The first pale light of dawn cut across the priest’s office, striping the polished oak of the desk and the two figures huddled together in its wake. Katsuki held Izuku wrapped in his black cassock, the wool scratchy against Izuku’s bare skin. Their foreheads were touching, breaths mingling in the silent space.
“You’re shaking,” Katsuki murmured. His voice was raw, hollowed out.
“So are you,” Izuku whispered back.
It was true. A fine tremor ran through Katsuki’s arms where they circled Izuku’s body. He wasn’t the predator from the altar or the confessional. He was a man holding onto the wreckage he’d made, terrified to let go.
“I need to tell Ochaco,” Izuku said, the words a quiet surrender to a different kind of pain.
Katsuki’s arms tightened. “You don’t have to do that today.”
“Yes, I do. Before she… before she hears it somewhere else. Before she plans anything more.” Izuku pulled back just enough to see Katsuki’s face. The red was gone from his eyes. They were a familiar, stormy grey, bloodshot and haunted. “You asked me to marry you.”
“I did.”
“You meant it?”
Katsuki’s jaw worked. He looked down at Izuku’s stomach, still flat, where his hand rested. “More than I’ve ever meant anything. As myself. Not… not that thing.”
Izuku nodded, a slow, weary motion. He believed him. The cruelty was absent, leaving only a devastating, exhausted truth in its place. “Then I have to end it with her. Cleanly. It’s the only decent thing left to do.”
“Let me come with you.”
“No.” Izuku’s voice was firm, a flicker of the steel that had kept his secret for years. “This is my mess to clean up. Mine and hers. You’d just make it worse. She’d see you and she’d know…”
“Know what?” Katsuki prompted, his thumb stroking over Izuku’s hip.
“That everything she confessed… that I already knew. That I’d been…” He trailed off, the shame still a live wire under his skin.
Katsuki didn’t make him say it. He just leaned in and pressed his lips to Izuku’s temple, a chaste, aching kiss. “Then what do you need from me?”
“Stay here. Pray, maybe. I don’t know.” Izuku managed a frail, broken laugh. “Figure out how we’re going to explain a pregnant youth pastor to the diocese.”
“I’ll figure it out. I’ll fix it.” The old Katsuki was in that vow, the competent, formidable man who got things done. But it was tempered now by a frantic edge. “I have to fix it.”
Izuku disentangled himself from the cassock and from Katsuki’s arms. The morning air was cool on his skin, raising goosebumps. He found his clothes in a pile by the desk, the soft cotton of his binder, his t-shirt. He dressed slowly, feeling Katsuki’s eyes on him every second.
When he pulled the binder down over his chest, he let out a soft hiss. The skin was tender, oversensitive.
“Does it hurt?” Katsuki asked. He was sitting on the edge of the desk now, naked, watching him with a focus that was no longer hungry, but painfully attentive.
“A little. It’s okay.” Izuku fastened his jeans, his fingers clumsy. “Everything hurts a little.”
Katsuki flinched as if struck. “Izuku…”
“Not just from you,” Izuku said, looking over. “From everything. From lying. From her lying. From being so scared all the time.” He buttoned his fly. “Some of it’s from you, though. Don’t pretend it’s not.”
“I’m not.” Katsuki shoulders slumped. “God, I’m not.”
Izuku finished dressing. He felt assembled, but fundamentally cracked. He walked to the door, then stopped, his hand on the knob. “Will you be here? After?”
Katsuki looked up. “Where else would I go?”
Izuku didn’t have an answer for that. He just nodded and slipped out, closing the office door softly behind him, leaving the priest alone in the dawn light with his guilt and his vows.
The hallway outside Ochaco’s apartment smelled like old carpet and lemon cleaner. Izuku knocked, the sound too loud in the quiet morning. He heard a scramble inside, a muffled voice, then the door opened a crack.
Ochaco’s face appeared, her big brown eyes wide. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair mussed. “Izuku. What are you doing here?”
Her voice was too high, too tight. She didn’t open the door wider.
“We need to talk,” Izuku said. His own voice was flat, a dead thing.
“I… I can’t right now. It’s really not a good time—”
A deep voice called from the depths of the apartment. “Baby? Who is it?”
The door was pulled open from behind her. Tenya Iida stepped into view. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of low-slung gray sweatpants. They did nothing to hide the thick, soft outline of his cock, resting heavily against the fabric. Izuku’s eyes flicked down, a purely instinctual, horrified capture of the image—the size of him, the casual intimacy of his state of undress—before snapping back to Tenya’s face.
Anger, hot and clean, washed through the numbness in his chest.
“I see,” Izuku said. He looked past Tenya, into the apartment. The blanket was rumpled on the sofa. Two mugs on the coffee table. “I guess confession wasn’t enough for you.”
Ochaco’s hand flew to her mouth. Her face went white. “Izuku, please—”
“Please what?” He stepped forward, forcing them both to give ground. He shut the door behind him. The click of the latch was final. “You fucked your friend. You cried about it in a confessional while I was on my knees for a priest. What exactly am I supposed to do with your ‘please’?”
Tenya stiffened, his posture ramrod straight even in sweats. “Midoriya. That language is uncalled for.”
