Daddy Cool

by lalazee

Summary:

“Where the hell have you been all my life?”

“Shaping Japan’s youth,” Deku says as he crawls atop Katsuki’s lap and shoves one of Katsuki’s hands down his leather pants. “Now get me off.”

Or: Deku is a kindergarten teacher who makes bad decisions because he's a romantic and a slut, while Bakugou finally makes one very good decision.

Notes:

• For crashintome.

Happy Birthday Ash!

Naomi’s mother is late. 

The winter afternoon is darkening with the impending early sunset and the threat of snow as Deku briefly glances out the window, diverting his attention from where Naomi’s riot of dark curls are bowed in play, coloring by numbers at the big, low table now devoid of any students but herself. 

But this isn’t the first time, so Deku isn’t worried. Ashido Mina is always blustering through the side doors of the vast international school building, all jangling gold hoop earrings and neon pink hair and long, long nails. She’s smiley and charming and can sweep Deku away with an apology, her vibrancy whirling up the neat kindergarten room like a fashionable typhoon. 

Her attitude is so different from her intense, reticent daughter that if they didn’t share the same fine, striking Blasian features, one would never guess they’re related. 

Ashido Mina made it clear from the start that, at times, she might be late. Working as a personal stylist for one of the most popular J-pop girl bands in the world does not allow for regular work hours, and Mina has already paid her extra dues to ensure Deku spends the overtime with Naomi after school hours end. 

But she’s later than normal and Deku is beginning to consider calling her.

“Naomi,” Deku says, dropping to a crouch beside her to smile and meet her watchful gaze. He speaks in clear, slow English, because that’s what the parents pay him for. “Do you need anything? I could get us a snack while we—”

“Naomi!” A male gruff, absolutely male voice cuts in with a breathless tone of relief. In Japanese, he says, “I found you.”

Deku looks up and startles in stilled shock as Naomi flings herself from the chair with uncustomary glee and launches herself into the arms of a man with spiked blonde hair, wearing black from head to toe. 

“Daddy!” Naomi’s chubby cheeks bunch up as she smiles brightly and touches her—father’s?—face with both hands, seeming to hold him in place to admire. Deku can’t blame her. “Mr Midoriya said he can bring us a snack. Do you want snack too? Did you remember to eat your lunch?”

“I’m sure Mr Midoriya has better things to do than feed us,” the man says, casually hiking Naomi higher in his arms like she weighs as much as a Pomeranian. Even in the winter coat, the set of his shoulders and the way he carries himself makes it clear the man is stacked underneath. 

Mentally shaking away the casual admiration, Deku offers a cautious smile as he approaches. 

“I’m sorry, are you Naomi’s father? You’re on her pick-up list?”

The school year is almost over and only Mina has ever retrieved Naomi at the end of day, so it’s been a long time since Deku has checked her list allowances. Naomi has mentioned her father on several occasions, always brightening considerably, and her personal documents state that her parents are not together, but again, it has been a long time. 

“I damn well better be,” the dad says, his gaze landing solidly on Deku, and oh , his eyes are some kind of hot cinnamon red, intense and narrowed. “I am her father, after all. Mina is forgetful as hell, but I’m pretty sure she remembers that part of our relationship.”

“Please mind your language in the school, sir,” Deku says, flashing an annoyed look as he turns and makes for his desk. “I’ll just quickly double check. Your name.”

“Bakugou Katsuki,” he says, and then Naomi begins an uncharacteristically rambling tale of the bad boy who cut in line for the slide at recess today, so Deku has time to collect himself as he shuffles through the neat files in his bottom drawer. 

Bakugou. His daughter is Ashido Naomi. They may not have ever married. It’s not Deku’s business, but he likes to understand his children on a deeper level so he can access their specific special emotional needs, should it be necessary. 

“Well.” Deku looks up with a smile, remaining behind his desk as Bakugou approaches with a distinct swagger in his step. “It looks like we’re all set here. It’s wonderful to finally meet you Mr Bakugou.”

“Cut the ‘mister’ and we’re good,” Bakugou says, but he doesn’t smile or lessen his stern countenance. Maybe he’s just like that all the time. “Naomi and Mina say good things about you.”

“And you,” Deku says, lying. Well, Naomi says nice things. Mina had once said, sorry if she gets competitive, her father lives and dies by first place, and that’s been about it.

Bakugou doesn’t look impressed by the flattery, but maybe he’s also just. . .like that. Unimpressed. Deku keeps his smile tightly plastered to his face and stands. 

“Anyway,” he says lightly, melting into comfortable ease as he meets Naomi’s eyes, his smile softening as he switches back to English. “Have a nice weekend, Naomi. I will miss you!”

“You should come to dinner with us,” Naomi replies in Japanese. “Daddy cooks yummy food. He’s very healthy and we eat a lot of vegetables.”

“Vegetables make you grow tall and make your eyes see far away,” Deku says in English, smiling between Naomi and her serious father. 

He’s almost unbearably handsome to look at, all strong, sharp foxy features of high cheekbones and cut jaw, a thin slash of mouth. Side by side, Deku can suddenly see a shadow of her father in her features; the pretty tilt of Naomi’s eyes and the slim jaw, the perfect eyebrows. She’s always been one of the more stunning children in class. Seeing both of her parents now, it all makes sense. 

Bakugou releases Naomi so she can lead them into the hallway where her coat, outdoor shoes, and little leather backpack await. Deku stands aside, lips curved as he watches the way Bakugou doesn’t help his daughter, but remains crouched beside her, offering out her backpack and taking her class shoes when she hands them over. He’s not pushy or overbearing with her, but present. Naomi has always been independent and self-leading, and between her parents, this now also makes sense. 

“I’ll be around more often,” Bakugou says, rising to stand, and he’s got maybe a half foot on Deku’s height, which shouldn’t mean anything to him at all, but it makes his chest tighten a little when Bakugou pockets his hands and leans in to speak to Deku in low, rumbly tones. “I just left my old job, so my schedule has blown open and I’ll be able to pick Naomi up after class most days.”

“Oh okay, that’s wonderful!” Deku says, brightening up. His expression immediately drops as he fumbles with his words. “I—I mean not about you losing your job, that’s awful, but that you and Naomi get to spend more time together. Not that—that you don’t already, because it’s not like I know you’re personal life, but I’m happy for her because she raves about you and—”

“Try breathing some time,” Bakugou interrupts, flashing a toothy grin that Deku isn’t sure should scare him or turn him on. “I highly recommend it for living. And I didn’t say I was fired or some shit. I left my job. I was a music producer, but that crap is cut throat and half the kids in the industry are miserable and I can’t stand to see it. I’m focusing on song-writing now. As long as people keep hiring me for it, anyway. And it’ll keep me home a lot, which yeah, it’s good because, yeah, I don’t see her nearly enough.”

“How wonderful all around,” Deku says, having finally gathered his runaway mouth as he steps back and gives a short nod-bow thing of awkwardness, because apparently after three years in this job he still can’t wrangle his social ineptitude around parents. This is why he works with children. “Well, have a great weekend, the both of you. Goodbye, Mr Bakugou. Make a snowman for me, Naomi!”

And that’s the first time Deku meets Naomi’s father. There’s nothing strange or unusual about it at all.

***

What’s strange about it is just how flustered Deku gets every time Bakugou Katsuki retrieves his daughter. 

They rarely converse beyond pleasantries and even then Bakugou is kind of bad at them, but in a different way from Izuku. Whereas Izuku’s social ineptitude comes from how very eager he is to interact with people that he trips over his words and thoughts in his haste to communicate, Bakugou is just the wrong side of callous, maybe even disinterested except for when he seems to arrive in a notably good mood and looks straight at Deku like he’s the only person in the room. It’s almost feline, his tail-swishing inattentiveness. 

Unfortunately, that makes Deku only wonder and anticipate what Bakugou he will be receiving on any given day. The days Mina arrives for Naomi feel oddly. . .lacking. Like a lost sneeze or a slightly more appealing simile.

Deku is leaning in the doorway of his classroom, overseeing the flow of after-school traffic as he waits for parents, when a big shoulder bumps at him and he looks up, unable to contain his smile when it’s Bakugou gazing down at him with a familiar scowl. Over the past few weeks, Deku has come to realize that the scowl is the same as Deku’s own innate smile; simply a part of his face. Bakugou often makes perfectly average conversation while frowning the entire time, and somehow Deku’s preferences for men are so pathetic that he finds this charming even when he logically knows it should be the opposite.

“Hello,” Deku says, inwardly cursing himself for how breathless he sounds and how close they’re standing in the bustling corridor of parents, children, and teachers. “Naomi’s inside, all ready for you.”

“You don’t have your own kids?” Bakugou says, completely non sequitur and straight forward as ever.

Deku strains a laugh and feels his cheeks heat.

“I have twenty-four of them right now,” Deku says with an easy smile. “I think I’m good.”

“Oh.” Bakugou is frowning at him, not even heading back into the classroom. “S’just weird. You seem like the type. You know, wife and kids and the nine to five, all that.”

Suddenly careful, struggling to remain contained with such an audience streaming past, Deku folds his arms and looks away, watching mothers and fathers bask in the squealed greetings of their children.

“Well,” Deku says dryly, quietly, “a wife isn’t exactly on my personal list of my life goals.”

From his periphery, Deku can sense Bakugou shifting from one scuffed black boot to another, can hear his inhale before he’s about to reply.

“Daddy, you’re here!” Naomi hollers, and Deku turns, smiling anew, to watch her bound up to them, her curly pigtails bouncing. “Do you know what we did today? Have you ever seen a lemur?”

With a helpless laugh at Bakugou’s abrupt look of confusion toward him, Deku can only shake his head, shrug him off, and say his goodbyes.

***

The very next Monday morning, Bakugou drops Naomi off at school, and that’s a surprise. 

“Mr Bakugou,” Deku says, eyebrows raised as he wanders toward the cubby where Naomi is changing her shoes. He’s working to roll up one sleeve of his crisp white shirt, the one the kids love that’s decorated in a very tiny green frog print. “Good morning.”

“Good morning!” Naomi says in English, her accent very American. Deku has to wonder why they send Naomi here when Mina is obviously from the States and her child can simply learn through osmosis, but Deku doesn’t linger on it much. This school is highly reputed and that’s likely the main reason. “I’m sleeping over at Daddy’s this week because Mama is going to Korea for work. I have my own bedroom and it’s purple and black, like night time. Daddy says I have to go to bed at six, but last night he fell asleep watching Ponyo with me and so I got to stay up super late and he snored and and and I poured myself milk from the refrigerator all by myself.”

“Is that so?” Deku sneaks a smile at a tight-lipped Bakugou, catching the hint of color on those sharp cheekbones before he squats to meet Naomi’s dark eyes. “What a naughty Daddy. Maybe Daddy needs a bedtime too, hmmm?”

Bakugou coughs hard, sounds like he’s inhaled hard enough to choke on spit, and both Deku and Naomi glance up with twin frowns. 

“I’m leaving,” Bakugou says, not looking at Deku as he drops a hand atop Naomi’s head. “Be good, kid. Seeya.”

Deku is leading Naomi into the room when she pauses and turns to him, all liquid doe eyes and petite nose tipped up.

“Daddy says—” Naomi frowns and switches to Japanese, still her home language it seems. “He says you wouldn’t want to have dinner with us because teachers are paid to be with us all day, but not after school.”

“Oh, Naomi,” Deku murmurs, lightly dropping to his knees to smile and gingerly hold her small, warm hand. This isn’t the first time a kid has expressed wanting to hang out with him outside of school. Either the exuberantly extroverted ones who will invite a stranger at the store to their house and feel the world is their friend, or the more introverted ones who rarely extend their trust past their loved ones. Deku is flattered to realize he is the latter to her. “You’re very kind and generous to think of me. Yes, this is my job and it’s my very important duty to make sure you are all happy and safe and learning, but I do this because I love it, and every single one of you are important to me, even after school ends for the day.”

“So, you’ll come to dinner,” Naomi says, a fact and not a question. She has steel for a spine, this one, and Deku knows exactly who forged it. “Daddy said you wouldn’t say yes, but that if you did, you could come.”

“Oh.” Deku is approximately one-hundred percent positive that Bakugou only agreed to such a request to make his child be quiet and not because he actually thinks Deku will accept. And, even more likely, if Deku agrees, Bakugou will shut it down anyway and that will be that, neatly wrapped in a professional bow. “Yes. Of course I would come to your home for dinner, Naomi. Thank you very much.”

“Daddy says you’re too nice and that’s why I’m too confident,” Naomi says, smiling now. “What is confident?”

“Confidence means believing in yourself more than you believe in wishes on stars and magic,” Deku says soberly, meeting her eyes. “It means you know you can do anything if you’re brave enough. And believe me, Naomi, you are a very brave girl with or without my guidance.”

“But,” Naomi looks instantly worried, her eyes going wet. “I can still wish, can’t I? At birthdays and on stars?”

“Oh, always,” Deku says, smiling. “Save your biggest, wildest wishes for those, though. There’s a lot you can do without magic, but it does help sometimes.”

All smiles once again, Naomi begins to shift around on her little feet, looking over her shoulder at her raucous classmates, losing interest in the conversation.

“Okay,” she says, already walking away. 

For a moment, Deku lets himself tumble back from his knees and onto his bottom, sitting on the cheerful sunflower printed carpet as he exhales slowly. Dinner, huh? Well, Bakugou will say no anyway. But the thought was very sweet. 

And apparently every kid in the room thinks that Deku on the floor means he’s a target for a tackle, which he is, and laughter prevails as he topples back under the weight of too many students. 

***

“When are you free?” is all Bakugou says when his daughter informs him that Deku can indeed come to dinner. The transition is so smooth that Deku automatically answers before the shock sets in.

“Friday works for—wait!” Deku places a hand on Bakugou’s coat-heavy forearm and immediately snatches it back, the first ever purposeful touch between them. He can feel his face going red hot as Bakugou flicks a brow and slowly looks from his empty arm, sliding up to survey at Deku’s expression. “That is—I didn’t think you’d actually accept—”

“I don’t lie to my kid,” Bakugou says lowly, holding Deku’s increasingly anxious gaze. “Neither should you. Friday is fine. Here, put your name in my phone.”

And that’s how Deku ends up putting ‘DEKU’ into a very handsome song-writer’s high-end cell phone along with his own number, all the while too scared to actually do anything about the surreal situation into which he has gotten himself.

“Deku,” Bakugou murmurs, frowning at his phone.

“Oh!” Deku makes a grab for the phone, but Bakugou snatches it out of reach with a toothy grin. “S-sorry, I’m—that’s just what my friends call me and I—”

“S’that make me your friend?” Bakugou asks, still smiling, all predatory and sharp and laughing at him with his eyes only.

“Only if dinner is really good,” Deku shoots back, briefly forgetting himself and his environment as he waves off Bakugou’s game of keep-away, like he’s better than that when really, if he wasn’t on the job, he’d be making much more of an effort about it. 

“Oh?” Bakugou says, voice dropped hoarse and somehow intimate despite the bustling hallway they’re standing in. “Guess I’d better cook real good, then.”

“You don’t want to be my friend,” Deku says before he realizes he’s saying it, but then Bakugou’s smile is dropping and Deku can feel his stutter catching his tongue as he holds his hands up like a truce. “I—that is—what I mean is I’m just a boring teacher. You’re so—and I’m—”

“See you Friday,” Bakugou says, and there’s a steel in his voice that makes Deku repress a shudder. With one more lingering look, Bakugou clicks his tongue like he’s calling a dog, says, “Naomi,” and they’re off.

As far as Mondays go, it’s one of Deku’s worst. Or best. Or something.

***

“Isn’t that, like,” Todoroki pauses on the phone as Deku struggles between massive waves of commuters rushing down the pavement in the heart of the city. Of course Bakugou Katsuki would live somewhere ungodly expensive and surrounded by towering business buildings. “Isn’t that illegal?”

“It’s not illegal,” Izuku hisses, trying to make himself smaller than he already is so he can sneak between stoic-faced bystanders. “I’m not even sure it’s against the rules of our school. It’s just, you know—deeply, heavily frowned upon. It’s fine, this is fine.”

“You must really like the kid.”

“Yes,” Izuku says, and it’s not a lie. It’s not . He thinks Naomi is delightful. He also happens to think that Bakugou was carved out of his most rock-solid horny fantasies and it can’t hurt to look. Since he’s invited and all. “She’s great. And if she wants me to come to dinner, who am I to break her heart and say no?”

“You’re such a nice guy,” Todoroki says, sounding like he actually means it, because he does actually mean it and he’s not a stupid liar like Deku absolutely is. “Well, have fun. I hope the food is good.”

Deku has been so nervous throughout the morning and school day that he’s barely managed to eat some rice and a banana. The thought of food is making his stomach knot at this point. 

“I’ll let you know,” Deku says, before mumbling his goodbyes and pulling out the maps app on his phone to navigate which one of these monster buildings belongs to Naomi’s stupidly handsome, charmingly grumpy father. 

When he does, there’s a literal dude dressed in uniform opening the door for him, and Deku’s nerves ratchet up to new heights. He takes the elevator to the seventeenth floor and wonders what his life has become and just how desperate he is for the most meager of attractive male company to agree to something like this.

When he reaches the floor, he realizes that there are only two doors down the entire corridor, one on either side. Which means Bakugou’s condo is half the size of the damn building. Just how rich are these people? Deku is thrilled that he has a separate bedroom from his living room these days and has a bedframe and a mattress and everything. 

When he knocks, a familiar childlike scream sounds from the other side of the door and Deku is already smiling and relaxed by the time Naomi fumbles with the rattling doorknob and swings it open with a giant smile. 

“Hi!” Deku says, laughing when Naomi yells it back and throttles his legs, hugging at his hips.

“Welcome to my home!” Naomi says, exuberant beyond anything that she is at school, and it is an absolute joy to see. “I’m going to show you my room now.”

“Naomi,” Bakugou snaps from somewhere in the apartment, not unkind but more with exasperation, “let the man get his shoes off first. He’s not even in the house yet!”

“Take off your shoes so you can see my room,” Naomi demands, stepping back into the foyer so Deku can finally follow inside and shut the door behind him. As Deku removes his shoes and places them beside some heavy, broken-in boots, Naomi frowns. “You have big feet. Your shoes are bigger than Daddy’s. Daddy, Mr Midoriya has bigger feet than even your big feet!”

There’s no answer while Izuku slips from his heavy winter coat and hangs it up, but a pot does clang in the kitchen and Bakugou curses before his strained, tight voice replies, 

“That’s—that’s great, honey. Thanks.”

The first thing Deku really notices as Naomi takes him by the hand and drags him through the open plan living and dining area is not just the enormity of the space, but the hulking, shiny Steinway piano in front of a floor to ceiling window overlooking Tokyo and a blinding amount of gold and silver records lining not just one wall but several around the room. 

Everything in Deku’s view is sleek grey and black furnishings with sudden pops and sparks of sunset colors in the cushions and floor rugs and some expressionistic art pieces full of violently slashing color. But there is life here, it’s lived-in, from the cluster of garish toys crowded in the space between the couch and television. The wicker basket stacked high with folded laundry on a plush seventies-style burnt orange armchair. The scatter of Legos Deku steps over as Naomi leads him toward the warm, savory smells of home cooking. 

With his strong, wide back to the entryway, Bakugou stands at the stove with his head bowed in concentration. Oddly, the first thing Deku notices is that his feet are bare. It’s not necessarily the most normal thing to see in a Japanese household, but it’s becoming very clear to Deku that neither of Naomi’s parents fit into the rigid lines their society has to offer. Perhaps that’s why they sent Naomi to an international school instead of a strictly Japanese one too. 

The second thing Deku notices is tattoos. They are everywhere and Deku’s blood pressure rockets right through his reddening ears. 

Bakugou has always been dressed for winter, but now, in the warmth of his home and the heat of the kitchen, he is stripped down to a pair of faded grey jeans with a stretch to them that clings to absolutely every curve of his trim waist and ass, the red t-shirt rolled up at his biceps, the fabric stretching to accommodate all that shoulder, all that arm—and oh boy, those arms are something. Both of them are inked in full sleeves of gray-scale work; skulls and lightning, roses and oni masks, dragons and fire, threads of lyrics and sparks of smaller tattoos seemingly shoved in to fit the spaces together. 

There’s no way to take it all in, so Deku only clears his throat and ekes out a smile when Bakugou grunts and throws a distracted look over his shoulder and back to the stove. Then his shoulders tighten, seeming to startle as he more slowly half turns and makes the most obvious sweep of Deku from head to toe, then back up to meet his eyes with a look Deku can’t begin to decipher. 

“Hello,” Bakugou says, that smoky timber to his voice ever sending a shudder through Deku’s core. “Thanks for coming. Naomi’s been so excited I had to peel her off the ceiling.”

“I wasn’t on the ceiling,” Naomi says with a stubborn jut to her jaw. She’s still holding Deku’s hand and she yanks on it for his attention, her round face pleading up to his with a pouted lip. “I wasn’t on the ceiling Mr Midoriya, I promise.”

Deku swallows a laugh and cuts a quick look to Bakugou, who looks quickly back to the stove, his shoulders shaking with an unmistakable chuckle. Deku likes this Bakugou, the one at home with bare feet and laundry in the living room and a crayon scribble drawing on the fridge.

“No?” Izuku says, smiling and at ease all of a sudden. “I would have liked to see that, I think.”

“I’m not naughty,” Naomi says, nodding until Izuku nods along with her, “I don’t do things like that.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Naomi.” Izuku sneaks a lingering look at the line of Bakugou’s nape, notices he’s wearing a stud of black stone in his left ear that he’s never worn before, and stops himself from drooling at the mixture of a big man cooking and the smells of what he’s actually cooking. “Can I help with anything in here?”

“Nah,” Bakugou says, finishing up a chop and drop of shiitake and scallions on a cutting board. “Most of the cooking’s gonna be done at the table anyway. I know I promised you some good food, but Naomi insisted on the Naomi Special Takoyaki and some other shit, so that’s what we’re gonna get.”

“I’m sure whatever Naomi likes I will also like,” Deku says, happy to hear they aren’t putting themselves out too much for him. 

“I like you!” Naomi says, tugging on his hand again.

“And I like you,” Izuku says, laughing anew. “Well, since Daddy doesn’t need help—”

“Shit,” Bakugou says as he drops his ladle on the floor. His ear looks flushed and red as he swipes it from the tile and keeps his stiff back to the two of them. 

“Why don’t you show me your room?” Izuku finishes, smiling quizzically at the back of Bakugou’s head. He doesn’t have it in him to correct Bakugou’s language outside of the school, and since Naomi doesn’t even flinch, she must be used to it. 

The offer sends Naomi into a small squeal of glee as she races from the kitchen, Izuku dragged in tow. He gets another view of the semi-neat living room before the corridor takes them, wide and hardwood and lined with black and white photos of Bakugou standing and smiling beside a lot of famous people that Izuku actually recognizes, even as oblivious as he is. Just how famous is he?

Naomi’s room is literally bigger than Izuku’s apartment, because of course it is. This isn’t even her usual bedroom, the place she actually lives in with her mother, and Izuku can’t imagine what kind of place that is either. Their entire lifestyle is dazzling and overwhelming.

Like Naomi had said, her room is black and purple, the walls painted a deep, almost-black purple at the base, then fading up into lighter shades until lavender prevails. Her bedspread is black with gold stars and the gauzy princess canopy around it is another ombre effect of purples into grey and white. Fairy lights string around the ceiling and there’s a reading nook complete with a tent stuffed with pillows and animals, a desk cluttered with disheveled art supplies, and a small electric guitar the color of the sky.

“Wow,” is mostly all Deku can say before Naomi takes him on an in-depth tour, saying more words in the next ten minutes than she has said in perhaps the entire school year. 

Naomi is sharing her collection of Barbies whose hair have all been chopped and dyed with permanent marker when Bakugou knocks on the door frame and sticks his head in. 

