This Familiar Stranger

The ceiling above me is the color of paper. The light is soft, a diffused glow behind a plastic panel, and a faint hum fills the silence like the room itself is breathing for me. For a moment I can’t remember how air is supposed to feel in my lungs without the sting of smoke. I wait for the pain that should come with waking, the sharp, twisting agony that tore through my side—except it isn’t there. My body feels heavy, slow, like I’ve been wrapped in cotton and set down very carefully. I flex my fingers. Someone has set a call button in my palm, but I don’t recall reaching for it.

My last memory is heat, searing heat—an explosion that lit up the alleyway, concrete shrapnel ricocheting, Kacchan’s furious shout cutting through the roar. Villain attack. Too many civilians. I moved without thinking. I always move without thinking. And then—pressure. Burning along my ribs. The ground rushing at me. The world going white.

The world is still white. But it’s the soft, sterile white of a hospital room. My side aches, a low, dull throb like an echo of pain from a distance. I lift my head inch by inch. Bandages grip my skin under the thin hospital gown. A monitor blinks a steady green rhythm. The IV taped to my hand tugs a little when I shift.

I should be relieved. Instead a slow, creeping disorientation slides under my skin. Everything is too quiet. No voices in the hall, no urgent footsteps. It smells like antiseptic and warm linen. I’ve woken up in the infirmary more times than I want to admit; there’s always noise. Recovery Girl tutting. Aizawa-sensei’s dry admonitions. Someone laughing at something stupid Kaminari said. Here, the silence feels staged.

I take stock as if it’s a mission report. Head: clear. No dizziness. Jaw: unbruised. Chest: tight, but manageable. Side: wrapped, sore if I breathe too deep. No tubes in painfully intimate places, thank all the gods. My quirk—my quirk hums under my skin like a power line, present but quiet. I flex my toes under the blanket and the sheet catches on my heel. That tiny raspy sound is too loud.

I try to remember the sequence of the fight, assemble it like a puzzle. We were at ground-level when the second bomber emerged from behind the truck, and I saw—no, that’s wrong. The angles don’t line up. The color of the sky was wrong, too pale. The streetlamps weren’t on yet. My mind keeps slipping. I reach for the panic button before I realize I’m reaching, just to confirm that it’s real, that I’m here. The plastic is warm against my palm. I don’t press it.

If I’m at U.A., Recovery Girl would be here. If I’m at a civilian hospital, they’d have me on heavier meds. My breaths come shallow and even because anything deeper flares a warning along my ribs, not sharp enough to demand, just enough to remind. Someone has tucked the blanket up to my waist and folded it with unnecessary precision.

I turn my head toward the window. The blinds are half-closed. Between the slats, I can see a slice of city—clean buildings, pale sky, a hint of blue. The light says morning. How long have I been out? My throat feels dry, but not raw. Water sits in a covered cup within reach, and when I push up a little, my muscles protest but obey. I sip. It tastes like nothing, and it feels like everything.

Kacchan’s voice won’t leave my head. Not words, not really—just the shape of his shout. I can’t pin down the exact sound, the exact syllables. It’s like trying to remember a melody from a dream. I start cataloging details because that’s safe. Gauze: clean. IV: saline plus something with a slow, cool drip. Heart rate: too fast for rest, too slow for panic. I force my fingers to relax around the cup.

I reach with trembling caution toward my side and stop before I actually touch. I don’t need to feel it to know the wound was real. The phantom memory sits under my skin, undeniable. But the tenderness is wrong. Whoever patched me up did it with a gentleness I can feel in the way the tape lies smooth and unpulling against my skin. No tug of rushed bandaging. No rough edges. My eyes sting for no good reason.

“Okay,” I whisper to the empty room, my voice small and hoarse. “Okay.”

