Gravity Has Your Name On It

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The dizzying mix of emotions almost makes Katsuki feel sick to his stomach. Shame, guilt, sadness, desire, warmth, and more he hasn’t got a name for.

Even now, he can’t stop getting flashes of Kirishima in the locker room. The memory of his exposed back, and then his chest when he turned, mingled with the way Kirishima’s face had dropped. The sadness in his expression. All Katsuki’s fault.

He buries his face in the crook of his arms against his knees. Katsuki can feel the burn in his cheeks and the frustrated tears burning in his eyes. He’s never felt like this before for anyone. Not ever. He can admit that, yet it makes it no less terrifying.

He lets out a bitter sounding laugh. How pathetic is he? Losing his mind over this, when he can fight villains without being afraid. Dire circumstances fuel him with the type of adrenaline he craves.

But this?

Katsuki knows he’s thinking in circles again. Spiralling.

Because Kirishima means something to him. His best friend, even when Katsuki is being a complete asshole, Kirishima sticks around to make sure he’s okay when everyone else still backs off and leaves him to it. Aside from Deku, sometimes, but that feels completely different.

That’s the crux of the issue though. Kirishima and Deku both sort of follow him around and bug the hell out of him. But Kirishima is somehow… more.

His chest aches.

“What the hell is wrong with me,” he mutters into the cradle of his arms. “Why now. Why him.”

But Katsuki knows why.

Kirishima is good, and steady. He looks at him like he’s worth something more than what he can achieve as a Hero. Because Kirishima confessed and now everything is different. But the same, somehow.

He squeezes his eyes shut harder as guilt twists deep in his gut.

Kirishima doesn’t deserve that—doesn’t deserve to be the target of Katsuki’s confused, messy feelings. Doesn’t deserve to be dragged into whatever disaster is happening inside Katsuki’s chest.

“I don’t deserve him,” he mutters.

He’s spent years now trying to be better. Trying to become someone who doesn't hurt the people he cares about. Now he’s ruining it.

Katsuki doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know how to handle the heat curling low in his stomach when he thinks about Kirishima’s body, or the ache in his chest when he thinks about Kirishima's voice, or the fear that he’s going to lose him because he can’t get his shit together.

He doesn’t know anything, except one thing. He doesn’t want to lose Kirishima.

He doesn’t leave his room for dinner. He tells himself it’s because he’s tired, training wiped him out, and he doesn’t feel like dealing with idiots and noise and Kaminari chewing with his damned mouth open.

It’s a lie. He knows exactly who he’s avoiding.

The hallway outside his door stays quiet aside from the coming and goings of people for food and hang outs. None come to his door of course. No-one knocks, no one meekly asks if he’s okay through the wood. Kirishima stays away, keeps his word.

It makes Katsuki’s chest ache.

Lying on his bed, Katsuki moves from staring at the ceiling to throwing his arm over his eyes. As if doing that will block the images replaying in his head. Of course it doesn’t work, nothing does.

He shifts in frustration, blanket twisting in his fist.

This is stupid. He’s handled worse than this. Villains. War zones. Death. He stared down monsters without blinking.

So why does one honest confession and one accidental look at Kirishima’s bare skin have him unraveling like this?

He’s never wanted people the way others do. Never felt that pull everyone jokes about, brags about, whispers about. He always figured it just skipped him. Or maybe he was too angry, too focused, too broken for it. Until Kirishima told him he likes him.

Suddenly Katsuki can’t stop being aware of him. Of his voice, his presence, the space he takes up in a room. Of the warmth that settles in Katsuki’s chest when he laughs. Or the way Katsuki’s body reacted without permission when he saw Kirishima half-dressed and unguarded.

A sharp knock hits his door and Katsuki jolts like he’s been electrocuted.

“Katsuki?” Mina’s voice. “You alive in there?”

He exhales shakily. “Go away.”

She ignores that, obviously. “You skipped dinner. Kirishima’s worried, we all are.”

Of course he is.

Katsuki grits his teeth. “Tell him to stop. You can all stop, I’m fine.”

There’s a pause. Then Mina’s voice softens. “He just cares. You know that.” As if she knows everything plaguing him.

“I said go away.”

Another pause. Then footsteps retreating down the hall.

Katsuki rolls onto his side, staring at the wall. His phone buzzes a few minutes later.

One message.

Katsuki stares at the screen.

His chest tightens painfully.

