Chapter Text
“Hey, man—” Sero says, voice taut and on the wrong side of pleading. He looks brokenly between his 2001 Toyota Camry and the handcuffed Katsuki leaned against it, no doubt thinking about how he can’t afford this. “Don’t do this. I’ll just take the ticket.”
“Oh, I think I’ll do both,” Officer Dabi says, unbearably smug for a guy currently making both of their lives twice as hard as they need it to be.
“Right.” Katsuki drags out the word, slumping into the cuffs around his wrists. If he thought it might help, Katsuki would shut up, but as it was, fucking Dabi of all people won’t decide to take mercy on a couple of college kids and the barely-out parking meters. It’s not the first time Katsuki’s given a cop shit for doing their job wrong, but it is the first time he’s been arrested for it. “End of March is coming up soon, ticket trooper has to meet his quotas.”
“You seriously don’t need to arrest him,” Sero continues. “I know he’s annoying, but—”
“He’s obstructing an officer?” Dabi tilts his head condescendingly. “Yeah. If you want to go in with him, I can definitely make that happen.”
“N-no,” Sero sighs. “I wouldn’t like that.”
“Good.” Dabi flashes a smile, and like that, Katsuki is left to boil in the backseat of his cruiser for half an hour before Dabi returns from writing tickets and ruining people’s week.
“Let me guess,” Katsuki says once Dabi shuts himself into the front seat. “It’s near the end of your shift.”
“What?” Dabi barely glances back at him before peeling out from the parking lot. “You seriously wanna know my schedule?”
“Cops always do this.” Katsuki rolls his eyes—and his shoulders; he’s pretty sure the cuffs behind his back tightened when he went to sit down, and the entire thing has been downhill since then. “You pigs make some bogus arrest at the end of your shift and then rake in the overtime because bookings take for-fucking-ever and take no effort. It’s not clever.”
“And yet,” Dabi smiles in the rearview window. “It works.”
“What am I even being charged with?”
“Obstructing a police officer,” Dabi says. “And being a public nuisance.”
“A public nuisance?” Katsuki asks, volume rising. “What the fuck? Are you serious?”
“You were screaming at me pretty loudly earlier.” Katsuki can see the shrug of Dabi’s shoulders. “People were staring. I’d say that’s a nuisance.”
Nothing else Katsuki says gets any reaction out of Dabi, so he ends up spending the rest of the ride oinking at the fucker.
While Katsuki didn’t regret tearing Dabi a new one, he did feel some guilt at adding ‘bail money’ to Sero’s list of expenses. He’s sure that it’s only a matter of time before the old hag hears about it too, and he’s not looking forward to that shouting match either. Of course, when Katsuki is free to go he’ll pay them all back in full—and then some, just for the inconvenience he caused them and totally not because of his injured pride.
Katsuki didn’t often like to admit it, but Sero was his closest friend. Their meeting was almost inevitable—both of them majoring in Pre-Med, nearing their last semester until graduation—but their friendship wasn’t. Katsuki can’t say exactly how it happened, since he’s an asshole and was even worse during freshman year, and Sero, the mullet-having bastard, was an unassuming kind of guy with a decent vision of the future and definitely had no need for an angry pomeranian to hang around. Katsuki, for his part, respects people who know what they want and go out to get it, and when he allows himself to reflect on it, Katsuki thinks Sero probably puts up with him for the sheer joy of seeing him blow up at his stupid jokes.
Regardless of how they ended up negotiating their friendship, Katsuki’s extra glad for it now—even if he’s a pain in the ass, he knows Sero won’t leave him hanging. And, when it comes to making up bail, he’s sure that their roommates, Shoji and Tokoyami, will help where they can.
Still, it's nothing to sneeze at when you live off of ramen packets. Katsuki’s getting comfortable with spending the rest of the night in jail when company arrives.
“Look, I’m sorry Shinso—” A freckled twink with ratty clothes whines into the station’s landline phone. Since Sero saw everything, Katsuki skipped on his phone call, but it was entertaining watching this guy use his. “I didn’t know that it was trespassing? I mean—”
If Katsuki strains, he thinks he can hear an exhausted baritone get interrupted by a more energetic tenor, probably asking ‘how could you not know?’