The word does nothing to anchor me. The clock on the wall ticks. I follow the hands with my eyes because they are honest. Seconds pass. My heart syncs to them, reluctantly. I pull in breath after careful breath and wait for the rest of the memories to assemble themselves into something that makes sense. They don’t. The sterile quiet presses in around me, too soft, too kind, and I don’t know where to put my hands, or my fear, or the way the world feels like it has shifted just slightly out of alignment. I curl my fingers into the blanket and hold on.

The latch shifts. My breath stalls. The handle turns with a soft click, and the door opens like a mouth letting in light and moving air.

Katsuki steps through.

Not the storm I know—no scowl, no sharp, impatient glare. His eyes find me and everything else on his face softens so fast I can’t process it. The relief that breaks across him is so open it feels indecent to look at. His shoulders drop like he’s put down something heavy. His hand, still on the door, trembles once before he shuts it behind him with careful control.

“Kacchan,” I say without thinking, the name leaving me the way breath leaves a punctured lung. It’s a reflex, a tether.

He’s across the room in three strides. There’s no spark and crack of nitroglycerin on his palms, no warning sizzle. Just warmth. He stops next to the bed like he’s learned exactly how to approach me here, how to hover without crowding. Close enough that I can see the red at the rims of his eyes. Close enough to see the faint stubble across his jaw he would never let anyone else catch. He looks at me like I’m all that matters, and something deep in me twists hard.

“You idiot.” It’s soft, the words stripped of bite. He inhales, steadying. “You scared the absolute hell out of me.”

My mouth opens. The script I expect isn’t there. No taunt. No barked insult. “I—” I don’t know what to confess to. I don’t know what he thinks I did.

His gaze darts to my side, then back to my face, like he’s afraid the wound will flare up if he looks too long. He drags a chair up with his foot and sits, crowding close, our knees nearly touching under the blanket. He smells like clean soap and the faint burn of coffee. His shirt is plain black, soft. He’s not wearing his gauntlets; his wrists are bare. The scar on his forearm I know like the back of my hand is there, but lighter somehow, as if it healed in a world without our history.

“You can’t—” He breaks off, jaw working. When he speaks again, his voice is low and intimate, like it’s only for me. “You can’t go charging in like that, even in training. You know your limits better than anyone, so why the hell do you treat them like a challenge?”

Training? The word scrapes across my thoughts, snagging. I swallow. “Sorry,” I say automatically. It’s the only answer that fits in any world.

His mouth twists. “Don’t be sorry. Be careful.” He leans forward, elbows on the edge of the mattress, and I feel the heat of him through the thin blanket. It’s steady and anchoring. It pins me to this exact moment. “I got here and you were—” He shakes his head, breath shuddering. His hands curl into fists on the sheet, then relax. He forces them to relax. “You were out. Didn’t move when I called you. I thought—” His voice cracks, a raw edge I’ve never heard from him, and his gaze drops to my hand like he needs to count the veins there to keep from coming apart.

I can’t breathe right. Not from the injury. From this. From him. “Kacchan,” I say again, and this time it’s a plea. For what, I don’t know.

He hears it anyway. He looks up. The relief comes back, not wild this time but profound, filling the lines of his face until I can’t look directly at it. It burns without heat. “You’re here,” he says, as if I might contradict him. His lips tilt, barely. “And you’re going to listen to me for once.”

I nod too quickly. Pain hums along my side and I catch my breath. He flinches like he felt it, and his palm lifts immediately, hovering a few inches above my blanket-covered ribs, unwilling to touch where I hurt, afraid that he’ll add to it. The caution is so tender my eyes sting.

“Kacchan…” I whisper. The room feels smaller, the light thicker. He’s close enough that I can count the faint gold strands at his temples, the way his lashes shadow his cheeks when he blinks.

“Reckless nerd,” he murmurs, but there’s no heat. He leans in before I can brace for it, and his hand—his bare, dry, warm hand—finds mine. His fingers slot between mine like they’ve done it a thousand times. His thumb strokes once, slow, grounding. My pulse trips.

I freeze because every instinct I have is to pull away or armor up, to protect myself from the version of him I know. But this isn’t that. His grip is gentle. He’s holding me like I’m breakable. Like he doesn’t want to hurt me even by accident.