“Food,” he says, and Naomi drops the dolls like dead weight and dashes out the door.

Still sitting on the ground amidst the warzone of Mattel, Deku beams up at Bakugou, perfectly at peace in this kind of setting over any adult dinner party where he can’t lean on talk of zoo animals and children’s books to keep up his end of the conversation. 

“You missed it,” Deku says as Bakugou strolls into the room with his hands pocketed. His red shirt is violently printed in black with a band name Deku doesn’t recognize, but that’s no surprise since he has never paid much mind to music past what happens to be on the radio. “I had to peel her off the ceiling again. She nearly landed on her little slime-making station over there. It was a close thing.”

Bakugou’s smile is so sudden that it leaves Deku breathless, struck with the overwhelming, low-boil energy Bakugou seems to carry with him at any given time. 

“You sound like an expert,” Bakugou says.

“My minor is basically in picking up after children,” Deku says as he pushes off the floor to stand. “But seriously, Naomi is a joy. I love to see her so happy and talkative at home.”

“She still doesn’t talk much at school, huh,” Bakugou says, reclining back against the door jam, his gaze once more considering Deku slowly, head to toe and back to his eyes. Now he’s not a low-boil type, he’s more like a lounging predator, a lion with all that shifting muscle, riotous blonde hair, and feral smile. 

“She does socialize,” Deku says, smiling kindly instead of staring at the way Bakugou’s biceps bulge and swell when he folds his arms across his chest. “She enjoys being around the kids, and when they speak to her she will always reply, but she seems more interested in assessing the situation and enjoying it from a distance. And that’s fine. The school board and hell, most of Japan, want parents to think that Kindergarten is where children are meant to get a head start in their book smarts, but it’s not. It shouldn’t be. This is the time for learning how to socialize, to stretch their manners and their communication, to learn patience and order. It’s not really about shoving math down their throats or drilling them with sight words.”

When Bakugou looks dubious and remains silent, Deku only smiles, much more in his element when speaking as an educator. 

“Mina once told me that you live for first place.”

“It’s the best place,” Bakugou says, nodding. “The only place. So?”

“So.” Deku approaches now and takes a chance as he passes through the doorway. He graces a hand across Bakugou’s hulking shoulder, sweeps it down one bicep before drifting off and away, tossing a comment over his shoulder and refusing to check Bakugou’s reaction to the touch. “There are much more exciting and adventurous things in life than racing ahead to first. Enjoy the game a little, Mr Bakugou. That’s what I recommend.”

***

“So what sent you into teaching?” Bakugou asks as he uses a toothpick to turn the round little takoyaki around in the cooking tray. The savory, toasty smell of cheese and corn and sausage, which was apparently Naomi’s favorite kind instead of octopus, wafts up to greet them. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Deku says as he looks down and fiddles with a long toothpick as he waits for the food to finish. “It seemed like a good place for me as any.”

Bakugou snorts as he uncaps the brown sauce and mayo. 

“Don’t sound too enthusiastic about it.”

Deku feels his cheeks burn as he offers both Bakugou and Naomi a hesitant smile.

“I am enthusiastic. I love it. I love the kids. I love helping shape them at an important growth period in their lives. I like making a difference to the future in some small way.”

Bakugou nods once, his attention focused on the takoyaki as he begins to flip them out onto a large platter.

“But?”

“I originally went into social work. But it—” Deku watches as Naomi goes at the platter while the food is still steaming, using her own small toothpick to place several on her plate. “It crushed me. I’m too soft I guess. Watching so many kids slip through the cracks when I could only do so much. I was barely helping their quality of life and making mine just as bad. It tore me up to leave—“

“But you put yourself in a place where you could make a difference all the same.” Bakugou gives Deku a look like he’s not stupid, like he can understand. He shrugs, his voice casual as he decorates Naomi’s food with a crisscross of the sauces. “Some people aren’t made for certain jobs. I don’t know shit about social work but I know enough to understand it’s a thankless and merciless job.”

“I don’t mind thankless,” Deku says truthfully, smiling to himself as Naomi buries her plate under dancing bonito flakes. “I just didn’t think I could do my best work there. Better people took my place.”

Deku startles when Bakugou offers a plate to Deku, already made up for him.

“And now you’re happy?”

Smiling softly, Deku nods and accepts the food.

“I am.”

Bakugou grunts in affirmation and begins to work on his plate last. 

“Happy in your second choice of a job is better than being broken down in your first choice.”

“Speaking from experience?”

Bakugou glances up briefly, catches Deku’s eyes.

“Actually, yeah.”

“Mr Midoriya, look at this one!” Naomi shows off a takoyaki half-eaten and bursting with melted cheese. “It’s too cheesy!”

“Too cheesy? Then it must be made for me,” Deku says, grinning as he pretends he’s going to bite at her food. “I’m awfully cheesy too.”

“You can’t be cheesy,” Naomi says, not even cracking a smile as she snatches her food back. “You’re a person.”

“She’s got a point,” Bakugou says, busy with his own bonito flakes, which he uses much more sparingly. “You’re all man.”

Deku looks up in the same moment that Bakugou seems to realize what he’s said, because their gazes meet in the middle and there’s heat of possible recognition that suffuses, hot and lazy between them. 

“Mmm. . .” Deku nods slowly, not looking away. “So I am.”

Then Bakugou is blinking and looking away and they eat, making happy conversation like there’s nothing at all weird and out of place about Deku being here when he probably definitely shouldn’t be. 

“So what do you like to do best with Daddy?” Deku asks later.

“Horsey!” Naomi exclaims, looking absolutely jazzed about the idea. Deku slides a smug look toward Bakugou, who is pointedly eating and glaring at his oblivious child. 

“Oh? Is he a good horsey?”

“Yup! And also he has a karaoke set and we get to sing together.”

Deku can’t help but melt at the vision of Bakugou and Daughter singing happy kid songs together.

“That’s lovely,” he says earnestly. 

“Do you want to sing with me, Mr Midoriya?”

“Oh, I don’t—” Deku’s hands fly up as if to protect himself from the very idea, his face going up in flame anew as he tries to laugh it off. “M-maybe another time. I’m a little shy.”

“You don’t have to be shy at home,” Naomi says, frowning gravely. “It’s just Daddy.”

Deku doesn’t want to say that this is exactly the reason why he needs to be oh-so-very-fucking careful.

“So it is.”

It’s later as they wash and dry dishes together while Naomi plays in the living room that Deku gets his first ever real moment alone with Bakugou Katsuki. 

“She’s wonderful around you,” Deku murmurs, accepting a plate to dry. 

“She’s good at home,” Bakugou replies simply. For a moment he is silent, then, “At the office too. I think we fucked her up pretty early. She’s spent the first five years of her life in recording studios, music video stages, backstage at concerts. She’s comfortable around adults and shit, but we were both so busy we kinda forgot about socializing her with kids her own age.”

“It’s early days,” Deku says, automatically placing a calming touch on Bakugou’s bare forearm and lingering before he accepts another plate. “I wouldn’t worry. She’s receptive and clever and kind. And you two are putting in the effort now. That matters.”

Bakugou huffs a sigh through his nose, his wide shoulders radiating warmth for how close they are. 

“I guess.”

Deku tilts his head into Bakugou’s field of vision and offers a smile. 

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty and all that.”

Bakugou’s lips twitch and his attention drops to Deku’s mouth, then back up, amused. 

“You’re a total nerd, aren’t you?”

“Are there teachers who aren’t?” Deku asks with a thoughtful frown, putting his mind to genuinely thinking on it. But Bakugou just passes off another plate and his wet fingers brush Deku’s dry ones. 

“You’re not like the teachers I ever knew,” he says quietly. 

Deku ducks his head to hide the shy curve of lips. 

“I’ll—I’ll take that as a compliment.”

***

“This is the part where Daddy falls asleep, right?” Deku murmurs, half asleep himself. His belly is full, the lights are low, Chihiro is on a quietly brave journey across the too blue ocean, and the overstuffed pillow Deku hugs to his chest and rests his chin upon smells like Bakugou’s dark cardamom and cedar cologne. 

The noise Bakugou makes from beside him is guttural and cut short, roughly scraping out Deku’s hazy calm in lieu of something sharper and keener at the back of his skull, something entirely animal and long-ignored over recent years. 

“Please tell me you’ve been doing that on purpose,” Bakugou says tightly, and when Deku only pillows his cheek upon the big cushion in his arms in order to face Bakugou and frown, Bakugou groans longer, louder, shoving his head back against the couch and staring at the ceiling. “Are you fucking kidding me? Sorry, just—ignore me. Ignore me, you’re right, I really am tired as fuck.”

“Wait, what did I say?” Deku asks, jolting up in his seat now, alert and a little alarmed at why Bakugou looks like he wants to die when he has seemed to enjoy his entire evening up to this point. “I wasn’t making fun of you for being tired, I—”

“Fuck.” Bakugou scrubs his hands over his face, speaking from behind his palms, voice muffled and low. “Can’t tell if you’re innocent, naive, oblivious, or if I read you completely wrong and you’re straight and this was a stupid idea.”

It’s—that’s a lot to take in at once. Luckily, Deku has always been a quick study. 

The implications settle in like an intoxicated buzz, leaving Deku smiling a little too wide, mischief creeping into his voice as he carefully folds up a leg onto the couch and angles himself toward Bakugou. 

“I’m sorry,” Deku says, allowing his voice to drop, and that must catch Bakugou’s attention because his hands fall and those intense eyes fix on him like Deku is red meat and Bakugou is all sharp teeth. “Oblivious and too eager to hope for reciprocation is the right answer.” Deku pauses, inwardly shoving himself into the unknown as he quietly says, “Daddy.”

“Oh holy fuck,” Bakugou wheezes, his hands fisting upon his thighs. With quick, frantic movements, Bakugou quickly looks to where Naomi sleeps soundly upon the other couch, her curls the only thing popping out from the patchwork blanket, then back to where Deku is gently smiling, his head cocked in a question that can be any manner of questions, should Bakugou be interested. “Deku—shit. This isn’t—I shouldn’t—”

“O-oh no, I wouldn’t expect you to!” Deku says quickly, understanding the hesitancy and warming from the inside out for how Bakugou’s responsibility shines through all the tattoos and coarse language. “But if—if this, this is something you might want to pursue in the future—”

“I’m gonna pursue the fuck outta you in about five minutes,” Bakugou says suddenly, standing up, and oh shit, those pale grey jeans do him no favors in hiding the thick, full length outlined down his thigh. “I just—fuck, I need to put her to bed and—”

“Let me,” Deku says, rising as well. He hasn’t thought that through, though, because now they’re standing in the dim living room, close enough to feel each other’s body heat, the flicker of television blue highlighting the severe angles of Bakugou’s face and fierce eyes.

“Deku,” Bakugou murmurs, and then he’s reaching out, a calloused hand skimming the side of Deku’s throat, palming around to grip the nape of Deku’s neck, roughened fingertips flexing in Deku’s curls. “Can I—”

“Fuck yes,” Deku whispers, and he has a split second to catch the way Bakugou’s eyes widen and his cheeks flush with the curse from Deku’s mouth before he tugs him in one-handed for a kiss. It’s clumsy and overwhelming at first, but melts into something mouthy and wet and unreasonably desperate for two people who barely know each other, and shit , Bakugou kisses like he means to devour, like a predator. 

Deku can’t help the noise he makes, meek and needy as he presses up into the big, thick wall of Bakugou’s body, his hands clinging to the wicked nip of Bakugou’s waist as he tilts his head back further to accommodate their height difference and opens his mouth for Bakugou’s tongue with total disregard for how absolutely slutty he’s gone in ten seconds time.

Bakugou’s gravel groan rattles through him and Deku can feel it more than hear it where their chests and stomachs are pressed. The buckle of Bakugou’s belt is digging hot and silver against Deku’s stomach, where his shirt has hiked up from Bakugou’s free roaming hand. And then Deku isn’t thinking at all, because he whines high and plaintive before he licks into Bakugou’s mouth, tipping to his toes, fingers hitched in Bakugou’s belt for balance now as he sucks on Bakugou’s tongue like an inexperienced high-schooler or a porn star.

Apparently Bakugou loves that stuff though, because the broken sound he makes is half-hunger, half-crying from frustration as he tears from Deku and holds him out at arms length, hands maybe trembling just a little on Deku’s shoulders. He looks younger like this, all ruffled and flushed and dazed, swollen lips parted to breathe as they simply stand there, staring. 

“You’re—” Bakugou’s voice comes out a hoarse, dry crack and he licks his lips and swallows, catches his breath. “You’re not sweet at all, are you.”

Deku hasn’t felt this empowered in front of a man since he learned how to deepthroat at nineteen. Big tough tattooed Bakugou Katsuki is standing before him, entirely befuddled just from a mini makeout in which they mostly had kept their hands in very safe-for-work spots. Mostly. Deku still wants to get his hands around that big gaudy belt buckle. 

“Me?” Deku’s mouth curves, more a smirk than a smile as he makes a show of righting his black dress shirt and undoing the second button from his collar. He’s excited, exhilarated, expectant for what Bakugou may be offering and what may come from it. And it looks like Deku may even have the upper hand here. “I’m a very nice person, Mr Bakugou.”

“You wore black,” Bakugou says pointedly, as if that means something. He seems to have relatively collected himself though, and turns to remove the blanket from Naomi and fold it aside. 

Deku smiles quizzically at Bakugou’s broad back. 

“I—yes? So?”

“So,” Bakugou whispers, pausing to carefully pick up his daughter, princess style. She doesn’t even shift in his arms, a dead weight of enviable childhood slumber. He cuts a stern glance to Deku and says, in a wildly disapproving and fatherly tone that makes Deku want to laugh, “You’ve never worn black. You looked entirely. . .different when you walked in my kitchen and no nice boy knowingly does that.”

“Different?” Deku asks, not bothering to fight the smile.

Bakugou makes an ugly face and looks young again. 

“Not like an innocent little kindergarten teacher, anyway.”

“That’s your type?” Deku asks before he can help it. 

“A recently acquired taste,” Bakugou murmurs, then turns away with color high on his cliffside cheeks. 

Deku’s smile only widens  as he watches Bakugou head down the hall to put Naomi to bed. Despite Bakugou always being almost crassly straight forward in their everyday interactions, it has never occurred to Deku that he may be just as honest and blunt when it comes to sex. Bakugou has never seemed like the most open communicator, but maybe Deku hasn’t been close enough to learn this part of him. Maybe he’s going to find out, and soon. Even the thought of it has anticipatory, nervous energy jittering through Deku like summer sparklers. 

But at the same time—

Deku sits back against the couch, blankly watching Chihiro pick through pigs for her parents, then turns off the television until he’s faced with the reflection of himself. 

This really isn’t the time or place. 

The initial rush of reciprocated attraction is understandable, even if a little surprising considering Deku’s boring nature versus Bakugou’s dynamic one. But the time and place is still all wrong and completely inappropriate. 

Deku is frowning at his dark reflection in the television, wondering if Bakugou is the type who will leave him high and dry once Deku refuses him in lieu of getting to know each other better, when he hears Bakugou’s bare feet lightly pad into the room. 

“Let me help you clean up!” Deku says, voice too high as he hops from the couch to bound for the kitchen.

“Oiy—” Strong hands take Deku by the shoulders and drop him back down to sit. Before Deku can bounce back up, Bakugou lightly lofts over the back of the sofa and sits beside him, thigh to thigh and close enough to smell his cologne. 

Deku springs right back up, jittery with guilt and worry. Just what had he been thinking, going in like he doesn’t have anything to lose? Like this won’t make everything so much more awkward between them when it doesn’t work out.

Because how can this possibly work out? Deku still barely knows Bakugou but he can tell this man is important. Powerful. Talented. Deku teaches children songs about washing their hands properly and makes sure no one bites each other by the end of the day.

Bakugou stands up behind Deku and bands brutally strong arms around Deku’s waist and all Deku can think is:

Holy shit, I want this man to fuck me.

And just like that, the complexities melt into the simple feeling of Bakugou’s silver hot belt buckle pressing against the small of Deku’s back. 

“Oiy,” Bakugou repeats, gruff and dark, his mouth at Deku’s ear. His hands slide over Deku’s hips to brace at his waist. He feels so big, so encompassing from behind, and Deku shivers when Bakugou speaks. “You runnin’ now or what?”

“I—”

“You back to Mr Nice Guy now?” Bakugou murmurs and, oh god oh god, he’s brushing his lips along the side of Deku’s throat and Deku can’t help the liquid drop between his legs or the way his breath catches on a gasp. 

“I’m—oh—I’m always nice.”

“So you keep sayin’.” 

Bakugou’s rocking now, faintly, his hands still firmly on Deku’s hips, and it’s only then that Deku realizes there’s soft music playing from another room, the kitchen maybe. A gritty croon and plaintive, grungy guitar, something American and familiar from Deku’s early twenties. The grind of the music and Bakugou’s behind him is intoxicating, time-slowing down to something syrupy and unrushed as Deku relents and leans into him with a sigh, subtly rocking side to side with the music.

“You like it?” Bakugou murmurs, leaning into so the scrape of early evening stubble skims Deku’s ear and shudders down his spine. 

“The—” Deku swallows, turning his head a little, their cheeks brushing, then their noses, and it would be so easy to kiss again, but the anticipation of it is almost as good. “The what? What do I like? You or this or—”

“The music,” Bakugou rasps, and those hands begin to wander, thumbs dipping in the waistband of Deku’s slim black jeans to untuck the dress shirt. The shock of guitar-calloused fingers skimming the sensitive skin of his hips and belly is a bright pop and shock straight to Deku’s cock and his brain scatters and sparks. “I produced it. Wrote it.”

“Oh,” Deku manages, entirely aware of how breathless and soft he sounds. “Oh, yeah. It’s um—it feels like you, now that you say it.”

Bakugou hums deep, as if the answer pleases him, and continues to idly sway to the music, Deku caught in the rocking of their close bodies.

“Are you—” Deku swallows and licks his lips, briefly wonders when his knees began to tremble from a simple slow dance in the living room. “This is—I didn’t exactly expect this—”

“I’m real fuckin’ bad at relationships,” Bakugou says into Deku’s ear, his thumbs hooking in Deku’s belt loops as they started to slowly turn in the room. “Even worse at reading ‘em. Understanding people and shit. But you—you were broadcast to me like a song right off the radio. Sounds stupid. Sounds cheesy. And you’re not my type—but my type up until now hasn’t done me many favors, so maybe they were never my type at all. But you—“

Bakugou’s nose brushes Deku’s ear as he speaks against Deku’s cheek. 

“You’re like hearing your next favorite song for the first time.”

And to that, well, Deku has to turn and kiss him. But it’s slow this time, softer than Deku has imagined Bakugou can kiss, all liquid time and gilded touch, the skim of a sigh on his lips. They don’t speak much in the wake of that kiss in the living room, but it seems to be enough to satisfy them both for the night, because Deku leaves shortly after with a brush of lips at the corner of Bakugou’s cheek and hesitant goodbye. 

***

Monday is decidedly weird. Watching Katsuki and Naomi approach feels surreal and Deku gets a little drunk on the warm jolt of knowledge he holds for how Bakugou’s mouth tastes and how he feels pressed up against the back of Deku’s body. 

“Hi,” Deku says, hoping not to sound like a teenager with a crush. “Good morning.”

“Hey,” Katsuki says, giving him a nod and a lingering, head to toe once-over before Naomi distracts him by asking for help with her winter coat. 

They don’t need to say anything more. Deku’s skin is buzzing from that single telling sweep. He’s thankful that Katsuki doesn’t seem to vibe with subtlety. Deku isn’t very good at understanding it anyway. 

Katsuki is so cool. 

“Oiy,” Katsuki says, low and abrupt as Naomi says hello and zips into the classroom. Deku nearly startles for how close Katsuki suddenly is, his chin dipped to ease further into Deku’s space with all the confidence of someone who belongs there. “This Friday night, I’ve got a thing to go to. Work stuff. Come with me.”

“A thing?” Deku blinks up at him, very well knows he looks clueless and stupid but can’t help appearing exactly as he is. “Work? What do you mean? Like a—“

Deku’s voice drops as he realizes quickly where they are. He takes a quick step back, hoping they look less like conspirators and more like a parent and teacher who are discussing something important. Katsuki looks to know what Deku is about because he only grins, sharp and lethal and knowing. 

“Like a date?” Deku whispers, eyes wide. 

“Don’t sound so fucking horrified,” Katsuki drawls quietly, his hot garnet gaze lingering on Deku’s surprised ‘o’ mouth. “You can dress up or down. Musicians are mostly rich slobs anyway. Say you’ll come with me. Friday night, I’ll pick you up at 9pm.”

Nine. At night. Deku can’t remember going anywhere for anything at nine at night since university. 

“Right,” Deku says numbly, disbelieving. Yes, last weekend had been something and whispered, heated promises had been made, but that happens to people. Not to Deku, but to people. And now Katsuki is here, making good on his talk and Deku doesn’t know how to take this. “Nine. Yes. I’ll—sure, I’ll go with you.”

“Of course you will,” Katsuki says, but the bravado of his voice is somehow betrayed by the relief and softening of his expression. One of his big black boots steps in and his lips part, but he also seems to finally grasp some sense of propriety because he rocks back out of Deku’s space, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’s a kid caught trying to sneak candy. Finally, Katsuki pockets his hands and nods once at Deku. “Alright, well. Good. I’ll see you then—or, before that.”

Deku cocks his head and watches color flood Katsuki’s face as he glances away.

“After school,” Katsuki mutters. “At pick up.” Katsuki meets Deku’s amused eyes and his own go wider. “Fuck. Bye.”

Katsuki turns and marches away so quickly that Deku is left befuddled and choking on a laugh. 

Maybe Bakugou Katsuki isn’t as cool as he likes to let on. Deku finds himself more intrigued than he even was before. 

***

Friday comes way too soon and finds Deku laid out on his bed, staring morosely at the ceiling as Todoroki rifles through his meager closet. 

“You really don’t go anywhere,” Todoroki says, frowning at another drab shirt before he neatly folds it and sets it aside, atop a growing pile of other folded rejects. 

“This coming from you of all people is soul crushing at this point,” Deku mumbles, rolling over to shove his face in a pillow. 

“I go places,” Todoroki says solemnly. “My father is the commissioner. I have to attend. . . things. Plus, I have a love life. I’m forced to go places and now you will be too. Maybe go shopping.”

“I hate shopping,” Deku says to his pillow and knows he sounds obstinate and childish and doesn’t care. He’d frustrated. “It doesn’t matter what I wear. I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb anyway. Singers and artists and whatever. And Katsuki is so cool and I’m so—”

“You’re different,” Todoroki says, and Deku jolts up in bed with the realization that Todoroki is sitting on the edge beside him. When Deku finally frowns at him, Todoroki cocks his head and reaches out, flattening some of Deku’s no-doubt wild curls. “From everyone I know. I think that’s a good thing, I always have. If this Bakugou guy is smart, that’ll be why he likes you too, not because you’re like the people he’s normally around.”

Katsuki had said something similar. Todoroki’s words heartened him. 

“Yeah,” Deku says softly, glancing down at his hands. “But about tonight—”

“Let’s go shopping.” When Deku looks at him in horror, Todoroki shrugs and offers a small curve of mouth. “For one outfit. Just one. And I’ll help. I’ll make all the decisions for you if it’ll really help.”

Some time after Todoroki dislodges himself from Deku’s weepy embrace of gratitude, Deku finds himself standing in a dressing room staring at someone he hasn’t seen since his younger years. Granted, he’s only twenty-six and still spry and fit as anyone, but his university years had been his time of experimentation, of bravery in his sexuality, of fun. 

Deku hasn’t had fun in such a long time. No fun that doesn’t involve jumping off the high swings at recess, anyway. 

