Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Oi, let go of me, Icyhot," he murmurs, pushing Shouto's warm weight off of him, half-heartedly.

"No," Shouto says back, yanking Katsuki and the blankets closer.

Jeez. No wonder everything always ends up in a heap in the middle of the bed by morning.In addition to the heat and the cold, the man’s hidden quirk is his profound ability to mess up perfectly laid out sheets and blankets, like some kind of vortex.

Not even Katsuki is safe from the pull, from the grabby hands and the quiet sighs of success when Shouto gets what he wants.

(... Shouto always gets what he wants.)

"No isn't an option, dumbass" he explains, far more leniently than he should be. "I'm going for a jog. You comin' or not?"

"Not," Shouto answers. His eyes are still closed.

Sleeping in on his days off is non-negotiable, Katsuki's learned that. Not that he doesn't try and push now and again.

"Fine, lazyhead. Stay. But I gotta go."

“Lazyhead? Is that supposed to be a good insult?”

“Shut up asshole! My insults are great.”

"Okay. Bring me a pastry on your way back then," Shouto says with a slight smile.

How the fuck did that make sense in his dumb half-and-half head? Katsuki is the one up at the ass crack of dawn doing actual exercise and then this princess's lazy ass thinks he ought to have free pastry hand-delivered to him in bed? Please. He’s getting nothing.

"Absolutely fucking not! You earn your pastry by coming with me one of these days. Burn the calories first!"

Shouto makes a face at him then, though he loosens his grip and allows Katsuki to get up from their bed. Once up Katsuki trudges over to their closet and grabs a pair of shorts. The shirt he slept in is probably okay for jogging in, it was just going to get sweaty and need a wash anyway. Nevermind that its pro hero Shouto merch.

At least it's subtle, with a small blue snowflake and red flame logo. Not like Shouto's fucking face or anything. That would be embarrassing.

Truth be told, he likes wearing Shouto's hero merch these days. He's always thought of himself as having more of a right to than anyone else does anyway. He actually knows Shouto after all. Personally and all that.

He's the one that has to deal with how clingy, sleep-warm and stupidly soft Shouto can be in the morning. Like a human velcro, attached to Katsuki with a fervor. He’s the one that has to talk him down from his crazier theories. He’s the one that has to deal with the deadpan retorts and Shouto slinking around their house stealthily like a cat (scaring the shit out of him when he creeps up while Katsuki is just minding his own business).

He has a right to the damn t-shirt. If anyone snaps a pic of him in it and zooms in, that’ll just have to be fine.

He doesn't owe anyone an explanation. Never did.

(He belongs to Shouto and doesn’t have a problem dressing like it.)

After a moment of thought, he grabs a pair of Shouto's socks from his dresser drawer. He has a right to those too, he figures, them having been together for so long. That’s a love thing people like to peddle, right?! ‘What’s mine is yours.’

Shouto certainly believes it, given that he goes around acting like their closet is communal. Well, he thinks as he slips the socks on, these are fucking mine then. Two can play at that fucking game.

Once he's changed and ready to go he leans over Shouto and kisses his plump cheek (even at twenty-six Shouto's face still has a bit of that youthful softness to it, maybe it always will).

"You better be up by the time I'm back or I’ll yank you out of this bed myself."

Shouto nods, then shuffles a bit and turns just his face the other way, eyes still squeezed tightly shut against the light (so stubborn). It might seem innocuous. Meaningless. But Katsuki knows what Shouto is doing - he catches the way those mismatched eyes flicker open for just a second and meet his own. He knows Shouto too well.

'Course he wants a kiss on the other cheek too. For symmetry. Katsuki really shouldn't be surprised. Shouto always wants a little more touch. A little more affection from Katsuki. Always has. The only difference is that now he asks for it without a second thought. No longer embarrassed about being this obviously needy. No longer doubting whether or not he’ll get what he wants.

It’s good.

They've come a long way. Seeing Shouto just lying here now, content and relaxed, wearing the same cat print pajamas he's had since he was seventeen years old; it's almost enough to make Katsuki consider canceling the jog altogether and spending the rest of the morning right here with him.

Almost.

He brushes his lips against Shouto's other cheek.

Maybe another time.

