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It’s always been Shouto.
-
He’s green, Katsuki’s hands are holding his hair back and he’s puking over a toilet. That third drink was a bad idea.
Still, how was Katsuki supposed to know this idiot was a lightweight? It’s not like they’ve ever gotten drunk together before. Todoroki doesn’t drink, always claiming an early day tomorrow and Katsuki, well, someone has to keep these idiots in order.
Tonight was something else. Dusky sunset lighting, broken red leather lining the too-small booths. Crammed up against Todoroki, hand sliding up his thigh all night. A recipe for a fucking disaster. Clearly, since everyone else left and suddenly there was just him. Still right next to Katsuki moving around the lychee floating in his near-empty yuzu cocktail like a fucking child.
Right next to him even though the seat across was open. With that shy smile. The glances from the corner of gray-and-blue eyes. Spaced-out and careful. Pretty.
The door to the place kept opening and closing, letting in cold air and whiffs of cigarette smoke. Katsuki shivered and his hand, his fingers were so tight by then on Todoroki’s leg.
You wanna dance or what?
I didn’t think you danced.
Maybe I do. (Maybe I do with you.)
Dancing and drinking. Katsuki’s such a fucking idiot. Like that ever goes together well. “You good? I’ll take you home.”
Todoroki’s shaking his head, retching some more. That’s a no then.
Katsuki leaves for a second, goes to grab some paper towels, then comes back and kneels next to him. Listens as Todoroki catches his breath. “Here.”
There’s banging on the bathroom door. Motherfuckers. “I SAID OCCUPIED! GET LOST AND PISS SOMEWHERE ELSE.”
“You don’t… have to…” Todoroki pants.
He’s done a decent job with the paper towel clean-up and there’s some regular color coming back into his face.
A decent job though. Not a perfect one. Katsuki fixes it. He had a pretty decent tolerance for blood and guts even before getting into the whole hero thing, so this is nothing.
It’s almost… a relief—even though Katsuki’s always known all that putting him on a pedestal as this perfect prince is nothing but well-meaning bullshit—that sometimes, Todoroki looks like a mess.
It’s mostly sweat anyhow. The body’s response to panic, and throwing up, and Todoroki’s body probably overdoes it with its heating and cooling wrong when things are going the wrong way up. Katsuki dabs at Todoroki’s neck with a clean one from the towel dispenser, under his shirt collar.
The top two buttons of Todoroki’s shirt look a bit restrictive, so he glances for permission, Todoroki gives a brief shake of the head, and he undoes them both. Should feel better.
They're too close. Close enough that Katsuki remembers their heated kisses back in the bar. The haphazard touching and rushed groping that comes from having been attracted to each other for years and done a fat load of nothing about it. Several near misses and close-calls but nothing to actually set off the fuse.
Katsuki will admit it to no one. Maybe not even himself. But he'd wanted to. More than once. He was scared. He's human too.
“I’m not gonna let them in here, I don’t want anyone seeing you like this,” he yanks Todoroki to his feet, and allows him to put most of his weight on Katsuki while he flushes the toilet with his foot.
“But you… are,” Todoroki murmurs, his breath warm on Katsuki’s neck. “You’re seeing me like this.”
Now he’s resting his chin on Katsuki’s shoulder, it’s very nearly a hug. Katsuki fishes Todoroki’s phone out of his back pants pocket and puts it in his own jacket for safe keeping. Which might have been a wrong signal (or the right one) because it only makes Todoroki tighten his hold.
His breath smells like alcohol. Like lychee. Like vomit.
Katsuki takes a deep breath in. Then one out. “S’not the same Half and Half, it’s not like I count for that.”
They've known each other for years. Shared the back of an ambulance while being stitched back together. He's seen worse states of Todoroki.
That's what he means. Mostly. But-
“No. You do,” Todoroki clings even tighter. “You’ve always mattered to me. So much.”
Todoroki's leaning on him. So despite this, and everything, Katsuki can't go getting shaky on his feet. He can't.