The outfit is not something the now Deku would choose but it is something old Deku would have slipped on, taken some molly, and spent the night in the sweaty center of the grinding dance floor. Deku skims his hands down his body in wonder, remembering himself anew, palms idly rubbing the very fine, matte black leather of the pants. There’s no shine to them and they’re subtly leather until someone looks too hard or touches them, and the material hugs thighs and calves that are still thick and pronounced from school years in athletics and the current workout regimen in the privacy of his home. 

His shirt is one of those fake-casual things that he sees rich people wear all the time, Todoroki included. The tee is deceptively simple, a fine, soft weave of mottled grays and a bite of silver thread that gleams only at certain angles beneath the light. The cut of it barely covers his torso, the peek of his waist shyly exposed when he moves his arms too much. 

“I look like a fuckboy,” Deku says loudly as he turns and walks out of the dressing room. “An expensive one, but—oh.”

 An older gentleman is stepping from one of the dressing rooms at the same time, looking scandalized in a full tweed suit. Deku offers a smile and a wave. He gets a solid once-over in return, a shock of a blush, and then the man is rushing away toward the cashier. Deku shrugs at Todoroki, who imitates the gesture. 

“Do you still have your red Docs?” Todoroki asks, acting like nothing happened. He’s good at that. 

“Red?” Deku asks, frowning down at his outfit. “With this?”

“Red shoes are always you,” Todoroki says. “ So, you should keep being you. Anyway, we can buy some red underwear. They can pop out the top of your waistband.”

“Oh my god,” Deku says from the inside of his palms, hiding his face from the world. It actually sounds like a great idea. “Okay,” he breathes. “I have that already anyway.”

“Of course you do,” Todoroki says. “I remember when you used to be a slut.”

“Hey!”

“Nothing wrong with that. I just remember. We met at one of those clubs, after all.”

“You’d just broken the hand of a guy who felt up your dick without permission.”

“Consent is important.”

Deku sputters a laugh and feels his entire body sag with relief. Everything is going to be fine. He is going to be fine. 

“Of course it is. Thank you.”

***

Deku waits in front of his building at the text of Katsuki. He’s in his damn red boots, only worn these days out of work and with a pair of jeans, nothing like what he’s hiding beneath his rarely-used, better quality peacoat. It’s freezing out and his cheeks feel the same color as his shoes. 

A black car pulls up minutes later and Deku is already rushing to open the door and dives in to escape the cold. In the same moment, Katsuki sets out the other side of the car, then ducks his head back in to glare.

“I’m supposed to open the door for you,” he snaps.

“I’m sorry,” Deku says, smiling without a hint of apology. “It’s too cold for manners.”

“Great,” Katsuki replies as he slides into the backseat alongside him and knocks on the headrest to alert the driver into leaving. “Because I’m shit with them even on my better days.”

“Was this going to be one of your better days?” Deku asks, unable to stop smiling as he considers Katsuki’s striking profile. Even in the dark, the starburst of city lights illuminate the cut of his cheekbone, the strong line of his nose, the faint, pretty tilt of his eyes. 

Then that gaze fixes on him, unflinching.

“Yeah,” Katsuki croaks. “Was gonna try, anyway.”

“Don’t bother,” Deku says. He settles in for the ride and buckles his seatbelt, his attention drawn out the window to admire the evening landscape with which he’s been long unfamiliar. “I liked you before you tried to be friendly with me.”

“When was I not friendly with you?” Katsuki enunciates, sounding entirely offended by the very idea that he was anything but genial, apparently. 

Deku drags a slow, telling look toward Katsuki and allows himself a smirk. 

“Who knows,” he says breezily.

“Oiy!” Katsuki snaps, and Deku is almost certain he’s blushing in the dark. Deku bursts into a delighted laugh and Katsuki hollers his protests and it goes on like that for the ride; trading soft barbs and teases like both of them are ten years younger and have known each other a lifetime. 

Something about Bakugou Katsuki is so easy. Deku can’t imagine why. 

“You can leave your coat here if you want,” Katsuki  says as they pull up to a venue, although they’re several cars down the line. “This’ll be our car back and your stuff will be safe. These venues are always hot, anyway. Too many fucking people.”

“Gee,” Deku says with a gentle smile Katsuki’s way. “You’re making this date sound more and more fun every second.”

The look on Katsuki’s face speaks of sudden and instant dread. Deku gasps in instant empathy and upset, reaching out to place a hand on Katsuki’s big, hard, distracting arm, giving it a squeeze.

“Oh no, I was joking! I was joking! I really am excited, I promise. I’m teasing, you know. I’m sure anyone you take to these kinds of events is thrilled to be by your side for something like this.”

For a moment, Katsuki gives him a look of mingled confusion and consternation, but then it’s gone and he’s grinning, feral and self-assured once more. 

“Right,” he says. “Obviously. Who wouldn’t want to attend the album release party of the Plus Ultra?”

Deku smiles and cocks his head.

“Who?”

Katsuki’s own grin falters as he copies Deku’s curious movement. 

“Plus Ultra. The boyband.”

“Oh!” Deku says, smiling and nodding. “Yes.”

Katsuki’s grin goes murderous as he speaks through his teeth.

“You have no idea who I’m talking about, do you, Deku.”

Still smiling, Deku shakes his head.

“No, but it all sounds very exciting.”

Katsuki makes a choking noise and bursts into motion, stripping himself of his winter coat as he mutters under his breath. 

“The fuck a man gotta do to impress this guy. . .”

“Hmmm?” Deku asks, taking off his own coat and looking down to straighten his taut tee. He’d clasped an old black leather studded bracelet around his wrist, something from years gone by that an old boyfriend had left behind. Katsuki makes a short, high, aborted noise and Deku glances up with a frown. “What did you say?”

Light from the approaching venue floods into the car, illuminating them both. Katsuki looks unbearably handsome in a slim-cut black suit, casually unbuttoned to reveal a blood red v-neck shirt and several very slim, delicate gold chains that cling high on around his throat. His single earring is gold too, and dangles with a bolt of lightning at the end. 

“Wow,” Deku breathes out in wonder. “You look so cool. Hey!” He cheers up from his awe and gestures to his shoes. “We kind of match!”

But Katsuki’s not looking at his boots, not even for a second. His gaze tears into the length of Deku’s frame, hugged in supple, subtle leather and grey shirt shot through with silver. A surprise shudder bolts through Deku’s bones with the heady realization of desire writ across Katsuki’s face. 

“This is worse than the black,” Katsuki says, voice a familiar husk from their time spent not-dancing in the living room. He can’t seem to look away from Deku’s belt, also black and studded like his old bracelet. 

Deku licks his suddenly dry lips and jolts when Katsuki’s gaze locks there instead, lingering and hot. 

“O-oh,” he manages, whisper-soft. “Okay, I, um—”

“Gonna kiss you now,” Katsuki murmurs, leaning in, one hand outstretched to cup Deku’s chin and tilt his head. “Before we gotta go in there.”

“Yeah,” Deku barely has time to say before Katsuki is swallowing the consent, lips parted, tongue already invading Deku’s mouth on the end of a relieved, throaty groan. 

Katsuki’s guitar-calloused fingertips scrape across Deku’s nape before they fist in his curls, pulling back to ease Deku’s mouth open wider. Nerves sing and Deku’s lips hum from the coaxing pressure of Katsuki’s, a thorough kiss that urges Deku into wide open submission. Katsuki’s free hand rides up Deku’s thigh and squeezes, not gently, and a liquid thrum starts up between Deku’s legs like a heavy heartbeat bass. 

“Sir,” says an unfamiliar voice from the front of the car. 

Katsuki groans a second time against Deku’s parted, panting mouth, just an edge of whine to it that thrills Deku straight through.

“Later,” Katsuki grits out, his brow pressed hard to Deku’s as they breathe each other’s air. “Later.”

The promise sounds like a threat and Deku wants to get on his knees in the footwell of the car and suck Katsuki off here and now. 

“Stay in the car,” Katsuki murmurs across Deku’s jaw, his roughened fingertips scratching lightly at Deku’s nape before his door opens and he steps out to the sidewalks. He turns and grins at Deku’s dazed expression, then holds out a hand. “This is how it’s supposed to go.”

For a moment, Deku is too dizzy with desire to understand what he’s referring to. But then it hits and he smiles and takes Katsuki’s hand, allowing himself to be led into the cold. 

The wall of sound and light socks Deku in the face, a bright, intolerable shock from the cozy, secluded secrets in the back of a car. He flinches first and stiffens, but Katsuki’s arm loops in his and eases him forward, and that’s enough to melt Deku’s trepidation.

“Why are people taking our photo?” Deku asks, staring owlishly at a cameraman who snaps bright photos in his face. 

“Because I’m important,” Katsuki says through his teeth, smiling as he doesn’t pause for anyone, just walks toward the entrance of the club, where the doors are already held open by two huge men. 

“Oh jeez,” Deku mumbles under the din of coercive catcalls, an overwhelming wave of self-consciousness sinking over him. He’d meant it when he told Katsuki that he wouldn’t want to be friends with someone like Deku. This only proves it. Deku is so very out of place. 

“Wow,” Deku manages as they burst into the club. It’s actually more mellow here in comparison to the harsh atmosphere outdoors. “That was a lot. Is it okay if you were seen with me?”

Katsuki pauses at the entrance, where he’s been craning his neck to look around for someone or something. His bright amber gaze abruptly drills into Deku and once more, Deku spots that odd look of confusion and hesitation.

“Obviously,” Katsuki bites off, sharp and succinct. “Now hang onto me while I find—”

“KACCHAN!” A blonde streak flies at Katsuki, knocking him right out of Deku’s grip and stumbling him back some steps as Katsuki manhandles the handsome, exuberant young man who has plastered himself to Katsuki in a hug. 

“Ugh.” Katsuki peels one arm away and opens his mouth when—

“KACCHAAAN!” 

Deku watches, agape and half-laughing at the sight as two more excitable boys throw themselves at Katsuki like puppies, effectively crushing him into an unrelenting bear hug multiple men deep. Katsuki is red-faced even in the low lighting of the club and looks just shy of apoplectic. 

Deku likes these guys already. 

“GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME YOU GODDAMN LEACHES!” Katsuki shakes himself off, much like a mother dog might brush off her mauling pups and actually points a finger in the face of the beaming blonde. “Don’t you have any self respect? You’re multi-millionaires. You’re idols. Stop acting like I just formed you from the thirteen year old ingrates you were!” 

“But we haven’t seen you in so long!” exclaims a redhead who looks about to burst from his t-shirt with muscle. 

“You hiding from us?” Asks the tallest of them, lanky with a mile-wide grin and black hair. He glances over his shoulder and meets Deku’s smile with his own. “Or who were you hiding?”

“You’re all an embarrassment,” Katsuki says, his face twisted in a scowl as he runs fingers through his spikes, setting them to rights, then smoothing out his suit. The ultra thin gold necklaces spark in the dim club lighting and the lightning bolt as his ear winks a stronger gold that goes with his hair. He’s so arresting, so stunning for a moment that Deku entirely misses what Katsuki says. 

It’s when he realizes that everyone is looking at him expectantly that Deku perks up and smiles, offering a dorky wave that he absolutely knows is dorky.

“Hi! I’m Deku. And you’re. . .”

The blonde laughs, not unkindly, and looks curiously to Katsuki, who rolls his eyes.

“He doesn’t know who you are,” Katsuki mutters, then gestures at each of the three boys. “This is Denki, Kirishima, Sero. They’re Plus Ultra. I made them and they drove me so crazy that I quit. Kids, this is my plus one, Deku.”

Deku has about two seconds to take them in before the three are surrounding him with greetings, jovial pats on the back, shoulder squeezes, even a hair ruffle from Sero. They all begin to talk at once, asking how Katsuki found him, did he tie Deku up to get him here, where did he find someone who doesn’t know Plus Ultra—and in that moment, Deku ceases being overwhelmed. Because this is exactly like his kindergarten class. 

“No one tied me up,” Deku says, aiming a wink at Denki. “Yet.”

Katsuki makes a sound at Deku’s back, where he’s come to stand watch, one hand gentle at the small of Deku’s back, a whisper of solidarity against these three. 

“And I’m sure if Katsuki wants to tell you where he found me, he’ll let you know,” Deku says, unsure just how much of Katsuki’s private life he prefers to share, even with his own little band. 

“Katsuki?” Kirishima parrots, looking on in wonder. “He lets you call him—”

“Oiy.” Katsuki smacks Kirishima upside the head. “You all are still meant to be calling me Mr Bakugou, you know.”

Deku can’t help himself. He tilts his head to look at Katsuki’s murderous expression and smiles.

“Kacchan, though?” Deku says softly. 

Katsuki’s entire face promptly blooms red. 

“Quiet,” Katsuki mutters, looking away, seemingly unable to maintain eye contact.

That’s something. 

“You don’t look like one of Kacchan’s,” Denki says, eyeing him from head to toe with obvious appreciation. 

Self-doubt swarms in Deku’s skull, black and buzzing and anxious as he takes an instinctive step back and bumps solidly against Katsuki’s chest. 

“Well—well, uh, I—”

A hefty arm drapes over Deku’s shoulder and Katsuki leans in props his chin on Deku’s other shoulder, his cheek pressed to Deku’s. 

“He’s not like one of anything ,” Katsuki says, and this sounds like a threat too, all seething heat and steel. “He’s just Deku and he’s with me. Treat him like it.”

Kirishima hasn’t stopped staring at Deku in wonder. Sero’s got a hand on his slim hip, head cocked with a grin as he coolly considers Deku. Denki looks at Deku like one of the five year olds who had too much sugar for breakfast. 

“So,” Deku says, going to the only thing he knows best. Leading excitable and possibly naughty little children. “Who wants to show me around? I bet you all have exciting stories to tell me about everyone here.”

And that’s how much of the evening goes. Deku dimly realizes he’s being introduced to some of the most influential people in the music business, but a lot of it is a blur of Plus Ultra getting him in on jokes, telling embarrassing stories about Katsuki and others, shoving drinks and delicious food in his hands, and pulling him into conversations where he’s entirely out of his depth.

But Katsuki remains at his side, always. He doesn’t talk as much here as he does when he’s only with Deku, and Deku secretly likes that. Even more, he likes the way Katsuki always has a hand on him, or pressed to his side, or interrupts the conversation when someone gets too pointed or invasive with him. 

Deku is several drinks in when he finally turns away from the boys and drapes his arms around Katsuki’s shoulders. He goes to his toes and brushes his nose to Katsuki’s, melting against his hard, unrelenting body as he murmurs, “Dance with me, Kacchan.”

“Fuck yes,” Katsuki replies with such sudden vehemence that it bubbles a surprised laugh from Deku. Someone has been holding something in all night. 

And then Deku is being dragged onto the dancefloor and everything comes back to him in a great, sweeping swipe of memory. Of color and sound, bodies and bright lights, sweat and the inherent stink of sex that comes from dozens and dozens of bodies roiling and riding the wave of liquor and song. 

Music, liquid and bass-heavy, drugging and dragging like the suggestive roll of hips during a good slow fuck, rides Deku’s bones and blood as he turns in Katsuki’s arms, grinds his leather-clad ass back against the grow bulge in Katsuki’s pants. He’s high on the brutal grip of Katsuki’s hands, the hot breath at the back of his neck, the way Katsuki insinuates his thigh between Deku’s legs so he can lean back against and let it press where he’s hottest, most desperate. 

Deku doesn’t know how long they dance, but it doesn’t matter and he’s lost to it. Katsuki spins him at some point, palms riding beneath Deku’s shirt, thumbs pressing between Deku’s ribs, riding his tee up until thumps sweep Deku’s nipples and Deku moans, bunches Katsuki’s lapels in both hands and drags him in for volatile, violently hungry kiss. Deku feels Katsuki’s answering noise in the vibrations between their mouths more than he hears it and it doesn’t matter, nothing matters but getting Katsuki’s inside him, his tongue inside him, hands inside him where Deku hasn’t let anyone go in too damn long. 

Katsuki is on the same wavelength because he’s suddenly breaking off from the kiss only to take Deku by the hand and drag him off the dancefloor. Someone tries to flag him down but Katsuki snarls, a sound that shoots right to Deku’s cock, straining to straighten in leather. 

They’re in the bathroom, a whirlwind of steel and blue lighting with a rainbow of graffiti somehow on the ceiling. Deku only knows this because Katsuki presses him to the door and promptly devours his neck while turning the lock on the entrance with a resound click. Deku smiles blissfully up at the ceiling, his knees going weak when Katsuki licks a long line from Deku’s collar to the sensitive skin below his ear. 

“How are you real,” Katsuki rasps against Deku’s curls, nose buried there as his hands sneak into Deku’s pants around the back, squeezing his ass through his cherry red underwear. “How,” Katsuki demands, as if Deku has any idea what the hell he’s talking about. 

Without thinking hard on it, because Deku’s skull is the inside of a bass drum in the best way, all bloodbeat noise and thunder heart, Deku hooks his foot around Katsuki’s knee quick enough to trip him up. When he feels Katsuki’s balance go weak-legged and unexpected, Deku flips their position and slams Katsuki into the door. Katsuki cusses as his head knocks back, but his ravenous, pupil-blown gaze never falters, only this time wider with surprise. 

Deku grins, his hands already working Katsuki’s fly. He licks his swollen bottom lip and watches Katsuki watch. Oh god, he has missed being watched like this. Wanted, adored. Missed being exciting.  

“How are you real,” Deku shoots back, beaming as he pulls Katsuki’s cock from his pants and strips it quick and exuberant once, twice, and again, drunk on the look of open-mouthed pleasure and awe that overtakes the former aggression on Katsuki’s sharp face. “I’ve wanted to drop to my knees for you just about the first day we met.”

“Deku,” Katsuki groans, frantically licking his lips as he stares down at Deku’s hand around his dick, then back to Deku’s sharpening smile. “What are you,” he whispers. 

Deku blinks.

“I’m a teacher,” he says, voice accidentally dropping an octave in his pleasure. He drops soundlessly to his knees and looks up, meeting Katsuki’s shock. “Lemme give you a lesson. Daddy.”

“Oh fuck fuck.” 

The predatory facade has fallen away to reveal a powerful Bakugou Katsuki more on his knees than Deku is right now. He’s wrecked and Deku hasn’t even put his mouth on that delicious, thick dick. Deku looks up at him with adoration, pumps the hard base of Katsuki’s erection, and opens his mouth wide, only to drag the flat of his tongue up the big beating vein along the underside. 

Katsuki’s full body shudder is all the affirmation Deku needs. He sinks his mouth around that beautiful cock and licks around the head, tongue swirling and dragging, memorizing the texture of slick, smooth head and the pulsing veins down the length. Deku presses a palm to Katsuki’s hip, leans his weight into it, urges Katsuki to keep from fucking forward, not because Deku doesn’t want it, but because the idea of this powerful, stunning man beginning for the person at his feet is too much for Deku to deny himself. 

With his other hand he cups Katsuki’s balls, fingertips dipping behind them to smooth over the sensitive bundle of nerves behind. With lips swollen and slick from precum and spit, he slacks his jaw and lets Katsuki’s cock feed down his throat just as he brushes the skin at the edge of his asshole.

Katsuki comes apart like no one’s ever touched him there. Hands fly to his hair and clench, merciless nails into his scalp, and now Deku doesn’t wait, doesn’t hold back as he skims his hands up and around, grips the hard muscle of Katsuki’s ass, and urges him to fuck Deku’s mouth at his will. 

Deku’s throat burns and tears run down his cheeks, automatic reaction to having something so thick bump the back of his throat and urge down. His lungs burn to breathe properly but the heady, white-out fuzz of having that choice taken from him is intoxicating and Deku only moans, the vibrations carrying down Katsuki’s frantic cock. The sound is cacophonous, the sloppy suction a harsh heaving breath from Katsuki above as he looks down and watches his dick disappear down Deku’s throat. 

Deku looks up, his gaze wet and unclear, but he can see Katsuki wrecked and ragged, can feel his hips stutter and stall, and then Deku’s letting his eyes fall shut as he swallows Katsuki’s cum down, barely getting a taste for how far back it ropes down the back of his mouth, filling him and satisfying him like few things ever can. 

He doesn’t expect Katsuki to slide down like he’s been shot in the gut, the look of abject, pink-cheeked shock so clear on his face as he simply gapes, exhausted and aglow with orgasm. His legs splay out on either side of Deku and hands seem to have forgotten to let go of Deku’s curls, simply embedded there above Deku’s hot ears, holding on.

Deku licks his numb lips, his tongue urging the feeling back in. He’s so hard in his pants, untouched, the masochist in him absolutely reveling in remaining on the shaking edge of release but refusing to give it to himself until it’s given. The cum-hungry part of him is sated, though, hungry for years since he’d last got with a guy he could trust enough to swallow him down like that. 

“What—” Katsuki finally says, hoarse and ragged, his hands finally dropping to Deku’s shoulders, then down his arms, eyes trailing the path of his touch until his palms settle on Deku’s thighs, one thumb outlining the obvious pulsing length down the path of his leg. “Where the hell have you been all my life?”

“Shaping Japan’s youth,” Deku says as he crawls atop Katsuki’s lap and shoves one of Katsuki’s hands down his leather pants. “Now get me off.”

“How’re you so fucking demanding like this,” Katsuki hisses in Deku’s ear as he roughly jerks open Deku’s belt and fumbles the zipper. He’s palming Deku through the leather, working him hard, just like Deku wants it right now when he’s gagging for it, frantic to come in Katsuki’s hold, surrounded by him. He doesn’t care that they’re on the bathroom floor or that the walls are dripping graffiti or that everyone locked out on the other side has to know what’s going on in here. 

“Daddy doesn’t like demanding?” Deku whispers back, rising up to his knees so he can wrangle the pants down his ass and thighs, his cheek pressed to the top of Katsuki’s hair as he reveals himself without any shame he might feel if he were in his right mind. But Deku is never in his right mind when it comes to sex. It’s like every social norm and self-doubt gets thrown out a highrise window where it gloriously shatters into a thousand glittering shards. 

Katsuki sounds like he’s in pain, the noise he makes, and Deku smiles into Katsuki’s thorny halo of hair when he feels worshiping hands round his generous ass, knead the fat and considerable muscle, fingertips bruising into the plush expanse of his thighs before one hand finally grips his sensitive, weepy cock. 

“You fucking brat,” Katsuki says against Deku’s chest, his voice deep, his exhale shaky as he drags his thumb along the dripping slit of Deku’s cock, slicking it around, cupping his palm around over the crown, the slick squish of his hand working just the head driving Deku into crying out. “So wet for me, aren’t you? Sluttier than I ever imagined. What the fuck made me think you were a nice boy?”

Deku whines and rolls his hips toward Katsuki, wishing they could fuck now , right now , but even his sex-addled skull knows it’s too soon, too fast to give it up.

But if Katsuki offers, Deku will not say no.

“Please,” Deku strangles out as Katsuki’s free hand continues to knead Deku’s asscheek, fingertips brushing just the edge of his asshole in a tease, a promise. His rough, calloused hand has started to work Deku’s dick, but not fast enough, not nearly fast enough, Katsuki taking his time to use the continuous dribble of cum to slick him up more and more. “Please, Daddy, let me.”

“God,” Katsuki breathes out, his voice trembling. He leans back against the door, hand tunneling quicker and wetter down Deku’s reddened cock, and Deku arches back and away in turn, his legs spread so wide on Katsuki’s lap, his hands shifting back to rest on Katsuki’s knees so he can recline and watch; watch Katsuki’s hand, watch Katsuki’s face. 

Katsuki has already come but he looks rapturous, concentration black and hard on the entire presented length of Deku’s body. Deku feels his balls tighten, the searing coil of energy bunching between his legs, white hot and edging across his fogging vision. Then their eyes meet and Deku, breathlessly, mouth hanging open, chin tilted back, chest heaving, smiles and comes. 