*

The jog is good. He's always liked jogging. Because it's competitive and people don't talk to him unless they can keep up. Most people can’t. Which thins the crowd quite a bit. Enough so that when he’s gotten into the rhythm of it everything feels quiet. His head is quiet, and he doesn’t have to think about anything and can just get on with it.

After the jog, he feels refreshed enough that he does swing by the dine-in bakery on his way back. It’s a little out of the way place, he discovered with Shouto about two years before.

They sat in the corner booth that day and argued about the right way to pronounce the word croissant. He still maintains that he was right.

He grabs a pastry for himself only and in no way for Icyhot. Even though he doesn't like pastry that much and doesn't plan on having more than a bite. If that.

By the time he's back home at their apartment, pastry in hand, the only thing on his mind is a shower. (And maybe the look on a certain candy-cane bastard’s face when he sees what was brought.)

"Tadaima!" he says as he enters the genkan, and then immediately registers the sound of the shower running. He might as well be yelling out 'I'm home' to an empty house.

Shouto's typically lost to the world when he takes showers. He probably has deep thoughts in there, with all the water weighing down his dumb head.

Good thing Katsuki is here then, to get in there and untangle the knots in Shouto’s wet hair and untangle the logical knots he manages to get into with weird assumptions that he makes for reasons that aren’t his fault.

Shouto asked him once, if it was tiring, having to talk things through with him, every once in a while. It probably seems that way, since he’s evolved a perennially annoyed tone in everything he does for his own sake, since basically forever.

It’s not hard though, telling Shouto time and time again that things are not his fault, and that he’s so, so good, whenever Shouto doubts it. It’s not hard because it’s true. But even if it was hard, Katsuki figures, it wouldn’t matter. Not then. Not now. Not ever. Not at all.

The bedroom then. Katsuki will stop there first. He’ll grab his clothes and just join him in there and they'll have their time together. Yeah. It’ll be good.

He's passing by the bathroom door when he hears it.

Water running, yeah. He hears that. But there’s also a soft, low voice. It’s kind of breathy. Singing. Shouto's singing. It catches him totally unprepared, so he freezes. What the fuck.

Even the cat looks up at him and meows, as if to also be saying ‘you hearing this?’. Or some shit like that. Katsuki shrugs back at her. ‘Cause he’s never heard Shouto sing before.

He also...didn't think at this stage in the game there were new surprises to be had. New Shouto things to hoard and treasure and keep for himself. No way. So he just stands there slack-jawed and sweaty for a moment and just listens to it.

The song isn’t familiar... is it a song? It's hard to make out the words too clearly because Shouto isn't that loud, the door's closed and again, the water. The damn water.

He should do something about that. The water. The door in the way.

Katsuki should just go in.

Once he’s inside, he could make out more of the words. He wants to know, he wants to know this new, secret part of Shouto so bad. Partly because even hearing the muffled hard-to-make out version of it is making his heart go thump thump thump in his chest, partly because Shouto can be so quiet sometimes and he isn’t particularly a loud person...so to hear him sing?! Yeah. There’s definitely something there.

He wants it.

The second he turns the door knob though the singing stops. Pindrop silence other than the water.

Then. "Katsuki?"

He comes in, wasting no time in stripping off his own clothes. "You've wasted like six good seconds of time to attack first if you even thought there was a chance in hell this was anyone but me."

After he’s undressed, he gets a good look at his boyfriend. From the state of Shouto's hair, he was clearly halfway through washing it. It looks pretty ridiculous. Sudsed up but not rinsed out. Little streams of water are dripping down Shouto’s skin and a particularly punchy shade of pink is spreading from his cheeks and going down to his neck and chest, then lower to his abdomen then lower still. Fucking hell.

He looks good, no-he looks… beautiful, but then, when doesn’t he?

Something’s bugging Katsuki. No response to the potential attacker quip? Why not?! It was pretty good, he thinks. Oh. Yeah. He caught this bastard off guard.

"Why’d you stop?! The uh—the singing."

"I didn't know you were home," Shouto says, embarrassed enough to avoid eye contact. Which is weird, because if there’s one thing that Katsuki’s learned about Shouto is that once he gets comfortable, he’s pretty shameless.

Also, it’s kind of funny—out of context. Shouto’s completely naked and he doesn’t care, at all, about being exposed like that, with Katsuki’s eyes roving all over him. Everywhere. But being caught singing? That he finds embarrassing.

