Chapter Text
The good news comes over grainy phone video at four in the goddamn morning with the business end of an engagement ring shoved into the camera lens and Ochako’s smiling face soon after.
“You absolute liar, Bakugou Katsuki,” is the first thing out of her mouth, edged with disbelieving laughter and the wobble of tears, and it’s probably what he deserves after swearing up and down for months that he didn’t know anything, when he obviously fucking did.
The phone jostles as Izuku slots into frame, beaming so wide it pinches his freckles, crinkles the corners of his eyes. He’s clearly been crying because the damn things are red-rimmed and wet.
They’re so fucking happy it almost hurts to look at.
And even though he’s still sleep-rough and not caffeinated enough for any of this shit, Katsuki can’t help but smile back.
“She said ‘yes,’” Izuku says.
“Of course she said ‘yes,’ dipshit,” Katsuki says, and if there’s a fond, rough edge to it, he’ll blame it on the sleep deprivation and take solace in the fact that no one will believe Deku anyway. “You gonna tell me about it or what?”
So, they do.
It tumbles out in one big rush, words blurring as they talk over one another. The park, and how Izuku nearly dropped the ring, and how Ochako had cried so hard that a stranger offered her tissues, and how she somehow knew and didn’t know all at once, and how Izuku’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking, even after.
For a while, it's easy. Familiar and warm and like no time has passed at all between them, like he's there with them in the warm glow of their kitchen lights instead of an ocean away as the dark outside his windows slowly turns to early grey.
The bad news, of course, comes later.
Ochako disappears somewhere in the middle of it, phone calls rolling in from friends and former classmates when she sends a photo of the ring and the group chat promptly implodes. Her excited voice comes through the speaker muffled from down the hall, so it's just the two of them on the call when Izuku starts gnawing at his lower lip.
“Out with it,” Katsuki demands.
“What do you— How do you know there’s an ‘it?’” Izuku stutters, and Katsuki levels the best uncaffeinated glare he can muster at him.
Izuku sighs.
There’s a long beat before he says, “Shouto’s probably going to be there.”
And that’s—
Well.
Fuck.
“Okay,” he grits out, “And?”
“I just didn’t know if—” Izuku starts, and then looks up, beyond the camera to where Ochako has clearly come back into the room and is mouthing something at him or doing some goddamn charades or something, before correcting himself, “We just want to make sure that you’re— that it’s going to be okay that he’s there.”
Katsuki’s pulse jumps. “Why the fuck wouldn’t it be?”
“You went to America, Kacchan,” he says softly.
As if on cue, voices float up from the sidewalk below through Katsuki's cracked open window in a language he is too tired to try to translate. Even though this city never truly sleeps, it has finally begun to wake and rise in earnest, the din of rush hour traffic growing alongside the pale light slanting in through the cracks in the blinds.
It’s the kind of morning Shouto always loved — easy and soft and full. The kind where he’d pad barefoot across the creaky floor of Katsuki’s old apartment and press his cold fingers against Katsuki’s bare skin, just to hear him swear before the day really even started, the steam of their coffee curling up between them like shared breath.
It’s a far cry from the bare wall emptiness of his shoe-box apartment, now.
Katsuki scrubs a hand over his face. Scrubs the memory away with it.
“Fuck. Look. It’s— I’m not going to make a fucking scene just because that half and half bastard shows up. I know he’s your friend, too, for whatever goddamn reason,” he says. “So yeah. It’s fine.”
Izuku hesitates.
“It’s ancient fucking history, Deku, and it’s your wedding. It’d be weirder if he wasn’t there.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Positive?”
“Make me say it one more time, fucker, and I— shit.” An alert comes through, bright red and urgent at the top of his phone in all-caps English, and Katsuki shoots up out of bed. “I gotta go. Jesus, a fucking kaiju quirk. Are you serious?”
“We’ll send the details once we get the date nailed down,” Izuku promises, but he barely catches it over Ochako grabbing the phone so she can yell, “Turn that thing into dust, Katsuki!” before she disappears out of frame once more, talking excitedly into her phone with someone — probably Mina — about dress shopping plans.
“Your future wife’s a fucking psycho,” Katsuki points out.