He’s vaguely away aware of Katsuki’s arms around him, hefty and warm and embracing him with the musk of sex and spice and sweat. And then the world shrieks back into focus and Deku startles, his brow pressed to Katsuki’s shoulder as he shudders a breath out, his entire body lax but his brain picking up speed. 

“Ugh,” Deku manages. “Bathroom floor.”

“I need a shower,” Katsuki croaks. Deku huffs a laugh, his body heavy and not yet ready to shift entirely. 

“Two showers.”

“Two?”

“One to get dirtier and one to clean up.”

Katsuki’s shivers at that and Deku can feel the pulse against his throat where Deku has shoved his face. 

“I don’t know what I expected,” Katsuki murmurs, “but it sure as hell wasn’t this.”

Deku merely hums and works himself up to move. His sexual prowess is something that he usually eases partners into unless they seem particularly keen on bratty power bottoms with ravenous sex drives. 

Katsuki seems to have survived though. Good for him; for both of them. 

“Oh no,” Deku says when he finally pulls back and gets to his shaky feet. His shirt is a hot mess. He looks between the front of his expensive tee and balefully back to Katsuki. “Oh dear.”

“How d’you go,” Katsuki begins as he strips his suit jacket from his shoulders and shoves it between his thighs to hold while he pulls off his burgundy v-neck, “from shameless brat to school teacher in sixty seconds flat all over again?”

“Uh.” Deku doesn’t know how to answer that. He stares at the shirt Katsuki is offering and mutely takes it, then watches as Katsuki pulls on the suit jacket and doesn’t even bother to button it. He looks like a rock star more than he even did before, his exposed chest revealing that his two tattoo sleeves ride across his pecs and down his sternum. He is absolutely decorated and now it’s on show for the world. Deku doesn’t even care as long as he gets to look too. 

“Put the damn thing on,” Katsuki says, impatience clearing away any wonder he may have had for Deku’s deviant side. “Bet you anything we got assholes are waiting on the other side of that door with their phones conveniently on camera setting.”

Deku winces and nods, quickly and clumsily stripping from his own shirt and putting on Katsuki’s. It’s a size too big for Deku, but he tucks the shirt taught into his pants and he looks fit for the public again. 

“But what about my shirt,” Deku laments, holding the glorified cum-rag at this point. “It was so expensive.”

Katsuki casts a disinterested look past the shirt and waves a tattooed hand, all slim palm and long fingers. 

“Whatever. I’ll buy you five more like it.”

“I don’t want five grey shirts,” Deku mumbles, but he tosses the thing anyway because it’s not like he’s going to carry it around in his back pocket for the rest of the night. 

“Hey,” Katsuki says after Deku washes his hands, and Deku looks up in the mirror with a jolt, finding his eyes meeting Katsuki’s stern expression. 

“Yes?” Deku whispers, not sure why he’s whispering when the music is beating down the door and the sound of voices grows impatient on the other side. 

“You’re not what I expected,” Katsuki says.

Deku can’t help but smile.

“You keep saying that. I’m not so very strange, Kacchan. Just a normal guy enjoying a date, getting to let loose from a job that requires a lot of self-control, time, and energy.”

Katsuki’s mouth twists down like he wants to disagree, but he just shrugs and motions toward the door. 

“Let’s go,” Katsuki says. “I’m sure people are gonna give us shit the minute we get outta here.”

“And I’m sure you’ll tell them to fuck off once they do,” Deku replies. 

Katsuki’s hand at the small of Deku’s back, guiding him toward the door, bunches in the fabric as he lets out a bright, abrupt laugh that is altogether new and totally delightful to Deku’s ears. Neither of them say anything, but Katsuki’s is grinning and quite happily feral with the people who greet them on the other side of the bathroom door, and Deku isn’t surprised that soon they’re all scattering in fear of their lives. 

Deku finds that he likes Bakugou Katsuki more than he even imagined he would.

***

“Thank you for tonight,” Deku murmurs at the door to his apartment building. He’s tucked away in his peacoat, the collar flicked up to protect his ears against the icy wind, but his cheeks ache from smiling and his bones are warm from the company and the booze. He feels happy. He had fun. “I’ve never done anything like that, I hope I didn’t embarrass you or—”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Katsuki asks without much heat. He’s bundled up too, the tips of his glossy, expensive shoes touching the toes of Deku’s red boots. They’re so very close and Katsuki smells warm, likes cardamom and cloves and a roaring hearth. “Everyone loved you. I don’t know what exactly you did to them all, but apparently treating people like five year-olds works on more than just five year-olds.”

Deku busts out a goofy laugh he knows is unattractive but he can’t help anyway. 

“I don’t know about all that, but everyone was really nice to me and that in itself was honestly more than expected. It’s not like I’m anybody.”

Katsuki’s smile immediately drops and once more he’s making that tight expression of consternation at him, like Deku is suddenly speaking in tongues and it’s pissing Katsuki off that he doesn’t understand. 

“You’re right,” Katsuki says, low, intense as he reaches between them and guides Deku’s hands into the pockets of Katsuki’s coat, his own hands joining him in the mingled warmth. “You’re not like anybody.”

“That’s—that’s not what I meant—”

“I know what you meant and that self-deprecating shit isn’t gonna fly,” Katsuki cuts in, sharp and succinct, his fiery amber gaze unwavering on Deku’s wide eyes. There’s an inherent aura of confidence and ease in Katsuki’s demeanor that demands respect and Deku can’t help but melt in its effortless radiance. “Everybody liked you because you’re not like them. I guess it’s what I first liked about you too. Even if it’s annoying as hell that you don’t notice how half the room wanted a piece of you tonight.”

“What?” Deku sputters a laugh and pulls his hands from Katsuki’s pocket to flail them a little, to brush it off physically as he discards the compliment mentally. “N-no, no, I—that’s very sweet of you, but—”

“I’m freezin’ my ass off out here,” Katsuki drawls, leaning in, his cold nose brushing Deku’s warm, flushed cheek. “Kiss me goodbye already.”

So Deku does. Rises to his toes and presses his mouth to Katsuki’s curved one, chaste and utterly unlike what they’ve exchanged through the night. 

Then Katsuki’s palm slips into the popped collar of Deku’s coat and curves around Deku’s nape, simply holding him in place as Katsuki tastes the seam of Deku’s lips and licks into his mouth, slow and searching, easy and without a rush to the end. The way Katsuki’s kissing him reminds Deku of that first night again, of the cool press of a silver belt buckle to Deku’s back, of Katsuki’s thumbs hooked in Deku’s belt loops, of the grainy guitar and crooning song coming from the kitchen. 

And then their lips drift apart, Katsuki’s hand still holding him firmly in place even as they separate enough to breathe air that isn’t each other’s. Deku’s lashes flutter, eyelids heavy with the weight of want as he forces them slowly open to find Katsuki looking at him like they’ve just met. Like Deku is Katsuki’s new favorite song. 

“See you Monday,” Katsuki murmurs, sounding just shy of breathless. 

“Yeah,” Deku replies, dazed and licking his lips as he faintly nods. “Monday.”

“Text me,” Katsuki says, finally letting his hand drop. Deku instantly feels cold and needy.

“Goodnight, Kacchan,” Deku says softly. 

Katsuki makes a quick, sharp noise, nods, and quickly stalks back to the car.

Deku can’t help but smile. 

***

Deku’s sex-addled haze of affection and hope is neatly sliced in two when he arrives at the summons of Headmaster Aizawa and finds himself on the opposite end of droll, dry-eyed disappointment. 

“Er,” Deku says, when faced with the laptop open to several paparazzi photos of himself and Katsuki heading in and out of the Friday’s venue. “That’s. Well.”

“The parent of one of your students, yes,” Aizawa drawls, “go ahead and say it out loud so we both know what an absolute idiot you are.”

“This is hardly professional conduct in the workplace,” Deku mutters instead, bringing his shoulders up to his burning ears as he slumps into the seat. 

“Yes, well.” Aizawa snaps the laptop shut and sets his unnerving, unblinking eyes on Deku. “Last I checked, and I did double check this morning just for the benefit of the doubt due to how long I’ve had the misfortune of knowing you, it’s fairly unprofessional conduct to fuck your student’s father as well.”

“I have not !” Deku sits up straight in his chair, spurred on by at least that one truth. He sinks down on automatic when Aizawa looks just shy of taking his head clean off his shoulders with a look. “I mean. Well, not in the most literal of ways yet.”

“Yet,” Aizawa blandly parrots. “Outstanding. Thank you for the clarification, you idiot, I’m glad we’ve cleared up that you’re only partially fucking the guy and I’ve been a fool for my concern.”

“Oh will you just—concern?” Deku can’t help the hopeful little smile that quirks at his lips. Aizawa only appears more drawn and disturbed in reply. “Concern for who? The school or me?”

Aizawa shuts his eyes as if searching for patience and, finding none, opens them to meet Deku’s guileless stare. And he sighs, his broad shoulders sagging as he spins half way in his chair, then back, then away, massaging the bridge of his nose between two fingers. 

“Kid,” he begins, which is a great sign all-in-all, because it’s what he used to call Deku back when they were just Deku’s step-dad’s best friend slash surly uncle figure and Deku just an idiot boy. “Just be careful so I don’t have to, A—fire you, or B—crack some skulls. I’d like to keep my job and you yours. Clear?”

Deku beams.

“Clear.”

“You like him?” Aizawa asks, surprising him. 

Deku thinks of Katsuki’s innate confidence; the way he carries himself like royalty but has no qualms stooping to cook his daughter’s favorite meals or let his apartment fall to the wayside in favor of strewn toys and play and love. He thinks of the way those three silly band members felt comfortable enough to fling themselves at their former producer even if he swore to skin them in the same breath that he hugged them in return. He thinks of his calloused fingertips and even rougher demeanor and the way he softly cups the back of Deku’s neck like he’s precious and barks orders at Deku for thinking poorly of himself. 

“Yes,” Deku says softly, smiling like a fool in a daze.

“Mother of—get the fuck out of my office,” Aizawa snaps, “and tell your parents about this before they see it online!”

***

Deku, in fact, does not tell his parents anything, because he’s apparently all about fucking over the parents of Japan in equal but different measures. 

Plus, after the puppy love stops biting at his ankles, it’s half-way through the week of exchanging coy looks with Katsuki at pick-up and clever texts in the evening, that Deku does come to wonder when this will end. Because it probably definitely will, eventually. And while he likes to consider himself an optimist, he also has something more important to consider than the habits of his heart and hormones.

Mainly, Ashido Naomi. 

While Deku is a romantic and a slut, and aren’t those two fun ends of the spectrum to meet in the middle, he also knows he can’t go around confusing a five year-old just because her teacher and dad had a great dinner date and wild night out. Deku is certain that Katsuki will agree. 

So, slow. Slow and careful they will go. Both of which Deku is neither, but he can and will implement caution because he loves his kids more than most things in this world, including taking chances on rough and tumble musicians with prickly hearts and soft lips. 

Unfortunately, Deku’s new resolve is almost immediately tested by Thursday, when Katsuki texts, I have  Naomi this weekend. Do you want to visit us?

Wish I could, Deku texts back, because it’s oh so very true. Busy weekend.

Immediately Deku feels awful because, first of all, he has no busy weekend plans and rarely does. Second, now he needs to make actual weekend plans or else he’ll feel guilty for outright lying like a liar. 

Next weekend? Katsuki immediately replies, and Deku can’t help his stupid romantic heart from going on like Disney singing birds. 

Sure, Deku texts back. But this time, I’ll pick the venue. Let’s be boring and normal.

Normal? Us? Idiot. 

Let me pretend!

At Friday pick-up, Katsuki uncharacteristically lingers. He’s a greet-Deku-and-run type, all efficient business without any telling signs of his feelings for Deku minus the way he makes hot, direct eye contact with Deku. He’ll maintain it until Deku begins to burn with a blush, then throw that dangerous, jackknife sharp grin at him, and leave. 

Today, though, he arrives late and lingers in the doorway after all the parents have collected their kids. Deku laughs at something the final parent says and turns around to find Naomi sitting on the bench outside the class, happily kicking her legs and looking up to her dad with the expectant look of a puppy. 

“Hey,” Deku says warmly upon approach, his smile edged with a question as he looks to Katsuki with raised, expectant eyebrows.

“Naomi,” Katsuki says, without ripping his gaze from Deku’s. “Sit here for a moment. I need to talk to Mr Midoriya about important school things in his room for a moment, alright?”

“Okay!” Naomi replies cheerfully. She’s playing with the mittens clipped to her coat sleeves on strings, softly making them talk to each other and argue. 

Katsuki flicks a single quick look down the emptied corridor, back to Deku, then disappears into the classroom. Frowning, Deku follows.

“Bakugou?” he asks with concern, taking care to use his proper name in these all-seeing halls. “Is everything—”

Katsuki shuts the door behind them, grabs Deku by the collar of his polo, and spins them until Deku’s back slams  against the wall beside the door. Deku barely registers the motion before a hot, urgent tongue licks into his gasping mouth, lips crushing to his own with a fervor that steals the breath from him. The needy whine could have been either of them as Deku scrabbles for a hold on the lapels of Katsuki’s heavy winter jacket, keeping him close, hauling him closer, relishing the weight of Katsuki’s body overpowering him. 

“You have no idea,” Katsuki breathes into Deku’s open mouth, shoves his tongue back in to swallow Deku’s needy noise, kisses into Deku like he’s the single most desired human on the planet, and it’s dizzying, maddening, tempting beyond belief. “No idea,” Katsuki grits out, rough and husky as he palms a hand up to grip the nape of Deku’s neck, proprietary and firm, like he’s been holding onto Deku for a lifetime. “How pissed I am not to see you this weekend.”

The way Katsuki words it has Deku trembling a breathy laugh, his grip on Katsuki’s jacket loosening as he props his brow to Katsuki’s shoulder and lets his frame shake with a muffled giggle.

“Oh shut up,” Katsuki grumbles as he abruptly steps back and gives Deku a playground shove back against the wall. When Deku only grins at him, gleeful and amused, Katsuki’s answering smile is slow and almost shy before he rolls his eyes and wrenches the door open. He pauses with his hand on the knob, and then his look is incendiary all over again, burning and unmistakably covetous as he assesses Deku from silly red sneakers to the place where his throat is blushing.

“See you Monday,” Katsuki rasps. 

Deku licks his swollen lips and watches Katsuki watch him. Flammable. Their chemistry is flammable. 

“See you Monday,” Deku whispers. And then Katsuki is gone.

It’s going to be a long weekend. 

***

“Sounds like he’s after your ass,” is Todoroki’s assessment at drinks and dinner on Saturday night. 

“Shouto,” Ochako cuts in brightly, all tense smiles as Deku wails drunkenly in reply and drops his head to the table. 

“Please be conscious of the hotpot, Midoriya,” Iida murmurs as Deku lifts his head and drearily watches the dual broth ripple from his excessive head slam. 

“What?” Todoroki frowns as he swishes a strip of beef in the red broth. “It does. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. Deku needs to get laid anyway. He’s always happier when he’s getting dick.”

“That’s not true!” Deku hollers, too loud even for the boisterous atmosphere of the restaurant. 

“What’s that English saying about the lady protesting too much,” Ochako murmurs into her beer, giving Deku the side-eye of the century.

Deku gawks.

“I thought you were defending me!”

“Not really,” Ochako replies cheerfully. “I was more keeping Todoroki from saying anything too true or else you’ll end up crying in my bathtub at three in the morning because you’re sad and horny.”

“That was one time,” Deku hisses, betrayed. 

“I think he sounds quite lovely,” Iida says, practiced as always in the ways of ignoring absolutely every conversation around him unless it suits his train of thought. “Attentive, a good father, passionate. These are all things that I feel appeal to you, Midoriya. Plus, of course, his dick.”

“Mainly that,” Todoroki says, chewing thoughtfully and nodding. 

“Not mainly that!” Deku cries. “Seriously guys—I’m making the right decision, aren’t I? With keeping my distance while we get to know each other better. I think once he realizes how truly boring my life is—how boring I am—he’ll go back to, I don’t know, movie stars or musicians or something. I don’t really know. He’s never said, but I can make educated guesses.”

“Don’t you think,” Ochako says in that careful, delicate way she has when she’s about to deliver a pointed blow, “that your educated guesses are more like anxious assumptions about a person who has, up until now, been very honest and open with you from his end?”

Deku stares at her, aghast.

“Do you like him or not,” he squawks. “I can’t tell!”

“I don’t have any opinion on whether or not I like him,” Ochako says with an easy laugh, merry with amusement as she dumps a load of vegetables into the hotpot and keeps a keen eye on them. “But it does sound to me like you’re being unfair to someone who, whether he’s into you for just the sex or more, has been upfront with you from the start. And has, apparently, explicitly stated that he’s going to pursue the fuck out of you.”

“Todoroki,” Deku whines pathetically. “You told her that?”

“Who else was going to tell her,” Todoroki replies drolly. “You? You don’t tell anybody anything about yourself, even us. You’re kind of a jerk like that.”

Iida makes a resolute sound of agreement and Deku can only stare at his friends in horror.

“You’re all the worst friends,” Deku whispers. “Stop saying so many true things. I want to go home.”

“Not to mine.” Ochako finishes her beer and switches her empty with Iida’s half-full. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I don’t want you in my bathtub.”

“I don’t want to be in your bathtub either!”

“So go to Mr Bakugou Katsuki’s bathtub and stop being sad and horny!” Ochako shoots back. “Won’t that solve all your problems in one?”

“Can’t,” Deku mumbles, pressing his forehead more gently to the table and closing his eyes, his head swimming. “Naomi is at his for the weekend. Can’t involve her.”

“She will be involved,” Iida says, like it’s obvious, because it fucking is, and won’t it be great of his friends to stop saying things that are continuously true. “She already is.”

“Yeah,” Deku croaks at the table. “But at least she won’t get her hopes up over anything before they’re dashed.”

“Are you talking about a five year old or yourself,” Ochako asks, and that sends Deku into the tipping point of very pathetic tears. 

He doesn’t end up in Ochako’s bathtub, but it’s a close thing as she rolls out a sleeping mat in the living room and sighs. 

“You know,” she says kindly as she crouches next to his bed in the dark and places a water bottle beside his head. “The kids are going to wake you up before the sun rises and you’re going to have a hangover and Tenya is going to cook a delicious breakfast that you won’t be able to stomach and that’ll all be punishment enough for the way you acted tonight.”

“What way am I acting,” Deku asks petulantly, pulling the blankets up over his mouth and nose so she can’t see him pout. So what, he’s a twenty-six year old man, he’s still allowed to drink himself in a state of self-pity over a very sexy and responsible daddy-type. There are no rules against it. 

“Like a man who is trying to sabotage himself from something good,” Ochako quietly replies. She sounds so mature, so worldly and female and all-knowing in ways Deku can never be when he spends his days on the same level as a classroom of five year olds. “Maybe trust him a little. And more, trust your instincts about him. They just might be right. And if they’re not, then you’ll still make some good memories on the way that you can cherish and learn from.”

“How did you get so wise,” Deku murmurs, already on the verge of sleep. 

“From living a little more fearlessly than you,” Ochako says gently. “And from being wildly in love with you before I realized you were getting laid by Shindo Yo all of third year.”

Deku sleeps soundly and wakes to slobbery toddlers weighing him into the floor, a socked foot in his mouth as one of them uses him as a climbing frame, and everything Ochako says about the morning comes true. And if she’s right about that, maybe she’ll be right about all the rest.

***

“Daddy says if I ask you to dinner, you can’t say no to me,” is the first thing Naomi says at Monday drop off. 

She says it way too soon, though, because Ashido Mina turns on her hot pink UGG boot with a predatory smile that makes Deku briefly wonder, while deeply in fear, how she and Katsuki had looked as a couple. Like a deadly lion and a panther, if Deku had any imagination of it. Talk about a power couple. 

“What was that, darling?” Ashido asks, although she’s looking directly at Deku while he sweats through his shirt and silently prays to just about any deity he can think of. “Is Mr Midoriya coming to dinner?”

“Not with you,” Naomi says, in that casually cutting way all five year olds do. “Me, Daddy, and Mr Midoriya.”

“Uh,” Deku starts. “That—that is—”

“Is that right.” Ashido seems to look at Deku in earnest for the first time, her heavily-lined cat eyes raking over him like she’s about to use him as a clawing post. “Mr Midoriya, is that true? That Katsuki had you over for dinner with our daughter?”

“I, well, yes?” Deku manages, desperately trying not to look guilty. “Naomi, she—well, a couple of weeks ago she’d asked her father if I could come to dinner one day. He’d told her that if she asked and I said yes, then I could. I didn’t actually, uh, think he’d take me up on it. I thought he was humoring her, but it turns out he wasn’t, and—”

“Right,” Ashido says, and if she could stop smiling any time soon that would be so much less terrifying. “Sure, that makes sense. I wish I’d been informed, though.”

“That’s—I didn’t know you weren’t,” Deku weakly replies. That part, at least, is not his job. “I’m sorry that you weren’t aware. I—well, I won’t say yes if it makes you uncomfortable. I understand how it could. But please know that I adore Naomi to pieces and I treasure her as my student and I’d never attempt to infringe on her life in a way that would be detrimental to her. I only said yes because—”

“Mr Midoriya,” Ashido interrupts, hands on her hips, and suddenly she looks like she’s about to laugh and Deku can’t figure out why. “Breathe. It’s fine. The fact that Katsuki hasn’t said a word about this says much more than you know.”

“It does?” Deku says, and just as he says it he realizes how hopeful he sounds. How incriminating. 

Ashido bursts into a short, bright laugh. 

“Mr Midoriya. Midoriya. Izuku. Can I call you Izuku?”

“I, er—”

“Great,” Ashido says, closing in on him to pat his shoulder. She looks absolutely incandescent with some kind of glee that Deku can’t place and isn’t sure he wants to. “This is great. Oh man, this is—have dinner with all of us, why don’t you?” 

Deku doesn’t know what happens next, but he thinks he agrees without actually speaking , as Ashido picks out the date and time at her house , this coming weekend when Deku is supposed to be seeing Katsuki anyway, and everything is on fire and Katsuki is going to kill him and Deku—

Deku is trying very hard to live fearlessly. 

***

“Fuck,” is Katsuki’s reaction when Deku quickly calls him during a fake bathroom break. “She’s going to eat you alive.”

“What?” Deku whispers harshly, wincing as his voice echoes in the bathroom. He cups the phone to his face and whispers harder, but not softer, because he is an idiot. “Eat me alive? Why? And why would she invite me to—”

“She’s going to pump you for information and leave you a hollow shell of yourself,” Katsuki says, and he doesn’t even sound like he’s joking. 

“What!” Deku yelps, then drops into a low mutter. “Kacchan, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it wasn’t me, it was Naomi, she—”

“Blaming the five year-old does not make this situation better,” Katsuki replies blandly. He pauses, then sighs. “There’s no arguing with that crazy bitch. We’ll have to go. If we don’t, she’ll make a point of driving us into misery and madness until we finally relent. Trust me, I know.”

“And you dated this woman?” Deku hisses. 

Katsuki’s laugh is so loud it ricochets off the tile on the other end of the line. 

“Fuck no,” Katsuki finally manages around a wheeze. “Hell no. Naomi is the oops baby of a very drunk Christmas work party that I don’t remember and a paternity test that was my birthday present when she finally realized she was pregnant.”

Deku gasps. 

“You can’t just call Naomi an oops baby, you asshole!”

“Not to her face,” Katsuki replies, unaffected.

“You—”

“Look, I love that kid more than life,” Katsuki says softly. “But she wasn’t exactly expected. Not that we’ll ever tell her that. As far as she’ll ever know when she gets older, we dated a while, wildly adored each other, but didn’t work out in the long run.”

“Oh.” Deku pouts at the bland mint green stall door. “Well, that’s nice.”

