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“It looks awful,” Katsuki said to him.
“And whose fault do you think that is?” Shoto snapped, pressing crumpled-up tissue to his mouth.
What Shoto really wanted to do in this moment was laugh right in his face; but his bottom lip throbbed, and Katsuki was worrying his own between his teeth, looking genuinely mortified, and—Shoto wanted to laugh at that. He realised it wasn’t a good look on him, if he were to burst out laughing at how Katsuki was making a face probably no one else had ever seen before: morbid embarrassment coloured high on his cheeks in splotchy red, the darkened vale between his brows, and now pointedly looking everywhere but at the damning thing he’d just inflicted on Shoto.
The hour that preceded this was beautiful and surreal, like looking into the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles and seeing thousands of your own smiling, flushed-happy expressions waving back at you. It had rained heavily but stopped just in time for Katsuki to poke his head in through Shoto’s door, mouth already wide open to tell him to hurry the fuck up. Their classmates had been in the common room, reading and drinking something cold in their bedroom slippers as the two of them inched out of the door, trying to be as discreet as possible.
“Fix this,” Shoto said to Katsuki, even though he was perfectly capable of doing it himself. He hurled the tissue at Katsuki. He ducked, and the tissue crumpled to the floor pathetically.
“Don’t throw your disgusting body fluids at me, you fucking—”
“Fix this,” Shoto repeated. He wanted to smile so badly, but if he did the wound would only split open again. “It’s your fault. I want compensation.”
It looked like Katsuki was going to freeze up and storm back into his room, his face so red it looked like steam was going to come out of his ears—so Shoto braced for the inevitable sting as he pressed his finger to his bottom lip, forcing Katsuki to look at what he just did.
“Fuck,” he hissed, glaring one last time at Shoto before pushing past him and going down the stairs. “Fucking—fuck, fine. Don’t get in my way.”
They got to the kitchen and Katsuki yanked the fridge door open, the things inside rattling from the force of it. Katsuki reached for a packet of soba noodles.
It’d taken Shoto three dates with Yaoyorozu to figure out that this wasn’t it, and a fourth to realise that she wasn’t even aware that Shoto had been taking her out on dates at all.
On their last not-date-date, he’d tried to kiss her, just to see what it felt like—and was met with the smooth skin of her cheek, because she’d mistaken him leaning in for an innocent goodnight kiss. You’re a really good guy, Todoroki, she’d said, reaching up to ruffle his hair. Hanging out with you is fun, I don’t care what anyone says.
He hadn’t stopped taking Yaoyorozu out for meals, but he did drag his feet through the weeks that followed; the leaves were starting to change, summer blurring into fall.
They had another scrimmage with Class 3-B—he was paired with Kirishima and they won by a small margin. It had been a good one; when he returned to the viewing platform, everyone was laughing to some degree. Kaminari and Midoriya crashed into his chest, whooping and grinning up at him (Todoroki, you’re the worst!), Shinso’s mouth was doing something weird to stifle his giggles, and Katsuki—was doubled over on his knees, arms around his stomach as he laughed and laughed and laughed, way louder than anyone else.
Later, when they were drying off in the showers, Shoto’s phone pinged.
Kirishima Eijiro
[18:02]
[nasty as fuck knee to the crotch.gifv]
mina converted it into a gif!!
ur a fucking monster dude
Shoto replayed the grainy, mute footage of it, but he swore he could still hear the loud booming sound of Katsuki laughing. It was rare to hear him snort even out of spite nowadays, much less pure, unadulterated laughter at something Shoto had done. Katsuki hadn’t so much as cracked a smile when Tetsutetsu accidentally nailed Midoriya right in the chest in an attempt to recreate what Shoto did earlier.
“You were real fucking mean out there, Halfie.”
That was the closest to a compliment Shoto would ever receive from Katsuki. He was sitting on a bench and crossed his ankles over each other, peering up at Katsuki who was leaning over him, into baleful eyes and a sneer.
“Yeah? So were you.”
Katsuki straightened up and tapped a finger to his chin, pretending to think. “Oh, really? Huh, you don’t say. Me, mean as fuck? Nah.” His hair was slicked back from his face, droplets from his bath glittering along his hairline and a towel was snug around his shoulders.
