in danger as his mind looped the same days again and again?

What was the exit point? What would it look like?

He tried to picture her. Red hair. Red clothes. She had looked so confident as he exploded towards her, the world rippling around him. He didn’t even know her name.

Eventually, he pushed away from the window sill, pulled on day clothes that weren’t his hero costume – what was the point in going to work when nothing was real, anyway? – and headed downstairs. Eijirou was finishing up breakfast in a pristine kitchen. The living room, too, was perfect.

The world reset, as if nothing had ever happened.

Eijirou handed him a plate and they sat at the dining table. He watched his husband cycle through idle conversation – what they should have for dinner, Kaminari visiting Katsuki at work for lunch, isn’t Barkugou such a sweet dog? – and kept his mouth shut to avoid getting dragged into it. He could feel a physical pull, trying to hook him into the conversation, trying to sink him down into the routine, into the trance.

He didn’t give in. There had to be a way out of it.

He ate only a few bites of his breakfast, but Eijirou didn’t seem to notice when he picked up their plates and suggested Katsuki should shower while he cleaned up.

“I’m not having a shower this morning,” Katsuki said.

Eijirou paused by the sink. “Oh, no? Aren’t you sweaty from your run?”

“I didn’t go on a run.”

Eijirou stood facing away from Katsuki. He couldn’t see his fake husband’s expression, only count the seconds before Eijirou replied.

“I’ll clear this away while you get changed,” he said at last, as if the stock answers had cycled around and around until the only available statement was to start the conversation over, a little to the left.

“I’m not getting changed,” Katsuki replied, forcing his voice to stay level and clear.

Eijirou glanced back at him, face blank. “You’re not in your hero costume.”

“I’m not going to work today.”

“Are you sick?” The mock concern on Eijirou’s face was laughable; it didn’t look exactly right. There was no crumple between the brow. Katsuki knew Eijirou’s face better than to be fooled by that.

“No, I’m just not going in.”

“Oh.” A five count. Eijirou scraped Katsuki’s leftovers into the bin. “I’m going to clean up while you get ready,” he said.

Katsuki left the house.

He started down the sidewalk and watched as the world sped around him. Children sprinted into cars, adults flung trash into their bins before running back into their houses. The old lady worked hard and fast at her petunias.

Izuku and Barkugou moved faster than he’d ever seen them go, on their run around the block. Seconds later, they reappeared and vanished inside their house. Seconds after that, Izuku re-emerged in his hero costume, Uravity in hers, and slowed to a normal speed as they started walking to work.

Katsuki crossed the street, waited until they were out of sight, and broke into their house.

He didn’t care; they wouldn’t notice, the damage would be fixed by tomorrow morning.

Inside was exactly as he expected; Barkugou standing stock still, not breathing, staring blankly into space. He was still soft and warm to the touch, but he was frozen.

Katsuki crouched beside him and looked around, whistling. “Deku could do with some interior design help.”

The space was a black void. He wandered through it. The areas that were visible from the street remained; shards of kitchen, of living room – but the further back in the house he travelled, the more it vanished to darkness. Like it hadn’t been programmed in; like a player wandering into a space the game designer didn’t know they could access.

He patted Barkugu on the flank and waited in the house until Eijirou left for work. It was odd, watching him go, chattering placidly as if Katsuki was beside him. He waited a little longer, and watched as the street slowly emptied. The old lady went back inside, the cars stopped driving past.

By the time he left the house, five minutes after he should’ve gone to work, the street was abandoned. He returned to his house and searched it once again.

This time, he wasn’t looking for signs that his reality was a lie: he knew it was. Now he was looking for an escape. There had to be a back door, somewhere; a place between places he could slip through and vanish, a route in and out for her too—though, that was a leap. Could the villain enter the trances? Would she want to? Had she, even?

His days were repeating, right? It didn’t come naturally to him to remember the day before, and he was unsure how long he’d spent in this place, but every memory he had here was the same. There was very little space for her to interact with him.

So maybe she wasn’t here, maybe there was just—an exit. Somewhere. Somehow.

He pulled every book on the shelves, searched thoroughly through every item he could find. When he finally got hungry, he rummaged through the fridge to find food. The chia seeds he would’ve used in that morning’s smoothie were unopened, the frozen fruit half full. He wondered if Kaminari was at his work place, talking to thin air, or if he had arrived and been confused by Katsuki’s disappearance.

