Asymptote

by Deos

When Katsuki passed away and entered the afterlife, he struck a bargain and managed to become a grim reaper. He was fine with collecting human souls and taking them to the underworld when their time was up. Until the next name on his list was that of Todoroki Shouto. Especially when he wasn't meant to die. TdBk slash. Heavy themes of death, dying, angst.

A/N: My piece for the first half of the TdBk fic fest! The prompt is the summary.

Warning: contains topics of death, dying, and mortality. Kinda heavy angst. Also, smut. So if these things aren't your cup of tea, stop now!

---

Katsuki fucking hates being a reaper.

No. That's not precisely correct. He fucking hates that Death, his alleged "instructor", was worse than his most useless teachers had ever been.

He'd agreed to let Katsuki hang around as a reaper, and no sooner had that been settled than he'd jammed a little black notebook into Katsuki's hand, warned him to "never force a soul to come unwillingly", then vamoosed. Just fucking vanished in the time it took Katsuki to look down at the book, then back up. Gone. Nothing but swirling gray fog as far as the eye could see.

The book, it turns out, is nearly as useless as Death. There are instructions etched on the inside of the front cover, which would really be helpful if he didn't need to have the eyes of a goddamn eagle to read the tiny-ass font. Frustrated, he does the only logical thing and flips through the pages.

Nothing particularly interesting. It's half-full, the back nothing but blank paper, the front an endless list of names and checkmarks printed in small, cramped handwriting that looks eerily like his own. In the middle the names end a third of the way down a page, where one name stands out from the rest:

Takahashi Ryoko

The name is as meaningless as all the rest, but the ink there gleams a darker black, and there is no checkmark beside it.

Katsuki looks away to ponder this, and the instant he does the world changes. Color blooms, unfurling like a flower in the center of his vision until he's standing in the middle of someone's bedroom.

Wait.

Not a bedroom. He'd thought that because of the conspicuous bed in one corner, but there are handrails on the walls, and the floor is a smooth expanse of beige tiles. This is a nursing home.

As if to give credence to this thought, he finally notices the figure in the bed. Bundled in blankets, the only visible part of it – her? – is the small, balding head cushioned on a plump pillow. The face there is a network of wrinkles, but he knows by the slightness of the skull it must be a woman. He checks his notebook again. Is this Ryoko? What the hell is he supposed to do with her?

He's about to move closer when something happens. The woman in the bed sits up, and– and–

Katsuki can only stare. It's the strangest thing. The woman now perched on the edge of the bed isn't the same as the one still in it. There are two of them. No. Three of them? The ancient husk under the covers, the much younger woman now blinking at him, and a queer doubling effect overlaying her.

"Hello, who are you?" the woman says to him. When she speaks her face shifts, smooth and round to wrinkled and hollow, then back. He realizes he can see right through her.

And, oh, fuck. He also realizes very suddenly that he has to talk to her. Shit.

Katsuki is used to introducing himself; in his line of work, he did it nearly every day. But he isn't Dynamight anymore, and to this woman, neither is he Bakugou Katsuki. He's Death. The reaper. But – Death hadn't introduced himself as such. What had he said?

Greetings, my child. I've come to take you home.

Ugh, fuck that. There's no way he's saying something so damn cheesy.

The woman – Ryoko – seems surprised by the sound of her own voice. She touches two fingers to her mouth then looks down, inspecting herself like she's never seen her own body before. She seems to have forgotten he's there.

Katsuki marshals his thoughts. He's smart, dammit, this isn't hard. Be professional.

"Takahashi, Ryoko?" he asks. Confirm the identity of any victims – step one of any rescue effort.

She looks up. "Yes, that's me." One ghostly hand drifts to touch her cheek. "I'm dead, aren't I?"

Well, at least she's making this easy for him. Step two – explain the situation succinctly.

"Yes, you are. I'm here to take you" — oh fuck, fuck, fuck, where the fuck is he taking her? Fucking Death and his shitty non-explanation — "Beyond."

God, he hopes she didn't notice the giant awkward pause at the end there. Shitfuck. There's nothing he hates more than arriving at a scene unprepared, and right now he feels like he looks just as clueless as the woman blinking up at him.

"You're Death?" Ryoko stares at him, amazed. "But you're so young!"

Katsuki realizes he doesn't actually know what he looks like. If it's anything like how he looked when he died, then yeah, he supposes to someone as old as her he does look young.

"Perks of the job," he mutters and startles when she laughs. Goddammit he's fucking this all up. When Death had appeared to him he hadn't laughed or been terrified, there'd been an odd sense of recognition and anticipation – then Death had spoken, and fear had flooded in.

This woman though seems unafraid.

Never force a soul to come unwillingly.

The only instruction that useless fucker had given him seems easy enough to follow. The hard part is figuring out where the hell they're going. Come with him where? He'd said it himself – Beyond. But he doesn't even know where "Beyond" is, much less how to get there.

When faced with the unknown and crunched for time, Katsuki has only one instinctive response: action. So he does what feels right and extends a hand.

"Are you ready to go?"

Ryoko pauses, turning to look back at the body still tucked in bed. She sighs. But when she turns to him her face has shifted again, lined with age but filled with inexplicable peace. "Yes, I suppose I am."

Her hand slips into his.

The sensation is odd. Katsuki realizes that this is the first time in awhile anyone has touched him without the barrier of his gauntlets between them. Her hand is cool against his palm, fine-boned as a bird's with long, elegant fingers.

No sooner has he taken her hand than he feels a strange shift; like inside his head something has settled into place. He turns to find a door behind him.

It's a very plain door. Dull. Painted white with a silver knob that looks like brushed steel. The kind of door you might find in a shitty apartment complex, not the fabled passageway to the afterlife. If it weren't for the fact that it's standing in the middle of the room, he might've confused it for the closet.

Again instinct has him reaching for the knob. There's a faint electric tingle as his hand closes on the metal; weaker than any of Denki's zaps, almost a tickle. Then it's gone, and he pulls the door open.

Beyond is swirling blackness. The sight of it sends something cold slithering into his stomach, but Ryoko gasps at the sight.

"Oh…" Her expression is rapturous, dark eyes wide with delight. "Oh, it's so beautiful!"

They're clearly not seeing the same thing, because while Ryoko leans eagerly toward it, Katsuki fights the urge to cringe away. Even looking at that darkness fills him with dread. Still, he remains steady as she uses his hand to get to her feet and walks toward the opening. Her hand is still in his when the tip of her foot passes the threshold, and there's a small but unmistakable tugging sensation in his head. Ryoko pauses.

She turns to him, squeezing his hand. "Thank you, young man." When she smiles, the weight of the years sluices away like black water, until a young and radiant girl beams from the doorway.

Her hand leaves his, and she disappears into the darkness.

When Katsuki opens his notebook, it's to find a tiny black checkmark next to Ryoko's name, and fresh ink spelling out his next target. When he looks up, the door is gone, and the rest of the world with it.

Then color blooms again, and he begins to understand.

---

Ryoko had been the first, but there had been no time to process the experience. The next soul was waiting. And then the next. And the next.

Death might have been useless, but Katsuki is figuring it out on his own. And he's learning that maybe, just maybe, this job is fucking worse than whatever waits on the other side of that door.

He wonders if Death had somehow rigged it. Compared to nearly everything that's come after, Ryoko had been a breeze. She'd taken his hand without cajoling and had walked through without fear.

She's in the minority.

His appearance does not go over well with many. Even less so when he introduces himself. He's not stupid enough to introduce himself as Death or even a reaper, but people instinctively know he is. He can see the fear on their faces – is that how he'd looked? – and that, while annoying, is tolerable. As a hero, he's met plenty of victims who can't tell friend from foe; hard to, when they're out of their minds with stress and terror. But he'd never been made to feel like such a– such a villain.

"Oh, no– oh, God, please!"

There's a soul groveling at Katsuki's feet. Handa Eichi — a middle-aged man whose bathroom Katsuki had materialized in some indeterminate time ago — is huddled on his knees, hands clasped beneath his chin, wailing. Eichi's body is sprawled across the bathroom tile. Eichi is actually kneeling in the lower half of his body, which makes Katsuki feel vaguely discomfited, but not nearly as much as the pleas pouring out of Eichi's mouth.

"Please! It's not my time to go, I'm not ready! Please let me go back!"

Katsuki looks at the body on the floor. He can't see much because Eichi died facedown, but the skin he can see is pale, gleaming faintly with drying remnants of sweat. Eichi is a very large attack, he's guessing.

"I can't," Katsuki says. Which is as good as true. If Death has that power, he sure as hell didn't share the secret with Katsuki. There's only so much he can learn through trial and error, dammit.

Eichi shuffles closer, planting his hands on the floor a scant centimeter from Katsuki's boots. He prostrates himself in dogeza, bowing so low that his forehead dips into the floor. Pleas burble out against the tile, and Katsuki takes a bracing breath – fuck, that's a weird thing to do when you're dead – and chooses his next words.

"Listen, I'm not gonna make you come with me, but I can't put you back into your body either," he says, interrupting the tide of supplication. "So you can stop begging."

The babble stops. Thank fuck.

Eichi looks up at him, and his face shifts dizzying; he's a hollow-eyed young man, a pimply teen, a round-cheeked boy whose eyes brim with tears. "You can't?"

"No. I can't."

For a moment he thinks Eichi is going to grab him. Just cling to both of his ankles like one of those damn lead weights they used to shackle to prisoners. Instead, something even worse happens: Eichi curls in on himself and begins to weep.

Fuck, he hates, hates, hates this.

Katsuki is trapped. He's never tried to leave a soul and he's not going to try now, but fuck, he wants to. Eichi isn't the first to cry. He is, however, the first adult man to do it, and his sobs grate in Katsuki's ears like the squeal of nails on steel.

Anger bubbles in him, an instinctive reaction to his discomfort. He tries to swallow it down, flexing one hand open and then closed. Had he been alive, he'd be popping explosions in his palm – little popcorn bursts of sensation to ground him – but Death has stolen his Quirk too. All he can do is stand there and hope that Eichi can't hear him grinding his teeth over the sound of his own blubbering.

How long he stands there, he doesn't know. All he knows is that it's way too long; by the time Eichi's sobs fade, Katsuki's almost gotten used to them. He's nearly surprised by the silence.

Eichi finally sits up. Katsuki loosens his fists, extending a hand toward him. "Are you ready?"

Eichi only looks at him.

"Told you already, I won't make you come with me. You can stay here if you want, but I don't know what's going to happen to you," Katsuki says. He's not trying to hurry this along, but he can sense that the man's resolve is wavering.

Eichi eyes his hand, doubtful. "Where will you take me?"

He wishes he had a more satisfactory answer.

"Beyond."

Eichi's face clouds and Katsuki heaves an internal sigh. Victims like this always want to know every damn nitpicky detail before they'll trust him; like knowing is going to make the process of doing any easier. It's just their indecision playing for more time.

"If it matters, most people seem pretty happy when I show them where they're going," he adds. It's not worth telling Eichi about the ones who aren't.

Another long pause while Eichi considers. He's young again, shifting between the round-cheeked kid and the pimply youth. It's only when he looks at his body that his face settles, a young adult with deep-set eyes and the shadow of his former self.

Eichi gets to his feet. A big man, taller even than Katsuki. He reaches for Katsuki's hand, pauses, looks again at his body, and then slowly closes the distance.

Click.

Katsuki's mind settles. He turns, reaching for the brass handle of a cherry wood door, and pulls it open.

Swirling darkness. He's getting much better at suppressing the dread that comes with the sight, barely even sparing it a glance as he looks back at Eichi.

Relief. Eichi is one of the fortunate ones. His face transforms, fear melting into the same wondering, rapturous expression as Ryoko's.

"Ma?"

And then Eichi's pushing past him, hand tugging out of Katsuki's as he barrels eagerly into the blackness. The door slams shut.

Katsuki waits, fighting the urge to consult his notebook, and lets the world dissolve back into gray mist. He wants a minute. Just one moment alone before he's thrown back into the world he's left behind.

Just one moment.

Katsuki sighs and pulls out his notebook.

---

Death has robbed him. He's too busy at first to realize the depth of that loss, though. Once he starts getting the hang of reaping he finds time to reflect in the sliver of silence between one soul and the next.

His Quirk had been the most noticeable thing, followed by the gradual realization that he no longer needs to breathe or eat. Well, duh, he chides himself. Dead people don't do that shit. But it still feels odd. He is, in essence, operating like a normal, living human – minus the weird metaphysical fuckery.

Sleep, too, is lost to him. Not that he has time to even try; the flow of souls is endless. He goes from one job to the next tirelessly, and it's that complete absence of fatigue that gets to him first. He misses being tired. Misses the satisfaction of putting his feet up after a long day. Misses cracking a beer with Eijirou or Denki, shooting the shit as the sun goes down.

He's not gonna mourn the loss of some things. It would be stupid to get choked up over the urge to take a shit or sneeze. But he finds he misses that too.

Most of all he misses working out.

Well, part of it. Pushing his body to the limit is a pleasurable sort of pain, but it isn't what he misses. He misses what comes after – lassitude sinking into every warm muscle, and the satisfaction that comes from knowing he's going to feel it tomorrow.

