A/N: Sorry this chapter is so late. I was really busy the past few months :(

Also, rest assured, this is an actual chapter. This is not April Fools. I'm only releasing it on April Fools because I thought it'd be funny, considering this whole fic is a joke HA.

Also, final note: This chapter takes place in a world where coronavirus doesn't exist. (Sorry if the chapter is coming out at a bad time. It was always going to have this concept; I just published it at a not-great time). Please do not do any of the things Katsuki does in this chapter. Social distancing is good and stay safe everyone!

When Katsuki wakes up in the morning, something feels different.

Something feels strange.

Something feels not quite right.

He can't quite place what it is exactly, but it probably has to do with the [Special Event Unlocked. You have gained access to the Sick Uraraka CG Event.] pinging around in his head like his mind's a broken radio channel.

Wait.

Did the voice just say sick Uraraka?

Katsuki rubs his chin for a second.

Now, there are two options here. Either she's sick as in she's down with the cowfluenza, or she's sick because she's radical as fuck.

As Katsuki mulls over these two possibilities, he feels as if neither make sense. First of all, Uraraka is cool as fuck, so to say so wouldn't require a [Special Event] flag in his head. Second of all, because Uraraka's cool as fuck, that means it'd be impossible for her to contract a fever, right? Chill people don't get hot; that's counterintuitive.

Wait, did he just imply Uraraka's not hot? Because she is. Which means she's not...cool?

And so, even as the [Special Event] flag continues flashing behind his eyes like it's actively trying to induce a seizure in him, Katsuki chooses to ignore everything about it. After all, it's not like the voice in his head is omniscient or anything.

With these thoughts in mind, Katsuki finally throws off his covers. Rolling his shoulders and stretching out his back a little, he walks over to the dresser and begins wriggling his body into his school uniform. On the desk beside him, he hears a pitchy ding immediately followed by a low rumble. Katsuki pokes his eye through the collar hole of his shirt and peeks over to his lit up phone. On the lock screen reads the messages:

Uraraka: Hey I'm not feeling too hot today

Uraraka: Actually I'm lying I'm feeling a bit TOO hot today LOL

Uraraka: Wait wait wait that sounds weird I just mean I have a fever

Uraraka: ...Anyway can you tell me what happens in class today? Thanks so much!

Reading this, Katsuki doesn't budge an inch. But reading it over again, Katsuki's eyes immediately bulge out.

Holy shit, the voice in his head is omniscient after all.

It's afternoon now and Katsuki stares down the whole of the pharmacy aisle like he's a cowboy in an old west movie about to face off against his longtime archrival: "Big Pharma."

He knows Uraraka told him, "Don't worry about me" after he texted her, "You good? You're not running like a fifty degree fever or anything, right?" but seriously, how could he not worry about her?

She's so sick she's bedridden. And skipping class. She's never skipped class before and he nearly broke all her bones during training once — an hour before an important exam that she could have very easily skipped with the amazing excuse of "Bakugou's a dickish asshole who tried to render my body into nothing more than a stain on that specific rock over there."

(And also, Katsuki really, really likes Uraraka and that very fact makes him completely incapable of not worrying about her during such trying times.)

Katsuki swears as he shoves his shopping cart down the aisle. She has a fever is all he knows. Fever medicine. Fever medicine. Fever medicine…

Katsuki clicks his tongue, letting out a slew of swears.

Fuck. Shit. Damn. Shit. Fuck.

Katsuki realizes now that he doesn't know what fever medicine looks like. Because he's never been sick in his life. His mom once told him it's because idiots never get colds, but Katsuki's looked at his grades before and those would definitely argue otherwise.

Katsuki glowers at the aisle of drugs once more. He doesn't know jack shit about anything that's going on here, he'll acknowledge that, but he also doesn't believe that anyone else knows what the fuck is going on. Like, people can read shit like — Katsuki's eyes dart to the closest container of drugs within sight — "amoxicillin" and — he shoots a glare at the container next to it — "atorvastatin" and even — Katsuki spins a 180 and nearly sets the aisle behind him on fire — "lisinopril," and tell him those words actually mean shit to them? Because anyone who says that is a lying sack of shit, and he'll even say that to their faces if he has to.