Izuku only smiles that dopey fucking smile of his, looking off camera. “I know.”
Five months later, Katsuki arrives in Japan three and a half hours late and in nothing but black sweats and an old tee shirt because his flight got delayed and then the airline lost his fucking bag.
Tokyo moves with familiar efficiency, people flowing around him like water parting around a stone. The schedule announcements come in clipped and familiar Japanese over the speakers. When the subway train pulls up to the airport terminal station, his body remembers everything before his brain does: where to stand, how to blend into the crowd, when to move as the doors part way at his stop a half hour later and he slips out of the train and up the stairs into crisp air.
It’s like muscle memory, reflex. Proof that some things don't actually leave you, no matter how far you go.
Above ground, ginkgo trees line the street, their leaves just starting to turn, flecking the sidewalk like yellow confetti.
He’s a week early to help with the planning and the preparation leading up to the actual wedding day, but the walkthrough of the new venue and the food tasting started ten minutes ago and he’s still five minutes out.
Apparently, they’d had the whole thing signed, sealed, and sorted less than a month after Deku popped the question. But then the shrine they’d reserved for the ceremony was half-destroyed in a villain attack three weeks ago, and then the botanical garden they’d reserved for the reception had flooded with sewage a week after that, and then the caterer pulled out in the middle of it all for good measure.
So, it’s been a fucking nightmare, and Katsuki officially knows too much about wedding shit already — which, quite frankly, means knowing anything about it at all.
The new place is a swanky hotel in Chiyoda ward directly across from the old imperial palace and surrounding gardens, and Katsuki knows from the very second that the shrewd doorman eyes him before reluctantly pulling the glossy walnut door open that he is laughably underdressed.
The lobby is done up in modern Japanese luxury. It sprawls out nearly as much as it sprawls up with twenty-foot floor to ceiling windows that pour in sunlight like water and give way to polished hinoki slats and shoji paper accents along the ceiling. Low beige setees and armchairs scatter thoughtfully across black marble tile throughout the massive space, all of them leading towards a reflecting pool where a real goddamn tree grows gnarled and tipped-green at the very center.
“Kacchan!” Izuku waves from where he’s standing just beneath it with Ochako, his mother, and the thin, severe woman Katsuki has to assume is the venue coordinator they’d mentioned in the last group text. They’re all dressed well — polished shoes, pressed-crisp button downs, clean dresses — and it makes Katsuki feel all the more slovenly in comparison as he walks over.
And then, of course, there’s Shouto.
Fuck.
Todoroki.
Katsuki’s stomach twists. Intellectually, he’d known this was coming. Known he’d been helping with all of the last minute planning mostly because Izuku clammed up every time they’d talked about it, so it’s not entirely a surprise to see him here.
He looks good, which is, first and foremost, fucking infuriating.
One hand slung lazily in the pocket of his no-doubt designer pants, a white cashmere sweater that looks so soft Katsuki wonders what fucking cherub he murdered to get it.
Katsuki specifically does not notice the way he’s cut his stupid hair differently, shorter on the sides and styled so that it’s pushed back from his face. It shows the scar more, but it also makes him look more striking, angular in that weird, model way that some people like.
And Katsuki’s in a ratty pair of sweat pants and an old tee-shirt. The only designer things on him are the massive fucking bags under his eyes courtesy of the wailing baby that guaranteed he couldn’t get a wink of sleep on the goddamn plane.
Great.
Izuku and Ochako don’t seem to care, at least.
“Sorry I'm late,” he says as Ochako hugs him, her strong-ass little arms wrapping around him and squeezing until he thinks she might pop one of his lungs. “It's been a fucking day.”
“We’re just glad you're here,” Izuku says as he pulls Katsuki in next, beaming. He’s still too fucking tall and too fucking broad these days, but the new undercut on his hair suits him and Katsuki shows him as much by roughing the fluffy top of it up with his hand as Izuku pulls away, eyes wet and sniffling through his laughter.
“Welcome home, Katsuki.” Inko throws her arms around him and nearly knocks him off balance, which is impressive given he is an entire head taller and probably has twenty pounds of muscle on her.
“Hi, Auntie Inko,” he says, half-strangled.