It was there—Shoto could swear it, on everything holy—it was there, the smallest of tilts in the corners of his mouth which everyone else might write off as his usual sneer, except it wasn’t. It really wasn't; Katsuki was giving him the barest of smiles, right after giving him the barest of compliments.
Shoto started sweating.
Katsuki turned to leave, and the cotton of his joggers brushed Shoto’s knee and seared right into his bones.
Shoto sat on the island, far away from where Katsuki was wielding a knife and working on green onions. There was nothing else to do, so he swung his heels downwards into the panelling in an obvious attempt to annoy Katsuki.
“Will you fucking quit doing that?!” Katsuki jabbed the knife blindly in Shoto’s direction. His feet stilled.
“You’re taking too long. Where’s my apology?”
“I’m working on it, you fucking—” Katsuki closed his eyes in exasperation and let out a deep sigh, setting the knife down so he could pinch the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. Shoto liked this so much; getting to annoy Katsuki and being on the receiving end of not too much yelling or death threats was a privilege granted to practically no one else. “I’m making your damn food literally right in front of your eyes. Fuck off and quit bugging me.”
Shoto ignored him, hopping off the island and standing right behind Katsuki, who stilled and hissed at the contact of Shoto dropping his face into the crook of his shoulder, careful to avoid busting his lip back up. “I can’t do anything if you’re draped over me like this, bastard.” Shoto ignored him again for a moment, nosing along the collar of his shirt and breathing deep.
“Sure you can. Look, you’re back to chopping the green stuff.”
“It’s called green onions, you Neanderthal.”
(Something sparked in Shoto’s mind, drawing something out of his hippocampus: a memory like this one from three days ago, one which ended with Katsuki standing quite close to him and complaining very loudly about how useless Shoto was in the kitchen.
They were making pasta, he remembered, a large batch for those on the fourth and fifth floors. Mina had shoved a cutting board into his hand and dangled a stalk of chives in his face, before going off to argue with Kirishima about what meat they should use. Sero was tittering around Katsuki, who was slaving over the sauce.
Earlier in the day, Katsuki had done it again—a light brush of knuckles over Shoto’s bicep when he was over by the sink, splashing water on his face. It had startled him so badly, shocking as an ice cube sliding down his spine. He could never quite figure out if it was a good or a bad thing that Katsuki had always been bold enough to touch his bare skin.
It was all Shoto could think about as he sliced through the chives, fingers curled over the stem and wondering what was wrong with them both, when he was suddenly aware of Katsuki right beside him.
“How many times have you shamed your sister with this, Halfie?”
Shoto had probably been cutting the chives wrong again. The slender bones of Katsuki’s hand curled over his for a half-second longer than necessary, before he yanked the knife outwards and upwards and left Shoto’s hand trembling around nothing.
There was no bite or hostility in Katsuki’s voice as he started bitching about Shoto’s non-existent culinary skills. He didn’t know what to do with his hands after that because Katsuki hadn’t given him anything else to do, so he laced his fingers together, hoping to God he wasn’t red to his hairline.)
Shoto wasn’t too sure where this came from. He sat in the middle of the white-sheeted bed, hugging one of the pillows to his chest and smashing his stupid, grinning face into it.
It started a few weeks ago and it was starting again, even at the end of this week-long training camp at the base of some far-off mountain. At the end of that first day, when Shoto was stuffing his shower products into his bag and felt something soft and warm brush at his elbow, his first instinct had been to smack it away and say Mineta, please leave me alone, I didn’t bring any aftershave with me. He turned to see the disgusted scrunch of Katsuki’s face glaring at him.
“Gross,” Katsuki said. “I don’t want your fucking aftershave. I just need some of your bandages.”
“I’m sure there’s a nicer way of asking me that.” Shoto knew he was probably crossing some kind of invisible line with that demand, one that he wasn’t sure where it started or ended, or if it even still existed because Katsuki wasn’t glaring at him anymore.
“Are you going to give me the bandages or not? I can always ask someone—”
Shoto pushed a roll of bandages into Katsuki’s blister-filled palms, along with a bottle of codeine before fleeing.
