Chapter Thirteen: Whaty Was Always There
For what felt like forever, neither of you moved.
Your eyes stayed locked on Katsuki’s, but somewhere in the back of your mind, you were still painfully aware of the two marks resting only inches apart between you. The small explosion beneath your bracelet. The lightning bolt that hadn’t been on his wrist five minutes ago. Two different pieces of the same thing, appearing exactly when they were supposed to and somehow changing the meaning of almost every moment that had come before them.
Katsuki was your soulmate. Even thinking the words felt strange. Not wrong—that was the part you couldn’t understand. Something this big should have felt impossible, like the universe had reached into your life and rearranged everything without asking. You should have looked at the boy sitting beside you and struggled to reconcile the person you had known almost your entire life with the person you were apparently meant to spend the rest of it with.
Instead, nothing about him felt different.
He was still Katsuki. The same boy who had stood beside you on a playground when everyone else had been afraid to get too close. The same person who had spent years helping you turn something you once feared into something you were proud of. He was every early morning spent training until neither of you could lift your arms, every stupid argument neither of you remembered starting, every movie you had watched too many times, every birthday you could remember. He was the person you searched for without realizing you were looking and the first person you wanted beside you whenever something went wrong.
Except suddenly, that word didn’t feel big enough anymore.
For years, you had used it without questioning whether there might be something underneath it. Katsuki was your best friend because that was what he had always been, and somewhere along the way, you had stopped wondering if there needed to be another word for whatever existed between you. You had never needed one. He was Katsuki, and somehow that had always felt like explanation enough.
Now, sitting across from him with matching marks on your wrists, you found yourself looking back at every feeling you had dismissed simply because you had never thought to call it anything else. The way you always looked for him first when you walked into a room. The way every victory felt better when he was there to see it, even if his version of congratulations was telling you everything you could have done better. The strange emptiness you felt whenever something happened and he wasn’t the first person you could tell. Even the way you had spent years imagining your future without ever consciously placing him there, because you had never needed to.
He was simply always in it.
And then there was Kamino. The memory came so quickly that your chest tightened before you could stop it. Twenty-four hours of not knowing where he was. Twenty-four hours of trying not to imagine what the League might be doing to him or what would happen if you were too late. You remembered standing in that alley, staring toward the opening until your eyes hurt, waiting for any sign that the plan had worked.
Then you had heard Kirishima’s voice, and the moment you saw Katsuki, you hadn’t thought. You had simply run—straight past everything else and straight into him.
At the time, you had told yourself it was relief. He was your best friend, and you had almost lost him. Of course you had cried. Of course you had held onto him like letting go might somehow make him disappear again. There had never been any reason to question it.
But sitting here now, staring at the person the universe had apparently chosen for you long before either of you understood what that meant, you wondered how you had never questioned why the thought of losing him had felt so much like losing part of yourself.
At the time, you had told yourself it was relief. He was your best friend, and you had almost lost him. Of course you had cried. Of course you had held onto him like letting go might somehow make him disappear again. There had never been any reason to question it.
But sitting here now, staring at the person the universe had apparently chosen for you long before either of you understood what that meant, you wondered how you had never questioned why the thought of losing him had felt so much like losing part of yourself.
Your gaze finally lifted fully to his face.
And that was when something inside you shifted.
Because Katsuki wasn’t looking at you like someone who had just discovered something.
There was surprise there. You could see it in the slight tension still lingering between his brows and in the way he hadn’t moved since the mark appeared. But beneath it was something else, something quieter than you were used to seeing from him and so completely unguarded that for a moment you forgot how to breathe.
You knew his face better than anyone.
You knew every version of his anger, from genuine fury to mild irritation. You knew the exact look he got when he was trying not to laugh and the one that appeared whenever someone said something so stupid he couldn’t decide whether it deserved a response. You knew what he looked like exhausted, victorious, frustrated, embarrassed, and afraid.
You had never seen him look at you like this.
Maybe you had simply never understood what you were seeing.
Because there was so much love in Katsuki’s eyes that suddenly, impossibly, the matching marks on your wrists weren’t the thing that frightened you most.
It was the realization that some part of you recognized that look.
Like it had been there all along.
You didn’t know how long you stared at him after that. Long enough for the initial shock on Katsuki’s face to begin settling into something quieter, though his eyes still dropped toward the marks every few seconds as if he needed to see them again to believe they were actually there. Each time, his gaze lingered first on the lightning bolt etched into his skin and then on the small explosion beneath your bracelet before eventually finding its way back to you.
And every time it did, you saw it again.
That softness was familiar.
You had seen pieces of it before, though never this openly and certainly never while you were actively searching for it. Now that you knew what it looked like, memories you had never thought twice about began surfacing in ways that made you question how much you had missed. You remembered the way his expression had changed when you ran into his arms at Kamino, how tightly he had held you when he realized you were crying, and the quiet way his hand had found yours afterward while the two of you watched All Might fight. Even before that, there had been smaller moments you had dismissed without a second thought—the barely hidden smiles whenever you accomplished something he knew you had worked hard for, the way you would occasionally catch him looking at you only for him to immediately glance away or find something to criticize.
At the time, none of it had seemed unusual. Katsuki was your best friend. Of course he cared about you, just as you cared about him. You had spent almost your entire lives beside each other, and somewhere along the way, the thousand little ways you existed around one another had become so familiar that neither of you seemed to notice them anymore.
Now, you weren’t sure how you had never noticed that something had changed.
“The hell are you staring at me like that for?”
His voice pulled you abruptly from your thoughts, and you blinked, only then realizing how long you must have been studying him. The familiar irritation in his expression almost made you laugh. Somehow, Katsuki could discover that his best friend of nearly his entire life was also his soulmate and, within minutes, still manage to get annoyed because you were staring at him too long.
You almost told him it was nothing. The response came naturally after years of dismissing thoughts you weren’t ready to explain, but this time the words never made it out. Instead, you found yourself studying him once more until his brows drew together further.
“You’ve looked at me like that before.”
“No, I haven’t,” he answered immediately, with so much certainty that you almost laughed.
“The hell does that even mean?”
“I don’t know yet,” you admitted, earning an unimpressed look that only made you more determined to figure it out. “But you have. I know you have.”