A part of him wavers. It's whet his appetite. Tell me. Tell me again how much you like me.
“If I…if I matter to you so damn much why didn’t you tell me you weren’t cut out to dance tonight?! Jesus christ, how much did you even have? Or have you just been sick all week and you decided now was the time to—” Katsuki doesn’t even know where he’s going.
He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say in response to Todoroki’s open-heart confession, when he stops dead at Todoroki’s mumbled words, heavy against his teetering frame of mind, “thought… thought you might never ask again.”
That’s-that’s it then. All of this sick in the bathroom and this… everything was just him, acting desperate because Katsuki’s an asshole who’s too full of shit to make a move on him more then once?
“I would ask again,” he says, rubbing a hand up and down Todoroki’s back, because he's not that asshole, he’s not.
He’s not.
He's a different kind of asshole. A stubborn one. Who won't let Todoroki win this. He would ask again. He’d ask-he'd ask right the fuck now.
“No,” Todoroki says, sounding sleepy now, like he’s humming out a nursery rhyme, “I know you. You might not if you thought I had rejected you. You… have a lot of pride. But that’s ok. I like that part of you.”
The audacity of him. To say that’s ok when Katsuki’s the one maneuvering them both to the sink. Turning the faucet on and putting his hands under to try and get them clean. Useless, fuckin’ pretty, stupid…idiot…
“You did call out sick yesterday,” Katsuki continues his reasoning, trying desperately to convince himself that this isn’t his fault—and failing.
“Soba was sick,” Todoroki explains. “I was taking care of her. Can I catch cat diseases?”
Katsuki hits the soap dispenser hard, two or three times before a pathetic soapy foam comes out, then he holds Todoroki up from the back and washes his hands. Stuff’s cheap, doesn’t even foam and smells like nothing.
He’s resolutely not answering the question about whether humans can catch cat diseases. Mostly because he doesn’t know. Probably…not.
“Think you can hold onto me on the bike?” Katsuki asks, they’re almost done here.
Todoroki nods as Katsuki grabs and dries his hands. “Didn’t you tell Kirishima you didn’t let people ride behind you?”
“Yeah, I did, I did say that,” Katsuki sighs. “Listen, I’d get you a cab but I’m not letting you get in a cab like this without me there too and I don’t wanna come all the way back to get my bike and I’m not parking it here all night.”
“I’ll be the first then,” Todoroki answers brightly, full of candy-coated happiness, ignoring it all.
The cold air does him some good when they’re outside. Katsuki too. He didn’t have enough to make drinking and driving wrong, unlike this clown, so he’s got no reason to feel bad.
Then Todoroki gets on behind him without any instructions at all. Effortlessly good, even when he can’t really walk straight right now and almost tripped when they walked past the main serving counter.
His arms come around to wrap around Katsuki’s waist, naturally, and that feels good. Almost like it was intended. Meant for that.
The comment, which Katsuki is expecting, about how his waist is kind of small, proportionally and everything, doesn’t come.
Instead, an infinitely more embarrassing one. “You’re nice to hold.”
A lot of passes have been given, by Katsuki, to people who are drunk and don’t know what they’re saying. A You’re my best friend, man or an I love you, Kacchan by Shitty Hair and Deku are fine-ish as long as no one will remember in the morning.
But this, this is annoying because Katsuki didn’t know about it. He’s not someone who is held or holds. Not like Deku, who launches himself out like a cannonball into your arms the second he spots you. Not like Raccoon Eyes who’s actually had Katsuki in a reluctant hug for long enough that she’s kissed him on the cheek.
He’s not that person. He started telling his parents not to hug and cuddle on him when he was three years old. Only started up again when his dad wouldn’t let him go for an hour after he got fuckin’ kidnapped.
Katsuki never tried to make hugging nice. It makes no sense. Everything else he has, he tried really hard for.
He hands Todoroki his helmet. “I only have one and I’m not arguing about who’s gonna wear it.”