But to be nice (he can be nice), he gets in the shower with Shouto and turns him around to rinse his hair. Shouto always likes it when Katsuki washes his hair, and maybe doing something that's so familiar to them both will make him feel less weird about the damn singing thing.

It’s not like Icyhot has anything to be embarrassed about anyway, he sounded okay and he has a decent voice. It’s easily Katsuki’s favorite voice in the world, on a good day—and even when that voice is getting on his nerves—he still has a soft spot for it. Enough so that he’s never blown up the apartment with Shouto and him still in it.

“Was it bothering you?” Shouto asks, and Katsuki cannot believe he’s asking that. Shouto has no qualms about bothering Katsuki on purpose most of the time. The hell.

"Of course not! I could barely hear you, s’fine," he points out as he notices Shouto's shoulders tensing.

He grabs the hand shower off of the handle it rests on and rinses out the remainder of Shouto's conditioner. Shouto’s tension dissolves, and he doesn’t say anything else.

But Shouto doesn’t start singing again either. Shame, really.

Figures though. They're much better at just doing things, than talking. After a few moments, Shouto turns around and faces Katsuki the other way to run soapy warm and cool hands across his back, and arms and everywhere he can reach, without even being asked. The fact that he's touching him like this probably means he isn't too upset about being overhead. If that’s even the issue.

The fact that Shouto's touching him like this, intimate even though it's casual and familiar by now—that should make it easy right? to say something stupidly simple like—I liked your voice. I wanna hear it again. Like, now.

He doesn't know why he can't fucking get the words out. For such an easy request.

Not when Shouto runs the water all over his body. Not when he can feel the wet calluses on Shouto's palms across his back. Not when Shouto washes his hair, massaging by his ears and, all over his scalp and at the nape of his neck. Stopping to press a kiss, here and there. It's so relaxing.

"Good jog?" Shouto asks.

"Yeah," he answers, mind racing.

Why won't you sing for me?! The thought buzzes loudly in his head. Is it because Shouto thinks he’s bad at singing? That shouldn’t matter. Shouto’s a bad cook, objectively, and Katsuki regularly yells at him for it and Shouto continues to cook.

It’s me, he wants to say. That means something. This, them is...different. Shouto should know he doesn’t have to fit any kind of role or play any kind of part. He’s fine. It’s fine. All of him.

A particularly childish, immature thought comes to the top of his mind with Shouto’s hands still in his hair. Maybe it is him. Maybe it’s not for Katsuki specifically, because it’s him, somehow. But...it can’t be that. (After all, Shouto tells him things no one else tells him, that he’s good to him and Shouto says that he ‘is happy’ with this and them and if that’s not real—it’s not worth it if everything else is.)

He still doesn’t ask.

He doesn't ask later either, when they're a little more dressed, when Shouto is drying his hair and taking what chance he can get to fluff it up even more than it'll naturally get. The bastard.

He doesn't even ask when Shouto eyes the brown bag containing his pastry and looks at him and goes, "You said you wouldn't get it. Is this for me?"

It would have been a pretty awesome time too, to say: sing for me and maybe I'll let you have it. Easy, while he had some damn good leverage. He doesn't say it though, because Shouto looks like a kid on his birthday, so excited that Katsuki brought him something... he would feel too damn guilty denying him.

These days Shouto still looks a little surprised and taken aback when he gets things he wasn't expecting. Presents and gifts, or even just...attention. It messes with Katsuki's brain chemistry when he sees it, creating the bizarre urge in the moment to compensate and give him everything.

That's why he can't take it away. He's physically unable to do anything other than cross his arms and look on, secretly pleased that out of all the flavors of tart they had—he managed to get Shouto's favorite: blueberry.

“Well I’m sure not gonna fucking eat it,” he mutters. “You know how much sugar there is in that?!”

“Ten grams,” Shouto says, and he looks very, very pleased. (And still doesn’t understand that not all questions are asked to be answered.)

It's stupid how happy food makes Shouto. It's such a damn small thing. He'll be in a good mood for the rest of the day, Katsuki knows, just from this.

He watches as Shouto takes a few careful bites. Then the idiot realizes that it'll be gone soon and cuts a small slice of it off. Then another.

He watches as the first slice is offered to him, then the second is placed in a bowl and covered in clear plastic wrap. The crumbs are still coating Shouto's mouth.