“Well, in my—hometown, we could just wander where we wanted. It wasn’t trespassing, and you wouldn’t get arrested.” He groans into the phone. “The door was unlocked!”
Into the palm of his hand, Katsuki snickers. After a long beat of silence, the guy speaks again.
“Yeah, I guess it was his dad who got the police,” he says. “God, Shouto’s going to be so mad. He probably already knows what happened; I kind of—brought him up. I’m just...” he sighs. “He asked me not to meddle and I meddled? I’ll just—see what I can do. Yeah. Thanks. Bye Shinso, bye Kaminari.”
The phone clicks back into its receiver at the urging of a pig on the other side of the bars. If Katsuki weren’t already at a low simmer, the way the guy tries to apologize to the officer for taking so much time would’ve made Katsuki’s blood boil anew. What was the point of fucking with people you’ve already arrested?
At least Katsuki with his piercings and brooding expression could give a PTA mom a good scare, but between his cell-mate’s height, rounded face, and ill-fitting clothes, it was hard to imagine what kind of threat he could pose. Taking in the sight of his chunky sneakers—a disgusting sort of muddy color—and a hoodie that looked around the same hue, Katsuki wrinkles his nose. Whatever the situation that landed the kid here didn’t sound good—more posturing and power abuse, if anything.
“Hi,” he says shyly, shocking Katsuki out of his train of thought.
Not one to be accused of staring, Katsuki drags his eyes away from the guy’s poor excuse for fashion sense and grunts out a reply. Of course, that doesn’t seem to be the end of their ‘conversation’. The metal bench beneath Katsuki dips slightly with his cell-mate’s added weight.
Katsuki can’t name a single person who would willingly make small-talk while waiting to get bailed out, but he also supposes there’s a first for everything. Side-eyeing the man beside him, the first thing he sees is an extended hand; then, unruly brown curls; then, the brightest eyes Katsuki thinks he’s ever seen.
“I’m Izuku Midoyria. Or Deku, if you prefer. I think I’m going to be here for a bit, so I figured—” the guy says, not quite meeting Katsuki’s gaze.
When he does, his voice catches, and Katsuki’s no longer the only one struck silent.
The thing Izuku’s eyes do is fascinating. And that’s not talking about the way they widen when they connect with the intensity of Katsuki’s stare, or the way they narrow in confusion not long after. The constellations in them don’t change, but the color does—slowly, and then all at once. What Katsuki once mistook for brown slides into an emerald green.
“I’m sorry, is s-something wrong?” Izuku asks. The hand he extends for a shake wavers before it disappears back to his lap.
Instead of answering, Katsuki just looks at Izuku harder. His hair and hoodie are also green, but different shades, and the shoes on his feet—
“Waah!” Izuku yelps, back bumping against the concrete wall behind him as Katsuki pulls one of his legs roughly into the air.
“How did these get worse?” Katsuki demands, glaring at the bright red clown shoe in front of him. He hasn’t been able to distinguish green and red in years, much less different hues of green. “What the fuck is this?”
“What?” Izuku asks, voice strangled, before he starts squirming. “W-what are you doing?”
“What the fuck is this?” Katsuki asks again. His grip, if anything, tightens around Izuku’s ankle.
“What-what do you mean—” Izuku whines until he suddenly stops moving altogether. He blinks dumbly at the sight of his own knee, bent in front of his face. “Wuh—were my jeans always this color?”
“Blue?” Katsuki asks. It’s a light-wash denim, which looks all sorts of awful with the lime green hoodie and scarlet sneakers combination. “What kind of color did you think they were, nerd?”
“I—I’m not sure. I thought they were just—pale, or something, but—” Izuku looks like he’s about to start babbling, but his brain shuts down before his words can make their way past his mouth. Now, he’s looking back up at Katsuki, taking in his face, and clawing at his chest. “Your shirt,” he says, fingers grasping at the nondescript little ‘X’ design on the shirt pocket. “This isn’t red, is it? It’s—”
“Orange,” Katsuki says, dropping Izuku’s leg like it’s scorching. “So you have red-green colorblindness too? Blue-yellow?” It would be the only explanation for why he dresses like that—Katsuki, for his part, wears mainly black for this exact reason. Only when he’s truly desperate will his fashion-designer parents weigh in.
