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It starts with the baby shoes.
Shouto’s been spending so much time with Fuyumi’s kids recently, and his heat is due any day, and they’re so small and cute that he can’t not get them, even if they’re way too tiny to fit either of the girls and way too pricey for something meant to be outgrown in, like, two months, but he gets them anyway. And then he just. Keeps them.
He stashes them in the back of his dresser, one of the bottom drawers that’s never quite full, and doesn’t think about them until after his heat passes.
And then he gets the matching scarf and hat with the little teddy bear heads attached right above the fringes on the scarf and the extra fabric sewn to look like little bear ears on the hat because they’re both on sale and he can just picture a baby wearing them, small and round and still mostly pink and eagerly babbling half-formed syllables.
As he’s folding them to place next to the shoes, a mortifying realization hits Shouto: he wants pups.
Not only that, but—
He wouldn’t mind one right now, even, as long as he had someone to help out. As long as he had the right alpha. Someone—someone strong, because hero work isn’t easy, and patient, because he can’t imagine it gets any easier when a crying baby kept you up until 3 a.m. the night before, and—and maybe he knows someone just like that, shares space and eats cereal sitting across from him before morning shifts, actually and—
That’s another mortifying realization right there. That, if he had to pick an alpha to have pups with out of everyone he knows, he’d pick Bakugou Katsuki.
(Shouto tries not to think about this. He does add a Dynamight onesie to his steadily growing pile of baby clothes, though.)
It’s—fine, for a while.
And why wouldn’t it be? They’ve been living together ever since they graduated. All it took was three months and Shouto pouting a little about how much he hated living alone over a bowl of convenience store ramen while Katsuki sat across from him and made disgruntled faces Shouto had by then learned not to take too personally for it all to fall into place.
And it did fall into place. Mostly. Mostly, it fell into place.
In that, now, Katsuki does all of the chores Shouto hates and picks out fabric softener with a growing mental list of the scents Shouto scrunches his nose at, and Shouto tries his best not to burn eggs when Katsuki is too tired from a late shift to make them breakfast on the weekend.
They work well together. So, really, Shouto doesn’t know why, of all things, it’s laying upside down on his bed, going from talking about his last agency meeting to how they’re running out of the soft paper towels so one of them should remember to pick them up at the store while Katsuki fills his basket with clothes that need to be washed that suddenly turns into his cheeks burningburningburning with warmth when Katsuki starts going through his dresser for dirty clothes and reaches that last drawer.
It’s not—
It’s not like Shouto has ever had anything to hide from him before, but he’s been the one who got around to doing the laundry most often this last month, and Katsuki is admittedly a lot better about leaving his dirty clothes in one place so Shouto can pick them up, so. Shouto doesn’t mind, usually. Now, though—
“Huh,” Katsuki says thoughtfully. “These for your sister’s kids?”
Shouto’s face burns some more.
“No,” he admits shamefully.
Which is just—
That’s what a reasonable omega would do, right? Get his sister’s kids things they can actually wear, sate the dumb urge like that instead of steadily filling the one mostly empty drawer left in his dresser with baby clothes like a shameful little secret. He doesn’t even have an alpha, god.
“Oh,” says Katsuki, coughing like he’s got something stuck in his throat. “Am I supposed to congratulate you, or something?” Then, because Shouto’s face not burning in horrible embarrassment is apparently not on the agenda for the day, “You don’t smell any different. And you spent your last heat home, right?”
“Yeah,” Shouto says, except it comes out more like a whine. “You made sure I ate, remember?”
“Am I gonna have to make sure you start eating more now, or…?”
“Oh my god,” says Shouto, mortification finally breaking through the urge to run away even as he presses both hands to his warm cheeks. “No. Katsuki, I’m not—you know. I just—do you promise not to laugh?”
“Okay,” Katsuki says, even if he hasn’t really laughed at Shouto since they were kids at U.A. “I promise.”
When Shouto spreads his fingers out over his eyes to peek at him, he’s standing over the bed, eyebrows furrowed and dirty laundry forgotten in favor of giving Shouto another one of his patented Bakugou Looks™ that imply you’re one of the few people he actually cares about.
(Shouto wants to be that. Wants to be that so badly it hurts. Wants to be singularly important in that way that ends with him baring his neck and whining alpha please so Katsuki can sink his teeth in.)