She grabs his face between her hands, yanking it down so she can inspect him. “What are they feeding you over there? You’re so thin, look at you. If you come by the house later, I’ll fix you up extra spicy gyudon the way you like it, okay? Double chili flakes.”
The fucking peanut gallery has started snickering, Ochako not even bothering to hide her stupid grin behind her stupid manicured hand. He flips her off behind Inko’s back and she sticks her tongue out at him. Izuku just looks exceedingly pleased with the whole scene, and also kind of like he might start crying again.
Shouto — Todoroki, god fucking damn it — lingers like an awkward specter at the periphery of all of it, and fuck if Katsuki’s going to be the one to make this any worse than it has to be. When Inko finally releases him, Katsuki decides to rip the bandaid because it's fucking fine, and they can both be fucking adults about it.
He shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants.
“Hey, Halfie,” he says.
Todoroki nods. “Hello.”
They meet each other’s eyes, once and for a beat too long before they both look away. A long moment of silence stretches, and it crawls beneath Katsuki’s skin.
It’s broken, mercifully, when the venue coordinator clears her throat delicately.
“Are we all ready?” she asks. “I thought we might start with the tasting first.”
Izuku and Ochako look at him
“I’ve been on a plane for fourteen hours and I’m jet lagged as hell, but yeah, why not.” Katsuki shrugs. “Let's go try some shitty food.”
The food, as it turns out, is actually pretty fucking incredible. The venue coordinator, Akaya, walks them through each dish from the Michelin star menu with a series of small sample dishes in front of them. They pass them to each other around the mahogany table, which has been polished so cleanly that Katsuki can see his own reflection in the wood. The entire dining room has been closed off for them, and the chef even comes out to greet them with a deep bow for the first course.
Katsuki thinks he makes a better tempura and steamed egg custard, but the sashimi is fresh, and the nishime is well-seasoned, and the miso is delicate, and all of it tastes, strangely, of being home.
“Fuck, I haven’t had fish this good in a year. Put this on the menu,” he says, nudging the sample plate of perfectly baked tai-meshi towards Izuku.
Deku twists his face up. “I don’t like sea bream.”
“Yes you fucking do, I used to make it for you all the time,” he says, and as soon as Deku takes a first, skeptical bite and then goes back immediately for seconds, it’s obvious that Katsuki was right. “See. What’d I say? Add it to the menu.”
“Glad we could settle on something,” Akaya says, tapping away at her tablet.
“Is the food that bad in New York?” Ochako asks him.
“It's fine.” Katsuki shrugs, but he doesn't miss the way Todoroki’s eyes flick over to him when she says New York. “Don’t eat it much, but Liberty Bell’s sidekicks drag me out after work sometimes, and it's been pretty good. Thought it would be all grease. I still cook most of the time mostly because there's no good fucking Japanese food in the entire city.”
Todoroki scoffs quietly.
Katsuki bristles. “You got something to say?”
“I have a hard time believing that, is all.”
“Yeah?” Katsuki snaps, and it's definitely too sharp, but the jet lag and lack of sleep have decimated his brain to mouth filter and so it comes out before he can really stop it. “And what the fuck would you know about it, Halfie?”
Todoroki doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a damn near thing.
The expression is so fucking familiar, so loaded with history that for a moment, it’s like Katsuki is back in Shouto’s cramped kitchen — the sparse cabinets, the empty countertops, the steam from the pot clouding the air between them as Katsuki had tried in vain to teach the man who could burn water how to cook.
“Don’t you dare touch that fucking knob.”
Shouto’s brows furrowed. “But it’ll cook faster if it’s hotter.”
“It’ll burn faster, idiot,” Katsuki said. “Follow the damn recipe."
“You never follow a recipe,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, because I know what the fuck I'm doing.”
Shouto had nearly rolled his eyes then, too.
Katsuki remembers the way they ate slightly underseasoned, but somehow mercifully unburned oyakodon that night, side by side on Shouto’s couch. Remembers the mismatched bowls and chopsticks, the way Shouto had been so fucking pleased with himself, smiling down just a little at Katsuki’s empty bowl when they had finished.