He inhales, the breath soft, and the corner of his mouth softens with it. “Stop making me say it,” he says, and I expect something flippant, some stupid insult that’ll make this safe again. Instead: “I was so damn scared.”

My name is a shape on his tongue he doesn’t use. He uses mine in the way he looks at me.

“I’m fine,” I lie, because he needs that. Because I need it. The sheet is too warm under my hand. His thumb keeps moving in a slow line I can’t stop tracking. He’s closer now, close enough that when he leans in, his breath brushes my forehead.

“Idiot,” he says again, softer than before, and then his mouth touches my skin.

It’s not a joke. It’s not a quick press like a dare. It’s careful, lingering. The heat of his lips is a direct line to my spine. I don’t move. I can’t. My heart seems to drop and then rush back up to fill my throat. He holds there, a quiet, steady weight, and it feels like an answer to a question I never let myself ask.

I don’t know what to do with my hands. I don’t know where to set my eyes. The ceiling blurs. His breath warms my hairline. When he lifts his head, his mouth is inches from mine and his eyes are so close I can see my own shock reflected in them.

The world tilts, not violently, but enough that I know something fundamental has shifted. He squeezes my hand once, as if to check I’m still here, and sits back just far enough to see all of me. He’s watching for the tremor in my jaw I can’t control. For the flush spreading under the pale hospital light.

“You’re okay,” he says, steady now, like a verdict. “You’re here. That’s what matters.”

I nod because my voice won’t work. The place he kissed pulses, small and insistent, as if that’s where my body has decided to keep time now. He looks at me like he wants to memorize the way I blink, the way I breathe, the way my fingers twitch against his. His thumb rubs another slow arc into my hand, and I can’t tell if he’s calming me or himself.

“Don’t do that again,” he adds, trying for stern and landing somewhere intimate, somewhere that makes my stomach pull tight. “You hear me?”

“Yes,” I manage, the word catching on my tongue. I’m agreeing to more than I understand.

He exhales. The sound is almost a laugh, and the tension in him loosens a fraction. He leans back just enough to sit fully, still holding on, like letting go would be a mistake. I stare at his mouth and try not to. The memory of the kiss sits on my skin, real as the tape on my ribs, and I have no idea what any of this means. I only know I’m frozen in place, shock sealing me in silence, while the person I never expected to see like this looks at me as if I’m something he almost lost and got back.

“What happened?” The words scrape out before I can stop them. “The last thing I remember was—”

“Hey.” He lifts our joined hands and presses his other palm over my knuckles, shutting the question down with a look. “No.” His voice is even, final. “You’re not thinking about it right now. You’re resting. Doctor’s orders. Mine too.”

“I need to know if—”

He leans closer, and the faintest edge returns, not anger, just certainty. “Later. When you’re not pale as paper and holding yourself like one wrong move will snap you in half.” His thumb glides along the center of my palm, a steady stroke that dissolves argument. “Breathe. With me.”

I do because he’s so close I can’t disobey. He watches my chest rise, the small hitch when the bandage tugs, and his mouth tightens like the pain is his. His knee bumps the bed as he pulls the chair closer, like he needs less distance between us on principle. He settles in, our hands remaining laced, and it hits me—this is familiar to him. This is what he does.

He glances at the IV, then back at me. “You eat yet?” he asks, already shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter. You will. After you stop looking like a kicked puppy.”

“Kacchan—”

“Shh.” He says it with a softness that leaves no room for anything else. “I’m gonna talk. You’re gonna listen. That’s the plan.”

I swallow the thousand questions pressing against my tongue and nod. He tracks the movement of my throat like it reassures him.

He exhales once, like shifting gears, then says, “Kaminari fried the office microwave again.”

The pivot is so sharp my mind stalls. “What?”