Katsuki scoffed and looked away, which might have ended the conversation with anyone else. Unfortunately for him, you had known him since you were six, and the speed with which he suddenly found something else to look at only made your suspicion grow.
“You’re avoiding me now.”
“I’m sitting right fucking here.”
“No, I don’t, because you don’t even know what you mean.”
Your mouth opened with an immediate response before you stopped, mostly because, annoyingly enough, he had a point. Katsuki noticed too. The faint satisfaction that settled across his face was unmistakable, and under any other circumstances you would have argued simply to wipe it away.
Instead, a small laugh escaped you.
“Fine. I don’t know what I mean yet.”
“Finally figured something out.”
You shoved lightly at his shoulder, and the quiet scoff he gave in return felt so normal that for a moment you almost forgot about the matching marks resting between you. This was still Katsuki. The same person you had argued with over absolutely nothing for most of your life, the same person who could irritate you faster than anyone else and somehow still be the person you wanted around when everyone else became too much.
Maybe that was why it had taken you so long to notice anything had changed.
Because nothing had happened all at once.
There had been no dramatic moment where Katsuki suddenly became someone different to you, and looking at him now, you were beginning to wonder if the same was true for him. Whatever you were seeing in his expression hadn’t appeared tonight with the lightning bolt on his wrist. You were sure of that now. It felt newer than childhood but older than the last five minutes, something that had quietly settled between you while neither of you was paying enough attention to give it a name.
Your thoughts returned to the last few weeks. Training camp. His kidnapping. Kamino. The alley.
You remembered running toward him without thinking, the relief that had nearly knocked the air from your lungs when you saw him walking behind Kirishima. You remembered crashing into him hard enough to nearly send both of you to the ground and the way his arms had closed around you without hesitation. At the time, you had been too overwhelmed to think about anything beyond the fact that he was alive.
But there had been something different afterward.
Maybe not immediately. Maybe not enough that you could have pointed to it then. Still, sitting here now and looking back, you could feel the shape of something that hadn’t existed in quite the same way before.
“Has something been different lately?”
The question slipped out before you could decide whether it made any sense. Katsuki’s eyes narrowed slightly, but unlike before, he didn’t immediately dismiss you.
“With us, I guess.” Even saying it felt strange. There had never really been an us that required explanation before. There was you, there was Katsuki, and the two of you had simply existed beside each other for so long that questioning it had always seemed unnecessary. “I thought maybe it was just because everything’s been insane lately. Training camp happened, then you were taken, then Kamino…” You trailed off, watching something subtle shift across his face at the mention of it. “But now I keep thinking about the way you’ve been looking at me, and I swear it’s different.”
Katsuki was quiet just long enough to make you suspicious.
Then he scoffed. “You’re imagining shit.”
“You literally said two seconds ago you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“That’s exactly what it means.”
You narrowed your eyes at him, but there was something different about the argument now. Katsuki could deny it as much as he wanted, but you had seen the hesitation when you mentioned Kamino, and the more determined he became to convince you that you were imagining things, the more certain you became that you weren’t.
Then, as you continued staring at him, the corner of his mouth twitched. It was barely there, but you caught it, and your eyes narrowed even further. “Why do you look smug?”
Katsuki rolled his eyes, but the faint curve of his mouth didn’t disappear completely. If anything, your growing frustration seemed to make it worse, and slowly, another possibility began forming in your mind.
“You know why it’s different.”
That earned you another scoff, though this one sounded considerably less convincing. “Never said that.”
For several seconds, the two of you simply looked at each other. The amusement in his expression lingered just enough to make you want to shake the answer out of him, but beneath it was something else now. Something almost hesitant, as though he knew exactly where this conversation was heading and had decided he wasn’t going to make getting there easy for you.
“You are seriously going to make me figure this out by myself, aren’t you?”
“Seems like you’re doing fine.”
You stared at him in disbelief before a laugh escaped you. “Oh my God. You’re enjoying this.”
“Bullshit.” You knew that look. You had seen some version of it every time he beat you at something and waited for you to realize it yourself. “You figured something out before I did, and now you’re sitting there feeling superior about it.”
His expression shifted into something dangerously close to a smirk.
There was nothing particularly dramatic about the words. Katsuki had said them with the same irritating confidence he used whenever you finally understood something he considered obvious, but this time they landed differently.
Because suddenly you weren’t thinking about the soulmate marks.
You were thinking about the way he had held you at Kamino. The way his hand had found yours afterward. The way he had been looking at you tonight even before either of you had fully processed what the marks meant.
Something had changed, and apparently, Katsuki had figured out what it was before you had.
Your eyes searched his face again, and this time he didn’t look away. “When?”
The question came out softer than everything before it, and for the first time since you had started trying to pry an answer out of him, Katsuki didn’t immediately have something smart to say. The faint smugness disappeared from his expression as he thought about it, his eyes dropping briefly toward his hands before returning to yours.
“I knew for sure at Kamino,” he finally said. His brows pulled together almost immediately afterward, like even that answer didn’t explain it properly. “But shit was different before that. I just didn’t know what the hell it was yet.”
“Before Kamino?” you asked, and when he nodded, you tried to think back through the months since the two of you had started at U.A. There had been so much packed into such a short amount of time that separating one moment from another felt almost impossible.
“Probably U.S.J.,” he said after a moment. “That was the first time I really…” He stopped, visibly irritated when the rest of the sentence refused to come as easily as he wanted it to. “I don’t fucking know. Started thinking about shit differently, I guess.”
You tried not to smile at how much he clearly hated this conversation already. Katsuki could stand in front of an entire class and explain exactly where someone had gone wrong in a fight without hesitating once, but apparently asking him to explain his own feelings was enough to make every word in the Japanese language abandon him.
Unfortunately for him, you weren’t about to let him off that easily.
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t push it.”
“You’re the one who said things were different.”
“Yeah, and that was already more than I wanted to say.”
A laugh slipped out before you could stop it, and the glare he gave you only made it worse. “Oh, come on. You can’t tell me you apparently started having some kind of emotional crisis after U.S.J. and then expect me not to ask questions.”
“I was not having a fucking emotional crisis.”
“You’re right. That would require admitting you have emotions.”
“Keep talking and I’m taking the soulmate thing back.”
“You can’t take it back.”
