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Katsuki tries to be a good significant other. It’s unquestionably a (most likely eternal) work in progress, but he’s been with Shouto long enough to know what needs to be avoided at any and all costs.
Waking him up. Before nine-thirty on a weekend comes with threats of physical harm (which only get Katsuki hard, like, 30% of the time, so. It’s not a thing.), but—waking him up when he gets home late is just as inadvisable.
(Shouto threatened to get a prenup when he did that once. Which made absolutely no sense considering they’ve been married for two years now, and not once did they discuss a prenup beforehand.)
Anyway.
Katsuki does his best to be quiet, is the point. Closes the door slowly so it doesn’t creak, takes his shoes off in the hallway, scratches Soba (a name Katsuki had fought tooth-and-nail to add Lord in front of and ultimately lost to Shouto’s primly pursed mouth) behind the ears, and makes it to bed.
He’s in the middle of tugging off his shirt when he notices Shouto stirring. He’s too damn cute when he sleeps, the bastard. Spreads out and steals the blankets and somehow still ends up plastered to Katsuki’s side.
Katsuki fucking loves him.
Wants to show it, too. To get his hands on Shouto and touch him all over, hold him close. Fucking keep him. Because Shouto is his. Because Shouto chose him, let Katsuki put a ring on his finger and said he loved him in front of all their closest friends. Because Shouto refuses to go to bed before twelve on Katsuki’s birthday. Because each year he tries to bake a cake and leaves a wreck behind in the kitchen. Because when Shouto has a bad day he comes home and puts on his fuzzy slippers and taps the corner of his mouth and goes “Kiss?” and—
Katsuki still doesn’t feel like he deserves any of it, sometimes.
Any attempts to demonstrate all this, to take the tangle of things labeled Shouto inside his heart and turn it solid, to get his hands on Shouto and try to express it grinds to an immediate halt once he lifts the edge of the blanket and tries to wrap an arm around Shouto’s waist.
(He’s wearing ground zero merch underwear to bed, the absolute dork.)
Half-asleep, Shouto pulls away. “I have a husband,” he says, “and he’s—he’s very against sharing.”
Katsuki stares at the back of his head. No shit, he thinks. I’m your goddamn husband.
“That so?” Katsuki asks.
Shouto hums. “Yeah, he doesn’t like it when—when other people try to touch me. He still gets pouty about that time I let Kaminari do body shots off me.”
Involuntarily, Katsuki grits his teeth together. The urge to pull Shouto close and never, ever let him go persists. It’s fucking ridiculous. They weren’t even properly together back then. (Katsuki remembers a lot of staring at Shouto’s mouth, though.)
“But he can touch you, right?”
Shouto nods into his pillow. “Yes,” he says. “I like it when he touches me. He—he’s really good with his hands.”
Shouto just—says shit like this, no matter how cognizant he might be at the moment. He made an EMT blush once.
“Baby,” Katsuki says, just barely brushing his lips against the nape of Shouto’s neck.
Shouto laughs. “He doesn’t like it when people besides him call me that, either.”
Katsuki gets braver. If Shouto’s just being a tease on purpose, then he fucking deserves what he gets. “Good thing no one else does,” he says. “Good thing that’s just for me.”
Shouto gasps when Katsuki nips at his earlobe. This time, he doesn’t protest the arm around his waist, lets Katsuki pull him closer until they’re pressed flush together, until he could count Shouto’s heartbeats if he splayed a palm over his chest.
(It’s yours now, Shouto had told him, once, pointing to his chest like the words leaving his mouth weren’t fucking monumental. My heart.)
“Missed you,” Shouto says. Finally, a confession. Freely-given vulnerability. God, Katsuki loves him.
“You did, huh?”
“Yeah,” Shouto says, “made me wait.”
Katsuki can hear the pout. Doesn’t need Shouto to turn and face him to guess just how his mouth is twisted. He does want to kiss it away, though.
“Shouto,” he says. “Sweetheart.”