The only thing he had to go on was that she wore red. He couldn’t recall the exact outfit, but it was put together, purposeful. Her hair was bottle red, similar to Eijirou’s – it was a choice. She had chosen red, even though most psychic quirks and quirk users tended to lean towards purple in some ode to Pokémon, probably. Purposeful. He searched the house again with this in mind.

Unsurprisingly, they had a lot of red items. Eijirou’s décor style was red, fire, manly, and it showed. Katsuki pieced through every poster and plushie and identical pair of shoes before he hesitated.

Eijirou wore the same outfits every day in this place. Red Riot gear during the day, soft grey sweats and a white t-shirt after work, and Earjack themed pyjama pants with a red, worn t-shirt to bed. Katsuki located it in the top drawer.

Red fabric, decayed graphic on the front. He’d never looked at it closely, and even now, struggled to make it out. He’d always assumed it was a band or superhero t-shirt, but after laying it out on the bed and studying it, he saw the faint shapes of letters in the vinyl.

After a few minutes of struggling, he’d pieced together the words.

IT’S HIM OR YOU.

Katsuki swallowed, frowned, checked his reading.

“It’s him or you,” he muttered. Eijirou or Katsuki? Is that what it meant? Was this the message from the villain or just some obscure movie he’d never heard of? Katsuki huffed, searching for the label in the t-shirt. The washing instructions were non-existent, but the brand was called Clytemnestra, which had him wracking his brain for a few minutes until he landed on the ancient Greek figure who appeared in—fuck, shit, The Odyssey? Maybe? Or The Iliad? One of those. The one who’d killed her husband.

He swore. Threw the t-shirt across the room.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” he said aloud. Both for the ridiculous hint hidden in this world and the obvious—

He couldn’t kill Eijirou. Not even—not even this fake version. It’s why he’d walked him out into the street when he’d blown the house sky high. Even when he was ninety-nine percent sure it was all a fucking lie, he couldn’t risk the one percent that it wasn’t and killing Eijirou would be permanent.

And what if it was? It was unlikely too, but what if his real Kirishima was locked into this trance state too? What if the options were to let this play out until his body fucking died in the real world, or kill Kirishima’s real body to get out? Could he risk that? Even if the likelihood was low? Kirishima was in the hospital when he would’ve been tranced – would Deku have let her get away or keep using her quirk if Katsuki hit the deck in the middle of the battlefield?

Oh, this was fucked up. This was so fucked up.

He stared at the wall, hands clasped, elbows digging holes into his knees.

“I’m going to have to kill my husband,” he said, and then hated himself for it. He couldn’t. He had to. It wasn’t really Eijirou. But there was a tiny chance it was.

And even if it wasn’t—could he really look Eijirou in the eyes and kill him?

Could he do him the disservice of stabbing him in the back? Of not facing him when he died? But could he handle seeing the light dissolve from his eyes? The way his mouth would grow slack, his hands limp at his sides?

He could burn the house down again. But that had killed Katsuki last time, too.

He could throw the Molotov from outside while Eijirou was in the kitchen—but wouldn’t his hardening just protect him? Hell, any knife or bullet would crack upon meeting Eijirou’s skin. If he had his hardening, that was.

Katsuki considered it: he didn’t have his explosions. He couldn’t recall seeing a single quirk as long as he’d been here. Not on the streets, not at work. There had been no villains and there had been no fights. Kirishima hadn’t hardened his hand into a blade to chop vegetables for breakfast; Kaminari hadn’t offered to charge Katsuki’s phone over lunch. Uravity often traversed the streets using her anti-gravity quirk and the grappling wire in her wrist bands, but she’d left his agency by walking.

Deku couldn’t go five minutes without lighting up like a Christmas tree with One For All.

The trance couldn’t replicate quirks. It could only give him a light show. He bet, too, that Eijirou’s skin could look the part, but fail to do the job.

He spent the afternoon plotting Eijirou Kirishima’s murder, and hated himself for every second of it.

He watched the world idly from the windows, as he did so, and waited until the clock hit five, then five thirty, then even later, before stepping outside. On the doorstep, he watched the sun race to sink, the sky turning pink and red before fading to black. On the street, everyone he usually passed on the way home sprinted by, on fast forward, and he watched as Izuku returned home down the street, the lights turning on, warm and yellow in his house. Uraraka came back a moment after, greeting Barkugou at the broken door. Neither of them noticed it.

