Alamogordo, New Mexico

"Hnngh."

Katsuki grunted as consciousness walked up to him, slow and heavy and unpleasant. It felt like someone was sitting on his arms, two someones. Two power-up villains. Probably D-listers, like everyone else, but they must be somewhat decent to have pinned him.

He'd been pinned.

A gasp escaped Katsuki's dry throat as his eyes shot open, and his body shot up. And then the pain came crashing down on him. His arms felt like deadweights, fat dumbbells taped to his wrists and dragging them down, straining the muscles as they did. That was enough for him to remember where he was, despite the fact that he couldn't see anything.

The room had one red light shining from a television, and the red digits of an alarm clock proving that it was just after twelve am, but they did nothing to illuminate the room. And out the windows was pure darkness.

"Kacchan?"

Izuku's voice was quiet and crackly—definitely just roused from sleep.

"Shuddup," Katsuki groaned, trying to remember if they'd brought in his water from the car or if there was water in the room. He was pretty sure they weren't supposed to drink from the tap.

"I bough' you a cheeseburguh," Izuku mumbled, and even without seeing him, Katsuki could tell that his face was at least half pressed into his pillow from how garbled his speech was. He wondered how late Izuku had stayed up after Katsuki passed out.

"Don't want it," Katsuki grumbled as he rolled off the bed. He'd never managed to get under the covers, evidently, and they were still tucked military-style underneath him. There probably wasn't a single wrinkle on the comforter. He remembered that there had been a filtering pitcher next to the coffee maker, and despite its proximity to the toilet, Katsuki was going to make use of it.

Katsuki crackled a couple explosions in his hand to provide enough light to find the pull for the lamp on his bedside table. Even just that action awakened a new aching in his hands, but it wasn't so different from what he'd felt any time he had to use his quirk a lot. The pain wasn't all that bad, but they were stiff as hell.

The lamp barely illuminated past his bed, but it did light up the wrapped burger resting on his bedside table, cold and paper stained translucent with grease.

"It's just McDonald's, but they have a special chile burger here," Izuku claimed, sounding a bit more awake. "I had one and thought it was pretty spicy."

"Fine," Katsuki said as he shuffled over to the water. A drink and a meal wasn't a bad idea, since he'd completely missed dinner. But despite his best efforts to rehydrate, all that sweating and the dry, dry air had left him parched.

It felt amazing on his throat. Even with the filter, the water still tasted different from home, but damn, it had rarely been more ambrosial. Katsuki poured a cup for Izuku and placed it on Izuku's side table. Izuku was sitting half up, looking at Katsuki as he circled back over to the burger. He snatched it, his room key, and then a pair of shoes from his bag.

"Where're you going?" Izuku asked.

"Gonna let you sleep," Katsuki answered, toeing on his slides at the door before stepping back out into the desert.

And shit.

It was dark out in a way that it never was in Musutafu. In the city, any door you stepped out of had a wall just a few meters away. Oftentimes, that wall had some kind of illuminated sign, and it almost always had a streetlamp or two just in front of it.

Well, there were streetlights here, though fewer. There were neon signs, but more spaced out, though perhaps a bit larger. But there was so. Much. Sky.

And it was dark. In Japan, the sky was murky, like miso soup in a black pot. Slightly brown with only a few specks otherwise. Back at UA, there had hardly been a decent square of sky through all the trees.

But here. The sky was as dark as unconsciousness. The stars, plentiful as dreams. And brighter than Katsuki had ever seen.

"Damn," Katsuki said, perhaps a little irreverently as the greasy paper in his hands crinkled.

The burger was small, and cold, but now that Katsuki was standing, slightly more awake, he grimaced at the rumbling of his stomach.

It would have been better fresh. And warm. But damn. The tingle on his tongue wasn't anything to write the curry places home about, but it was sudden and it was decent. And even a wimpy little burger was delicious when you hadn't eaten since breakfast in the airport.

"Wow, it's beautiful."