“Is it?” Izuku laughed, a short, brittle sound. “What’s called for, Tenya? You fucking my fiancée? Is that called for?”
“The situation is more complex than you understand,” Tenya said, adjusting his glasses. A nervous habit. “Ochaco and I have developed deep feelings for one another. We have been praying for guidance.”
“In your pants?” Izuku shot back. He was trembling, but not from fear. It was a white-hot vibration in his hands, his jaw. “Get dressed. This isn’t for you.”
Tenya looked at Ochaco. She gave a tiny, miserable nod. With one last disapproving glance at Izuku, he turned and walked toward the bedroom, his bare back rigid.
Izuku faced Ochaco. She had wrapped her arms around herself, wearing a thin sleep shirt and shorts. She looked young. She looked guilty.
“How long?” Izuku asked.
“It doesn’t matter—”
“How. Long.”
“A few months,” she whispered, tears welling. “It just… happened. We were studying together and… I’m so sorry, Izuku.”
“Sorry,” he repeated. The word meant nothing. It was air. “You were saving yourself for marriage.”
“I was!” she cried, her own anger flashing through the tears. “But you never even tried! You kissed me like I was your sister! You hugged me like a friend! What was I supposed to think? I thought you were being respectful!” Ochaco yelled back, tears streaking her face. “I thought you were a gentleman! But maybe you just weren’t interested. In me. At all.”
Izuku stared at her. The anger in his chest solidified into something cold and sharp. “We agreed. To wait. For marriage. That was our vow.”
“Vows are for people who want each other!” she spat.
“So you fuck Tenya?” His voice didn’t rise. It dropped, low and dangerous. “You let him put his hands on you, his mouth on you, his cock inside you, because I was too much of a gentleman? That’s your defense?”
She flinched at the crude words. “Don’t—”
“Don’t what? Name what you did?” He took a step closer. “You didn’t slip. You didn’t stumble. You opened your legs for him. For months. You lied to my face. You cried in a confessional and still came home to him.”
“You don’t understand the loneliness!” Ochaco sobbed, her guilt curdling into rage. “Touching you was like touching a statue! At least Tenya *wants* me!”
“Then you should have ended it with the statue,” Izuku said, his voice eerily calm. “But you didn’t. You wanted the wedding. You wanted the story. You just didn’t want me.”
“I did want you!”
“No.” He shook his head, the motion final. “You wanted an idea. And the idea wasn’t enough, so you got a real man behind my back.”
Ochaco’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Izuku reached for his left hand. He tugged at the simple silver band on his ring finger. It stuck for a second over his knuckle, then came free. He held it out to her. “Here’s your idea back.”
Her eyes widened in genuine panic. “Izuku, no. Please. We can fix this. We can pray—”
“Pray?” He let out a broken laugh. “What would we even pray for? For God to make me a man you’d want to fuck?”
She recoiled. “That’s a horrible thing to say!”
“It’s the truth.” He dropped the ring onto her cluttered coffee table. It landed with a tiny, metallic clink against the wood. “We’re done.”
“You can’t!” She scrambled forward, grabbing his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “You can’t just give up on us! After everything we’ve built? Think of the scandal! Think of my parents! Our friends!”
Izuku looked down at her hand on him. He slowly, firmly, pried her fingers off. “You should have thought of that before you spread your legs for Tenya.”
Her face crumpled. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I’ll end it with him, I swear! We can go to counseling. We can start over.”
“No.” The word was absolute. He felt it rise from a new, solid place inside him. A place Katsuki’s brutal, terrible love had somehow forged. “There’s no ‘us’ to start over.”
“Why? Because you’re too proud? Too hurt?” Her tears were angry now, manipulative. “After all I’ve sacrificed for you? I defended you when people whispered you were too soft, too feminine! I stood by you!”
Izuku took a deep breath. The apartment air tasted like dust and betrayal. He looked her directly in her big, round, guilty eyes. “You want to know why I was a statue?”
Ochaco froze, sensing a shift.
“You want to know the real secret?” He didn’t stutter. His voice was clear, a steady, devastating river. “I bind my chest every day. Not because I’m modest. Because I have to. Because I’m a trans man, Ochaco. The body you wanted to wait for on our wedding night? It isn’t the one you think it is.”
She stared. Her lips parted. “What?”
“I have a pussy,” he said, the crude word shocking in the quiet room. “I have small breasts I hide. I’ve been saving for surgeries you never knew about. I was going to tell you after the wedding, when it was safe. When you were legally bound to me and couldn’t ruin my life with the truth.”
Her hand flew to her mouth again. Horror. Revulsion. Understanding. It all flashed across her face.
“But you couldn’t wait,” Izuku continued, the strength in him growing, burning away the last of his shame. “And someone else didn’t have to. He knows. He’s seen me. All of me. And he wants me anyway.”
“Who?” she whispered, aghast.
“Father Bakugo.” Izuku said the title with a strange, proud defiance. “Katsuki. I’m going to marry him.”
Ochaco made a choked sound. “The priest? You’re… you’re blaspheming. This is insane—”
“And I’m pregnant.”
Silence. Thick and complete.