“But-”
“I said I’m not arguing.”
“Only if you will drive… slow,” Todoroki takes it from his hands, puts it on, his grip around the waist instantly missed.
The helmet’s black, plain. Like the motorbike is so Katsuki can get around without people knowing it’s him.
It looks wrong on Todoroki though, since he’s obviously the kind of guy who shouldn’t be riding on a motorbike. He should be in fuckin’ pony-driven carriages, or nice expensive cars that get taken by valets. He deserves to be kissed by nice people who’ll tell him nice things.
Not asshole people who make out with him for the first time in an izakaya after one inappropriate dance and too much alcohol and don’t even realize Todoroki’s so down bad for the affection that he’ll risk his own health, risk anything. Todoroki should be loved by someone who knows what loving is. Someone who can at least talk about it.
“I always drive the speed limit. It’s safer that way. Too slow’ll get you into accidents too, ‘cause no one’s expecting it.”
“Oh,” Todoroki accepts the explanation, and his hands find their way back around Katsuki.
One warm and one cool. “Yeah. Now don’t let go.”
Todoroki's still out of it, so that's gotta be specified.
“I won’t,” his voice is muffled through the helmet, but he sounds so sure.
“Ok, let me know if you need me to pull over. In case you need to throw up again or something.”
"Or something," Todoroki dutifully repeats.
Katsuki takes him home.
-
Two texts the next morning. Sent at ten am.
> hello.
> sorry you had to take care of me last night
Then another set at quarter after noon, which is when Katsuki wakes up. Slightly hungover and thirsty. He reads all five while he walks to the kitchen, bleary-eyed. All from Todoroki.
> i cant stop thinking.
> i dont want to think this much. please tell me.
> did i ruin my chance
He doesn’t wait, Katsuki skips the whole drinking-so-his-body-doesn’t-feel-like-crap thing, and presses call. He doesn’t realize it went straight to the video kind of call either until he sees Todoroki’s face. He's still in bed. The same style of room as he’s always had visible in the background. Soft blue sheets.
It makes Katsuki wanna cry, or scream, or hit something. He does none of that.
Todoroki’s eyes are puffy in the morning after a late night. That’s something Katsuki already knew though. They lived together once, the whole group of them. Yuuei dorms, a different lifetime.
Katsuki isn’t sure what he pressed call so quickly to say. He just did it without thinking.
Fuck. Fuck this.
There’s way too much light streaming in his goddamn kitchen and that’s why he got this specific apartment but right now he hates it. There aren’t any chairs in the kitchen either because he hates it when people sit down and backseat-chef when he’s trying to do something. Can’t even sit down for this.
It’s hurting. Todoroki hurts and Katsuki will not be the one to actually hurt him. “You’ll get your chance, ok?! Damn it-you’ll get your chance. There’s always gonna be chances for you and me. Shut up and stop thinking,” and shit, there he goes again giving orders.
Why can’t he ever just think and be nice. He hears the criticism in his mother’s voice. Years of arguments there, but at least the two of them always understood each other eventually, because they did things the same.
Todoroki isn’t like that though, if you’re nice to hold, he’ll go right ahead and say it. He'll give his love openly, sinking into Katsuki’s arms like it's nothing and not a great calamity in Katsuki’s plan to not do these kinds of things and be the kind of person that loves and loses.
He’s warm even though he wasn’t brought up with any reason to be, and Katsuki's not good for someone like that, he’s a door slamming shut in Todoroki’s face. He can’t reach him. He’s—
Katsuki’s wrong about that.
Because Todoroki’s all soft blinking eyes, relieved, the stupid sun coming into his stupid place too, drenching him in a white-golden glow. He likes what was said. Maybe it was enough. Could it have actually fuckin’ been enough? Just Katsuki yelling out things in the morning without thinking first. Skirting the urge to find a desk to bang his head against because of how mad his own incompetence makes him.
Todoroki sighs into the phone and says nothing else. Maybe he can’t.
