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Cold. It’s May and it’s fucking cold.
Izuku slowly frees himself from Shouto’s arms and rests his feet on the icy hotel floor. He shivers hard enough to shake the bed, then casts an uneasy glance over his shoulder toward his boyfriend. Shouto keeps sleeping undisturbed, his red and white hair falling over his forehead as he turns his head against the wall with a sigh. Izuku’s stomach clenches, as he gets up and puts on the jacket he had left on the chair a few hours earlier. He looks at the clock hanging on the wall, which reads four a.m.
He steps out onto the balcony and carefully closing door behind him to keep the wind out – not that Shouto would mind, he who always keeps a below-average body temperature even when he’s not fighting.
The sky’s black over New York, the darkness broken only by the thousand lights of skyscrapers and billboards. The city’s so noisy, chaotic and alive that it seems immune to the very concept of time, as if it were sited in an alternate dimension in which the hours all follow one another. Remembering that he arrived only a week ago requires Izuku a lot of effort, and the amount of work All Might has subjected him to doesn’t help. But then again, this is the life he has chosen. The one he has fought for and that gets him out of bed every day with optimism and pride. He just wish that his idol had informed him that, in addition to making his appearance by his side before the World Heroes Association as their country’s representatives, his duty also consisted of talking part in its many exponents’ debates and, last but not least, giving interviews. That’s his worst nightmare.
At least Shouto offered to go with him: knowing that he’s waiting for him at their hotel, once he’s done interacting with the world’s safety bigwigs and running from the swarms of fans hiding at every corner, makes him feel more relaxed. Nothing beats what he feels as soon as he enters the room and finds shelter in his arms, weariness and tension instantly slipping away from his body.
So why isn’t that enough? He asks himself that every day. In fact, it actually began months ago, when the butterflies he felt hovering in his stomach every time he saw Shouto even from a distance started to fade. So did the blushing. And then his heart not beating like a train anymore. The high he felt just from touching Shouto. Not that he doesn’t want anymore – the physical drive to his boyfriend hasn’t faltered a single day since they got together more than a year ago now. But the thing is, it starts out urgent, passionate, and then becomes methodical, automatic. He’d never call it boring, but it certainly isn’t the same as it was in the beginning. There’s a strange distance between them that has always been there – despite Izuku only realizing it now.
He stuffs his hands in his pockets to escape the cold as he allows himself to be hypnotized by the little clouds of breath before him as he breathes. Only then does he realize that he left his phone in his jacket pocket this whole time and never checked it again. Which means he didn’t call his mother.
Turns out she texted him, and so did All Might, Ochako and Kirishima. He reads the texts from the oldest to the newest:
I know you’re important now, but I think I deserve a little ‘hello’ every now and then, I’m your mother! :/ Anyway, I saw the report on the TV this morning and you looked so handsome in your suit and tie, honey!
What happened, young Midoriya? The president wanted to have a chat after the reception! I had to tell him that the lobster sickened you, I hope you don’t mind! ://
Ok so I spent a WHOLE afternoon at the dress fitting for Kyoka today and it was sooo much fun! Their dresses are just crazy. I know you don’t mind about this stuff but you MUST see them so I’ll send you some pictures. No pictures of the one Kyoka chose though (we know you boys like to gossip and Denki will end up seeing it before the big day – sorry, but we don’t trust you <3 <3) Are you having fun??
Deeeeeekuuu, when are you coming back? We miss you. And fyi Bakugo kinda shut down since you left (don’t tell him I told you this or he’ll kill me). I know you won’t believe this, so here’s my proof!
The last text is followed by a sneaky picture of Bakugo lounging on the couch in front of the TV, looking bored and... Yes, Kirishima used the right words: shut down.
He tightens his grip around his phone as he inspects every feature of Kacchan’s face, but it’s not enough for him. He realizes only now that they have not spoken for ten days, that is, since Izuku went to see him before leaving, and then it hits him. How much he misses him. He managed not to think about it so far because too busy chasing his duties all over New York, but now, in the cold night, he finds that he needs the warmth that only he can give him.
He casts a glance beyond the window to check Shouto: he has not moved from the position where he left him. Then he looks at the time on the display: it’s afternoon right now in Tokyo. He could text him. Or call him. Calling is more like them. It doesn’t feel quite right, but he’s just calling a friend. It could also be Iida, or Mineta, or Tsuyu. He repeats this to himself silently as guilt grips him tight, from his stomach to his heart. He dials Kacchan’s number anyway and then hesitates for a few seconds.
