Chapter Text
"Sour Spirit was a great benevolent spirit and mystic creator, who, in the long ago, descended from his Lodge of the Sun."
Katsuki took in a deep breath of the rarefied air, noting with distaste the vague burning feeling at the back of his throat that had plagued him since his arrival. Goddamned high altitudes being stingy with the oxygen. The sleep deprivation didn't help, he supposed, but he could hardly complain when, at long last, a sight like this met his sore eyes.
Those angles could cut glass, lit sharply as they were by the red-gold razors of the setting sun, split between the clouds to reflect blue-grey off of pristine pools…
Katsuki clicked his tongue at his uncharacteristic poetic inclinations, but he let out a smile all the same as he stretched stiff arms above his head, reveling in the sensation. He'd waited long enough for this, and he was only human; effortless natural beauty deserved to be started at, so stare he would.
"Bakugou. You're late."
Katsuki's smile disappeared as Todoroki Shouto appeared in the corner of his vision, effectively ruining the view from the pier at Lake McDonald Lodge. He flicked his eyes up and down the tall, lean figure, and was immediately offended on five different fronts. "You look like shit."
The corner of Todoroki's mouth dipped down; a scowl. The low angle of the light made his skin luminous either way, shading the dark bruises under his eyes a burnished copper and bronzing his normally pasty complexion. "How was your trip?" asked Todoroki, completely ignoring Katsuki's jab, as was his habit.
Two could play that game. And besides: "What the fuck are you wearing?" Number one on the list of capital offenders.
Todoroki had the nerve to look down at his denim-and-plaid ensemble as if it wouldn't immediately give both of Katsuki's parents heart attacks. "I was at work? These are work clothes."
The jet lag and four-hour drive slammed into Katsuki with a vengeance that made even the symphonic descent of the sun highlighting statuesque mountains feel like a cheap postcard imitation for a second. He felt a muscle in his eye twitch. "Two weeks here and you've gone native, hah? Where were you working, a fucking dude ranch?"
Todoroki just smiled placidly and kept sidling ever closer until his shoulder bumped Katsuki's and they were both leaning against the pier railing, chasing the sunset with intent gazes. "You know I work on the glacier restoration project every summer since UA. I'm glad you finally made it out here."
Katsuki studiously did not look at Todoroki, because the goddamned red-and-white flannel was burning his eyes, and the stupidly well-fitting Levis should have made up for the abomination of a trucker hat declaring 'Glacier National Park' in all its kitschy tourist-ness but they sure as fuck did not. Katsuki glanced down once again just to make sure, and –
"The hell, Icyhot. Those aren't even shoes."
"Oh!" Todoroki's voice sounded pleased, of all things, despite his feet being effectively strapped to large chunks of tire rubber. "They're used a lot by river guides around here. You'll never guess what they're called."
"Garbage."
Todoroki leaned over to make sure his kicked-puppy deadpan expression interrupted Katsuki's attempt to pick out mountains he'd like to climb. "Kirishima wears Crocs at home and you still like him," Todoroki said judgmentally. "Anyway, these are called Chacos! I've already ordered a custom pair for Uraraka. Do you think they'd make a good wedding gift?"
Katsuki did his level best to throw Todoroki in the ice-cold glacial lake. "If you even think of profaning that shitty nerd's wedding with such an abomination, I will fucking end you, you horrible, tasteless, cowboy wannabe and disgrace to the title of Pro Hero and the entire nation of Japan –"
"Missed you, too," said Todoroki quietly into Katsuki's hair, from where he'd managed to get Katsuki's arms pinned in a half-grapple from the dunking attempt.
Katsuki allowed himself to fume in silent anger for a minute, before popping off a warning series of explosions from his palms. Hopefully they'd catch that shitty flannel on fire, although the t-shirt peeking out from underneath looked badly tie-dyed from either generous portions of dirt and sweat, or a truly terrible choice of color palette.