“Peachy,” Katsuki grits out. “Look, if you don’t want to do this thing—”

“I want to do this thing,” Deku whispers quickly, sounding probably too crazed, too invested. Mostly because he is. “I want to, uh—” Deku inhales, exhales. “I want to do a lot of things with you, Kacchan. If you—that is, if you’re interested in—”

“I’m very interested,” Katsuki replies, sounding a little breathless and tight over the phone.

“Oh,” Deku says, not sure why he’s surprised. He smiles. “Okay. Well, I have to get back to my class. I’m hiding in the toilets.”

“What the fuck are you getting paid for anyway?” Katsuki says, but Deku can hear the smirk in his voice. 

Deku huffs laugh. 

“See you at pick-up, Daddy.”

Deku hangs up to Katsuki’s choked off whimper. 

***

On Friday at one in the morning, Deku frowns at his ringing phone and answers carefully. 

“Kacchan?”

“Come pick up your princess,” a deep, honeyed and extremely sexy male voice croons into the phone. “He’s sloppy drunk and won’t stop talking about you.”

“That sounds like a him problem,” Deku replies on automatic, even as he’s smiling to himself and rising from his desk, where he’s been whiling away the night playing video games. 

“And now I’m making it a you problem,” the man says, and in the background Deku briefly hears an aggravated, muffled rant that may or may not be Katsuki. “Seriously, he’s moping. Please come reassure him of your affections or whatever gentlemanly shit he’s pulling with you. I’m honestly at a loss.”

Deku’s not even considering denying him. He’s already bundled into his ratty winter coat, still in comfy matching sweats of ugly pumpkin orange. 

“Alright.” Deku sits at the genkan and slips bare feet into woolly insulated boots. “Text me the address.”

“Will do,” the man agrees easily. Before Deku can hang up, he adds, “You’ll take care of him, won’t you?”

There’s something about the way he says it. Double edged sword, sharp and cutting despite the relaxed drawl of his words. Deku pauses at his front door, holding it open as he frowns into the cold corridor. 

“Yes,” Deku carefully replies. “How could I not?”

“Who knows,” the man breezily replies before hanging up. Deku gives his phone a strange look and heads out the door. Luckily, the address isn’t that far away, and Deku can make it at a fast walk in about twenty minutes. In this cold, it’ll feel like a trek, but he doesn’t want to pay for a cab either. 

A very tired man with wildly lavender hair answers the door to another lavish apartment. His smile is crooked and wan and he reminds Deku of a rather handsome scarecrow. 

“Shinsou,” the guy says, holding open the door to Deku and gesturing inside. “And you’re the Deku that Bakugou won’t stop mooning over.”

Anxious by the assessment, Deku lets himself in and toes off his unwieldy winter boots.

“Kat—er, Bakugou doesn’t seem like the time to moon over anything.”

“How very special you are then,” Shinsou says so dryly that Deku can’t tell if it’s earnesty or sarcasm. “And as much as I would love to go into depth on that so I can scar him for life with the way he’s been acting, I actually need to get up in the morning, so please take your man of my hands, okay?”

Deku darts a quick, furtive look toward Shinsou and finds him not looking unkindly back. With a differential nod, Deku steps into the foyer and follows the direction of Shinsou’s long, lanky arm gesture. 

He approaches the couch where Katsuki is face down, one arm and one leg hanging off the side and dragging the floor. Lips curved, Deku drops to a crouch and brushes fingertips along Katsuki’s temple and around his ear, as if tucking a lock of hair behind if it wasn’t so short. Katsuki hums at the contact but his face remains buried in the couch cushion.

“Hey handsome,” Deku murmurs, his hand drifting to cup the nape of Katsuki’s neck. “I’ve come to take you home.”

“Hmmm?” Katsuki turns his head, his hair a hot mess, his features somehow unbearably young when he’s muzzy and soft like this. He cracks open an eye, and for a moment Deku can tell that Katsuki doesn’t recognize him. 

Delight registers first, then surprise, followed by abject horror as Katsuki shoots up from the sofa, one side of his hair flat where he’s been laid out. 

“Deku!” Katsuki sounds like a lifetime chain-smoker, hoarse and rough as his obvious confusion and alarm ratchets up. “What the fuck’re you—Shinsou.”

“Yes, dear?” Shinsou calls from the kitchen. 

“Why is he here!”

“He can hear you and is standing right here,” Deku says, amused. He rises from his crouch and gestures to his unkempt self, still half in comfy clothes. “Your friend called me out in the dead of night reporting you as too unbearable to deal with for how much you were pining for me.”

Not entirely true, but it’s fun to watch the panic set into Katsuki’s countenance. 

“Well, that’s—that’s because—” Katsuki scowls, his expressions loose and changeable rather than tight and aggressive like usual, and it’s then that Deku properly understands that Katsuki is much more drunk than he initially assumed. “Because once you meet my crazy baby-mama you’re not gonna wanna—y’know—”

Deku blinks. 

“You know I have met her, right? Every day for almost an entire school year. She even attended parent-teacher night, which, if we’re being honest, you did not.”

“I was in Spain!” Katsuki squawks, and as if on cue, Shinsou bursts into laughter from the kitchen, where he is clearly not doing anything but listening in. 

Deku takes pity on Katsuki with a gentle smile, leaning in to cup Katsuki’s night-stubbled cheek, his thumb brushing one sharp cheekbone. 

“I’m not sure what you’re worried about,” Deku murmurs, meeting Katsuki’s unfocused, drunk gaze, “but maybe it’s something you should discuss with me instead of drinking yourself silly over.”

Deku realizes he’s the worst kind of hypocrite for doing exactly that less than a week ago. Okay, so they are both hot messes. 

“Now,” Deku says, standing straight, hands on his hips as he assesses this particular mess of a man who paints such a pretty picture in bare feet and ripped jeans and those tattooed sleeves. “Put your shoes on. Let’s get you home. Or, to my home. It’s a bit of a walk away and it’ll help sober you—”

Katsuki launches forward, arms banding around Deku’s waist, his cheek pressed to Deku’s sternum through the layers of his sweater and coat. Deku startles only briefly, then immediately relaxes into it, his hands both brushing through Katsuki’s soft, wild fray of hair, nails gently scraping over Katsuki’s scalp. Apparently a drunk Bakugou Katsuki is an affectionate one. 

“You’re not gonna stick around,” Katsuki says into Deku’s stomach, turning his face to inhale Deku’s coat. “I can tell. I already told you, right? I’m not good at this shit and I always pick people just as shit at this stuff as I am. But you’re better than all my crap, better than half the rejects I know in this industry—”

“Hey—” comes a quiet rebuttal from Shinsou from the kitchen, easily ignored. 

“But I didn’t expect it to end so quickly,” Katsuki mumbles, his hands fisting in the material at the small of Deku’s back. Shocked, Deku remains silent, one hand palming down to the burning skin of Katsuki’s nape to squeeze in solidarity. “After tomorrow, after dinner and the shitstorm that’s gonna come from her meddling, you’re gonna be gone and we won’t even—”

“Hush,” Deku says firmly, and takes Katsuki’s face in both hands, urging them apart so Katsuki can peer up at him with flushed cheeks and bright, volatile eyes. 

The knowledge that they’ve both been experiencing the same insecurities and doubts about each other for different reasons is a sobering and heartening one in turn. Because Deku can work with imperfection—he can work with flaws, especially when his own reflect Katsuki’s. Perfection is terrifying, and suddenly Bakugou Katsuki seems worlds away from that. 

Deku’s lips curve. He thumbs the downturned corner of Katsuki’s mouth. 

“Come on,” Deku finally says, quiet and warm. “Come home with me, Kacchan. This will all feel different tomorrow.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Katsuki mutters dryly, and that sounds more like him. But he groans and unfolds to stand, wavering on his feet enough that he has to put a hand on Deku’s shoulder to steady himself. He looks around blankly, as if remembering where he is, then heaves a sigh and squeezes Deku’s upper arm before releasing and turning away. “Shithead, stop hiding. Get my fucking coat.”

“Am I your maid suddenly?” Shinsou says breezily as he strolls from the kitchen as if he’s been doing something terribly important in there the entire time. But he winks at Deku as he passes, and somehow he pulls it off with all that confidence, and saunters toward the door.

It takes some doing, and Katsuki has to sit on the floor while Deku pulls on his socks and tie off his boots for him because apparently Katsuki’s fingers are not in top form, but between Deku and Shinsou, they eventually get his grumpy ass out the door and onto the bitterly cold street. For a while they just walk, arm in arm not out of romance, but out of Deku’s insistence that Katsuki not tip over on their trek home. Katsuki sullenly works to empty the bottle of water Shinsou sent him out with, and Deku aims smiles and cajoling elbows at Katsuki to keep him from sulking about the night. 

 With their cheeks both wind-chafed from the cold and their smiling lips chapped, they walk and talk. It feels normal and gentle, the two of them just about the only people on the street for the night, chins ducked into the coats for comfort. 

“My friends think I’m sad and horny and pathetic.”

“Do they,” Katsuki murmurs, the smile in his voice evident despite his mouth hidden in his flicked up collar. 

“Well,” Deku says, “not pathetic. No one said that. But I think it goes along with the rest.”

“What’ve you got to be sad about?” Katsuki asks. He’s as straightforward as ever and Deku still finds he appreciates it. 

So Deku frowns at that question and actually thinks on it.

“Dunno. I like my life. It’s a little boring and quiet when I’m not at work, which isn’t boring or quiet at all, but there’s nothing really awful about my life. Maybe I’m sad sometimes because I’m horny, and I’m horny because I’m admittedly more than a little slutty and I haven’t had the opportunity to be in, uh, a long time.”

“Fuck,” Katsuki breathes out, sounding a little shaky, and Deku directs his thoughtful frown at Katsuki as they walk. He’s staring straight ahead with a glassy look, probably still the wrong side of sobering up. “You’re so—that’s a lot.”

“Is it?” Deku huffs a laugh from his nose and watches his breath come in clouds, keeps walking, his arm tightly around Katsuki’s, his hand in Katsuki’s pocket alongside one much warmer than his own. “It’s easy to be honest with you, I guess. Since you’re the same. It’s kind of like you demand it just by being you.” 

“Most people don’t like that,” Katsuki says. 

“Yeah,” Deku agrees easily. He feels Katsuki’s hot coal gaze on him and glances over. “What?”

“You were supposed to say something stupid like, I’m not most people.”

Deku’s laughs in earnest, warming from the inside out despite the angry cold air. 

“Me? I’m just like everyone else. It’s honestly a problem. My friends can never find me at theme parks, I blend right in.”

Katsuki barks a laugh now and it surprises Deku in its sudden earnesty, not contained at all. 

“How the fuck are you a teacher? You’re objectively an idiot.”

“Just like everyone else!” Deku adds, matching Katsuki’s smile as they look at each other and walk and Katsuki nearly bumps them into a sign post and that’s fine too, because Deku can’t look away even if he wants to. 

Katsuki seems relatively sober by the time they arrive at Izuku’s building, because he does manage to strip off his shoes and socks himself without sitting down or tipping over, and that’s more than Deku could do the night that Ochako and Iida took him home. 

“Do you want tea?” Deku asks as he finds himself struck with the vision of Bakugou Katsuki in his little apartment, taking a slow circle to encompass the room. He has paused at the wall of Deku’s photographs, a lifetime of treasured memories in mismatched frames he’s accrued over the years. In all of them, everyone is smiling, and Deku is never sick of looking at them. 

“Your place is warm,” Katsuki says by way of reply, and Deku doesn’t pretend to misunderstand.

“Yours is too,” he replies quietly. The night feels too deep to talk too loud now. 

Katsuki hasn’t looked away from the photos. In strong profile, it’s so easy to become distracted by the cut of cheek and slim jaw, the surprising delicacy of his slim nose, the short, ashen jut of his eyelashes. But this time Deku notices the faint bruising beneath his eyes and how tired the set of his shoulders are. 

“Come to bed, Kacchan,” Deku murmurs, taking one of Katsuki’s long pianist hands and linking their fingers. When Katsuki finally looks at him, his stern expression indiscernible. He must be sobering up considerably, because this face is more like the one Deku knows.

“Just to sleep,” Deku says, offering a small smile. “And when we wake up you can go back to being unbearably perfect and I can go back to being a clueless idiot.”

“Back?” Katsuki grits out with a faint curl of a scowl as he looks down on their linked fingers, then to Deku. “Have you stopped being clueless at some point and I missed it?”

“Asshole,” Deku says around a laugh, and drags a snickering Katsuki to his cramped bedroom. There’s nothing special to it, just like Deku himself, aside from the haphazard desk littered with All Might memorabilia, his stacks of All Might comic books clogging multiple shelves, and the other errant knick knacks his heart feels unable to part with over time. 

“Let me get you something to sleep in,” Deku says, opening his closet and feeling thankful that Todoroki has returned his clothes neater and more organized than they’d been several weeks ago, before the first date. 

He’s rummaging through a drawer and tossing over his shoulder a pair of loose basketball shorts and a large, miscellaneous tee printed with a beer brand he doesn’t like—must be an old one night stand's shirt—when he hears Katsuki rustling through some comics. 

“I’ve always liked All Might too,” Katsuki says. “Way more than Endeavor. That guy always got on my fuckin’ nerves. Always had something to prove that it got in the way of doing the right thing. Winning.”

“Winning is not always the right thing,” Deku says, closing the drawer and closet before turning to consider Katsuki facing away, one hand on the desk for balance as he steps into the shorts. His ass in taut black boxer-briefs makes Deku entirely forget the words from his suddenly salivating mouth. 

And Katsuki has the nerve to hike the waistband over them, glance over, and smile. 

“Winning is everything.”

Abruptly, Deku feels like he’s swaying on his feet, dizzied by the surge of blood from his brain to the growing bulge in his sweats. Oh yes, he will be staying firmly in his sweatsuit tonight, full length sleeves and pants for him alright. 

“Ashido did warn me months and months before we’d met that if Naomi was a bad sport, it was because of you,” Deku says, because apparently when he has no brains left to spare, he will always fall back on work. 

Katsuki, who has stripped from own shirt and is pulling on the mysterious beer tee—one that hangs of Deku’s frame but clings to Katsuki’s vast shoulders and proud chest—

Katsuki turns and looks at Deku like he’s going to puke. 

“Are you okay?” Deku asks, rushing forward with a gentle hand to Katsuki’s clenched fist. “Do you need a bin beside the bed? I can—“

“No,” Katsuki bites off, his neck painted pink up to his cheeks. “No. No, I—I’m gonna use the can.”

“Okay!” Deku calls, as Katsuki is already out the door and away. “Spare toothbrushes underneath the sink! Feel free! Come to bed when you’re ready or call me or—“

“Go to sleep, you noisy fucker!” Katsuki hollers across the apartment, much louder than Deku had been in the first place. 

Deku can’t help but laugh. Can’t help but tingle all over, skin buzzing, his heart happy with all the sound and activity in his quiet little apartment, even just for a night. 

So he does as he’s told and lays in bed. He folds down Katsuki’s side too, then makes a point to face away from the center of the bed, not to make Katsuki nervous or something. He’s still wide awake with the anticipation of a twelve year old at a sleepover when Katsuki quietly pads into the dark room and slips into the bed beside him. 

A moment hangs where Katsuki is obviously lying on his back, utterly still and breathing near soundlessly. Someone outside yells and another person laughs. Deku realizes his eyes are open, staring at the shut curtains of his window, keeping at bay the copper lamplight from the street. 

“You didn’t have to come get me,” Katsuki says, hushed, reverent to the night. “I could have slept on that asshole’s couch. Done it before.”

“I’m sure you have,” Deku can’t help but reply, humor lilting his words. “And I’ve spent more than one night relegated to sleeping in my friend’s bathtub but it doesn’t necessarily mean she wants me there.”

“The bathtub?” Katsuki snorts a laugh. “Seriously?”

“Hey,” Deku says, rolling in bed to mock-glare at Katsuki in the dark. Katsuki’s head is turned to smirk at Deku in that unbearably regal way of his, but annoyance refuses to win out over gut-wrenching desire every time Katsuki does it, so Deku just kicks Katsuki’s bare foot beneath the covers. “This is what I get for trying to cheer you up with self-deprecating stories about my life. Never again!”

Katsuki’s grin melts into the shadows as quickly as it comes, his features limned in the deep indigo-grey of city nights where the light never fully fades, even with the curtains drawn. His sobriety has Deku pausing his offending charade to quietly stare. 

“What?” Deku asks, soft again. 

“You don’t have to cheer me up,” Katsuki quietly replies, voice still scratched like an old record played too many times. “I’m happy. I’ve been happy since you arrived tonight. Happy enough that I think it’s pissing me off a little for how obnoxious it is.”

“Why?” Deku whispers, because he can’t fathom being upset over something as pure as joy. 

Katsuki doesn’t answer. He’s not asleep either, because neither of them break eye contact in the blue dark, both of them unmoving. Deku can feel his mouth gone heavy with a questioning pout as he silently searches Katsuki for clues, but still the silence prevails. 

Deku has almost drifted away, his body suffused with the extra warmth of another body in the bed, when Katsuki’s assured, slender hands are on his hip and shoulder, rolling him until he’s facing away once more. Again, his hands are so proprietary on Deku’s body, so firm and confident that it feels like they’ve always been like this and Deku rolls to oblige. 

The press of Katsuki’s carved, muscled body contouring to fit the dips and curves of Deku’s back is such a bright shock to the system that Deku imagines he briefly glows with it, like a lightning strike that stays snapping beneath the surface of his skin. He’s had this man’s cock blessedly down his throat, has fucked into his fist on the dirty floor of a bathroom, but this single second of their fully clothed bodies pressed line for line against each other with the full intention of sleeping is staggering.  

Deku’s exhale is obvious and shaky in the night, his sternum quivering with it as Katsuki throws an arm over his side, hand spreading, searching, and finding the sliver of skin where those calloused fingers can ride up his sweatshirt. Katsuki’s palm rests solidly on Deku’s stomach. His thigh insinuates between Deku’s and their height difference is so Katsuki’s chin can neatly tuck a top Deku’s head. 

Deku’s is effectively encompassed by Bakugou Katsuki and he can die a fulfilled man. 

From there, it’s as easy as breathing to melt back into him with a cozy little sigh and let his eyes fall closed. 

He’s once more melting into the lapping shores of sleep when Katsuki speaks softly into the night, the rumble of his voice vibrating his chest and through Deku’s back. 

“I’ve never done this before.”

“Hmmm?” Deku tries to rise from the syrupy pull of sleep. “Done?”

“This,” Katsuki emphasizes with a squeeze around Deku’s middle. “Just this. And other things. With you it feels easy even though it never has been with anyone. Ever. Not for me. I’m—it pisses me off to feel this happy. . .‘cause I know it can’t last.”

The end of Katsuki’s sentence gets buried in Deku’s curls as Katsuki shifts and mouths the words against Deku’s hair, but of course Deku hears it. 

And of course he understands. How can he not understand? 

“Know why I have all those pictures on my wall?” Deku murmurs as he slides a hand down Katsuki’s arm to rest over the one on his belly. 

“You’re a sentimental idiot with too many friends for his own good,” Katsuki mutters into Deku’s hair. 

Deku shoves his ass back hard, not looking to attract but to lightly knock the wind out of Katsuki, and it works, if his small wheeze is anything to go by. 

“No, you jerk,” Deku says, unable to hide the humor in his voice. “To remind me that happiness will keep. It has kept and will continue to keep, and not everyone will walk out of your life just because one or two important people once did.”

At Katsuki’s pointed silence, Deku sighs. 

“My dad left before I was three. Shit happens. I’m not so optimistic that I don’t know it. But I know there are better people out there than him who I can count on in the long run.” Deku links their fingers over his stomach and squeezes Katsuki’s hand. He whispers, “Like you, maybe.”

Their bodies are too close not to feel Katsuki’s body subtly jolt. 

“Like me, maybe?” Katsuki repeats in a mocking lilt, his mouth moving to Deku’s ear so he can feel Katsuki’s smile there. 

“Well now I’ve changed my mind,” Deku says petulantly—

And immediately pays the price for it when Katsuki clamps both arms around Deku waist and rolls , taking his screeching, giggling captive along with, until he slams Deku onto the other side of the bed. Urgent fingers furrow between Deku’s ribs and his giggles ratchet into laughter as he curls into a shrimp in a vain attempt to escape the barrage of tickles. 

When the laughter devolves into plaintive wheezing with Katsuki’s discovery that Deku is ticklish just about everywhere, he finally relents with a rather unnerving victory laugh, his hands pinning Deku’s wrists to the bed at either side of his head as Katsuki looms and lords over him with a smug smile. 

“You were saying?” Katsuki drawls, sounding every inch the self-important jerk he can make himself into when he pleases.

Panting and in recovery from the merciless tickle attack—dads with young kids are simply way too practiced and shouldn’t be allowed—Deku just smiles. 

“I can’t remember,” he says innocently, still breathing hard. “Must not have been about anyone important.”

That one seems to light a fire under Katsuki because his smile sharpens to sharpnel and his gaze narrows to molten steel before he dips his head and captures Deku’s lips in a hungry kiss of teeth and tongue and demanding, unrelenting mouth. 

Deku moans and submits to the barrage in the same time that he meets it head on, shoving his tongue into Katsuki’s mouth to lick away that minty toothpaste tingle in search of that hearty spice scent at the back of his teeth. Katsuki’s fingers remain manacled around Deku’s wrists as they devour each other’s mouths, but Deku’s feet go to work, massaging up Katsuki’s calves, then climbing, a thigh hiking up Katsuki’s hip, his other knee wedging between Katsuki’s legs to rut up against that big, impressive cock of his. 

Katsuki’s answering sound is all animal, all instinct as he abruptly releases Deku’s wrists in favor of palming up Deku’s sweater, bunching it beneath his armpits to paint the planes of Deku’s body underneath. Deku throws his head back, unashamed in his high, needy keen as Katsuki licks it out of his mouth and scrapes thumbnails over his peaked nipples. Fissures, hot and red, skitter through Deku’s nipples and straight to his cock, curling and molten hot. 

Burning up, Deku is suddenly searing in all of these heavy clothes, itching to be free of them. He breaks their sloppy, swelling kiss to wiggle out of his sweater, and Katsuki must get the picture because he curses breathlessly, sounds helpless even as those capable hands free him fully of the top and then all four of their hands are on Katsuki’s shirt, tearing it away. 

And Deku is so fucking thirsty, parched and desperate for the saturated, sticky, humid heat of sex that he rises up, sits up so Katsuki is staddling his lap, and Deku has to gaze up at him, licking the taste of Katsuki from his lips. Their eyes lock and Katsuki looks crazed, his hair everywhere, electrified, eyes wide like he’s just seen Deku for the first time in the dark. 

“Strip,” Deku whispers, riding his palms down the meat of Katsuki’s ribs, squeezing hard at the shockingly slim nip of his waist. “Kacchan,” Deku grits out, impatient and so empty and ready for him. “Now.”

Katsuki hesitates, makes an aborted move like he’s coming in for another kiss, but Deku growls, sharp and quick as he jolts forward, knocking Katsuki back onto the bed, laid out and shocked. Deku smiles in triumph, glorifying in the man spread out just for him, only him, and fits between Katsuki’s knees to hastily tug shorts and underwear away, quick and economical and with only one thing in mind. 

“Deku,” Katsuki gasps as Deku runs his hands up the soft inner fuzz of Katsuki’s thighs, dips his head, and sucks on the swollen crown of Katsuki’s cock, humming as he revels in the salty musk he tastes there, tongue swirling, dipping past the slit, the soft graze of his bottom teeth against the bundle of tight nerves. Katsuki bucks up, nails diving into Deku’s hair. “Deku!”