[Skill proficiency of -2 «Knowledge» has been reached. «Pharmacy» and «Medicine» have been dropped from «List of Acknowledged Studies»]

Well, since Katsuki has no idea what to do in this situation, he supposes that the only valid course of action left is to just do the reasonable thing. The sensible thing. The only valid thing in this situation.

Katsuki slowly backs up to the end of the aisle, taking in a deep breath as he does so.

And then he bulldozes down the aisle with one arm stretched out, steamrolling the entire right side of it into his shopping cart.

He reaches the end of the aisle.

Slowly, he turns around — his eyes covered in the shadows of his disheveled hair.

He takes a deep breath.

And then he bulldozes back down the aisle, steamrolling the entirety of the other side of the aisle down into his shopping cart.

Needless to say, shopping carts were not built to fit twenty quantities of every possible drug there was, even if they were tiny little bottles of five total pills costing six thousand yen each.

So, with a trail of Tylenol bottles freefalling from his cart as if they were sailors desperately jumping ship — and with a roll of toilet paper delicately stacked on top of the mix just for good measure — Katsuki proudly saunters over to a flabbergasted cashier, whose expression keeps inexplicably shifting between amazement and fear.

This better be worth it, he thinks to himself.

"Uraraka!" Katsuki shouts, entering Uraraka's room with all the delicacy of a giant, heavy-weight wrecking ball. "Uraraka!" he repeats, practically stumbling over to her because he cannot see over the massive pile of drugs cradled in his arms.

For a brief moment, Katsuki considers bulking up just so he can fit more drugs into his arms.

And yes, he knows what you're thinking.

And no, he doesn't mean steroids.

"Uraraka!" Katsuki shouts out one more time.

Actually, at this point, he already knows he's being obnoxious, but he's kinda banking on that fact because he needs Uraraka to respond to him. Preferably soon. Preferably now. Because he's definitely about to trip over his feet or over some tossed up piece of trash on the floor because he once again cannot see over the massive pile of drugs cradled in his arms.

"Ura—"

"I'm right here," a faint voice rasps slightly in the distance. "You don't have to shout."

"O-Okay," Katsuki replies in a faint voice that would almost put ASMR artists to shame. Almost. Barely.

Okay, maybe not at all.

As we all know, Katsuki is a very loud, very scream-y boy.

"I told you not to shout!" Uraraka repeats in a slightly harsher tone, just before her voice trails off into a low mumble. "I already had a headache before you arrived, too." Katsuki can practically hear the wince in her voice.

The boy gulps. He reaches one foot out, gently toeing the ground before taking a step. At this point, his internal "Big Fat Crush" GPS has locked onto Uraraka and he's figured out where Uraraka generally is in the room based off of echolocation and primal instinct alone.

But then he hears it.

A singular cough.

Followed by a harsher cough.

Followed by a whole slew of coughs crescendoing and building off of one another like the climax in a post-modern orchestral movement.

That's just to say: she sounds like shit.

At this point, Katsuki all but tosses all his pharmaceutical shit in the air, rushing over the two more steps he apparently needed to be by Uraraka's side.

"Uraraka, you okay?" He presses the palm of his hand against her forehead. Holy shit, is that a really high fever or is his body just involuntarily heating up because he's touching Uraraka's face with his hands?

Her head and neck are covered in sweat, so he's gonna have to assume it's the former. Not to discredit the latter though. No, the latter can never be discredited when it comes to his relationship with Uraraka.

"What are you doing here?" Uraraka finally asks Katsuki, as if even she's just now realizing that should've been her first question to him the second he rammed straight through her wall like the Kool-Aid man. She opens her bleary eyes, trying her best to focus them on his face.