Carefully, he sits up. “Um,” he starts, pulling his long hair over his shoulder to one side so he can have a little safety blanket for the next bit. He needs it. “I didn’t mean to, you know. I just—I’ve been thinking. About, um, how if my—if our lives weren’t the way they are, I’d want pups. And—and I guess my omega is stubborn like that, because I keep buying baby clothes when I definitely don’t need them and—and now I think I might actually want to die, honestly.”
“Our lives?” Katsuki repeats.
Shouto swallows.
Right. Of course he heard that part.
“Well,” he says uselessly. “You’re important to me.”
Katsuki sits down on Shouto’s bed. “You’re important to me too, sweetheart,” he says. “You know that, right?”
Even more embarrassingly, Shouto shivers. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
He’s pouting. He doesn’t need a mirror to know, to confirm how the strange ache inside his ribs feels like a physical weight pulling him downdowndown, and all he really wants to do his press as close to Katsuki as he can get and nuzzle at his scent gland and whine alpha until Katsuki gets the hint.
“Okay.” Katsuki sighs. “Why are you sad then?”
“Because,” Shouto says, like a spoiled child.
Katsuki’s eyebrows furrow some more. “Is—is it about an alpha?” he says tentatively. “Were you hoping—?”
“Yeah,” Shouto interrupts. “I was hoping. But he—he’s great, and he already takes care of me so much, and I want to lick his abs, like, all the time, so. I can’t really ask him to put pups in me on top of all that.”
Katsuki huffs. “Only an idiot would say no when it’s you.”
Finally, Shouto looks at him properly instead of stealing little glances like a coward. “You think so?” he says. “Really?”
“Of course,” Katsuki says, voice soft, comforting. “If it was me, I’d—”
And then he stops himself, eyes widening for a single breath, and Shouto gets the feeling he’s not the only one thinking about running away anymore.
But the thing is—
He doesn’t want to. Not really. Not underneath the stupid fear. Underneath it, he wants to stay right here with Katsuki. Forever, if that’s an option. If Katsuki really wouldn’t mind, really isn’t planning on saying no to him. (He hasn’t before, to be fair. Even if Shouto was usually asking for homemade soba instead of, you know, being bred.)
So.
“Did you get to the Dynamight onesie yet?” he asks, teeth digging into his lower lip. “That one is my favorite.”
Katsuki stills. “Really?”
Shouto nods, willing himself to be brave enough and get a little closer. “Mm,” he says. “It’s so cute, isn’t it? When pups look just like the alpha? And the matching clothes really make it—mmph.”
Shouto doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because then Katsuki is taking his face into his hands and pushing him back on the bed, and suddenly all Shouto can see is the determination in his eyes as he’s laid down, how dark the red in them looks just before he slots their mouths together.
“Hey, princess,” Katsuki says when Shouto finally gets him to stop kissing him so he can breathe a little, “I’ve wanted you since before I knew how to say it out loud. You think I’d mind? What the hell.”
“Well,” Shouto says, even if it’s hard to think with how much he just wants Katsuki to kiss him some more, to keep going until he’s helping Shouto through a heat and then they really do end up with pups running around and wearing Dynamight onesies. “It’s kind of a big deal.”
“Kind of a big deal,” Katsuki says incredulously. “Yeah, right. Sure.”
Shouto blinks. He feels like he’s missing something here, and his strongest instinct is telling him to pout at Katsuki some more about it. “Alpha,” he whines. “Don’t be mean to me.”
“Shouto,” Katsuki says. “We live together. We do everything together. I cook for you during your heats. You shove your cold feet under mine in the couch instead of using your quirk, you spoiled little—”
“That’s because I like you,” Shouto says defensively. “I like you a lot. That’s—that’s why I want you to give me pups.”
“Yeah?” Katsuki asks, and—oh.
Shouto’s figuring it out, little by little. What it means when he looks at him like that.
“Only you,” Shouto says. “Always you. Might be your fault, honestly. You’re all I’ve been thinking about, these last few heats. But you won’t help.”
He says it accusingly, even if it’s hardly fair to Katsuki when they weren’t—but they are, aren’t they? Katsuki just said so himself.
Katsuki laughs. “Right,” he says fondly. “Of course it’s my fault. How about I fix it, princess?”
“Okay,” Shouto says, clutching at his sleeve. He’s allowed, now. “I’ll let you fix it.”
So Katsuki does.