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It’s easy to think of another life where his name doesn’t fit so easily and earnestly into Ei’s mouth. Katsuki sees flickers of it on his worst days, a new insecurity from the relationship he’s learned to soothe over the years, through patience and faith — his boyfriend’s and his own.
He’s thinking of it in the dim of early morning, waiting for Ei to come back from patrol, when he flips on the TV to see a reporter ambush his boyfriend to ask about a villain takedown.
The news channel cuts to footage of Eijirou, unbreakable, skin hardened into jagged ridges, mouth set with determination as he’s engaged in pursuit. There’s some throwaway question about what fighting was like, whether he thinks they’ll come back, what he thinks about the fight. Katsuki always gives terse answers, but he’s come a long way from earlier in his career when he’d have to clench his hands to the point of little red crescents in his palms to stop from exploding.
Eijirou isn’t like that. He grins and Katsuki feels his world shift at the edges. He doesn’t understand how anyone else can bear the full force of that, even through a screen.
He answers the questions with a remarkable level of recall and ease. “Oh, it was tough, but nothing my Unbreakable can’t handle. No need to worry! I’ve been thinking about how we handle these takedowns, though. If there could be a better way, something more — restorative…”
The Ei on screen goes on new restorative justice practices he’s been talking to Katsuki about, a monologue he’s heard over the past few months, and while he listens to the well-trodden ideas, Katsuki imagines knowing about Red Riot only as a fan. If he had been some quirkless kid whose teen years were spent in a nondescript school. If the trauma he carried didn’t hang so heavy on his back and he wouldn’t have been as emotionally repressed as to deny himself the pleasure of a brilliant smile coated in red sweeping him off his feet, giving into slightly obsessive and Deku-adjacent tendencies.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so different from now, when he scans footage of Red Riot fights during strategizing sessions for their agency to discuss techniques to try or adjust. Except there’d be missing warmth by his side, no full-body laugh and biting banter jolting him out of focus. No gentle but firm pushback when Katsuki says something just the wrong side of harsh.
The apartment’s empty and if he looks away from the garish display of red in the kitchen and the plants in the corner of the windowsill, erases the throw blankets Eijirou is always bragging about getting on sale, it’s a vision of a life where he pushed Ei all the way out — insisted number one was all he had room to care about, burned up every relationship that’s an easy call away.
In that life, maybe he wouldn’t ever have learned to control his anger. He sees phantom images of himself, always scowling, always sparking.
Maybe he’d run into Red Riot during an occasional fight. They’d fall back into a familiar rhythm with everything but eye contact, exist in a perpetual, near impenetrable state of tension. They’d see each others’ names in newspapers and think of what could have been, and maybe in the dead of night Katsuki would admit he’d fucked everything up just to be alone at the top.
But he hears the door open and he’s moving, his boyfriend in the doorway and the sunrise is making an orange halo around his hair, and Katsuki lets the sight knock out every thought of the lives that are tugging at the corners, because he doesn’t need them. It’s a gut punch. It’s the way Eijirou looks like at Katsuki with eyes that say welcome home.
“Katsuki,” and no one says his name like Ei does. No one holds it in the mouth the same, and he wouldn’t want them to.
“Marry me,” Katsuki says. He’s just as surprised to hear the words as Ei looks, eyes blown wide. He’s floating on the outside of his body, he’s never been more aware of all his senses heightened, he’s everywhere, he’s anchored by the love he’s worked to be worthy of.
Then before he knows it, Katsuki’s on one knee and his face is burning.
“Take a guy to dinner first, Kats,” Ei laughs, shuts the door behind him. But his voice is shaking and his eyes are watering and never mind, Katsuki’s frozen because he wants to preserve this moment in his mind forever. He sees thinly veiled disbelief in his boyfriend’s eyes and he singlehandedly vows to eradicate it. He doesn’t have any doubt that this is it for him.
But he knows his boyfriend, and he knows the certainty Ei needs, explicit stability that’s never been his strong suit.
Katsuki is nothing if relentlessly committed to self-improvement, though.
“Eijirou,” he starts, and he’s surprised at how sure he sounds. “I love you. I love you, and I want to be with you forever. I want to see your fucking infuriating grin when you beat me at video games. I want the way you look at me in the morning when you’re not sure what time it is and I’m the only thing in your world for however long I can get it. I don’t want any life where I don’t get to work on strategy with you or see that stupid cherry red you love so much everywhere in the apartment, even when it’s dye on our fucking sink.”
“Hey, I promised I’d try to look for someone with a stain remover quirk!” Then a beat, and Eijirou has the decency to look mollified and shocked all at once. Katsuki has learned about so many emotions from dating Ei, it’s ridiculous. Unfair how all of them either look distractibly hot or irresistibly cute on him.
“Wait, you’re serious, you’re proposing for real?”
This is the most inane, stupid thing Katsuki has ever done, he thinks as he mimes pulling out a ring box and opening the lid to reveal an invisible ring. But he’s learned he’s willing to be foolish, as long as it’s for Ei.
“So what do you say, Eijirou Kirishima?” A smirk he can’t stop spreads across his face. He sees the yes in Ei’s eyes but he knows he needs to work for it, sees the disbelief changing to something like resolution. “Come on.”
Ei grabs his hand like he’s refusing to let go and pulls him up into a kiss that steals the breath from beneath his lips, and he’s kissing Katsuki like it’s every fight they’d never thought they’d make it through again, lips soft and pliant and warm.
One hand is tangled in Katsuki’s hair but Ei still hasn’t let go of the other one, solid and grounding in Katsuki’s own, and they’re still holding hands when they break the kiss, foreheads pressed to each other while their breaths keep the air between them warm.
“It’s always going to be you, Kats,” Ei whispers, and Katsuki swears he can hear their hearts beating in tandem. “I love you.”
Katsuki just grins back, steps back properly to admire the smile on his fiance’s face. Welcome to the start of their lives, or whatever.