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It’s Shitty Hair’s engagement party, and Katsuki hasn’t seen Shouto in a year.
You wouldn’t guess it, he thinks bitterly, watching the way Shouto’s eyes go the slightest bit wider when they land on Katsuki, and he gives Momo a quick peck on the cheek before setting his champagne glass on a nearby table and walking over like they went to bed together just the night before and the last time they spoke wasn’t—
Well. Wasn’t when Shouto decided to tear Katsuki’s still-beating heart out of his chest with perfectly manicured fingers.
“Hi,” he says now. “You look—you look good. I missed you.”
Katsuki scoffs. “Did you?” he asks. “Because you looked like you were having a lot of fun without me.”
Because while Katsuki was away trying to mend the heart he only remembered he had a use for when Shouto started making a cozy home for himself inside it, Shouto was very publicly fucking his way through friends and coworkers and even his shitty dad’s business partners.
Katsuki’s not even sure if he remembers it. When he called, drunk out of his mind, three months into Katsuki’s self-imposed exile, and told him I still have your rice cooker before saying anything else. Not even hello. Not even how are you? Not even the bed’s cold, now. Is yours cold too?
(That used to be Shouto’s favorite excuse. Being cold. That Katsuki apparently warmed up enough space for him to need to be close. Always, always close. Too close.)
Katsuki hadn’t said anything. Had just listened to him talk and talk and talk, staring at the caller ID on speaker and wondering why he still had Shouto saved as halfie <3. Not his idea originally, obviously. But they started dating at eighteen and he was Shouto’s—well, yeah. He was Shouto’s. That too. But he was also Shouto’s first everything. And that just happened to mean he was the first person Shouto ever felt comfortable enough with to tug on his sleeve and say Katsuki, why don’t we do cute couple things together? while pouting like a bastard. So Katsuki had ended up with an embarrassing name on Shouto’s phone to match, and that had been—
Katsuki’s not sure. Back then, it felt like the first thread tying together what now feels like a flimsy forever.
Shouto pouts at him just like he used to. “Not my fault,” he says. “You’re hard to replace.”
He looks like it might hurt, maybe. Under the practiced nonchalance. Like he might also be hurt the exact same way Katsuki is. Was? Is it was yet? It doesn’t feel like it. Like a year and a bit of distance dulled building himself around loving Shouto. Because it was so fucking easy. And everyone prattles on about doing what you love and yeah, actually. Katsuki was. Quite fucking literally. So maybe life wasn’t as much about living it as much as it was about sharing it with Shouto.
And that’s—
Wrong?
It’s wrong to spend three years next to someone and think you’re lucky, that you’re not like those other pathetic losers who come home just to pick a fight and stick together because it’s better to only be miserable than to also be alone for it?
Might be something like tempting fate. Not that Katsuki has ever believed in that shit. (Maybe—maybe he did, the first time Shouto smiled at him in the middle of the snow and pulled him in for a kiss, though. Maybe back then it felt like he was fate’s chosen one, who knows? Because he was young, and eager, and Shouto’s shampoo smelled like strawberries.)
“Wouldn’t have to,” Katsuki huffs. He’s closer to twenty-three than to sixteen and repressed and fuckin’—embarrassingly predictable about it all, and still. It feels pretty much the same, with Shouto. In front of Shouto. In front of the only person he’s ever truly wanted to be good enough for, and still couldn’t figure out how to keep. “You’re the one who thought I needed replacing.”
Shouto shrugs. His sweater costs more than Katsuki would have made in three months right after graduation if Shouto hadn’t pouted and tugged on his sleeve about being sure his old man knew somebody who could get him an internship and Katsuki worked hard so he deserved it, anyway. Isn’t that nice? How Katsuki’s whole life, even when he tries uselessly to run away from it, is built with Shouto at the center?
“I was—I think I was just scared,” says Shouto, too softly.
Scared. Right. Katsuki knows something about that. About indulging his own misery by taking advantage of his parents’ money and traveling the world for a year instead of settling into the responsible adult he’d promised himself he was going be because the alternative hurt too much, and –
And Shouto had been right where Katsuki left him, letting other people warm his bed. Katsuki remembers a handful of headlines about it, too. Because Todoroki Enji’s Youngest Son and Famous Model Todoroki Shouto look nice on the front page. Especially when the picture right under is Shouto sneaking out of a cheap hotel in the middle of the night looking like he’s been mauled or photographed smiling for the paparazzi in broad daylight with a man twice his age keeping a possessive hand on his bare thigh.
Katsuki should be angry about it, probably. About how little he must have meant to Shouto for Shouto to just. Wipe him away like day old chalk on a blackboard.
“I was doing my best,” Katsuki says. Bites down on his tongue not to let something more vulnerable slip. Something like I’m sorry it wasn’t enough for you.
And Shouto—
Well, Shouto’s used to Katsuki letting him take. isn’t he? A lifetime of learning how not to ask for anything at all, and all it took was Katsuki letting him reach inside his chest once for Shouto to get used to it. (Katsuki used to be so sure that was what love looked like, back when it still didn’t hurt.)
He’s used to it, because now he’s reaching to stroke Katsuki’s cheek with a soft palm, and for a single, guilty breath, Katsuki wants to lean into it. To kiss the center of Shouto’s palm and pick up where they left off and forget his own useless pride because holding Shouto in his arms is much better. Why wouldn’t he?
“I know,” Shouto says. “I’m sorry.”
That’s—
Maybe Katsuki just needs to go find Deku and congratulate him on this shit. Shove the gift in his face and go home and scream into a pillow or whatever it is people who don’t know how to handle their feelings do when the person responsible for them (for all of them, by the way) tries to touch you gently.
“You don’t get to pull this shit,” says Katsuki. “You broke up with me.”