“Sorry,” Deku murmurs, his lips pressed and smearing along the length of Katsuki’s dick, his head tilted to accommodate the long, thick jut of it as he mouths along the smooth, searing skin as he speaks. “Sorry, sorry, I just—it’s good, so pretty—” Deku licks a wide stripe from balls to tip, eyes trained on Katsuki’s shuddering chest, his head thrown back, hands scattering from Deku’s hair to shoulders, scrabbling for control against this sudden onslaught. “Haven’t been able to stop thinking about your cock in all my holes, Kacchan. Sorry, I’m just so—”

“Shut the fuck up and suck it then,” Katsuki hisses, and Deku’s eyes all but roll in the back of his head as he groans and takes it, swallows that leaking, cum-slick length into his mouth until his throat startles with it and tears prick his eyes. 

Deku can do this all night, really and truly with no exaggeration. Can and will do it until his jaw locks and aches, his throat burning with it, drool down his chin, tears soaking his cheeks—but he wants more than that now. Has to have this man in every way he can before—just, before. Deku doesn’t let himself float, keeps himself grounded with fingers curled into the muscle of Katsuki’s thighs, with grinding his still-clothed cock against the covers, overheating and going mad from the stimulation. 

He pops off Katsuki’s cock with a gasp, not bothering to wipe the wet from his face, his tear-glazed eyes fixed on Katsuki rising up from the bed to meet him, both on their knees, strong arms around him, belly to belly as Katsuki snarls and savages Deku’s mouth, finesse in tatters, all grappling, rushed hands to rid Deku of remaining clothes, touching everywhere, claiming everything. 

Then Katsuki’s hands are groping his ass, clenching the muscle and fat in his fists and releasing, cupping his cheeks and squeezing, releasing again to savor the jiggle in his palms, and Deku has to laugh breathlessly against Katsuki’s bruised throat, because the sounds of pure, animal bliss Katsuki is growling and whining against Deku’s shoulder is both delightful and intoxicating. Feeling appreciated, desired so deeply that Katsuki seems to be losing sanity over something as simple as Deku’s ass makes him feel powerful, special. 

"God,” Katsuki hisses at Deku’s ear as he spanks Deku’s asscheek and cups it to feel the ripple again. “Wanted to get at this so fuckin’ bad—the time before wasn’t enough. You know how insane this thing makes me every goddamn day in those stupid ugly khakis of yours?”

Deku’s responding laugh is choked off when Katsuki brushes his thumb over Deku’s hole, and then all Deku can do is clench his arms around Katsuki’s shoulders and let him touch and tease and play. But it’s not wet enough, not full enough, not even when Katsuki shoves two fingers in Deku’s mouth, makes him suck, and uses them on Deku’s ass until he’s writhing for a proper fill. 

“Fuck me,” Deku whines, clinging to Katsuki, both of them still on their knees, sweat-damp chests pressed together in the night, Deku’s thighs spread wide to accommodate two slow, maddening fingers. “Daddy, please, please I’m begging you, I’m not above begging, I’m not above anything, I’ll give you anything, just fuck me please.”

“That mouth of yours,” Katsuki snaps and promptly shoves Deku back hard enough that he lightly bounces on the mattress, his leaking cock smearing across his stomach. Deku moans, simply for existing in the spotlight of Katsuki’s searing bright stare, arches his back and throws his arms over his head, spreads his legs to present himself on display. 

“You like my mouth,” Deku whispers hoarsely. “Daddy.”

“Shut up,” Katsuki bites off, seeming to struggle with tearing his gaze away from Deku’s body to glance at one of the bedside tables. “Where—“

Deku hums, feeling drunk off desire, and rolls onto his stomach to stretch for a drawer. Blindly, he shuffles his fingers through the contents—

And yelps at the searing, blunt pressure of Katsuki’s teeth sinking into one asscheek. The wave of pleasure-pain instantly follows and Deku’s hand goes limp in the drawer, sliding out as he moans and follows instinct; gets to his knees, ass up and swaying, face into the pillow, presenting. 

“Fuck,” Katsuki’s whispers, and Deku can feel him rising up behind him, the wet heat of his cock brushing against the back of his thigh, one hand riding up the divot of his spine, then scratching  back down with his nails. Deku shivers, whimpers into the pillow. “So responsive. Look at you. Aren’t you my sweet little slut.”

“Yeah,” Deku breathes out, the liquid drug of Katsuki’s voice shooting through his veins and making him quake.

There’s a lull in the violent urge to fuck, then. A span of soft time where Katsuki fits the length of his body over Deku’s so he can reach the draw himself and take what he needs, his free hand skimming Deku’s side, flank, thigh, kneading and smoothing and biting nails in at his pleasure. It’s heady, a rising roar in Deku’s skull that he can’t think around or find the words for, so he simply pants into the pillow and clenches the sheets in his fists and lets Katsuki take his time marveling over him with hands and lips and teeth. 

When Katsuki finally takes to opening him up proper, two slick fingers at once, then a third, his slippery thumb circling and teasing the sensitive skin where he’s spread Deku apart like a present, Deku cries out, fresh tears soaking his pillow, muffling his thankful sob. He reaches for his dick to touch himself, to ease the ache and encourage it in one, but Katsuki takes him in hand first and squeezes fingers around the base, brutally tight, fighting against the pulse of Deku’s length. 

“Wait,” Katsuki rasps, and it’s the first time he’s spoken in so long, the register of his voice so surprisingly deep with arousal that Deku has to flatten his cheek to the pillow so he can look over his shoulder and see . 

Katsuki looks livid, practically furious with desire, his cheeks flushed even in the blue shadow dark, his shoulders and neck stiff and lined with veins of strain as he bares his teeth, eyes focused between them, and slowly feeds the weighty girth of his cock into Deku’s ass.

“Ohmygod,” Deku gasps, sharp and loud and surprising  himself with the strength of his voice. Katsuki’s gaze abruptly snaps to his, shocked, as if he’s forgotten Deku has a mouth at all when faced with the view of his cock sucking into Deku’s tight, greedy hole. Deku feels the blush scream up his chest and throat and face as his lips part, stuttering around the seemingly endless intrusion into his guts. Katsuki’s really looking at him now, lips swollen, eyes hooded and hot, gripping Deku’s hips down to the bone as he bottoms out with a guttural, throaty sound of approval. 

“Oh god,” Deku wheezes, eyes falling shut as he brings his brow back to the damp pillow and shudders a slow breath, waiting for his body to accommodate the size of him. “Can feel you in my throat.”

“Yeah?” Katsuki says breathlessly, sounding just as winded as he slowly, tortuously pulls out and stuffs himself back in slow. “Like that? Feel me? Good?”

“Yes.” Deku rolls his hips back to meet him, relishing the gaping burn and the feeling of being impaled and owned and cared for.

A spark and flare of knowledge briefly brightens the heavy, dark hunger in Deku’s body—the realization that, for Katsuki, being Daddy here means taking care of him, giving Deku what he wants. Whether that’s relenting to Deku’s surges of dominance when he’s gagging for cock and climbing Katsuki like a tree, or when he’s a needy, writhing thing on the bed, begging to be filled. Katsuki wants to give him all of it, spoil him, love—

Frenzied with the knowledge, Deku rocks back against Katsuki growing thrusts, the bone of Katsuki’s hips slapping the curve of Deku’s ass with a sound that claps in the air. “Daddy,” Deku whispers, gasping when Katsuki makes an abrupt, harsh grunt and shoves in hard, once, waiting. “Want it,” Deku manages, “gimme.”  

“Deku,” Katsuki chokes out, strained. 

Katsuki’s nails rake into Deku’s waist and it’s fire from there. The sweaty snap of hips and uneven, harried breaths, the rising humidity and the burn, the flare of precious pain as Katsuki slaps Deku’s ass, one side then the other, then again and again through the savage fuck, a surge of rampant heat from flesh to the fevered, dripping length of his unattended cock. Deku can’t help the noises punched from his lungs with each thrust, doesn’t care that the top of his skull is bumping the headboard or that he might be biting the pillow and screaming around it as Katsuki adjusts his angle higher, driving into that trigger point that sends Deku seeing prisms behind his eyes as he comes. 

Katsuki fucks him through it, unrelenting, grunting with each stuttering thrust now, ignoring Deku’s wails to go easy on him because of course Deku still wants to be filled even as he’s coming like a fucking bullet train. It’s only when Katsuki drops his brow between Deku’s damp shoulder blades and gasps, surprisingly soft, surprisingly sweet, that Deku collapses with a cry and feels Katsuki follow, two boneless bodies splayed across the bed. 

They sleep. There’s no other choice. 

Vaguely, Deku registers Katsuki roll, slipping out of him, discarding the condom, stumbling around the dark bedroom and cursing once as he stubs his toe. Deku may have laughed, half-asleep, because Katsuki says something like, shut the fuck up you little shit, and if Deku the isn’t already considering falling in love with this man, he falls asleep knowing he’s half way there. 

***

Deku wakes hot and sweaty and flatten into the mattress, probably because a half of a large man is laid out on top of his back, one arm slung over him, a leg fitted between his thighs, knee wedged up against Deku’s ass. Katsuki’s cheek rests on Deku’s shoulder, and his skin is damp from his hot breaths and maybe some drool. 

Deku is simultaneously uncomfortable with the excessive heat coming from him and incandescent with the turn his life has taken. So he sighs and falls back asleep with the snuffle of Katsuki’s soft snores at his ear. 

He wakes up later because can feel someone watching. Deku cracks an eye open, his lips already curved as he meets Katsuki’s sober, sleepy features. He looks very young again, despite the shade of beard growing along his jaw and the subtle laugh lines splayed from the corners of his faintly tilted eyes. Sunlight beats against the curtains, illuminating them white, telling Deku it must be near midday. 

When Katsuki doesn’t speak, even after Deku has both eyes open and they’re staring at each other, and Deku’s leg is comfortably sandwiched between Katsuki’s, Deku finally reaches out with a gentle smile and scritches his nails against Katsuki’s scalp. 

Katsuki hums, eyes instantly falling shut, enough like a contented purring cat that Deku has to huff a laugh at the recollection that he once considered Katsuki’s affections to be distinctly feline. 

“Afternoon,” Deku says, and oh hell, his voice sounds absolutely destroyed. He needs to drink about a gallon of water. “Sleep well?”

“Unbelievably,” Katsuki replies, sounding warm and content as he leans into Deku’s attentive petting. “Never sleep like that. You know how hard it is to sleep when your kid stands at the end of the bed in the dead of night asking for a drink? Your instinct is to punch them in the face before you remember they’re not a fuckin’ murder gremlin. It’s a nightmare.”

Deku snorts an ugly, unexpected laugh, and this time Katsuki cracks a smile, his eyes still closed, but obviously enjoying any time Deku makes a fool of himself. 

“Try having twenty-four kids who all decide eating the paint is a good idea. They’re very suggestible. The minute one does it, they all follow.”

“I know twenty-four year-olds who I’d have to stop from eating the paint,” Katsuki says, opening his eyes finally, his sober countenance gone, leaving just the raw, golden version of himself, untarnished by the worries of the world, fatherhood, work. 

Deku laughs and cups Katsuki’s cheek, scoots in closer to kiss that unbearably handsome smile. Katsuki makes an approving sound into his mouth and melts against the kiss, letting Deku lead it as his arm curves around Deku’s waist, pulling him into the cradle of Katsuki’s arms. 

They make love in the sunlight barely kept at bay by the curtains, slow and simple, palms smoothing over bruises, lips tucked behind ears and the damp joint of jaw and throat. Katsuki’s presence is overwhelming, all encompassing, the assured way he grips the back of Deku’s knee and presses it to his chest, his capable hands holding Deku’s other leg spread out wide, the other working Deku’s dripping hole open in long, slow curls of fingers. Katsuki remains steadfast above him, hot ember eyes devouring the length of him, up and down, over and over, as if every time he looks at Deku's body it’s the first time, like Deku is wondrous and sexy and worth something more than just a night. 

Has no one ever seen him like this, Deku wonders around the blissful, honeyed haze that drips between his legs, addles his limbs to slow, languid movements as Katsuki steadily, smoothly fucks into him with a huff of breath and a distracted, triumphant smile. Has no one gotten to see this side of Katsuki who is loose and easy and crowned in gold light, desperate to give and get off on giving it?

Mine, Deku thinks as the shuddering crest of his orgasm melts and floods over him, basking in the shuddering exhale above him as Katsuki follows, their eyes locked in a silent promise as they drown together. Mine. 

Deku finally drags his corpse from bed sometime later, sitting up and, after a moment’s consideration, landing a nice, flat spank to Katsuki’s ass to jolt him awake. 

“Come on, handsome,” Deku says cheerfully as he rises from the bed and lifts his arms in a broad, spine-crackling stretch. “Shower time. You can go first. We can’t do it together, my bathroom barely fits me. Maybe we grab a bite at a cafe before we head to your place? You’ll need to get dressed properly for dinner, but if it’s okay with you, I can hang out at your place until it’s time—”

“You sure are noisy,” Katsuki says, hoarse and probably thirsty beyond belief. Deku only shoots a smile over his shoulder—savoring for a half-second the sight of Katsuki starfished out on his bed looking bleary and grumpy—then heads out of the bedroom, butt-naked and comfortable with it. 

“I’ll grab you some water,” Deku hollers across the apartment. He opens his fridge and sighs happily into the cool air that wafts over him. He can’t remember the last time he felt this warm in January. 

When he returns with two water bottles, one already half-drained by him, Katsuki is standing nude at Deku’s window, the curtains flung open, hands on the sill as he gazes at the bleak, icy streets bustling with Saturday afternoon traffic. Deku presses the cold bottle to the small of Katsuki’s back and only grins with his best disarming smile when Katsuki jumps and glares. 

“Here.”

“You really aren’t a nice boy at all,” Katsuki says lowly, hailing Deku back to the first dinner he’d had at Katsuki’s home with Naomi. 

Deku only grins wider.

“What do you mean,” he croons, playfully walking his fingers up Katsuki’s back until they can ruffle his wild dandelion hair. “I’m extremely wholesome.”

“Wholesome and nice are different things,” Katsuki mutters, even as his eyes are crinkled in the corners with humor. 

“Please,” Deku says, biting down a smile as he sits on the edge of his bed and gestures at Katsuki’s beautifully naked body with his water bottle. “Explain the difference.”

A pale brow arches as Katsuki pauses to take a long drink, emptying near the entire bottle in one go.

“Nice,” Katsuki says, sitting beside him on the bed, their bare legs and hips and arms all flush and in each other’s spaces like they’ve been sitting on the bed bantering for years before this. “Like agreeable or pleasant or helpful. You,” Katsuki adds with a pointed look, to which Deku blissfully beams up at him, unrepentant, “are surprisingly stubborn and sneaky and mischievous as hell. That idiot smile of yours lets you get away with it.”

Deku hums noncommittally, knowing Katsuki is excessively correct and delighting in it. He leans back on one hand and drinks the rest of his water, enjoying this angle because he can admire the curve of Katsuki’s waist and the wide breadth of his shoulders.

“Wholesome?” Deku goads, biting down on his bottom lip when Katsuki shoots him a look. 

Then Katsuki turns abruptly, straddling Deku’s stomach and shocking Deku with one of his lethal, sharp smiles that slices Deku off at the knees and leaves his thighs feeling like melted butter. 

“Wholesome, on the other hand,” Katsuki drawls, running his hands up Deku’s pecs and shoulders and arms, almost a massage, almost a tease, “is good for you. Good for your health, your well-being, whatever.”

Deku somehow didn’t expect the compliment. He feels his cheeks ache with a stupid smile as he stares up at Katsuki and again thinks, mine.  

“And you think I’m good for you?” Deku asks, low and hopeful.

Katsuki’s smile shrinks, his shoulders subtly shuddering on an exhale, and he swallows and nods, entirely earnest. 

With a dreamy sigh, Deku holds out his arms, making grabby hands, and welcomes Katsuki into the embrace. The sunlight from the curtains crawls across the bed to an entirely different spot before the two of them finally get out of it. 

***

“Relax,” Deku murmurs as they ride the elevator to a very high floor.

“You fuckin’ relax,” Katsuki shoots back, stiff shouldered, hands obviously balled in the pockets of his coat if the straining tendons in his neck mean anything. 

“The more anxious you are, the more relaxed I am,” Deku replies placidly, staring at their warped reflections in the steel doors. 

“I’m not anxious ,” Katsuki hisses. “I’m preparing myself for battle. You don’t know her like I do. She’s fuckin’ crazy. I don’t mean that like, oh my crazy ex-girlfriend I’m calling crazy because I’m secretly a dickbag. I mean she’s crazy like she has no qualms digging for information, asking the worst questions at the worst possible times, and generally embraces the fact that she’s completely unhinged.”

“You’re friends, though, right?” Deku glances at Katsuki’s profile, catching the mute sigh that slightly relaxes his shoulders and jaw. While Katsuki doesn’t answer, Deku knows anyway.

“Well,” Deku says, filled with renewed vigor as the doors ding open and he sweeps into the corridor. “I’m sure everything will be fine! She obviously thinks I’m important to you or else you wouldn’t have had me over with Naomi and all that.”

“Obviously,” Katsuki mutters as he leads them down the hall. 

“Obviously she thinks I’m important or obviously I’m important?” Deku asks, shouldering Katsuki none too gently and laughing when Katsuki flushes from neck to ears.

“Shut the fuck up, you goddamn menace,” Katsuki snaps, promptly stomping away muttering something under his breath.

But he knocks on Ashido’s door with his attitude in a different headspace than in the elevator, and that’s all Deku had hoped for. 

“Hey,” Deku says quickly before anyone answers. He can hear squeals of joy and shouting from the other side. Katsuki looks at him with a frown. “You’re important to me too. And I don’t scare easy.”

When Naomi whips the door open with glee, Katsuki’s still staring at Deku like he just hit him over the head with a frying pan.

“Daddy!” Naomi cries, arms up, already bouncing in her little frog socks. Katsuki picks her up and plants a kiss in her tight corkscrew curls. 

“Look who’s here!” Ashido exclaims as she sails into the room, looking cute and cozy in leopard print leggings and a neon green cropped hoodie that’s too long in the arms and puffy in the sleeves. Her slippers are big obnoxious unicorns with rainbow horns and bugged out eyes. She’s without makeup tonight, her deep autumn skin glowing and healthy as she smiles and pulls Deku into a warm, zingy floral embrace. “Hey boys, thanks for coming.”

“Thank you for having me!” Deku exclaims, unsure where to put his hands in the hug. He settles for gently patting between her shoulder blades until she releases him. “I’m happy to be here.”

“Really?” Ashido says, pulling away with a lingering look and full, curved lips. She looks on the verge of laughing and Deku can feel his face burning under the playful scrutiny. He can’t even begin to imagine what she sees. 

Deku hasn’t dressed specially for the dinner and, by the look of Ashido, he’s glad he didn’t. So he appears as plain as he always is, both in school and out, choosing some decently fitting jeans and a yellow tee with a very small, subtle All Might symbol on the chest pocket. Now that he knows Katsuki is a fan, he’s more comfortable bringing out his nerd shirts. 

“Really,” Deku says, his smile tight with an anxiety he had previously professed not to experience. Because he is a dirty liar when it comes to taking on the role of optimist. 

“For the love of—” Katsuki shoves past them, Naomi chattering in his arms, and kicks off his shoes before stepping up into the vast, open apartment. Even the kitchen is visible in the space, cut off by a line of marble counters. “Let us in already. I’m cold as hell.”

“Welcome home!” Naomi chimes in, either oblivious to the swears or too used to them.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Ashido says, unaffected by Katsuki’s demeanor as she goes right into unzipping Deku’s coat and taking it from him. Deku sputters his protests, but he is effectively stripped and left to toe off his shoes in the genkan while the oddball family scatters into the apartment. 

Deku takes his time, slowly lining up his shoes so he can gather his wits and absorb what may be the loudest living space Deku has ever seen in person. 

The entire room is dripping in deep peacock colors, all sumptuous teal, vibrant green, royal purple, and vibrant splashes of fuchsia and gold. A neon sign of a gold, glowing crown dominates one wall, while a velvet green L-shaped couch that can likely fit thirteen people encompasses the living room like it’s ready to welcome a party any minute. Cushions of all shapes and sizes are scattered along in those same jeweled tones, and the attached dining area, rugs, and wall art all reflect the same dynamic. 

“Wow,” Deku breathes. “This place is amazing. It looks like a movie set.”

“Not yet,” Ashido says with a laugh, bounding up to take him by the wrist and drag him toward the kitchen area. The counters are lovingly cluttered but not a mess. “But it’s been used in a few music videos. I always make sure to steal a set piece after, keep it for the place, y’know?”

“Sure,” Deku says numbly, shaken by this level of wealth. While Katsuki’s place is large, it feels contained, understated, entirely without flamboyance. This place is living theater, ostentatious and brimming with color and life. “Wow,” Deku murmurs again, unable to help his wonder.

“Mr Midoriya!” Naomi rushes up to greet him properly now that she’s had time with her father. She’s all smiles, and now that Deku has seen Katsuki’s unbridled happiness, he wonders how he can ever have imagined that smile belongs to Ashido. “Did you see my socks? They match your Friday shirt.”

“They certainly do,” Deku says, happy to fall into habit as he drops to a crouch and makes a show of admiring her clothes. “And don’t you look lovely tonight? Did you pick dinner again?”

Naomi shakes her head. 

“No. Mommy ordered sushi.”

“What?” Deku yelps, instantly overwhelmed all over again byt he generosity. He looks helplessly to Ashido. “You didn’t have to do that. It’s too much just because I’m here.”

“When do I ever get to have the whole family ‘round?” Ashido replies, waving him off with a manicured hand and black coffin nails. “And anyway, I have you to thank for Naomi’s education, don’t I? Among other things.”

Deku has know idea what Ashido is inferring with other things, but he smiles and blushes and looks down at his plain white socks before standing, his hand brushing the smooth curls atop Naomi’s head. 

“Well, thank you,” he murmurs, looking around the room for Katsuki and finding him removing several lids from artfully arrays of sushi. Naomi has already run off to bravely climb a stool and reach out to steal an end slice of sashimi.

Katsuki pointedly turns away like he doesn’t see it. Deku smiles, warmed. 

“In addition,” Ashido says, demanding his attention as he snaps back to her impish smile and ungodly knowing eyes. “If Katsuki agreed to have you in his home, you must be important.”

Deku’s eyes widen. He doesn’t know how to reply, how to not implicate himself in the guilt of involving himself with the father of his student. 

“I don’t, I mean, it was Naomi who asked and he just went along with it to be nice, like I said—”

“Katsuki doesn’t do anything just to be nice,” Ashido says, and there’s a flatness in her tone which makes him think that, at some point in their friendship, she had been on the wrong end of his nature. “Don’t fool yourself.”

“I’m not fooling myself about anything,” Deku shoots back on automatic, his hackles up with the implication that he doesn’t understand the man who holds him in the night and admits he’s never committed the simple act of affection before. “At no point in the time up to that dinner was he ever excessively kind to me. He has never changed himself for me, nor would I ever demand that of him. If anything, I think he’s spent his entire life straining against the restrictions and expectations he and others have wrapped around him. And I hope one day he can release them, with or without my influence.”

Across the apartment, Naomi laughs at something grumpy and gruff Katsuki says. Ashido stares at Deku, unreadable, and Deku evenly meets her, struggling to even out his trembling breath. 

This is the mother of one of his students, dammit—how can he have lost it so spectacularly at only the faintest jab at Katsuki’s character? Deku is an adult!

“Sorry,” Deku says, offering a lopsided smile, hoping that the away Ashido seems to startle and blink at him is not a sign that she’s going to have him fired. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I just—I know you’ve known him for a long time. I respect that and you and Naomi and the life the three of you have built together to allow such a lovely girl to grow. But I’m—” Deku doesn’t know what he is yet. His smile gentles, a little helpless. “I’m—”

“—in love with him,” Ashido finishes quietly, her expression warming, mouth curving as she considers him without the boisterous facade.