There’s nothing wrong with it. Absolutely nothing wrong. He calls.
He clenches his left hand into a fist inside his pocket, so tightly that his fingernails dig into his palm and hurt. He leans his back against the wall next to the window, his head bent back as he looks up at the stars. The phone rings only three times before Bakugo’s rough voice resonates like melody in his ear and Izuku allows himself to think that he must have been waiting for him to call, if he answered so quickly.
“Calling your friends at last, huh, shitty Deku?”
Izuku closes his eyes and smiles instinctively. He missed him. He misses him.
“Good evening to you, Kacchan”
“I guess I should say good night to you. What time is it there? Like, three in the morning?”
“Four a.m., precisely”
“Well, shit” mumbles Bakugo. “Why are you awake?”
Deku takes a deep breath and pauses. He might say he has been tossing and turning in bed for hours, wondering if this is what he imagined his life to be when he was a child. He might say his jaw hurts from all the fake smiles of the past few days. He might say that for some time now, when Shouto spoons him in his sleep, he feels cold.
He swallows the knot in his throat and prays his voice doesn’t tremble as he says, “New York’s noisy”
Bakugo’s silent for a few seconds, but Izuku knows he understood and heard the melancholy in his voice. But he also knows that he won’t force him to vent now, over the phone. If they were face-to-face he would have already done so, but that’s not the case. Which only makes him want Kacchan there with him even more – or makes him want to be there with him.
“How’s Icy-hot?”
Izuku looks ì at Shouto’s sleeping body again. “He’s fine” he answers with a half-smile.
“Is he still making bad impressions in front of reporters like he did the first day?”
Izuku chuckles. As soon as they landed in New York, the reporters’ cameras blinded them, which caused Izuku to stumble and nearly fall on All Might’s back as they stepped off the plane; Shouto helped him to his feet, glared at the reporters and proceeded to freeze the cameras with an angry wave of his hand, thus interrupting the report of their arrival.
“He learned his lesson” Izuku giggles. “I don’t think it will happen again”
“Too bad. That was the only funny and honorable thing he’s done since I’ve known him”
The way irony and seriousness coexist perfectly balanced in these kinds of remarks always leaves Izuku dumbfounded. Only Kacchan is capable of such a thing. They both know that he actually respects Shouto and even considers him a friend, but that doesn’t stop him from indulging in certain jokes.
“So? What, you call me and then you keep quiet?” insists Kacchan. From the noise he hears, Izuku guesses he’s lying in bed. “How’s New York?”
Izuku looks around. “Uh... It’s great, I think”
Bakugo bursts into a wry laugh.
“Nice one, nerd. I would never have guessed that”
Izuku swallows. “It’s just...”
There he goes. Damn. He knew he shouldn’t have called. Now he won’t be able to keep quiet. He won’t be able to keep from shifting his burden onto Kacchan, who doesn’t deserve it, because none of this is his fault – or maybe it is, just like it’s Izuku’s, but Kacchan has no obligation to Shouto, unlike him. Izuku’s the one who should stop. He should have stopped this way before it escalated.
And he wants to stop, he really does. But loneliness is driving him crazy. Actually, it’s not loneliness. It’s pining. Not for his mother or Tokyo or his friends. They both know it. There’s no point in keeping it to himself.
He looks over his shoulder for the umpteenth time to make sure he won’t find Shouto awake facing the glass. Then he sighs.
“Sometimes I wish you were here” he confesses.
Kacchan says nothing for a while, and Izuku starts to fear he has ruined everything. He doesn’t even bother to ask if Kirishima’s there with him, or if he can speak freely. If anyone, any of their friends, found out about them, the balance of the group would be broken. And it would be awful.
“You wish I was there?” repeats Bakugo with a little irony. “Sharing a bed with the two of you like a fucking poly couple?” He waits a few more seconds. “Or you wish I was there instead of him?”
Izuku presses his lips together.
“Deku. You can say it”
Well, compared to what they’ve been doing behind everyone’s back for the past five months, everytime they have the chance to be alone, admitting it should be easy. But Izuku’s voice is still faint once he finds the courage to do it:
“I wish you were here...”
“Speak up”
“I wish you were here instead of him”
“Isn’t he distracting you enough?” asks Bakugo scornfully. “Are you two even fucking?”