He re-entered his own house, and went about locating all the alcohol bottles once more. He’d died instantly in his own blast, and he didn’t want Eijirou to suffer – as long as the hardening was truthfully fake, it would work. And if that wasn’t the case, he would surely go to bed that night despite the fire raging in the kitchen, and wake up tomorrow to try it again.

Eijirou called, “I’m home!” when he returned, and paused in the doorway to the kitchen as Katsuki poured the last of the bottles on the kitchen counter. The floor was covered, slick and wet, and all that remained was a single half-empty bottle with a rag sticking out the top.

“Hey, Kats,” Eijirou said, oblivious. “What’s for dinner?”

He hummed. “I’m thinking that beef thing that you like.”

Eijirou grinned. “Sounds great! Mind if I wash up?”

“Go right ahead,” Katsuki replied.

Eijirou went upstairs and Katsuki took the unlit Molotov to the door, where he placed it so he could grab it later. Then, he put two dishes on the dining table, set out the chopsticks and glasses, all of it empty, and waited.

Eijirou was wearing the white t-shirt and grey sweats when he returned and sat at the table, in front of the empty plates.

“It looks great,” he said, before picking up his chopsticks and starting in on his invisible meal. Katsuki sighed, watching, cheek pillowed on his fist.

“Hey, Eijirou,” he said.

“Mm?” his husband replied, mouth full as if there were food in it.

“I wish you were real.”

Eijirou swallowed nothing. “What? I am real, man.”

“No, you’re not. But I wish you were. I wish we had this in the real world.”

“Beef?”

“No, dumbass.” He was smiling, though, and Eijirou looked pleased at his comment. “This. I wish we were married and had a house and a life together.”

“We do have all those things.”

“No, we don’t. We have an apartment, which is fine, and we spend basically every day together, which is great. I love that. But we’re not—together. We’re friends, best friends – but I never could just… tell you how I fucking feel.”

“You’re great at telling me how you feel,” Eijirou said, latching onto the one thing he had a programmed answer for. “Being vulnerable is hard for you though, I get that. It’s hard for me, too.”

“No, it’s not,” Katsuki sighed. “You’re great at it because you know vulnerability. You know what it was like before you trained your hardening. It’s not easy for me. I want to tell you how I feel—for ages I just thought it would go away so I wouldn’t worry about it, and then my priorities were on work and becoming the greatest, and now I’m on my way, and I’ve got basically everything else I want—”

He could remember the night he entered the top ten in the rankings. Could remember the elation, the need to do better, the knowledge that he would always go down in history now, no matter what. He was number six, he thought. Number six in Japan, and knew he could beat out the five ahead of him, so long as he could keep ahead of Deku. He was almost there.

“—and I still want you.”

“You have me.”

“No, Ashido has you,” he huffed. “Because Ashido had the guts to actually tell you what she wanted.”

“You have guts.”

“Not when it comes to you.”

Eijirou rolled his eyes, amused, before taking a sip of his imaginary drink. He placed down his chopsticks and reached a hand out across the table, grabbing Katsuki’s. It felt so real, so warm, and exactly the way he knew Kirishima’s hand felt.

The air left his lungs; he wished, so badly, this was real.

He wished he had this.

“Katsuki Bakugou,” Eijirou said, “you are the manliest, bravest, most courageous person I know. And if there is one thing I know about you, it’s that you always go after what you want.”

Katsuki didn’t have it in him to wonder how, generally, the words were made. If they were all things that he expected other people to say, or if the villain in control made them up.

But on this front, he knew the words were more than just his own, or a villain’s. These were Kirishima’s words, because he could remember Kirishima saying them. Word for word, an exact replica.

He squeezed Eijirou’s hand. Said, “I love you.”

Eijirou smiled, squeezed his hand back, and then went back to his invisible meal one-handed.

Katsuki remembered that too—that Eijirou never said I love you back.

He decided it must be his own mind in control, then. A villain could lure him into comfort here, into an eternity in this fake reality, if only Eijirou Kirishima would tell him he loved him. But he couldn’t; he didn’t have those words.

Because Katsuki Bakugou didn’t think he would ever say them.

He stood from the table and collected his dishes, taking it over to the alcohol-soaked sink. A moment later, Eijirou followed.

“Would you do the dishes?” Katsuki asked. “I need to do something.”