Izuku watched the last of her arguments, her guilt-trips, her pathetic defenses, shatter against that single, immutable fact. He placed a hand low on his own abdomen. “With his child. Our child. He loves me. He cares for me. He gives me strength when I have none left. So you can have your scandal. You can have your prayers. I’m done hiding.”
He turned his back on her, on the ring, on the rumpled blanket and the two mugs. He walked to the door.
“Izuku!” Her cry was pure, undiluted panic now. “You can’t… people will destroy you! They’ll destroy him! They’ll call you a monster!”
He opened the door. The hallway’s lemon-cleaner smell washed over him.
He looked over his shoulder one last time. “Then let them,” he said, and stepped out, closing the door softly on the wreckage of his old life.
The walk back to the church was a blur of sidewalk cracks and early morning sun. Izuku’s defiant strength, the cold fire that had carried him through Ochaco’s door, evaporated with each step. By the time he pushed open the heavy oak door of the parish office entrance, he was hollow. Shaking.
The office was as he’d left it, bathed in dawn’s weak light. Katsuki stood at the window, his back to the door, a stark silhouette. He turned immediately.
Izuku didn’t make it three steps inside. His legs gave out. He crumbled, a sob tearing from his throat before he could stop it.
Katsuki was across the room in an instant. He caught him before he hit the floor, his arms wrapping around Izuku’s shuddering frame. “Izuku.”
“He was there,” Izuku choked out, his face pressed into Katsuki’s chest. The wool of the cassock scratched his cheek. “Tenya. He was just… there. They were together.”
Katsuki’s arms tightened. His voice was a low, controlled rumble. “Tell me.”
“Months.” The word was a wretched gasp. “She said… months. She’d been sleeping with him for months. In our bed. While I was here, thinking I was the liar, the fraud…”
“Look at me.” Katsuki’s hand came up, cupping his jaw, forcing his head up. His crimson eyes were clear, human, burning with an intensity that wasn’t demonic. It was fury. “Did he touch you?”
Izuku shook his head, tears streaming freely now. “No. He just… looked ashamed. She tried to make me stay. She tried to pray.” A broken laugh escaped him. “She cried about the scandal.”
Katsuki’s thumb wiped roughly at a tear track. “What did you do?”
“I gave her the ring back. I told her we were done.” Izuku’s breath hitched. “And then I told her. Everything. About me. About you. About the baby.”
Katsuki went very still. The fury in his eyes didn’t diminish, but it shifted, sharpened into something more dangerous. “You told her about the child?”
“I had to.” Izuku’s hands fisted in Katsuki’s cassock. “It was the only thing that finally shut her up. She can’t argue with that. No one can.”
“Fuck.” Katsuki breathed the word out, a harsh exhale. He pulled Izuku closer, tucking his head under his chin. “My brave, reckless idiot. You walked into a war zone and set off all the bombs yourself.”
“It felt like winning,” Izuku whispered, the confession muffled against his throat. “For a minute. Now I just feel… empty.”
“You’re not empty.” Katsuki’s hand slid down his back, a firm, grounding pressure. “You’re feeling it. All of it. Let it out.”
And Izuku did. He wept, great heaving sobs that felt like they were tearing his ribs apart. He cried for the betrayal, for the wasted years of hiding, for the terrifying freedom he’d just hurled himself into. Katsuki held him through it, silent, his own breathing a steady counter-rhythm to Izuku’s chaos.
When the storm finally subsided into shaky hiccups, Izuku felt boneless. Spent.
Katsuki shifted, sliding down to sit on the floor with his back against his desk, pulling Izuku into his lap. He didn’t speak, just held him, one hand carding slowly through his sweaty curls.
“She’ll tell everyone,” Izuku said quietly, his voice raw. “She’s scared. And hurt. And angry. She’ll use it all as a weapon.”
“Let her.” Katsuki’s voice was quiet, final. “Let the whole rotten town talk. They don’t matter.”
“They’ll come for you. Your collar won’t protect you.”
Katsuki’s hand stilled in his hair. “I don’t want it to.” He tilted Izuku’s face up again. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, but the gaze was unwavering. “I wore it as a shield for too long. Let them come. I’m not hiding anymore either.”
Izuku searched his face. The demon’s predatory gleam was gone. In its place was a weary, ferocious honesty that was somehow more terrifying. “What do we do now?”
“Now,” Katsuki said, his thumb stroking Izuku’s cheekbone. “We go home. My home. We sleep. We face whatever comes next when it comes.”
“The church…”
“Can burn for all I care.” Katsuki said it without heat. A simple statement of fact. “The only sacred thing I’m interested in is right here in my arms.”
Izuku closed his eyes. The terror was still there, a cold knot in his stomach. But beneath it, cradled in Katsuki’s certainty, was the first fragile seed of something that wasn’t fear. It was just a breath. A possibility.
He turned his face, pressing his lips to the palm of Katsuki’s hand. A vow. An anchor.
Katsuki stood, lifting Izuku with him as if he weighed nothing. He didn’t set him down. He just adjusted his grip, holding Izuku against his chest, and walked them both out of the office, leaving the dawn and the silence behind.