Katsuki grimaces, annoyed. He's becoming – what was that word four-eyes had used once? – maudlin. Like some fucking old dude reminiscing about the glory days of his youth. He punches himself in the cheek and is disappointed to find that the hit barely registers. No pain here either.

No pain, no pleasure. In this place, there's no room for extremes. His world is condensed down to the pliable leather of his notebook's cover, the press of each soul's hand, and the hard, cold, metal of door handles.

Katsuki closes his notebook and steps into a kaleidoscope of color.

---

How many souls has he taken? Katsuki doesn't fucking know.

The notebook had been half-full when he'd gotten it, and it's still half-full now. The number of pages never changes, though the names continue their march down, down, down.

He could probably count each one if he wanted to waste his fucking time – which he doesn't. Death has given him a goddamn eidetic memory too. He can dredge up the image of everyone he's taken Beyond, their doors, their reactions. Sometimes he thinks the only thing keeping him from tearing the stupid book apart is the fear that he'd be left in this gray void with nothing but the memories to drive him mad.

Stupid thing to worry about. Everything that's happened he's done to his own damn self. Just gotta carry the fuck on.

Days – weeks? Years? Who the hell knows – pass. Reaping is beginning to feel almost natural. He's come to learn that a soul's perception of him is tied intimately to his emotional state; anger makes him fearsome, while calm imbues him with that strange familiarity that he'd witnessed from Death.

Calm. He can be calm – with practice. It's so much easier to deal with souls when they're not freaking the fuck out, so he takes pains to master it. Anything to make this shit easier.

And it is becoming easier. Kind of. He's starting to see patterns emerging.

Babies, he finds, are the easiest. Too young to process more than the most basic of stimuli. All it takes is a kind touch – a moment of rocking to soothe the ones who have died in pain or blind confusion – before they settle enough to come with him. The worst part is sending them into the darkness. He holds his breath and closes his eyes as he sticks his hand into the undulant black, waiting until their pressure vanishes before he yanks his arm back.

Children are much harder.

If he'd thought it difficult to learn to calm infants, he'd been completely stymied by kids. Too fucking variable. Even more than adults. Adults at least have societal conventions hammered into their brains; even when upset, they understand basic communication. Children are dynamite and shrapnel all wrapped in a small, messy package. He fucking hates taking kids.

Some scream. Many cry. Few come quietly. Most children do not die easy deaths. The shadows of their torments cling to them; an unshakeable psychic scream. It takes patience, soft words, and the kind of emotional flexibility he's always found difficult to put into practice.

But that, too, gets easier in time.

"Hey," he says to the hiccuping little boy standing over his own mangled body. "I'm here to take you someplace better."

---

Time is fucking weird.

Katsuki's been a reaper for who-knows-how-long, and he still can't fucking figure it out. In Life, it had seemed so linear. Here? Anything but. He rarely knows the date in the places he appears, but he can tell by the varying styles and different technology that he's not always moving forward.

The concept of space-time is one that asserts itself occasionally; an abstract image of time and space as a fabric that can bunch and ripple. Fuck, Jeanist would love that. None of that nerd shit had ever interested Katsuki before. Now it's something he's got time to consider, even though it doesn't change fuck-all about his situation.

But… could it?

Could he, by some random chance, wind up in some iteration of a timeline close enough to his death to change it?

Can he even influence the living world?

He tries just once.

It's the scene of a car accident. A rural road, a bend, a tree in just the wrong spot. The night strobes black and red with the lights of police cars, fire trucks, and a solitary ambulance. Chaos. Men and women labor over the crushed steel husk of a green sedan, carting loose pieces away. They've already freed the unconscious driver and sent him off in an ambulance, but the passenger is trapped, pinched between the seat and dashboard.

Katsuki knows they're too late. Over the low grind of hydraulic extractors the soul's screams are piercing.

The girl is young. She looks teenage, perhaps a little older. Hard to tell, with the way she's cycling so rapidly – child, adult, all the way down to toddler and then back. She's fighting the rescuers, alternately clawing at them as they begin to peel the roof of the car off, or else begging them to help. The noise of the hydraulics seems to upset her most of all. Each time it ramps up blood spills from ghostly wounds, a bizarre transformation that's beginning to unnerve him.

She's going to be a difficult one. Katsuki desperately wants the paramedic currently crammed in alongside the girl's body to verbalize her death – maybe then some of the frenetic energy will fade.

"Hey," he says into the paramedic's ear. "Tell them she's dead."

The guy has to know it. His fingers are on her neck, the crablike chest compressor is squeezing her body insistently, but his face is shadowed and grim. He knows. But still, he says nothing.

"Oi," Katsuki says louder, and grabs for the paramedic's shoulder—

There's a blast of light and sound in his mind, so deafening that he stumbles back and almost falls flat on his ass. He clutches his head, but the sensation clings. Inside he rings like a bell, sensations not his own bouncing in the cavern of his skull.

Dimly he registers that the paramedic is gasping like he's been doused in icy water. Katsuki cracks an eye open to see the man looking around, wide-eyed. Obviously, he'd felt something.

The girl is still wailing. Katsuki backs off, rubbing his head, and resigns to wait. Fuck. Definitely not trying that again.

He's so fucking confused. It doesn't make any sense. He'd pushed straight through a mass of people just to get to the paramedic, and nothing like that had happened. Had never happened. It's like… it's like his intent had changed the outcome.

Katsuki shakes off the lingering echoes, realizing only once they've gone exactly what he'd heard. It wasn't only the paramedic's thoughts — it was him. For one brief second, he'd been the paramedic, fingers pressed to the soft, sticky skin of the girl's neck, the whine of machinery loud in his ears and his own heart beating like a drum. He'd had a taste of humanity, and found it overwhelming.

I've been dead too long.

Katsuki grimaces. Stupid. Why had he chosen to try this on a person first? If he can't even move rocks how the fuck is he going to handle humans?

To test his hypothesis he crouches and rips at the long grass, but his fingers pass harmlessly through. Not so much as a twitch from a single blade, even when he puts all of his energy into concentrating. Well, that's that then.

He does not try again.

---

There is so much more to the world than he ever knew.

Katsuki might only sip from the well of Life now, but the span of his time in between has long since eclipsed the twenty-nine years he spent on earth.

He visits limestone cliff sides, sandy shores, golden prairies. Expanses of roaring oceans. Bleak white tundras. He takes souls from all countries and of all ethnicities; despite their heritages, death is the great equalizer. They understand him, and he them. That doesn't make it any easier.

So often he despises what he must do. Memories stack, an unending tide of grief, pain, and terror broken by brief respites of wide-eyed relief. Despite all this he begins to find himself almost perversely eager for the next name; the blank fog of the in-between is almost as terrifying as the blackness beyond the door. As the world blooms into life around him, Katuski turns his face towards the sky and wishes.

Then, things change.

He opens his notebook to find something odd. There on the page, a new name — no. Two names. One in black as is typical, but overlaying it in fresh red ink: a second name.

Katsuki frowns. This has happened twice before, and he's managed to deduce that it symbolizes the equivalent of an accident – the wrong soul doomed to death. He doesn't like these cases. They're much more resistant to moving on than normal souls; as if they can sense the error.

He picks out the red hiragana from the black, reading the name written there.

Todoroki Shouto.

There's a funny feeling in his chest. If Katsuki has a heart, it's missed a beat.

No way. That can't be right. Probably just someone with the same name. Some nutty fan who's appropriated the title of their favorite hero, or someone with the same family name who'd thought it'd be cool to—

The world fans into color. Katsuki materializes in a place he's been a thousand times for a thousand different lives.

This room is more spacious than many, though, like every other room, it's crowded in the center with a huge bed surrounded by machines. Small, colorful displays read out patterns, percentages, outputs. A heart monitor beeps like a metronome.

Pillowed in the middle of the bed is Todoroki Shouto.

Katsuki's heart plummets. There's no mistaking him, though his appearance is distorted by age, tubes, and blankets. Two-toned hair has been shorn in places down to a buzz cut, and Todoroki's head is thickly bandaged.

He drifts closer, standing squarely in the middle of the machine that breathes for Todoroki. This close he can watch Todoroki's eyes – half-lidded, glazed, and unfocused – shiver aimlessly in their sockets. Mismatched gray and brilliant blue.

Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

It's not enough.

"What the fuck!" Katsuki whispers to the quiet room, casting about wildly. There has to be something here, some sign, some clue. But the whiteboard on the wall is empty, save for Todoroki's name, his doctor, and the date.

Katsuki stares at the numbers written in black dry-erase. It's not exact, but close: today is almost twelve years to the day that he died. That makes Todoroki forty-one.

He looks back at the man on the bed. There's no one here, and that doesn't make any fucking sense. Todoroki is – was – a pro Hero when Katsuki died. He had friends. Family. Usually when Katsuki comes these rooms are crowded with mourners. Why is he alone?

Todoroki is also still alive, which is only marginally more understandable. He's been called to people like this before. Their hearts still beat but the rest of them is gone, which means only one thing: Todoroki is brain dead.

"What the hell happened to you, Half n' Half?" he murmurs to that lax, pale face.

And then Todoroki's soul sits up in bed, nearly clocking him in the forehead.

Katsuki jumps back. He hadn't realized he was so close. Shit! You'd think after this long he'd know what was coming next, but Todoroki's appearance — no, the fact that it was fucking Todoroki Shouto hasn't just knocked him for a loop, it's tipped Katsuki's world right off its axis.

Todoroki's soul blinks at him. Frowns. Shouto scrubs at his eyes, and then looks again.

"Bakugou?"

Well, fuck. This isn't how Katsuki had imagined meeting anyone from his old life, and it's awkward as shit. Even worse than that damn ten-year UA reunion. Pretending it hadn't stung seeing nearly everyone in his class happily taken was one thing, but meeting Half and Half in his new professional capacity? Fuckin' shit.

He jams his hands into his pockets, feeling every inch the unsociable teenager he'd been when they'd first met. "That's me."

Shouto frowns even harder. "But you're dead."

"Yeah. What of it?"

Inwardly he cringes at the sound of his own voice. Almost childishly petulant. He's a fucking adult for crying out loud!

Katsuki pulls his hands out of his pockets, forcing his fists to loosen. He's not a child. He's a damn reaper, and he's got to–

he's got to–

What he's here for hits him at the same moment that Shouto realizes the truth.

"Am I dead?" Half and Half looks around the room, seeming to register for the first time the ICU bed, the heart monitor, the ventilator. Then he turns, staring into his own face.

"Yes, you are. And I'm here to take you Beyond," Katsuki says, and braces himself for the inevitable reaction.

"What?" Todoroki pats at his chest and face as if testing their tangibility. He reaches for his body's shoulders, face blanching when his fingers go right through. "What– how?"

Seems like he only listened to the first part of what Katsuki said. Dammit. He hates having to repeat himself.

"I dunno, you tell me. I didn't see that part," Katsuki grouses, but his anger is weak. The only protection he can muster against the harrowing knowledge that he must take this man's soul.

Half and Half is, predictably, too fixated on his death to pay attention. He does as so many other souls have done: looks about wildly, tries laying back into his body, and, when that doesn't work, sticks his hands into its chest a few times, like he could grasp his own beating heart. After a minute of unsuccessful attempts, Todoroki winds up curled at the foot of his hospital bed, hands clutching his head.

Katsuki watches, feeling for the first time in a while a prickle of empathy. He's gotten too used to this. Todoroki looks younger now, his older self a ghostly shell around a man that could be Katsuki's age. He's regressed, and that isn't so surprising. So many people see themselves this way, but in Todoroki's case he can't help but feel it's a sort of mirroring. Having seen Katsuki, perhaps Todoroki is remembering what it was to be so young.

He approaches the end of the bed, then stops. Chews on his lip. Often silence is enough for most souls to work through their grief, and that works for him; he's always been shit at comforting adults. But Todoroki is – was? – a friend. Kind of. He deserves better.

"Oi. Half n' Half," he says, and resists the urge to put his hand on Todoroki's shoulder. "I know this is probably a lot to take in, but–"

But, what?

Deal with it?

Just learn to accept it?

Fuck, he doesn't even know where he was going with this.

"But, uh, if you wanna talk about it or whatever, I'm here," he ends lamely and immediately wants to take it back. Ah, fuck. Out of everything he could've said he comes up with weak therapeutic bullshit. He isn't a fucking psychologist.

Todoroki doesn't respond. Maybe he's still not listening. Katsuki hopes so. He steps back and leans against the wall, waiting.

A nurse comes in. She fusses with the machines, checking numbers and scribbling them down on a clipboard. Pulls back the sheet and fiddles with the IVs snaking into the crooks of each of the body's elbows. It's only when she reaches right through Half and Half to get to the compression stockings on his legs that he startles and jumps off the bed.

Katsuki watches Todoroki watch the nurse. Will he try to talk to her? He wouldn't be the first; just another step in the death-affirming checklist.

But Todoroki does not. He watches the nurse leave, and as soon as the curtain flutters back into place he turns to Katsuki.

"I'm dead."