Todoroki immediately let go and pulled back from their violent facsimile of a hug. "Externalized Quirk usage is strictly forbidden in national parks, without special dispensation!"
"Yeah?" Katsuki growled, not really wanting to admit that he knew that. "Well then, get Round Face a real gift, you stingy bastard, we all know you're loaded."
"Fine," Todoroki agreed too easily, leaning back on the railing of the pier.
Katsuki glared at him, lost his train of thought, and then found it again when his stomach growled. Todoroki looked tired, almost as tired as Katsuki felt, and that was after more than thirty hours of travel. Todoroki had always referred to his annual US trip as summer vacation, but Katsuki had heard Momo crunch the numbers once, and he knew it was grueling work.
"Hungry?" asked Todoroki, and Katsuki nodded vehemently in reply. "Don't suppose you brought the soba I asked for," continued Todoroki, like clockwork, eyeing Katsuki's suitcase. "If I have to eat one more potato I'm going to shoot someone."
Katsuki scoffed. Of course he'd brought the soba, not that he was going to say so now and deprive himself of the pleasure of flinging it into the bastard's face later. "What idiot let you have a gun?"
"No one." Todoroki sounded mournful. Katsuki secretly rejoiced. Score one for public safety. "I do have bear spray, though. I got an extra one for you, too."
"Thanks," Katsuki allowed awkwardly. That was one noxious chemical substance he wasn't allowed to take on a plane.
Something like a smile flit across Todoroki's face, although it was hard to tell in the twilight. "So. Dinner? My colleagues all came down for the evening, too. They're very curious about you."
"Their loss," grumbled Katsuki. "I'm a conversational fucking delight, especially jet-lagged, exhausted, and speaking English. Dumbasses."
"You're right. It's really an excuse to drink a lot of alcohol, sleep in a real bed, and get up before the sun to drive back to base camp and hike up to the site." Todoroki grabbed the handle of Katsuki's suitcase and started making his way off the pier.
"Hey!" Katsuki was torn between his personal belongings and the still-mesmerizing vista over the lake. "Hands off my shit!"
"But my soba's in there!"
"That's for our hiking trip, Half-'n-Half, get your freezerburn hands off of that –"
Todoroki laughed all the way back to the lodge, Katsuki hot on his heels and barely remembering not to activate his Quirk for assistance.
After all, the mountains weren't going anywhere.
They say the best way to deal with jet lag is to power through and go to sleep at a normal time, but these mysterious 'they' were certainly not Todoroki's batshit insane co-workers. Katsuki supposed he should count himself lucky that they'd at least let him eat before corralling the two of them out of the fancy lodge restaurant onto some much less swanky back porch of a staff-only outbuilding and handing out the supermarket beer.
Katsuki sneaked a look at the time on Todoroki's phone just to check that he wasn't joining that group description. But no, it was indeed ten-thirty at night and the sky was still blue-grey with residual sunlight. "What the fuck," he muttered, glaring at the number.
"Past your bedtime?" asked Todoroki, to the amusement of his colleagues. "Katsuki's always out like a light at nine-thirty sharp," he explained to the gallery.
Katsuki scowled at him and took a sip of his beer. "It's, uh, it's…"
Shit, he couldn't do math in English.
"It's fucking afternoon in Japan," he finally managed. "On day two or whatever the hell it is of me being awake. Screw all of you."
This just earned him a laugh which made Katsuki suspicious that he must have said that last bit in Japanese, or else they sure as hell wouldn't be laughing. Weird Americans.
"Days are long up north," commented Lucille, the project leader. "It's practically not worth it to sleep at this point, since if we want to get back to the glacier while the ice is still stable, we've got to leave before sunrise."
"Like, in six and a half hours," volunteered one of the ones with a compression Quirk. Katsuki squinted at him while doing the mental math. The extras all had names like Stacey and Bill and one was called Jimbob, which was apparently odd by even American standards, so he couldn't be blamed for not placing this one.
