Chapter 20: Reclamation
The hug was a tectonic shift. It was not gentle. It was all force and panic, Katsuki’s arms locking around Izuku’s torso, yanking him up from the chair and against his chest. It was something foreign to him but needed, a physical override for the emotional chaos. He held on like Izuku was the only solid thing in a dissolving world.
Izuku froze for a half-second, stunned. Then a broken sound escaped him, and his own arms came up, clutching fistfuls of Katsuki’s sweat-damp back. He buried his face against Katsuki’s neck, his shoulders beginning to shake.
They didn’t cry. It wasn’t that. It was a silent, violent tremoring, the release of a tension that had been winding tighter for days. Katsuki could feel every shudder that ran through Izuku’s frame, could feel the damp heat of his breath against his skin. He pressed his own face into the mess of green hair, his eyes squeezed shut, anchoring himself in the real, present scent of sweat and ozone and Izuku.
The heart monitors, still attached, recorded the frantic, synchronized rhythm. It didn’t matter. Nothing existed outside the desperate, wordless truth of that hold.
Minutes bled together. The tremors subsided, leaving behind a heavy, breathless calm. The embrace loosened, but they didn’t separate. Katsuki’s hands slid down to Izuku’s hips, fingers digging into the thin fabric of his underwear. Izuku’s palms flattened against Katsuki’s pectorals, over the sensors, feeling the thunderous beat beneath.
Katsuki pulled back just enough to look at him. Izuku’s face was blotchy, his eyes red-rimmed but clear. The awful, pitying mask from the vision was gone. This was just Izuku, wrecked and real.
“The balcony is ours,” Katsuki stated, his voice raw. “Not his. We take it back.”
“How?” Izuku whispered.
“Like this.”
Katsuki kissed him. It wasn’t gentle either. It was a claim, a correction. His mouth crashed against Izuku’s, all teeth and desperate pressure. Izuku met him with equal hunger, his lips parting instantly, a low groan vibrating between them. It was a fight for dominance that neither wanted to win, a messy, breathless tangle of tongues that tasted like salt and relief.
Katsuki walked him backwards, never breaking the kiss, until the backs of Izuku’s knees hit the raised edge of the narrow medical bed. He pushed. Izuku fell onto the stiff mattress, the paper sheet crinkling loudly under his weight. Katsuki followed him down, crawling over him, a predator reclaiming his territory. He ripped the sensor pads from his own skin, the adhesive pulling sharply, and tore Izuku’s off with the same brutal efficiency. The monitors flatlined with a continuous, piercing shriek. He ignored it.
His mouth left Izuku’s to travel down his jaw, his throat, biting and sucking at the skin over his pounding carotid. He needed to mark, to overwrite. Izuku arched into the bites, his hands flying to Katsuki’s hair, gripping the spiky strands.
“Kacchan,” he gasped, his voice shredded.
“Shut up,” Katsuki growled against his collarbone. “Don’t think. Just feel.”
His hands roamed with a violence that bordered on reverence, mapping the familiar landscape of Izuku’s body as if to confirm its reality. He palmed his chest, thumbed a nipple, slid down the quivering plane of his stomach to the waistband of his briefs. He hooked his fingers there and yanked, the fabric tearing at the seams. Izuku kicked them off the rest of the way, his legs falling open in a wordless, eager invitation.
Katsuki sat back on his heels, staring down at him. Izuku was sprawled on the sterile white sheet, flushed and hard, completely exposed in the cold blue light. The most beautiful fucking thing Katsuki had ever seen. And for a second, the seed’s poison tried to whisper: He pities this. He thinks you’re a savage.
“Look at me,” Katsuki commanded, his own voice tight.
Izuku’s eyes, dark and wide, locked onto his. There was no pity. There was hunger, trust, and a challenge. “What do you see?” Izuku breathed, throwing Katsuki’s own earlier question back at him.
“I see mine,” Katsuki snarled, and the whisper died.
He leaned down, taking Izuku’s cock into his mouth in one swift, deep motion. Izuku cried out, his hips jerking off the bed. Katsuki worked him with ruthless skill, his tongue circling the head, sucking hard, his hand gripping the base. The wet, obscene sounds filled the small room, louder than the forgotten monitor alarm. Izuku’s thighs trembled on either side of Katsuki’s head, his heels digging into the mattress.
“Fuck… Kacchan, I’m gonna… you gotta stop or I’ll…”
Katsuki pulled off with a pop. “No you won’t. Not yet.” He reached for the small medical supply cabinet bolted to the wall, yanking it open. Inside, next to bandages and syringes, was a tube of sterile lubricant. He grabbed it, tearing the cap off with his teeth.
He slicked his fingers, watching Izuku watch him, then pushed Izuku’s legs back towards his chest. He didn’t prep him slowly. He pressed one finger inside, then a second almost immediately, scissoring him open with a rough, efficient urgency. Izuku gasped, his back bowing.
“More,” Izuku demanded, his voice thick. “Don’t be gentle. I need to feel you. I need to know this is real.”