When he realised it first started—he’d tried explaining what it was to Natsuo and Fuyumi, only for Natsuo to laugh and roll around like Katsuki did that one time, and for Fuyumi to look at Shoto with amusement in her eyes—he’d been prepared for the novelty of it all to wear off within the week. Katsuki had started appearing like a ghost when Shoto least expected it, fingers and skin glancing off his own—a full two-palmed shove into his bare shoulder blades so that Shoto became a human barrier between Katsuki and the other sweaty, half-naked boys roughhousing before a bath, or jabbing the tips of his fingers into Shoto’s chest before they participated in a scrimmage against each other, just because he could.
And even when he wasn’t touching Shoto and doing his fucking head in, Katsuki would just be there—lingering in the edges of his vision, brushing sweat from his face or tugging at the knot in his school tie.
The worst thing was that Katsuki didn’t even seem to notice it, and would continue life as usual; all while being ignorant of the way Shoto’s heart, that weak thing that betrayed him, would start slamming itself against his ribcage, like a bird beating its wings to escape.
That was the worst part, surely, because Katsuki was carrying on normally, while it reduced Shoto to hiding his face in a pillow to avoid seeing his own sappy, lovelorn expression in the mirror.
He thought it was strangely remarkable that he hadn’t splintered under all of this, this feeling he thought he experienced with Yaoyorozu but had actually been the exact opposite. Fuyumi assured him it was normal, amidst Natsuo’s cackles. Those not-date-dates with Yaoyorozu had taught him almost nothing, which was disappointing—and Shoto liked her, but not in the way he liked the feeling of Katsuki’s palms on him, or the feeling that sparked in his chest at the dumb, tiny smile Katsuki had given him, because he was also fucking stingy. A miracle, definitely, that Shoto was still completely intact.
He grabbed his suitcase and resumed packing. Well, can’t think about all that now, he thought to himself, shoving a face towel into an already stuffed-full compartment, there’s still plenty of time for all of whatever this is to blow up in my face.
The door to the room creaked open and in stepped Katsuki, peering round the wall like he had every right to be there. He was standing directly in the 7pm sun slinging through the window.
“Oi, Todoroki.”
The autumn weekends hit him hard as an injection, which was odd, because all anyone did was laze around in the common room in the afternoons, before moving to laze around outside the building in the evenings.
Sometimes it rained and sometimes it didn’t, but when Saturday evenings were dry Iida would bring out the portable grills that Yaoyorozu created and everyone would head outside, no matter how cold or windy it was.
At first, Shoto hadn’t been too interested in participating in this—the first two weekends it happened there’d been a sudden drop in the mercury, so he used that as an excuse to completely bypass all the chummy, homely scenes of his classmates huddled together—until that third weekend when Midoriya and Uraraka cornered him and gleefully shoved their phones in his faces, opened to the weather app.
“Todoroki.”
There it was again. Shoto was standing in the kitchen, white-knuckling the edge of the countertop, paralysed with something he still hadn’t put his finger on. Katsuki’s fingers had clipped off his elbow, and even though he’d predicted it this time, it still didn’t stop him from springing up.
“Your sister sent me something new. Come help so I can show her how shit you are in the kitchen.”
Katsuki’s phone was opened to a chain of text messages between himself and Fuyumi, all of which were just recipes and blunt exchanges of i liked it or it tasted like shit, wtf?
The newest one was short and bullet-pointed, from Fuyumi, detailing how to make some sort of dipping sauce for barbequing their chicken skewers. The first sentence was u can make this one, i think shoto likes it and he decided to stop reading any further.
“Stop hitting on my sister,” he said.
Katsuki was holding a basting brush and a metal bowl, and Shoto was thankful he’d chosen this time to say that because the brush was jabbed into his forehead.
Mina had been in the kitchen with them, rummaging around and freaking out because she couldn’t find the cider that she wanted, but for the most part they were left alone after she ran off. And Katsuki still kept touching him, soft skimming of a finger poking into his wrist or brushing his shoulder to reach for a spoon, there and then gone like the soft whispers of a barely-there memory; like he had given Katsuki explicit permission to touch him all along.
“Maybe you can teach me one day. How to cook on my own,” Shoto had said. He had no idea where that sudden bout of bravery came from.