“No problem, sunshine,” Eijirou replied, before pressing a kiss to Katsuki’s cheek and darting around him to the sink.

Katsuki walked to the front door and picked up the Molotov. He turned to watch Eijirou wash the clean dishes, humming to himself and smiling. Totally content, totally happy.

“I love you,” Katsuki said again, because Eijirou deserved good final words.

His husband grinned at him, bright as the sun.

Katsuki left the house, closed the front door, and walked down to the street. He could see Eijirou’s profile in the window.

He took the pack of matches he’d found in the kitchen out of his pocket, and lit one.

Katsuki held it up to the alcohol-damp fabric, watched it take light.

He reeled his arm back and threw the bottle through the kitchen window.

Eijirou was smiling when he died.

FRIDAY

Katsuki Bakugou woke up with a harsh gasp. He lurched forward, pulling wires as he went and prompting shrieking alarms to accompany his return to the world of the living. Immediately, there were people surrounding him, their voices blurring into one.

Bakugou coughed onto his bedsheets as they took his arms and rubbed at his back, before encouraging him back onto his bed. Someone whisked away the sheet, dappled with sparkling red liquid, and gave him another.

He floundered through their tests, shining lights in his eyes and asking him questions he didn’t know the answers to. All the while, he watched the red in the corner of his eye. He couldn’t face it—was it her? The villain with the smirk and the confidence? Or was it—

“Mr Bakugou,” the doctor said, forcing his attention to divert. “We need to check your cognitive abilities.”

“My brain’s fine, probably,” he grunted. “Why does my body hurt?”

The doctor pulled a face at him. “You have been unconscious for six days,” he said. “You were subject to a powerful psychic quirk and your body has been deteriorating the longer you were unconscious. If the quirk user is to be believed, you should heal fairly quickly now that you’re awake again—”

“What’s wrong with my body?” Bakugou asked.

“Most prominently, kidney failure,” he replied. “Although yesterday you started experiencing issues in your lungs, too.”

“Oh,” Bakugou said, and allowed the doctor to perform his tests.

Only when he was done and the plethora of medical personnel finally left the room did he turn his head to the side to face the red straight on.

Eijirou Kirishima sat next to the window, skin pale with purple rings beneath his eyes. There was a bandage wrapped around his left arm, but the signs of severe damage from the building were gone and, Bakugou thought, he didn’t look like he’d recently been exploded.

The image of his corpse on the kitchen floor, white light shedding out the centre of his body, a door to another reality—

“Hey, Bakugou,” this Eijirou Kirishima said, and Bakugou’s thumping heart settled hearing his surname.

“Kirishima,” he croaked.

Kirishima stood and stepped over to Bakugou’s bed; he shifted his legs aside to give Kirishima space to perch there on the edge.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Kirishima said.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I suppose we’re even.”

Bakugou lifted a hand without thinking about it, drifting the fingertips down Kirishima’s forearm, before reaching his hand. His best friend simply watched as Bakugou fitted their hands together.

Bakugou had been wrong. He’d thought Eijirou’s hand was a perfect replica of Kirishima’s, but it had failed to elicit the same shiver up his arm, like touching a live wire. He couldn’t believe his own mind had missed that, too.

“Tell me what happened.”

Kirishima sighed, yawned, and nodded. He didn’t pull his hand away. “I’m told you went in with a team to take down the new yakuza sect. They had a psychic villain on their side. Kaori Sasaki. Officially, her quirk was registered as a hallucination quirk, but that was twenty years ago, and it got a lot more complicated since then.”

“It didn’t feel like a hallucination.”

Kirishima hummed. “Deku caught her shortly after you went down. She gave up the quirk specifics in interrogation. The quirk builds realities designed to make the victim feel at home and safe – the longer they stay, the more their body deteriorates to feed the reality. If she’s with the person when they die, she can extract the entire thing and it makes her quirk more powerful, able to create more complicated and believable realities. The only way to escape is to destroy the thing you care about most in the reality, but she says most people fail to do it.”

Bakugou blew out a breath. “And I would’ve died?”

“Yeah.” Kirishima looked out the window. His voice was raw and his eyes wet. He blinked the feelings away. “Your kidneys started failing a few days ago. Then your lungs yesterday. You couldn’t breathe. They put a tube down your throat and everything but sometime last night you started doing better and they could take it out. They started struggling again this morning. There was a whole thing about trying to find organs to transplant, but the committee declined to put you on the transplant list.”

