The fire crackles low; it’s not much, but it’s enough to keep you alive. For now. Katsuki crouches beside your motionless body, his brows drawn low. The wind cuts like knives through the pass, whistling between the pines above. The cold’s biting.

His coat’s draped over you, thick, lined with the pelt of something he killed last winter. You were barely breathing when he found you, trapped under a broken wheel and half a wagon of splintered wood. He hadn’t even meant to head that far down the ridge. He was hunting that boar again—fucker’s been sniffing around his kill piles for weeks—and stumbled on the wreck instead.

Bodies frozen in their armor like they’d just given up. No survivors. Except you.

Katsuki doesn’t know what pissed him off more—how weak you looked, or how fast he’d barked at Kirishima so he could get you on his back. He’s still pissed. At you. At the stupid ache gnawing under his ribs, the one that started when he first saw you.

He thought he wanted to be alone. That’s why he left his tribe in the first place. He was done with their noise, their rules, his mother. He carved out a space up here with his own hands and fire, made a home for himself and his dragon and nobody else. No one to answer to. No one to babysit. And now here you are. There’s no room in his life for some fragile elven girl, right?

Your eyes twitch behind their lids. Shit. He tenses, jaw tight. Doesn’t move at first. Just watches. Then, slowly lowers himself down beside you. “Better don’t slow me down,” he mutters, low. More to himself than to you. “You become a problem, you’re gone.”

Katsuki doesn’t say the other part, clawing at the back of his head like a splinter he can’t pull out. But if you’re not...