He types. Deletes. Types again.

You should regret telling me...

His thumb hovers.

He deletes it.

I’m not mad...

Delete.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me...

Delete.

His hands start shaking again. He locks the screen and tosses the phone onto the bed like it burned him. Katsuki presses his face into his pillow, muffling the sound that escapes him—halfway between a growl and something dangerously close to a sob.

He doesn’t reply but he doesn’t block the other man either.

Sleep comes late and badly. When it does it’s restless, with his dreams full of heat and Kirishima standing just out of reach. Solid and smiling and half fucking naked, waiting patiently while Katsuki spins himself into knots trying to get closer without blowing everything up. He wakes up tangled in his sheets with his heart racing, dick aching in a way that makes him groan and bury his face in his hands.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters hoarsely. The worst part isn’t even the physical reaction, it’s the guilt that follows it.

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The next day, Katsuki avoids Kirishima with the precision of a trained assassin. Different hallways, different training partners, different lunch tables. He doesn’t look for him yet he always knows where he is anyway. Like some traitorous part of his brain has decided Kirishima is a fixed point it refuses to stop tracking.

And Kirishima lets him avoid, which might be the cruelest part. Knowing that the other man knows he’s being avoided and letting it happen unchallenged.

He doesn’t chase or confront or guilt-trip. He just adjusts and gives Katsuki exactly what he asked for. Space.

By the last session of the day, Katsuki feels hollowed out.

They end up paired for a rescue simulation anyway—Aizawa doesn’t care about personal crises, apparently—and when Kirishima meets his eyes for the first time in hours, there’s no accusation or betrayal there. It nearly breaks Katsuki.

They work well together, of course. Muscle memory, trust, and years of training and fighting back to back.

At one point the debris shifts unexpectedly and Kirishima grabs Katsuki’s wrist to yank him out of the way. The contact is brief. Firm and warm and Katsuki’s entire body lights up like a struck match.

He jerks his hand free too fast, breath hitching. Kirishima notices like he always does and immediately steps back, hands up, apology already on his lips.

“Sorry—”

“It’s fine,” Katsuki snaps, too fast. “Focus.”

Kirishima nods, swallowing whatever he was going to say and they finish the exercise in tense silence.

Afterwards, Katsuki heads for the exit without waiting. He almost makes it before Kirishima calls his name.

“Katsuki.”

He stops but doesn’t turn around. Kirishima doesn’t move any closer either, he just speaks.

“I’m not upset with you,” he says quietly. “I just wanted you to know that.”

Katsuki’s chest tightens. He clenches his fists.

“You should be,” he mutters.

Kirishima exhales. “But I’m not.”

“Why,” Katsuki snaps, spinning around at last, his anger flaring sharp and desperate. “Why aren’t you mad? I’m being a dick. I’m avoiding you. I’m snapping at you. I told you I needed space and now I’m like this—”

“Because you’re struggling,” Kirishima says simply, always being able to see right through him, or some shit. “And because I care about you.”

The words hit harder than any insult ever could. Katsuki’s throat closes and he looks away, his jaw trembling despite his best efforts to control it.

“This isn’t fair,” he mutters.

Kirishima’s voice is gentle. “I know.”

“I meant on you. I don’t know what I want,” Katsuki admits, barely audible. “I don’t even know what I’m feeling. And my body—” He cuts himself off sharply, face burning hot. “It’s fucked up.”

Kirishima is quiet for a moment.

Then carefully “does it scare you?”

Katsuki nods, almost imperceptibly, before he can stop himself. His eyes darting around to make sure no-one is eavesdropping on their moment.

Kirishima doesn’t smile or tease him at all.

“Okay,” he says softly. “Then we can take this as slow as you need. Whatever happens, or doesn’t.”

Katsuki finally looks at him, really looks at him, and sees no expectation there. No entitlement, just patience and care. It makes his chest ache in a way that feels almost unbearable.

“…I don’t want to lose you,” Katsuki says, voice rough.

Kirishima’s eyes soften. “You won’t. Not for this.”

Katsuki swallows hard. He still doesn’t have answers and doesn’t understand himself. He’s also still terrified of what his feelings might mean, the change they’ll bring if he lets them out.

Kirishima isn’t demanding certainty, he's just offering to stay. Like the soft, dependable bastard that he is, and Katsuki feels a little less like he’s drowning all of a sudden.

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