The absurdity of the threat pulled another laugh from you, and for a few seconds, the enormity of everything that had happened tonight seemed to loosen its grip. This was still the two of you. Somehow, even while sitting inches apart with matching marks on your wrists and years of unspoken feelings beginning to unravel between you, you could still find something stupid to argue about.
When your laughter faded, Katsuki’s expression softened again. He looked down at his wrist for a moment, thumb brushing absently over the lightning bolt as though he still hadn’t quite gotten used to seeing it there.
“After U.S.J., I started noticing you more,” he admitted eventually.
That made you pause. “You’ve known me since we were six.”
“So what does ‘noticing me more’ even mean?”
“I don’t know.” His frustration sounded genuine this time, and when he looked at you again, there was none of the earlier smugness left. “That’s the fucking point. You were always there. I was used to knowing where you were, what you were doing, whether you were pissed off about something before you even opened your mouth. None of that was new.”
You knew exactly what he meant. There had never been anything unusual about knowing Katsuki’s moods from the way he walked into a room or being able to tell whether he was genuinely angry by the slightest change in his voice. You had known each other for so long that paying attention had stopped feeling like something either of you consciously chose to do.
Katsuki seemed to struggle with the next part before finally continuing. “It just started feeling different. I’d catch myself looking for you when I didn’t need to. Paying attention to stupid shit I’d already seen a thousand times.” His mouth tightened as though he already regretted giving you that much, which naturally only made you more curious.
You couldn’t help laughing at how quickly the answer came. “Katsuki.”
“I answered your question.”
“You absolutely did not. You said ‘stupid shit.’ That could mean anything.”
“It means shit I’m not listing for you, so drop it.”
The tips of his ears were beginning to turn red, and that alone guaranteed you were never going to drop it. You shifted slightly closer, trying and failing to hide your smile as you pressed him again. “Just one.”
He held your stare for several long seconds, clearly waiting for you to give up. You had known each other for more than ten years, so both of you knew exactly how unlikely that was. Eventually, he exhaled sharply through his nose and looked away.
“The way you smiled when you finally got something right.”
Katsuki immediately looked like he wanted to take the words back, but you barely noticed. Your mind had already gone somewhere else—to countless afternoons spent training together, to the rush of finally landing a move you had failed a dozen times before, to all the moments you had looked up afterward and found him already watching.
There was something almost defensive about the answer, as though noticing you had always been so natural that he didn’t understand why you were making it significant now. Maybe that was exactly why neither of you had recognized any of this sooner. You had spent so much of your lives paying attention to each other that neither of you had noticed when the reasons behind it began to change.
Your gaze softened. “So you started realizing something was different after U.S.J.”
“Didn’t say I realized it.” Katsuki glanced back at you. “I noticed it. There’s a difference.”
You considered that for a moment before nodding. Somehow, the distinction made perfect sense. Whatever had been changing between you hadn’t happened all at once, and maybe that was why it had been so easy to miss. You had both spent years noticing each other without thinking anything of it. Katsuki had simply been the first to realize that somewhere along the way, the reason behind it had started to change.
“But you knew at Kamino.”
This time, his answer came easier. “Yeah.”
Something in his expression shifted as soon as he said it, and you didn’t have to ask where his mind had gone. You remembered that night too clearly yourself—the twenty-four hours of not knowing where he was, the fear you had refused to acknowledge because acknowledging it meant accepting there was a chance he might not come back. Then, after all of it, you had finally seen him standing there alive.
You hadn’t thought about what you were doing. There had been no decision to move, no moment where you considered whether running into his arms was something best friends normally did. You had simply seen Katsuki, and every ounce of fear you had been carrying since the forest seemed to break loose at once.
Katsuki’s eyes met yours again, and this time there was no teasing left in them.
“When you ran at me,” he said, “that’s when I knew.”
You stared at him for a moment, waiting for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, you raised your eyebrows, and the faint irritation that immediately crossed his face told you he knew exactly what you were waiting for.
“That’s all I’m getting?”
“I don’t know, Katsuki. Maybe an explanation?” You shifted slightly toward him, trying to understand how something you had done without thinking had somehow answered a question he had been struggling with for weeks. “I nearly tackled you into a wall, cried all over you, and apparently that was the moment you realized you were in love with me. I feel like there are a few steps missing.”
“You didn’t tackle me into a wall.”
“That’s the part you’re focusing on?”
A laugh slipped out before you could stop it, and Katsuki’s mouth twitched in response, but the humor only lasted a moment. You could see the shift happen as his thoughts returned to that night, the amusement slowly fading from his expression as he considered how to explain something you suspected had made far more sense inside his head than it ever would out loud.
“It wasn’t just because you ran at me,” he said eventually. “It was everything before that too.”
You stayed quiet this time, letting him find the words without immediately pressing for more. Katsuki looked down at his hands for a moment, his thumb brushing absently over the lightning bolt on his wrist before he continued.
“After they took me, all I gave a shit about was getting out. Didn’t matter how long it took or what I had to do. I knew I wasn’t staying there.” His jaw tightened slightly at the memory, but there was no fear in his voice when he spoke about it now. If anything, there was the same stubborn certainty you would have expected from him even then. “I had too much shit left to do. U.A., becoming number one, proving every one of those assholes wrong. I kept thinking about all of it because thinking about anything else wasn’t gonna help me get the hell out.”
That sounded exactly like him. Even surrounded by villains with no idea what was going to happen next, Katsuki had apparently spent the entire time refusing to entertain the possibility that they could decide his future for him.
Then his expression changed.
“But every time I thought about what happened after I got out, I thought about you.”
The words settled between you with a weight you weren’t prepared for.
Katsuki seemed to notice because his eyes narrowed almost defensively, like he was already daring you to make a bigger deal out of the admission than he wanted you to. For once, you didn’t tease him. You simply waited.
“I figured it was because you were there when they took me,” he continued after a moment. “Last thing I remembered was you trying to get to me, so it made sense that I kept thinking about you afterward. I kept picturing getting back and seeing you again, hearing you bitch at me for scaring the hell out of you even though none of that shit was my fault.”
A small smile tugged at your lips despite the ache beginning to form in your chest. “I wouldn’t have blamed you for getting kidnapped.”
“You would’ve found a way.”
“You once blamed me because it rained on your birthday.”