Katsuki added a third finger, fucking him with them, the squelch of the lube loud and filthy. He curled his fingers, searching, and Izuku shouted when he found the spot, his whole body seizing.
“There! Right there, fuck, please…”
Katsuki withdrew his fingers. He shoved his own underwear down just enough to free his cock, already leaking and painfully hard. He coated himself with the rest of the lube, his hand trembling slightly. He positioned himself at Izuku’s entrance, the head nudging against him. He looked down, meeting Izuku’s gaze. The green eyes were glazed, desperate.
“This is real,” Katsuki said, a final, grounding statement.
He shoved in.
He didn’t stop, didn’t pause, until he was buried to the hilt, sheathed completely in the tight, clutching heat. Izuku screamed, a raw, ragged sound that was pure ecstasy and pain. Katsuki held still for a moment, muscles corded, letting them both adjust to the brutal, perfect fullness.
Then he moved.
He set a punishing pace from the start, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in. The bed rattled against the wall with each thrust. Katsuki braced one hand by Izuku’s head, the other gripping his hip hard enough to bruise. The slap of skin on skin, their ragged panting, the creak of the bed—it was a symphony of reclamation.
“Is this what you wanted?” Katsuki grunted, pistoning into him. “This hard enough for you, Deku?”
“Yes! God, yes! More, don’t stop, it’s you, it’s really you,” Izuku babbled, his nails carving red trails down Katsuki’s back. Each sting was an anchor.
Katsuki fucked him like he was trying to destroy the ghost in the machine, to pound the last of the seed’ vile suggestions out of both of them. He leaned down, capturing Izuku’s mouth again, swallowing his moans. The angle deepened, and with every drive of his hips, he hammered against Izuku’s prostate.
Izuku was incoherent, chanting a mix of “Kacchan” and “please” and “right there” into his mouth. His cock, trapped between their sweat-slicked stomachs, leaked steadily. Katsuki could feel his own climax coiling, a white-hot wire tightening in his gut.
He reached between them, wrapping a fist around Izuku’s cock, stroking him in time with his thrusts. “Come for me,” he growled into Izuku’s ear. “Come all over yourself. Show me this is real.”
It was the permission, the filthy command, that shattered him. Izuku’s body locked up, his mouth falling open in a silent scream as he came, stripes of white painting his stomach and chest in hot pulses. The intense, rhythmic clenching of his body around Katsuki’s cock tipped Katsuki over the edge.
With a final, brutal thrust, he buried himself as deep as he could and came. It felt like a detonation, wracking his entire frame. He saw white behind his eyelids, his vision tunneling as he emptied himself inside Izuku with a guttural roar that was half-sob.
He collapsed forward, catching most of his weight on his forearms, his forehead dropping to rest against Izuku’s shoulder. They were both gasping, slick with sweat and come, utterly spent. Katsuki could feel Izuku’s heart hammering against his own, a frantic, living rhythm.
Slowly, the world came back. The cold air of the room on their heated skin. The persistent, annoying shriek of the disconnected monitors. The smell of sex and antiseptic, a bizarre, intimate cocktail.
Katsuki softened and slipped out. He rolled to the side, lying next to Izuku on the too-small bed, staring up at the acoustic tiles of the ceiling. Their shoulders touched. After a moment, Izuku’s hand found his, their fingers lacing together tightly.
The observation mirror remained dark. The silence, now that their breathing had steadied, was profound.
“The balcony,” Izuku said softly, his voice hoarse. “When I think of it now… the first thing I’ll remember is this. You. Here. Like this.”
Katsuki turned his head to look at him. Izuku was already looking back, a small, exhausted, but genuine smile on his swollen lips.
“Good,” Katsuki said. It was the only word that fit.
He knew the problem wasn’t solved. The seed’s effects might linger in subtler ways. The villain was still out there. But in this sterile, blue-lit room, on a paper-covered medical bed, they had taken something back. They had rewritten the ending of the memory with sweat, and pain, and a bruising, honest truth.
The monitors kept shrieking their empty alarm into the empty observation room. Neither of them moved to stop it. Not yet.
Not yet.
The singular, incessant tone of the flatlined monitors was a physical presence in the room, a scream of void data. Katsuki found he didn’t hate it. It was proof. It was the sound of their vitals going off the rails together, a shared failure of clinical observation. It was better than the soft, treacherous beeping that had tracked them toward the poison. Izuku’s hand was warm and solid in his.
He turned his head on the stiff pillow, the paper sheet rustling. Izuku was already looking at him, his expression soft in the blue gloom, the ghost of his smile lingering. The frantic energy had bled away, leaving a profound, weary stillness in its wake. The sweat on their skin was cooling.
Izuku shifted, his movements slow and tentative. He turned onto his side, facing Katsuki, and carefully, as if moving through a field of broken glass, he curved his body into the space beneath Katsuki’s arm. He tucked his head against Katsuki’s shoulder, his nose pressing into the hollow of his collarbone. A sigh, deep and shuddering, escaped him, fogging against Katsuki’s skin.