They’d finished making the sauce and Shoto was just standing there, feeling stupid—stupidly stupid, why were his stupid empty hands not doing anything—stupidly, he scrunched his fingers into the hem of his shirt. One of Katsuki’s hands was gloved and he was moodily stabbing cubed chicken meat onto sticks. He paused to look at Shoto.
“…You know. So I can be not shit in the kitchen.”
Katsuki considered him for a long, long time. Then: “Yeah. Maybe.”
It rained on the day Shoto and Katsuki had their first date, only stopping a few moments before they left the dorm. Katsuki was wearing a snapback, a tuft of his hair poking through the closure and Shoto wanted to tug at it, which he did. Katsuki slapped his hand away.
Halfway through their second plate of kebabs, even Shoto could tell it was a terrible date.
It was so terrible that he couldn’t help smiling through it all. His cheeks hurt from smiling so much—he didn’t even know it was possible for his face to hurt from doing that. They weren’t even doing anything; Katsuki for some reason was absolutely refusing to talk to him, hiding his face behind the menu half the time. Shoto clutched at his aching cheeks and kicked at Katsuki’s leg from under the table, looking at where Katsuki was peeking at him from between his fingers, red-faced but still scowling.
“Stop laughing at me, jerkwad.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Yes you are.”
“I’m not!”
Shoto sat up straighter in his seat. A woman singing about her cheating boyfriend trickled down from somewhere above them. The lighting in the restaurant, like how their date was going, wasn’t great, and Christ, Shoto thought the two of them really needed to get it together.
Shoto was lightly tapping his shoe against Katsuki’s, which he thankfully didn’t seem to mind. He leaned forward in his seat. “See? I’m not laughing.”
The asphalt was still slick with rainwater when they left the restaurant, colourful from the reflecting streetlamps and gigantic billboards. Katsuki still wasn’t speaking, wasn’t even looking at Shoto; his hands were shoved in his pockets and he was stomping ahead as he usually did with singlemindedness, as if being called forward by some unstoppable force like the Moirai. Back in the restaurant, watching Katsuki struggle with—well, everything—had been funny. Cute, even, but Shoto didn’t think Katsuki wanted to hear that. But now, for once in his life, he couldn’t stand the silence.
“Can I hold your hand?” he asked.
“What?”
“Can I hold your hand?”
Katsuki slowed, but he didn’t stop walking. He looked confused and terribly disturbed. Shoto wanted so badly to tug at his hair again.
Katsuki sucked his bottom lip between his lip and released it. “This,” he sighed out, with all the flare and exhaustion of someone finding out their cat had scratched up the couch, “didn’t go how I thought it would.”
“I’ve been on four non-dates with Yaoyorozu, and all of them were better than this.”
Katsuki glared at him, red high in cheeks. Goddamn. He was in technicolour now, flickering under the streetlamps that never seemed bright enough.
“Can I hold your hand?” Shoto asked for what felt like the thousandth time.
“Oh my God, you are so fucking annoying,” Katsuki hissed out, but he took a hand out from his pocket, and—didn’t offer it to Shoto. It stayed stubbornly at his side in a fist, and Shoto reached out and tried prying the fingers apart. He had to settle for awkwardly resting his hand over it, not quite fitting together. He squeezed the tip of Katsuki’s thumb, the only finger that he hadn’t hidden in his fist. Well, it was something, at least.
“This is your fault,” Shoto told him. “You were the one who asked me out on this date.”
They stood right outside their building, where anyone could fling the door open and see—Katsuki, with his hands gripping Shoto’s shoulders too-tight, holding him at arm’s length. He realised it would probably look stupid as hell to outside eyes, and to him it felt worse in the best possible way; Katsuki was holding him on purpose, so unlike the usual grazing of his hands or fingers for not a second longer, that the fact of it made Shoto snap upright and lock his knees in place.
“Can I kiss you?” Katsuki asked, and the floor fell away from under Shoto’s feet.
“Uh,” he stammered intelligently, “what?”
Katsuki squinted at him, then took a step forward. Shoto took a step back, more out of reflex than anything. Katsuki rolled his eyes and took another step forward, negating whatever miniscule distance Shoto had accidentally put between them. “I don’t hear a no.”
Shoto’s heart was beating so hard he was sure the bottom of the ocean could hear it. He opened his mouth to form either a yes or another what?, but he couldn’t be sure, because Katsuki hadn’t waited for an answer and already leaned in.