In response, Katsuki jerks his hand back. He feels as if the heat of her fever is slowly beginning to transfer over to him, because his face is currently feeling very, very hot. And probably also red.

"Uh, m-medicine!" His tongue scrambles for words the same way his eyes now scramble for the location of all the drugs now strewn around Uraraka's room. "I'm here to give you some medicine!"

"Bakugou-kun, the doctor's already prescribed me some—"

He huffs, his back turned to her as he begins picking all his littered drugs and pill bottles off the floor. "Doctor must've been a quack, since you're clearly not better yet."

"...Bakugou-kun, the doctor prescribed me the medicine yesterday."

"Yeah, well, my point still stands."

Uraraka breathes a heavy sigh. Or, at least, she tries to. But her sigh is fragmented into pieces, as if her lungs keep refusing to work properly.

He doesn't like the sound of her sigh at all. Not like he generally likes the sound of her sighs ever when she's sighing at him, but definitely not this time when it sounds like she can barely eke out a prolonged breath.

And so, last painkiller now stacked precariously on his dangerous game of Extreme-Drug-Jenga-TM, Katsuki sprints straight back to Uraraka's side and dumps the whole load on her bed.

"H-hey what are you—" is all Uraraka manages to get out before an avalanche of non-prescribed prescriptions fall flat onto her face, muffling her cries. Her arms flail around a bit, before they begin scrabbling at all the boxes and bottles on her face as if trying desperately to excavate a lost artifact out from sea.

Oh wait, that artifact's her face.

Which currently has trouble breathing.

Ah, fuck.

Katsuki's arms rush in before the folds of his brain can fully connect those two dots together, and he too begins trying to shovel Uraraka out of the mess he created. Slowly, ever so slowly, one eye peeks out from the pile.

One eye radiating pure, unadulterated fury.

Katsuki briefly considers swiping the pile of drugs back onto Uraraka and dashing out the room.

No, that wouldn't be very un-jerk-y of him, would it?

But just as he finally resolves not to escape into the sunset, a second, more furious eye pops its wrathful head out of the pile.

Katsuki gulps.

He wasn't afraid when he was kidnapped by villains the second time.

He wasn't afraid when he was kidnapped by villains the third time.

And he definitely wasn't afraid when he was kidnapped by a villain the first time. (And if Deku tries to argue you on that, then you should know he's a lying little bitch.)

But what Katsuki's experiencing right now, as Uraraka emerges from his man-made avalanche like the raging undead?

Pure, unmitigated dread.

Congratulations! New skill «Fear» has been gained.

Ah.

Fuck.

"Bakugou-kun," Uraraka begins, her voice a low rumble. Her previously furious eyes are now covered ominously in the shadows of her bangs.

Katsuki's fear meter is about to fucking ding and spike through the roof.

"Would you care to explain—"

"Uh—" Katsuki's hands fumble around, picking random drugs off her body and knocking some more over in the process. After all, he'd be fucking damned to ever show a trace of fear on his face in public. (And once again, if Deku tries to argue you on that, he's a lying little bitch.) "Medicine," he spits out. "I just wanted to give you some medicine, is all." He shuffles around some more in her pile. "So, which one d'you wanna take?"

In perhaps an unconscious response, Uraraka's frothing at the mouth. It looks like her soul's just about escaped her body.

Fuck, Katsuki doesn't know what kind of medicine would work for that. Wait no, that symptom sure sounds like death, doesn't it?

Katsuki jumps, quickly pulling Uraraka out of the pile of drugs to shake her shoulders furiously back and forth. "Uraraka, you good? You're not dying yet, right? Hey! Wake up!" He looks around desperately at all the pills and boxes tumbling off her. "What d'you need? Huh? Uh...Vicodin? Emergen-C?" He stares deep into her dilated, unfocused eyes. "Shit. Do you need opioids?"

Of all things, that really seems to snap her out of it. She throws him a very dirty glare. "I don't need opioids, Bakugou-kun."