Katsuki nods. "You are."

Mismatched eyes stare at him blankly. He can see the moment Todoroki stops seeing him and gets lost in his own head because Half and Half's gaze shifts, settling somewhere around Katsuki's ear.

After a long silence, Todoroki hangs his head. "Shit."

Bizarrely, the urge to laugh bubbles up in Katsuki's throat. That's almost exactly what he'd said. "Tell me about it."

"So, I'm dead and you're–" he pauses, brow wrinkling. "Did you say you're here for me?"

Oh boy.

"Kinda. I'm here to take you Beyond," Katsuki says, resisting the urge to fidget. Just saying the words has his heart kicking off again, hammering in his chest like he's running a sprint. It's making him uneasy; he hasn't felt a sensation like this since he died. The fuck is wrong with him?

"So you're… what. The grim reaper or something?"

Katsuki nods.

Todoroki blinks at him like an owl, then bursts into laughter.

When he smiles, Half and Half transforms. He's always been attractive; his skin is smooth and clear around the scar tissue that wreaths his left eye, his hair thick and lustrous. He's proportional and muscular, and his Quirk is powerful. Todoroki has never wanted for a date. But even so, he's never lost the faint frostiness that Katsuki observed during their time at UA.

But when he laughs… when he laughs, that frigid wall cracks. To see Todoroki happy is to want to share in that happiness, to bask in the warmth of his regard.

Katsuki watches with creeping resignation. "The hell are you laughing at?"

But he knows.

Todoroki's laughter tapers away. "Now I know this is a dream," he says, still smiling. "It just fits so perfectly. Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight is the Grim Reaper, that's too unironic to be real."

Fuck, Half and Half is in denial. He should've seen this coming.

"It's not a dream, Shouto." The use of his name has the desired effect; Todoroki's smile falters.

"But…" he looks around the room again. "I can't be dead. I'm still here. If I was dead I'd just be gone."

Fucking hell. Katsuki's not about to get into a pointless philosophical discussion with Half and Half, so he asks the question he knows will bring Todoroki back to reality:

"What were you doing before this?"

Plenty of souls can't accept their own deaths. If he's truthful, he counts himself among them; and while he might've been lucky — or damned — to avoid confronting whatever true death is, he's done this long enough to know that acceptance must happen before a soul is ready to come with him.

Todoroki is frowning faintly again, eyes unfocused. "What was I doing…" Katsuki watches him rub his chin with a knuckle, a thoughtful gesture that sparks a hundred memories; Todoroki hunched over his desk in the classroom, Todoroki surveying training scenarios, Todoroki puzzling over the press's questions during every candid interview.

"I don't remember going to bed, but—" The frown deepens. "I remember being at work. We got a call that a villain with a gigantification quirk was on the rampage in west Esuha City. I went to back up Fat Gum and his people, and…"

The knuckle strokes, strokes, stops. Katsuki is forcibly reminded of the twitching of a cat's tail. "And?"

"And it was a mess. He was smashing buildings left and right. I was bracing everything as best I could so we could get survivors out, when…"

Again Todoroki trails off. This time Katsuki doesn't prompt him. If it's anything like his own death, Half and Half won't remember the specifics.

"I don't remember what happened next." That blank, stunned look is back, all traces of humor gone. "I— I don't remember finishing the case or going home, or—" He whips around, again staring at his body in the bed.

Todoroki is building towards another freak-out, and Katsuki is resigned to it. Maybe even a little thankful. The longer it takes for Half and Half to accept his death, the more time he has to prepare himself for his role. Fuck, this is so shitty. Why him? Why fucking Todoroki Shouto? Of all the people he could've met from his old life, it had to be him. Isn't there a rule against this? If it were hero work he might've been banned from such a rescue; friends and families of the victims aren't allowed on scenes. Too much emotional entanglement. It hinders rather than helps rescue efforts. Somewhere along the way he'd just sort of assumed that's how this job would be too; in the thousands of souls he's been sent to, Death had never, never called him to take anyone he knew.

"Fuck," Todoroki whispers, dragging Katsuki's attention back. "That's really me in the hospital bed, isn't it?"

"Yes."

Half and Half stares at him, helpless. "How?"

If he had one yen for every time someone asked him that question — well, it wouldn't fucking matter because he couldn't do shit with the money anyway.

"Dunno. Like I said, I can't see that. If I had to guess I'd say you took a hit from some rubble or got tagged by another villain and wound up here." Katsuki looks at Todoroki's body. It's clean, and he can see the faint, puckered edges of a suture line peeking out from the bandages around his head. That means he's been here long enough to have surgery and get a sponge bath. "Looks like you've been here a couple days."

A couple days. Time enough for whatever poisonous process going on in Todoroki's skull to kill his brain.

"How do you know all that?"

He shoots Todoroki a look. "I don't. Didn't I just say it was a guess?"

"And you're really the grim reaper?"

Katsuki throws himself down in the solitary chair and resigns himself to playing twenty questions with Todoroki. "Yeah, if you want to call me that. I'm here to take your soul whenever you're ready." He props his elbow on the chair's arm, resting his cheek on his knuckles. Here we go.

Todoroki blinks, one hard pinch of his eyes that bespeaks of enormous confusion. "So… ever since you died you've been here?"

"Not here but I've been working, yeah."

A thoughtful pause. "... Can anyone become a reaper?"

"Dunno." He starts bouncing his foot.

"How did you manage it then?"

"I asked."

"You did?" Todoroki's gapes like a fish. "Why?"

Oh, he doesn't like that question. Not one bit. Katsuki scowls at Todoroki, regretting now that he sat down. It feels like Todoroki is looking down on him. Discomfort squirms in his belly, a strange and unsettling sensation. It's been so long since anything's had the power to disturb him, but here Half and Half has to go and throw him off that nice even keel.

He doesn't have to answer that. He doesn't want to answer it. But Todoroki Shouto is — was — a comrade, and Katsuki respects him enough to give him that much.

"Because I wasn't done yet," he says.

It's the truth. Or at least a version of it. A version that carefully skirts around the raw, ragged wound that is Katsuki's irrational fear of death.

He watches Todoroki warily, waiting for him to probe further — but Todoroki doesn't. The knuckle is back on his chin.

"So, you're a reaper," Todoroki reiterates. Katsuki nods, already guessing at where this is going. "And you're going to take my soul. ...How do you do it?"

He's got that answer by heart. "When you're ready you'll take my hand. A door will appear. I'll open the door, and you'll walk through," Katsuki recites. "Pretty simple." Of course, telling Half and Half will only get him so far. The nervous ones like to know what to expect, but when it comes to death — the last unknown — even he can't answer their most urgent question.

Todoroki's gaze sharpens. "What's on the other side?"

Bingo.

"Fuck if I know." Katsuki shrugs. "I think it looks different to everyone, but it doesn't look like anything to me. It's just something you gotta see for yourself, Half n' Half."

His heart trips again. Stupid thing. Can't his soul —body — whatever the fuck he is figure out that he's dead?

Todoroki is frowning, thoughtful. Katsuki swallows down the dread that churns in his throat like bile. He's a reaper. He's a professional. He's bound to do his duty. But he knows if Todoroki agreed and reached for his hand in this instant that he'd probably puke.

The line between Todoroki's brow fades. His expression shifts subtly; a constellation of changes like ripples echoing through a pond. He's afraid.

"I… don't think I'm ready for that yet."

Katsuki flaps his hand. "Fine by me. S'not like I'm gonna force you."

The words come out rougher than intended, strangled by the force of his relief. Todoroki is afraid too. That realization shouldn't feel as good as it does; both he and Todoroki aren't unique in their fears. But still, he feels lighter.

Silence falls between them.

Quiet, too, is a natural part of Katsuki's job. It's one of the things he had the most difficulty adjusting to; silence, and the interminable wait that shadows it. No forcing. No rushing. It had prickled at his skin like needles, silver-sharp and painfully urgent.

It's Todoroki who breaks first.

"So you're just going to hang around until I decide?"

Katsuki sinks down into his chair, stretching his feet irreverently onto the rails of Todoroki's bed. "Yeah."

He closes his eyes, head thumping onto the chair's back. It's been a while since he's had this kind of downtime with a soul, and he's never felt comfortable enough to let his professional demeanor slip this way. Maybe he could nap if he tried hard enough…

He's content to make the attempt. Katsuki lets his mind drift, lulled by the soft beep of the monitors and the mechanical whoosh of the ventilator. Outside the room there's the constant scuffle of feet on tile; the heart of the hospital hard at work. It's really quite— quite…

Ah, fuck. No dice.

Katsuki opens his eyes. Well, it had been a nice thought. He looks for Half and Half, intent on watching to see if he attempts the same thing—

Todoroki is gone.

The fuck? Katsuki leaps to his feet. No Todoroki in the corner. No Todoroki behind the equipment. Did he try to get back into his body again?

"Hey, Half n' Half!" he hisses to the unconscious form, to no answer. Fuck!

Katsuki dashes out of the room and nearly crashes right into Todoroki, who's watching the hubbub of the ICU from just beyond the curtain. He dodges sideways to avoid impact, plowing through a nurse. "Shit, Half n' Half! Don't run off like that!"

"I didn't run off. You were napping so I thought I'd look around."

Todoroki steps back, away from someone pushing a cart. "I didn't get very far anyway. I can't go any further than this." He demonstrates, leaning forward at a gravity-defying angle, and looks over his shoulder at Katsuki. "Is it because of my body?"

"Probably." Hell if he knows.He's seen a lot of dead people and had his fair share of runners, but none had been tethered the way Todoroki appears to be. Then again, only a small fraction of those deaths had involved a still-living body. It's as good a guess as any.

Todoroki ceases his Michael Jackson impersonation and plods back into his room, Katsuki hot on his heels.

"So I'm trapped," he says dully, stopping at the foot of his bed.

"Looks like it."

"And the only way out is through you."

Fuck, there goes his heart again. "I guess so."

Todoroki looks down at his hand. His whole body ripples like a string oscillating on two frequencies; a young, vibrant core surrounded by an age-worn shell. "Do you think if I–"

From outside the room there's a commotion. The shuffle of many footsteps echoes from the hall, and then the curtain rattles open. In pours everyone Katsuki's expected since the beginning: Rei, Natsuo, Fuyumi, and Endeavor.

The room is suddenly very crowded. Katsuki slips around them to the mouth of the door, trying not to stare. He's met every one of these people several times, and it's unnerving to see how much older they are. Fuck, Endeavor is seventy and still built like a brick shithouse. He's the kind of guy Katsuki should be here for, not—

He cuts that thought off before it can grow teeth. "I'll be out here if you need me," he calls over his shoulder, and gets one last glimpse of Rei Todoroki caressing her dead son's cheek before he ducks into the hall.

Katsuki situates himself between Todoroki's room and the next, edging closer to the adjacent ward until the low mutter of conversation from Todoroki's room is no longer audible. He leans into the wall and sighs.

His time sense has been shot to hell. Katsuki glances periodically at the clock over the nurse's station, watching the long arm crawl across its face. After about an hour a man in a white lab coat — Half and Half's doctor? — knocks on the wall next to Todoroki's room, then enters. He stays for about fifteen minutes, then leaves. An hour after that Rei exits the room, and Katsuki perks, watching the rest of the family trail her like ducklings. Her back is straight, but her nose and eyes are red.

Endeavor is the last to exit. Of the four of them he's the only one who seems unmoved, but Katsuki is an old pro at reading faces. He can see the pain simmering in those sea-green eyes, buried under a layer of denial so thick it might as well be at the bottom of the ocean. The man isn't feeling anything. Dangerous. He'll quickly be heading the same way as Half and Half if he keeps that up.

As the last of the Todorokis vanish out the double doors, Katsuki takes up a post outside Half and Half's room. He's loath to go back inside. There's only one way that visit could have gone; undoubtedly Half and Half needs a moment to himself. He knows where Katsuki is when he's ready.

---

Fifteen minutes later a voice floats out to him. "You can come back in."

Katsuki does. Todoroki is seated on the end of his bed, looking old and worn out.

"They're going to take me off life support tomorrow," he says. "The doctor told them none of my readings had changed for the last few days. I'm brain dead."

So, he'd been right.

"I guess I've been here for two weeks," Todoroki continues, picking at the tubing connected to the compression stockings. "And things are only getting worse. Fuyumi wanted to wait and see if they could find someone with a quirk that might help me, but the doctor said they'd already consulted all the hospitals in Japan. And it's not like there's another Eri out there." He adds the last bit as a bitter aside.

No. No there isn't. A quirk that powerful is one in ten million. Katsuki nods, just to show he's listening and drifts closer.

"Dad didn't want to do it either. Said they should wait long enough for him to contact his colleagues in America, but the doctor said my kidneys are starting to shut down too. Without a lot of medical intervention I won't hold on much longer anyway."

Pick, pick, pick. Todoroki's fingers pass through the clear tubing and whisper dryly together. Katsuki stops at the foot of the bed, looking down at the crown of Half and Half's head.

"Mom agreed that it was better to let me go. Natsuo too. So that's what they're going to do, tomorrow morning at eight."