“You said it wasn’t going to rain.”
“I’m not a fucking weatherman.”
The argument came so naturally that for a few seconds, neither of you seemed to remember what you had been talking about. You had no idea whether the birthday story was even a fair comparison, but judging by the irritated look Katsuki gave you, he had apparently been holding onto that injustice for years.
Your smile widened. “Please continue telling me how deeply in love with me you are.”
“Keep it up and I won’t.”
You laughed softly, but when the sound faded, Katsuki didn’t retreat from the conversation like you half expected him to. Instead, his gaze settled on you again, quieter now.
“Then I got out, and there you were.”
Something tightened inside your chest.
“I saw what you looked like. You looked like you hadn’t slept. You were fucking terrified, even if you were trying not to show it.” He paused, his expression softening in a way that would have been almost impossible to imagine on Katsuki only a few months ago. “Then you saw me and ran.”
You remembered that moment so clearly. You remembered the relief hitting so hard it had almost hurt, the tears you hadn’t even realized were falling until your face was already buried against his shoulder. But until tonight, you had only ever thought about what it had felt like to finally have him back.
You had never wondered what it had felt like for him to have you in his arms.
Katsuki looked away briefly before continuing. “You were shaking so damn hard I could feel it. I knew you were crying, and I knew I should’ve probably said something, but all I could think about was how fucking relieved I was that you were there.”
“At first, I told myself I was holding onto you because you needed me to.” His gaze returned to yours, and there was something almost painfully open in it now. “Then I realized I didn’t want to let go either.”
The room seemed to grow quieter around you.
You could still remember exactly how his arms had felt around you that night. One wrapped tightly around your waist, the other holding the back of your head while you tried desperately to convince yourself that he was really there. Every time you had trembled, his grip had tightened, and you had assumed he was reassuring you.
Maybe he had been reassuring himself too.
“So that was when you realized?” you asked, your voice softer now.
Katsuki nodded slightly, though his expression made it clear even that answer felt more complicated than a simple yes. “That was when all the shit from before finally made sense. Why U.S.J. fucked with me as much as it did. Why I kept noticing you more. Why seeing you hurt at training camp pissed me off in a way I couldn’t explain.” He let out a quiet breath, almost annoyed at himself even now. “I’d spent weeks trying to convince myself none of it meant anything, and then you ran at me like that and made it pretty fucking hard to keep lying to myself.”
You smiled faintly. “So basically, I figured it out for you.”
His eyes narrowed immediately.
“I’m just saying, without me—”
“Finish that sentence and I’m leaving.”
The answer came automatically, playful and certain, but the second the words left your mouth, something about them made you pause.
It had been a joke, a response born from more than ten years of knowing exactly how far you could push him before he threatened to walk away and exactly how rarely he ever actually did. But suddenly, the words felt heavier, because somewhere along the way, that certainty had become one of the foundations of your entire life.
Katsuki wouldn’t leave. Not after an argument. Not when you were difficult. Not when your quirk frightened everyone around you. Not when you failed or got angry or pushed him until he wanted to strangle you. Even when you were children and there had been no reason for either of you to believe you would still be standing beside each other ten years later, somehow he had stayed.
Your smile slowly faded as the realization settled deeper.
“I think that’s why I didn’t notice.”
Katsuki’s brows pulled together. “Notice what?”
You didn’t answer immediately.
For the first time since the marks appeared, you stopped trying to understand what Katsuki had felt and turned the question inward.
You thought about the playground where you had met him. About all those afternoons learning how to control lightning without being terrified of what it could do. Birthdays and movie nights. U.A. U.S.J. Training camp. Twenty-four hours spent feeling like you couldn’t breathe properly because somewhere in the world Katsuki was gone and you had no way of knowing whether he was coming back.
Then there was Kamino. You had run to him without thinking and held onto him like letting go wasn’t an option. Afterward, you had stood beside him with his fingers intertwined with yours, feeling for the first time since the forest like the world had returned to the shape it was supposed to have.
You had loved Katsuki through every version of yourself you could remember.
That had never been the confusing part. The confusing part was realizing that somewhere along the way, the meaning of that love had changed.
You searched for a moment anyway.
Some obvious line you had crossed without noticing. A morning when you woke up and suddenly wanted him differently, a conversation that changed the way you looked at him, some accidental touch that should have made your heart race and forced you to question everything you thought you knew.
Even Kamino, as overwhelming as it had been, hadn’t created something that wasn’t already there. You had run to Katsuki because the thought of losing him had terrified you, but that fear hadn’t begun when the League took him. Maybe being forced to imagine a world without him had only made you confront something you had spent years taking for granted.
Katsuki had always been there.
When you were six, that meant sitting beside him at lunch because he was the first person who hadn’t looked at you like there was something wrong with you. As you got older, it became afternoons spent training together, weekends that somehow always ended at one of your houses, birthdays and arguments and entire conversations carried through nothing more than a look. By the time you reached U.A., you no longer thought about choosing Katsuki first.
He was the person you searched for when you walked into a room. The person you wanted beside you when something went wrong and the first person you looked for when something went right. You had spent so many years assuming he would be there that you had never stopped to ask yourself why the thought of a future without him felt so impossible.
Katsuki’s voice pulled you back, and you realized he had been watching you work through every one of those thoughts. His brows were drawn together slightly, his expression caught somewhere between curiosity and suspicion. “You’ve got that look again.”
You blinked. “What look?”
“The one where you’re thinking too damn hard.”
A quiet laugh escaped you. “You just spent the last ten minutes telling me you started noticing every stupid little thing I did, and now you’re complaining because you recognize one of my looks?”
“I didn’t say that’s when I started loving you.”
The response came automatically, but it stopped you.
Katsuki seemed to realize what he had said too, and for a moment neither of you spoke. He had noticed something changing after U.S.J. He had understood what it meant at Kamino.
But neither of those things answered when he had actually fallen in love with you.
“You don’t know when it happened either,” you said.
It wasn’t really a question. Katsuki considered it for a moment before shaking his head. “Not really.”
Strangely, that made something inside you settle, because neither did you.
“I don’t think there was a moment for me.”
Katsuki’s attention sharpened, but he stayed quiet.