He knew Kacchan would catch on quickly. It’s always like that between the two of them. But he can’t bring himself to say out loud. Saying it would make it real. Not to mention the injustice that would be towards Shouto. So he holds back the tears and mutters, “I’m too tired to do it when I get back”
But he doesn’t delude himself into thinking that his childhood friend will fall for it. And Bakugo doesn’t.
“Yeah, right” he retorts. “Don’t bullshit me, Deku, I know you: you’re not tired. You just don’t want it bad enough. While if I were there...”
The air fills with electricity in a split second as Izuku's eyes go wide in the night and he holds his breath.
“Trust me,” Kacchan continues, “I’d make you forget how tired you are the moment you arrived”
“I-I...” That’s all he can answer. What else could he say? He’s right. A thirty-second phone call from one part of the world to the other was enough for Kacchan to read into him. Everything would be different if he were there instead of Shouto. Admitting this to himself hurts him, it hurts like hell, and Kacchan knows it but keeps it going anyway, ruthless as ever:
“It’s because he doesn’t fuck you like I do” he murmurs, his voice imperceptibly rougher. “He doesn’t fuck you like you deserve. He doesn’t know how much you can take”
Izuku turns quickly toward the bed and, once again relieved by his boyfriend’s heavy sleep, lets his hand fly down to his erection. He slips a hand into his underwear and dammit, suddenly it’s so hot it seems like Kacchan is really there. As far as he’s concerned, Shouto could wake up right now and knock on the glass. He wouldn’t even notice. He wouldn’t care. He’s on a whole different dimension now.
He lets out a shaky sigh as he starts moving his hand up and down. “No” he whispers. “No, he doesn’t...”
“Are you touching yourself, Deku?”
“... Yeah”
The answer comes late and it sounds like an admission of guilt. It feels so pathetic and wrong because he can’t even stop touching himself when he sniffs and whines:
“I feel so bad”
“No, don’t think about it now” Bakugo interrupts him fiercely, almost angrily. Izuku knows he can’t stand it when he punishes himself like this. He can’t stand that the thought of Shouto has the power to ruin even this one little, pathetic moment that they’re granting themselves to escape reality for a while. “Don’t think of him. Think of me”
And Izuku does. Those few sentences whispered over the phone are enough to remind him of all those obscene images of Kacchan naked on top of him, sweating and eager as he shoves finger after finger up his ass, with Izuku letting it happen and moaning impatiently like a whore.
“Think of what I’d do to you if I was there” says Bakugo urgently, and Izuku knows he’s touching himself, too. “You feel me, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I feel you”
“I’m kissing you everywhere. Right where you like it. I know where you like it. I touch you just the way you want, and in a moment you’re already hard in my hand. You move your hips against me. You want me to go faster, you can’t get enough. You make those high-pitched little moans right in my ear because they drive me crazy and you know it. You do it on purpose, you little pervert”
“Kacchan... Kacchan”
“You’re so beautiful you don’t even look real. Like when you blush so hard that your freckles disappear. When your eyes shine from how horny you are. And then those choked screams you make when I move in you”
Izuku tilts his head to the side to keep the phone still between his ear and shoulder; it’s uncomfortable, but he needs it, so he can go on masturbating with one hand while the other reaches his butt from behind and teases the opening with a finger.
“Aa-aahh...”
It’s quiet. The only other sounds apart from him are of horns and club music, but Kacchan hears him well and he hears Kacchan. He hears those same hoarse groans he usually lets out during foreplay, when they take spend the usual half-hour making out until their lips and tongues are consumed, grinding against each other; those grunts that make Izuku’s skin crawl in anticipation. He slips a finger in to the last knuckle. It doesn’t hold a candle to Kacchan’s fingers in the slightest, but he’s so desperate that he just makes do it with it. And Kacchan must be somewhere in New York, too, hiding behind the curtain of some window from which he can spy on Izuku, because incredibly he says:
“Move it”
Izuku obliges, moving his finger quickly inside as he pumps his throbbing erection with uncoordinated movements.
“Touch yourself, Deku. C’mon”
He couldn’t stop even if he wanted to – which he doesn’t. He chases his pleasure like a madman, spurred on by Kacchan’s sighs and moans as he chases his own. He closes his eyes and frowns in an almost pained expression, his mouth open while releasing little clouds of breath. It’s freezing outside, but he feels warm now. Warm like he hasn’t felt in days. Not since he stopped touching Kacchan, his Kacchan.
“Can you feel me?” asks Bakugo between gasps. “I’m inside you”
You’re always inside me, Izuku would want to say.