The picking stops. Silence again, but this quiet is impossibly thick, immeasurably heavy. Katsuki is alight with it, seized as he has never been with the urge to say something, anything to break the awful tension.

What can he say?

Are you going to stay for it?

That sucks?

How does that make you feel?, like he's some shitty psychoanalyst?

There's really only one thing he can say, and it's the most inadequate thing of all:

"I'm sorry, Shouto."

Todoroki's head tips back. He peers up at Katsuki through his floppy mop of two-toned hair, ghostly lines fading in and out around his eyes like a faulty hologram. He reaches, and Katsuki has all the time in the world to see it coming but is powerless to avoid it.

Shouto pulls him down into an embrace.

It's awkward as fuck. He's bent down like he's hugging a child, but that's not what bothers Katsuki. The instant Todoroki touches him anxiety leaps into his throat – what if the door appears? – but he chokes it down. So what if it does? It's not like he has to open it right away.

It's that thought that allows him to unfreeze. He tugs Todoroki towards himself, pulling him to his feet. At this new angle it's much easier for Todoroki to slot his face into the crook of Katsuki's neck, and for Katsuki to lift onto his toes and plant his chin on Todoroki's shoulder. Todoroki is already clutching him like a lifeline, so Katsuki returns the embrace, hands cupping the warm swell of Todoroki's back.

Every day souls pass through his hands on their way to beyond. He touches each and every one of them; has clasped more hands and cradled more babies than the Pope and every fucking pro hero put together. It's normal now. Rote. But this—

Sensation hums through him, an electric burst overflowing the confines of his nerves; his body has forgotten what the embrace of another is supposed to feel like. Had it really always been like this?

When he'd been alive, Katsuki had tolerated hugs like an ill-tempered cat. To be touched was to be intruded on, his personal space violated again and again in the name of camaraderie or convention. He'd allowed Eiji's sweaty one-armed embraces and Denki's liquored-up clinging because it made them happy, and because he liked them, it had made it bearable.

Here with Todoroki not a trace of the old vexation remains. Shouto is solid in his arms, the point of his chin digging into Katsuki's collarbone. The breath on Katsuki's neck alternates cool and then warm, the evidence of Shouto's humanity damp against his throat and pounding against Katsuki's chest. Shouto is still human — dead, yet alive, and Katsuki is so far, far from being human; whole worlds and lifetimes away from it. He must time his breaths with Shouto's, the natural rhythm forgotten.

They stand there for who-knows-how-long, Katsuki acclimating to the touch until it feels almost normal. He wishes it wouldn't. Those first ecstatic moments were the most he's felt since his death. It's… nice. Then Shouto speaks, and he nearly jumps at the tickle of lips on his skin.

"Now I'm sure we're dead. There's no way you'd allow this otherwise."

Though he still has about as much inflection as a robot, there's a hint of humor in Todoroki's tone. Katsuki takes his chances. "Shut up and accept the damn hug, Half n' Half."

Shouto's snort ripples through them. "You're definitely Bakugou."

"Of course I fuckin' am."

He waits for some witty repartee from Half and Half, but none comes. Instead, Shouto's hold on him eases, and a sigh gusts across his throat, prickling goosebumps in its wake. Time to address the elephant in the room.

"You don't have to stay to watch, you know," Katsuki says.

Shouto flinches. He pulls back, the hug tearing apart. "That eager to get rid of me?"

Ah, shit. Katsuki reaches, snagging Half and Half's shoulder before he bumbles right through the ventilator. "That isn't what I fucking meant!" He yanks Shouto back towards him, refusing to let him flee. "I'm saying you don't have to be in the damn room when they unplug you!"

Half and Half scowls. "Of course I do. It's me."

"Yeah? And is watching your body die going to make you feel better?"

Shouto flinches again, shrinking away from him like a wounded animal. Katsuki wants to cut out his own stupid fucking tongue; everything is coming out wrong.

"Fuck, that's not—" The words snarl up in his throat. Katsuki stops, sighs, tries again. "What I mean is — watching it happen isn't going to change anything. It's going to fucking suck."

Which is the understatement of a lifetime. But how else can he put it? Half and Half might have seen his fair share of shit as a hero, but human recollection is like fabric; vibrant at first, then friable and soft with age. He doesn't have a thousand thorny memories of souls and the ones left behind to grieve them.

Half and Half's shoulder still thrums with tension, a live wire in his hand. Katsuki lets go. "You can do what you want, I'm not gonna stop you."

He turns on his heel, not quite sure what he wants to do. He's going to be here for a while, a luxury – or is it a fucking curse – that he's never had before. It feels weird and wrong; a mounting pressure in the back of his brain, like the weight of uncollected souls is gathering there. Is he really allowed this?

He fingers the outline of the notebook.

"Are you going to leave?"

Shouto's voice in his ear. He looks back to see Half and Half in flux; young, then old, then back – cyclic agitation like lunar phases. The words "do you want me to" are heavy on his tongue, but he swallows them down. He isn't going to be some dog begging for Half and Half's fucking approval.

"No," he grunts, and shoves his hands in his pockets again.

The relief that blooms in Shouto's eyes is too much to bear. He looks away, watching the shuffle of clogged feet from beyond the curtain until the shame smoldering in his gut burns out. Of course Half and Half doesn't want him to fucking leave. He's the only one in this shitty in-between that Shouto can communicate with, and the only one who can set him free.

Again and again he's reminded how much he hates this fucking job, and again and again he has no one blame but himself. He's going to see this through, there's no other choice.

Katsuki rubs his tongue against the sharp line of his teeth, then turns back around. Half and Half has moved from the side of his bed to behind it, approaching the wall-to-wall window. Katsuki follows, looking outside.

It's not a great view. The hospital is in the center of Mustafusu, and the sight that stares back at them is flat and angular, the dark city skyline like charred bones against the sunset. It's changed. More people, more high-rises, and more billboards than there'd been when he'd patrolled this city. Back then he could've pointed to any one of the lights out there and known the business or at least the neighborhood, rattled off crime percentages by block and zip code. Melancholy flutters in his chest; a familiar bird coming to roost.

"Could you talk to me?"

Shouto is shifting again, a fresh-faced boy with hollow eyes. He's watching Katsuki's reflection when he speaks, perhaps too embarrassed – or still too annoyed at him – to look directly.

Katsuki boosts himself up onto the window's wide sill, stretching his legs out. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Something. Anything. I just — I don't really want to think about things right now."

Shouto's shoulders curve forward. Reality is getting to him. He'll work himself into a panic if Katsuki doesn't divert him, so he racks his brain, searching for something suitable. Talking about his current work is right out, which leaves him with only his past life to draw on. Twenty-nine years of memories that have bleached like overexposed film. Which one?

"Did I ever tell you about the time I blew my dick up?"

The words fly out of his mouth, completely unbidden. Instantly he wants to smack himself. Really? Did he really just fucking say that? Out of everything he's accomplished, thought, or experienced, his brain decides that is the memory to supply?

Todoroki's head turns towards him slowly. "What?"

There's an uncomfortable heat crawling up from his collar, burning into his ears. Oh my god. He's actually blushing. How the fuck do dead people even do that?

"You heard me," he says, glancing at Todoroki and then back out the window, playing at nonchalance. If he leaned forward a bit more he'd plummet two stories. Worth it? "Quirk accident when I was thirteen."

He knows exactly why this memory stands out from the rest; the agony of the moment made it appropriately distinct, but that pain is secondary to his torment now. Shit, shit, fuck. He hadn't even told Eijirou about this. But the story has begun, and he forces himself to finish it in one smooth burst; razor wire slipping between his teeth. When he finishes Todoroki can only blink at him, wide-eyed.

Well, it's not precisely the reaction he was expecting, but the story has at least shocked Half and Half out of his gloom, so mission fucking accomplished. But was it really worth the indignity? His ears feel like they've been dipped in habanero juice.

"What?" he barks, unable to take the silent judgment. "Don't tell me you've never done something stupid with your quirk before."

It might've taken two weeks for the burns on his dick to heal, but Katsuki hadn't made another mistake like that. Meanwhile, all through grade school idiots like Denki had routinely risked brain damage using their Quirks for stupid pranks like shorting the power out in the girl's bathroom.

"Uh," is all Half and Half says.

Katsuki growls to himself as he tucks up against the window, willing his embarrassment to fade. Some of the ancient resentment has risen up — of course perfect Shouto has never made such a mistake — before his better judgment reasserts itself. Shouto had been molded from a young age to hone his quirk to perfection; no doubt stupid kid errors like that had been trained out of him before he'd even hit puberty. Not that Todoroki's quirk lends itself to the kind of accident that Katsuki had. Nitroglycerin sweat and the eager fumblings of youth were a recipe for disaster.

"Well, I guess there was one time."

Katsuki's eyes snap to Half and Half, who is now leaning on the windowsill tracing the faux-wood formica with one long finger. "But, it wasn't quite like what happened to you."

As Half and Half recounts some accident involving freezing the pipes in the kitchen ("Fuyumi had complained that the water wasn't getting cold enough, I thought I could help") Katsuki can feel his remaining agitation slip away. The awkwardness is gone. They've established a connection; Half and Half's earlier vulnerability now equalized by Katsuki's own and strengthened by their past association.

One recollection sparks two, three, a cascade. The first memory is a lodestone drawing forth the remnants of his old life in colorful bursts. When Shouto finishes his story, Katsuki gives him hell ("Shit, Half and Half. That's a couple thousand in damages, all I had to do was put vaseline on my dick for a week"), grins toothily at Shouto's aghast stare, then begins anew.

The sun sinks behind the horizon, the sky burnished in fiery red-gold that deepens to bruised purple, then black. It should be more than that. Katsuki remembers indigos and navies and a thousand other subtle colors — but the city lights leach life from the sky, and the hospital windows reflect nothing but flat fluorescent rectangles. Such a shame. This is the kind of talk meant for beachside getaways or rooftop stargazing.

It's kind of amazing how much they have to say. He and Half and Half had never been close, not in the way that they'd been with the others. They associated as heroes and mixed casually at gatherings, but there had always been a notable chill between them that had nothing to do with Half and Half's quirk. Shouto was a perpetual thorn in his side. He'd fought Deku like he wanted to kill him, but given Katsuki a half-assed duel and an unsatisfying victory. That had set the precedence. Not even the war against the Paranormal Liberation Front had shattered that wall. They'd fought, survived, and then moved on with their lives — then Katsuki had died, and that had been that.

And now Shouto is dead, too.

"Do you remember Mina's wedding?" Todoroki is saying, eyes far away. "Those party poppers?"

"Yeah, I remember." Katsuki had blown his up with his quirk and ended up showered in glitter. Fucking Racoon Eyes was the ultimate troll.

"Did I ever tell you that I set mine off in Izuku's car?"

Izuku, Katsuki thinks, not Deku — and then parses the rest of the sentence. "Oh shit, really?"

"Yeah. He was still finding glitter in the seats years after."

Katsuki imagines Deku's face freckled in pink glitter and snorts laughter. "Fuck, I would have paid to see that." And no fucking wonder it took him years to get rid of the shit. Deku's car was a damn mess.

"Actually, I was paid to do it."

Katsuki stares. "Really?" Pure, virtuous Shouto, taking bribes?

"Yeah. Kaminari put me up to it. I didn't actually take his money though."

"Sheesh, Half n' Half. What did Deku do to deserve that?"

"Some men just want to watch the world burn," Shouto says flatly, but a small smile curves his lips.

And that's another surprise: Half and Half is… kind of hilarious. He'd always thought the guy had the personality of a wet paper bag, but beneath his blunted affect lurks a wickedly dry sense of humor.

Katsuki reaches over and punches him in the shoulder. "You're fuckin' evil. Well done." Then grins widely at Shouto's surprised but pleased expression.

The talk flows smoothly until about three a.m., when they reach the end of Katsuki's memories. By now Katsuki is, if possible, even more eager to speak; what's happened on earth after his death has mostly been a mystery.

They're sitting comfortably in an island of silence. Shouto has inched closer over the night, his elbow now close enough to touch if Katsuki shifted his foot. He does so now, drawing Shouto's eyes.

"What's been happening with everyone since I've been gone?"

Shouto's head tilts. "You haven't been able to watch?"

"No, not really. It doesn't work like that." He pauses — It's not against the rules for him to explain a little, is it? — then elaborates. "I go where I'm needed, and in between I'm kind of… nowhere."

Though he looks interested, wisely Shouto doesn't press him. He rubs his chin again, slowly shifting from youthful to lined as the seconds spin out.

"You died twelve years ago, right?"

Katsuki nods.

"Twelve years," Shouto mutters, staring out the window. "That's about when Best Jeanist and Edgeshot retired. What else…"

Best Jeanist retired, huh? Not too surprising. Twelve years ago he would've been closing in on fifty, the age when most heroes — well, the ones lucky enough to make it that far — retire. Jeanist had it tougher than most, too; he'd never quite been the same after All For One's attack.

"Kaminari got divorced the year after, I think. Or maybe it was two years?" Shouto continues, and Katsuki leans forward, interested.

"What, really?"