His mouth curves, the faintest smirk cutting through the worry. “He swore he could make ramen in three minutes with an egg dropped in. ‘Protein boost,’ he called it. Instead, he created a sulfur bomb. Whole second floor smelled like a sewer. Sato came in from patrol and went right back out.” He shakes his head, lips pressing together like he’s holding back laughter. “I told that idiot he was banned from anything that plugs into a wall, but he keeps finding loopholes.”

I try to picture it—the agency, a second floor that belongs to us—and the image wobbles and reforms around his voice. “Did he at least eat it?”

“He tried.” Katsuki rolls his eyes, affection threaded through the exasperation. “He said, ‘Kacchan, I can’t waste food,’ while he stood there crying and breathing through his mouth.” His thumb traces my lifeline, slow and absent, like he’s drawing courage from each pass. “Mina filmed the whole thing. I have it saved for blackmail.”

The corner of my mouth lifts before I can help it. “That sounds like him.”

“Yeah. You told him he was vitamin deficient and gave him a list of recipes that wouldn’t kill the rest of us.” He flicks me a glance, pride quiet in his eyes. “He actually made the miso soup one. Didn’t poison anyone.”

“You remembered the recipe?” I ask, half a joke, half wondering.

“Of course I remember.” He says it like it’s obvious, his tone warm and stubborn. He tucks our hands together a little closer to his chest, like he needs the contact as much as I do. Heat radiates from him, steady, comforting. He watches my face for the small signs—the easing of my brow, the way my shoulders relax against the pillows. “Jirou’s been crashing in the break room between gigs. Her band got booked for some indie festival. She pretends she doesn’t care, but she blushes when anyone says congratulations.” He pauses, looking down at the way his fingers dwarf mine. He rubs his thumb along the base of my thumb in a thoughtless rhythm. “You teased her about it until she called you a sap and told you to go be domestic somewhere else.”

“Domestic?” My voice goes thin.

“Yeah,” he says, easy. “You and me. We do groceries on Sunday, remember?” He glances up, there and gone, like he’s checking for panic and smoothing it away. “You always forget where they hide the sesame oil, and I act like I don’t know just to listen to you mutter theories about store layout like it’s a conspiracy.”

My laugh comes out small and shaky. It feels like stepping onto a floor I expect to give and finding it solid. His expression melts at the sound, relief washing over him again, softer now, less desperate, like a tide easing out.

“And Kirishima,” he continues, voice low and even, “dropped off that stupid cactus. The one shaped like a heart? He said it would ‘radiate good vibes’ at the front desk.” He snorts, but there’s no real disdain. “You put it in the window where it gets sun. You talk to it when you think no one’s listening.”

“I don’t—” I start, then trail off because it’s exactly the kind of thing I would do. Heat rises in my face. His gaze snags on the flush and goes tender, and my chest tightens in a way that has nothing to do with the bandages.

“You do,” he says, softer. “You tell it about your day. You tell it about me.” He leans in, and the air between us shifts. “You tell it I make the worst coffee, which is a lie. My coffee is perfect.”

“Your coffee is strong enough to strip paint.” The retort slips out, easy as breathing, and his grin flashes, quick and real, brightening everything.

“There he is,” he says under his breath, like he’s found me. The words land low in my stomach and unfurl warmth through me that battles the nerves.

He kicks the leg of the chair forward another inch and our knees touch through the blanket. His hand tightens around mine—not gripping, anchoring. He keeps talking, quiet and careful, a steady stream of small stories that build a life I can almost see: Sero sticking notes everywhere that read hydrate; Todoroki showing up with seasonal fruit because he “overbought”; Uraraka mailing us a photo of a cloud that looked like All Might, complete with heroic annotations; Aizawa pretending not to smile when we sent him a holiday card with matching sweaters.

He never lets go. When my breath hitches, his thumb slows. When my eyelids droop, the cadence of his voice gentles, like he’s learned the exact speed that calms me. He leans close enough that I can feel the warmth of his neck, the faint rasp of his stubble when he turns his head too near. He exists in inches and heartbeats and the soft drag of skin against skin, and every second wears away at the shock like water smoothing stone.