He takes a deep breath, trying to calm his frantic nerves. "Then which one of these do you wanna—"

"That's not how medicine works!" Uraraka retorts. In his deepest of hearts, Katsuki thinks that if her response were, for any reason, an email, it'd be worded somewhat like this:

Hello Bakugou,

It has come to my attention that you're a fucking dipshit. I will NOT be swallowing every single drug known to man, because, due to an abundance of caution, I'm not a fucking idiot.

Best Regards,

Uraraka Ochako

1 attachment:

Message sent.

And...received.

Fuck.

Katsuki quickly backs off, taking his hands off her shoulders. "We could at least have you take something, yeah?" He pilfers once more through all his pharmaceutical shit. "Uh, 'Use this to treat symptoms of a congested nose and wet cough.'" He raises his eyes to face Uraraka once more. "I forgot to ask. What symptoms do you have, anyway?"

"Well–"

"I mean"—Katsuki begins counting on his fingers, looking up at the ceiling in absentminded thought—"You definitely have a fever. You've been coughing. Sounds like that might've caused some breathing issues for you, too. And based on the amount of tissues in your wastebasket, you either have a really runny nose, or you've been sneezing a lot, right?" He finally turns his gaze away from the ceiling and back to Uraraka's sickbed. "Is there any more that I missed?"

Uraraka blinks, an expression of pleasant surprise settling on her face. "Oh, yeah. That's basically it."

Katsuki nods his head, eyes downcast for hopefully the final time. He picks something out of the pile, reading the back of it. He tosses it behind him. And then he silently repeats this process about five more times before finally landing on something promising. "Here," he says, lightly shoving a box into one of her outspread palms. "Antiviral stuff. Sounds like it would work for flu-like symptoms."

She looks down at the box, carefully reading the inscription. She mumbles softly to herself as she goes over its contents. "Huh, yeah, I guess I could take this," she murmurs, just loud enough enough for Katsuki to overhear.

He breathes a sigh of relief.

Silently picking himself back up on his feet, he scurries over to the kitchen to fetch Uraraka a mug of warm water to wash her meds down.

"Cold," Uraraka mumbles, pulling her covers over her head. Even with her body beneath such a thick quilt, Katsuki can still see her shaking and shivering.

Katsuki bites his lip.

She had been pretty lively before when she had been telling him off about why hoarding every known drug under the sun is a shitty thing to do, but her condition suddenly spiraled down fifty hills and straight into the Pacific Ocean right after he got back with her mug of water.

First, she was coughing up a storm.

Then, she sneezed so hard that Katsuki nearly called the ambulance for dislocated eyeballs.

And then she suddenly got so dizzy and tired she almost smacked the backside of her skull on her headboard from falling over.

For reference, Katsuki lept out the fucking window, somehow cushioned his fall with some well-placed trees, ran into the kitchen, nearly broke all the china and silverware looking for the Perfect Mug™, filled the mug with some ice cold water, realized he wanted it to be lukewarm so he started exploding all the air around it to get it to "Warm up you little muggerfucker," and then inexplicably ran back out to the yard to explode-fly his way back up to her fourth-floor dorm. All in under two minutes.

But also, by the time he got back into her room, there were like maybe five ounces of water left in that mug.

His point here, though, being that he doesn't understand how her sickness took such a sudden turn for the worse in such a short amount of time.

"Cold," she whines once again from under her covers. He can see the vague silhouette of her body twisting left and right in discomfort.

He gulps, the cogs of his head spinning in overdrive.

And then, as if the clouds of the heavens had parted to gift him with a once-in-a-lifetime thought, a bright ding goes off in his head.

Without another moment wasted on hesitation, Katsuki dashes out the room.

He returns just a few beats later, three blankets weighing heavily on his arms.

One he borrowed from Kirishima. One he stole from Deku. And the one on top he's gracefully donating from the Bakugou's-Own-Fucking-Bedroom foundation.

Katsuki trods stiffly over to Uraraka's side, trying his best once more not to trip as a result of not being able to see five centimeters in front of him due to all the fucking shit collected in his arms.

