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Katsuki’s hand freezes on the door handle when he feels that it’s unlocked.
He knows he locked it this morning—he’s certain he did. Despite leaving in a rush, downing half a protein shake and throwing his jacket over his shoulder, he distinctly remembers shoving it closed. He remembers twisting it that one way that made the latch catch smoothly and rocketing down the stairs whilst pocketing the key.
On mornings swamped with early shifts it’s an inconvenience, one he frequently forgets about and sprints back again to lock the damn thing. But naivety is no longer a luxury he can afford, not with all the talk, the threats from the public and villains alike. His image only goes so far when speaking to an irate crowd, so Katsuki isn’t stupid enough to forget something so trivial. He locked the door, and he’d left the spare set of keys at the office with Kirishima.
Katsuki’s jaw tenses and his backpack drops to the floor. He’s always the one to be resiliently maverick; a pillar in a crumbling temple. He’s no Deku, no daylight hero with the sun shining out his ass, but he takes pride in his prowess; his raw determination. He’s bold and victorious.
So, why does his stomach drop through his feet when he presses against the cold wood?
The door creaks open with a sound like a thunderstorm in a canyon, the fluorescents in the hallway bathing his living room in bare flickers. The shadows loom on the walls and pull at his nerves, his fight, the chill in his back; he forgets to breathe when his eyes snag on a shape in the dusk.
Seated in the darkness, is exactly who he expected it to be.
They catch each other’s eyes through the dim, dancing in an endless sea of impasses with every glint of the light. Even in the daytime, those eyes are dull, detached, and the night is no different to their insentience. Not like when they first met.
The door clicks shut, and the room is plunged into the depths of the night. It’s like a cavern; a deep darkness that toys with the childish fears at the back of Katsuki’s mind, a feeling of not being watched as much as hunted. The overhead light blinks when Katsuki snaps his fingers, but it doesn’t bring life, only a staleness thickening the air. When Katsuki turns to look Todoroki Shouto in the eye with his teeth bared, it’s nothing short of feral.
“Get out of my fucking house.”
Todoroki blinks, slowly, face unchanging. “Why?”
“Why?” Katsuki feels his morality slip through his fingers like sand. “Because you’re trespassing, asshole, that’s why. Don’t make me say it again.”
Todoroki doesn’t move. He stares at him over the top of the fist pressed to his lips. He looks far too casual, far too at home sitting there like he owns the place and everything in it. Katsuki included.
“If you’re asking how I got here, I was given the key.”
Fucking Kirishima. “That’s not what I’m asking, and you know it.”
Katsuki leaves his shoes on as he steps up onto the beige carpet, chancing that little bit closer, and Todoroki still looks like the cat that caught the canary. His next question comes as a contradictory impulse— “Why are you here?”
Todoroki doesn’t watch, he observes him with a sweep of his eyes. He’s done nothing, said nothing overtly threatening, and yet Katsuki’s palms begin to smoke like he’s been flashed the sharp curve of a blade. “I’m here because I want to be.”
“Why do you want to be here?” Todoroki opens his mouth and Katsuki growls, “Don’t give me that vague shit, you’re not dumb. You have a reason.”
Now he hesitates, that steady contact breaking to flicker down to Katsuki’s backpack on the floor, and the arches of gauntlet metal poking out the top like flagpoles.
“I missed you,” he settles on, voice taut, and leaves it at that.
Katsuki’s heart quickens. The feeling is indescribable, it always has him choking on his breath in a flush of unadulterated horror. Nothing ever prepares him: not for the hole in his chest swallowed by grief, not for the mourning of touch, the feeling of someone just out of reach. It’s something that slips by him like he can stop it, and like clockwork it happens whenever he came home and found Todoroki sat in his apartment like everything is okay.
And, if there was one thing this whole mess wasn’t, it’s not okay .
“Spare me.”
His voice is bitter, like a cornered dog, and Katsuki sidesteps Todoroki in a berth so wide he’s plastered to the wall. He can’t stand to be near him, not when Todoroki’s very presence is repulsive like a heart full of magnets, something corrosive against Katsuki’s explosive; two sides of the same coin which should never, ever meet. “Get lost.”
Katsuki finds his solitude behind the thin wall of his kitchen, letting the glow of twilight filtering through the blinds wash over his hands as he moves. He’s robotic: boiling water, sorting tea leaves for two—no, one—no, two —and dumping the water in with such a force it sloshes over the marble countertop.