“Was it okay?” he’d asked.
“No,” Katsuki had said, but he couldn’t keep the strange warmth from his voice that had bloomed there, bloomed in the sliver of space between them on the couch, too. “But I’ve eaten worse from places that actually charge me money, so.”
They’d hardly been anything then — just coworkers and maybe sometimes friends when Deku forced them into orbit for Class A izakaya nights and more and more often sparring partners that lingered too long on the mat with one another — and they both knew it.
That was the point of this whole thing, of the empty threat he’d made that Shouto would have to learn how to cook more than just instant noodles, or he’d personally kill him before the malnutrition did.
A ruse, like the one Katsuki told himself as he’d stared down at Shouto’s soft mouth, or the one that drew him forward like a strange and inevitable gravity.
“Katsuki,” Shouto had breathed into their shared air, noses brushing and—
And the memory collapses like steam hitting cold air.
Ochako’s chair scrapes in the dead quiet, and the dining room sharpens back into visceral focus. The mahogany, the half-finished tasting plates, the long, clawing beat of silence they’ve fallen into that stretches so uncomfortable and tight that he’s certain even Akaya is privy to their their dirty laundry now.
“Try this!” Ochako says quickly, shoving a dish of thinly sliced steak and glossy whole chili peppers in a sweet and spicy sauce towards him. “It’s amazing.”
She’s right, of course, and even though it's just an attempt to shut him up and diffuse the tension, it's also the best damn thing he’s tried so far, so he can't find it in himself to mind too much.
The conversation eases back towards the safe, neutral ground of the impending nuptials. Todoroki doesn’t say anything else directly to him for the rest of the tasting. Hardly speaks at all, actually, even as the rest of them fill him in on the plan for the rest of the week, the preparation that still needs to be done. Between the flower arrangements and the cake and the linens — of which, apparently, there are multiple kinds to manage — and all the other details that make Katsuki’s eyes glaze over, it becomes more and more clear it's a miracle that this wedding is happening at all.
Aside from the general fuckery of the universe, the biggest problem is that Ochako and Deku can't make a decision to save their fucking lives. They waffle on every single dish until Katsuki or Inko or Todoroki express an opinion one way or the other, which, he supposes, are why all of them are here in the first place.
When the menu has been settled and the chef thanked personally during an impromptu tour of the pristine kitchen, the rest of the walkthrough starts in earnest.
If Katsuki thought the lobby was a little rich for his blood, it's nothing compared to the ceremony venue itself. The atrium is all glass and sunlight, pale wood and perfectly manicured tropical plants.
The large windows beyond Akaya overlook the imperial palace gardens, a sprawl of autumnal red and orange that contrast the vibrant green of the space inside.
“Seats here,” Akaya gestures with her tablet to either side of her, heels clacking softly as she walks up what will be the aisle towards the front of the room. “Altar there. String quartet or grand piano in the corner, if you like.”
“Oh,” Deku scrubs at his neck with his hand. “We're, uh, just going to bring a speaker and play something from one of our phones.”
“Our pianist broke his wrist rollerblading a couple of days ago,” Ochako laments.
“I know someone,” Todoroki says, pulling out his phone and tapping out a text. “I'll see if she’s available.”
“She even any good if you can book her this last minute?” Katsuki scoffs.
Todoroki's gaze flicks up to him as he says with cool indifference, “She performs as a guest pianist with the Tokyo Philharmonic sometimes.”
Because of fucking course she does.
There should be a medal and a ceremony to acknowledge the immense effort it takes him not to roll his eyes.
“Just as a guest?” he needles instead.
Todoroki’s mouth does that irritating little twitch Katsuki used to find so endearing — not quite a smile, but amused with himself anyway.
Asshole.
The tour goes on.
Akaya points out where the flowers could go, how the afternoon sunlight will slant in just-so as the ceremony begins. Katsuki only half-listens. His attention catches unwillingly on the way Todoroki’s distorted reflection follows his own in the glass as they walk. Side by side, but with a crack wide enough to fit the last year of absence and silence between them.
“How the hell did you find this place so last minute?” he asks Izuku, both of them looking up at the clear autumn sky through the delicately latticed glass roof. It probably helps that Deku cracked the Top 10 in the rankings last year, but still.