“I have to go,” Katsuki stammers. “Gotta-drink of water.”
He hangs up and splashes his face with water from the sink. Lukewarm. He hates it.
It won’t work. Him liking someone and them liking him back. He can’t make it fine. Can’t train the raw want that chokes him every time Todoroki's name comes up. Can’t force his feelings into submission like he did his own out-of-control quirk. Can't make himself behave.
It won’t work-but Todoroki seemed to understand him. He’s always seemed to get it. He misses half of everything, sometimes, but he gets the half that’s important. So, maybe—
Phone’s ringing again, and he answers.
It’s just audio this time. The world’s softest voice, and this tone of it belongs to Katsuki alone. It’s quiet, stubborn authority fills the room. “Will you stay this time?”
Stay. Not hang up the phone.
He sounds accepting. Kind. Faintly needy. Katsuki makes an incomprehensible sound back that’s supposed to be a yes. He hasn’t even had his goddamn water yet.
Todoroki’s voice soothes the ringing in Katsuki’s head. “Thank you… for yesterday.”
“You woulda done it for me. Don’t make this a-” Katsuki falters, what was he even gonna say, a big deal? It’s already a big deal. It’s a big deal and he can’t even take his own advice and stop thinking and he’s good at compartmentalizing so why can’t he just put Todoroki into a little box and stop blowing up shit.
“I didn’t ruin my chance?” Todoroki asks again, even, patient, wanting.
“S’what I said,” Katsuki shrugs, he’s not even totally sure what a chance even means, unless it means the same hopes he’s wound around Todoroki all this time.
Taking himself in hand, and wishing it was Todoroki there with him, calling his name out in the middle of the night over mussed sheets. Quiet evenings alone when Todoroki’s chatter at the office would fit in the room and he knows it. Not glaring across the room in silence when someone takes Todoroki’s arm, or sidles up too close. The ache, the pressure to take him up against a wall somewhere, anywhere, every time he passes by.
Finally kissing him after all their friends have left, and they’re the only ones in a red-lit izakaya, knowing exactly what to do by themselves. Going home with him after and staying there, like he didn’t get to do last night. A chance. A chance at that?
“What does that mean exactly?” Todoroki asks him, finally.
Katsuki might know, might know what to tell him. “Look. Do you really wanna try this?”
A hum to confirm.
Katsuki looks down at his hands, clenches and unclenches his fist. “I do too.”
“You sound like you’re worried.”
“I’m not,” he finds himself scowling even with no one to see. “Not worried.”
There’s quiet on the other end of the line. The sound of rustling sheets. Fucker's moving.
“You left your wallet with me,” Todoroki remarks, allowing the deception. “I like this photo.”
Doesn't matter if he's talking about the hero id or the driver's license. Katsuki hates them both. “Don’t go through my shit.”
“You have transit cards even though you don’t take the train.”
“I take it sometimes, when the bike’s in the shop, it’s good to have,” he rants.
Todoroki asks a few questions about the bike, Katsuki answers and the steady beats of Todoroki’s voice, his even tone makes everything better.
He fills a glass of water and takes the phone, and Todoroki with him. The idiot’s already going through the rest of Katsuki’s wallet out loud.
“You should have more than one credit card,” Todoroki points out. “It’s more responsible in case one gets frozen. It’s happened to me once.”
Interest peaked. “Why?”
“They detected unusual activity and decided to freeze it.”
“Of course that would happen to you. What did you even buy? Tell me,” Katsuki demands.
He gets comfortable on the living room floor, leaning his back up against the sofa. His water rests on the coffee table. He's struck by the odd impression that he'd almost certainly like it better if Todoroki were here in person.
“I bought fifteen different cat trees for Soba, for the variety, they thought it was fraudulent.”
“Fifteen?! I’d freeze you out too, ya fuckin’ freak.”
“Not all of them were for my apartment, I was going to give some to friends, some for the agency, so she’d feel welcome no matter where we went. Midoriya was willing.”