A door squeaked closed behind him, and Izuku appeared beside Katsuki on the balcony. The wind swept his bed head and brought a chill to Katsuki's arms. The temperature had sunk with the sun. Now it was pleasant out, if even a little chilly.

No one was out. Every once in a while a car would pass by, but there wasn't a person to be seen outside but for the two of them. Not so much as a hero patrolling. It seemed this wasn't much of a walking town.

"Gonna wait till the afternoon to go back to the Missile Range?" Izuku asked.

Katsuki clenched his hands on the railing. They were still creaky, but another day of training wouldn't damage them. They'd just continue to ache a bit.

"Midday, yeah."

"Maybe we could go somewhere in the morning? Before it gets too hot?" Izuku suggested.

"Ain't nowhere to go here."

"No, there are definitely places to go," Izuku insisted. "There were lots of places on Google Maps."

"Places worth going to," Katsuki corrected. He'd be happy to eat a bite at some of Izuku's Google Maps pins—a place this boring was bound to have some tasty food. The people didn't have anything better to do.

"Someplace we can walk," Izuku added. "Maybe someplace with hiking. There are mountains, right? There's gotta be hiking."

That wouldn't be horrible. It'd be a leg workout before his arm and quirk workout.

"Maybe," Katsuki said. "Pretty sure this isn't your vacation, though."

"I didn't think it was yours either." Izuku's grinning teeth glinted in the starlight.

"Shithead," Katsuki grumbled, pushing Izuku's head away as he turned back inside. "Go to sleep."

Alamogordo, New Mexico

The rest of the night had been fitful. Katsuki and his body were both men of routine, and his circadian rhythm didn't like the time change any more than his bones liked the thick springs poking up against the supposed pillow-top mattress he rested on. He turned over, springs squeaking, only for Izuku's voice to cut through the morning.

"I figured out how to add us to the register!"

Katsuki's face was pressed flat into the motel pillow that smelled of the same dust that made up the rest of this dry, dead world. The room had blackout curtains, but the damn things weren't flat against the wall and Izuku had already turned on a lamp. He had to lift his neck to grumble out: "What?"

"To the roaming hero register," Izuku chirped, coming over to Katsuki's bed and sitting on it, presumably to show Katsuki his phone. "Obviously neither of us can teleport, but we're both really fast, so if anything happens in town, we'll get the alert, and maybe we'll get to handle the case. Or, at the very least, we'll get to meet the local heroes!"

"Great," Katsuki mumbled, rolling over and knocking Izuku off the bed.

"Oof—Kacchan!" Izuku groused as he got back on the bed, forcing the phone in Katsuki's nose. "I signed you up too, you just have to download this app and then you'll get the notifications."

"Why do I need the app when you're stuck to my hip like a barnacle?"

"Well, I guess that works too, but you know…"

Izuku trailed off as he got a notification on his phone. A text reading Miruko: How's it going?

Katsuki would have thought it was nothing. An annoying text by an annoying person, were it not for how Izuku immediately turned the phone away, the tips of his ears going redder than they already were from sunburn.

"Deku," Katsuki said. Just that. And Izuku crumbled like a D-list villain.

"I'm so sorry, Kacchan, Miruko didn't send me here just to catch you in the lie. She wanted me to make sure that you actually did take some time off, and didn't just work the whole time, so it's been my mission to make sure that you properly vacation, at least a little bit. I know I shouldn't have lied, please, Kacchan, I'm sorry."

Katsuki blinked. Izuku sniffled.

Katsuki laughed.

Here Izuku was, practically on his knees begging forgiveness for something that wasn't half as bad as what Katsuki had done in the past. Not a fraction. Not close to the worst either of them had done, really.

"Kacchan?" Izuku asked, looking up at Katsuki with those wide, stupid eyes.

"Honestly, I'm the idiot for not guessing that shit," Katsuki cackled. "Call my bluff? If Bugs Bunny wanted to do that, she woulda done it herself just to laugh in my face."

"So…you're not upset?"

"The White Rabbit should be the one upset," Katsuki continued. "Aside from maybe my parents, you've always been my worst enabler. She's late, she's very, very late."