“See?” he murmurs finally, when my hand stops trembling in his. “There’s nothing you gotta carry right this second.” He brings our joined hands up and presses his mouth to my knuckles, a brief, warm touch that makes my pulse throb against his lips. “You rest. I’m here.”

My throat works around words I can’t say. I nod because it’s all I can do. He settles deeper into the chair, like he’s dug in for the night, and starts in on a new story about Kaminari and a misdelivered package of glitter that turned the lobby into a galaxy. His voice threads through the sterile quiet, filling it with color, and I let it hold me together. I let him.

The door clicks once, and a soft knock follows like an afterthought. Katsuki’s head turns before mine, shoulders tightening for a breath. The nurse slips in with a tablet hugged to her chest and a smile so familiar it feels like routine. She’s middle-aged, hair tucked under a cap with a cartoon apple on it, and she moves with the practiced ease of people who live in rooms like this.

“Good evening, Mr. Midoriya, Mr. Bakugou,” she says, bright and warm. “How are we doing?”

The plural lands first, then the pairing. My grip on Katsuki’s hand tightens without my permission. He squeezes back, a quick code of pressure—here, here. Her gaze dips to our hands and her smile widens like it’s something lovely. “I heard you woke up lucid and ate a little,” she adds to me. “That’s great progress.”

Lucid. Ate. Mr. Bakugou. The words stack in my head, neat and wrong. I try to breathe the way he told me. In. Out.

Katsuki shifts only enough to let her get to the IV stand, his thigh still pressed against the bed. “He’s fine,” he answers, voice low but sure. Not defensive. Protective. “Pain was at a four earlier. Three now.”

“Good.” She taps her screen, then checks the saline bag, the catheter site. Her fingers are efficient, careful on my arm as she looks at the tape. “Any dizziness?”

I open my mouth and nothing comes for a second. “A little when I sit up,” I say finally. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.

“We’ll keep the fluids going at this rate,” she says. “And the pain meds are on schedule. Recovery Girl will check in the morning.” She glances toward Katsuki with affection that assumes history. “You must be relieved, Mr. Bakugou. You looked ready to tear up the floor when I told you he was still out two nights ago.”

Katsuki huffs a breath. The corner of his mouth pulls, half a smile that doesn’t reach the tension in his eyes. “Wasn’t gonna do anything stupid,” he mutters. “Just—wanted him back.”

“I know.” The nurse lifts a brow at me, amused and kind. “He hasn’t left your side. We had to remind him there’s a shower down the hall. Stubborn.”

Heat crawls up my neck, embarrassment laced with something that makes my chest feel hollow. “You—uh. Thank you,” I say, because politeness is muscle memory.

“Of course.” She pats the bed rail like I’m a student who’s answered correctly. “Your vitals are good. And the scans look promising.” She shifts her attention to Katsuki again. “If you need an extra blanket, Mr. Bakugou, there’s a warmer by the nurses’ station. But you two have hoarded most of the pillows already.” She winks. “Keep it PG, please. There are cameras.”

Blood slams in my ears. The word PG reverberates through me; it assumes we do things that would need the label. Katsuki just snorts, faint color rising high on his cheekbones. His thumb sweeps over my pulse in a stroke that’s almost unconscious. “He’s got stitches,” he says dryly. “I’m not an idiot.”

“I know you’re not.” She checks my chart one more time, then looks at me. “If you feel nauseous or too warm, hit the call button. And if Mr. Bakugou glares at anyone who tries to check your temperature again, tell him I carry a spare rectal thermometer just for grumpy boyfriends.”

I choke on air. Katsuki barks out a startled laugh, quick and real, and the sound spikes through my nerves like a spark. “Try me,” he says, but softer than his words would’ve been in another life.

She grins, victorious, and heads for the door. “You’re in good hands, Mr. Midoriya. Both medically and otherwise.” Her eyes flick back to our joined hands, to the way I’m gripping him like a rope. “We’re glad you’ve got your person with you.”

