The late afternoon sun dripped gold over the neighborhood. The air smelled like summer—like cut grass and sunbaked pavement. Katsuki wasn’t one for nostalgia, but today something about it stuck in his chest.

You’d always been the one who pulled him away from his own storm clouds, who made the world feel lighter, like it wasn’t always a battlefield. You’d been best friends since you were kids, growing up in houses right next to each other, backyards separated only by a crooked wooden fence. It had been your shared world—forts made of old sheets, fireflies trapped in cupped hands, scraped knees and whispered secrets in the dead of night.

Now, years later, not much had changed, except for the fact that you two were dating.

You were sat on the fence between your yards, swinging your legs, an orange popsicle dripping sticky trails down your wrist. Katsuki leaned against the old oak tree, arms crossed, watching with an unimpressed expression.

“You’re disgusting,” he muttered as a drop of melted orange dripped onto your thigh.

You grinned, unbothered. “You’re boring.”

His eye twitched. “The hell’d you just say?”

You leaned forward, smirking. “You heard me.”

He bristled, ready to bite back, but then you hopped off the fence and took off across the yard, bare footed. “C’mon, Suki! Bet you can’t catch me!”

Tch. Stupid. Childish.

And yet—his legs were already moving.

The chase was a blur of laughter and taunts, your footsteps quick but not quick enough. When he grabbed your wrist at last, you yelped as both of you came tumbling down onto the grass in a tangle of limbs.

For a moment, neither of you moved, catching your breath beneath the open sky.

Then, you started laughing uncontrollably, the kind of laugh that shook through you and left you breathless. Katsuki huffed, lying flat on his back, the sun warm on his face.

“This is dumb,” he muttered but couldn't help but smile a little. Because the world felt quiet in a way it never did. For once, he let himself be seventeen, barefoot in the grass, you beside him.