Shouto winces. “I know,” he says, again, and the very small part of Katsuki that wouldn’t lament bruising that pretty face ten times more kind of wants to punch him. Or maybe—maybe he just wants the excuse for proximity. To touch. To hold. To have, even if just as a cheap goodbye.
(He didn’t get a proper one, last time.)
And then Shouto’s hand is dropping away, a quiet resignation, and—
No, Katsuki thinks, sharply and with the same stubbornness of forever. Because wanting Shouto is hardly all that different from refusing to finish his broccoli as a kid. Just a bit more complicated than shoving your plate away and bursting into tears, maybe.
So here Katsuki is, almost twenty-three with his useless college degree, gripping Shouto’s wrist too tightly as he turns to leave instead of congratulating his two closest friends on their merited happily ever after, because. Fuck his life, actually.
“It fucking hurt, asshole,” says Katsuki, crushing Shouto to his chest like a lovesick fool.
(He is. That’s the thing. He is lovesick and a fool, and Shouto’s shampoo still smells like strawberries.)
“Oh,” says Shouto, both palms on Katsuki’s chest, steadying himself. “I thought—I thought you’d be okay.”
And that’s such a fucking stupid thing to say that if Katsuki couldn’t read between the lines, he would hate him. But he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. Because what Shouto means is that he’s used to taking pain for himself. To accepting it like consecrated duty. And up in that pretty little head of his hurting himself enough meant not letting that hurt spread. Because—
“Still think you’re not worth it?” Katsuki asks. “Is that it, you fucking idiot?”
“Mean,” says Shouto, rubbing his face like a cat against Katsuki’s button down. “I haven’t seen you in a year, and you call me an idiot.”
“My favorite idiot,” Katsuki says. “My very favorite giant pain in the ass. Needy, spoiled little brat.”
“I missed you,” Shouto protests. “I missed you a lot. I was scared, but—everyone kept telling me I messed up. That I hurt you. That I didn’t need to ruin a good thing just because I kept—I kept picturing it. How you’d wake up one day and realize I wasn’t worth the—the effort or the trouble or the, uh, the daddy issues, and—”
“I don’t mind it when you call me daddy in bed or whatever the fuck, you idiot,” Katsuki interrupts.
Shouto laughs. “I don’t think it was about that,” he says, face warm. “I was just—you were too precious to lose. So if—if I didn’t lose you, maybe it would be okay?”
“What?” Katsuki asks. “If you remembered where you put me down, you could pick me back up? I’d just stay there twiddling my thumbs waiting for you to decide you were done whoring yourself out and come back home?”
It’s too harsh, probably. But Katsuki hasn’t—
(Hasn’t and won’t and will never, ever, really.)
He hasn’t figured out how to exist without Shouto yet. And now that he’s close enough it’s like fuckin’ kryptonite. Because Katsuki isn’t a hero, or strong, or even particularly brave when it’s about Shouto.
He’s just—
“No,” Shouto says, sounds like he might genuinely cry. “No, I just—I don’t trust myself, you know. And when—we weren’t waiting for the rest of our lives anymore. We were there. And you were the one thing I was sure about, but the rest was—it was fucking terrifying, Katsuki.”
Katsuki runs a careless hand through the hair he’d spent thirty minutes styling in front of a mirror just in case. Because he knew Shouto would be here. And maybe he’d had some unimportant, petty point to prove. Or maybe he’d just wanted to see if he was still enough of a masochist to try and get Shouto to come home with him. One last taste of his own personal dilapidated heaven.
He sighs. He’ll congratulate Deku and Shitty Hair later.
“C’mere,” he tells Shouto. “We’re getting you ice cream.”
…
They got ice cream for their first date. Not that Katsuki would have admitted, under oath or gunpoint, that it was a date, back then. And it’s been—
Kind of a thing, ever since. Every bad argument followed up by a bit of breathing space and then come on, let’s go get ice cream. Katsuki almost expected it, the morning after. After Shouto packed his bags and took his spoiled cat that sheds everywhere and insists on taking up Katsuki’s side of the bed next to Shouto with him and got into a cab headed for his shithead brother’s place. Expected to wake up and see Shouto holding a fucking ice cream cone out to him as a peace offering. Licking those dainty fingers clean one by one and making a face while he hands it over because he never likes what Katsuki orders for himself.
And now Shouto’s wrapping his arms around Katsuki’s waist, spare helmet on, warm and solid and real, and maybe—his? Or something close enough.
“Why’d you bring your bike?”
“Figured I might see you,” says Katsuki, enough of a confession.
“And you didn’t—mind?”
It’s vulnerable, the only way Shouto knows how to be. By biting his tongue at the start, still. So.
“No, sweetheart,” says Katsuki. “I didn’t mind.”
Shouto holds on tighter. “That’s good to know,” he says. Then, after a bit of quiet, “I haven’t had ice cream in a while.”
“Me neither,” Katsuki admits. “Could pick up the habit again, though. Doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Really?”
(God, how did Katsuki even—breathe without this part? Who wouldn’t forgive Shouto anything, when he sounds like that?)
“Yeah,” he says. “Really. Someone’s gotta keep you from getting diabetes before twenty-five.”
“You’ll be around for the job?” asks Shouto. “Because I might—need that. Or, um, want it. Whichever’s okay with you.”
“As long as you’re sure you’ve got an open position for me, princess.”
Shouto laughs. “I could think of a couple,” he says, and—
They’ll probably get to that too. To kissing their way into falling on a soft bed wherever they end up, tangled in each other’s bodies like deciphering an old photograph, a familiar bit of forgetting. But—
Katsuki still remembers Shouto’s favorite ice cream order. And that matters just a bit more. For now, at least.