"Does the ice, like. Melt and shit," Katsuki tried, finding himself lacking in the technical vocabulary the others were all too willing to throw around.
"Yes, Katsuki. Ice melts," deadpanned the bastard at his side, and Katsuki aimed a left hook at that two-toned head. It was avoided with a smug shimmy.
"Shouto," scolded Lucille. "You know that's not what Katsuki's asking."
"Yeah, Shouto." Katsuki echoed the other's earlier tone. "Is Bakugou really that hard to say?" he added under his breath, switching languages just in case. He didn't really mind the American informality, but he thought it would be entertaining to hear them try. Although Katsuki wasn't sure what kind of weird-sounding surnames he'd be expected to get out of his mouth in return.
"It's important that the ice settles before we try to add to it,” Lucille explained. “The survey team has to monitor the density levels at different heights in the glacier so that the reconstruction group can match it. Replicating ice that's been under tremendous pressure for thousands of years is no small task!"
"You can't control your ice's density, can you?" Katsuki asked Todoroki, trying to envision a Heaven-Piercing Ice Wall. To him, they always seemed to be made out of the same stuff all the way through.
"Not very well," Todoroki admitted. "And I've never been able to make it variable density in a single piece."
"That's why we've got the compression team!" chirped Jeff or Jimbob or whoever the fuck seemed so eager to keep Katsuki chatting and not sleeping like he really wanted to be. "It takes about five of us an hour to deal with a single structure of Shouto's, though."
"And it takes six or seven Giant Ice Walls to restore eight thousand cubic feet of ice," added Lucille. "We're lucky if we can get three and a half thousand cubic feet of restoration a day after the compression team's been at it, to say nothing of all the additional quality and scientific checks we have to perform."
Katsuki's head was beginning to pound. "What's that in meters."
"Ah, I forgot! Where's our scientist – hey, Jordan, what's the square meterage of our average restoration?"
"With or without Shouto?" shot back Jordan. Beside Katsuki, Todoroki made a little noise that Katsuki couldn't make head or tails of.
"Come on, where'd you get your PhD from, don't you know what an average is?" Possibly-Stacey heckled her colleague.
"Are you… oh my God." Katsuki took a fortifying sip of beer, more interested in Todoroki’s odd behavior than the others’ banter. "Half-'n-Half. Don't tell me you've finally developed a sense of shame."
And if so, why did it have to be over a well-deserved compliment rather than his terrible excuse for an outfit?
"Of course not." Todoroki still looked slightly flustered as he turned to better face Katsuki. "It's just a little embarrassing, since technically my being here puts seven people out of a job."
"Close to one hundred cubic meters!" announced the triumphant voice of Jordan. "And Shouto, you're giving seven people an opportunity to finally take advantage of their government benefits and take a damn vacation. If you're gonna turn pink over something, have a beer or two."
"I'm underage in this country."
For some reason – sleep deprivation, most likely – that was when Katsuki lost it. "Icyhot," he gasped when he finally could breathe again, damn the thin mountain air. "You're telling me that your day job takes place in disaster zones, you've fought God knows how many villains, nearly died a half dozen times and you're not even allowed to buy a beer at a bar?"
"Poor summer child," said Jeffbob cheerfully, ruffling Todoroki's hair into a pink disaster. At least somewhere along the way the trucker hat had disappeared. Katsuki may or may not have had plans to explode it later.
"That's only true in the southern hemisphere," huffed Todoroki, taking a sip of Katsuki's beer because he was petty like that.
"Hey! Get your own!" yelled Katsuki, grabbing it back and chugging it down because he was petty like that. That done, he showed off a feral grin. "Oh, that's right. You fucking can't."
They were laughing louder than they should at Katsuki's roast of Todoroki – maybe it was an American thing, this boisterousness – but they were also laughing more at Katsuki than they should be.
"When was the last time you drank at altitude, Katsuki?" Jordan asked eventually, and Katsuki felt Todoroki sit up straighter at his side, bi-colored eyebrows pinching together in concern.