It takes only a few seconds before he comes. Hard. All the stress accumulated over a week is released in white spurts that stain his underwear and hand as he clenches around his finger.
“Better?” asks Bakugo, once he’s finished riding out his high.
No, he thinks.
“Yeah”
“Why are you crying, then?”
“I’m not crying”
“Deku”
“Sorry. I just...” Izuku runs a hand over his face, wiping the cheeks streaked with hot tears. “I miss you”
He doesn’t expect any sweet word from Kacchan, because that’s not how he works. And he’s fine with it. He accepted this years ago. He could do nothing but accept it because he has always loved him. And yet for once – it may be because of the distance, or because this is the first orgasm they gave each other in almost two weeks – Bakugo surprises him:
“Me too” he admits. “I miss you too. Fuck, Deku, I...”
He struggles as if finding the right words requires a tremendous effort from him, and perhaps it does. But he manages anyway, because he’s Kacchan:
“I can’t wait to see you again”
Izuku feels himself blushing like a 13-year-old boy on his first crush, and despite everything he can’t help but smile.
“Me too, Kacchan”
And then he realizes what the real problem is: it’s not just the sex. And it’s not just warmth. Kacchan fucks him better than anyone, it’s true: he knows which buttons to push and when to do it, knows how to make him want him even at the most inopportune times, even when they’re at dinner with their friends, or at the cinema, or a party; he knows precisely what Izuku needs, at all times and places, without Izuku ever saying it out loud. But it’s not just that. If it were, Izuku would have already put an end to it; he would have chosen Todoroki and given up on Kacchan forever. But there’s more.
The fact is that Kacchan knows him.
Todoroki has seen him weak: he has seen him collapse under the weight of the people he inevitably failed to save – because the first thing he learned once he became a hero was that his childhood motto was bullshit: no one can save everyone –; he has seen him snap when he failed to stand up for himself at work, ending up fighting colleague on duty. He listened to him cry, scream, complain. All of which Kacchan also did.
With one difference: Todoroki thinks Izuku is just that. He thinks he’s the future symbol of peace and number one hero, unbeatable and unreachable; a man forced to endure more, always a little more while he makes his way and grows, but destined for great things. A poor boy-angel with a pure heart who only turns into a beast when he fights. The perfect ideal for anyone.
But Izuku’s not just that. Sometimes Izuku makes mistakes. Sometimes he misunderstands people because he trusts too much, and is unable to see the rot in them. When he finds that he just can’t take it anymore he allows himself to explode in uncontrolled anger, to the point that he could make buildings collapse and open the streets in two if he wanted. Izuku is resentment and remorse, too. But Shouto doesn’t see these things. He, as well as All Might, Ochako, Iida and everyone else, sees him as the perfect being who never makes a mistake.
Kacchan, on the other hand, has always been able to look beyond that. He acknowledges him as the chosen hero – and over the years, as they struggled to rebuild their relationship into solid friendship and then love, he also acknowledged why he is the chosen hero –, but he also acknowledges him as a man. An ordinary man, beyond all else. Shouto and Kacchan both see his weaknesses, but only Kacchan sees his rotten side. And while he’s not sure that Shouto wouldn’t leave him if he ever saw it, Kacchan never left him.
So yes: he wishes he were there instead of Shouto. And not just to shake off the unease at night, in their private hotel room away from prying eyes, with one of their wild fucks that leave him breathless and completely spent; he would want him there all the time. He would want to be free to go out in daylight, walk close to him and fight alongside him, as it should have been from the start. He would like to be free to kiss him whenever and wherever he wants, to go grocery shopping with him as he groans in impatience while leaning against the cart, to cook with him only to end up arguing, to watch a cheap movie or a TV show on the couch and kiss him, breathe him. He would want a life, with him.
When they hang up, Izuku lets the icy night air tear him away from the warmth he’s sunk into and immediately heads for the bathroom to fix himself up. It takes him a short time, but he’s scared to get out and face Shouto, even though he’s still sleeping.
He gathers up his courage eventually and lies down slowly on the mattress, trying not to move it too much. Shouto turns to him with a yawn and opens one sleepy eye. The darkness of the room prevents him from reading the guilt in Izuku’s gaze.
“Were you awake?” he slurs.
Izuku clears his voice softly. “I was just getting some air” he whispers.
Shouto snuggles into him like he usually does, and Izuku feels like dying. He hopes he’s fallen right back asleep. He couldn’t handle a conversation now. And thankfully Shouto does, but not before murmuring an innocent, oblivious:
“You’re warm”