“In—” Deku sputters, face aflame as he flails his hands around as if begging not to be shot. “I’m—well, that is—about him—”

“Can you leave him alone already?” Katsuki hollers, looking suspicious and cross from the dining table, the food already spread out and Naomi carefully setting plates. “You’re unbearable, woman! Let him live.”

“ You don’t even know what we’re talking about,” Ashido sing-songs in an obnoxious school-kid way, then sticks out her tongue for show. 

“Even more reason to keep you two in ear shot,” Katsuki mutters, a sour twist to his face that makes Deku huff a fond laugh. 

“All good things about you, I promise,” Deku says, meandering over to smile at Naomi and take the seat beside her. “May I sit here?”

“Yes please,” Naomi replies, content and swinging her feet where she’s sat on a colorful cushion to keep her level with the table. Between the beginning of school and now, nearing the end, Deku has found that while Naomi is by nature reserved and watchful, her exuberance and communication rises exponentially with her comfort in certain peoples’ company.

Like her father, Deku thinks warmly as he casts a warm look directly across from him, where Katsuki is nagging Ashido to ‘get the damn drinks yourself’. When they’re all finally settled and have said their thanks for the meal, Deku has enough time to place three pieces of sushi on his plate before the questions come sailing over the table. 

“You look so young,” Ashido says as she piles her plate as if three grown men are about to burst in through the door and inhale it before she can get a bite in. “When we first met, I thought you were a teacher’s aid, maybe doing some work placement, maybe eighteen.”

Katsuki coughs and wheezes around some tuna and goes red in the face, snarling to his side where Ashido deftly ignores him. 

“I’m the same age as Katsuki,” Deku says, careful not to use that silly nickname that feels so intimate and natural. “And at age eighteen I looked about twelve, for real. Believe me, it wasn’t a good look.”

“I doubt you ever had a truly bad look,” Ashido says and sounds like she means it by the way she eyes his chest. Deku suddenly has the urge to cross his arms like he has something to hide. “But that’s cute. I suppose people in your line of work don’t take you as seriously, looking like this.”

“I don’t mind,” Deku says, and also means it. He takes a moment to pick a piece and eat, glancing at Naomi, who is shoving sashimi in her mouth like she’s never eaten in her life. “I think the kids find me more accessible like this and I care more about what they think than the parents do.”

At Katsuki’s snort, Deku suddenly remembers his situation and flails his hands, nearly sending his chopsticks flying as he panics.

“I mean! Not that I don’t care, I care, I care very much about all the things and all the parents. Not that I, y’know, care care about them like I do with Kat—er, I’m very thankful the majority of parents are very kind and accommodating with me even if they might have their concerns about my age. Which is normal! My age, I mean. My age is normal. I’m not eighteen.”

Katsuki’s wearing a look of vicious, bullying glee at Deku’s tongue-tie and Ashido looks seconds from laughing. Naomi does laugh though and beams up at him with Katsuki’s smile and Ashido’s warm, dark eyes. 

“You’re acting very very silly today, Mr Midoriya. Maybe you need to sit in my calm down corner. I can join you. It’s super nice. I have books and stuffies and a slinky.”

“Please,” Deku replies helplessly. “That would be wonderful.” Anywhere but here.

“It’s the opposite in our line of work,” Ashido says, sharing some kind of disparaging look of understanding with Katsuki for a moment. When they're not actively trying to rile each other up, they seem to be rather on the same page.  “Not exactly in production where Katsuki is, but I’m in beauty, and the girls I do makeup for are considered old before twenty-five. And they’re all, of course, flawless, but it never seems to matter.”

“Plus Ultra are getting on too,” Katsuki says with the gravity and exhaustion of someone who feels too much for them, but also appears relieved to have given up whatever part he once played in their lives. “They’re all heading toward twenty-three.”

“They act younger,” Deku says, smiling at the memory of those three. They seem like good, rowdy boys living their best lives. 

“Yeah.” Katsuki huffs a laugh, head shaking a little as he seems to fall back into some memory. “It’ll keep them goin’ longer than most.”

“Work talk is boring,” Naomi says quietly, as if concerned that she’s being too rude but can’t help but say it anyway. “Mommy and Daddy always talk about work at our dinners.”

Deku doesn’t have to look at Naomi’s parents to feel their coordinated discomfort and guilt over her comment. And since it would be rude to look, Deku shifts in his chair to present himself more fully to Naomi, exhibiting his full attention, and leans in to smile at her pout. 

“Mommies and daddies can be so boring sometimes, huh?”

Naomi flicks a look across the table, again concerned with her manners, which is frankly hilarious considering how her parents conduct themselves so loosely. But she looks back at Deku and soberly nods. 

“And they don’t notice fun things like we do, do they?” Deku mock-whispers, goaded on by Naomi’s more fervent nod. “Remember when you found those bunny tracks in the snow at recess a few weeks ago?”

“And they went in a biiig circle around the playground and under the climbing frame and then into the bush!” Naomi bursts out, lighting up.

“Right! And because you noticed them, I changed our afternoon lesson so we could go outside and draw the animal prints we could find.”

“Like the teeny tiny bird feet!” Naomi exclaims, squishing together two tan fingers to emphasize their smallness. 

Deku laughs and brushes a hand over the top of her head, unthinking, enjoying the connection. 

“Exactly!” He looks to Naomi’s parents, who both seem to be considering the pair of them with similar expressions that Deku can’t understand because he’s not a parent, not really. “Naomi is very detail oriented. I’m sure you already know that, but she picks up on the smaller things than the majority of kids her age.”

“She is very particular,” Ashido says, an open, doting warmth radiating from her. “About a lot of things. I wonder where she gets that from.”

Katsuki scowls.

“I just like what I like, when I like it, how I like it done.”

Deku sputters a laugh at the same time Ashido heaves a sigh and rolls her eyes, grinning despite herself. 

“You can keep him,” Ashido says emphatically before she subtly startles, blinking and sitting just a bit straighter as she seems to realize what she has said. Deku looks away, cheeks hot, not wanting to make her uncomfortable. He doesn’t know what Ashido feels or felt for Katsuki, before they had Naomi and after, but despite Ashido’s independent woman veneer, Deku knows she is a mother and a friend and former lover, and those roles can’t be simple or straightforward to juggle. 

“After dinner,” Naomi says, the conversation going over her head, “I’m going to show you my bedroom and we can play.”

“I would like nothing more than that,” Deku replies, and he means that too. 

After dinner, Naomi can’t rush from the table fast enough, taking Deku’s hand in surprisingly strong fingers and dragging him along. She’s not nearly as physically demonstrative with Deku in school, nor is she very touchy with her friends, but in this home she appears to be entirely conscious that she is the queen of this realm, and is content to treat Deku as her subject. He finds this absolutely delightful. 

Naomi’s room is a dreamland of rainbow polkadot wallpaper and a four-poster bed bigger than Deku’s that requires several small steps to reach the mattress, complete with gauzy curtains sewn full of fairy lights. A detailed three-story dollhouse dominates the far wall, and Deku laughs when he leans in to find that the proper dolls have been shoved into a basket in favor of a variety of mismatched Lego humans and a kaleidoscope of gacha vending machine toys in all shapes and sizes. 

They sit cross-legged on the plush, fuzzy area carpet, knees knocking, Naomi’s hand on his knee so she can lean across him to access other rooms of the house as she mainly she tells him how to play, what to say, who to say it with, and Deku is more than happy to follow instruction. 

“The mommy and the daddy live on different floors of the house,” Naomi says, nodding sagely as she settles a cutsie lion with flames in his eyes in one bedroom and a happy bumblebee wearing a glittering crown in another.

“Why is that?” Deku asks, thinking she chose some fairly apt characters to mirror her parents. 

“Because they need their space,” Naomi says, repeating the words of an adult like she came up with them herself.

“True.” Deku nods, fiddling with an oversized keychain that’s basically just a head of green lettuce with eyes. Naomi had told him that this is the gardener. “Grown ups need their own special quiet places just like kids need their own important play areas. Everyone needs different things to make them feel happy and safe.”

“The gardener can come in now,” Naomi says, snatching Deku’s lettuce and placing it precariously on a too-small couch in another bedroom, on Katsuki’s floor. “He helps keep the house nice too, so he should have a room.”

“Oh,” Deku says, a little strangled, a lot overwhelmed, his voice unexpectedly thick. “That’s nice. I’m sure he would like a room too.”

“He probably can’t live in the garden forever, even though he’s a lettuce,” Naomi says, like this is a completely reasonable conclusion. “All the other lettuce got picked, but he got left behind to grow all the new ones so he’s all alone right now. He can live on the daddy’s floor because lions aren’t s’pposed to live all alone and the mama bee already has like five-hundred other bee friends.”

“Yup,” Deku quietly manages, lightly patting her small knee. “Sounds good.”

“Oiy,” a low, familiar drawl approaches, and Deku tilts his head, wondering at Katsuki’s upside down face looming above him. “You two gonna hide out in here all night or do I get some attention too?”

“Depends on how much attention you need,” Deku says, smiling slowly, wanting to reach up and touch Katsuki’s face but keeping his hands firmly to himself. “I’m currently a hundred percent of mine to your child, but I could spare a fraction for you.”

“You gonna make me do fractions now?” Katsuki looks disgusted as he drops to the ground, close behind the two of them and props his chin on Deku’s shoulder, his voice too raspy and close to Deku’s ear as he speaks. “Thought you became a kindergarten teacher so you wouldn’t have to do math.”

“I’m perfectly good at math!” Deku retorts. He’d received excellent grades across the board his entire life. It’s pretty easy to do well in school when one isn’t particularly popular. “And you, mister musician? How well did you do in school?”

“Probably better than you,” Katsuki replies with such ease and genuine confidence that Deku briefly imagines strangling him. 

“If you say so,” Deku says with the put-upon inflection of someone who absolutely doesn’t believe him at all. 

Katsuki rises to it instantly, flabbergasted and digging his chin down with purpose into Deku’s shoulder. 

“I’ll have you know—”

“Here.” Deku hands Katsuki a Pokemon figure. “You can be Slowbro. I’m sure he’s more your speed.”

Deku doesn’t see the tackle coming, but he feels it before he registers the attack as he goes down hard, scream-laughing and wrestling Katsuki off of him. But Naomi is firmly on her father’s team and immediately shrieks and falls on top of the both of them, giggling up a storm as Deku wheezes and struggles beneath the brunt of their joint weight.

“I’m dying!” Deku wails and wheezes, “Help! Somebody help me! All Might!”

“Come here, you smartass lil’ nerd!” Katsuki sounds breathless, holding back laughter as he rolls, sending Naomi flying off his back with a screech of joy and sitting up to wedge Deku’s head in his armpit for a violent noogie. “That’s right, no All Might to save you now, hah!”

“Nooo, Daddy!” Naomi hollers, now suddenly switching sides, the sneaky vigilante. She falls across Katsuki’s lap, pushing at Deku’s abused skull, trying to shove him out of Katsuki’s armlock. “Let him go! He has to live!”

“Why should I let him!” Katsuki yells over the sounds of Deku’s laughing, desperate pleas for freedom. It does actually hurt, dammit, it really shouldn’t be this funny. 

“He’s my friend!” Naomi announces and, with that, bites Katsuki on the arm with the abandon that only a child can deliver. 

Rather than deescalate the situation, mayhem runs wild as Katsuki howls and releases, leaving Deku to scramble to his feet with a whoop of victory. He takes a dive, scoops up Naomi under his arm, and dashes from the room, Naomi’s bright, delighted screams echoing off the giant apartment as he bolts into the living room. 

Ashido pauses in the kitchen, holding a stack of plates she’s putting away, and laughs with instant glee as Deku stops dead and looks around, panicked at the sound of Katsuki’s roar of rage in the bedroom. 

“We need to hide!” Deku says, breathless, Naomi hanging limp and laughing under his arm, basically weightless. “Quick, he’s coming!”

Ashido doesn’t need to be told twice. Katsuki’s stomping steps can be heard down the corridor and she quickly bites down on a smile, her face full of mock sobriety as if she’s taking on a great endeavor.

This is how Deku finds himself standing perfectly still behind a heavy, velvet curtain, floor to ceiling, hiding him and Naomi right down to their toes peeking out from the bottom. 

“Where are they?” Katsuki demands as he enters the room, and for some reason Deku’s pulse ramps up at the idea of Katsuki chasing him, pursuing him, catching him. Then Naomi muffles a giggle, trying so very hard to keep quiet, that Deku can’t help but giggle in reply. 

“Who knows,” Ashido replies breezily, her voice the very picture of disinterested. “What did you do to make them hide?”

“I did nothing!” Katsuki’s footsteps pace toward the other end of the room, searching. “Naomi bit me!”

“Really?” Ashido sounds thrilled by this. “You? She must really like him.”

“We have that in common,” Katsuki mutters, and to that, Ashido just laughs. 

Then, to Deku’s growing nerves, the room goes silent, and he can’t hear Katsuki’s movements at all. It’s like he’s been purposely making himself loud until going in for the kill. The excitement of hide and seek makes Deku hold back a nervous giggle. 

Naomi must feel the same, because she wiggles with impatient exuberance and squeaks out a laugh—

The curtain snaps back and Katsuki outright growls, feral and grinning as he scoops them both up in either arm, dragging them from their hiding place and viciously tickling them without mercy or pause. Deku collapses from it, struggling to breathe as Katsuki finally relents on him to turn his full attention to Naomi on the floor. 

Eventually Katsuki crows with triumph, putting his foot lightly on Naomi’s belly where she’s collapsed on her back, her bronze cheeks flushed dark with overexertion. 

“And the undefeated winner is—”

“Mommy!” Ashido yells, suddenly holding up two cartons of ice cream over her head. 

“Ice cream!” Deku exclaims, Katsuki’s victory entirely forgotten in lieu of dessert.

“What—” Katsuki gawks as Naomi scrambles to her feet and joins Deku in crowding the kitchen for excess sugar. “Hey! No one is going to congratulate me?”

Deku glances over his shoulder, takes a moment to appreciate the delicate sheen on Katsuki’s face and his mussed hair, his shirt disheveled on his strong frame, his pout childish. He grins. 

“You beat a five year-old and a man nearly half your size. Congratulations, I guess.”

Expectedly, Katsuki’s jaw drops as he stalks into the kitchen with the rest of them. 

“I’ll have you know that kid is extremely wily and you’re a lot stronger than you look.”

“Oh, am I?” Deku bites back his amusement. “Thank you very much.”

“I wasn’t complimenting you!”

“Boys.” Ashido snorts a laugh and shoves two bowls against their chests. “Calm down and eat your ice cream.”

They gather at the counter this time, Ashido beside Naomi, then Deku, and Katsuki at the end. Naomi talks about her birthday like it’s tomorrow when she doesn’t turn six until September, and how she wants to go on vacation to Korea because Mommy is always going there for work so it must be very fun. She hates piano lessons but loves when Daddy sits with her and helps her with guitar. She misses her Grandma Betty, who lives in America, and Deku gauges from the conversation that Ashido’s parents are divorced, her mother back in Louisiana and her father still here in Tokyo. 

“Maybe for your birthday we can spend some time in America,” Ashido says gently, in the way adults do when they don’t really mean it. 

Katsuki must not pick up on it because he scoffs, immediately dismissive.

“What, in the middle of the school year? That’s not going to work.”

“She deserves both cultures,” Ashido snaps, switching to such clear, easy English that Deku realizes she must have grown up there, at least for a time. 

Katsuki looks like he’s going to argue, but bites back whatever he’s going to say in favor of nodding and dropping his spoon into his bowl with a loud clang.

“During summer vacation, maybe,” he replies in English, more distinctly accented with his own homeland. 

This is something Deku can’t yet touch, he knows. But he understands that the struggle parents encounter when raising a child of multiple worlds. He’s been working in an international school for years, after all. And two parents who aren’t raising their child in the same household must have it even harder. 

“When you do go,” Deku says, leaning into Naomi’s space, where she’s sullenly mixing her melted ice cream around the bowl. “Take lots of pictures for me, okay? I can get you a little camera for an early birthday present. It’s called a Polaroid camera and they make some especially for kids. You take a picture and it pops out the picture right away, it’s like magic! And then you can make a book for all your photos to show me when you get back.”

Naomi visibly brightens at this, the possibility of the concept as real in the present as her birthday, eight months away, is at the forefront of her mind. 

“Really? I want a polar bear camera!”

She’s rattling off a list of things she wants to photograph when Deku feels a warm hand linger on his knee. Deku can’t help but smile, his hand sneaking beneath the counter to squeeze back.

As the night drags on and Naomi begins to grow reticent and quiet with exhaustion, Deku watches Katsuki pick her up and carry her to her room for a bedtime story. 

“Thanks for coming tonight,” Ashido says, drying the dishes that Deku insisted he wash. 

“Thank you for inviting me,” Deku replies earnestly, catching her eyes with a small, earnest smile as he hands her a bowl. 

Ashido’s natural demeanor of good humor seems to wane a little as she nods and looks down to where she’s towelling. 

“I don’t know exactly what I was expecting,” Ashido quietly says, “but it wasn’t what I got. Not in full, anyway.”

“What were you expecting?” Deku asks, even though he doesn’t necessarily want to. 

Ashido shrugs and accepts another bowl.

“Katsuki going into some kind of crisis where he realizes he’s going to be alone forever if he keeps everyone at arm's distance. The cute, perky teacher he’s hot for because the guy makes him feel young and reckless again. The teacher who won’t break Katsuki’s heart but might break his daughter’s by flying in and out of her life.”

“Has that—” Deku swallows and concentrates on rising a spoon without sending the water spraying directly into his face. “Has that happened before?”

“Never,” Ashido says firmly. “Not even close. I don’t—I don’t even know if he’s ever taken someone to his apartment. He’s very. . .particular about people being in his personal space. Like Naomi, I guess. So when I found out he’d had you over for dinner, and then the way you looked when I called you out on it—well, I didn’t entirely know what to think. It’s so out of character for him. Or, what I thought I knew of him, anyway.”

“You loved him?” Deku asks, because he has to know even if it’s not entirely his business.

Ashido’s profile is so beautiful, her features large and lush and expressive, but her smile is nearly imperceptible as she continues to keep her gaze lowered.

“Nah,” she murmurs. “Not in any way you’re thinking. I’m assuming he already told you how Naomi happened, and it’s all true. One blind grope in the coat room and your entire world changes. But before that we were friends and after that we were more. Parents, you know. Family.”

Deku thinks of his step-father and mother. How it felt to create a new family from an old one. 

“Yeah,” he says. 

“Anyway,” Ashido says, sounding stronger now as she brightens up and aims a genuine smile his way. “I was wrong. About him, about you. He’s never acted like this before. Not with me, not anyone. It’s like he’s twenty again, minus the abysmal control he had on his temper.”

Deku huffs a laugh and shakes his head, looking back to the sink as he feels the nape of his neck burn. 

“Well, thank you. For accepting me, in whatever way you choose to. I promise you, I have no intention of ever upsetting what your family has. I just—”

“You’re welcome to join this family.” A hand rests on his forearm and Deku abruptly looks up, eyes wide and unexpectedly wet. Ashido just cocks her head and meets his surprised gaze with a beatific smile. “Izuku. I think you’ll fit in just fine.”

“Alright,” Katsuki says brusquely as he strides into the room, all business. “She’s asleep. I—what the fuck, Mina! Are you making him cry ? What the hell did you do to him? I knew I couldn’t leave you alone with—”

“Oh, just shut the fuck up already,” Ashido says as casually as anything. “I was welcoming your boyfriend into the family. Do you want me to take it back because of your attitude, because I will.”

Katsuki stands there looking shocked, gaze darting between Deku’s bashful one and Ashido’s assured one. 

“Uh,” he says intelligently. “Okay then.”

“Cool,” Deku mumbles numbly.

Ashido beams.

“Well, this has been nice.”

***

“You’re so fuckin’ perfect,” Katsuki says as he shoves Deku against the wall beside the door, mouth already busy at Deku’s throat, licking up the scent of his skin and that now-familiar, muted meadow and sunshine cologne. “How’d you get so perfect.”

“H-hold on,” Deku breathes out, even as his quick, clever hands are shoving Katsuki’s coat over his shoulders, down his arms, and Katsuki allows the briefest moment away from holding Deku to let it go so the jacket can fall. “I think—fuck, bite me, now—er, I need to record you saying that again. For—hnnng—posterity.”

Not for the first time, Katsuki is caught between exasperation and laughter and arousal in the face of Deku’s unrelenting mind and demanding body. So he chokes on a noise of frustration instead and kisses that smartass mouth hard, all intrusive tongue and possessive drive as he pushes Deku’s coat off too. They part long enough to struggle and wrench each other’s shirts off, kicking off shoes, tripping over the stair of the genkan and dropping there without a care for anything but please more need more. 

There’s just something about him. Katsuki can’t fucking place it, has been trying for for weeks and months, but fails to put a finger on it somewhere between Deku’s fire heart and child soul and vast, open mind. At first, the inkling of interest and attraction he’d felt for Deku was obnoxious, intrusive and unwelcome. That didn’t last long and now he’s here, sitting on the floor with a lap full of the most gorgeous ass and stupidly decent man he’s ever encountered.

And he will bite the hand off of anyone who tries to take this away from him. 

Deku hauls Katsuki in, arms locked around his neck, the earthen scent of his natural sweat kicking up the spit at the back of Katsuki’s tongue, salivating and starving as he slashes at Deku’s avid tongue with his own. Motivated by the hunger to consume, take, keep all of Deku in him and around him, Katsuki’s hands ride down the ladder of Deku’s ribs, past is taut waist, so sturdy and unshakable like the rest of him, and dive into the gap at the back of Deku’s jeans, taking in great handfuls of that ass. 

He wants to fuck it, to lick it open, slick it up and bury into it like something dark and secret and dangerous for how easy it feels to simply fall into worship of every inch that is Deku, inside and out. That first dinner had been a revelation; Deku in black, the pale expanse of his throat, the smatter of freckles in the dead of winter, the ease with which Deku smiles, showing off that single devastating dimple, his generous nature, his quick mind, the way his big hands stay in flight when he speaks. 

“Daddy,” Deku all but purrs, his normally lilting, sun-bright voice dropping in the way Katsuki is learning it only does when he’s unfurling into the sultry, confident incubus who deepthroats cock in dirty bathrooms and can’t bottom without shooting demands like cupid arrows through Katsuki’s heart. “Show me your bed now, handsome.”

Katsuki’s head falls back with a gravel groan, his cock flexing in along the leg of his jeans, painfully contained and desperate for Deku’s touch. And Deku doesn’t help, or helps too much, because his grinning teeth are raking down Katsuki’s chest, scraping sparks through him, leaving nerves exposed and screaming for more as Deku eases from Katsuki’s lap, scooting down between his splayed legs so Deku can drag his tongue against the grain of the pale trail of hair skimming the waistband of Katsuki’s jeans.

When Deku simply angles his face to bury his nose in the crease of his thigh and inhales, deep and decadent, Katsuki dimly realizes that if Deku gets Katsuki’s dick out, everything is going to begin and end here and now, on the goddamn doorstep. The pure, unadulterated pleasure Deku seems to take from Katsuki’s body and from what they do to each other is drugging, a freedom of feeling Katsuki is entirely unused to, and which he now finds unbearably, threateningly addictive.

“Up,” Katsuki gasps, abruptly scooping his hands into Deku’s damp armpits as he stands, lofting Deku along. When Deku only gazes up at him with dreamy, swollen lips faintly curved, those big, expressive doe eyes hooded and pupil-blown with want, Katsuki swallows with a resounding click and licks his lips, refusing to allow his body to shiver with the power that stare holds over him. “Bedroom,” he says sternly, giving Deku a warning look, as if he’s going to try something on the short trip there. 

Deku bites down on his bottom lip, smiling and blatantly glancing down the length of Katsuki’s body with hunger. Katsuki contains what would have been a pathetically pleading whimper in reply to the expression before he takes Deku’s hand tightly, turns, and strides through the silent dark of his apartment. 