Katsuki brushes them off with his fingers. "Tsch. Eat more carefully!"

Katsuki opens his mouth and Shouto takes that as the cue it is to feed him a bite, but Katsuki swallows the entire slice in one go.

"When you start getting old I'm going to start making you take smaller bites," Shouto says sternly, gripping Katsuki's chin for a moment to focus his attention.

He can't reply because he's chewing. Stupid Shouto probably knew that. He prepares his retorts while he finishes though. One he's never gonna become a weak old man who can't eat right. Two even if he does he's not gonna listen to another weak old man tell him what to do. Three, fuck you candy cane.

For a few moments the fact that Shouto so casually referred to them growing old together just circles around in his head as background noise. Then it sinks in with a loud clunk, making him feel all weirdly warm and floaty inside.

Shouto said it like it was a given.

Maybe if that's the case… he's got some time to hear that singing yet. When Shouto wants him to hear it. Yeah. That's right. He could play the long game. That’s a strategy he does all the time now at work. It’s strong and effective.

He can murder patience's ass and wait for this.

No question.

*

So that was a fucking lie.

Katsuki can't live like this anymore. He has to hear Shouto sing for him or figure out why it's off limits. He cannot wait a single solitary second. 'Cause it doesn't make any sense.

But also. He insists to himself that he isn't that pissed that the next time it happens Shouto is singing to their cat...and has still never sung to him.

He doesn't want Shouto to sing to him. He doesn't need that romantic shit. It's just the principle of the thing. All special Todoroki Shouto things belong to him. That's the way it should be.

He is not jealous of their cat and the moment between them he overhears.

That day he took one of his extremely rare afternoon naps. Shouto basically made him do it. He kinda deserved it though, this time. Being awake any longer was probably going to make him delirious. He'd really stretched himself not sleeping much for his last mission.

When he steps into the living room, groggily rubbing his eyes he hears Shouto singing again. It’s the same song from the last time.

Dual colored idiot is sitting by her. She's letting him hold a paw in each hand (amazing) and bob it gently up and down in time with the song. As if she was kinda dancing. If he wasn't kinda dazed he'd probably wanna get it on video. Shit's priceless.

Shouto's voice is still soft and on the quiet side. But this time Katsuki can tell that he's smiling. For a moment Katsuki wonders if he's still dreaming.

"Shou?" he mumbles, blinking his eyes a few more times at the sight.

Icyhot is on his feet and by his side in an instant. There are some terse meows from Soba from being abandoned.

Then he feels Shouto's hands on him. One on his face, the other catching his wrist, and turning it to read the watch face. This is definitely not a dream. His Shou's… too real. Right there.

His boyfriend's features are kind of stern and Katsuki doesn't know why. "That was only thirty minutes. You need to sleep at least a few hours."

"That's fucking boring. I got stuff to do."

"No you don't. Go back to bed."

His response is instinctive, though he can't summon up the usual spark behind it. "Don't tell me what to do!"

Shouto looks at him, keenly. "What is this going to take?"

They both just look at each other for a moment. Neither budging in their intense stares.

"You come then," he insists finally. "I ain't sleeping alone."

(If he's out within seconds after Shouto holds him to his chest, and doesn't stir for hours afterward, well, he pretty much didn't sleep for three days—he has an excuse for it.)

*

The next time he catches Shouto singing it’s much more public. They’re at Ponytail and Ears’ place. It’s the first time they’ve been over there in a while, in the months since Ponytail gave birth to their little monster (‘their baby, Katsuki’ - Shouto keeps correcting). They’re in the middle of a card game in the living room when they hear the sound of cries.

“Already?” Ponytail sighs, moving to get up. “I just put her down.”

“Maybe we should be a little quieter out here,” Deku contributes.

“Shut the fuck up, Deku,” he whispers back at him.

Shouto stops Ponytail on her way to the baby’s room. “You should stay and play - I’ll get her back to sleep. I am her godfather.”

Somehow, she agrees, and then returns to the circle on the floor. The cries stop a few moments later. Then a different sound comes through from the baby monitor on the table. It’s quite soft, but unmistakable.

Katsuki freezes.

“Is he singing?” Jirou asks, surprised.

“He sounds...good,” Kirishima notes.

“Skip my turn,” he says, getting up, even though he has great cards—and could probably win this round.