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. A whole hell of a lot can happen in twelve years; they'd fought the PLF for three, and spent four more years rebuilding. In all that time five of Katsuki's friends had married, and two had started families. The trend seems to have continued after his death: more children, marriages and divorces, rank climbing and falling, and —

"Holy shit, are you serious?" Katsuki goggles. He can't help it. What had just come out of Shouto's mouth had been so wildly unexpected he had to have misheard.

"Yeah," Shouto says, looking discomfited. "About ten years ago."

"Hawks has been dating your dad for ten years?!" If he hadn't already been dead, Katsuki's soul might have left his body. Hawks and Endeavor? Hawks and Endeavor? Isn't Endeavor fuckin' twice his age?

"Yes. Just after my father retired."

Holy shit. He hadn't even known that Endeavor was gay or bi or whatever — not that it fucking mattered. What mattered was that it was Hawks and Endeavor!

"How the fuck did that happen?"

Shouto smiles again, seeming to enjoy his shock. "Your guess is as good as mine. Apparently Hawks was pretty persistent, but why he chose my father I'll never know."

Katsuki stares at his knees. "Well, damn." He's missed a lot since he's been gone.

"Does it bother you?"

He looks up to see Shouto watching him curiously, chin pillowed on his palm. "Does what bother me?"

"My father being gay."

No, actually, it doesn't bother him. Maybe it even explains some things; Katsuki doesn't know much about the Todoroki family's dynamic outside of what he's seen, but Endeavor being a stuffy asshole — a repressed stuffy asshole — now suddenly makes a hell of a lot of sense.

He grimaces. "No. Why would it? I'm not a damn hypocrite."

People's sexuality isn't his business. Besides, doesn't Shouto know that Katsuki himself is gay? He hadn't exactly been hiding it, though he'd never brought a date to any of their gatherings. No one had ever been serious enough for that.

Shouto's owl-eyed look of surprise tells him he might not have been as obvious as he'd thought. "You're gay?"

Katsuki grunts.

"Oh." A line forms between Half and Half's brows. "I never knew."

He can almost see Shouto's mind churning. Perhaps this had been a revelation; Katsuki's heard it himself from other gay men: you just don't seem the type. Which is bullshit. Just because he doesn't tick some set of invisible boxes doesn't mean anything. And anyway, all that's behind him now. What he's more interested in is what Half and Half himself has been up to since he died, but it's probably better to focus elsewhere. Instead he asks about Eijirou.

And the night rolls on.

By the time six a.m. hits, Katsuki has been thoroughly briefed. Three of his classmates have been divorced, and remarried. Deku has two kids now, Tenya three, and everyone else has one, minus Jirou and Tokoyami. Most of the kids are old enough to start chattering about going to UA, excited to be taught by the aging legend himself: All Might.

All Might. So he's still kicking around, just like Endeavor. Melancholy flutters in his chest, opening and closing downy wings. Seems like everyone is, except him and now Shouto.

But that's old pain, and easily put aside. Just in time too; outside the sky is beginning to lighten, black softening to stony blue. He glances at the clock: nearly six-thirty. An hour and a half left.

Shouto is starting to get twitchy. The closer the hour hand ticks toward eight, the quieter he becomes, closing off despite Katsuki's best efforts. He jumps when a nurse enters the room to check his body's temperature, and his eyes flicker every time the blood pressure cuff cycles. Katsuki finally lets the conversation die.

And then, nineteen minutes before eight, the familiar patter of feet. The curtain jangles as it slides to the side, and Todoroki goes rigid.

Katsuki is torn. He watches Shouto turn to face his family, almost dizzied by how quickly Shouto flickers from form to form — child-adult-teen, and once even a startling, unscarred toddler. Fuck. What is he supposed to do?

He slips off the windowsill and edges around the side of the room, following Half and Half as he shuffles woodenly towards the side of the bed where his mother stands. Maneuvering carefully around Natsuo and Endeavor, he puts himself between the foot of the bed and the door, in the corner of Shouto's line of sight.

It feels weird to speak in the sanctity of this silence, so he lifts two fingers, catching Half and Half's attention. The question doesn't even need asking; Katsuki can read the anguish in those eyes openly, and knows he cannot leave.

Rei's fingers are combing through Shouto's cropped hair. On the other side of the bed Fuyumi has Shouto's hand clasped between her own. It shakes as she utters one short, chopped sob.

Endeavor is standing frozen at Rei's side, one hand on the bed's railing. He's still glassy-eyed and expressionless, in bleak contrast to Natsuo, whose hands are balled into fists. He's scowling fiercely, and Katsuki knows it's to keep the tears at bay.

The family huddle close, caressing Shouto's dying body gently, reverently; pale-faced supplicants at the altar of death. Katsuki can hardly stand to look. He clenches his jaw and forces himself to anyway. It's why he's here.

Ten endless minutes later, the doctor arrives. Katsuki sidesteps him and drifts around behind Endeavor to the place where Shouto stands, grateful for the distraction.

"Rei and Enji?"

They turn to face him. Katsuki inches closer to Shouto.

"Yesterday we discussed the remaining options for Shouto's care, and you elected to have him taken off life support today. Are you still comfortable with that decision?"

It's Rei that responds. "Yes."

"Okay. Let me explain to you what is going to happen, then…"

Katsuki knows what will happen, because he's seen it before. They'll take the breathing tube out and turn all the alarms off, and possibly give Shouto's body drugs to keep him comfortable. Then they wait. The real unknown in all this is: how long will it take him to die?

As if echoing his thoughts, the doctor finishes: "We don't know for sure how long this process will be, but know that we will do everything in our power to keep Shouto comfortable."

Tears spill from Rei's eyes. She nods, unable to speak. The doctor bows his head in quiet acknowledgement.

"I'll be back in a minute."

As soon as he disappears, the simmering tension finally explodes. Natsuo curses brokenly, turning away. Fuyumi's breath leaves her in a gasp that turns into sobs so heart-wrenching that Katsuki begins to grind his teeth, struck by a hundred other memories of loss. Endeavor, petrified, stares blankly at nothing.

But it's Rei that is the epicenter. Quieter in her grief, but no less poignant. She leans against Shouto's pillow, stroking his face and crooning words Katsuki would give anything not to hear.

"Shouto. Shouto, my beautiful boy—"

He looks for Shouto and is alarmed that he has to look down. Where Shouto was is the ghost of a man, and burning brightly at his core the same toddler he'd caught a glimpse of before. He's young. He's so damn young, and Katsuki aches for him.

Then the doctor returns with two nurses in his wake.

The grief quiets, strangled by convention. Shouto snaps back into adulthood, though his face is still shocked and horribly open. One nurse taps the buttons on the heart monitor while the other fiddles with IV's, halting their flow. The doctor moves to the head of the bed.

Katsuki knows what he's about to do, and that doesn't make it any easier. A strange, urgent energy is building in his chest, gathering momentum as he watches Shouto.

Shouto stands apart from his family, an invisible island of grief in this maelstrom. His distance only grows more conspicuous as the Todoroki family draws close. Rei presses a hand to Endeavor's forearm. Natsuo's arm slips around Fuyumi's shoulders.

The heart monitor darkens. When the nurse moves to the ventilator she looks to the doctor, and gives a quick nod. She punches a button, and the ventilator goes dark too. Simultaneously the doctor draws back the depressor of a syringe, unhooks the ventilator tubing, and pulls the tube out from between the body's slack lips.

Katsuki makes up his mind in an instant. He steps close and takes Shouto's hand in his.

Their palms meet, fingers interlocking smoothly as though they've done this a thousand times. In the minutes that follow, Katsuki's eyes are trained on the body's chest, but his attention is on their linked hands, and the pulse that beats there.

Alive. Alive.

As soon as the ventilator had turned off, the body's chest had stilled. Shouto's brain is dead down to the stem, then — completely dependent on the respirator to survive. It won't be long.

And it isn't. Four minutes later, the pulse flutters, then ceases entirely. Shouto's hand clenches.

There is no change as Shouto goes from mostly-dead to fully-dead. Just that quiet shiver as his heart gives out, and then nothing. Three minutes after that the doctor slips the stethoscope's earpieces in and slides the bell onto the body's chest. He listens. Slides it to four different posts, and then pulls it back.

"He's gone."

Fuyumi sways, and Natsuo pulls her to his chest, holding her upright. Rei touches her dead son's lips, his eyebrows, his scar; then, with utmost delicacy she presses his eyelids closed.

The grief of this moment is heavy and silent, a velvet pall draped over the room.

It's Endeavor who breaks it. He moves for the first time since he'd entered the room, leaning so heavily on the bed rails that the whole bed groans. Thick fingers touch his son's pallid palm and lay heavily on the wrist. Then—

"Shouto!"

Endeavor is nuclear in his grief. He actually roars Shouto's name, and Shouto's hand tightens convulsively in Katsuki's. Katsuki acts instinctively, putting himself between them and pulling Shouto to him; an old protective reflex, though nothing can harm them.

There's a commotion outside. The hard bang of doors thrust open, and then the curtain jangles again as Hawks bursts through it, wings buffeting the fabric.

"Hi. Sorry for the intrusion," he says hurriedly, sparing a glance at the gathered family and the dead man in the bed. "I just heard—"

But the rest of his sentence is cut off when Endeavor turns to him and lunges. Katsuki half-expects Hawks to go up in flames, but instead he catches Endeavor up in a fierce embrace. Red wings cocoon Endeavor's heaving shoulders.

"Hey, big guy. I know." Thin fingers stroke Endeavor's silvered hair. "I'm sorry."

As Endeavor sobs wordlessly into his shoulder, Katsuki reads a lifetime of open and honest love on Hawks' scarred face. Love and sorrow, swallowed by a deep, abiding devotion.

"Sorry, Rei," Hawks mouths. "I'll be out of your way soon."

Rei takes a deep, shuddering breath. "No. It's okay, Hawks, thank you." She seems to have pulled herself together, strengthening even as Endeavor crumbles. She turns towards the doctor, who is watching them solemnly. "When will we be able to— to take him home?"

She has a steel spine, that woman. There's only the briefest quaver in her voice, and then it's gone.

"By the end of the day. We're going to remove all our equipment from him and clean him up a little first," the doctor says. He comes around the bed, bowing to Rei." I'm very sorry for your loss. We'll give you some time alone."

Then he and the nurses disappear, closing the curtain behind them.

The time the Todorokis spend with the body rolls like a dreamy silver sea. The sun creeps across the room as they clasp its hands, tuck the blankets under its chin, whisper softly to it beneath the staccato bursts of Endeavor's breaths. In Katsuki's arms Shouto is still and quiet.

At long last Rei straightens. She passes her fingers once more over the body's cheek, then moves towards the door. Natsuo and Fuyumi follow. Endeavor and Hawks hang back long enough for Endeavor to dry his face on some paper towels and give the body's hand one last squeeze before they, too, depart.

Then they're alone.

But not for long. Minutes later a flock of nurses arrives, descending on Todoroki's body like a bevy of doves. They pluck cables and patches, strip the compression sleeves, and extract the catheter. As they prepare to move his body to a smaller bed, Shouto presses his face into Katsuki's neck and shudders.

They don't need to be here for this.

"Do you want to get out of here?" Katsuki asks.

Shouto doesn't answer. Katsuki tries again. "Hey. Shouto. Come on." He squeezes Shouto's hand and pets the nape of his neck. Another shudder, but still no answer.

He'll make the decision for them, then.

When Katsuki pulls away, Shouto does not cling to him. His face is as blank and pale as the moon's reflection, but he comes willingly enough when Katsuki tugs their joined hands.

He leads Shouto out of the hospital, into the sun. Where should he go? He's had Shouto's hand for a while now, yet there's still no sign of a door. Without it, that's it. He has no obligations. No duties. No demands. For the first time since he'd died, the world is completely and utterly open.

The thought is overwhelming. Almost too enormous for his mind to grasp; he can feel his brain shy away from it, alarmed by the implication.

Don't think about it.

He doesn't. Instead, he lets his feet make the decision for him.

These streets are achingly familiar, sights and sounds blowing dust off memories long shelved. He finds his old beat, categorizing the new from the old. They're just passing one of his favorite takoyaki stalls — fuck, that place is still open? — when he realizes where he's headed: the train station.

It isn't a bad choice. Getting away from here would be good for Shouto. And he has an idea of where he wants to go, if he can remember the way.

He glances at Shouto. His face is still shuttered, but his eyes are roving slowly back and forth, the old sweeping surveillance pattern Katsuki knows so well. He's coming back to himself.

They walk.

In this familiar place it's easy for Katsuki to forget his inhumanity. He stops to wait at crosslights, dodges crowds as best he can, conscious all the while of the fingers twined with his. Gradually he educates Shouto on the new rules of his universe. They can go anywhere. They can do anything. They are intangible.

Still, Shouto balks the first time Katsuki leads him into traffic. He squeezes Katsuki's fingers tightly, and jumps as a taxi barrels right through them. Katsuki pulls them together again, arms snared around Shouto like vines, and waits for him to relax. It will be fine.

And it is fine. Even when Shouto hesitates at the ticket gates, he comes easily when Katsuki pulls them through it and onto the train.