"Okay, I'm glad you feel that way, because," guiltily, Izuku held up the car keys, "I've stolen these. We're not going to the Missile Range today."

Now that was a different matter entirely.

"The fuck?" Katsuki finally got out of bed, leaping up and making a lunge for the keys. Izuku easily sidestepped him.

"If you managed to get these from me, I'm not even sure you could hold them in your hands, Kacchan," Izuku said, slipping them into his pocket. He'd already changed out of his pajamas and was wearing an oversized pair of cargo shorts where the deep pockets alone were probably a quarter of his height. "I'm happy to train with you, but just because this is a good opportunity doesn't mean I'll help you overuse your quirk."

"You're one to talk, hypocrite," Katsuki snarked, lunging again for the pants. If Izuku thought putting them there meant they were safe, he had another thing coming. "My hands are fine."

And they were. They were stiff and sore, but they were fine.

"I know it's hypocritical, and that's exactly why I'm the person who should be saying it," Izuku said, sidestepping again. If he really thought Katsuki was a threat, he'd bind him with Blackwhip, but he wasn't even doing that. Bastard.

"Okay, if you're the big man in charge, then what's your brilliant idea?" Katsuki asked.

"I want to take a day trip," he offered, holding both hands up in the air, like a criminal claiming giving himself up for surrender.

"Where?" Katsuki punched into his suitcase, searching for a tank top to tear over his head.

"Up in the mountains," Izuku said. "Not hiking, we drive up there. It's cooler, not so much sun, there are shops and food. It'll be a break from the desert for a minute."

Katsuki narrowed his eyes. Not being in the desert for even a moment seemed appealing.

"Fine. But if it sucks, I'm blowing you off the mountain and that will be my training for the day."


Route US-82, Otero County, New Mexico

It was like he'd blinked and been sent to Hokkaido.

Obviously he hadn't been, because he was still in an oversized SUV with an animal head hood ornament, and damn Izuku was driving in the left seat. But being dropped onto this steep hill of conifer trees after having been in the desert not one moment ago was disorienting in its own way.

They were on a winding road up a mountain, one of the many they could see clearly from anywhere in the Tularosa Basin, but everything that wasn't a house or a cow farm or the road itself was filled with pine trees. Dark, viridian evergreens that provided the first speck of natural color that wasn't brown or the damn sky that Katsuki had seen since his arrival on this side of the world.

"It doesn't feel any better on this side," Izuku said, white-knuckling it as the road corkscrewed up the mountain

"I don't care, if you skid off the road here, you'd better be ready to whip out One For All to save us, otherwise I'm gonna kick your ass."

"I would, Kacchan." Izuku declared. "But it won't come to that."

"I'm serious. I remember learning with you, and of all our bad memories, that one's definitely up there."

Since the legal driving age was eighteen, it had been a part of the UA curriculum in their third year. It was an important skill for heroes, especially any who would be sent abroad. And Izuku—and most of their classmates—had been a nightmare at it. Katsuki, of course, had gotten top marks. Well, second behind Glasses, who drove the exact speed limit and nothing else.

"I'm keeping my skills sharp," Izuku promised, narrowing his eyes with fresh determination, flicking his eyes between his speed gauge, mirrors, and back at the road. It was the same look he got when he was getting ready to spar, or planning a villain takedown, or anytime Katsuki punted a challenge his way. If he wasn't punting it right back, he was swallowing it down, determined to do his best with it.

Katsuki looked away, that expression making his fingers tingle more than they already were.

"You better be, or else I'm taking those keys back."

Izuku was never the best at something the first time he did it—as a kid that had always surprised Katsuki, who often was the best at something the first time out. But in high school, it became rare that Izuku failed at anything. There was no way he'd ever steer this car off the road, especially with Katsuki in it with him.

"Oh no, there's a tunnel ahead. Check and make sure there aren't any turns, Kacchan. I don't wanna lose signal," Izuku said as he white-knuckled the steering wheel.

"Turn where?" Katsuki grumbled as he checked the map anyway. The highway was winding, alright, but it wasn't turning. It was more or less one road all the way up. "No turns."