He leaves the group then and walks through the narrow hallway, close to the door of the second bedroom he knows the baby sleeps in. Just so he can hear better. The door’s open, just a crack, and he can see inside. He doesn’t care, at the moment, what the others are probably thinking of the fact that he left.

The baby looks like Ponytail mostly, though she has the long earlobes with headphone jacks attached. Shouto’s just rocking her back and forth in his arms.

Shouto is good, isn’t he? Katsuki muses. He cares. He's always cared so much and tried so hard. He’s mine.

My every fucking dream.

The song’s much clearer now that Katsuki’s closer. The same one about a lost little village girl making her way back to her parents under the light of the moon.

He was not jealous of a cat and he is definitely not going to be jealous of an actual baby for being able to hear Shouto sing just for them.

(He is though, a little bit.)

After a few more moments, Shouto leaves the small area of the room where he can see. He must be putting her back down in the crib. This should be his cue to leave. That would have been the smart thing to do. To prevent what happens in the next two minutes. Which is Shouto leaving the room and bumping right into him.

At least both of them are smart enough not to make any noise.

Shouto looks so confused, as he grabs Katsuki’s arm (he flusters at the touch and forced redirection) and walks them both a few paces further from the door, and then whispers. “Did Momo send you with something?”

“No, she didn’t,” he whispers back.

“Did you need something from me?” Shouto tries again.

Fuck. That voice. Damn sound is driving him crazy. Calming and infuriating at the same time.

“No, I don’t fucking need anything from you,” he hisses angrily, then amends. “Right now.”

“Are you...sure?” Shouto cups his cheek in his warm hand, then nods encouragingly.

Out of options, and practically burning up from the inside out, and frustrated with the quiet, Katsuki kisses him. Gently shoving him up against the wall, flipping the hallway lightswitch from on to off in the process as it collides with Shouto’s back. They try to be as silent as possible, hastily kissing each other like that. Anyone could see them at any moment but it doesn’t matter. Katsuki likes him too much and has to do something about it.

“What-” Gasp. “Kat-” Kiss.

“Shut the fuck up,” Katsuki insists. Then goes in to kiss him again.

They’re doing this now. No matter what anyone else has to say about it.

“What has gotten into you?” Shouto manages to get out a few minutes later, clothes a little more rumpled and the clean part between his red and white hair slightly in disarray.

“I don’t know,” he says, a bit shakily. Honestly, he doesn’t. They haven’t been this desperate to get at each other in—okay, well, maybe it hasn’t been that long. It’s just—god—the singing. Just when he thought there was nothing else soft and squishy about Shouto that would drive him insane. This just has to fucking happen.

“Is it me?” Shouto wonders out loud.

“Sure,” Katsuki snorts. “You’ve definitely started to grow on me.”

“That’s good,” Shouto nods, stopping Katsuki’s heart for the second time that evening. “Since I’ve been thinking we should get married.”

*

A couple weeks later, newly engaged, Katsuki wonders if there’s ever gonna be a right time. He stays up late, in their living room, with a bunch of maps and his laptop open—working on an open case, and he wonders about it. Is Shouto ever going to sing for him? He sings in the shower, for cats and babies. Just not for Katsuki. Not...directly.

It’s distracting enough that he realizes he’s opened the same website twice in a row. Or maybe he’s just tired.

He groans. Then gets up and heads to their balcony for some fresh air. It’s cold, so maybe that’ll wake him up a bit.

As he's leaning over the railing he hears a voice behind him. "Katsuki?"

He doesn't turn around, as he knows who it is. "Why do you always call my name out first? You know it's me."

"I like that you always answer me."

"Not like there's another option!" he protests, weakly. "You would get way more annoying if I ignored you."

"I know."

Katsuki looks over at Shouto, and he's smirking. "Jerk."

"From you, that's actually rather complimentary."

*

He confesses something close to it, coming off of the high of the kind of intimacy he’s only ever shared with Shouto. What pushes him over the edge are the soft gasps and quiet murmurations, the uses of his name, broken up into bursts or stretched out languidly. Approving sighs when they reach a precipice together where no one but them could meet. Shouto says I love you like a prayer and Katsuki says it back like a promise.

“Like your voice,” Katsuki mumbles later, and turns the pillow to the cold side so he can rest his cheek against it and rest.