“Oh,” Izuku’s smile tips nervous. “Um. Shouto found it, actually.”
“The hotel owner is a business associate of my father’s,” Todoroki says, voice carefully mild, probably for Izuku’s benefit and not Katsuki’s. “He called in a few favors.”
“Didn’t know your old man still had any of those left after the war,” Katsuki snorts.
Todoroki shrugs. “Me either.”
“Lucky for us either way,” Izuku says too brightly and too fast. Katsuki shoves down the impulse to roll his eyes again because it's polite conversation and not like they're at each other's throats.
He’s been careful about it since the tasting, even though every time he looks at Todoroki or hears him speak or he just breathes in Katsuki’s general vicinity it makes him want to blow something up.
“ 'zuku, baby, I need your opinion,” Ochako calls from the far side of the atrium by Inko, waving him over to look at something Akaya has pulled up on her tablet. “I can’t choose.”
Izuku hesitates, looking between him and Todoroki.
“It's fucking fine, Deku.” Katsuki shoves Izuku's shoulder lightly, “Go pick out napkin rings or whatever.”
After he leaves, it's just the two of them. Alone. Together in the same room, the same space, the same air, for the first time since—
“So that's it?” Shouto had said as Katsuki shoved his shoes on in the genkan, voice flat and cold and low, like ice scraping bone, “You’re just going?”
“Why the fuck wouldn't I?”
Katsuki crosses his arms. Todoroki slides his hands into his pockets. The silence drags and drags and drags.
The crisp scent of polished hinoki and fresh flowers drifts through the atrium, and for a second it feels almost too serene. Restlessness prickles in his palms, presses at his ribs. It makes him want to move or snap at something just to fill the vacuous space between them.
He hates that it feels like waiting for a fight, like waiting for something to break open.
He looks at Todoroki and he can see the tension in his jaw, the unnaturally stiff set to his shoulders. It reminds him a little of how he used to be nearly a decade ago now back in their first year at UA when he was still so locked up inside of himself, anger simmering beneath a placid, icy surface.
“Can we just, I dunno,” Katsuki scrapes a hand through his hair, “not be assholes about it?”
Todoroki’s mismatched eyes flick across to him and hold, assessing. Like scoping out a threat on the scene of a quirk accident or looking for an opening during a spar, somewhere he can land a hit.
Todoroki scoffs. It’s a dry, short sound that makes Katsuki bristle. “And the tasting was you not being an asshole about it?”
“Hey, you fucking started it—” Katsuki snaps, and then, realizing Izuku has shifted his attention to look nervously over at them instead of at anything that actually fucking matters like his future wife, he cuts himself off. Makes himself breathe.
He’s always known how to press Katsuki’s buttons, always had an uncanny ability to see through him right down to his very bones. Seems like some things never fucking change.
But it's not about him. Them. Whatever.
“Look,” Katsuki tries again, keeping his voice low. “It's their day, right? I'm not about to be the one who fucks it up. You?”
It’s immensely gratifying to watch Todoroki stiffen, to see a flicker of realization pass across his face as if the idea that he could be a part of the problem here hadn’t even occurred to him. And if Katsuki hadn’t known him quite as well, he might miss the way Todoroki’s shoulders sag a fraction, slowly, almost imperceptibly. Might miss the small exhale he gives.
“Of course not,” he says, and it’s quieter this time. There is no fight to it.
It’s almost nothing, barely an inch of ground given.
But, it’s a start.
“Good. Then for the rest of this week, we’re fucking civil.”
For a long moment, they watch their friends smile adoringly at one another across the atrium, two idiots blissfully and completely in love. Idiots that Katsuki, for some fucking reason, also loves. That Todoroki probably loves too.
The silence that had dragged between them tightens and loosens all at once as the quiet, fragile truth of it hangs in the sunlight.
“Okay,” Todoroki finally agrees. “Civil.”
The rest of the afternoon passes, mercifully, without incident.
They settle on linens and china patterns and napkin rings and a half-dozen other bullshit things that Katsuki couldn’t give less of a shit about, except for the fact that all of it matters to two of the only people in the world he actually does give a shit about.