Shouto tries to pull away again, just barely. Katsuki doesn’t let him. Squeezes him tighter and slips a hand under his loose sleep shirt. (An old one of Katsuki’s, probably.)
“Cold hands,” Shouto protests.
“Yeah?” Katsuki asks. “Why don’t you warm me up then?”
Shouto mumbles something that sounds a lot like not your personal heater.
Katsuki hides his smile, presses it into Shouto’s shoulder. “But you are mine, aren’t you?” he asks, hand creeping higher. “All mine, right Shouto?”
Shouto shivers. “Not fair,” he says. “You know what you’re doing.”
Katsuki laughs, before placing a kiss on Shouto’s shoulder blade, breathing in and just—memorizing him, trying to catalogue all the little things that make up the person he loves most on this damned earth. Shouto’s warm. Like he’s made for coming home to. Like he’s made for Katsuki to twine his arms around him and hold him and leave any and every bad thing to the side, where it can’t touch them. Where it can’t touch him. Because Katsuki will be damned if he lets anything happen to Shouto. He’s been through enough. It’s Katsuki’s job to keep him safe, now. To help him stay whole when that feels near-impossible.
(He loves Shouto on his bad days too, loves pulling him back up and out of the darkness. It’s all him, in the end. All the same boy who stared at him head-on and refused to back down about anything. Even about loving Katsuki.)
“No, I don’t,” Katsuki says. “Tell me, what am I doing?”
“Stayed up for you,” Shouto says. “Wanted—wanted to wait. To welcome you home.”
Oh, Katsuki thinks.
It never ceases to—to fucking stab him right in the heart, just how much Shouto cares for him. Idiot basically shouts it from the rooftops in every way he knows how. And Katsuki is just left there clutching his bleeding heart and thinking that he really didn’t do enough to deserve it. That nothing’s fucking enough for Todoroki Shouto.
“I love you,” Katsuki says. “You know that, right?”
Shouto goes very, very still. And then, slowly, he turns to look at Katsuki.
He’s still in his arms, within perfect kissing distance. Katsuki could count his eyelashes, if he wanted. (He’s tried that a couple of times, when he wakes up before Shouto. But usually Soba jumps on the bed and demands to be fed before Katsuki can fully indulge himself.)
Shouto’s looking at him like he’s taken by surprise and—fuck. If that’s the case, then Katsuki really needs to fucking start saying it more. He thinks it all the damn time anyway. A constant loop of I love him I love him I love him, triggered just by looking at Shouto, just by watching him smile or stretch when he wakes up. Hell, even when Shouto points at those small, angry-looking dogs they pass by while walking and goes that’s you. Even then.
Katsuki kisses his forehead. “I love you,” he repeats.
Shouto’s fingers dig into his upper arm. Like he’s trying to steady himself. “I love you too,” he says.
Which is, of course, the exact moment Soba chooses to begin scratching at the closed door.
“You locked it?” Shouto asks.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Katsuki says, “you were the one going on and on about traumatizing our fragile daughter for the rest of her life the last time she walked in on us.”
Shouto makes a face. “You weren’t that happy about getting pushed off the bed either, as far as I remember.”
“You didn’t have to push me. What if I’d broken something you’d miss more than I would, huh? Then what?” Katsuki hisses, but—
Shouto’s smiling at him. “I’d miss all of you,” he says. “Always miss all of you.”
Katsuki sighs. He pecks Shouto’s mouth once before braving the winter chill to open the door for Soba. She immediately jumps on the bed and curls up on Shouto’s side, the traitor. (They both have a favorite. He can’t actually blame her.)
“Make room for me, you giant brats,” Katsuki says, but when Shouto pats Katsuki’s side of the bed and smiles before reaching up for another kiss—Katsuki really can’t stay mad. Can’t even pretend.
This is it. The two of them and their ridiculously spoiled cat. Katsuki wouldn’t change a thing.
(Even if Shouto’s been pushing for a second cat.)