His brain-to-mouth filter breaks down in soft, syrupy moments like these. Lately he can't seem to give a shit even when it does happen. Because it means it's been a good day. Which is an obvious win.

“My voice?” Shouto inquires. Ever the disbeliever. For fuck’s sake.

Katsuki could spend an entire evening showing him how beautiful he is, how loved he is, worship every inch of his skin and make it so that there’s no space at all between their bodies. And he has.

Shouto still doesn’t know though, apparently, this disgusting fucking gooey bullshit in Katsuki’s heart is just for him.

He grunts in response.

“When we were in school whenever I talked you were always telling me to shut up. I sort of thought you found my voice annoying.”

“Yeah,” Katsuki wants to roll his eyes. “Clearly nothing’s fucking changed since we were in U.A. Get your short-term memory checked.”

“My voice,” Shouto muses, and Katsuki can feel the bed move as the other man abruptly sits up. He’s probably stroking his chin and making that stupid thoughtful expression.

Katsuki turns to check. Yeah. There it is. “You are beyond stupid.”

Shouto ignores the jab, and turns to him. “Should I start sending voice messages to you, when I am away?”

“Do what you want.”

It might not be so bad, having Shouto’s voice break up the streams of pusheen stickers and morning beverage photos he normally sends. Not bad at all.

“I will then.”

“You do whatever you want anyway,” Katsuki points out, grumpily.

Shou looks smug hearing that, so maybe he knows it. Bastard.

*

It doesn’t count if Shouto sings to him when they’re both not even totally awake.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, really, when he reaches for Shouto most times at night. Slightly confused, and disoriented, and still reliving images and sounds from dreams.

He’ll feel like shit in the morning, later, if it turns out Shouto never really fell back asleep after that, and was kept awake. After Katsuki reached out to grasp his shoulder, or touched his face. Sometimes he isn’t too gentle with it, because it seems urgent at the moment, to check. Yeah. Right here. You’re okay. Mkay.

Ever slow on the uptake, Shouto reacts a few seconds later, blinking his eyes back and adjusting to the dark. But he’ll fold Katsuki into his arms even before that, as if his body knows what to do even in sleep, and he doesn’t even need to use the two brain cells he has to rub together to figure out what Katsuki needs.

They’re usually okay after that much. Except one night where they’re really not, even like this, whenever Katsuki closes his eyes, because he’s so fucking tired, he still sees his own personal hell. Again, and again. Endlessly.

That’s when Shouto talks. Listening to his voice makes the drowsiness without rest bearable, and his brain slinks off to a better place after he mumbles that whatever Shouto is saying is “no sense, don’t want tea” (because that makes sense). Something about paper-mache and adult coloring books, and how everyone should have a hobby. He really doesn’t know anymore, exactly.

Probably doesn’t care.

When Katsuki’s nearly there, and just needs one more push is when Shouto sings. He’s nodding off too, though the close squeeze he has around Katsuki’s body hasn’t subsided. Some days, he has really strong feelings about the fact that Shouto might just be using him as a personal fucking teddy bear and one of these days he’s gonna prove it.

Shouto’s words taper off, and it’s more of a hum than a song, but it’s nice and it reminds Katsuki of Shouto in the shower, Shouto with their cat, Shouto singing to their friends’ screaming brat. A little reel of mental pictures that have a vice grip on Katsuki’s heart.

His voice is home. S’all there is to it.

*

Shou’s mom sings the same song. She has her own residence now, in the city. It’s a decent size one bedroom flat, in a safe area. The apartment has a street facing window, and there are plants along the sill. That’s where Katsuki catches it.

She sings when she waters the plants. Like mom, like kid, he supposes. Shouto spouts that nonsense too, that singing to plants can help them grow. Or maybe she’s not being weird, and is just doing it for herself.

Shouto’s not actually here. He’s out of town. He always gets a little antsy about missing a visit with her. Katsuki can tell, and has always been able to tell. So lately, Katsuki offers to go himself.

It’s not the most chatty visit. Typically. They mostly just eat. It’s a little awkward at times, and he’s occasionally entertained finding an excuse to bring the damn nerd around with him, since that would at least kill the quiet. But nah, this is something he wants to do by himself. Has to.

The few minutes of conversation before and after the food is the hardest. The first time he came over by himself, she jumped when he talked loud, flinched when he cursed, and he’s since adjusted for it. He just isn’t...used to it.