Occasionally, he catches Todoroki looking like he's about to throw out some icy jab, or catches himself opening his mouth around some barbed remark, but one of them always thinks better of it first.
Katsuki is great at being civil. Probably the fucking best at it, actually.
By the time they finally call it a day, Izuku and Todoroki head off for a late evening patrol, Ochako goes home to tackle whatever fresh wedding emergency has cropped up in the last five minutes, and Katsuki catches the train toward his parents' house to scrounge up enough clothes to survive until the airline finds his suitcase.
His childhood home sits exactly where it always has, tucked into the same quiet neighborhood on the same quiet street.
Katsuki lets himself in with the spare key still hidden beneath the ceramic planter beside the front steps, and as the door swings open, it takes him approximately four seconds to realize he'd been an idiot to hope that house might actually be empty.
"So, Inko gets to see my own kid before I do?" His mother screeches as soon as he steps over the threshold.
Katsuki kicks his shoes off, sliding into an old pair of All Might slippers, the soles worn thin. "I was going to come here first—"
"Liar. You weren't even going to tell us you landed, were you?"
"I was gonna text."
"When? Next week?"
“Uh, tomorrow?" he tries, and then he has to try to duck away from his mother’s vice grip as she reaches towards him, but the old hag catches him anyway. Katsuki doesn't know how she always fucking does that, no matter how fast he is out in the field.
Her fingers dig into the sleeve of his tee shirt long enough to swat him across the back of the head and then tug him close like he's still sixteen instead of twenty-six.
"Look at you," she chides, pulling back, patting his cheek. "Getting wrinkles already. You work too much."
"You say that like it's news."
"No." Mitski reaches up to smooth a stubborn piece of blond hair away from his forehead. "I say it because I miss you.”
And he can't really fucking argue with that, can he?
“Hi, son,” his father says with a soft smile after the she-hag finally lets him go, folding Katsuki into a hug that smells faintly of spices and laundry detergent. “Are you staying for dinner?”
Katsuki glances toward the kitchen. Something rich and savory simmers on the stove. Curry probably, which has always been his favorite. For half a second, he thinks about saying yes, but exhaustion and jet lag and the cost of being fucking civil for an entire afternoon pull on him like physical weight.
“Nah," he says, shoving his hands into his pockets, "I’m just grabbing some shit and then heading to Ei's.”
Mitski clicks her tongue, “Ungrateful brat.”
"You say that every time," Katsuki shoots back, already halfway up the stairs.
"Because every time it's true!" Mitsuki hollers after him.
His room is almost exactly the way he'd left it after graduation, and it doesn’t feel so much like his anymore as it does a time capsule of who he used to be.
The shelves are dusted. The bed is neatly made, dark sheets tucked and pillows fluffed instead of strewn about in the disheveled heap he’d always left them in. The desk sits beneath the same window overlooking the street. A few hero magazines he'd forgotten to pack still lean crookedly beside old textbooks and notebooks. His provisional license sticks out from between the pages of one of them.
He digs through the closet for an old duffle bag and starts stuffing it with jeans and hoodies and tee shirts that he hopes still fit.
It's only when he’s done that he notices the photo.
It's tucked into a simple wooden frame on his bookshelf. His old man must have put it there sometime after he’d moved into that first shitty apartment he’d shared with Deku. Doesn't know how he's never noticed it before.
The photo is of them. The Big Three, back at the end of their final year at UA.
Izuku has one arm thrown around Katsuki's shoulders, grinning so hard that it pushes his cheeks out wide. Shouto stands on Katsuki's other side, flashing an easy peace sign toward whoever had been holding the camera, edge of his mouth quirked up in a small smile.
Sandwiched in the middle of the frame, Katsuki’s scowling.
It feels a little stupid, a little childish to see the expression reflected back at him now. He remembers that day well enough to know he’d been happier than he’d ever admit to anyone out loud.
Back then, he'd have looked at this picture and thought he knew exactly how the rest of his life was going to go: tomorrow after tomorrow stretching out in front of them, a future glinting almost too bright to look at.
He grabs his duffle bag off the floor.
Before he leaves the room, he flips the photo face down.