Work Text:
“15 across, an affliction born from unrequited love. Eight letters.” Izuku muttered from the kitchen table as he chewed the end of his pen.
“Obsession. Depression.” Katsuki threw guesses out offhandedly, with every flip of the pancakes in his pan. “Murdering,” he said, with a menacing voice, as he let the pan clatter onto the stovetop.
“Kacchan,” Izuku chided, “Murdering is not an illness.”
“Love makes people do crazy shit.”
“Anyways, none of those fit,” Izuku said as he scanned the page, only looking up briefly to smile at Katsuki, who was now sliding a couple of pancakes onto his plate.
“Whatever, nerd.”
Izuku made some marks on the paper and set it aside, but before they could start eating, a phone call interrupted them.
“New intern needs help,” Izuku whispered, covering the phone with his hand.
“Thought it was supposed to be the other way around,” Katsuki grumbled, only to be shushed by Izuku as he stood up and walked into the next room to take the call. He took the opportunity to sneak a peek at the crossword.
15-across, 15-across, 15-across—there it was, confidently spelled out in ink. H-A-N-A-H-A-K-I.
Go figure, the answer to a crossword clue was some obscure as fuck disease. Katsuki wasn’t even sure if he had ever read about it in his school books, nor come across it during mandatory medical training sessions. It was just a thing that you knew existed, but would never actually come across, especially not someone who had it.
Which was exactly why Katsuki couldn’t stop thinking about it when Izuku came home one day with puffy eyes and a slight wheeze.
Had Deku been crying?
“M’fine, Kacchan. Just congested,” Izuku mumbled as he pressed a cold compress to his face, slumping down onto the couch. “Make me some tea?”
The kettle whistled on as Katsuki flipped through their stash of tea bags absentmindedly.
What was there for Deku to be upset about?
“Absolutely nothing,” was the answer he gave Katsuki as he cupped his hands around the mug and breathed in the rising steam. Peppermint tea—just what he needed. He gave Katsuki a little peck on the cheek and cooed, “My Hero.”
Katsuki scoffed, resisting the urge to shove Izuku. He was lucky that he was holding a hot drink. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t get used to it.”
“Whatever you say, Kacchan. I don’t need grand romantic gestures anyways.” He blew at his tea, pausing to add, “You should see the kind of things Kikuchi gets from his boyfriend, though.”
“Who? Oh, useless intern.”
“New intern,” Izuku chided. “They’re so head over heels for each other. Cards, chocolates, flowers.”
“So what?” Katsuki rolled his eyes. “Waste of money, if you ask me.”
Izuku laughed and teased him a little, “You’re right, as always, Kacchan.”
Of course he was.
Katsuki was sure, until he came home one day to the sound of Izuku sniffling away.
“Yeah, I know, I should say something.” He must be in the bedroom. Katsuki remained silent in the hallway, feeling uneasy when he heard the tone of Izuku’s voice.
“I can’t say it to his face, Ochako,” he wheezed. “Seeing his face is going to break my heart.”
Was Deku sick? He seemed fine in the morning. Katsuki couldn’t help but feel a little jealous that he was confiding in Round Face; they never had anything to hide from each other.
“I’m doing fine, as much as I can be with this accursed affliction.” Izuku’s laugh was cut short by a coughing fit. “Yeah, it’s the flowers.”
Holy fuck, flowers. Katsuki started pacing up and down the hallway, his whole body tensing as he put the pieces together. Flowers. Coughing. The crying.
“Yes, I’ll think about seeing the doctor. No promises.”
Doctor.
Deku had hanahaki.
“Okay, I gotta go, I think Kacchan’s home. Ok, bye. I said no promises. Bye. Byeee. Yep, bye!”
For someone who just admitted to having a death sentence hanging over his head, Izuku was sounding way too fucking cheerful.
He’s doing that thing again, hiding behind a smile.
Had Katsuki done something wrong? Was Izuku unhappy?
An affliction born from unrequited love.
But Katsuki fucking loved Izuku; he had no doubts about that.
Did he think that Katsuki didn’t love him back? That Katsuki didn’t love him enough?
The romantic gestures, of course. That fucking intern.
For all the explosiveness that he was, apparently Katsuki didn’t love him loudly enough.
So he made a plan, to love Izuku so fucking loudly that no flower, hanahaki or otherwise, would ever dare to grow within a 100 meters of him. After all, there was no way he was going to let Izuku die to a bunch of shitty flowers.
He started with the usual: cards, chocolates—no flowers, of course. Katsuki wasn’t much for romantic prose and poetry, but he tried his best. For once, he was happy to hear Izuku laughing at him. A positive reaction, right? He’d make himself a fool a million times over for Izuku’s life.
Katsuki did more than his share of chores, despite Izuku’s profuse protesting and insisting that they share the responsibilities equally like they had agreed to. He made Izuku breakfast in bed. He even started using emojis when he texted.
All of this did little more than confuse Izuku, who wasn’t used to a Katsuki who acted like this. And on top of that, Izuku was still coming home every day coughing and wheezing. All Katsuki could do was make sure they had plenty of peppermint tea in the pantry and have the kettle going if he got home before Izuku.
“It’s too much, Kacchan,” Izuku said, resigned, as he poured hot water into his mug. “Kikuchi and his boyfriend. Every single day, there’s something for him. Delivery from Sakurai, delivery from Sakurai, delivery from Sakurai.”
He’s saying it’s not enough, Katsuki thought, as he half-listened to Izuku’s complaints between the coughs.
He had to go bigger.