“Because it wouldn’t matter?”

“Yeah.” Kirishima sniffed, looked back at him. “They wouldn’t fare any better. It took hours to convince your parents not to donate their own. The whole city could hear your mother yell about it. But Sasaki said the body improves as soon as the quirk effect is finished, so hopefully you’ll start feeling better soon and you won’t need any replacements.”

Bakugou nodded and thanked him for staying, and the two separated, Kirishima slipping off the bed and out of Bakugou’s hand, when the door opened and Bakugou’s parents flooded in, followed shortly after by Deku—felt good not to automatically say Izuku—and Uraraka, before half of their old class showed up within the hour.

By the time visiting hours were over, Bakugou was exhausted and Kirishima was asleep in the chair by the window. No one kicked him out, so Bakugou just watched him until he fell asleep himself, alive and real.

SATURDAY

Katsuki Bakugou woke with the sun.

He turned his head to the side, expecting to see Eijirou’s sleeping face, only to see the monitors and machinery, the glowing numbers and lines charting his heart as it up ticked in speed.

He sat up, looked around, was alone.

“Kirishima?” he said aloud, as if somehow that would summon him. Absently, he rubbed at the spaces on his body that ached, but he felt a lot better than he had the day before.

He was out, he was in the real world, his body was recovering.

But he felt strange all the same. He felt the need to make smoothies and go for a run. He had hero work to get to. Izuku would be outside his front gate, waiting.

He thought of the house, the black void. Barkugou frozen inside, waiting to be visible to Bakugou’s programmed route again. He thought of Eijirou’s dead body on the kitchen floor, surrounded by flames. Chunks of him were missing, but the centre, where the organs were, was all white light.

He’d vomited before climbing into the body of his dead best friend and fake reality husband, out into the reality on the other side. He itched, however. Wondered. How did he know he was in the real world?

Bakugou’s heartrate rocketed. He scratched at his palms.

He called Deku Deku and not Izuku. That made this more real.

And Kirishima. He didn’t call him Eijirou, and Kirishima called him Bakugou.

They weren’t married here. There were no rings and vows and he reminded himself that the timeline of events didn’t make sense anyway. They never made sense.

Ashido had visited. She had hugged Kirishima. They were not dating, and they were friends, and the sleeping together was casual, but he was putting it on the list anyway.

What else? What else? It didn’t feel like enough. It didn’t feel real enough.

He dug his nails into the palm of his right hand. He blinked, loosened his grip, exploded.

The alarms went off immediately, the nurses and doctors sprinting towards his room, but they only found him laughing, and crying, hand stretched out and tingling. He had felt the blast. The heat, the ignition. There was the adrenaline hike, the satisfaction.

This was real, this was real, this was real.

Hours later, when Kirishima arrived, he said, “The nurses said the bomb attack threat on this hospital has increased to amber.” He rocked back on his heels, looked a lot better rested than he had yesterday.

Bakugou said, “I’m not going to attack the place.”

“Mm. But you might blow it up.”

“A fair assumption to make,” Bakugou replied. “Read my chart.”

Kirishima rolled his eyes and picked up the chart from the end of the bed. “This handwriting sucks.”

“I know, but read it.”

“I don’t know medical terms,” Kirishima said, “but the doctor drew a smiley face so I think that’s good, right?”

“I’m improving at remarkable rates,” he replied, imitating the doctor who’d been by earlier. They’d run him through a battery of tests, discovering his kidneys to be doing so well they’d taken him off dialysis, and his lungs looked as if they had never struggled to breathe less than 48 hours prior. “If this weren’t part of a quirk, they’d want to study me.”

“They still might,” Kirishima replied. “Official report on the interrogation states that not a single victim of the quirk has ever broken out without being warned before about the exit. You figured it out.”

Bakugou hummed. Kirishima wandered around to the side of the bed, chart back in its place.

“You don’t have to tell me about any of it,” he said, “but I think I’d be a bad friend not to check to make sure that you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“The bomb attack threat is amber,” Kirishima reminded him.

“I have an explosion quirk,” Bakugou retorted. “The bomb attack threat increases at every public location I go to. Malls, theatres, primary schools—our landlord has to warn tenants when they sign their contracts that there’s an explosion quirk user in the building. I am a threat by nature.”