You looked down at your hands, trying to put words to something that had existed long before you understood what it was. “I’ve always loved you. I know that sounds like an easy answer, but I don’t know how else to explain it. When we were kids, you were my best friend. You were the person I wanted to spend every day with, the first person I wanted to tell when something happened, the person I knew would still be there the next morning no matter how badly we pissed each other off.”
A small smile pulled at your lips as years of memories passed through your mind, but when you looked at him again, the smile softened.
“And then we got older, and I think that love just changed.”
The words hung between you for a moment before you continued.
“I don’t know when wanting to spend every day with my best friend became wanting every version of my future to have you in it. I don’t know when looking for you first became needing to know you were there, or when the thought of us growing up and eventually going our separate ways stopped feeling normal and started feeling like something I couldn’t stand.”
Your throat tightened, but for once, you didn’t look away.
“Maybe that’s why I never figured it out. Because nothing about loving you ever felt new. You were already the person I trusted most. You were already the person I wanted beside me when everything went wrong and the first person I wanted when something went right. There was never some empty space waiting for you to fill, Katsuki. You were already there.”
Something in his expression changed.
You saw it in the slight widening of his eyes, in the way whatever response he might have been preparing seemed to disappear entirely.
And suddenly, the answer felt so simple you almost wanted to laugh at how long it had taken you to understand it.
“I think somewhere along the way, it just stopped being me wanting my best friend beside me.” Your voice softened. “It became me realizing I never wanted a life where you weren’t.”
For once, Katsuki Bakugou had absolutely nothing to say.
You lasted approximately five seconds beneath his stare before the vulnerability of everything you had just admitted began catching up with you.
“Okay, you have to say something.”
That seemed to snap him out of whatever had happened inside his head. His brows pulled together, though the faint redness spreading across the tips of his ears ruined any chance he had of looking genuinely annoyed. “You just dumped, like, ten years of feelings on me. Give me a fucking second.”
A startled laugh escaped you. “I did not.”
“I asked when you figured it out. Didn’t ask for your whole damn autobiography.”
Your mouth fell open before you shoved his shoulder, laughing despite the heat rushing into your face. “You are such an asshole. Forget it. I take everything back.”
You barely had time to pull your hand away before his fingers closed around your wrist.
The movement stopped both of you.
His grip wasn’t tight. It was almost absentminded, like his body had reacted to the idea of you pulling away before he had time to think about it. His fingers rested just beneath the small explosion on your wrist, and when both of your eyes dropped toward the place where his skin touched yours, his hold softened instead of disappearing.
“You don’t get to take that shit back.”
When you looked up, every trace of teasing had disappeared from his face.
Katsuki’s thumb brushed once against the inside of your wrist, and the tiny movement somehow felt more intimate than any touch you had shared before. He had held your hand. He had carried you when you were hurt, grabbed you during training, fallen asleep beside you during movie nights, and held you so tightly at Kamino that you could feel his heartbeat against your chest.
But you had never understood those touches the way you understood this one.
Everything was different now.
And somehow, nothing was.
Maybe that was the strangest part. Katsuki was still Katsuki. You were still you. The marks on your wrists hadn’t created something new between you or suddenly rewritten years of friendship into something they had never been. They had simply forced both of you to finally look at what had already been growing there.
Your gaze drifted toward the lightning bolt on his wrist.
Then to the small explosion beneath your bracelet.
The realization came slowly at first, little pieces of the last twenty-four hours rearranging themselves until something you hadn’t considered before became impossible to ignore.
Katsuki had known how he felt before your mark appeared.
Yesterday, while you had been staring at the small explosion on your wrist and wondering who in the world it belonged to, he had been standing beside you already knowing he loved you. His own wrist had still been blank. There had been nothing to tell either of you what would appear when his birthday finally came, no guarantee that the mark on your skin had anything to do with him at all.
The realization must have shown on your face because the moment you looked back at him, his eyes narrowed.
You almost smiled. “I didn’t say anything.”
A laugh threatened to escape you, but it faded almost as quickly as it came. Katsuki clearly knew where your thoughts were heading, and judging by the look on his face, he had absolutely no intention of making this conversation easy for you.
Unfortunately for him, that had never stopped you before. “You thought it would be someone else.”
His expression shifted immediately. “Didn’t know who the hell it was gonna be,” he corrected. “Could’ve been anyone.”
You looked down at the explosion on your wrist again. Yesterday, it had seemed like nothing more than a clue you didn’t know how to solve. Now, sitting beside him with a lightning bolt etched into his skin, it seemed almost painfully obvious. “But you wanted it to be you.”
Katsuki was quiet for only a second. “Yeah.”
There was no hesitation in the answer, and something about that made your chest tighten more than you expected. Maybe because you were only now beginning to understand how different yesterday had been for the two of you. You had wondered about your soulmate with nothing but curiosity, never realizing that the person sitting beside you already had something to lose.
“You really wanted it to be you,” you murmured.
Katsuki gave you a flat look. “Already said yeah.”
“I know, I just—” You stopped, trying to explain why hearing him admit it felt so much bigger than it probably sounded. “You knew you loved me before any of this. Before you knew who my soulmate was.”
His eyes stayed on yours. “So?”
The answer caught you off guard. You stared at him. “So?”
You almost laughed at the sheer simplicity with which he said it, but Katsuki wasn’t joking. If anything, he looked confused about why you were treating the distinction like some enormous revelation. “But what if this hadn’t happened?” You gestured between the matching marks on your wrists. “What if your mark had appeared tonight and it was something completely different?”
Katsuki’s expression changed slightly. Not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough for you. He looked away for a moment before answering. “Then it would’ve been something different.”
You frowned. “That’s your answer?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.” You shifted toward him, watching his face more carefully. “You realized you were in love with me, then my mark appeared and you had no idea if it had anything to do with you. You had to have thought about what would happen if it didn’t.”
Of course he had. You could see it before he even answered.
Katsuki let out a quiet breath, his gaze dropping toward your wrist again. “Course I thought about it.”
“And nothing.” He shrugged, though the movement didn’t carry any of the casualness he was clearly aiming for. “Would’ve fucking sucked.”
Despite yourself, a tiny laugh escaped you. “Very heartfelt.”
“You want the truth or some sappy bullshit?”
“Then it would’ve fucking sucked.”