Katsuki started setting up date nights. Homemade katsudon, a movie of Izuku’s choosing—a romance that Katsuki would normally object to. Enough massaging and cuddling afterwards to turn him into a pliant gooey mess after bawling over said movie.
It still wasn’t enough, though, to stop the coughing. In fact, Katsuki could swear that Izuku even came home a few days smelling distinctly more floral than usual.
So, he started picking up rare All Might merchandise to add to Izuku’s collection. He became obsessed with setting up keyword alerts for certain pieces that he knew Izuku really wanted. He made multiple accounts for different auction sites. He began recognizing rival bidders by their usernames and swearing that he would fucking track them down and cut their throats for winning the bid. Katsuki would wake up in the middle of the night, having set an alarm for an auction start time, and shuffle out with bleary eyes to the living room. He would sit in the dark, illuminated only by the light of his smart phone, furiously tapping out bids.
The packages piled up. Izuku was delighted, of course, to receive all of Katsuki’s gifts. But when he could hide neither his concern nor cough well enough behind a smile, Katsuki knew that it still wasn’t loud enough.
For the first time in his life, Katsuki was going to use his celebrity status for selfish gain. It wasn’t that he was too good and honorable to do it. He just never wanted to deal with any of the extra attention that came with it. People get too fucking nosy. But, Deku was worth it, he thought as he dialed the number for the city’s paper.
“You gonna do the Sunday crossword, Deku?”
“Mm, yeah. I just have to look over something for Kikuchi.” Izuku pulled a stack of papers out from his bag and threw them onto the table as Katsuki took his seat. While he rifled through them, Kastuki flipped the paper open to the crossword, double-checking again that his request had been fulfilled.
Izuku was pleasantly surprised that this Sunday, Katsuki was genuinely trying to help. It wasn’t that he was bad at crosswords, he just thought they were too nerdy to be any fun, finding it much more amusing to throw out joke answers to rile Deku up.
Not today, though. Katsuki had a declaration to make and he was going to be sincere and he was going to be present for it. And so was the entire population of nerds in Musutafu city, too.
Katsuki wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts under the table, watching Izuku fill out the crossword, waiting with bated breath for his surprise to reveal itself.
“23 across, words of affection. Eight letters.” Izuku was chewing his pen again. The image of him made Katsuki feel a sense of deja vu, bringing him back to that previous Sunday, just before his mind became obsessed with this stupid disease. Before he discovered that Izuku didn’t feel as certain as Katsuki did about them.
“I love you,” Katsuki managed to say, despite the lump in his throat.
Izuku smiled and leaned over to kiss him. “That you do. Love you, too.”
Katsuki watched his pen travel over the paper, neat little letters settling into each box—until a cough shook his body enough to make the final letter wobbly.
What the fuck.
Izuku gasped, clutching the paper to his chest and wheezing before breaking into a couple of coughs. “Kacchan!” He managed to squeeze out between coughs. He looked at Katsuki with big, teary eyes and quivering lips.
He’s finished the crossword, he thought bleakly.
Katsuki wanted to scream.
He wanted to grab Izuku and kiss him so hard that he couldn’t cough. He wanted to fucking scream right back into his throat and tell the hanahaki to fuck right off. He wanted to reach in and rip it out by the roots, every last strand of it.
But he didn’t, because he was fucking scared.
He was scared that if he said anything in this moment, it would be the last he would share with Izuku. He didn’t dare ask the question because he wasn’t ready to accept all the possible outcomes. Hanahaki meant that Izuku loved him, right? So why, why, wasn’t Izuku hearing Katsuki love him back, loud and clear?
He slumped his shoulders as Izuku flung his arms around him, and rested his chin on Katsuki’s shoulder as he read off the message with glee.
“DEKU. I LOVE YOU. FOREVER. AND. ALWAYS.”
Katsuki could only hum in response. It didn’t make any sense.
“How’d you manage it? How’d they manage it—working in Deku as an answer? I should call them—no, maybe I’ll ask on their Tweeter page—no, I should write in.”
Izuku’s rambling washed over him as he stared off into a corner of the kitchen floor. There it was. A single flower petal.
Katsuki was going to beat this piece of shit hanahaki. Oh, he wasn’t fucking done yet.
Whoever missed the Sunday crossword was going to get a rebroadcast of Katsuki’s declaration of love. He made sure to tell Izuku to come home on time that day, so they could head out together. Katsuki had something to show him.
Katsuki swung the front door open to find that he was already home. Perfect. He shouted for Izuku, kicking off his shoes haphazardly, expecting to be leaving again in a moment. Katsuki followed Izuku’s voice to the kitchen, only to feel his heart seizing when the smell of flowers hit his nose. His heart dropped when Izuku came into view, a large bundle of roses in one hand and a pitcher in the other.
“Deku, that’s fucking morbid.”
“I know!” Izuku blurted out. “Ochako said that too, but I didn’t know what else to do with it! Kikuchi insisted and I panicked.”
“He insisted you display a fucking symbol of your impending death?”
“That’s a pretty dramatic way of saying ‘allergy trigger,’ Kacchan.”
Wait, what?
“Kacchan?”
“So, you don’t have hanahaki.”
“No? I don’t ha—these are just flowers from Kikuchi’s boyfriend. He’s gotten so many, he’s started making people at the agency take them home.”
Katsuki buried his face and started to shake, laughing so hard that he even cried a little. He wanted to be mad at Izuku for the stressful few weeks he had, but he was mostly relieved that his boyfriend wasn’t going to die, and that the worst that had happened was him making a fool of himself.
Finally, he reached out for Izuku’s hand.
“C’mon, Deku. I have a billboard to show you.”