Chapter Text
Prologue: Breaking Things off.
Katsuki helped Kirishima pack his bags.
He tucked Kiri’s shark into one of the clothes suitcases, careful not to let the old stuffed animal get too squished/damaged among the brightly colored collar shirts and odd patterned shorts all still attached to hangers. He wasn’t going far.
The apartment complex was a pack apartment.
Class B had the first four floors.
Class A had the last four floors.
Two larger packs who were intermingling enough with lovers and mini-intimate circles that it had just been logical to go for one of the larger pack condos. The War pack, as some liked to call them.
Packmates who had bonded/mated because of shared trauma during their efforts of the war against All For One.
Supposedly.
Kirishima had been walking around their shared condo with tears not quite brimming over for hours now even though he was the one who’d initiated this. Katsuki silently started in on the others comic books, quietly taking them off the shelf from where they’d been sitting next to Katsuki’s own collection of books, manga, and comics. He heard the red head sniffle and wipe his face a few times but hadn’t gone to comfort him.
His omega scratched against his skin, growling and snarling and biting at him to march into the other room.
Katsuki closed the box of comics and taped it shut, putting it down on the dolly they’d borrowed. He pulled another card board box over to himself and started in on Kiri’s collection of Crimson Riot merch. Kirishima was going to have to pry his Red Riot merch from Katsuki’s cold dead fingers.
It was an easy pace.
There was no real rush. The early morning shined bright through their window and there was a quietness about the packing. Three apartments were empty at the end of the hall for potential new pack mates. All of their idiots had chosen apartments as close to his and Kiri’s as possible and few wanted to board on the same floor as their boisterous crew.
Kirishima passed him with their inflatable mattress, insisting Katsuki keep the bed. Katsuki hadn’t fought it, wanting the lingering smells for as long as possible while he was sure Kirishima had wanted the exact opposite.
The redheaded Pro Hero was packed up before noon hit and they’d moved everything within a brief thirty minutes that left them both staring at the finished work in the eerily empty new place.
It wouldn’t last long though, he knew. Mina would take the lug head shopping for décor and kitchenware tonight. They’d talk shit about Katsuki and roll their eyes in irritation as they tried to figure out what contraptions some of the utensils were for. They’d probably do something ungodly to the place just for the healing process that they knew Katsuki would never allow like paint the walls tractor red. They’d hang those garish Crimson Riot lanterns up that Katsuki has told them three times can’t be properly done because the ceiling can’t support the sheer weight of the iron monstrosity because they have no support beams running through the living room, only the dining room, which is far too small for it without someone conking their head on it every time they pass through.
They’ll try the living room first.
It will stay up for a little bit. Enough to give them a cocky feeling in their chests about Katsuki Bakugou being wrong. And then it will fall, taking a chunk of the ceiling with it. They’ll try again in the dining room and it will only be after one of them gets a concussion for the third time that they’ll take it down and put it in the corner, at a loss of what to do with it.
It will become a sore spot for Kirishima.
A mark of failure he’ll be reminded of.
The same reason Katsuki had kept it in the closet in the first place because he knows Kiri and he knows his idiots.
“I guess this is it,” Kiri whispers.
Katsuki’s head shoots up, startled from where he was staring at that empty dining room corner. He presses his lips together and nods. Kirishima’s face pinches in that look of hurt that’s become so familiar as of late. The one that presses down on Katsuki like lead weights every time he comes home.
He hasn’t said a word since last night.
When Kirishima had grabbed his wrist after dinner and had whispered his wants in broken words, shaking like a leaf. Katsuki had felt very small as he’d nodded and gently taken his wrist back.
“Okay.”
He’d agreed. He’d agreed to the break up, to the moving out, that Kirishima wasn’t trying to hurt anyone but how this ‘just wasn’t working anymore.’ He’d quietly shut down as Kirishima had babbled on and on and on about all the things that had been wrong for so long never mentioning the biggest reason of all.
That Katsuki had rejected Kirishima’s claim mark to make them mates three times. The last and final time on their anniversary of four years last month. That their entire relationship was Katsuki rejecting the alpha intimately over and over again.
“If you just wanted to be best friends then why didn’t you tell me?” Had been the devastated words he’d uttered weeks ago, looking lost and unsure of himself.
The tension between them in the new apartment is thick as Katsuki swallows, intending to tell Kirishima that he hopes he finds someone good for him. There’s advice on the tip of his tongue to not walk away from the stove and to check in with the others if he’s feeling sad. Katsuki wants to say a lot.
His mouth clicks shut though and instead he finds himself nodding to Kirishima’s words.
‘This is it.’
He repeats in his own head. Clipped and firm. Before quietly slipping out the door and back to his apartment. The furniture Kirishima refused to take with him stares back at him from the living room. Even the reinforced, bright red couch Katsuki had picked out specifically for the redhead.
He finds himself gravitating towards it, curling in on the soft fabric and staring at nothing for the rest of the afternoon. No tears fall. No sobbing commences. Katsuki feels an odd emptiness that it altogether alarming.
This is his fault.
Katsuki had done this.
These were the consequences of his own actions.