After Katsuki steadied the phone back in its holder, he stretched out his fingers, popping the knuckles, hoping to feel some relief in between, but it didn't come.

It was only a short tunnel. The signal on his phone did dip, but that could have been from the altitude as much as the dinky tunnel. The town they were going to was apparently a good two-and-a-half kilometers above sea level. Katsuki's ears had already popped once.

"Ooh, it looks like there's an artisanal shop ahead!" Izuku said, catching sight of a weathered, handmade sign off the side of the road. It had a mascot with a giant apple for a head. "We should turn off!"

"Well, you're the one who's basically kidnapped me, so I guess we have to."

Even as Izuku looked out the windshield, the constant array of pine making his eyes that much greener, Katsuki could see them soften into sadness.

"Not your funniest joke, Kacchan."

Izuku's foot must have fallen off the gas pedal, because their speed suddenly began decreasing rapidly up the incline. The car might not have been in neutral, but Katsuki wasn't convinced it wouldn't just decide to start going the way gravity intended anyway.

"If you really don't wanna do any of this, I'll take you back to the hotel, even back to the Missile Range," Izuku continued, his voice low. It always fell so deep when he was serious, bright and high as bells when he was excited. "I know I'm supposed to be making you vacation, but I won't make you do anything. I wouldn't assume that I could."

"You can't," Katsuki emphasized, putting a hand on Izuku's knee and pressing it hard, trying to get him to depress the pedal. "Just hit the gas and keep going, and we'll go to the apple frenzy, okay?"

"Are you sure?"

Katsuki pressed down harder. "Don't make me say it again."

Izuku put his foot back on the gas and the car revved underneath them, engine working overtime to get back up to the modest speed they'd been going.

"Okay, Kacchan."

Katsuki took his hand back and settled back in his seat, arm crossed. He mumbled, "Next time you're driving, I get explicit veto so that you don't go and get confused."

It only took a few more minutes and one hell of a sudden turn off to reach the shop that resembled an oversized cabin more than anything. It was made of wood, like it had been built from the very land it stood on. Perhaps it had been, for all Katsuki knew.

"Ooh, apple cider, pie, fudge!" Izuku exclaimed, reading the signage aloud like Katsuki was blind. "I've never had fudge before!"

"Yeah, sugar that sticks to your teeth," Katsuki said, kicking the car door closed. "Great."

"C'mon, it's worth a try!"

They hiked up wooden steps and a wooden wraparound deck to the wooden shop, and when Katsuki stepped in, he was immediately disoriented. The smell was sweet. Auntie Inko's hot chocolate sweet, first bite of birthday cake sweet. But in a land that wanted for everything but space, the shop was packed tighter than the smallest corner conbini Katsuki had ever seen. There were barrels—yes, barrels—of tchotchkes, collectibles, and novelty items. Somehow the middle of nowhere had sprouted a tourist trap. And worse than a tiny conbini, this place was packed with tourists.

"Deku," Katsuki hissed, but Izuku was already on the move, following the sweet smell as doggedly as he'd followed Katsuki to this dried-out county.

The food area was the most crowded, so Katsuki walked the other way, looping between the racks of socks illustrated with chiles and aliens, the keychains with all the hundred most popular American names. The closest to Katsuki was Katelyn. He passed them right by, trying not to brush anything off their given racks and shelves with his broad shoulders. He'd never be able to find where to put them back.

There was so much red, white, and blue in the shop that he almost missed it. But there, among the American flag bandanas and American flag sunglasses and American flag beer koozies was a series of hero figurines. Mostly Americans, he assumed, but amongst the assault of capitalistic patriotism was a single All Might. In a cowboy hat. It was a good twenty-five centimeters and well painted. The hair wasn't overly defined and the iconic smile wasn't overdrawn or creepy. It was the good stuff.

Hell.

Katsuki looked back at Izuku, who was holding up a number on both hands as he ordered at the front of the food line. The checkout for the tchotchkes was on the other side of the store.

Fucking hell.