Kirishima quirked a smile. “You sure are,” he said. “But seriously. Are you okay? The nurses said you were a bit manic afterwards.”

“Snitches.”

“Doing their jobs,” Kirishima said.

“Surely there’s some sort of confidentiality in this place.”

“I’m literally your emergency contact and medical proxy.”

Bakugou sighed and slumped into the bed. The world felt so different to the other reality. The routine was missing, the feeling of latching and being tugged into conversation and action gone. There was no trance here to fall into; he existed in every second and had to guide them all or he would do nothing.

He didn’t like it; it was liberating.

“I’m fine, probably, overall,” he said after a moment of sulking. “It’s just… weird. Like I’m not totally sure I’m in reality again. I could just be in a second fake reality, and all of this is still just in my head.”

“Does it feel real?” Kirishima asked.

“Yes. But so did that place, sometimes. Until I started noticing the cracks.”

“Like what?” He nudged Bakugou’s legs aside and took up his place on the bed, one leg pulled up and the other dangling. “What were the cracks?”

Bakugou thought back. “There was an old lady gardening her petunias every morning at the same time. And Deku would just stare at me, not saying a word, until I moved out of his way. He would be frozen, smiling. The routine reset every day, and so did everything in the house. The chia seeds… the packet was always unopened. There were just so many episodes of Takeshi’s Castle. Too many, I think.”

“I love that show,” Kirishima said.

“I know.”

“I’m gonna be on it one day.”

“I know.”

“Why were you watching it?”

“Because you love it and want to be on it one day,” Bakugou replied.

Kirishima’s face lit up. “I was there?”

Eijirou Kirishima. Husband. The wedding photo. Kissing his cheek each morning. Washing the hair gel out each night. Cuddling on the sofa watching reality TV. Making breakfast. Eating dinner. Never saying I love you.

“Yeah,” Bakugou breathed. “You were there.”

“Was it just our everyday lives then? Because we do watch a lot of Takeshi’s Castle.”

“I thought you weren’t going to ask about it.”

Kirishima raised his palms in apology. “You’re right, it’s none of my business—”

“We watched it every night,” Bakugou said, because as much as he didn’t want to, he also desperately wanted to tell Kirishima everything. “Three episodes like clockwork. All of it was clockwork.”

Kirishima’s smile was soft. “Your perfect, ideal reality, and we were just watching Takeshi’s Castle?”

“I don’t think it was perfect,” Katsuki said. “Or ideal. But it was… I don’t know. Wanted. Desirable. Something I’d at least thought about.”

Kirishima watched him closely and he hated it, like his best friend might see through the obtuse words and find the core of it all. Instead, he said, “Maybe you need something that isn’t exploding to prove that this world is real when it feels like it might not be.”

“Like what?”

“Like a code word, or a thing that never happened in the other place.”

Katsuki blew out a breath, thinking about it. “I could break into someone’s house and see if it’s an empty black void or not.”

“What—no, wait, what—”

“I could see if Uraraka knows our fucking ages.”

“Why wouldn’t she—no, wait. Bakugou.”

“I could actually fight a villain instead of helping the same lady with her groceries each day.”

Kirishima was frowning at him, a crease forming between his eyebrows. Bakugou couldn’t help but smile.

“They never got that right,” he said, reaching forward and pressing his thumb against it. Kirishima went cross-eyed, looking at his hand on his forehead, before focusing on his face again.

“My face?”

“Your eyebrow crease when you’re confused. I think the scar on your eyelid was a little wrong too. You were always too fast at spiking up your hair in the morning. You never complained about getting up before 8am.”

He dropped his hand slowly.

“Fake you had an ankle issue and couldn’t run so much anymore. I didn’t know about that so it was weird. And you never spent the entire day texting me propaganda for whatever meal you wanted me to make for dinner—actually, there were no phones at all, which I didn’t notice was weird for a while. But that meant you were never constantly staring at your phone, sending me an obnoxious amount of memes I don’t understand.”

Kirishima’s voice was quiet: “I explain them to you every evening.”

“Yeah. And fake Kirishima always did the dishes without being asked. And the house was always really tidy without me having to clean anything. And he was never talking incessantly about being manly or complaining that his Crimson Riot t-shirt was in the wash.”

“… Sounds like it missed a lot about me.”

Bakugou nodded. He was still leant forward, towards Kirishima, hands loose between them. “All the important parts,” he agreed.