And, somehow, he succeeds.

Barely.

When he finally reaches Uraraka, he plops everything onto her bed. A pained groan slips out from under the four layers of cover.

"Oh, fuck, shit." Katsuki scrambles now. Grabbing hold of all the blankets, he starts arranging them less haphazardly across her bed, taking care to tuck her into each layer.

"Ah...that's nice," Uraraka murmurs, with all the satisfaction of an elderly grandma just finished with her daily crochet.

Unbeknownst to him, a soft smile pulls at the corners of Katsuki's lips. "Better?" he asks.

"Yeah," she mumbles back, slowly poking her head back over the covers. Eyes still drowsily closed, she sighs. "Kinda wish...these blankets…"—she thoughtlessly yawns—"were a...little heated, though." Another yawn.

Heat?

Say no more.

Katsuki rips off his shirt, blessing the room with the sight of his toned-ass abs.

Ha!

Katsuki wishes he had confidence to pull that kind of shit at this kind of time.

Well, actually, that would be borderline harassment.

Perhaps not so borderline, given the context.

No, what Katsuki really does is hover his hands above her four layers of covers and starts exploding the air above it.

Even.

Worse.

Harassment.

"Huh?" Uraraka's still caught in the thralls of fatigue at the moment, her brain too groggy to fully comprehend what's going on around her. "Why're there popping sounds?"

Concentrating even harder now on heating up her blankets with minute detonations, Katsuki refuses to answer her question.

Probably, a small part of him knows that if he answers the question, she's going to send him flying out the window.

Six more pops. Uraraka groans, slowly opening one of her eyes. The other one immediately follows in shock.

If Katsuki had considered calling the ambulance for eyeball dislocation after one sneeze, then he should probably be reaching for his phone now based on her reaction.

Really, it looks like her eyes are about to pop out of her sockets from shock.

"Bakugou-kun! What the fuck are you doing?"

Katsuki gulps.

If the person she were yelling at wasn't him, he'd almost be proud of her for swearing.

But she wanted warmth, right? Heat?

So, Katsuki does what any reasonable person with explodey tendencies would do in front of their crush.

He doubles down.

It's only a little bit because he's sweating more from nerves.

"This is what you wanted, wasn't i—OOF!"

First he doubled down.

Now he's doubled over from a swift kick to the gut.

Against his will, a soft whimper breaks free from the prison of his iron-clad, prideful lips.

Who knew sick people could kick that hard?

Who knew sick people had no sense of self preservation?

The sheer force of the kick was enough to change his trajectory; and if Katsuki hadn't spent the last year training like a madman under the supervision of several other adult madmen, there would've been a toasty hole through Uraraka's wall right now. Or, even worse, through her body.

"Never do that again!" Uraraka huffs, completely oblivious to her near brush with death. It seems her year training like a madman under the supervision of several other adult madmen has honed her body and will to be completely impervious to physical damage.

She must have allocated all her gained skill points into her Defense and Hit Points stats, Katsuki can't help but think.

Congratulations! The title «Fucking Nerd» has been added to your list of skills.

"Bakugou-kun, I know what you're thinking," Uraraka says, her head propped up on one hand as she lays facing him on her side. She squints, as if already expecting some level of defiance from him. "And no, you can't cook in here by using your quirk to heat everything up."

In response, Katsuki glares at her.

Just a little.

Not enough to look like a fucking prick, but definitely just enough to tell her, "What do you mean I can't set off fifty explosions in your room? Who do you take me for? A non-pyromaniac?"

"Then what do you expect me to do?" he asks, his voice set in a monotone drawl.

Uraraka glares back at him.

Just a little.

Not enough to make him level up again in his fear skill, but just enough to give him like, five whole goosebumps.

It's unpleasant.

"I don't know," Uraraka says, her voice laden with sarcasm. "Why don't you use the kitchen?"

Ah. Yes. The kitchen. That. Yes.

"No," Katsuki flatly responds.

She looks at him, confusion coming off her face in waves.