Katsuki let him. His arm, which had been lying at his side, came up and around Izuku’s back, his hand settling heavily between his shoulder blades. He held him there, the weight an anchor. Izuku’s breathing evened out, growing deep and slow. His eyes drifted shut, the tension finally leaching from the lines around them. The frantic electronic shriek of the monitors seemed to stretch, then blur, fading into a distant, unimportant hum in the background of Katsuki’s awareness.
It was maybe two minutes later when the door’s locking mechanism clunked loudly, breaking the spell.
The heavy seal released with a sigh of equalizing pressure. The door swung inward, and the ordinary white light of the outer medical bay sliced into the blue dimness, outlining a tall, lean figure in the doorway. Aizawa stood there, one hand on the frame, his capture weapon lying loose around his shoulders. His dark eyes scanned the room with a single, sweeping pass that missed nothing: the torn sensors on the floor, the discarded tube of lube, the two of them tangled together on the disheveled medical bed, barely covered.
He didn’t look surprised. He looked monumentally, professionally tired.
“The alarm was disrupting communications on two floors,” he stated, his voice flat as slate. He stepped inside, letting the door hiss shut behind him. The overhead lights flickered on, harsh and clinical, burning away the intimate blue shadows. Izuku flinched, burrowing his face tighter against Katsuki’s neck. Katsuki didn’t move, but his grip on Izuku’s back tightened, a silent demand to stay still.
Aizawa’s gaze landed on the smeared white streaks across Izuku’s stomach and chest, then flicked to the obvious bite marks darkening on his throat. He said nothing about them. “The medical staff are insisting on a debrief. They believe the seed’s activation may have caused… uncontrolled physiological trauma.” A faint, almost imperceptible dryness tinged his last words. “I assured them you were both conscious and verbally responsive.”
Katsuki finally spoke, his voice gravelly from disuse and exertion. “We’re fine.”
“Clearly.” Aizawa walked over to the main console and with a decisive stab of his finger, silenced the screaming monitors. The sudden quiet was a shock. “Get cleaned up. There will be questions. The official report will state the trigger was successfully, and safely, activated and neutralized in a controlled setting. Any deviations from that story will create complications neither of you need.”
He turned to leave, then paused, looking back at them. His expression was unreadable. “The balcony memory. Is it salvageable?”
Izuku stirred at that, pulling back just enough to look at Aizawa, then up at Katsuki. Katsuki met his teacher’s gaze, his jaw set.
“It’s ours now,” Katsuki said, echoing his own words from earlier. “Different. But ours.”
Aizawa gave a single, slow nod. “Good. Debrief in thirty. Don’t be late.” He left, the door sealing behind him with a softer click than before, leaving them in the now-bright, silent room that smelled intensely of sex and consequences.
Izuku slowly extricated himself, sitting up with a wince. He looked down at the mess on his skin, a faint blush creeping up his neck. “We made… a lot of mess.”
“No shit.” Katsuki sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The cold air hit the sweat on his back, making him shiver. “Shower. Now.”
The quarantine room had a small, attached bathroom. They shuffled into the tight, tiled space. Katsuki turned the spray on, steam quickly fogging the mirror. They stood under the hot water together, not speaking, the simple act of washing away the physical evidence a ritual in itself. Katsuki’s hands were oddly gentle as he worked soap through Izuku’s hair, his fingers massaging his scalp. Izuku leaned into the touch, his eyes closed.
As the water sluiced the lather and the sweat and the come down the drain, Izuku spoke, his voice barely audible over the spray. “He’s going to make us file so much paperwork.”
A short, sharp bark of a laugh escaped Katsuki. It felt strange in his chest. “Fuck the paperwork.”
“They’ll know,” Izuku said, quieter. “The medical team. When they see the marks.”
Katsuki’s hand stilled on Izuku’s shoulder. He turned him around, water sluicing between them. He looked at the darkening bruises on Izuku’s pale throat, the red lines on his hips. “Let them know.” His thumb brushed over a love bite. “I don’t give a damn what they think.”
They toweled off with the thin, institutional towels. Their clothes, the simple underwear they’d arrived in, were unsalvageable, torn and stained. Aizawa, with his terrifying foresight, had left two sets of standard agency-issue grey sweats folded on a chair outside the bathroom door. They dressed in silence.
Looking at Izuku swimming in the bulky sweats, his hair a dripping dark mess of green, Katsuki felt a sudden, violent surge of possession. It wasn’t like before. It was quieter, deeper. It was the look of Izuku in his clothes, in this sterile place they’d somehow claimed, walking into a hallway where people would talk.
“Hey,” Katsuki said, stopping him with a hand on his arm before he could reach for the door. Izuku looked up, questioning.
Katsuki didn’t have the words. He never did. So he kissed him instead, a hard, brief press of lips that was more a punctuation mark than a sentence. A promise, or a threat, or both. When he pulled back, Izuku’s eyes were warm.
“Come on,” Katsuki muttered, turning toward the door. “We’ve got a fucking story to tell.”