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Shoto knew he was in over his head.
From across a pile of debris, Katsuki straightened up and smiled at him. His nose was smeared with soot and there was a very pretty rose-gold flush across his cheeks, pupils dilated with the adrenaline of it all.
Didja know, Todoroki, Midoriya had said, twiddling his thumbs in that thoughtful way that immediately set Shoto on edge, that if you stand in front of a mirror and repeat ‘I have a ginormous, massive, big fat crush on Kacchan’ three times, he appears behind you and sucker punches you?
It had been months of that, and also of shuffling back and forth between Bakugo likes me, Bakugo likes me not, Bakugo likes me, Bakugo likes me not—because they kept running into each other during patrols, or when they were sent to a crime scene at the same time, and Katsuki was somehow always okay with Shoto being there; Shoto would feel something strange criss-cross inside his chest, and that was okay too. The way Katsuki would sometimes look at him in those moments would be too overwhelming, too much to bear, and Shoto knew he was in over his head.
He’d been starting to think that Midoriya was on to something, at least the part about standing in front of his mirror but only to give himself pep talks—because by the time Katsuki would touch his arm before leaving, Shoto’s carefully rehearsed plans for a goodbye kiss would be dashed to pieces on the asphalt between them.
So when he finally mustered up the courage to ask Katsuki out for brunch, with his right hand pressed to a bump on Katsuki's forehead after they'd been called to deal with robbers, and Katsuki had said yes—of course I'll go out with you, you dolt, have you finally grown a pair?—Shoto panicked and froze the left side of his head.
In hindsight, Katsuki loved to remind him, that had probably been the universe's way of putting its foot down and telling Shoto that no, he was not cut out to date someone amazing and special and incredible like Katsuki (in his own words), and if Shoto really wanted to, he was going to have to work for it, and—
"You know I'm still gonna make you work for it, right?" Katsuki had told him, eyes crinkling in the corners after Shoto apologised profusely, melted the ice off and promptly waited for explosions which didn't come. "Since I can't sue you for emotional distress and negligence, you ice-cold bastard, I thought you already liked me all the way back in second year when you asked me to meet your mom!"
But even after their first date, which ended abruptly when Katsuki placed his hand above Shoto’s where it was toggling the gearstick, causing him to freak out and crash his father’s I’m-sorry-for-abusing-you apology car into a telephone pole—Katsuki had said yes to a second one.
He said yes to a third one, after their second one had been interrupted by Endeavour tracking them all the way to Chino just to yell at them about the car in the middle of the museum, among the glass aisles of Jomon pottery; the memory of stepping behind Katsuki and bunching up the fabric of his shirt to hide his mortified face into it, even as Katsuki rolled his eyes and took the brunt of Endeavour’s long-winded sermon, still made Shoto want to tear his hair out in embarrassment.
And the third one was what made Katsuki start to advertise how bad Shoto was at dating, practically walking around with a neon Todoroki Shoto is doing an awful job at seducing me! sign floating above his head like a halo.
And Katsuki had agreed to a fourth one anyway, scuffing the tip of his shoe against the swirly pattern of the arcade flooring, as workers glared at them and swept up a pile of exploded plastic and burnt gacha boxes—because Shoto was convinced those claw machines were rigged and had lost his temper, accidentally activating both his Quirks at the same time and somehow managing a small Dynamight-esque explosion—you know what, yeah, let’s go on another one. Why the hell not, your ability to fuck up literally all our dates has been more entertaining than whatever else I do on the weekends.
Their fourth one—and Shoto was still counting, still keeping track of how many yeses Katsuki could stomach before he inevitably blocked Shoto everywhere, and walked out of his life for good—came to a dramatic close when someone with a lightning Quirk thought it was funny to start busting up the mall they were at.
Katsuki started picking his way over the debris, to where Shoto was sitting dazed on a half-blasted bench.
“You know,” Katsuki said, coming to a stop in front of him, “I’ve been thinking that maybe you’re not cut out for this.”
“Stop.”
“Have you heard about this thing called Murphy’s Law—”
“Stop!”
“—where anything that can go wrong will go wrong?”