“Deku’s a freak too.”
"He's my best friend, in a way he is your oldest friend too."
"As if. I hate all you losers."
“You carry a copy of our class photo,” Todoroki sounds smug. “It’s in the back, tucked in behind everything.”
Katsuki knows. Knows exactly where it is. “Must have put it in by mistake and never gotten the chance to throw it out.”
“Do you want me to throw it out for you?” Todoroki offers, that bastard.
Katsuki scrambles in silence for a way out, then settles for a huff. “Don’t mess with my stuff.”
“Ok. Will you come to pick this up later?”
“I don’t have a choice, do I? It’s my wallet,” Katsuki answers, then takes the chance.
He has to. “If I do, do you… wanna have dinner?! There's a movie playing. We could go.”
No hesitation. “Yes. I'd like to.”
“Ok. Fine. Good.”
"I'm hanging up now," Todoroki says. "I have to feed Soba."
"Tell her fuck you from me," Katsuki remembers making his way out of Todoroki's place in the dark and the demon ball of fur nipping at his ankles, practically crazed.
"I will not."
"Uh-huh. I'll come by at seven," Katsuki's sure he can make himself a proper person again by then.
He meant to make it a question and not a statement but he can't take it back.
Another hum of confirmation, a soft bye that Katsuki echoes, more like a breath into the phone. Then Todoroki hangs up.
It's the first time in his life, maybe, that Katsuki hasn't hung up first. When he calls his mom, his dad controls the phone, and he'll never hang up first on his precious kid. Deku calls sometimes too, these days, and of course he never shuts up, so Katsuki has to pull the plug on him.
This time though, it didn't even cross his mind. Like he was still waiting for Todoroki to say more words or hum a bit more. It's fuckin' pathetic. One kiss and he can't hang up the phone.
This is awful.
He can’t stop smiling like a maniac, face burning in an empty apartment, and it’s stupid. It’s just-it’s just a date. It won’t necessarily be anything.
But it could be.
-
“Was that really the moment you knew you had to be with me?” seven months later, Katsuki has Shouto in arms, wearing absolutely nothing but the look of not-impressed on his face. “After I got sick in an izakaya after our first kiss?”
The judgment, after Katsuki did all the work fucking his ungrateful ass into the bed, is not warranted.
“Shut the fuck up there was a moment,” Katsuki explains, the post-sex cloud of euphoria, and still feeling Shouto pressed sticky-close against him overriding his instinct to keep these things to himself. “Between all the gross shit. When I dropped you back to your place and got you onto your futon. There. Right then. Still haven't forgiven your little fluffball for attacking me on the way out by the way.”
“It was late, she probably thought you were an intruder.”
“Hah?! She'd met me by then!” Katsuki snaps. “And that’s a dog thing anyway. Right, you wanna hear this or not? ‘Cause I’m not saying it again.”
Shouto pauses tracing the shape of Katsuki’s pecs for a moment, and then looks up at him. “I’m listening.”
“There was a moment when you looked…out of it but you looked back at me, and you fuckin’ asked me to kiss you goodnight.”
“Was that too forward?” Shouto asks, beyond oblivious.
He says the rest of it much quieter, since it feels illegal, almost, to say these things out loud. “Nah, I just realized what I wanted. I wanted to fuckin' stay. I wanted to belong with you, right there, and I do… now. So I won, basically, and—” whatever orgasm-induced stupidity made him start this spiel is wearing off, and the awareness of what he’s saying is making him conscious of just how bent-outta-shape in love for Shouto he really is.
Starting rambly sentences with no clear cut end just because Shouto asked him when exactly he knew he had to act on his feelings. There’s a pass, maybe, because he’s naked and everyone with sense knows that the shit you say when you are shouldn’t count towards anything.
He remembers that night. He’ll never forget. The headache of being up at such a weird time and the idea of having to drive all the way back to his place was already getting to him after spending time and energy tucking Shouto in just right. Fending off his batshit crazy cat.