You smiled, but Katsuki’s expression didn’t change. His eyes stayed on yours, and when he continued, his voice was quieter. “Wouldn’t have changed how I felt about you.”
The smile slowly disappeared from your face. He said it so simply, like there had never been another possibility.
Katsuki hadn’t fallen in love with you because some mark told him to. He hadn’t spent weeks noticing your smile or thinking about you while he was trapped with the League because somewhere inside him he had magically known how this would end. When he finally understood what he felt at Kamino, there had been no promise that you would ever feel the same way.
“And if my soulmate really had been someone else?”
Katsuki’s jaw tightened slightly, but he didn’t look away. “Then they better have been fucking worth it.”
A surprised laugh broke through the ache in your chest. “Katsuki.”
“You cannot threaten my hypothetical soulmate.”
“That sounded exactly like a threat.”
“I said they better be worth it.”
“That somehow sounds more threatening.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, but when he spoke again, the humor faded from his voice. “If they made you happy, I would’ve dealt with it.”
That stopped you. Katsuki looked almost irritated by the way you stared at him, as though the answer should have been obvious. “I wouldn’t have liked it,” he added. “Probably would’ve hated the bastard on principle. But I wasn’t gonna make that shit your problem.”
Your throat tightened because beneath all the swearing and irritation, you understood exactly what he was saying.
He would have let you go. Not because he wanted to, but because he loved you enough to.
The realization stayed with you longer than you expected. Katsuki had never been someone who gave up easily. You had watched him chase everything he wanted with a kind of determination that bordered on insanity, refusing to accept anything less than the future he had decided belonged to him. Yet somehow, when it came to you, he had been willing to accept something entirely different. He would have hated it. Probably complained about whoever your soulmate turned out to be until you threatened to stop speaking to him altogether, but if that person had made you happy, he would have found some way to live with it.
You looked down at his hand, still resting loosely around your wrist, and something warm twisted painfully inside your chest. “You know, for someone who spent the last twenty minutes acting like talking about his feelings might actually kill him, that was disgustingly selfless.”
“Don’t make it weird,” Katsuki muttered, and you couldn’t help the laugh that escaped you.
“You were prepared to stand by while I ran off with some mysterious soulmate, but I’m making it weird?”
“Didn’t say I would’ve been fucking happy about it.”
“Oh, I’m sure you would’ve handled it beautifully.” You could already picture it: Katsuki insisting he didn’t care while finding something wrong with the poor person every time they breathed in his general direction. “You would’ve hated them.”
“If they were an asshole.”
“You would’ve decided they were an asshole before they even introduced themselves.”
Katsuki considered that for all of half a second. “Probably.”
The admission pulled another laugh from you, and this time you caught the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth before he could hide it. Somehow, the weight of the conversation began to ease with it. The possibility the two of you were joking about had never happened. There was no stranger waiting somewhere with an explosion on their wrist, no future where Katsuki had to figure out how to stand beside you while you built a life with someone else.
It was him, and the thought felt different now than it had when his mark first appeared. At first, soulmate had seemed too enormous a word to attach to someone you had known since you were six. It had carried expectations you didn’t understand and a future you hadn’t had time to imagine. Now, after everything the two of you had said, it almost seemed ridiculous that you had ever expected the answer to feel unfamiliar.
Your soulmate was Katsuki. The boy who had taught you how to stop being afraid of your own quirk. The person who had spent years challenging you until you were stronger than you ever thought you could be. The person you fought with, laughed with, trusted without thinking, and had apparently fallen in love with so gradually that you hadn’t even noticed it happening.
A smile must have crossed your face because Katsuki’s eyes narrowed almost immediately. “What now?”
You laughed softly, glancing down at the matching marks before looking back at him. “I’m just thinking.”
“That usually causes problems.”
“Would you shut up for five seconds?”
“Depends. You gonna say something stupid?”
“I was actually about to say something nice, but now I’m reconsidering.”
Katsuki scoffed, though the faint amusement still lingering in his expression made it obvious he wasn’t nearly as annoyed as he wanted you to believe. It was strange how quickly the two of you could fall back into this. Minutes ago, you had been admitting things neither of you had ever said aloud, and now you were arguing exactly as you had a thousand times before.
Maybe that was what finally made everything feel real.
You had always imagined discovering your soulmate would change something fundamental. That there would be a clear before and after, some invisible line separating the life you had lived from whatever came next. Instead, you were sitting beside Katsuki exactly as you had countless times before, except now his hand was still around your wrist and you finally understood the softness that appeared in his eyes whenever he looked at you.
“I thought this would feel different,” you admitted.
Katsuki’s brows pulled together. “What would?”
“This.” You gestured vaguely between the two of you, unsure how else to encompass everything that had happened since midnight. “Finding my soulmate. I always thought it would feel like meeting someone new, even if it turned out to be somebody I already knew. Like there would suddenly be this whole part of my life that hadn’t existed before.”
Katsuki looked almost offended by the idea. “Sounds fucking exhausting.”
A laugh escaped you. “You know what? It kind of does.”
His hand finally loosened around your wrist, but instead of letting the contact disappear, you turned your palm beneath his. Your fingers brushed against his for only a moment before slipping naturally between them, and you watched Katsuki glance down as your hands settled together.
Something about seeing them like that made your chest tighten. The marks were still visible above your joined hands. An explosion on you. A lightning bolt on him. Two pieces that should have seemed like proof of some enormous cosmic decision, and yet somehow they felt less important than the simple fact that the hand holding yours belonged to someone you already knew better than anyone else in the world.
“But this doesn’t feel like meeting my soulmate,” you said quietly.
Katsuki looked back at you as you struggled for a moment to explain what you meant. “It doesn’t feel like something suddenly started tonight. I don’t feel like I found some missing person I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet.” Your thumb moved absently against the side of his hand as the answer became clearer. “It just feels like I finally understand something that was already there.”
Katsuki was quiet for a moment, his gaze dropping briefly toward your joined hands before returning to your face. “Still us?”
Your heart squeezed at how easily he said it, and a smile slowly spread across your face. “Yeah.”
That was exactly it. Still you. Still Katsuki. Still the same two people who had spent more than ten years annoying the hell out of each other, arguing over things neither of you remembered five minutes later and somehow choosing each other again every single day without ever realizing that was what you were doing.