“What? No, I—” Izuku wiggles back into proper sitting position. “Red and green are the only colors I can see well. And, um—” Izuku starts to reach towards Katsuki, as if to touch the spikes of his hair, before he thinks better of it. “I think I can see yellow fine. Your hair is golden, and it didn’t change at all, and yellow and gold should be the same, I mean, unless—” As realization dawns, his face turns almost green—a shift that Katsuki can now fully appreciate. “Unless I’ve only been able to see in Christmas colors this whole time? Oh my god—”
“Listen,” Katsuki says, leaning back into Izuku’s space. “Five years ago, I developed severe protanopia and deuteranopia. People thought I had fucking brain cancer. What the fuck is going on?”
“Oh my god—” Izuku says again, his mouth sputtering like a broken car engine. “You’re too pretty to be my soulmate. Christmas Magic must have—”
“Christmas Magic?” Katsuki asks, voice rising. “Are you fucking high?”
Katsuki has half a mind to bunch his fist up in front of Deku’s shirt and shake him until he gets his shit back together. Before he has a chance to, however, there’s a clatter of a wood against the metal bars of their cell.
“Hey!” A red headed pig in uniform berates, baton in her hand. Izuku looks up at her, like a frightened deer, and promptly shuts up. “Break it up or I’m sending someone in there to break it up for you.”
“Fine,” Katsuki says. A glance to the man mere inches away from him confirms that, yes, Izuku is still losing his teeny tiny mind, and out of no particular sense of obedience, Katsuki slides out of his personal space. Looking back up to the officer and eyeing her badge derisively, he sneers. “Sorry for the bother, Officer Kendo.”
In lieu of replying, she merely slots her beating stick back to the utility belt slung around her hips and stalks back to her desk.
Despite the newfound space to breathe, Izuku’s own condition only worsens. He won’t stop looking between Katsuki’s face, Katsuki’s chest, and the floor—a finger raised to lips that keep forming words without any sound.
Any other day Katsuki would rejoice in the lack of muttering, but after a minute passes, and then finally two, he wishes that Izuku would actually say something—his incessant mouthing of words is just creepy. The more time passes, the more Katsuki has to think about how he can see now, and the utter lack of color within the station keeps pulling Katsuki’s eyes to the lush green of Izuku’s.
After another moment, he snaps. “Spit it out, Deku.”
“What?” Izuku startles out of his thoughts. In his cycle of anxious glances, Katsuki caught him at the whole ‘ogling his chest’ stage; when Izuku finally looks to meet Katsuki’s eyes, his too-pale cheeks blossom with color.
“What?” And, any other day, Katsuki’s famously thin patience wouldn’t entertain it, but something about the nerd’s expression has his chest swelling with pride and his lips twisting into a quickly aborted smirk. “Cat got your tongue?”
“No!” Izuku nearly shouts, red-faced, before remembering the officer’s earlier warning and settling down. “I mean—there’s no good way to say it, and you wouldn’t believe it anyways,” Izuku sighs. “It’s probably...not important, right now.”
“Not important,” Katsuki repeats. Part of him wants to argue the point—if Katsuki now, miraculously, has full range of sight, he might be prone to believing just about anything—but the idea of further discussion of soulmates and Christmas fucking Magic has him hold his tongue. “Right.”
“I just feel bad, that we had to meet like this,” Izuku says instead, evidently deciding to change the topic altogether. “I wish we could go outside, somewhere with more color.”
“Mm,” Katsuki hums in reply. “Dunno about you, but that’s probably not happening for me until morning. Don’t think anyone’s gonna be able to bail me out any sooner.”
“Bail?”
If it weren’t for the sweet way Izuku tilts his head when he asks his stupid fucking question, Katsuki might have snapped at him again.
“Bail,” Katsuki sighs, wiping an exasperated hand down his face. He hopes his tone properly conveys how much of a dumbass he thinks Izuku is. “As in the amount of money someone has to pay to get us out of here before our day in fucking court.”
