Bakudeku/Dekubaku Oneshots

⚠️Letting Grief Take the Wheel⚠️

Warning: Suicide mention if you squint your eyes

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Katsuki couldn’t sleep.

He lay staring, unblinking at the ceiling, watching the lights from outside his window shift slowly across the expanse of gray. His skeleton felt volatile, like it wanted to rip his flesh off, tear through his skin so it could be free. He wanted to throw his brain into the abyss to be picked at by carrion birds.

It had been a week since he had lost Izuku. Each moment without him felt like a knife slotted through the space between his ribs. The empty hole inside his heart ached in the shape of bent fingers and summer green smiles.

The nights were the hardest.

Katsuki could work himself to exhaustion in the daytime, fill his moments with meaningless, trivial things as distractions. But the night was an unending void, no barrier between him and the things that he had lost.

That he let slip through his fingers.

The clock on the nightstand blinked at him. Its green light was empty, lifeless and mocking in its shine. Three AM slipped closer and closer to dawn as Katsuki sighed. His head rolled back to lay at his center. He felt the rough fabric of the secondhand couch under his fingers. The blanket tangled in his bare legs scratched against the fragile skin. The pillow under his head, stolen from the bed they had shared together, felt warm and clammy against the skin of his neck. He couldn’t get comfortable no matter what he did.

Katsuki glanced for a moment to the closed door that led to what had been their bedroom. He couldn’t bring himself to go in, to face the emptiness there. Katsuki had tried, the first night he got the news. The bed next to him was too vast, too cold and empty. After hours tossing and turning, he finally admitted defeat and slunk to the couch. His sleep wasn’t any better, but at least he had an excuse for why he felt so shitty.

Katsuki kept waiting, praying for the moment that the memories would turn from knives to balm. So many people kept telling him that it’d get better, that Izuku wouldn’t want him to suffer. Bullshit, Katsuki would think to himself. If Izuku hadn’t wanted him to suffer, the bastard wouldn’t have left him on his own.

Just one more night, he thought, Just one more night of feeling like this.

He sighed, resigning himself to another empty night. He watched as the night bled into day, pale rosy streaks of dawn light stretching further across his ceiling.

Katsuki turned to lay on his stomach. A light blinked on. He looked down, seeing his phone screen lit up with a text. Probably Kirishima trying to make sure he hadn’t offed himself during the night. With one weary hand, the blonde picked up the phone and swiped away the notification. He felt his heart clench at the sight it left behind.

Katsuki’s lock screen was a picture of him, arms wound loosely around Izuku’s neck. The green haired man had his hands wrapped around Katsuki’s wrists. If he closed his eyes, he could almost feel the pressure once again. The warped skin of the other’s scars sliding against his own, how Izuku’s crooked fingers clenched and shook as he held on to the other. They were both smiling. Izuku had his usual blinding grin, his eyes shut with the force of his happiness. Katsuki’s face was more subdued, half pressed into the other’s curly hair. He felt an ache in his chest. As much as it hurt to look at this picture, to look at the two of them happy when it only reminded him of what he lost, Katsuki couldn’t bring himself to change it. The wound felt too fresh, too raw.

Katsuki’s hand trembled slightly before he dropped the phone. He couldn’t be here, not now. Not surrounded by the memories of their life together, the reminder of what exactly he lost.