Something sharp rattled in Shoto’s head—he realised it was the clack of their teeth together, once he closed his eyes. Katsuki’s hands had gone from his shoulders to his face, his palms gentle as early morning sunlight. Shoto never knew he was capable of doing something so soft and sweet, of holding something in his hands like he didn’t want to break it.
Katsuki’s mouth was moving faster than his own, which felt weird, and it was warm and wet, which was alright—but oh, the way Katsuki was holding his face, on purpose, and holding it gently, also on purpose—Shoto reached for his nape.
Katsuki jerked forward at the touch like a startled animal, lips parting a little around a sharp inhale, and when they crashed again, Shoto’s bottom lip somehow got caught between Katsuki’s teeth. They both jumped away at the sudden metallic taste, pain blooming bright in Shoto’s lip.
“Ow,” he grumbled, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. When he pulled back to look at it, there was red. “Oh, that’s…wait, Katsuki, wait—”
But he’d already disappeared inside, so quick that when Shoto threw the door open after him, he was already halfway up the stairs, fluttering past the banister, not bothering with the lift. There were a couple people in the common room but they all ignored Katsuki, used to all his moods that they were forced to be subjected to after almost three years. But Shoto didn’t usually slam doors and run in the dorm, and so felt all eyes on him as he gave chase, knocking on Katsuki’s already-closed room door, hollering through it.
“Todoroki? The hell is going on?” Kaminari was standing in the landing. He must have followed them up, and Shoto prayed he was the only one who did so.
Shoto thumbed his bottom lip. It stung horribly. “The asshole busted my fucking lip open.”
“What, like in a fight?”
“I—no, what?” Shoto realised Kaminari was mistaking his disastrous post-kiss panic for anger. “No, we weren’t fighting, he ki—”
“Shut up!” Katsuki shouted through the door.
Shoto continued banging on it, ignoring Kaminari and threatening to tell everyone what really happened. Katsuki opened the door and pulled him through, before quickly slamming him back against it. He was backlit against a single lamp, and Shoto couldn’t really see his face.
“Are you fucking insane?” Katsuki barked out, hands twisted into the front of Shoto’s shirt.
“You,” he said, bringing his blood-encrusted thumb up to his lip again, “are a terrible date.”
Katsuki released him and took a step back. It took a moment for Shoto’s eyes to adjust to the dark; Katsuki had taken his cap off and his hair looked lumpy and weird from being squished underneath it, and he was staring at Shoto’s fucked-up lip.
“Oh my God, stop fucking squeezing it like that, I get it, I can see it—”
“Why’re you even angry at me?” Shoto demanded. “You bit me. I should be angry at you.”
It had been a terrible date, and it was a terrible kiss. But Shoto wasn’t angry. Where anger should have materialised, there was only his thoughts going: wow, I want all of that again. I want to kiss him again, his heart beating around the shape of those words which Shoto knew was incredibly pathetic, and would probably make Natsuo laugh even more. How fucking stupid is that?
Katsuki still hadn’t turned on the main overhead light, and for good reason too. Even in the semidarkness, Shoto could see that his initial anger had fallen away to spotlight his dreary embarrassment, still staring at the bloody mess on Shoto’s face. He leaned away to grab a pack of tissues from his bedside table, tossing it to Shoto.
“You’re going to have to apologise to me,” he said, smiling into the tissue.
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“Yeah you do, unless you want me to tell everyone what a horrible kisser—”
“Stop,” Katsuki interrupted loudly. Shoto was weak in the knees, now that the adrenaline of being kissed into a bloody lip and having to run after the attacker had worn off. And Katsuki smelled so nice.
Shoto hadn’t taken into account that that was probably Katsuki’s first kiss, too. Neither of them knew what were they doing.
“This is the worst night of my life,” Katsuki told him.
“No, it’s not,” Shoto argued, watching as Katsuki reached past him to open the door, letting the light spill inside. The both of them peeked around—Kaminari had disappeared and the corridor and landing were both empty of people. Katsuki stepped into the light in all his frenzied, blood-kissed embarrassment.
“It is not the worst night of your life,” Shoto repeated, following after Katsuki and closing the door behind them. Shoto grabbed his wrist. “It’s not.”