Shouto had looked back, his head lifting some from the pillow, his arm outstretched making a beckoning motion for Katsuki in the dark, his voice was so low, almost inaudible, “Katsuki?”
Can’t be explained. How in that moment things were so clear.
“—and now you don’t have to be stubborn. You’ll have me forever. Until we get old and likely gray. Isn’t that what you won? ” Shouto climbs over him, nuzzling into his sweaty neck.
Oblivious to menacing in an instant. His lips are cool, and that feels good. Completely makes up for it.
Katsuki turns his head to give Shouto more room to work, thinking of his half-head of white hair, “You’re kinda halfway there already.”
“Then it wouldn’t really take much,” a kiss, another, “would it?”
“Well I got shit to do first, I ain’t gettin’ old.”
“You don’t have a choice, and since you’re a year older than me, you’re going first,” Shouto smiles against his skin, and Katsuki pulls him off and into a kiss on the mouth for the audacity of the whole thing.
His lips are cool, but his kisses run warm the longer they go and even hotter when he kisses and his empty head is full of something, a feeling. Like he’s burning to show Katsuki how much he likes this. How much he wants it still. Chances, and chances and chances.
Katsuki already wiped the cum from Shouto’s stomach but as they kiss his elbow brushes up against the dirty towel. The sheets are too starchy from the dryer too but the moment’s perfect. Shouto’s kisses are special, and Katsuki holds his jaw and gently caresses at the back of his neck every time they part for a second, for a warm breath out, a gasp, and pulls him back in. Gives Shouto's ass a hard squeeze just for the thrill of it.
He wants to apologize, still. For letting Shouto think it was all-in-one-go or nothing. The way he asked did I miss my chance. Not even in person, but even over text, Katsuki could practically hear it. Those words are still burned in his brain. A goddamn tragedy. That Shouto might think he wasn’t worth asking a thousand times over, the shattering of Katsuki’s ego into broken glass. He is. He is.
The kisses are the sorries, the weighted, varied apologies, but there should be words. Kissing him, fucking him gives a feeling but Shouto deserves a certainty. The truth. What Katsuki’s known and confirmed seven months over.
It’s always been Shouto.
“If I’m gettin’ old I’m taking you down with me, stupid,” he pokes Shouto between the eyes, right at the nose bridge.
An eyebrow raise from a dumb idiot. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” he closes his argument with another kiss, Shouto’s face so close, stumbling into the genuine. “I never let go of what I’ve got.”
“Like when you ride a motorbike,” Shouto says, happiness practically beaming out of his face, looking down at Katsuki to make sure his cleverness doesn’t go unnoticed.
Katsuki remembers. He still tells Shouto to hold onto him on that bike with a firm, tight grip. He reminds him every time.
The crass, once-teenage boy lying dormant in him takes the reins once again. “Sure, or when you ride me.”
“I guess the principle is the same, not slipping off is crucial,” Shouto acknowledges, and Katsuki laughs so hard that he snorts because Shouto sounds so serious.
Shouto smiles back, looking ridiculously pretty, and Katsuki seriously contemplates what it is, exactly, that he wouldn’t do for him.
The next moments are quiet, and they really should get up soon. In the back of Katsuki’s mind, whenever they lock the bedroom door for more than a few minutes he’s always afraid the cats have done something unsalvageable. Knocked over a vase or the TV or something.
He’s more concerned for them than the stuff, but he supposes if it was really that bad he would have heard something.
Shouto’s found something new to do, like he always does when Katsuki’s all bare skin and open for him to see and touch. He never touched people a lot, as a kid, so Katsuki kinda let's him do whatever he wants and however nice it feels to have Shouto's hands all over him is just a side benefit.
This time its opening and closing Katsuki’s hands and interlocking their fingers. Tracing his scars and calluses. Holding his hands, their hands together for a moment and then letting go.
“Having fun there, Shou?” he asks.
“You’re nice to hold.”
It’s farther from embarrassing, this time. “Yeah whatever, I know.”