This time of day the work rush is in ebb. They're traveling opposite the tide of people flowing into the city, taking a line that leads them out and towards the east coast. Katsuki finds a map, refreshes his memory, then plants them in a patch of empty seats.

Outside buildings roll by, sunlight glaring from reflected windows. The train rattles on its tracks, vibrating through Katsuki's sneakers all the way into his teeth. Someone's music plays. All inanities that used to irritate him; now, he's never been so content to just enjoy the ride.

Some of that is, undoubtedly, due to his death. Stripped of everything, even the mundanities of life now feel significant; stolen moments, glittering like gold. But an even greater part of it is due to the man next to him.

Shouto is pressed against his side, head pillowed on Katsuki's shoulder. He sways with the motion of the train, each movement telegraphed through him straight into Katsuki. Even in death, he's warm. The weight of him unexpectedly pleasant. Katsuki is exquisitely aware of their clasped hands resting in Shouto's lap; twined fingers the inosculated roots of trees grown close together.

He skims his thumb against the back of Shouto's hand, and waits.

They have to switch lines once, one hour and numerous stops later. This time when he steps off the train there's added resistance; Shouto, lagging as he takes new interest in their surroundings. He's coming back.

Another, shorter train ride. Their stop arrives, and with it a spark of life. The glassy look in Shouto's eyes is clearing, though he's still silent and wan. His eyes linger on the maps as Katsuki checks the bus schedule and finds the timing and route they want, and his gaze is dimly curious. Katsuki squeezes his hand and pulls them on.

The bus takes them within ten kilometers of their destination, and they disembark one stop earlier than Katsuki is used to. With the visiting season over, they'll have to walk. Katsuki doesn't mind. The dead do not tire.

The streets here are much quieter, shops tapering away to bare roads as Katsuki leads them away from the town and east, towards the horizon. It feels a little bit like he might be dreaming; he wades through ghosts of memories, ankle-deep. Almost there. The mantra beats in his chest like a living thing. Almost there. Almost there.

The sun is just beginning it's descent by the time he finds it. A turn off the road that leads to a long private drive and a series of driveways that seem to disappear into greenery. Katsuki counts: seven in total. The one he wants is the fourth.

He leads Shouto up the worn gravel into the treeline, then stops as it comes into view. Still here. Nearly thirty years since he last visited the place and it looks the same as he remembers, but for the fresh coat of white paint.

"Where are we?"

It's the first time Shouto's spoken in hours. Katsuki looks to see him fluctuant but clear-eyed, and smiles. "A beach house."

Then he pulls them through the front door.

"When I was a kid my family used to come here for a few weeks during the summers," he says as they emerge into a dim, empty landing. It's October; beach season is over. As he'd hoped, they'll have the place to themselves. "I fucking hated it at first."

Shouto's grip on his hand loosens. Katsuki lets it slip away as he wanders further into the house, casting a glance over his shoulder as he does. Shouto dithers on the genkan, looking around and trying futilely to take his shoes off.

"Not like that," he tells him. When Shouto looks up, he taps his temple. "Just think about yourself without shoes."

Looking puzzled, Shouto shuts his eyes like a kid making a wish. His shoes dissolve into bare feet, and Katsuki nods in approval. He hadn't been sure that would work; he'd never had a soul try it.

Shouto opens his eyes and flexes his toes, still frowning. He seems as confused by the rules of death as Katsuki had been, but that's not a surprise. Many things here defy logic.

He follows Katsuki down the hall, looking at the pictures hanging on the walls. Katsuki snorts as he catches sight of one of them. God, they still have that painting of a crane?The damn thing's been bleached from so many years of sun that the black ink has turned gray.

"Why did you hate it here?" Shouto asks, reaching out to touch a conch shell perched on a walnut end table. His hand lights on it, but when he tries to grab it his fingers sink right through.

Katsuki turns away from the faint look of disappointment. "Lots of reasons. The AC was shit, my mom would lay out and then forget to put on sunscreen so she'd be bitching about her sunburn after day one, and the ocean was just…" he trails off, trying to figure out how to articulate it. "It fucked with my quirk."

Shouto makes a quizzical noise.

"The water. It washed off my sweat so I couldn't use my quirk when I was swimming, and the saltwater would dry the hell out of my skin. My quirk was always weaker when I was here and it was annoying."

He looks down at his palms, curling his fingers. Even now he can feel the phantom snap of heat and pressure against them, and loss surges, an echo of ancient pain screaming up from the marrow of his bones. He drops his hands and sweeps it aside with practiced ease. No point thinking about it.

"Oh. I didn't think about that."

They're in the living room now, a tidy expanse of space empty of everything but more pictures, a TV, and a set of furniture under cream dust covers. He can't lift them up to see but the shapes look different than the seating he remembers. Not everything is the same.

"Yeah. It sucked," Katsuki continues, "but I got to liking it. Once they got central air the nights weren't shitty, and my dad bought me a bodyboard after the third summer."

Well, after Katsuki had pestered him incessantly for a surfboard, that is. The bodyboard had been a compromise.

Katsuki looks through the rest of the house. Everywhere is bare, stripped clean for the off season, but his mind fills the rooms with whispers of remembered conversations, smells, tastes. That counter is where his mom had chopped goya. She'd laughed her ass off after he'd swiped a piece of it and then spat bitter melon all over the floor.

"That's what you get for not asking first, brat!"

That tub where he'd spend hours scrubbing salt from his scalp and sand from too many crevices to count.

The living room where he'd walked in on his parents sucking each other's faces off. Fuck. He hadn't been able to look either of them in the eyes for two days after that.

"Why did you bring me here?" Shouto asks, breaking his spell. He stands alone in the middle of the living room, arms wrapped loosely around himself. In that emptiness he looks forlorn. Uncertain. A duality of young and old, diaphanous in the ripening light.

Katsuki holds out his hand.

"Because I thought you needed to get away."

Shouto takes it.

---

The walk down to Shiroi Beach is a short one. A well-worn path through the foliage at the back of the house leads them right to the edge of the dunes. From here the beach stretches as far as the eye can see, empty but for the distant form of a jogger kicking up sand.

At the sight of it something in Katsuki loosens. There had been another, more significant reason he'd brought Shouto here, but it's far too nebulous for him to articulate.

It's a feeling.

When he'd been a kid, the beach had been a playground. He'd splash through the lapping waves, building sand castles on the edge of the wet surf and dragging his dad out from under the umbrella to join him. When he'd gotten the bodyboard he'd spent hours learning to ride, then countless more seeking the perfect wave. It was only when he'd been older — much older — that this place had become something more.

The sand is warm and soft between his toes. He can feel the grainy give of it against his bare feet, but knows if he looked down he'd see untouched shore. The sensation is there because he expects it to be, just like the heat of Todoroki's palm.

The advantages to death are few, but this is one of them. Katsuki turns to Shouto and jerks his head towards the surf. "You wanna see a trick?"

Todoroki, ever agreeable, nods.

Katsuki's hand slips free as they approach the waterline. He points to the shallows. "Go in."

A puzzled look again — that seems to be his default reaction to Katsuki's requests — but he acquiesces. He wades in calf-deep, seemingly disturbed by the lack of splash and the water that cuts through his ghostly flesh. Katsuki distracts him by walking out too— on top of the waves.

He smirks when Shouto's eyes bulge.

"How are you—" Shouto begins, then lifts one of his feet out of the water and tries to settle it on the surface. It plunges back in. "How are you doing that?"

Katsuki taps his temple again. Just like the trick inside, this is all mental. It had taken him more than a few harvests at sea to figure it out, though. Gravity is one of the hardest limitations to shake. "Just like with the shoes. You can do whatever the fuck you want if you believe you can."

Well, except touch people. Or come back to life. Or use a quirk. But he's trying to draw Shouto out of his shell, not throw him back into depression.

Shouto tries again. Same result. The line between his brows is deepening. Katsuki knows why; for a guy who, like him, had been a natural prodigy at nearly everything, failing is not normal.

"It took me at least twenty fuckin' tries before I started to get the hang of it. Don't worry if you don't get it right away," he says, and extends his hand. "Try this."

He doesn't know if it will work, but he has an inkling that it might. Just another way to get around that mental block; if Half and Half believes it'll help, then it will.

Shouto takes his hand. This time when he settles his foot on the water it sticks, and he tests his weight gingerly before boosting himself all the way up. He wobbles in Katsuki's grip like a sailor still getting his sea-legs, rolling with the undulating waves until Katsuki loops a steading arm around his waist.

He might be silent with awe, but Katsuki can see it in the wide gleam of Shouto's eyes. I'm doing it!

They walk yards out onto the ocean, past the foamy crests of waves onto calmer water. It's windy today, and sunlight flashes off the rippling blue tide like a thousand silver coins. Overhead a seagull wheels. Gradually Shouto becomes more confident, easing away from Katsuki's bracing arm until he's the one tugging Katsuki along, sheer delight transforming him into a teenager.

"This is amazing!" he calls over the swells. "What else can you do?"

So Katsuki shows him.

They spend hours first on, and then in the water, Katsuki plunging them into the depths together. "Remember, you don't need to breathe," he tells Shouto at Shouto's suddenly-panicked expression, and waits until the fear fades before he takes them in deeper. Water walking might be a neat trick, but it's nothing to what lies beneath the waves.

By the time they emerge, the sun is setting. He's amused to see that Shouto is drenched, clothes and hair plastered to his skin. When Shouto sees Katsuki, smirking and bone-dry, his whole body ripples alarmingly before the water-laden effect fades. Now he's getting it.

Katsuki throws himself down on the sand. Being dead has turned him into a sentimental old fart; he's actually looking forward to watching the sun go down.

Shouto sits down next to him, close enough for their knees to brush. He looks content.

Katsuki hates to ask, but he has to. "What do you want to do?"

The air between them seems to chill. When Shouto meets his eyes his face is lined again, and so incredibly hollow. "I don't know."

Never force a soul to come unwillingly.

"Alright."

He can take his time. Katsuki is fine with that. Even so, his relief is overshadowed by the same persistent anxiety; is he really allowed this? The longest he'd ever spent with a soul before Shouto was maybe three hours. What if Shouto is never ready?

For a moment, he remembers how it feels to be breathless. He sucks in air — pointless. This has got to be the single biggest loophole in existence. But if it's possible — if it's real—

he's free.

"Should I go to my funeral?" Shouto mutters from a great distance. Katsuki pulls himself back.

"Fuck no."

"Why not?"

Katsuki raises an eyebrow. "Shit, Half n' Half. If you thought today was hard, imagine seeing all your family and friends crying over your damn body. Do you really wanna be there for that?"

Shouto's eyes slide away. "... I'm not sure."

"You don't. Trust me." He nudges Shouto's shoulder. "You stayed for the most important part. That's good enough."

They gaze out across the water. The sun is an orange disc half-swallowed by the black line of the horizon, casting fiery fragments of red and orange into the surf. This was the last thing he'd loved about this place. Compared to that vast expanse of water, everything else seems paradoxically insignificant, yet heavy with possibility. Or maybe inevitability. The ocean is every bit as mysterious as the black behind the doors.

"Thank you. For being there."

The warm weight of Shouto is heavy against his knee. Katsuki swallows down the instinctive urge to scoff at the appreciation; he's not arrogant enough for that anymore. "You're welcome."

He can feel the swell of Shouto's ribcage with each breath. Still so human.

"I know it probably sounds weird to say it, but," the breathing pauses. Katsuki's awareness strains toward Shouto in the gravid air.

"I'm glad that it was you."

He looks at Half and Half. Shouto is turned to him, long bangs casting dark shadows over his face. In the half-light his mismatched eyes are glittering pools, looming closer and closer until Katsuki can count every gossamer lash.

A warm mouth meets his.

Katsuki had never been big on intimacy. Sex was a biological imperative — an itch that he scratched when it became unignorable. He'd been too busy progressing his career to focus on anything but climbing to the top ten. When I'm there, I'll settle down became his mantra. Only once he'd reached top ten he'd realized: he had to keep working at the same fucking level. His old classmates had settled for lower ranks in exchange for families — except damn Deku, the bastard stayed number one even with two kids — and Katsuki had watched him with only a glimmer of envy. He'd have time for that shit one day. Only he had fucking died before that day ever came.

And now Shouto is leaning into him, lips moving gently against his, and he's frozen. He can't even close his damn eyes, though he can see how Shouto's have slipped shut in observance of the usual etiquette.

It's rude, but he just can't. He won't. Because it's important, so vitally important that he remember every detail of this moment.

Shouto's mouth is soft, his pressure light. The pure physical sensation of Katsuki's first kiss is underwhelming in its intensity, but inside he's imploding from the contact; a star collapsing its own gravity. This is— this is—

The blue of Shouto's eye is piercing. It gleams, a fluid crescent as he catches Katsuki watching. When he pulls away it's as if he takes all Katsuki's breath with him.

"Is… is this okay?" he asks, suddenly uneasy. Then just as suddenly the doubt rebounds, fracturing into embarrassment and contrition. "Oh, shit. I'm sorry, Bakugou, I should've—"

Katsuki lunges after him. If he had a physical body the impact would've split both of their lips, but instead it just mashes them together, rocking Shouto back.