Whenever Katsuki made soba for him—which the intervals of when this happened gradually started getting shorter and shorter—Shoto would notice that Katsuki would linger around, like he was expecting a thank you. Which Shoto always provided, saying it so softly that most times he wasn’t sure if Katsuki could hear him; somehow he always did, and would roll his eyes or wrinkle his entire face in faux-disgust.
Once Katsuki poured the broth over the noodles, Shoto snatched the bowl from him. He looked a little miffed but didn’t say anything, and only watched in tense irritation as chopsticks and spoon started scraping into the bottom of the bowl.
“Is it okay now?”
“It’s fine.” Shoto pulled at his bottom lip, now numb from how long he’d pressed an ice shard from his finger into it. He showed it to Katsuki, who leaned forward for a look. “I still don’t hear an apology from you.”
Katsuki immediately scowled, and pointed to the now-empty bowl. “That was it.”
The tension between them had been so thick, crackling in the air like livewire, that it successfully deterred anyone from coming within ten feet of the kitchen. Kaminari had tried, probably to ask them what happened earlier, or to ask why Shoto was pressing himself into Katsuki from behind, but Katsuki looked up from the stove and glared at him so hard that he shrieked and scampered off.
Shoto had gone back to sitting on the island and from across the common room, Yaoyorozu caught his eye and raised her eyebrows in question. If there was one thing their non-dates taught him, it was that for the sake of clarity and straightforwardness, he should just come out and say what his intentions were.
“I want to kiss you again.”
Katsuki made a noise in the back of his throat like a drowning rat. “What? Why?”
“Because,” Shoto insisted, “I liked it.”
“You liked that I made you bleed?”
“Don’t be a pervert,” he snapped. “You know what I mean.”
Katsuki had gone back to gnawing on his bottom lip. At least he looked like he was contemplating it, or so Shoto hoped. He was so giddy at the prospect of it happening again that when he hopped off the island, his ankle twisted painfully below him and he crashed right into Katsuki’s legs.
“See?” Katsuki said, propping Shoto up against the panelling. “Worst night of my life. And yours.”
Katsuki had no excuse now—they were hidden behind the island and the only way anyone would see them was if they needed cutlery or something from the fridge. Shoto grabbed him by the biceps and Katsuki pitched forward, catching himself by slamming a hand into the island’s panelling.
“Kiss it better,” Shoto demanded, sticking his bottom lip out.
“You’re crazy.”
“C’mon, Bakugo—Katsuki,” Shoto sighed out. “I can probably call you that now.” He closed his eyes and leaned forward. His mouth found an awkward angle at the side of Katsuki’s jaw, and he made a wet, kissy noise against it. Katsuki jerked away. “Yaoyorozu did that to me, too,” he said, “when she didn’t even know I was trying to woo her.”
“That word sounds so disgusting coming out of your mouth.” But Katsuki was already rearranging his hand over Shoto’s face, a perfect pad of warmth pressing into his right cheek. His other hand was still braced against the panelling by Shoto’s head, so that he could balance on the balls of his feet from where he squatted awkwardly.
Katsuki exhaled sharply through his nose, pressing a thumb into Shoto’s bottom lip, right beside the wound. “If I kiss it better,” he mocked, “will you promise not to tell anyone about this?”
“Yeah, sure—”
There was a soft mouth on his, a nose squashed against his.
Shoto’s hands melted into Katsuki’s hair.
They moved easier now, much slower and hesitant—no need to make Shoto even more of an idiot than he already was. They still didn’t know what to do with their mouths, and Shoto was half-afraid Katsuki would lurch forward again and open another wound; but nothing very much happened, and apart from the awkward, stuttering way they were moving, trying to figure all of this out, Katsuki’s tongue poked through and it drew out a small gasp from Shoto. Katsuki pulled away, before it got too much; before it flayed open something in Shoto’s chest that he wasn’t ready to look at yet, no matter how much he wanted this.
Shoto was smiling again.
So was Katsuki—and not the tiny, stingy one he first gave Shoto, as though he was hoarding his real and big smile for something important. Saving it for the worst night of his life, Shoto supposed. A smile that was wide and bright and radiant as a star.