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Todoroki jerks as he’s thrusted back into his body at midnight, the same seconds of the old day ticking past, and then Bakugou curls his fingers and Todoroki is jerking for another reason altogether.
Liking boys is not new to Katsuki. Liking Todoroki Shouto, however, is an entirely different matter.
They were trained in disaster relief. Floods, landslides, and yeah - earthquakes. But the disaster is still happening all around him. Relief will come later.
For Katsuki, maybe it will never come at all.
“We’re fucking friends, aren’t we?”
“No,” Shouto says shortly. “You’ve made that very clear.”
“Well, you’re missing three years of memories, dickhead. Shit changes.”
Katsuki is in love with his roommate. It should be complicated.
It's not.
Shouto gets hit with a quirk that prevents him from sleeping and reality as he knows it, crumbles before him.
“I really like your hair,” he comments, pointing at the couple of strands that are purposely styled to resemble a porcupine. Bakugou’s expression doesn’t shift, if anything, it gets worse. His eyebrows are twitching now. “Oh,” Shouto adds, inspecting Bakugou’s face more carefully, “and your piercings. They suit you.”
“A few months or so,” Todoroki shrugs. “I can’t really remember. Bakugou started it.”
Midoriya snaps into an upright posture. He looks close to passing out.
“What?! K-Kacchan did?!”
“There’s nothing to root for! It’s a misunderstanding, alright? I don't fucking like Todoroki!” Katsuki exclaims for the nth time, with a slam of his fist on the table to punctuate his statement.
But no one’s fucking listening. No one ever is.
Bakugou joins a Young International Heroes Program in USA for six months and they start texting
Considering that information, Todoroki smiles. Knowingly. No longer so demure or polite for the people paying to support his work. That expression is raw. Real. Honed in on Katsuki.
“What about yours?”
“You got them? That’s good.”
No - it definitely is not good. A lifetime of bad emails is not what Bakugou signed up to. Not even for this gorgeous man he may or may not have had an attraction to for far too long.
“Listen up asshole - those emails were total fucking shit. If you’re gonna send me stuff at least do it properly. I ain’t gonna respond to any of your half-assed garbage. So you better up your fucking game.”
These days Katsuki’s two-step plan to avoiding his problems looks like this:
Step one: if a problem arises, the first course of action is explosions. (What? He’s an improved person not a new one, sometimes the best approach in life is the classic one.)
Step two: if step one fails, pretend like it worked. The problem is now dead to him, refuse to acknowledge its continued existence until it has the gall to try and blow up in his face.
He looks up at Todoroki through his eyelashes, and he can’t say anything of substance yet. Still catching his breath. So he whispers the word beautiful on an exhale, and lets himself really look at those eyes, and that scar, not at all cautious in what his expression gives away as he takes in everything Todoroki is.
“You’re delirious,” Todoroki notes, concerned, and Katsuki’s heart sinks thinking that’s the only way Todoroki can rationalize something like that being said to him.
There’s kids on the playground. Katsuki pays ’em no mind. But Todoroki looks back at what they’re doing—piggyback rides—and faintly frowns.
When Katsuki gets to their bedroom, avoiding the creaky floorboard once again, he opens the door as quietly as he can.
Shouto’s in bed, spread out diagonally. Stupid long limbs tangled up in their blankets, face pressed into one pillow with another tucked right up behind him. Katsuki thinks he knows why and the thought aches.
Looking at him, he doesn’t feel like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin for the first time in almost 24 hours.
“Look at me, asshole,” and it’s a little too quiet for Katsuki’s voice, but the same curling vowels, the same husky quality Shouto has seared into his memories.
Shouto squints at him and pulls his hands in front of his body, running his fingers lightly along the back of his other hand to his wrist. Slow.
Breath hitching, Bakugou clenches a fist. His palms are sweatier than they were before.
“I’m getting married.”
The words don’t quite fit in his mouth, bigger and more beautiful than anything he can possibly string together by himself. But that's fine because they made it together, made this happen together.
It’s stupid. You’re a fucking idiot. It’s just a dumb orange. They’re not even good.