It's a fucking mess. It's wonderful. Shouto tastes like salt and bitter melon, an amalgamation of the purest memories Katsuki has of earthly flavors. In his chest heat blooms, and Katsuki flounders. More. He's got to have more, but he isn't gonna push Shouto—

Then Shouto's mouth splits open. A slick tongue slides between his lips and Katsuki welcomes it in with a choked sound. He's panting, breath remembered.

Shouto's hands grip his shoulders. He's panting too, moist breath puffing out against Katsuki's lips. They devour each other like animals, becoming steadily more wild with each passing second.

He needs. Katsuki needs this like he's never needed anything in life or death; stripped of his humanity, denied of the basest forms of intimacy, he's desperate. But Shouto is newly dead and grieving, and he must be desperate too.

Katsuki leans back. He draws Shouto along with him, guiding him until Shouto is draped over him groin to groin, knees splayed on either side of his hips. Shouto groans when Katsuki palms greedy handfuls of his ass, rocking them together. Fuck yeah.

Heat burns against him. Arousal is a novelty; he hadn't even been sure it would work. But his erection rises alongside Shouto's, and the burst of pleasure that races through his veins at their contact grounds him in his body like nothing else has. He is here. This is real. Katsuki whines deep in his throat as Shouto sinks teeth into his neck.

It's still not enough.

More. Closer still. He needs what's warm and alive beneath Shouto's clothes, and so banishes his own with a thought. Shouto makes a surprised sound as Katsuki writhes against him, naked as the day he was born.

"How did—" he starts, and then quiets. Seconds later Shouto's clothes melt away and Katsuki pets every inch of bare skin he can reach, devouring the contact.

"More," he growls in Shouto's ear. "I want you to fuck me."

That gets a reaction. Unfortunately it isn't the one he wants; Shouto pulls back, surprised.

"You want me to—?"

"Yeah. Did I stutter?" Katsuki snakes a hand between them, squeezing their cocks together. Shouto's eyelids flutter. "Fuck me, Shouto. I wanna feel you."

In the twilight Shouto is rosy and young, eyes heavy-lidded with arousal. His tongue flicks out, wetting his lips. "Okay."

Hell yes.

Flexibility was a skill he'd honed in life, and abandoned in death. He puts it to use now, pulling his legs back to bare himself in a display that, in front of anyone else, would have been horribly vulnerable. Shouto's eyes widen at the sight, and Katsuki tracks the bob of his Adam's apple. He is wanted.

"Right this second?"

When else? "Yeah. Get in."

It's hard to tell, but he thinks Shouto might be flushing. "Are you sure you're— you're ready?"

Of all the times for Half and Half to get cold feet, why does it have to be now when Katsuki is splayed so terribly open?

He looks below. Shouto's cock is full and leaking, cupped loosely in Shouto's hand. He wants this too. So what's the holdup?

"Hell yeah I am, c'mon!" he urges. Like bending himself nearly in half isn't enough of a fucking sign that he is.

Shouto's face is pained. "But— I can't go in dry!'

Ah. He can't let go of humanity as easily as Katsuki can, and at the moment that's frustrating. Rather than belabor the point, Katsuki rolls to his knees. He can fix this.

Shouto gasps as Katsuki sucks him down to the root, hands fisting in Katsuki's hair.

"Oh—oh—" Shouto's voice shatters like glass. The sound goes straight to Katsuki's cock and he huffs his remaining air out, pushing forward until his nose is almost flush against Shouto's pubic mound. He swallows. Shouto whimpers. Katsuki shoves forward the final distance.

The heat packing his throat is immense. It throbs, a pulse that sinks to the core of him. Alive. Alive. In his own mind, Shouto still lives, and that's fine. It doesn't fucking matter. Nothing matters except this.

Katsuki squeezes his eyes shut, willing more saliva into his mouth until drool runs in a stream down his chin. Wet and sloppy, this should be good enough.

He pulls off. With a swipe of his hand he snaps the thread of spit stringing them together and throws himself back down. Two fingers dip into his mouth, swirl, withdraw. He rubs slick fingers across his hole then slides them inside; pliant, moist, he's fucking ready — then pulls his knees back towards his ears.

"C'mon," he rasps again, feral with want. "Fuck me, Half n' Half!"

Like a man in a dream, Shouto shuffles forward. The snubbed head of his cock presses against Katsuki's hole, catches, sinks in. He's moving with care, a millimeter at a time — until Katsuki hooks both heels around Shouto's ass and yanks him inside.

Bliss.

Air wheezes out of him at the unexpected fullness. Fuck. Too long. It's been too damn long. Still his body remembers this; the stretch of another has never been so welcome. No burn, no ache; instead of pain, there's nothing but sweetness.

Above him Shouto pants, shivering between his thighs. In the gathering darkness he's limned in red fire, light gathering about his head like a crown of blood.

He's beautiful.

"Shouto," Katsuki croaks, and they fall together.

---

Katsuki bites his lip, clutching Shouto's shoulders as he quakes his way through another orgasm. Over him Shouto is slick with sweat, low groans tearing from his throat as his pace quickens.

Katsuki leans up to steal a kiss. "Fuck yeah. Fill me up, Shouto."

Shouto shudders and slams his hips forward. Grinning, Katsuki strokes his hands down Shouto's back to grab at the swell of his ass, grinding him down as Shouto begins to twitch deep inside him.

The fact that he'd been able to come was a welcome discovery. One they'd taken advantage of many, many, times over the last few hours. The ghost of exhaustion clings to him now, a feeling superimposed over his usual vigor by the man slumped on top of him, panting into his neck.

Shouto had fucked him tirelessly, drawing orgasm after orgasm from them both. Now he too seems spent. He pulls free with a wet sound, and Katsuki shivers at the phantom sensation of warmth spilling out of him. Fuck. He never thought that could feel so good.

With a sigh, Shouto rolls off, flopping onto his back in the sand. Katsuki can understand the sentiment. All the urgency between them had faded, leaving him with nothing but the heat of remembered pleasure and bone-deep lassitude. It feels like he could spend an eternity here.

During their coupling night has fallen. The beach town is small, the glow of light from it faint, leaving them sprawled beneath an endless expanse of dark heavens.

Katsuki tucks his hands behind his head. His elbow brushes against Shouto; a point of bright awareness. Despite his languor, something in his chest clenches like a fist. If he could close his eyes and make any wish right now, he wouldn't wish for his life back. He wouldn't even wish he'd never become a reaper. He'd wish that they could stay frozen in this moment forever.

Katsuki turns his head. Next to him Shouto reclines, still naked, and he seems to glow against the dark dunes, rarified by the pale moonlight. A star fallen to earth.

Shouto catches him looking. "What?"

Katsuki, distracted by the shadowplay across Shouto's heaving ribs, says the first thing that comes to mind.

"I didn't know you were gay."

They stare at each other, two dead men alone on a moonlit beach. Katsuki might be closer to a demi-god now than human, but he's still a fucking idiot. What is wrong with him?

Shouto begins to laugh. He laughs so long and hard that heat begins to crawl into Katsuki's face again, the memory of a blush. As Shouto rolls to face him he catches the bright gleam of tears in the corners of Shouto's eyes, but not a trace of sadness.

"You're funny, Bakugou," he says, hiccuping a little as the laughter trickles away. Shouto splays himself on Katsuki's chest, dabbing away the tears with a flick of his fingertips. "I never knew you had a sense of humor."

"Wasn't trying to be funny," Katsuki mumbles.

"I know. But you are."

The tickle of Shouto's hair against his skin is a pleasant thing. Katsuki scratches his fingers along Shouto's scalp, amazed by the simple intimacy of it. At least his stupid fucking mouth hasn't ruined anything.

"I'm not gay, by the way."

He freezes. "You're not?"

Oh, fuck. Had this all been just an accident? A weird twist on the life-affirming shit that normal people get up to? It's not like Shouto has anyone else here to get down with. And now that he thinks on it, really thinks on it, he can remember some blonde chick that had attended the holiday parties with Todoroki two years in a row. She'd spent most of the time glued to his hip, and Katsuki had ignored them both, but… shit.

A soft sigh. Long fingers trace Katsuki's collarbone, drawing him back. Shouto smiles up at him, a small, shy smile. "Actually, I like both."

Oh.

That raises a whole slew of questions and one particularly ridiculous thought — how fitting that Half and Half bats for both teams — but Katsuki keeps his mouth shut. None of it matters. If Shouto has anyone waiting for him back at home, that's all over now. And Katsuki had noticed the complete lack of any visitors besides family.

"Did you know I had a crush on you once?"

Katsuki is torn rudely out of his musings. "What?"

"I did. About fifteen years ago." Shouto nuzzles against his chest, now idly playing with one of Katsuki's nipples. "I didn't act on it, of course. Didn't even know you were gay. It was more of a physical attraction than anything. Even though I thought you were an ass, I really wanted to get you into bed."

Well that's… interesting. Katsuki isn't sure if he should be flattered or annoyed. Wanting to fuck a sexy asshole isn't that far out of his wheelhouse; he'd felt the same way many times, but it stings just a little. He snorts. "Well, now you've had me. Was it everything you fuckin' dreamed?"

Shouto tweaks his nipple. "Don't be like that. You know after everything that's happened tonight wasn't just about sex." Before Katsuki can respond, he inches up, pressing a kiss against Katsuki's neck. "But if you really wanted to know… you were better than I expected."

High praise from captain understatement. He really shouldn't be so fucking pleased to hear it; he knows he's a damn good lay.

"I am a little surprised that you let me top, though," Shouto continues. "You don't strike me as the type."

One of Shouto's legs slides over his, pinning him in the sand. Fucker thinks he's subtle, but he's really not. Katsuki grins. "I'm just full of fuckin' surprises."

Shouto's mouth is inching closer. "I'm not complaining."

"Good. Cuz I got no problem bending you over and fucking your brains out right here, pretty boy."

Shouto's face fills his vision, nearing until he blots out the moon, the stars, everything but the twin wells of his eyes. His mouth brushes against Katsuki's, breath a feather against his lips. "Do it."

For a long time after that there's nothing but the roar of the waves.

---

The next few days are simple, sparkling like diamonds. Katsuki can't remember a time he was so content to simply be with someone — though, of course that's an oversimplification. He and Shouto do sit on the beach sometimes, but mostly they're fucking like rabbits.

In the empty house. On the sand. Even in the verdant, sun-filtered depths of the sea. They lose themselves in each other, glorifying in pure hedonistic joy. Katsuki has never felt so human. If only he could enjoy it completely.

Despite his contentment, he can't quite shake the feeling of wrongness. It's such a subtle thing, easily forgotten when he and Shouto are wrapped up, but it never disappears completely. That faint, looming pressure. There's a job you should be doing, it says, and though Katsuki counters it with Shouto's unwillingness to move on, it lingers over everything like a gauzy curtain.

He can feel it now more than anything. It's always closest in the quiet moments that he and Shouto have carved out in place of sleep. They're lying on the bed in the master bedroom having finished another marathon round of sex, listening to the wind whipping up off the ocean. Katsuki's eyes are shut. Though he can't dream, he's achieved something close to it; sinking deep into himself in meditation.

It's only when he finally opens his eyes that he notices that Shouto is no longer beside him.

Katsuki sits up. He looks around the empty room, confused. Where had Shouto gone? He gets up and wanders around the house, poking his head into each room. Nothing. Even in the yard there's nothing, and that's fucking weird. He'd been right there! How could Katsuki have missed him?

He calls Shouto's name then. First outside, then in. Maybe this is some kind of game Shouto's playing; an adult version of hide-and-seek. Maybe Shouto wants to feel pursued?

"Shouto?" He tries the living room again, beginning to feel uneasy.

"...suki?"

The faintest sound. Katsuki pinpoints the source instantly — the same bedroom he'd been in at the start.

Inside the room is still empty. He doesn't fucking get it. Where the hell—

"Katsuki?" Shouto's voice is whisper-thin. Katsuki kneels to see Shouto lying underneath the bed, sprawled in the same position they'd laid down in.

There's something wrong.

"Shouto?" He lifts Shouto through the bed, and Shouto feels far too limp in his arms. Katsuki cradles him, turning Shouto's pale face toward him. "What the hell happened?"

He tries to rest Shouto on the bed and fails. Shouto sinks right through, and this time his feet dip into the floor. He's not tangible enough. Katsuki carries him to a chair and situates Shouto on his lap, the only thing that seems solid enough to hold him. He cups Shouto's face, turning it towards him.

Shouto blinks up at him, dazed. "I feel… strange..."

He doesn't look right. There's something terribly off about him, and it takes Katsuki only seconds to spot it.

Shouto is fading.

While all souls are semi-transparent, they usually possess enough form to be mistaken for human at a quick glance. Exactly as Shouto had when they'd laid down. Now Katsuki can see his own hands clearly through Shouto, and the gossamer strands of Shouto's hair glimmer into complete translucency in the light.

And somehow… he knows. It comes to him in a flash, that weight he felt heralding an understanding borne of nothing but instinct: Shouto's soul is weakening.