Katsuki took a second to make sure he parsed that sentence correctly, and in the end decided to play it safe and mutter, "It's none of your fucking business."
"Alcohol affects people a lot more at high altitude," volunteered Todoroki. "It's why I'm not allowed to drink. Well, besides the law. It'd take too long for my Quirk to get back to full power."
Katsuki snorted; as if he was going to let a shitty Miller Light or whatever this was get the better of him. Dehydration wasn't his Quirk's best friend either, but Katsuki wasn't a lightweight at anything.
Except maybe he was, because the next time he blinked there were two Todorokis, although that could also be that split-down-the-middle appearance he had going on. But the grey eye belonged on the right side, and the blue on the left; Katsuki was sure of that.
"We'd better get you to bed," Todoroki decided, and that was music to Katsuki's ears.
"The fuck do you think I've been trying to do since I got here," he grumbled, much to the delight of the gallery. Geez, if they'd been so in favor of him getting some rest they could have shut their yapping a hell of a lot earlier.
"Come on, Katsuki, don't be a baby."
"Hah?!" Katsuki had no idea what Todoroki was going on about, or why he was trying to tug Katsuki to his feet so urgently. Katsuki would get up when he wanted to, and that would be when the stupid half-and-half stopped trying to be two different people. "You're the one who's a baby. Couldn't even fly here without dumb Deku to sit next to."
"The Deku?" asked Jimjeff or whatever, and why was everyone always so interested in the shitty nerd? Just because he was an easy-to-pronounce household name didn't mean Katsuki wanted to talk about him.
"This one," said Katsuki, pointing at ice-Todoroki, and then at fire-Todoroki just to be certain. "Literally cannot sit next to strangers on an airplane because he's –"
"Am not," protested Todoroki, rude as ever. "People just freak out and think I'm dead when I'm too cold or sick when I'm too hot."
"– unable to regulate his fucking Quirk when he sleeps on airplanes, for some goddamned juvenile reason –"
"– deep-rooted childhood trauma?"
Katsuki thought that had been in Japanese but he couldn't be sure. "About airplanes?" he replied in English, just in case.
"Midoriya was coming to New York at the same time, it made sense to travel together."
"Yeah well, I don't see him here, so what the hell's that got to do with anything," Katsuki snorted, and okay. That didn't make much sense, except that he was already tired of talking about Deku.
"I don't see your logic here either, but what else is new," said Todoroki, deadpan.
"Oi!" Katsuki lunged for him, got tripped up by what must have been someone's ground-distorting Quirk at play, and ended up being the one grabbed by the bastard rather than the one doing the grabbing.
"Bedtime," said Todoroki, decisively.
"WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I BEEN SAYING," Katsuki roared, stomping towards the lodge, only the ground-wiggling was still happening, couldn't that asshole let up for half a second? Katsuki wished he could explode them, but he didn't have a Quirk permit for the park that he was taking shameless advantage of.
"Have fun," Katsuki thought he heard someone say, but he was studiously avoiding the lot of them. Besides, all the hallways looked the same and Todoroki had to nudge him in the back twice to point him in the right direction. The thought of sleep was so overpowering in Katsuki's mind that he almost allowed Todoroki to force-feed him two aspirin and half a liter of water before he remembered that he could do that perfectly well himself, despite feeling like he'd been hit with Uraraka's Quirk.
"Good night, Katsuki," was the last thing he heard before his head hit the pillow and sweet, blissfully idiot-free sleep overtook him.
Katsuki woke up to a throat that felt like the desert and made even the crisp morning air burn against it. He refilled the empty liter bottle from the night before and chugged it down as he blearily registered the numbers on the wall clock. Six thirty.
He raised the blackout curtain a fraction and was nearly blinded by the bright daylight. What the hell.