Katsuki snatched up the All Might, the feeling of gripping him by his tiny hat-clad head somewhat rewarding as he remembered being thrown into a building by the guy back at UA. And if there was a jar of pickled chiles that he snatched up on the way to the register, well, who could blame him?

"Kacchan, I got the fudge! Ooh, did you get something too?"

"I got my business, and the receipt said that it's none of yours," Katsuki said, trying to force down the heat rushing to his ears. He distracted Izuku with a swipe towards his pocket, managing to fit his fist into the gaping cargo shorts opening and snag the car keys. "My turn to drive."

Izuku must not have seen any use in fighting, because he didn't even try for keys. Even though Blackwhip would have been easy, even in the crowded shop. Not that Katsuki would have made it easy for him, but still, any fight Izuku wanted to have, he had.

Katsuki questioned his decision as soon as he turned the key in the ignition. Just that little bit of grip and fine motor control set off a twinge in his hand that was definitely ignorable, but not exactly good news either. Before he was even backing out of the parking space, Izuku was opening his paper box of treasures, and soon the car took on the scent of the shop. It followed them just like the sand and the dust and everything else in this town.

When they were pulled back on the main road and the GPS was set back up, the caramel scent grew even stronger as a cube of brown suddenly appeared in front of Katsuki's mouth.

"Eat, Kacchan!"

Katsuki recoiled, knocking his head against the headrest. "Hey, I'm not eating anything I don't know!"

"It's fudge!" Izuku repeated, as though that held hardly any of the relevant info. Ingredients, nutrition info, flavor for Pete's sake. Though, even out the corners of his eyes, Katsuki could see it was chocolate. "C'mon, Kacchan, it's vacation. The point is to try new things. You not brave enough to try strange American food?"

Katsuki gripped the wheel until his joints creaked. He was being played. Izuku wasn't above it, and he'd used it enough on Katsuki for him to have caught on ages ago.

But damn if knowing the trap's right in front of him was the same as avoiding the trap.

"Good luck using Air Force again when I bite your fingers off with it."

"A risk I'm willing to take," Izuku said as he held up the chocolate to Katsuki's lips.

Izuku was nothing if not devilishly fast, so Katsuki didn't get more than a graze of his teeth against Izuku's thumb and forefinger as they quickly retracted from his mouth. And then his teeth sunk into the thick, rich, sticky fudge.

"It's horrible," Katsuki said immediately. "Like an American movie in a mouthful."

"Impossible to choke down with how sweet it is?" Izuku asked, popping his own piece in his mouth.

"Exactly."

"Mm, it's not very good," Izuku agreed. "It needs pop rocks or chili flakes to be like the movies you like."

"Or some TNT," Katsuki said, doing his best to swallow. Honestly, some cayenne probably would make it better. Some matcha, coffee, charcoal, anything to make it a little less sweet. If Katsuki could get his hands on that kitchen, he could make it fan-fucking-tastic for anyone who had a more complex palate than an American child. "Gimme some water."

Izuku grabbed Katsuki's bottle—the cooler was still in the back, full as if they were going to train—and opened it for Katsuki before handing it over. Even just gripping the bottle didn't feel great, so Katsuki kept the third knuckles of his fingers from wrapping completely around the body. When the sickly sweet taste was mostly washed from his mouth, he thrust the bottle back at Izuku and scraped his tongue against his teeth to clear the last of the flavor away.

"Kacchan, give me your hand."

"Hah?"

Katsuki turned away from the road to catch Izuku looking at Katsuki firmly, one of his own hands outstretched. Izuku reaching out. He fell straight into the well-worn memory that image provided.

He stared at Izuku long enough that the car's right tires hit the rumble strips on the side of the road, saving Katsuki from running off into the mountain's cliff face as he fisted both hands on the wheel. But it didn't matter, because Izuku reached further anyway, wrapping his index and middle fingers under Katsuki's wrist.

"Loosen your grip," Izuku instructed as he began pressing into the tendons, rubbing in a small circle.

"I'll loosen the grip your neck has on your skull."