He could hear Kirishima’s breathing, a little shaky. “Also sounds like your fake desirable reality was just us in domestic bliss.”

Bakugou swallowed. “Yeah,” he admitted, because there was no way he could lie about that now. “That was a lot of it.”

He thought about the words fake Eijirou and real Kirishima had said to him, time and time again.

You are the manliest, bravest, most courageous person I know. And if there is one thing I know about you, its that you always go after what you want.

“What was the rest of it?”

“Going to work and stuff,” he said. “Though it actually tended to fast forward through that.”

Kirishima blinked. “It skipped the hero work?”

“Like five days in I realised I hadn’t experienced a single afternoon,” he said. “I always did basic patrolling, got lunch, then blinked and ended up at home cooking dinner.”

“You skipped hero work,” he said, “to get back to being at home with me?” Bakugou could see the cogs whirring, clicking into position. “In your wanted reality? That you had thought about before?”

Bakugou shrugged, like he wasn’t turning Kirishima’s world on its side. “You’re my favourite part of every day. Even on the days with the big villain fights and ranking reveals and whatever. Going home at the end of it and seeing you is the best part.”

“Bakugou.”

“That’s different, too,” he said. “You called me by my first name there. And sunshine, for some reason. I always thought you’d go for babe or probably man, actually. Maybe dude or bro still.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You do,” Bakugou said, because he did, because he wanted it spelled out for him nonetheless. “We had a house with a garden and a big kitchen. And we watched your show every night and we made the spare room into an office we never used. There was a photo on the bedside table of our wedding, and we were happily married in our repetitive, daily routine that looped around and around every morning.”

“You… we… Bakugou.” Kirishima shook his head. “Why were we married?”

Bakugou sighed. “Because I’ve been in love with you since we were teenagers,” he said. Kirishima’s eyes widened. “Probably since Kamino, if I’m honest. You calling out to me and saving my life… I’m in love with you. And I want you. And being married to you meant that every time I realised something was wrong about that reality, I would see you and I would forget all about it, because why would I question the opportunity to be with you?”

“Bakugou…”

“And it meant that the way out of that reality was through you. And it made so much sense. Because you’ve always been the answer, Kirishima. You’ve always been my answer.”

The room quietened as Kirishima took it in, and Bakugou waited, watching the words sink into his bones and shuffle around. He didn’t run for the hills, which was a good sign, and he didn’t immediately tell him that he was actually dating Ashido for real now or no longer wanted to be best friends and roommates, which was actually the most he could feasibly ask the universe for.

Instead, Kirishima thought, and Bakugou counted to five, but by the time he hit four Kirishima was slipping his hand into Bakugou’s and asking, “Do you want to be with me? Here? In this reality?”

Bakugou swallowed. “Yes.”

“And you’re—you’re interested in the long haul, right? Like, if we were to be together, it would be a rest of our lives situation? Marriage and a house and probably a dog?”

“Yes.”

Kirishima nodded. “Okay. Okay. Ask me.”

“Ask you?”

“Ask me to be with you. Ask for what you want.”

Bakugou’s wide eyes met Kirishima’s. Their hands squeezed around each other’s. He felt like he was shaking, probably. This was too good to be true, too much want he wanted to be real. But the eyelid scar was perfect, and Kirishima’s hand in his made him feel like flying, and he felt no drowning trance sensation, no hook that he had to struggle against.

He asked, “Kirishima, will you go out with me? And love me? And, sometime in the future, marry me?”

Kirishima said, “Bakugou, I have loved you for years.”

When he pulled Bakugou in, the kiss felt like a million howitzers, or a nuclear explosion, or a world-ending meteor hitting his chest and punching the air out of his lungs. If the short, sweet kisses of the fake reality were how Bakugou had imagined it, then he had sorely misunderstood what it would be like to kiss Eijirou Kirishima for real.

When they pulled apart, one of Kirishima’s hands cupped his face, warm and large and wonderful.

“I love you,” Bakugou said.

“I love you too,” Kirishima replied.

Reality sunk into Bakugou’s bones. Of course this was real. Of course it was. Kirishima loved him too.

Their smiles were broad and their laughs loud as they tangled together, hugging and falling back into the hospital bed, a mess of limbs and wires and bandages.

“Say it again,” Bakugou pleaded into Kirishima’s shoulder.

“I love you,” Kirishima replied. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Reality had never felt as real as this.