Other than the partially-destroyed ground floor of the mall, the smell of burnt-everything, and the voice in Shoto's head screaming he deserves someone better, someone who’s funny and socially-adept and can plan perfect dates, someone like oh, I don’t know, Kirishima?, nothing about this felt wrong, at least not to Shoto, because Katsuki’s grin was devastating—devastatingly handsome and playful, the bright mile-wide of it lancing right through Shoto’s heart like a sunbeam.
His heart ached. His head ached. His hands were heavy, and he thought that the two of them had already been here before. Here, and here, and here, failed date after failed date and still, Katsuki had said yes three more times. It was bewildering how quickly he’d started embracing Shoto into his peculiar, Byzantine life, like he’d always been an old fixture there. Katsuki knelt down in front of him and rested his forearms and chin on Shoto’s knees, his expression a mask of amusement.
“Everyone’s favourite rookie hero, the best demonstrator of Murphy’s Law,” Katsuki teased.
The ability to poke fun at each other—that was something they had now. Shoto looked down at him. So badly he wanted, he wanted, he wanted. And he really wanted this: Katsuki with his eyes unfocused and Bambiesque, the abstract fluttering of his hair, the slim fingers brushing it out of his face. Shoto was definitely in over his head.
“You’re going to get wrinkles from smiling like that,” Shoto said to him.
“Who’s the fuckin’ pathetic idiot smiling now, huh?” Katsuki stood up and reached out to squeeze Shoto’s cheeks together. “I won’t get wrinkles. I’ll be part of Friday’s top ten hottest rookies forever, don’t you know that?”
It was easy to forget that they’d been forced into a fight on their precious day off, that they were surrounded by the angry voices of the policemen and the wails of frightened children clinging to the pantlegs of their parents, when Shoto found himself looking at a bird’s-eye view he’d recently come to be familiar with: Katsuki with his hip cocked to one side, still smiling crazily at him after yet another disastrous evening, an immaculate hand extended towards his chest.
Shoto took it and brought it to his mouth. Like the rest of Katsuki, it smelled like melted plastic, but also—sweet burnt-sugar. Nitroglycerine.
"Come on, halfie. This date wasn't as bad as the others. At least it got caught on camera that I beat that guy's ass and totally showed you up today." Katsuki wandered over to a life-size cardboard cutout of a Hero with an oval hole for a face, one of the few things in the mall that was miraculously untouched. Katsuki stuck his face through the hole. "Think today will finally help me beat you out of the 21 and Under rankings? Maybe even edge me over this guy right here?" Katsuki jiggled cardboard Kamui Woods by its shoulders.
He was in a Wax London shirt and black bomber jacket, fabric crinkled from all the fighting he did, the soot from earlier still smeared across his nose.
They had already been here before, Shoto realised. Katsuki slapped the cutout on the chest and made his way back over, parking himself right beside Shoto on the bench where he'd stubbornly refused to move from once the fight was over. There was hardly any bench left from where the lightning had somehow sliced half of it clean off, and they were pressed shoulder to elbow to hip to knee; the pocket of time after everything where Katsuki would try to cheer him up.
Because Katsuki was good, even if he didn't want to admit it. He was everything good in the world if you asked Shoto after a few drinks, or while he gnawed on a thumb and looked up one-way flight tickets to anywhere else outside of Japan, because he'd be hit with a sudden wave of self-resentment and could only think to himself, I'm embarrassing and the universe was right in saying Bakugo is too good for me, I should set him up on a date with Kirishima because they definitely had a thing in our first year, except I'll probably fuck even that up too—but Katsuki had continued staying for him and with him, squeezing his hand and Shoto was a terrible person for counting the dates and the yeses.
"I'm sorry," Shoto mumbled to the floor anyway, chin tucked into the collar of his button-down. One policeman was already starting to make his way over to them, tablet out to take down the initial report. Behind him, the lightning user with his hands in cuffs, scowled at Shoto. He was tempted to scowl right back, but that was more Katsuki's thing, and Katsuki was looping his arm through Shoto's and smiling a hole right into the deepest part of his heart.