For someone who has asked to be taken to bed, Deku does a shit job of following through. They enter the bedroom, sure, and they reach the bed, yeah, but Deku doesn’t even glance at it as shoves Katsuki onto the mattress and stands at the edge, his dark eyes snapping with intensity as he strips before him. Thumbs hook in the waistband of his jeans, fingers skimming around to his belly, taking down his fly slowly, and fuck if Katsuki can hold Deku’s gaze when he can instead be weak as fuck and watch the progress of Deku’s hands. 

Deku hooks fingers in his belt loops and has to shimmy and work the jeans down his slim hips, not from the width of them, but from the innate difficulty Deku seems to encounter every time in getting his pants past the ripe rise of his ass and generous thighs. Katsuki unconsciously licks his lips, sitting on the edge of the bed, fists clenched in the blankets, watching the show.

This Deku is one that takes Katsuki’s breath away every time, shakes him to the core because until that moment in the bathroom when Deku demanded he be taken care of and then went into taking care of himself regardless of Katsuki’s desire—it was the first time anyone had ever dominated him like that, sexually or otherwise, even when Deku had been obviously gagging for it like the most depraved bottom. To take control of the situation, Katsuki has to fight for it, he has to deserve it.

It was the first time someone hadn’t treated him with royalty gloves, like he isn’t someone rich and handsome, like he’s just another horny douchebag who owes Deku his due just by being in Deku’s benevolent presence.

Something about the knowledge that Deku will use him as a sextoy as he sees fit is the sexiest, most unexpected thing Katsuki has ever experienced with a partner. Katsuki has never encountered the desire to spoil like he does with Deku. 

He has always enjoyed breaking his partners apart in order to put them messily back together, to watch how grateful they get for him at this gift. But Deku—Deku can and does take care of himself and still expects Katsuki to take care of him on top of it all. He’s a brat on a level Katsuki is still catching up with. 

“Daddy,” Deku murmurs, a knee placed delicately between Katsuki’s spread legs, one hand on his bare shoulder for balance as Deku leans in, totally nude, pale flesh aglow in the gloomy city lights pressing against the big, cold window. Katsuki’s breath catches, the plush wet of Deku’s mouth at the hinge of his jaw, the sight of Deku’s hard, hanging cock between his thighs, the flushed crown glistening with a drip that Katsuki wants to taste. “Where d’you keep going? I’m right here. Touch me. Take care of me. Lemme ride that nice big cock of yours. I’ll take you in so well, I’m so so good at it if you just let me have it.”

“You’re gonna fuckin’ kill me,” Katsuki rasps before he bursts into motion anew and rolls them, pins Deku to the bed, familiar with this position now, in control again, on top and the center of attention so that Deku can concentrate only on what Katsuki will choose to give him. Katsuki grins down at Deku’s pretty, fuckable lips and feels that feral edge cut through the fugue of adoration he’s been caught in. “Unless I get t’you first.” 

Katsuki expects awe. He expects desire and submission and that sweet little mouth to smile and say, thank you for taking care of me Daddy, yes please.

Deku does smile, the tendons in his wrists flexing as he seems to test the hold Katsuki has on them. But all he whispers is, you can try, before clenching his thick thighs around Katsuki’s waist and shifting his bodyweight with such simple, easy force that he flips them like Katsuki isn’t the larger between them. 

The air knocks from Katsuki’s gut as Deku straddles his stomach, his laugh husky, darker than usual and surging through Katsuki in rivers of black and red. Deku makes Katsuki feel in color and music, playing him like a raging, tumultuous sonata. Katsuki jolts upright, smirking at the surprise in Deku’s eyes, but then finds himself flipped and on his back again, the ceiling wavering in his vision before Deku lords over him with a more lighthearted, delighted laugh.

“The fuck,” Katsuki manages, struggling between the growing fury of his erection at being so physically dominated and the baffled annoyance that comes from being outsmarted by this little shit. 

“Did I ever mention,” Deku murmurs, humor lacing his words as he shimmies down Katsuki’s body and rids him of the rest of his clothes, “that I practiced judo from first grade to university?”

Katsuki can’t help the unbearably aroused, strangled sound that he makes when it hits him that any time he gets Deku under him, it’s because Deku is letting him. It’s almost enough to burn his ego, but so fucking sexy that the two negate each other. 

“Gonna have to tie you up somedaaaahfuck.” Katsuki dissolves into a long, unintelligible string of sounds as Deku gets on his stomach between Katsuki’s legs and licks at his balls, clever tongue sneaking back behind them without hesitance, hot and wet and sinful. Pleasure darts between Katsuki’s legs, gilded and bright and sharp, demanding a harsh, violent fuck that Katsuki can’t seem to pull himself together enough to give when Deku is letting him thrust up in to the tight circle of Deku’s fist as he continues to slather and slick his spit over Katsuki’s most secret places.

Midoriya Izuku is going to murder him in the sack before Katsuki can ever marry the fuck out of him. 

In the moment Katsuki thinks it, Deku hums his approval and slides that pretty, innocent mouth over Katsuki’s leaking erection and bobs on it, all sloppy and showy like a porn star, wet eyes flicking up when Katsuki manages to recline on his elbows to watch in awe. The ring of Deku’s lips is so tight, the wet suction as he hollows his cheeks sparking static at the edge of Katsuki’s vision, threatening a total white out when he finally loosens his jaw, shifts the angle of his body between Katsuki’s thighs, and swallows him down, throat unbearably hot and velvet around Katsuki’s cock. 

Words do not exist for this. At this point, Katsuki barely has the emotional fucking intelligence to hold onto any feeling other than fuck him own him hold him take him love him when Deku is splitting himself down the middle for him, barely breathing from the nose for how hard he’s choking himself up and down Katsuki’s dick. Katsuki’s going to blow soon, way too soon, and he’s forgetting how words work in order to say so. 

He must have made a noise to indicate the issue because Deku makes a plaintive sound of loss and slides off, his expression fucked-out and cock-drunk, lips lax and parted, spit shining on his chin, cheeks burning with color, breath coming in pants. Deku sits up and kneels, knees tucked beneath him, cock standing hard and needy red, his hot palms braced on Katsuki’s thighs, a tear-streaked gaze fixed on Katsuki. 

Then he cocks his head and whimpers, almost puppy-like, and it utterly trashes any of Katsuki’s control. 

“Daddy,” Deku whispers, hoarse and used up, “ please.”

“Oh my fuckin’—” Katsuki wheezes, absolutely winded by the picture Deku makes as he scrambles up to kneel before Deku and embrace him hard, enveloping his small, strong body with too much force, face buried in Deku’s sweat-dark curls. “You’re so so good.”

Deku shudders in his arms as if the words make all the difference and Katsuki rises to the occasion, pulling back enough to rain kisses across Deku’s cute snub nose and dick-sucking chapped lips and damp brow. With a needy noise, Deku raises his face, a flash of teeth in the night before he bites Katsuki’s chin, then his bottom lip, sucking on it briefly before invading Katsuki’s mouth with a moan. Katsuki falls into it for a moment, biting at Deku’s tongue, sucking on it until Deku grows breathless; but he has other urges that drive him now. 

“On your stomach,” Katsuki says, clipped and assured as he braces hands on Deku’s shoulders and firmly guides him away. Deku grunts a briefly grumpy noise but flops onto the bed, face buried in a black pillow, arms wrapped around it. Katsuki allows himself to appreciate the outrageous curve of Deku’s spine to his ass, then those muscular, splayed thighs all padded in smooth, pale skin and a subtle layer of fat that keeps Deku from looking ripped. Instead he feels both soft and sturdy to hold, welcoming and dependable and so easy to sink into. 

Shaking himself from the admiration, Katsuki knee-walks across the expansive mattress to rummage through his bedside table and get what he needs. Deku remains blessedly quiet, which is new and Katsuki can appreciate it while he settles into the sinew and skin of the man he needs to be for Deku, for himself. 

Katsuki knees Deku’s thighs apart a little roughly, pausing to slap one of Deku’s asscheeks and watch the faint jiggle before he fits himself back there as he pleases. He paints his palms up the back of Deku’s knees and thighs, his mouth watering as he watches Deku subtly sway his hips in an attempt to rut against the mattress and tempt Katsuki’s attention. It works. 

“Needy,” Katsuki says, struggling to keep the strength and disinterest in his voice as he manipulates Deku’s body with firm, possessive hands, getting Deku to present his ass up, knees spread wide. His cock and balls are heavy and flushed dark, begging for attention like the rest of Deku. “Good enough,” he mutters dismissively, his raging erection brushing against the curve of Deku’s ass for a moment before he shifts further away. “Stay.”

Deku whimpers and hugs the pillow to his face, his breath coming faster even though Katsuki’s yet to touch him in any way that matters. Katsuki would love to see Deku at the end of his thread, shaking apart before Katsuki can fuck him stupid, but the craving to touch and taste and mark is so much stronger tonight. 

Not after the abject terror of possibly losing him after meeting Mina. Not after Mina’s approval and the way Deku felt like he fit right into the family. 

Katsuki needs to mark him; something tangible to say, yes, you’re here and you’re staying. 

The resounding slap sounds so succulent and succinct across Deku’s ass that Deku’s own loud sound of surprise is drowned out by Katsuki’s long, pleased groan of approval. He watches his hand welt red on Deku’s supple moonlight flesh and feels himself fill properly into his skin for the first time since the last time they did this. So he does it again over the same spot, his hand burning with the sudden, satisfying sting of it, and feels his bones click into place when Deku muffles a plaintive string of pleasure into the pillow.

This person makes Katsuki feel whole somehow, and the acknowledgment that Katsuki will never feel like his best self unless he’s at Deku’s side is staggering. 

Lost to this, Katsuki takes Deku’s asscheeks into hand, spreads them, and bows to his small, sturdy frame to lick a hot, wet strip over his tight, begging asshole. He doesn’t want for Deku to catch up with it, suck in a wet breath or brace himself before he shoves right in, tongue stiff and curling in turn, his moans mashing against the purely masculine, musky taste of him. It’s a fucking drug, this ass, this body,  this brain and heart. Katsuki wants to put his mouth over every inch and swallow him whole.

Deku’s thighs subtly shiver, seemingly without end as Katsuki eases a thumb into him and hooks it, spreading him wider to lick inside, lap desperate and damp at the delicate skin surrounding, to sneak his tongue in deep beside his finger. Katsuki’s vaguely aware that Deku’s making high, bright, needy noises, but it’s almost secondary to the personal pleasure of feeling him loosen around the invasive, unrelenting thrusts of his tongue, the drip of his spit down Deku’s crack where it dampens his balls, the full-body flinch Deku’s body gives when Katsuki fondles him there and slightly pulls as he tongue-fucks into that ass. 

“Oh god, oh fuck!” Deku has somehow lost his pillow, shoved it away as he writhes back against Katsuki’s hungry tongue. He’s nails scrabble across the sheets, fisting and releasing. “Oh no, nonono please, fuck, Daddy, fuck me, I can’t,” his voice cracks. “I can’t—”

“I know you can,” Katsuki soothes, his own voice a wreck as he sits up and licks his lips, pets his thumb over Deku’s twitching, needy hole and watches it try and greedily suck in his finger. He allows it, slides in just that thumb, slick and smooth inside, idly pumping in an easy, maddening rhythm that can be nowhere near enough. “So pretty for me, look at you , my greedy lil’ brat. Don’t wanna flip me around the bed anymore, hah? You still wanna play like you’re bigger ‘n badder than me?”

“No!” Deku gasps out, and from this angle Katsuki’s can enjoy Deku’s cheek plastered to the mattress, his curls stuck to his face in dark sweat, his eyes wide and sightless as as he rocks back again and again on Katsuki’s thumb. “ Nonono, I don’t—I’m not—I just need it, you, your cock, please, I’m so—“

Katsuki holds upside down the tube of lube he’s been ignoring on the mattress and squeezes, smirking as Deku’s entire body jolts from the cold drizzle that streaks down his crack and settles around his hole, down his balls, drips to the bed. 

“There,” Katsuki murmurs around Deku’s whispers and whimpers of shock. He skims his fingers through the lube, warming and rubbing against Deku’s skin, thumbing over the tight bundle of nerves behind his balls, presses softly then a little harder until Deku’s entire body begins to shake and he’s blindly begging for Daddy, Daddy, please, need more, need you, please. “That’s better,” Katsuki soothes. “Calm down, pretty boy—where’s your patience?”

Deku absolutely writhes in displeasure at the prompt and half-growls into the sheets, frustration and desperation singing from his body clear as any song. 

“There isn’t any!” Deku shoots back, and Katsuki has to gamely swallow a laugh to keep him from knowing what’s going on back there. “I’m going to lose my mind if you don’t get that big fat cock in and fuck me ‘til you’re in my damn lungs!”

“Well,” Katsuki drawls, his attention fixed on Deku’s flushed ass, the stark handprint risen on one cheek, and then begins to ease two long fingers into Deku, tortuously slow. “With that shitty attitude, this is all you’re getting. Brat.”

“What th—ah!” Deku cries out, thighs spread so wide that his hips begin to drop, the tip of his cock leaving an obscene, growing wet spot on the mattress. 

Katsuki’s feral smile hurts his face for its width as he scissors his fingers, stretches them wide apart, watches Deku’s pink, glistening asshole tighten around his fingers then give up, lax and submitting  to the pressure. He adds a third finger then, humming in consideration as Deku bottles up a scream at the back of his throat, the sound struggling in him as he pants and shoves back brutally onto the three without Katsuki even having to move his hand. 

“Needy,” Katsuki repeats, faintly aware of how breathless he sounds, how in awe he is of this little powerhouse snapping with energy at the end of his fingers like Katsuki is controlling and wielding lightning itself. 

“Need you,” Deku says, gritty and dark, turning his head to look over his shoulder. His eyes are huge and black in the night, lips bitten up and blood dark, the city lights casting a hazy glow across his freckled back. “S’only like this for you.”

Katsuki feels the truth of it in his setting into bones like the way he feels a melody finally take form and play from his fingers.

Suddenly desperate, Katsuki drapes himself over Deku’s body, fingers slipping out to Deku’s loud hiss of disdain, and takes Deku’s chin in hand to coax him back for an awkwardly angled kiss that is mostly from desperation to touch than anything more practiced. Deku meets him with the same enthusiasm he does everything, tongue curling around his own, licking at the corner of Katsuki’s mouth, biting down on Katsuki’s chin with enough force to surely leave the dent of teeth. 

Katsuki’s hand skims from Deku’s jaw down his throat, palm encompassing the rabid pulse of him, practically feeling the blood rush through Deku’s veins as Katsuki’s free hand works his cock past the tight, greedy ring of Deku’s ass and shoves in, blunt and firm and brutal. 

Deku goes stiff and startled and still, and for a second the shocked, vise of pressure engulfing Katsuki’s dick is painful—and then Deku releases a long, drawn out shout of pain and pleasure, his body going lax, his ass sucking him in with blissful ease, that Katsuki nearly comes from the sound Deku makes alone. Katsuki’s about to release Deku’s throat so he can fuck him in earnest, but Deku’s pressing his brow to the headboard and murmuring, choke me Daddy, and Katsuki almost comes a whole damn second time. 

“Fuck,” Katsuki bites out, one steadying hand gripping Deku’s hip, his other firmly clamped around Deku’s throat, but not enough to steal breath yet. “C’mere, demanding brat.”

With that, he sits up to kneel, taking Deku with him. The angle locks his cock in deep and Deku screams with it, the abrupt change, the way he has to straddle Katsuki’s hips and open his legs wide and accommodating while Katsuki spreads his hand low down Deku’s belly, ignoring his desperately dribbling dick in favor of rubbing the bulge where Katsuki’s cock subtly distends Deku’s stomach. 

“N-n-nonono!” Deku stutters around his words, writhing his hips around in a failed attempt to escape the touch. “Don’t—you can’t —that’s too— ngh!”

Katsuki’s fingers tighten at either side of Deku’s throat, old remembered habits of properly choking a partner rushing back as he presses his smiling mouth to the back of Deku’s head and listens to him whine and wheeze and struggle, all impaled on Katsuki’s dick and at the mercy of his hands. 

“My pretty—” Katsuki inhales deeply, struck by a sigh of overwhelming peace even as the tightening coil and urgency in his gut goads him toward a violent, rushed fuck. “Pretty boy. So so good, holy fuck, aren’t you incredible like this, all mine, all mine.”

Deku huffs out a breath, his chest stuttering on a struggled inhale, his ass dipping back onto Katsuki’s dick, their bodies so close he can barely fuck down on it, but he’s trying all the same, that thick ass rocking back on Katsuki’s lap as he keeps sucking in quick, short breathes of effort. Katsuki moans into Deku’s hair, bites at his skull without thinking, like a stupid animal who will bite for bitings sake, then releases Deku’s throat, only to drape his arm across it. He holds onto Deku’s shoulder, shifting until Deku’s chin tucks in the crook of Katsuki’s elbow, and tightens up. 

Gasping, Deku throws his hands up to grip Katsuki’s arm, his nails digging into the bulge of his bicep and wrist, holding on as Katsuki’s free hand finally takes Deku’s iron hot erection in hand and begins to slowly work it as he thrusts up into the sloppy suction of Deku’s ass. 

Katsuki isn’t sure which one of them is shivering, but he thinks it might be him because Deku is barely moving now, his head tilted back on Katsuki’s shoulder with small, helpless noises eking out as Katsuki fucks him in short, sharp staccato slaps that mirror Deku’s quick gasps for air. He’s growing heavy against Katsuki; dependent, body and safety entirely entrusted to him and oh god, oh fuck, he’s beautiful this way, he’s perfect, he’s so one-hundred percent all or nothing that Katsuki’s going to goddamn die if he can’t keep this man forever. 

This is the thought that sends him over the edge, that has him sinking his teeth into the meat of Deku’s shoulder as he cups his hand around the crown of Deku’s cock, his palm soaked in precum as he haphazardly works just the pulsing head of it. He feels Deku clench and quake around Katsuki’s dick but can’t stop thrusting now, can’t help but fuck Deku through his orgasm, releasing the pressure of his arm around Deku’s neck just as Deku shoots off into Katsuki’s hand with a plaintive sob, lungs hiccuping with it, thighs trembling until Katsuki tenses and throbs and releases so goddamn deep inside of him. 

Deku crumples like he’s lost the bones in his body, the weight of all that muscle he keeps secreted beneath ugly school clothes collapsing back against Katsuki’s frame all at once. Katsuki’s barely holding on as it is, the throes of his orgasm still swamping his senses as he does his best to topple back on the bed and take Deku along without knocking themselves out on the bedframe or each other’s skulls. 

Panting and dazed, Katsuki wills the last of his draining strength to roll Deku on his side and follows, spooning him, loose-limbed and losing consciousness as they lay diagonally with their feet shoved in the pillows and Deku’s arm flung over the side of the bed. Distantly, Katsuki wants to clean Deku up, rearrange them, but he hasn’t orgasmed like that maybe ever and Deku has already succumbed to the shallow breath of sleep, and Katsuk is down for the count before he knows it. 

He wakes sometime in the dead of night, cold as hell everywhere but where Deku has curled into his arms, head nudged beneath Katsuki’s chin, his arms bundled against Katsuki’s chest. Katsuki’s heart lurches against his ribs as if trying to crawl out and into Deku’s hands, so he waits it out, allowing himself the secret pleasure of burying his face in Deku’s unkempt, sweat-dried curls and inhaling the sex-musk and distant mint shampoo scent of him. 

Eventually he peels himself away from the warmth of Deku’s ever-generous body and stretches his arms up with a wince. He aches everywhere, but probably not as much as Deku will. Unfortunately, he feels zero percent bad about this because it just means Deku will think of him when they’re apart. 

Humming something under his breath that he has not yet written, Katsuki makes for the bathroom and wets a cloth in warm water, comes back and spreads Deku out on the bed to clean him up thoroughly. Deku scrunches his nose and huffs a breath, but nothing more, and Katsuki snorts a quiet laugh that this stupid expressive face never stops, even in sleep. 

Katsuki is rearranging Deku on the bed when Deku groans and rolls onto his stomach, snuffling his face into the pillow as he mumbles, “Leave me ‘lone. Gotta pee.”

“Go pee then.” Katsuki smacks Deku’s ass and appreciates the grunt of Deku’s response before he literally rolls out of the bed, looks like he’s going to topple over the side, but catches himself and slumps like a zombie toward the ensuite. Katsuki can’t help but grin after him because he has apparently been reduced to pure, simple idiocy over a ditzy kindergarten teacher with judo skills and a bratty disposition a mile long. 

Actually, he sounds exactly like the person Katsuki has been searching for without even realizing he’s been searching. Now to find a way to keep him. 

“Your bath’s big,” Deku mumbles as he flops back into bed, hugging his pillow to his face in a way Katsuki must imagine is his preference. To hold onto things, people, knickknacks, photographs.

Katsuki hums and lays out on his back, his arm outstretched across the big bed to rest in Deku’s curls, a soothing softness. 

“You can have one in the morning.”

“Gonna wash my hair too?” Deku asks, sounding excessively pleased about it even when Katsuki hasn’t agreed to shit. 

“Noisy,” Katsuki says, even as his eyes close and he’s smiling into the dark. 

“Yours,” Deku slurs, sleepy and sated as he turns his head from the pillow and tilts his face to kiss the heart vein at Katsuki’s wrist. 

Katsuki inhales deeply, filled with the word, the implication, the moment. He doesn’t exhale for a long time. 

“Yours.”

***

Naomi likes New Orleans.

She likes the happy colors and the people on street corners who play music like Daddy does and how everyone smiles back at her and says hello like they’re friends. She likes those powdery donuts that cling sugar to her skin like snow and how there’s so many people the same color as her. 

What she likes most, though, is walking down the street with a hand in Daddy’s strong one and the other in Deku’s big one. Naomi runs and lifts her legs and they both swing her and laugh and Naomi feels like she’s flying even more than she does when she’s on a plane. Her heart feels like a rollercoaster drop, like when her whole tummy jumps in the air on the fall. 

The air is thick and hot like a big bear hug and although Daddy sweats and complains about it, both Deku and Naomi and Mama don’t seem to mind. So Daddy keeps his shirt off while they’re staying at Grandma Betty’s, his arms and chest and back like a coloring book without anything filled in yet. Sometimes when the heat gets too much and everyone hides indoors, Daddy will even let Naomi color in his tattoos with markers. Sometimes Deku joins too, but after he ended up drawing pink hearts all over the back of Daddy’s neck, Deku got chased off and banned from it altogether. 

Naomi only colors in the lines. She doesn’t like to get in trouble at all. She doesn’t know how Deku can laugh about something like that. 

But right now they’re all laughing as they walk home from the park, dust all stuck to their legs from playing in the baseball diamond next to the jungle gym. Naomi’s feet and flip flops are dirty and the purple polish is chipping from her toenails.

 She never gets this dirty back home. It’s like a big special secret between her and her family that everyone gets to be different when they visit this place. 

They speak English and eat with forks at places called diners, where Naomi only orders grilled cheese and curly fries over and over as long as her parents let her, and they let her. They go to a special salon where all the little girls have hair like hers and she gets it done in lots of tight, little twists with rainbow clips at the ends. Deku takes her to bookstores and buys her bags of storybooks in English to bring home so they can read them together. Daddy plays piano at something called a club even though it has nothing to do with a big thing you hit people with, and Mama says it’s called ‘the blues’ even though it has nothing to do with the color either. 

Naomi’s birthday is tomorrow and she is flying and special and loved. She’s never been more excited for a birthday than she can remember in her whole long life. Because tomorrow, she’s going to get the best gift she can ever imagine. 

When Naomi hands over one of her already wrapped, already picked out presents that her and Daddy went shopping specially for, she’s going to give Deku the box with the ring—

And she will get a new family member.