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The silence in Recovery Wing 3B isn’t empty.
It’s heavy. Full. Thick with every word they’ve never said.
Izuku breathes in shallow bursts, bandages crawling up his arms like vines. He looks better than he did a week ago—less dead, Bakugou thinks bitterly—but still not right. Still too pale. Still not fucking okay.
And Bakugou hasn’t left the chair beside his bed. Not once. Not since they dragged Deku in, unconscious, dripping in blood that wasn’t just his own.
The chair creaks when he shifts, arm aching from a deep bruise he won’t let the nurses touch. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Deku’s alive.
That’s all that matters.
“You’re staring again,” Izuku murmurs. His voice is scratchy, half-broken from screaming. It makes something sharp twist in Bakugou’s chest.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Bakugou mutters, but he doesn’t look away.
Izuku cracks a smile. Small. Crooked. Real.
“You haven’t slept.”
“Neither have you.”
A pause.
“…I couldn’t. Not without—”
“Yeah.” Bakugou cuts him off before he can say it. Not without you. He knows. He feels it too. That gaping hole in the middle of his chest where Izuku almost didn’t come back.
He swallows hard, jaw clenched. Then, quieter:
“You didn’t have to fight him alone.”
Izuku closes his eyes. “I did.”
“You didn’t,” Bakugou says again, this time with something softer in his voice. Not anger. Not blame. Just ache. “You just didn’t want me to see what it did to you.”
Silence.
Then, barely a whisper:
“I couldn’t lose you again.”
Bakugou’s heart stops.
Izuku’s hand moves across the sheets, slow, hesitant—until it bumps against Bakugou’s. He doesn’t pull away.
Bakugou stares down at their hands. His is shaking. He doesn’t remember when that started.
“I came back, Kacchan,” Izuku says. “I’m here.”
“Yeah. You did.”
And then—so quiet, so unbearably soft—it’s not really meant to be heard:
“I’m sorry.”
Bakugou swallows.
“I know.”
He threads their fingers together.
And for the first time in weeks, Izuku sleeps.
It’s two days later when they’re discharged. When the silence of 3B is replaced by the emptier, colder silence of a dorm that shouldn’t feel like home anymore.
The dorms look the same. But they’re not.
The floor creaks differently.
The walls echo louder.
Too much of the world has ended for it to be the same place.
Bakugou watches as Izuku lingers in the common room, eyes flicking over the couch where Kaminari bled out for six minutes before they got to him. The corner where Shinsou dropped to his knees and didn’t get back up for hours. The couch blanket Iida used to wrap Jirou’s leg.
“Feels weird being back,” Izuku says, voice soft.
Bakugou doesn’t answer. His throat’s too tight.
His room is across the hall from Deku’s. Always has been. Always will be. But somehow, now, it feels wrong.
They say goodnight like normal people. Like they’re not both seconds from breaking.
It’s 2:13 AM when Bakugou gives up pretending.
He doesn’t knock.
Just opens the door and slips inside like he’s done it before. Like it’s his right. Izuku’s not asleep anyway—he’s sitting on the floor with his back against the bed, a hoodie draped over his knees, hands clenched in the fabric like he’s holding himself together.
He doesn’t flinch.
“I figured,” is all Izuku says.
Bakugou doesn’t explain. He just lowers himself down beside him. Close. Closer than he has any right to be. Their shoulders touch.
They sit like that for a while.
The light from the hallway spills in just enough to see each other’s outlines. Izuku’s eyes are wide, red-rimmed, glassy. His hand trembles every few seconds. Bakugou doesn’t point it out.
“You remember what you said?” Izuku whispers.
Bakugou’s brow furrows. “I say a lot of shit.”
“No. After I… fell. After your apology.”
Bakugou goes still.
That moment feels like a knife still stuck between his ribs. The weight of Izuku in his arms. The way he collapsed—like he’d been waiting for permission to break. The way he whispered “I’m sorry” like it was everything he’d ever needed to say.
And Bakugou, useless and bleeding and shaking, whispering “I know.”
“I knew you’d catch me,” Izuku says. “Even before I fell.”
Bakugou closes his eyes.
“I thought I lost you,” he says. “I thought I was too late. Again.”
“I thought you died.”
Bakugou swallows. “I did.”
It’s not dramatic. It’s not metaphorical.
His heart literally stopped.
And the only thing he remembered before the darkness was Izuku. Screaming his name. Holding his hand. Eyes wide like the world was ending—because it was.
“I didn’t want to live without you,” Bakugou says, voice cracking. “And I didn’t want you to live without me either. Isn’t that fucked up?”
Izuku nods. “A little.”
Bakugou lets out a breath. It almost sounds like a laugh.
Eventually, he moves.
Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask.
Just crawls into the bed and shifts the blanket back.
Izuku stares.
“You serious?”
Bakugou doesn’t answer. Just looks at him.
And it’s all there. The fear. The love. The need.
So Izuku crawls in too.
They lay like statues for a moment, backs touching, breathing careful.
Then Izuku turns. Slowly. Quietly. And curls into Bakugou’s chest like he belongs there. Like it’s the only place he’s allowed to exist now.
Bakugou wraps an arm around him. He doesn’t speak.
Izuku whispers, “Don’t go anywhere.”
Bakugou doesn’t answer. He just holds him tighter.
He won’t.
And when the morning light hits their window, they’re still there.
Twisted in blankets. Fingers tangled. Breathing in sync.
They didn’t say “I love you.”
They didn’t have to.
They said it in every breath.
In every silence.
In the space between I’m sorry and I know.