When things are going well, it’s usually when they’re talking about Shouto. She’s curious about him, the way he acts around the house. She likes the anecdotes Katsuki has about whatever dumbass things Shouto’s pulled that week alone, and it feels alright to tell her. She’s his mom after all, and Shouto still writes to her a lot, and in those letters (which he freely lets Katsuki see) he doesn’t hold back anything.

Katsuki likes her stories about Shouto too. Though he tries to look less obvious about it. She brought out a thin photo album once, and holy-fucking-god the little half-and-half bastard was even cuter as a screaming brat than he is today. Head-empty and big-eyed and everything.

Once he took a photo of a photo to save on his phone, and he saw her looking at him out of the corner of his eyes, amused. The same smile on her face as the one he's come to recognize as surprised/fond when Shouto does it. 

“He doesn’t like to look at these photos,” she explained another time. “His father is in too many of them.”

Fair enough.

He’s looking at the album the day he hears her sing for the first time. Looking at these stupid pictures of Shouto as a baby is just too damn good for him. She’s left him alone to look at it, and is watering the plants on the windowsill.

“Hey, what—what’s that you’re singing?” he asks, his tone measured, low. Since the first time, he’s determined not to make the same mistake and freak her out again.

She looks embarrassed, just like Shouto did that first time, as if she didn’t really know she was doing it. “It’s a song for children. I used to sing it to my children as a lullaby. I learned it from my mother.”

“Huh. That’s where he learned it.”

“Shouto remembers the song?” She turns to him, watering can in hand, and she has that very crinkly up-to-the-eyes smile that Shouto can also kinda do—the one that chops Katsuki’s heart up into tiny little bits.

“Yeah. He remembers it. He even sings it to our f-our cat.”

“The cat?” she laughs fondly.

“You sing it to the plants!” unnecessarily defensive.

“That’s fair,” she smiles. “I think they do need it.”

Before he can second guess his urge, he blurts. “Would ya write down the words for me? I wanna learn it.”

*

Katsuki doesn’t sing. He can be nagged into playing the drums, he can even be nagged into being present at karaoke nights. He goes along with it because it’s better than seeing their sad dumb faces when he says no. The scheming fucking parasites (‘they’re our friends, Katsuki’) can nag him into a lot of things. Not singing.

He’s not gonna sing.

Not for them. Not in public. If they’re playing one of those games where you have to name the song, he’ll say the words with a little bit of the tune and that’s not singing. It won’t sound like a song though. Because the words are all that’s going into it.

It’s not coming out to kill. From the gut.

Gut instinct stuff could be the reason that Shouto doesn’t sing to him, if he really thinks about it. Since the way he works, Katsuki’s has noticed, is two-fold. He either does things on pure, raw instinct, or he does them because he knows that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and takes hints from what other people do, to figure out what he should.

Physical stuff, Shouto usually approached the first way, doing what felt right, and following his gut. With dates and things, anniversaries, he almost always does the second way, and discovers whether he actually likes what they’re doing after.

It’s really possible that Shouto doesn’t sing to Katsuki, because no one told him it was a thing that people do.

Sometimes Katsuki forgets, with how good Shouto’s gotten at it, that so much of this is new to him. He forgets how the first time they held hands Shouto kept letting go, because it was never made explicit that the whole deal with that was to hold on and keep holding it. For a while at least, until the whole thing got old.

He takes a lot of the hints from Katsuki too. Which is just absurd, because Katsuki knows that his way of doing things isn’t a ready-to-go template either. That’s why he sometimes initiates intimacy by being as irritating as possible, until Katsuki’s pissed enough that he yanks him into his lap and shuts him up. They both kinda do that, making fun of each other until they have to kiss and it cannot be a coincidence.

Unless it is. In which case what the hell. Maybe there’s some truth in some people being meant for each other. Symmetry, or compatability, or whatever the fuck it is. 

*

They don't fight a lot. Actually fight in the sense that they can’t talk the rest of the day without being reminded of it. Usually their fights are brief enough that they air it out in that hour or so itself. Katsuki hates it when it lasts any longer.

It feels like he’s walking around off-balance or something, when they’re not talking. When Shouto doesn’t kiss him on the cheek while walking by, or interrupt his work to tell him a dumb detail like ‘Izuku got new shoes’.

Katsuki...usually gets sick of it first.