The door closes behind her with a soft click.

The silence that follows is not the same as before. It has edges. My breathing turns shallow. The air feels too thin. My vision tightens around the edges like a camera misfocusing. Mr. Midoriya and Mr. Bakugou. You two. Boyfriends. The words slot into place like puzzle pieces that make the wrong picture.

Katsuki’s thumb presses more firmly against my wrist. “Deku,” he says, my name a low anchor. “Hey. Eyes on me.”

I drag my gaze up. He’s closer now, leaning in, features carved in seriousness. The warmth in his eyes has a new line under it—worry that’s gathering momentum.

“What is this?” I try to ask, but it comes out thready. “Why—why is everyone—”

He lifts our hands to his chest and holds them there. I can feel the slow, heavy beat under my palm, the solid rhythm like proof. “Don’t spiral,” he says, quiet. “It’s late. You woke up. Your brain’s pulling stupid tricks because it’s tired. Nothing’s wrong.”

Nothing’s wrong. Everything is wrong. The nurse’s smile, her familiar tone, the joke about cameras and blankets—no one here thinks twice about us. The acceptance is casual, unremarkable. It makes my skin prickle with cold.

“Kacchan,” I say, and the name feels like a lifeline I don’t deserve. “They—she—called us—”

He dips his head, his mouth near my temple, his breath warm against my hairline. He doesn’t kiss me, but the memory of the forehead press flashes anyway. “Yeah,” he says. “Because it’s true.”

The ache behind my eyes sharpens. I stare at the ceiling to hold it back. I try to map details that make sense—the straight line of the fluorescent light, the hairline crack near the vent, the gentle drip from the IV—but my mind keeps snapping back to the way she said it like good evening, like weather.

My fingers twitch against his chest. He covers them with his, palm to palm, engulfing. “I know it’s weird,” he murmurs. “I know you’re scared. You don’t have to pretend you’re not.” He draws our hands down and rests them on my sternum, where the steady pressure is something I can measure. “Breathe with me again.”

I match him because I can’t not. In. Out. The oxygen drags through my lungs in slow, catching pulls. The panic doesn’t disappear, but it loses its teeth. He watches my throat, my ribs, the faint tremor in my hand, and adjusts the pace until my chest stops jerking.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says finally. “I’ll deal with the nurses. I’ll deal with anyone.” His mouth tightens for a second. “You don’t owe them anything. You don’t owe me anything. Just—stay here. With me. Okay?”

Stay. With me. My heart stutters against his fingers. The room narrows to the points where we touch—his hand over mine, his knee against the mattress, the brush of his sleeve at my wrist. The echo of the nurse’s easy voice keeps reverberating. It sounds like a life I don’t know how to wear.

“Okay,” I whisper, because I need the word to be true. My voice shakes. “I’m trying.”

“I know.” He leans back enough to see my face fully, searching, and whatever he finds there makes his expression soften. He lifts our joined hands, turns them, and presses his mouth to the heel of my palm. Not long. Not suggestive. Grounding. Heat sinks into my skin and spreads in a small, steady circle.

The door hums as someone wheels a cart past in the hall. The monitor blips, indifferent. He settles again, chair angled so his body shields me from the doorway, as if he can guard me from everything by sheer proximity. His thumb resumes its slow path along my skin. The panic ebbs and surges, but I don’t drown.

“Tell me about the glitter,” I say hoarsely, because I need his voice, need the ordinary shape of it.

He huffs a laugh that’s almost a sigh. “Oh, that mess. Okay.” His mouth tilts. “So a package shows up with no return address…”

As he talks, the nurse’s words hover at the edges of my mind like a sign I can’t look away from. Mr. Midoriya and Mr. Bakugou. My stomach knots, my chest tightens, and still, the cadence of him threads through the fear, tying me to this bed, this moment, this person who holds my hand like he’s done it a thousand times and expects to do it a thousand more. I don’t know what world I’m in. I only know he’s here. And for now, that is the only thing holding me still.