Short summer nights, Stacey or whoever had said last night. No wonder the sun was so strong already. Now that he was prepared, Katsuki pushed the curtain back slowly and was rewarded with the clear lake waters sparkling a cheerful good morning from under ever-shortening pine shadows.
Might as well get the day started. Katsuki had places to be and mountains to climb.
He might be on holiday, but hero instincts were hard to suppress; Katsuki headed over to the door and stooped to pick up the envelope he'd noticed first thing when he'd woken up. It hadn't been there the night before.
Inside was a map of the park – the very same one he'd been handed at the entrance gate – only this one had markings in red ink designating a service road in the east of the park. Next to it was a short description of what signs and paths to follow to find the restoration group's base camp, along with a doodle of a cat holding a radio with a frequency written on its display. Katsuki couldn't help but hold back a snort. Of course that idiot would think he'd brought a professional-grade radio on his damn vacation. It's not like Katsuki would get lost; he wasn't some amateur who'd go running to a park ranger in order to phone a not-friend.
"Have a great day!" was written in a speech bubble above the cat. Katsuki let himself smile at that.
He was going to have a fucking outstanding day, one hundred percent guaranteed.
It all started with a healthy breakfast, in the form of miso soup, natto and rice because he wasn't about to give himself diabetes with whatever sugary breakfast the hotel served. How else was Katsuki meant to fuel up for his paddle around the lake?
Naturally he fucking crushed his kayak excursion, achieving the perfect balance between cardio, arm day, and nature appreciation. If he had one complaint, it was that the water was too cold to even consider practicing his kayak rolls, a skill that he hadn't gotten the chance to test since high school, not that it was really possible Katsuki had forgotten it. Still, it might have been nice to try near the famous beach of rainbow-colored pebbles, to get a closer look through the clear waters.
Whatever. Arm day achieved, acclimatization to altitude proceeding on schedule (although not ahead of it as Katsuki would have liked) and jet lag banished to fucking oblivion. Katsuki threw on a clean shirt, put the rest of his things in his suitcase and set out in the car. A short drive through picturesque forest later, and he was at Avalanche Creek.
Despite the name, which sounded like something off of Icyhot's resume, Katsuki found the brief ten-kilometer hike completely engaging. The cedars were majestic, and the rushing creek had smoothed and polished the stones as it ran over into marbled curves. When Katsuki rounded a corner and saw a swath of felled forest, he had to stop for a moment.
Avalanche and no fucking doubt. He thought he ought to be used to these things, standing next to Todoroki or Deku on heaps of smoking rubble, or seeing photos of giant ice walls bracing against tsunamis or landslides. But somehow it was still a silent reminder of the forces out there that were greater than any villain, and more dangerous in their unpredictability.
Katsuki saw it again, driving up and up the long winding road called Going to the Sun, only this time the land was scarred by fire. Blackened skeletons of trees, bordered by stripes of young green growth; placards telling of the fires of 1910, 1929, 2003, and 2015 that laid claim to more than a hundred thousand acres each.
Fire spreads life, not just destruction, he remembered Todoroki telling him in that bland voice that somehow conveyed a sense of wonder. In his first summer here, Todoroki had been in charge of a controlled burn, and Katsuki remembered how weirdly peaceful the other man had been upon his return. Seeing persistent green growth already repopulating scorched earth, Katsuki could begin to understand.
Despite his reputation, Katsuki was also the kind of person to seek out rest from the turbulence swirling in and around him. He was one of the few who used his days off. Recharging like this – drinking in the colors, shapes, and sensations of a landscape that clearly demonstrated power levels not even All Might in his prime could reach – helped him focus, gave him perspective.
And if it resulted in something special that was just for him, that he wasn't obligated to share unless he deigned to send a fucking glorious photograph to some group chat, well, so much the better.
He was so going to spam the group chat once he got back into range of a cell tower, Katsuki thought. The country the road ran through was glorious; he knew he'd have to come back with a motorcycle one day. As he neared the top of Logan Pass, he was often torn between whether to keep an eye on the rearview mirror for the view unfurling behind him or to keep his eyes on the narrow road.