He doesn’t apologize, if he can help it. ‘Cause they’re both wrong, he’s just tired of the distance and the being quiet. So he gets fucking creative.

He’ll make soba and have it ready, or bribe Soba into his lap with treats, and cock an eyebrow at Shouto, a silent hey dumbass see what you’re missing. Once he stopped by and got blueberry tarts from Shouto’s favorite bakery. Another time a song on the radio came on, so he turned it up and pulled Shouto up to move around to the beat in the living room.

All of those things to say that yeah he can be a huge asshole when he thinks he’s right about something but when it comes down to it he really loves this fucker and would rather be with him than get to be right. And that next time, because he loves a real dumbass and there will be a next time, he’ll try to say his piece in not that exact way.

Because he doesn't like to hurt him. 

Sometimes though, it seems like no matter what he does, Shouto does nothing but sulk. It makes Katsuki feel like shit, seeing his back turned, and him all huddled up by the window, like a lonely fucking cat.

It’s on a day like that, Shouto sitting by the window, watching the rain pour, that Katsuki knows he has to do it. Shouto’s been pouting there for a while, thinking in his dumbass candy cane head, probably, that what happened this morning means that Katsuki doesn’t love him anymore. It happens sometimes, that kinda misconception, ‘cause he thinks love applied to himself is conditional, or he did think that for a longass time, and even once (in the dead of night) admitted it.

There are plants all around Shouto now, since he took a few off the window sill to make room for himself and the cat. They only got sill plants to match the ones his mom had, so the two of them could maintain identical collections or some shit. There’s a few succulents, and a money plant, and a spiky one that Shouto calls ‘Plant God Explosion Murder’ cause he’s a menace. He was supposed to be in charge of them, that was the plan. Though it’s Katsuki that waters and fertilizes and obsesses over them, and Shouto that happily sends the photos with his letters for his mom to see. Idiot.

“Hey,” Katsuki barks in his general direction, to make sure he’s listening. “I know you’re mad.”

No answer.

He feels apprehensive, before he even says it. “Just listen though.”

Then Katsuki goes up to the window, and picks up Soba in his arms. She squirms, meowls and he lets her go, and takes up the space on the seat where she was, next to Shouto. “I’m not—I don’t do this! So if you make fun of it I’ll kill you. But…”

This is his chance. He could have said it before. That he loves hearing Shouto's voice. It bothered him for ages that Shouto was so guarded with it and he didn't know why. But he can show that he understands. He gets it. He figured it out.

He doesn't mind going first. Showing him. 

He pulls out the piece of paper from his pocket, and reads off it to the childish little tune he memorized. He honestly memorized the words too, but this is embarrassing and weird enough without having to look at Shouto in the process, and he can feel his face turning red anyway. The paper is there as a fucking support item. Necessary, or he’ll combust.

The song’s okay. About the lost girl from the village going to see her parents. He can sort of tell why Shouto likes it. Because it’s about the friends who helped along the way and the kind of dumb shit he does with Deku. Love lost and love found, families being together despite a long time apart. Like him and his mom.

He keeps staring at the paper even when he’s done with every word on it. “Yeah.”

“My song,” Shouto whispers, turning to him at last, and his eyes are shiny and his tone reverent as he grabs the paper. “This is your handwriting.”

“I asked her to tell me all the words, and I made this copy off what I got down on the napkin. It wasn’t that hard. I’ve heard you a bunch of times.”

“Nobody else has sung it for me in years,” Shouto says, and he runs his hands over the characters on the page over and over again. His fingers trace each lyric lovingly.

Then he lifts up his gaze from the page, and pulls Katsuki in for a kiss, just a warm press against his lips. But it says more. They’re okay. They’ll be okay. “Thank you.”

He looks him right in the eyes, holds his face, and for a moment, Katsuki is mesmerized all over again by the way the light shines into two different colored irises and how fucking-stupid-holy-shit-beautiful he is.

Katsuki is the luckiest motherfucker on the goddamn planet. No, the goddamn universe. Just to be able to have him.

Then Shouto smiles. “But your pitch could use some work.”

... The moment’s over.

“My pitch is a delight! A gift to the human ear! What do you even know? In your empty stupid head.”

“That you love me,” Shouto says, smug even though his eyes are kinda watery, then he holds up the paper, as if it’s proof. “I have the receipt.”