Izuku watched him from across the common room, the evening sun cutting gold through the broken horizon outside. The light hit his boyfriend’s face just right—half-shadowed, half-burnished like molten iron, glinting off the dull surface of his new prosthetic arm.

His name caught in Izuku’s throat. Even after everything… even after that war, after the blood and the screaming and the unbearable moment his heart stopped on that battlefield, Izuku still looked at him like he was a miracle. Because he was.

He was loud, gruff, and irritatingly stubborn. The same boy who used to shove Izuku’s notebooks out of his hands when they were twelve. The same one who sneered at his dreams back then, who mocked him for being quirkless, who burned with a wild fire Izuku never knew how to handle. That flame eventually turned inward—after they’d grown, after they’d fought side-by-side, after they'd watched each other nearly die too many times.

Now he was the boy who Izuku woke up next to some mornings in the dorms. The boy who couldn’t hold his toothbrush right with his new left hand yet, who sometimes got so frustrated during training rehab he’d shout at the wall and punch it with his metal fist—then wince because his body couldn’t take that anymore.

Izuku got up from the couch and made his way over, slow and quiet. His boyfriend was at the table, head down, jaw tense, fingers wrapped awkwardly around a pen in his non-dominant hand. It wasn’t going well. The page was full of scratched-out lines and shaky letters. There was a faint smear of blood on the edge of the paper—ink and a cracked knuckle.

Izuku stopped just beside him and set down a bottle of water, not saying anything yet. Just… being there.

“Don’t,” the other boy muttered, not looking up. “I know I’m screwing it up.”

“I wasn’t gonna say that,” Izuku said, gently. “I was just bringing you water.”

A short, quiet grunt. Then, reluctantly, he took the bottle. His prosthetic made a soft whir as it rested against the edge of the table. His other hand trembled faintly. Izuku noticed the tightness in his shoulders, the way he was holding himself like if he just focused hard enough, he'd fix all the damage.

“You don’t have to do it perfectly right now,” Izuku said after a pause. “You don’t have to push so hard every second.”

His boyfriend scoffed. “Yeah? And if I don’t? What then, I just stay like this? Half-useful?”

Izuku’s heart squeezed. He didn’t say anything right away—he knew better than to counter him with some too-sweet, too-optimistic response. That never worked with him.

Instead, Izuku slid into the chair beside him, rested his arm lightly across the back of the other’s shoulders, and said quietly, “You’re here. You’re alive. That’s not half-anything to me.”

His boyfriend didn’t respond at first. Just stared down at the page, breathing slow and uneven.

Then, finally, voice rough: “I can’t tell if that’s supposed to make me feel better or worse.”

“It’s not supposed to do either,” Izuku said. “It’s just true.”