"I don't believe you," Katsuki whispered, threading their fingers together. "I don't believe you, Todoroki. I don't believe that you're sorry for taking me out on a date."
Katsuki was still held up in one of the rooms at the police station, finishing up his report with the officers. Seeing him being herded off was nothing new on the days where they were in uniform and on the clock, but this was very different. Shoto had stared at the back of Katsuki's head as it disappeared between a swarm of dark blue shirts, bemoaning the fact that his expensive bomber jacket now looked like it'd been in the wash too many times.
At this point, this was nothing new. What would really surprise him would be something going right; but Katsuki had insisted on hand-holding all the way to the station, settling their outstretched arms on the seat between them. Holding someone's hand in the back of a police car was something new, and as Shoto looked at Katsuki sitting beside him, oil on canvas, he thought to himself: huh.
Shoto finished up first and exited the station, sat down on the steps and sighed, a pathetic, wobbly sound in the night air.
After a couple of minutes, Katsuki appeared and plopped down beside him. Their elbows and knees knocked together.
"Do you still want to date me?"
"Hmm? The fuck kind of shitty question is that?"
Shoto wrapped his arms around his knees tighter, trying to disappear into himself. "You used to have a thing with Kirishima back when we were first years, right?"
"Excuse me?"
"I mean, he's a pretty solid guy. Gives great hugs—"
"Halfie—"
"—and he probably won't end his dates at a police sta—"
"Shoto! For fuck's sake. Do you think I do anything I don't want to?"
Shoto couldn't stand it.
His head twisted away from Katsuki to look out at the street below them. A group of teenagers kicking a ball between them as they made their way down the sidewalk, their shouts of delight barely carrying over the din of late-night traffic. The trees creaking gently in the wind, someone leaning dangerously out of an open car window as it zipped past, and still Shoto was too aware of Katsuki beside him; perfect warmth pressing into his side. He wanted to dig his teeth into his trembling bottom lip and stamp his feet, and yell, and murder the smile on his face.
“You,” said Shoto, finally turning back to point a finger at Katsuki, “you said my name.”
Katsuki stared at him; the corners of his mouth were doing something. Shoto didn’t know what, and he was too afraid to look. He lowered his hand, dropping it back on his knees.
“It’s your name, idiot.”
Katsuki’s hand was raised, settling on his shoulder, thumb pressing gently into the base of his throat. I’m going to die, Shoto thought giddily. It felt like his heart and stomach were being pulled downwards, like that one time Midoriya took him to an amusement park and they rode those crazy inverted roller coasters. Shoto didn’t know what to do; there was not much to do, except stay still and trust Katsuki.
Then their faces were touching, and it was achingly slow, achingly gentle. Still smiling.
(He kissed me first—he kissed me first!!!).
Everywhere Shoto looked was something beautiful: like the paradisal fracture of colours in Katsuki's eyes from the yellow of the streetlamps, the bright scarlet that was seared into his cheeks from the soft chill of the evening, and Shoto stared at the wet red of his mouth.
"There's probably a question you gotta ask me now," Katsuki said.
And—ah, yes, there it was, all laid out in plain sight for Shoto to see. The red in Katsuki's cheeks was from him feeling flustered. There was also probably a reason why Katsuki was still here, looking like he wouldn't mind making out on the front steps of their assigned ward's police station, like a couple of horny teenagers.
"That quick?" Shoto asked.
"Uh, yeah? Is there a reason you're stalling, you asshole?"
Shoto grumbled to himself, fidgeting. "Our first kiss was right in front of our regular police station—"
"See? We even have a regular now. Isn't that neat. Come on. Ask me."
Shoto buried his face in his arms. "No. Not until I can get one date right."
"You think I’m gonna stop you from trying? Because you can try," Katsuki laughed, tugging on his arm.
Whenever Katsuki left for the night, the distance always felt unnecessary—cruel even, and Shoto would find himself missing Katsuki in stupid little ways. But right now everything was too blinding and overexposed to look at directly, Katsuki's sneaky little smile like a vignette. Shoto tried to get it together and jerked his head up, because Katsuki was pulling him into another kiss.
"You can definitely try."