"Kacchan," Izuku said patiently. "Your hands are overworked. It's obvious. I'm just trying to massage the tension out of the muscles a bit."

Slowly, silently, Katsuki slipped his right hand off the wheel, resting on the console between the two of them. Izuku's went with it, his thumb creeping up and pressing into the heel of Katsuki's palm like he was inking his thumb print firmly for a crime.

It took more than a little control for Katsuki to keep his groan behind his teeth. It tasted torturously sweet with the hint of fudge still resting on the back of his tongue. The ache that worked under Izuku's thumb was too strong for such a small muscle.

As Izuku continued, Katsuki's hand warmed up in his. No sweat, no threat of ignition of course, just the warmth that built between two bodies out of nothing. The skin-on-skin contact that saved lives in the cold, even with no other heat source. It ran a flush up Katsuki's neck, steaming out the top of his ears. When he had to pull his hand away for a hairpin turn, Izuku let go, and the warmth went with him.

And the new cold followed Katsuki to the tip of the mountain. When they parked and Katsuki stepped out of the car, he shivered.

"It's fifteen degrees," Izuku said, tossing Katsuki a flannel from the back of the car.

Fifteen was nearly half what it had been in the valley, and though that wasn't especially cold at all, the temperature difference was a shock. The cloud cover overhead was thick and dark, exerting its oppression over the town that had dared build up so close to it.

"What's there to do here?" Katsuki asked as he eyeballed the wooden buildings forming a row of establishments. It looked like a strip mall that the second little pig might have built just before the big bad wolf blew it down. Or maybe just after.

"Shopping, I guess," Izuku said, swinging on his own jacket. "There are supposedly a lot of artisans up here."

Once UA had returned to something resembling normal after the fall of All For One, and the place was no longer locked down or being used as a shelter, Class A had been encouraged to go on outings. To return to teenagedom by going to the movies, out for lunch, to the mall. Unless a really good food place had been on the itinerary, Katsuki had skipped them all, and never once regretted it.

His apartment had no art in it. He didn't want any. There wasn't any room in his suitcase for it, and he damn well wouldn't be doubling the price of any art piece by having to pay for a second suitcase to lug it to his 1DR apartment.

"Um, those windchimes look nice?"

Katsuki followed Izuku's gaze and he couldn't have stopped the scoff from escaping his lips if Izuku had slapped his lips shut with One For All 100%. Trust Izuku to find the most garish thing and match it to his aesthetic. One of the log cabins claiming to be a shop had giant copper windchimes hanging out the front with huge panes of stained glass dressing them like costume jewelry.

"Your taste is as stupid as your inability to keep a damn secret," Katsuki said. "If you wanna go back to the March Hare and tell her you vacationed the shit outta me, it'll behoove you not to let me blow my brains out in a crafts shop."

"Okay, noted," Izuku said, looking around in a circle. "There's supposed to be good barbeque here, but it's too early for lunch…"

He completed a full circle and then began walking a couple steps forward, squinting at the shops labeled The Bear Print and Old Stump Mall. If they'd been dropped in the middle of a paddy field in the Japanese mountains, it would have felt less rural than this place.

"There's, uh, hiking?" Izuku finally offered.

"Thank God," Katsuki said, opening the car door again to grab a hat and his water bottle. "Let's go."

There were a number of paths offered around the town, and none of them were crawling with people, at least not yet. It didn't seem as though people necessarily had to get out early to beat the heat in this town. So they chose one equally as pine-filled as the rest, and after only a few meters into the woods, they'd left the neighborhood behind entirely.

The air was crisp up there. Not quite as dry as down in the valley, and Katsuki wasn't thirsting for water every second. But where it was cold and pleasant, it was also thin. The kind of thin that made your chest as heavy as it made your head light. But the plodding thump of his heart made him feel good, like he was working harder than he was.

"I can almost imagine I'm back in Japan," Izuku mused as he touched his hand to a tree. "It's not so different here."

"You didn't have to come out here if you were just gonna get homesick," Katsuki said.

"I'm not homesick," Izuku protested. "And besides, I wanted to come."