If Katsuki pulled over once or twice like a goddamned tourist, well, no one would need to know.
Logan Pass was on the Continental Divide, he read on the signage at the top as he followed a boardwalk over ground marshy from snowmelt. On one side, all rivers would flow into the Pacific; on the other, the Atlantic. For some absurd reason, this brought Todoroki to mind, and for the rest of the brief hike Katsuki couldn't get the idiot out of his head.
He'd be dumbstruck by the wooliness of the bighorn sheep, instead of impressed at their agility and tough, curling horns. He'd probably make a big deal about going to see the Hidden Lakes, and then complain that they weren't hidden enough or lake-y enough.
Whatever. Katsuki had no idea how that half-and-half head worked, and the view of the lakes was panoramic as shit. Frigid air wafted off of them and mixed with the chilly wind speeding up as it went over the pass; the hot summer sun was evenly matched to it at this altitude, making the sweat alternately form on and then evaporate off of Katsuki's body, leaving him chilled until he upped his walking pace or the breeze died a little.
Fucking annoying, is what it was, but that was the nature of some things some times, including nature itself. Wouldn't keep Katsuki from enjoying it.
Besides, glacial lakes – infuriatingly idyllic yet ice cold – were a sight he was going to see a lot of, and each was special in its own way.
Lake St. Mary, enclosed by high mountain walls, was entirely different from the wide-angle views from Lake McDonald, and Lower St. Mary's Lake, just outside of the park itself, was in another setting altogether. Even Swiftcurrent Lake, back among peaks again once Katsuki drove back into the park, had a different feel about it, as the gateway to the ice giants of Many Glacier.
By the time he found the service road leading to the little-used trailhead, it was eight at night and the sun was still just above the highest peaks. Sunset would come in another two hours, but if last night was any indication, ambient light would last at least an hour after that.
Katsuki wasn’t worried though; it's not like he was some unprepared extra. Of course he had a fucking headlamp.
So he felt perfectly justified in his decision to park among the various empty trailers of supplies, equipment and what-have-you, hike the half-hour to the Forest Service cabin surrounded with signs of recent activity but currently empty, leave his pack and extra layers under a bench and continue on up the trail towards the glacier.
If those damn workaholics were putting in overtime the day before the hiking trip they knew Katsuki had crossed an ocean for, then they had another thing coming. In the form of an appropriately enraged Katsuki, who wasn't going to let a stupid candy cane poke holes in his well-laid plans.
Sure enough, Katsuki managed the steep climb in record time, legs only burning a little as he navigated the chunks of mud and rocks at the glacier terminus. A white canvas tent glowed in the low light, and Katsuki made his way toward it.
"Why," he growled when he got close enough to see the disaster that was about to ruin all his careful planning, "am I not at all surprised to see this shit."
"Bakugou!" Todoroki looked a mix of sheepish and relieved as he finally noticed Katsuki. "This is not what it looks like."
"If it looks like this two-toned numbskull is getting chewed out by his boss for pushing himself too hard, then this is exactly what it looks like," declared Lucille, an exasperated hiss to her tone.
"I'm fine," insisted Todoroki, shaking the mylar blanket draped over his right side into a mad protest of crinkles.
Bakugou caught a glimpse of frost still clinging to his neck, and snorted. "You look fucking fantastic," he said, earning an immediate look of betrayal from Todoroki.
"Katsuki," the brat whined. "I thought we were colleagues. Why are you sticking up for the man?"
"Oh no he didn't," snapped Lucille, and Bakugou had to agree.
Remembering various anger management seminars and therapy sessions, Bakugou inhaled a long breath and let it out slowly.
Nope, didn't work. There was still a dumb as fuck icy-hot bastard seated on a boulder in front of him, climbing harness over blue jeans looking out-of-place with the usual thermoregulation vest and gauntlet worn over yet another eye-scarring flannel, all half-wrapped in an emergency blanket like a particularly unappetizing burrito.