The thought made another memory surface, so unexpectedly that a laugh escaped you before you could stop it. Katsuki immediately looked suspicious. “What?”
“You literally just laughed.”
“I remembered something.”
“That usually means I’m about to get pissed off.”
Your smile widened because he was absolutely right. “You remember when I told you my birthday was the day before yours?”
Katsuki’s expression went flat almost immediately, and that alone told you he remembered.
“Oh my God.” You shifted toward him, suddenly delighted. “You do.”
You laughed, the memory becoming clearer the longer you looked at him. You couldn’t remember exactly how old you had been, only that you had been young enough to consider twenty-four hours an enormous amount of time and annoying enough to make sure Katsuki understood exactly what that meant. “I told you that because I was older, you had to respect me.”
“You told me to call you senpai.”
The disgust in his voice made you laugh harder. “I was older than you!”
“You acted like you had years on me.”
Your mouth fell open. “That was one time!”
Katsuki stared at you, and you stared back until his mouth twitched.
The laughter that escaped you this time came so easily that you barely noticed how much closer the two of you had shifted until your shoulder pressed against his. Katsuki didn’t move away. If anything, his fingers tightened slightly around yours as you tried to stop laughing.
“You know what the worst part is?” you managed eventually. “I was technically right.”
His expression immediately darkened. “Don’t.”
“Twenty-four fucking hours.”
You grinned. “You should probably start calling me senpai now. Especially since we’re soulmates. Respect is important in relationships.”
“I’m breaking up with you.”
“We haven’t even started dating.”
You laughed again, and Katsuki rolled his eyes, but there was no hiding the smile this time. For a while, neither of you said anything else. You simply sat there together, hands intertwined and shoulders touching, letting the laughter fade into the kind of silence that had always belonged to the two of you.
Only now, something had changed inside it. Not enough to make it unfamiliar, just enough that when you eventually turned your head, you found Katsuki already looking at you.
And this time, neither of you looked away.
For once, neither of you seemed in a hurry to fill the silence. The smile still lingering on Katsuki’s face softened as the last of your laughter faded, and without the usual teasing passing between you, you became strangely aware of how close the two of you had gotten. Your shoulders were pressed together, your fingers still intertwined between you, and Katsuki was looking at you without any attempt to pretend otherwise.
Normally, none of that would have mattered. You had spent most of your lives existing in each other’s space without thinking about it, and being close to Katsuki had always been so easy that you had never stopped to consider what it meant. Even now, he didn’t feel different beside you. His hand still fit against yours, his shoulder was still warm against your own, and the boy staring back at you was still the same person you had known since you were six. The only difference was that now you understood why being near him had always felt so natural. You knew what was behind the softness in his eyes, and the simple thought that he loved you still managed to make your heart do something ridiculous inside your chest.
A smile tugged at your lips before you could stop it, and Katsuki noticed immediately. “What?”
His eyes narrowed, clearly unconvinced, which only made your smile grow. You knew he was waiting for whatever thought had put that expression on your face, but for once, you weren’t sure how to explain it without sounding completely ridiculous. You had looked at Katsuki thousands of times. You knew the exact shade of his eyes when sunlight hit them, the tiny crease that appeared between his brows when he concentrated, and the way one corner of his mouth always lifted first when he was trying not to smile. You knew what he looked like exhausted after training, furious after losing, unbearably smug after winning, and half asleep in the morning when speaking to him before breakfast was practically a death wish.
There should have been nothing left about Katsuki Bakugou that could make you nervous, yet sitting there while he looked at you with absolutely nothing left to hide, you suddenly had no idea what to do with yourself. “You need to stop looking at me like that.”
A faint smirk appeared almost immediately. “Like what?”
You stared at him, instantly regretting giving him something to work with. The smug bastard knew exactly what he was doing, and the fact that he had spent half the night refusing to explain his own feelings only to suddenly rediscover every ounce of his confidence the second you became flustered felt deeply unfair. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, stop.”
“Thought you were supposed to be the wise one, senpai.”
Your mouth fell open at the word, delivered with so much sarcasm that it took you a second to recover. “Oh, now you’ll call me that?”
“Figured it might finally shut you up.”
“It absolutely will not.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Should’ve known better.”
A quiet laugh escaped you, easing some of the nervousness that had begun creeping beneath your skin. When it faded, though, Katsuki was still looking at you, and this time you didn’t tell him to stop. Maybe because you were beginning to understand that the way he looked at you wasn’t actually what made you nervous. It was knowing you could finally look back without questioning why. There was nothing left to misunderstand, no reason to dismiss the warmth spreading through your chest as something that simply came with knowing someone for most of your life, and no mysterious soulmate waiting somewhere who would eventually make sense of feelings you hadn’t known how to name.
It was Katsuki. It had been Katsuki for longer than either of you could pinpoint, and somehow, the universe had chosen the same person you already would have chosen yourself.
Your gaze moved over his face again, slower this time, and whatever Katsuki saw in your expression made the last trace of amusement disappear from his own. The silence between you shifted with it, becoming heavier without ever turning uncomfortable, and for the first time all night, you found yourself wondering what happened after this. You had figured out what you felt and somehow survived saying it aloud. He had told you when he realized he loved you and admitted that even if the mark on your wrist had belonged to someone else, it wouldn’t have changed how he felt. There was nothing left to wonder about between you except what came next.
The question must have crossed Katsuki’s mind too, because his thumb moved slowly against the side of your hand before he spoke. “You gonna make this weird?”
You blinked. “Me? Why am I automatically the one making it weird?”
“Because you overthink everything.”
The look Katsuki gave you made it very clear he wasn’t going to dignify that with an answer, and you rolled your eyes before glancing down at your intertwined hands. It was only then that you understood what he was actually asking. He wasn’t questioning what the two of you felt or whether any of this was real. He was asking what happened to you now—to the friendship that had existed long before either of you understood it had become something more.
Strangely, the answer didn’t scare you. “I don’t want everything to suddenly become different just because we know now,” you admitted, your thumb brushing absently against his hand. “I mean, obviously something is different, but I still want us. I don’t want us to suddenly start acting like completely different people because somebody decided to put matching marks on our wrists.”
Something in Katsuki’s expression softened. “Then stop thinking so damn hard.”