The dead aren't meant to linger here. Without bodies they're nothing more than an echo on this plane. He's there to guide them along before anything can happen to them — though whether Shouto will become a ghost or dissipate like dust on the wind he doesn't know. But both options are far, far, worse than the one Katsuki can offer.

"I think I know what's wrong with you," he says, and red shards splinter in his chest.

Another slow blink. "What?"

He strokes Shouto's cheek. Soft, and still tangible. "Your soul can't handle staying here. You need to move on."

Shouto stares at him, uncomprehending. "But I'm not ready."

That fucking excuse again. Katsuki should have known it wouldn't be that easy, but the anger at his own blind willingness to accept it grates. He's such a fucking idiot.

"Well, what do you need to be ready?" Katsuki says. It sounds more like a snarl, but he can't help it. Still, his gut twists as hurt gleams into Shouto's eyes.

"Do you not want me here anymore?"

Katsuki shakes his head vehemently, a beast harried by flies. "It's not about that, Shouto!" Fuck. This is all happening too fast. Oh, fuck, he can't do this.

Shouto's fingers curl feebly around his arm. "Then what is it?"

"It's about—" Fuck. How can he explain this when he doesn't even fully understand it? "It's about you. You're a soul, and souls aren't meant to stay here. That's why I'm here. There's— there's something after. What it is I can't say, but I know that if you stay, you'll die. Your soul will die." The thought fills him with dark terror. "I'm not letting that fucking happen."

He's the reaper. The shepherd of souls. Even if he can't read the fucking rulebook, he's certain that letting one disappear forever is a major failing. But more important than that – no, most importantly—

He's Shouto's friend. He can't let him just end.

"But what about you?"

Katsuki looks at Shouto. "What about me?"

"You became a reaper, right? What about me? Can you make me one?"

"Fuck no." The rejection is out of his mouth before he even considers it. Shouto's face pinches.

"Trust me Shouto. You don't want to do this job." He caresses Shouto's cheek again, willing the hurt there to disappear. If only he could just show him the reality. "You remember the worst part of being a hero?"

Shouto nods. Of course he remembers. They all do. The weight of every life unsaved can crush even the most steadfast hero, but notifying the family is every bit as bad.

"Imagine that. Only it's every second of every fucking day. Or, nearly." He snorts bitterly. "If I'd have known what I was getting into I sure as shit wouldn't have signed up."

"But why sign up at all?"

Katsuki grinds his teeth, torn. He doesn't want to fucking get into this! They've talked about all kinds of shit over these last few days, but skated around the topic of him and his job. Shouto has been careful not to probe too deeply. But now— it's here. And he has to fucking say it. He has to fucking say it because Shouto has to know, to understand; Shouto can't make the same fucking mistake as Katsuki. He has no doubt that if Shouto really wanted it, he or Death could make it happen. Katsuki could reach into his pocket and pull out a notebook identical to his own and pass it along. But he isn't going to do it.

He takes a deep breath, stirring the emptiness within. "Because I'm fucking scared!"

Katsuki's most shameful secret comes out in a hot rush. Fuck. He thought if he said it quickly it would hurt less; ripping off the bandage before his brain has a chance to register it. A fat load of shit that is. It hangs between them like a raw and beating heart, spilling his anguish between them.

In the silence Shouto watches him. Katsuki finds it nearly impossible to meet his eyes, afraid of the censure he'll find there. It's only a faint pressure on his cheek that does it, urging his face down.

"It's okay, Katsuki."

Shouto's touch is feather-light. Katsuki reaches up to cup the back of Shouto's hand, feeling his whole soul breathing through that contact. "I'm scared too. That's why I haven't gone."

Katsuki threads their fingers together. "Is that the only reason?"

He has the sneaking suspicion that, while that might have been Shouto's reason at first, something much more tangible is keeping him here now.

"No. You are too."

Fuck. He's been such a damn fool. Helping Shouto tether himself to earth when he should've been teaching him to let go. "Shit, Shouto. I really fucked up."

Shouto's hand squeezes his, suddenly forceful. "Don't say that."

"Well, it's true! It's my job to help people get out, not keep them here!" He grimaces. "But, whatever. It's happened. And… I don't fucking regret it. Not yet, anyway. But I will if you end up vanishing or turning into a damn ghost or something!"

"A ghost?" Shouto's eyes gleam with interest. "Could I stay here as one? How do you do that?"

"Absolutely fucking not."

Another flash in Shouto's eyes, this time annoyance. "I think that's my decision, isn't it?"

"You are not sticking around as a goddamn ghost!"

That was the wrong thing to say. Shouto tears his hand out of Katsuki's, nearly rolling out of Katsuki's hold before Katsuki snags him around the shoulders. "Why the hell not? If it means I can stay—"

Katsuki cuts him off. "Shouto, being a ghost is worse than going through the damn door!"

"How am I supposed to know that? You haven't said anything about it!"

This is all going so fucking wrong. Shouto's dying, upset, and now he wants to be a fucking ghost. He's drifting further and further from Katsuki's grasp, and Katsuki doesn't know how much time he has left before Shouto disappears outright. He has to convince him!

"Fine," he says. "You wanna know how I turn someone into a ghost? I got one rule as a reaper: never force a soul to come unwillingly. A ghost is what I get when I break that rule."

Shouto's brow is still creased, but he's not actively resisting Katsuki's hold anymore. Better. But he has to hear everything.

"I made a ghost once. Got called to take the soul of some shitty abuser."

He can see it clear as day. Manifesting in the middle of a kitchen amidst a mess of smashed plates, squashed food, and blood. A woman huddled against the cabinets. A man sprawled on the floor. The gleaming silver handle of a knife sticking out from between his ribs.

"He was screaming at her while she was on the phone with emergency services. Didn't even fucking care that she couldn't hear him, and he wouldn't shut up. I got pissed. Didn't have as much patience then as I do now, especially not for shits like him."

And secretly, hadn't he been pleased? A shitty damn person had gotten his comeuppance, and a long time coming too if the woman's bruises and the numerous holes in the wall were anything to go by.

"So I grabbed him. When I did I—" Katsuki pauses, unsure of how to say it. "I… well, normally the door doesn't come unless the person willingly touches me. Or— not just a touch, they're ready. It's like a trigger. But this time, I felt it when I grabbed his arm. So I did what I normally do — opened the door, but this time I tried to throw him in."

Again, he pauses. The next bit is what gets to him, horrifying even after so long.

"What happened?" Shouto asks. He's turned back to Katsuki, all anger forgotten.

"As soon as he went through he changed." Katsuki frowns. "Normally when people go through, they disappear, then the door closes. This time he went through and came out on the other side. But when the door closed he…"

Fuck. How can he explain what had happened? How the man's skin had run like candle wax, dripping off bone and muscle in thick globs. How he had faded. He'd become something indistinct like Shouto, but horribly disfigured. How he had rounded on the woman, descending on her like a frenzied shark, only to pass right through.

The phone had sparked in her hand. She'd jumped and looked around, dropping it. Katsuki had seen her breath condense into fog on the suddenly-frozen air.

"He changed. I can't explain it. It was like he'd been stripped of everything but every evil, shitty impulse, and he could make her feel it. I tried to stop him, but I couldn't touch him anymore. And before I could try anything else I got kicked to the next job."

And of course there had been what he'd seen in the notebook. No checkmark there, only the man's name blacked out in a mess of rough scratches.

"So, yeah, you could be a ghost. But you won't be able to stay with me, and you'll exist only to hurt everyone around you."

He can see the truth dawn in Shouto's eyes, and the finality is like a book slamming closed. At last he understands. So why doesn't it make him feel better?

Shouto is limp, slumped in his arms. Katsuki lets the silence spin out, vibrating inside with terrible anticipation. Any second. Any second Shouto could disappear. Please, he prays, offering up a silent plea to whatever fucking powers exist. Please don't be too late.

Finally, Shouto speaks. "If I go, what are you going to do?"

Katsuki huffs, bitterly amused. Shouto is always so fucking worried about him; it would be annoying if it wasn't so genuine. "The same thing I've been doing. But don't fuckin' worry about me, I've gotten used to it. I can handle it."

Another silence. Shouto touches his face again, and Katsuki, weak dumbass that he is, can't help but lean into it. "I don't want you to be alone."

"M'gonna be alone one way or another," Katsuki says. The sound of that is disgustingly edgy though, so he adds, " I'd feel a hell of a lot better knowing I helped you, though."

Quiet again. It's where Katsuki lives anymore, strung between one long silence and the next.

"... Okay. I'll do it." Shouto seems to wilt in his arms at the declaration, but relief sweeps through Katsuki, tightening his throat until he can scarcely think. Thank god.

"Alright." He shifts Shouto's weight fully to one arm, offering his free hand. "Whenever you're ready."

There's a queer sense of inevitability at Shouto's resigned expression. Of rightness. Shouto had died first in the hospital surrounded by his family. Now he will go again, this time in the quiet, sun-drenched bedroom of Katsuki's childhood. No friends. No family. There is only Death and the soul he must release.

Shouto's hand approaches, then stops with a bare centimeter of space between them. He looks ready to say something, but instead he swallows, then closes the gap, tangling their fingers together.

In Katsuki's mind something clicks.

He doesn't have to look up to know the door has appeared. It's reflected in Shouto's pale eyes, which have gone wide and fearful.

"It's okay," he reassures, squeezing Shouto's palm. "You're gonna be okay."

Inside he's disintegrating, but this he has some practice with. Strong emotions were one of the first things he'd learned to ignore. Ten fingers, ten toes. The crystalline fractals of bones beneath his skin. Katsuki is human in shape only. Forget attachment. Forget pain. Shed your humanity; there is only responsibility.

That's right. He is the reaper, and he has one last duty to Todoroki Shouto.

Katsuki raises his head. There before them is Shouto's door, and the only one he's ever recognized. It belongs to Shouto's family home; a set of handsome red mahogany double doors.

He can't put Shouto down, so Katsuki releases Shouto's hand, tucking arms underneath Shouto's legs and back to heft him bridal-style. He approaches, tucking Shouto against his hip to free up one arm. Katsuki reaches for the handle.

"Wait!" Shouto's arms cling tight around his neck, freezing him.

"What?"

Now Shouto's legs are around his waist, squeezing so ferociously Katsuki doesn't need to support him at all. "What's on the other side?"

Ah. This again; the only question he can never answer.

"I don't know. I told you before, all it looks like to me is nothing. But most everyone seems to be pretty happy about whatever's in there."

"Is it Heaven?"

Katsuki ponders. "Maybe? I think sometimes people see family there. Others just say it's beautiful." He strokes Shouto's back in long, even sweeps, the same motions he uses to calm frightened children.

"So if there's Heaven, that means there's Hell too?"

"I guess." It's as good a hypothesis as any. Not everyone is happy to move to the other side, but they seem unable to stop themselves.

Shouto buried his face in Katsuki's neck. When he speaks the sound is muffled, almost inaudible, but Katsuki can feel the shape of the words there.

"What if I go to Hell?"

There's a rush of something then, a feeling breaking through the dam he's so carefully constructed. It's fondness and surety, pain and loss. The bittersweet balance of love.

Katsuki coaxes Shouto's face up, turning it towards his.

"You won't." He kisses Shouto then, breathing the words against the damp well of his lips. "You'll be fine."

A beautiful gift, their time together. One last taste of life's sweetness; rapture on earth as there is in heaven.

This time when he reaches for the door, Shouto does not stop him.

The familiar black billows out to him, a cloud of malevolence made enormous by the size of the aperture. Both doors had opened, though he'd only pulled the handle of one. He hardly cares. Katsuki's attention is focused on Shouto.

And there it is. Shouto's expression softens, fear melting away, and with it Katsuki's lingering tension. He's made the right choice.

"Put me down," Shouto breathes. Katsuki does, gingerly, afraid Shouto might fall — but he doesn't. His feet meet the floor solidly, and he pulls away from Katsuki's arms.

Shouto walks away. In the emptiness Katsuki's soul yearns for him, his whole body wanting to twist itself at unnatural angles. Terrible pressure squeezes his chest, gravity as powerful as a neutron star.

Shouto pauses, one step over the threshold. He looks back at Katsuki, a young and vibrant shell surrounded by darkness.

"Come with me."

Shouto's hand thrusts out toward him, once again strong and opaque.

Katsuki can only stare at it.

"Come on!" Shouto insists. His voice sounds fainter.

Go? With Shouto?

The thought is too strange for him to grasp.

"I know you're scared, but listen to me! You will be fine!"

His own words echo back to him in Shouto's voice, which is fainter still. Katsuki looks up from the extended hand to see Shouto being swallowed by creeping tendrils of blackness, half of him gone.

Go? Into that?

His greatest fear stares him in the face, darker and more mysterious than ever. It has nearly all of Shouto now.

"Katsuki!"

He lunges. Katsuki catches Shouto's trailing fingers. Shouto's grip meets his, twines, holds fast.

Katsuki is pulled into the darkness.

---

In an empty room twin doors close and vanish. On the floor where they stood: a small black book. There in the midday sun it shrivels, seeming to sigh, then crumbles into dust.