"I," said Katsuki, volume bordering on a yell, "am sticking up for the scientific expert in this restoration procedure who also happens to be in charge of the health and well-being of her crew, against someone who I know very fucking well will fall asleep without brushing his teeth at the end of a long day."
"And that," declared Lucille, "is too much information, thank you, Katsuki. We're going to pack up and head down now, I trust you can keep an eye on this knucklehead until we're ready to go."
"I'm fine," Todoroki repeated when she'd left, but this time in Japanese. "You should know. You've seen me when I'm really not fine, after all."
Katsuki had, on more than one occasion, but he didn't like recalling any of them. "That doesn't mean you should go pushing your damn limits over a shitty glacier. It's not like you or anyone else can't add more fucking ice to it tomorrow, why'd you have to mess yourself up over this, huh?"
"I wasn't anywhere near my limit," Todoroki protested. "And you know why. Why'd you come all the way up here, anyway? I thought we were meeting at the cabin."
Katsuki allowed Todoroki's not-at-all subtle deflection, and shifted his weight to his other foot. "Because."
"Did you want to see the site?"
That was part of it, so Katsuki would let Todoroki keep thinking that. "It's a fucking metric shit-ton of ice," he said, eloquently.
Todoroki cracked a small smile at that. "Scientifically rigorous accuracy as always, I see. Since the start of the project, only about ten percent of the glacier loss since 1950 has been reversed, though. And that's been five years of work from some of the best ice Quirk specialists they can get."
Katsuki would die before he admitted to being impressed by Todoroki's Giant Ice Walls, but they had that name for a reason that wasn't just Todoroki's lack of general creativity. Now, however, staring at a good two dozen of them lined up neatly at the end of the glacier, waiting to be compressed to the correct density, he could see just how puny they were in comparison to the glacier itself. And this was just one of the twenty-five glaciers in the park they were actively trying to preserve.
"Shit-ton of ice," Katsuki repeated. It still held about as much meaning as the ridiculously huge numbers the scientists would rattle out.
They watched in silence as the last members of the compression team rappelled down from their perches atop the ice walls, stowed away the ropes and other tools, and donned packs and headlamps to prepare for the trek back to the cabin.
In Katsuki's line of hero work, such long, grueling days were also common, but heroes were supposed to be a cut above the rest. He honestly hadn't expected to see this level of dedication from a bunch of people whose job was adding more ice to ice, but when he considered Todoroki's why, he supposed he could see it.
Didn’t excuse dumbass decision making and shitty self-care habits, but everyone was supposed to be an adult here.
"Do we really have to walk down the mountain," complained the only one whose adult status Katsuki seriously had his doubts about. "It's so far."
Katsuki flicked Todoroki's ear. "Then maybe don't fucking exhaust yourself when you know there ain't no fancy helicopter coming to pick you up, Ice-for-brains."
"I'm not exhausted. I just hate walking."
Deep breaths were not going to cut it here. "THEN WHY THE FUCK DID YOU AGREE TO A THREE-DAY HIKING TRIP, YOU FUCKING BASTARD?!!!"
Todoroki looked away. If he was trying to hide a smirk, Katsuki was going to explode it, rules or no rules.
"Whatever he said, I probably agree," broke in a tired-sounding Lucille as the restoration group started past them. "You two take it slow on the way down, you hear? No shame in resting, except for being an idiot to put yourself in the position to need it in the first place."
"We're not bring up the fucking rear," grumbled Katsuki, prodding Todoroki in the back. The fucker had the nerve to look completely unrepentant.
"Yeah, the last one to get to camp always has dish duty," Todoroki agreed, setting off.
"Walk behind me!" Katsuki yelled, out of habit, but made no move to get in front of Todoroki.
"I don't know what the hell is going on here," Katsuki heard Jordan say as the scientist fell into step behind them.
Katsuki knew the feeling.