A quiet laugh slipped out. “That’s your solution to everything.”
“Works most of the time.”
He didn’t bother arguing, and somehow that made you smile even more because maybe, for once, he was right. You didn’t need to figure out what every day after this was supposed to look like. You didn’t need to decide tonight exactly what being soulmates meant or how becoming something more than best friends was supposed to change a relationship that had taken nearly eleven years to build. You already knew how to choose Katsuki. You had been doing it your entire life, even before you understood that choosing him was what you were doing.
The rest could come later.
Something inside you relaxed at the thought, and Katsuki seemed to notice because his fingers tightened slightly around yours. You squeezed back without thinking, the small gesture passing between you as naturally as everything else always had. Neither of you needed to say anything more, but the silence that settled afterward carried a new awareness neither of you could ignore. There was no question left about whether you loved him or whether he loved you. There was only the strange reality of finally knowing what that meant, sitting quietly between you while neither of you seemed willing to acknowledge the one very obvious thing you still hadn’t done.
And slowly, as the seconds passed and Katsuki continued sitting there without doing a damn thing, you realized something that almost made you laugh.
Katsuki Bakugou was hesitating.
Of all the things you had learned tonight, that might have been the hardest one to believe.
For a few seconds, you simply watched him. It was subtle enough that anyone else probably would have missed it. Katsuki wasn’t fidgeting or avoiding your eyes, and there was no obvious nervousness written across his face. He still looked like himself—steady, stubborn, almost annoyingly composed—but you knew him too well. You knew the way his jaw tightened when he was holding something back, the slight shift in his breathing when he was trying not to react, and the way his eyes would settle somewhere just beside yours when he didn’t quite know what to do with what he was feeling.
The realization nearly made you smile again. “You’re nervous.”
His eyes snapped fully to yours. “I’m not nervous.”
The denial came so quickly that it only made you more certain, and you had to fight back the laugh threatening to escape. As funny as it was to catch Katsuki hesitating over something for once in his life, there was something strangely endearing about it too. This was the same person who launched himself at villains without thinking, challenged people twice his size without blinking, and treated danger like an inconvenience rather than something he was supposed to fear. Apparently, after everything the two of you had survived together, this was what finally made him pause.
“You are,” you said, softer this time, unable to keep all of the teasing from your voice. “A little.”
Katsuki narrowed his eyes, clearly deciding whether arguing was worth it before his expression shifted into something faintly smug. “You’re not exactly doing anything either.”
That shut you up faster than you would ever admit.
Annoyingly, he had a point. You were sitting there finding his hesitation amusing while doing absolutely nothing yourself, and judging by the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, Katsuki knew he had caught you. Heat crept into your face as you glanced down at your joined hands, suddenly far too aware of the way his fingers were still threaded through yours.
“Maybe I’m waiting for you,” you muttered.
“Maybe I’m waiting for you.”
Your head lifted immediately, and the smirk waiting for you made your eyes narrow. “You’re impossible.”
There was no bite behind the answer, and whatever comeback you might have made disappeared before you could say it. The silence that followed felt different from the one before, less uncertain but somehow heavier now that neither of you could pretend not to know exactly what the other was thinking. Katsuki shifted almost imperceptibly beside you, his knee brushing yours, and neither of you moved away.
Your heart had started beating faster, but not because you were afraid. If anything, the feeling was strangely familiar—the same anticipation that came before stepping into a fight or trying something for the first time, except this mattered in a way none of those things ever had. You were standing at the edge of something you had apparently wanted long before you ever knew enough to want it, and for once, neither of you seemed to know who was supposed to take the first step.
Katsuki’s gaze moved slowly over your face.
This time, you noticed when it dropped.
His eyes lingered on your mouth for barely a second before returning to yours, but it was enough. Your breath caught quietly in your chest, and from the way something shifted in his expression, you knew he had noticed that too.
Neither of you said anything as the distance between you suddenly became impossible to ignore. You had sat closer than this countless times without caring, but now every inch separating you seemed to carry its own weight. His shoulder was still pressed against yours, your fingers were still intertwined, and when Katsuki shifted toward you, the movement was so small you might not have noticed it if you hadn’t already been paying attention to everything he did.
That seemed to be all the permission he needed.
Katsuki turned toward you more fully, his hand tightening slightly around yours as he leaned closer. There was none of his usual recklessness in the movement, none of the confidence with which he threw himself headfirst into almost everything else. He moved slowly enough that you could have stopped him at any point, and something about that made your chest ache more than any dramatic declaration could have.
You found yourself leaning toward him too.
There was something almost surreal about knowing what was about to happen. You had imagined your first kiss before, in the vague way everyone probably did, but whoever you had pictured had never really had a face. You had always assumed that one day you would meet someone and somehow know when the moment was right.
You had never imagined Katsuki.
Now, with his face only inches from yours, you couldn’t understand how you had ever imagined anyone else.
His eyes searched yours as the last of the distance disappeared between you, and for the first time since you had known him, there was something almost careful about Katsuki. Not uncertain. He knew what he wanted, and after everything you had admitted tonight, he knew you wanted it too. But there was a softness in the way he looked at you that made it obvious this mattered to him.
He didn’t want to get it wrong.
Something inside your chest tightened.
His eyes flickered at the sound of the nickname, and whatever you had intended to say afterward disappeared the moment he looked at you.
Maybe there had never been anything else to say.
His free hand lifted, hesitating only briefly before settling against the side of your face. The warmth of his palm spread across your cheek as his thumb rested just beneath your cheekbone, and the gentleness of it almost made you laugh because there was something absurdly unfair about Katsuki Bakugou—who had spent most of his life doing everything with more force than necessary—touching you like you were something he wanted to be careful with.
Your eyes fluttered closed as you leaned instinctively into his palm.
And somewhere in those final few seconds, the nervousness disappeared.
Because this was still Katsuki.
The same boy who had stood beside you on a playground when you were six. The same person who had spent years pushing you to become stronger, arguing with you over things that didn’t matter, showing up for every birthday and somehow becoming so tangled into every part of your life that neither of you had noticed when friendship became something neither of you could imagine living without.
The person you had spent your entire life choosing without realizing there had ever been a choice.
A small smile touched your lips.
Then Katsuki closed the last of the distance between you and kissed you.
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