"What do you mean, no?"

"Look, the last time I only went to the kitchen for two minutes and the second I got back, you were already coughing up a storm."

Uraraka sits up now, her arms crossed as if to contest his sheer audacity. "That wasn't sick coughing. I was just choking!"

"Choking on what? Your spit?"

"For your information, yes, I was." She tilts her nose up in the air as if proud of herself for being capable of such a feat, but the second she peeks one eye open and takes note of his incredulous expression, her voice shrills in defensiveness. "Hey, don't give me that look. No, don't point at yourself like, 'Oh, what look are you talking about?' You know very well what look I'm talking about, Bakugou-kun. I'd like you to know that it's very hard to keep swallowing down the right pipe when you're in a constant horizontal position."

Katsuki doesn't understand what she's talking about.

After all, he's never laid in bed and been conscious for more than twenty minutes in it.

Uraraka, watching as Katsuki's face squeezes further and further in on itself in confusion, huffs. "Like I said, I don't need you to cook for me, but if you really insist, you need to go to the kitchen to do it."

"What am I, some kind of fucking pleb?" Katsuki mutters to himself. Inexplicably, though, he's already obediently heading out her door and straight to the kitchen.

"Here," Katsuki says, delicately balancing a tray with a bowl of congee on top of Uraraka's blanketed lap.

Uraraka eagerly claps her hands in delight. Taking note of the heavy steam drifting off the congee, she tries to waft the smell in.

She tries really hard to waft it in.

At some point, she even leans down and almost sticks her whole two nostrils into the fresh-off-the-stove congee.

And then she turns to him — completely distraught — with her cheeks puffed out in a pouty indignation.

"My nose is stuffed and I can't smell."

Externally, Katsuki is made of absolute steel. So much so it'd put Kirishima's 1-B friend, Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu, to shame.

Internally, however, Katsuki's heart is made of play-doh and sand.

Sand because it's coarse and rough and irritable and his personality these past few months has been fucking everywhere.

But damn, this fucking sucks. Katsuki poured his heart and soul into making Uraraka the most delicious congee she'll ever taste and it then turns out she can't even taste.

What the fuck was even the point, then? If he can't win her praise then why is he even doing this?

Resigned to this permanent depression, Katsuki takes a metal spoon, dips it in the porridge, and pulls it close to his lips to blow on it.

He moves the spoon to her lips.

The way Uraraka reacts, he might as well have been trying to hand her one of his grenades.

"B-B-B-B-B-B-Bakugou-kun," she stammers, frantically waving her hands about. "Y-you don't have to feed me!"

Katsuki tilts his head a little. He looks at the spoon nudging at her lips.

Her…

...lips.

Lips.

That are...Uraraka's.

Lips.

Huh?

In shock, Katsuki nearly drops the spoon in his hand.

Except he fucking doesn't because if he did it'd spill all over her and that congee is burning fucking hot.

Speaking of burning fucking hot, Katsuki's wholeass body is heated up either entirely because he's covered in a deep flush of red, or because he's completely fucking embarrassed.

Refusing to meet her gaze, Katsuki not-so-delicately plunges the spoon back into the depths of the congee and pushes it towards her. "Just eat it," he barks out.

He can hear her stifling a laugh. Fuck, she's laughing at him, isn't she?

After what feels like forever suspended in the vacuum of her silent room, he finally hears her blow on presumably a hot spoon. He hears her cutely "Ahhh" and then forcibly swallow down a mouthful of hot congee.

Katsuki hates that he likes her to the point that even just hearing her eat makes his heart tingle with...feelings.

Seven-year-old him would have called this version of Katsuki a fucking embarrassment.

"It's really good!" Uraraka enthusiastically exclaims, waving her hands beneath his eyes to capture his attention and get him to look at her again.

Katsuki knows. He knows she's lying.

If she can't smell, then she obviously can't taste.

Even so, Katsuki looks back up at Uraraka and lets out a small smile. Poking her lightly in the forehead, he softly says, "I'm glad you like it."