“Wait, you have to pay to get out of here?” Izuku’s eyes get impossibly wider. “That’s so messed up. There’s no way Shinso and Kaminari can afford that!”
“Do you even know what your bail is set at?” He asks, eyebrow quirked. Trespassing, surely, would get him a heftier deal than Katsuki’s ‘public nuisance’ charge, but—
“I don’t need to know,” Izuku laments with complete certainty. “They won’t be able to afford it.”
“That makes two of us,” Katsuki says, burying the urge to laugh somewhere deep inside of his chest, probably next to his half shriveled heart. “Don’t worry—I’m sure they’ll be able to make it up somehow.”
“Maybe,” Izuku says, but he doesn’t sound full of belief. “Jesus, if Shouto ends up having to pay it, I’ll be so embarrassed.” One of Izuku’s hands returns to the front of his mouth in thought while the other incessantly pulls at a curl of hair beside his temple—an anxious tic, probably. “Are you sure there isn’t another way out of here?”
At that, Katsuki does allow himself to laugh. “Not unless you want to break several more laws.”
“Ugh,” Izuku groans, and just when Katsuki thinks he’s going to go back to muttering under his breath like a weirdo, he turns the full intensity of his focus to Katsuki. Rather than by his face, his hands twist together in his lap instead. “This is a really bad situation.”
“Uh,” Katsuki allows. “Yeah.”
“So it doesn’t leave me much of a choice,” Izuku continues, and if Katsuki didn’t know any better, he’d say that Deku sounds apologetic.
“What?” He asks, and that’s when Izuku decides to launch himself towards Katsuki. He feels arms drape around his shoulders in a weird fucking impromptu hug. Katsuki has no idea what to do with his hands. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m sorry—this might feel kind of weird,” Izuku says. His breath tickles the side of Katsuki’s neck, and his shampoo smells like peppermint.
Right beside Katsuki’s ear, he hears Izuku snap his fingers once; the second time sounds more like the crack of a belt, loud enough to make Katsuki try to jerk out of the embrace, but Izuku’s hold only tightens.
Weird might be an understatement.
His hearing goes first. The impossibly loud, leathery snap coming from a distinguishable point in the room fades into an all encompassing crackle. The more Katsuki tries to identify the noise, the hazier it becomes—maybe it’s the sound of crumpled wrapping paper, right as you gather up the scraps for the waste bin, or maybe, it’s the crackle of a fire, or maybe the static of a television set.
He’s almost too preoccupied with whether or not Deku’s just made him go deaf that he nearly doesn’t notice when his vision whites out, the restoration to his color cones so briefly enjoyed before he loses sight of the jail cell entirely. If he had time for it, Katsuki could scream at the injustice.
The physical sensations, however, are by far the worst. Everything bottoms out, his center of gravity pulled in ways not even the worst of roller coasters or acid trips could do. Izuku, now wrapped in his arms, hardly even feels real, though Katsuki knows with a strange certainty that if he lets go, neither of them will be coming back.
When they land—and Katsuki can’t describe it as anything but landing—they’re not far outside of the Midtown South Precinct. And when Katsuki blinks the sunspots out of his eyes, he almost panics at the sight of Izuku’s dark, nearly black hair, thinking that the return of his missing shades of greens and reds and browns was merely a passing fantasy.
But then Izuku blinks back up at him, eyes green as ever, and Katsuki feels something settle within his chest.
“That was a big wish,” Izuku breathes, and he feels faint in Katsuki’s arms. “But we shouldn’t have to worry about bail. I think—I think it wiped all records of us.”
“Of—of our arrests?” Katsuki asks, incredulous and wild eyed. “From booking? Or—everything?”
“Ah,” Izuku says, with a slow, dumb blink. “I don’t—”
“Deku,” Katsuki says, and his hands migrate from Izuku’s waist to under his armpits in order to keep him from spilling onto the sidewalk. “What did you do? Deku, Deku—stay awake—”
Of course, the commotion attracts the attention of a bastard dressed in business casual with the most candy-cane ass looking hair Katsuki’s ever seen. He and the nerd passed out in Katsuki’s arms know each other, apparently, but Katsuki is reluctant to let go.