“I really like oranges,” he says, because of course he does. He picks up the one you offered to the empty desk, same as yesterday. “Thank you. I’m Todoroki Shouto.”
“You absolute fuckface,” Katsuki says, with all the love and adoration that makes a long lasting marriage, “you’ve bought us a fucking haunted house."
“Your hair looks real fucking nice.”
“I thought it was about time I grew it out,” Todoroki says, something wistful caught in his voice. “You were always saying I should.”
That’s true. And Bakugou is satisfied to know he was right about it looking good, but it’s not like he can share that with the fucking class anymore.
Shouto’s been a nanny for the last few years and is well versed in both kids and their high maintenance parents. He’s worried he may have finally met his match in “perpetual problem child” Kota—only to find out they get along perfectly.
His dad might be a problem, though.
The first time Katsuki tried to skate on ice ended up with him flailing his tiny hands, falling on his ass more times than he'd like to admit, and maybe a stray tear or two. Maybe. Everyone knows Bakugou Katsuki doesn't cry.
"Open your eyes, Icyhot," Bakugou said, voice a loud rumble over the engine’s roar. "You're missing out."
Shouto's reply was lost in the wind so he resorted to shaking his head.
They came to a stop at a red light, and Shouto felt a soft rap against his helmet. He opened his eyes a smidge, staring up to meet Bakugou's red ones.
"It's safe, Halfie," Bakugou said, and despite Shouto still feeling queasy, he trusted him.
Todoroki gets hit with a quirk that makes him sick unless a particular person is touching him. And that particular person just happens to be Bakugou Katsuki.
“Don’t you have better things to do than flirt with some stranger you met at the hospital, pretty boy?”
Katsuki’s throat feels dry. “Do what?”
“Look at me,” Todoroki says, “and kind of—space out?”
Ah. So he does notice.
“Oh,” Katsuki says. “It’s, uh—it’s because—”
“Do I bore you?” Todoroki asks, tone completely, utterly serious.
Before Shouto can even open his mouth to respond—he’s waffling between “Like what?” for maximum Bakugou-annoyance or “It’s the trauma.” because of the one time it made Kaminari laugh so hard he cried—Bakugou is already talking over him, scrubbing a hand down his face and sighing like talking to Shouto is the hardest thing he’s ever done.
Deku shakes his head to himself and pushes right past that claim. “I tried to get you to start knitting with me last year and every few months since then but you’re going to start because of your hot friend telling you about an old wives’ tale?
“He’s not fuckin’ hot,” Katsuki grumbles, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer finger. “And it’s a curse, get it right.”
Todoroki won’t eat anything peach flavored and likes his water exactly room temperature. He won’t let Katsuki make their tea because “he does it wrong” even though he does it absolutely right. He once made Katsuki listen to voice recordings of one of his cats meowing at different times of the day to “see if she sounded more melancholy earlier in the morning.” For being like, kind of jacked, his hips and shoulders and elbows are bony as fuck. He, as a rule, has to sleep on the right side of the bed or he can’t sleep at all. Katsuki fucking hates him.
“Why are you the person taking me home?” The car jerks forward the second the light turns green. “Why not- literally anyone else?”
“We’re fucking friends, aren’t we?”
“No,” Shouto says shortly. “You’ve made that very clear.”
“Well, you’re missing three years of memories, dickhead. Shit changes.”
“He tripped over me.” Todoroki just sounds bored. “Then insulted me. Then kissed me. In that order.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not letting you go. I quite like being in my own body.” Todoroki's next breath comes out icy cold, and Katsuki leans as far back as their joint hands will allow.
“Are you fucking hearing yourself?” he sputters, feeling heat crawl up his neck to his ears.
“Don’t you think Bakugou is pretty?”
Todoroki looked up, after having apparently caused the untimely deaths of his three friends. Uraraka was doubled over, clutching her throat as bits of food sprayed from her wheezing mouth, Iida had somehow mini-Recipro Bursted his way through the floorboards and was struggling to get back out of the crater, and Midoriya… Midoriya looked like he needed an ambulance. Or an immediate blood transfusion at least, his face was so white.
dec 25 2024 +