With her bowl of congee slowly and laboriously finished — if only because Katsuki kept telling her to "Suck it up and eat it up" — Uraraka's back to lying down on her bed, tucked snugly beneath her many, many, many, many layers.

Outside, the sky has fallen to a darkness punctured through with starlight.

"It's getting pretty late," Katsuki says. No fucking duh, Captain Obvious, he wants to retort himself. "You need anything else?" he asks Uraraka.

Uraraka weakly shakes her head from her position, pulling the covers higher above her head. "I'm...good." She yawns rather loudly.

A soft sigh escaping his lips, Katsuki reaches over to start clearing stuff off her bed. First to put away the bowl of congee before she knocks it over in her sleep. Then go the last of those pill bottles. And finally, all the tissues scattered around her bed.

Hushed breaths slip out of her lips, as it seems she's already nodding off into dreamland.

Ever so gently, Katsuki pulls her covers down below her lips, just to give her a little more room to breathe.

Though drifting slowly out of consciousness, Uraraka still manages to pull the corners of her lips into a soft smile as if to thank him.

With the room shrouded in silence and moonlight, Katsuki looks at Uraraka. Really looks at her.

He remembers when he fell for her, at a time that felt like forever ago.

Everyone thought she was some delicate little princess, only good for her cheeriness and looks. Even going so far as to call her fragile.

Fragile, Katsuki scoffs.

Back then, and even now, she's been anything but fragile. After all, she was bedridden with sickness all day and she still mustered the strength to 1) tell him off 2) kick him in the gut and 3) tell him off again.

Fragile? No, she's never been fragile. If anything, she's always been…

"...Resilient," he breathes out.

No matter what, she always bounces back. She gets hit with his quirk at full capacity and instead of moping about it, she trains herself to become one of the strongest close-range combatants in their class. She's the type of girl that, if she takes one step back, she'll dash forward until she sees the finish line ten steps ahead.

If she falls flat on her face, she doesn't need anyone to pick herself back up.

But even though she doesn't need anyone, he'd still like to be there, with his hand outstretched and always at the ready to go along with her wherever she needs to go.

Beneath him, Uraraka groans, her face scrunched up in slight pain and forehead blossoming with droplets of sweat.

With his right hand, Katsuki gently wipes the beads of sweat from her brow, careful not to wake her up.

He leans in closer.

He parts her bangs to the side of her face.

She hums in satisfaction.

Amused, he leans in ever closer.

He wants to take in her every breath. He wants to cherish her every change in expression as she sleeps. He wants...her. Just...every part of her. When she's happy, when she's angry at him, when she's kicking him in the gut, and hell, even when she's sick. He wants to be by her side and be there for all of it.

Softly, he presses his lips to her forehead.

He blinks.

He blinks again.

And then he stands up and backs up to the opposite wall with such speed and ferocity he nearly blacks out from the suddenness of it all.

His thoughts race at a million kilometers per millisecond.

Lips.

Lips.

His.

Lips.

Touched.

Her.

Forehead.

Which.

Means.

His.

Lips.

Kissed.

Her.

Forehead.

He can't stay here any longer.

Kissed.

He's really got to go.

Kissed!

Running around the room to collect all his piles of trash and dirty dishes and fucking thoughts, Katsuki gathers them all up in his apparently capable arms and dashes out the room.

The last thing he leaves in the room is a hushed "Sorry" into still air.

A/N: Our boy finally did it.

Anyway, this story should be coming to a close soon. Perhaps. Unless I want to add in more friendships who knows AJDSKLAJD:AD. But for sure next chapter will be Ojiro. Unless I still don't know what to do with him in which case it'll be a different character asdkfjalfjaslfjdsalf.

I know it doesn't make up for how long you had to wait for it but I hope you liked the chapter! I'll try not to make you guys wait that long again, sorry :,(

Anyway as a final note, stay safe, stay inside, if someone is sick please don't kiss them on the forehead, and above all, stay healthy! We'll get through this together!