"Not just trying to score points with Bunnicula?"

"No," Izuku replied, quick and sharp as a branch snapping underfoot. "No, I just…haven't spent time with you in so long. And if I could also play a part in you having a good time while you were here, yeah, I wanted that too."

There was no memory that stuck out in Katsuki's mind as the moment that spending time with Izuku had changed from an annoyance to innocuous. Maybe even something to look forward to. Perhaps when a year of your time together is spent preparing for and battling in a war, it simply stops mattering. It cleans the slate.

"But I think I overestimated myself," Izuku continued, looking at the rocks, at the canopy of needles above them. His eyes nowhere near Katsuki. "I don't know what to do here. Or at home. What do you do with just…time?"

Katsuki said nothing. Began breathing a little harder out of his mouth as they continued forward, Izuku's pace increasing with each step.

"I don't shop. I don't play video games. I don't do sports or garden or fish. I'm a hero!" Izuku exclaimed, his voice an ax against the trees.

"And what do you do when you're a hero and no one needs saving," Katsuki finished for him.

"I volunteer," Izuku replied, as though it had been an actual question. "I watch the news, I analyze other heroes. I follow up with the people I've saved, and I follow up with the villains too, but…none of that is here."

They came to a clearing. A cliff's edge where none of the trees below had grown tall enough to block the view. Yet there were still eyefulls of sky, all that blue from the valley replaced with thick clouds full of the water the mountain stole from the desert below. It was the side of a hill with endless hills beyond, dappled with endless trees on endless land. The desert was nowhere in sight.

"That's where you've disappeared to all year?"

"I haven't disappeared, have I?" Izuku asked, sparing Katsuki a glance. "Maybe I have. I've been trying so hard not to disappear."

"Yeah, well, you did."

Maybe Katsuki had disappeared a bit too. Eijirou was always nagging him about being more social, but that had been the case even when they'd all lived together. Besides, if there weren't more jobs to do, there was always more training. Time in the gym and in sims and working other minutiae like reflexes, cognition, attention, memory. To be number one, he couldn't let any of that slide.

But what did it even mean to be number one in a world that was safe?

"I don't know either," Katsuki offered, voice falling off the cliff. "It's like my arm is always wound back for a punch, but there's nothing to hit."

Izuku chuckled, the sound magnified in the open air. "Never thought I'd find something Kacchan doesn't know."

Nobody teaches you how to take a vacation. How to have time off. Maybe more than not wanting a vacation, Katsuki just didn't know how to have one.

"Don't get smug about it," Katsuki retorted. "Not like you know either."

"I'm gonna learn," Izuku said, and suddenly, he was sitting down on the rock, legs dangling over the sheer edge. "Come. Kacchan, sit."

"Don't tell me what to do," Katsuki said, walking to Izuku's side but remaining on his feet, arms crossed.

"Does your hand feel a little better?"

Katsuki stretched both hands out, feeling a bit more creaking in his left than his right. He popped a couple light explosions with his right. Any louder and in this country, someone would think he had a gun. The explosions were easy, natural as ever. But they still stung between his knuckles, deep in the bones, even with the massage.

"Right's my dominant. Might just be handling it better."

"Kacchan."

Izuku's hand was out again. Katsuki didn't even have to look at him to know.

"It'll be easier to train tomorrow if you do."

Reluctantly, Katsuki let his hand slip from his ribs and dangle by his side. He didn't sit, didn't even look down at Izuku, but the warmth that came when Izuku took his hand contrasted against the rest of his body and sent a shiver down his back. There was a panicked voice in the back of his head shouting this wasn't what they did, this wasn't what they did. But Katsuki stomped it down and focused on the physical sensations. His muscles loosening and coming back home to him.

"You said we were hiking," Katsuki grumbled as Izuku grasped each finger one by one and pulled it firmly. His ring finger gave a delicious pop at the base joint and felt more open than it had since before the flight.

"We're doing nothing for a minute," Izuku said. A glance down showed his brows furrowed in concentration, as though it took most of his focus to remember.

"I didn't agree to that."

But he stayed anyway.