“ Ugh.” Nothing can ever be clear or okay with Todoroki around. Even when they were back in UA with nothing more than spits of words between them and Deku acting as haphazard glue, it’d been the same. Solidarity only goes so far in classmates, and when they graduated Katsuki was more than happy to flip him off as he marched away with his diploma.
Then that bastard had to sneak into his life again, and nothing has been the same since.
“You should be more careful.”
Todoroki’s voice comes from the doorway, all languid and pointed, and Katsuki’s grip on his mug tightens painfully.
“I told you to get out.” He can’t look at him, not at those stupid eyes of his, not when there are very obviously two mugs of tea on the countertop.
“Mm.” Warmth suddenly fans across his nape, far too gentle, and Katsuki’s eyes snap open. “But do you mean it?”
A second is all it takes for Katsuki to react, instinct spreading to the tips of his fingers and pulling his arm back to elbow Todoroki in the gut. He flips them over in a heartbeat: Todoroki pinned to the counter, arm twisted behind his back, and Katsuki’s breath ragged against his lips.
“Whaddaya think you’re doing, Icy Hot?” Katsuki’s palms are smoking again, dripping in concentrated, malevolent sweat through skin on skin as he holds Todoroki’s arm there, spitefully. “I warned you what would happen if you came here again.”
Even as he’s speaking, Todoroki’s eyes move. They aren’t watching Katsuki anymore, but are flickering down to his lips with a look that Katsuki wants to punch off his face. “I know.”
Katsuki’s temper flares. “Then why—”
Todoroki kisses him, and it tastes like every other time they’ve kissed. Nothing feels different when so much has changed: Todoroki’s lips are still warm in their cold, are still soft and a little dry, still mellow. Maybe it’s a way to keep Katsuki under his thumb, a way to make sure he doesn’t call for backup, and a way to promise him that he can’t have a distant future. Not when Todoroki ripped it all apart the second he slid under the radar and into Katsuki’s bed.
Todoroki isn’t Todoroki Shouto anymore. He’d turned his back on that months ago.
Katsuki doesn’t struggle when Todoroki frees his arm and cups his cheek, but it’s the move to pull him closer by his hip that jerks him away like a burn. He shoves Todoroki’s chest—hard—and can only stand on the linoleum like a spoilt child, furious frustration pooling wet in his eyes.
Todoroki is silent, gazing at him with curiosity and concern—too much like the Todoroki he grew up with to be comfortable. Yet here he sits on a palace of ice and a throne of lies, with Todoroki Shouto in the throne room like a ghost. Maybe that’s why he chose the name Ghost, because he’s a shell. Someone that nobody apart from Katsuki will believe in.
“Don’t touch me.”
Katsuki gags on his words, stuck to the fridge, heart against his ribcage, ears ringing. “You lost that when you decided to become a fucking villain.”
Todoroki’s lips purse. “I wouldn’t call it that.”
“Then what would you call it, smartass?”
“A contrast.”
“To what?”
“My father.”
“Your father ?” Katsuki spits and slaps away the hand that reaches for him with a sneer. “That’s the reason? You got so many daddy issues that you threw yourself into the trash to spite him?”
Todoroki’s face changes. The concern melts to stone, lips tight and grounded. He’ll get no more reactions out of him. “My apologies. I didn’t realise after so long that you cared.”
“Get out.”
Katsuki’s palms are smoking again with more vigour this time, and it takes every ounce of restraint to keep his feet on the floor. This rage is inexplicable in a way that has his heart thumping too hard against his ribs, his head pounding with every word he could say but can’t trust his tongue to.
And still Todoroki doesn’t move. “If you’re—”
“Get out. Get out!”
Neither of them miss the lilt to his tone, nor the seething tremble to his voice, but it’s enough to close Todoroki’s mouth. He stares for a moment longer, those shitty eyes still insipidly blank, and Katsuki realises he can barely remember the look in them from before. Had they ever looked at him with shining adoration? Once maybe, but that was many, many years ago.
Todoroki says nothing as he slips by Katsuki, and the silence extends across the building when the door clicks shut and the footsteps fade down the hall. A weight settles that no noise or light can fill.
He stares at the two mugs of tea, still boiling; the stains on the countertop and the discarded, waterlogged towel. He sees his reflection in the window, the lights of central Tokyo outside, and the abundance of life that can’t reach his quiet apartment. The Ghost has been here and, like his namesake, turned everything cold.
Katsuki drops his hands to the marble with a force that stings, and all he can do is watch his frustration drip into the spilled water. He’s no longer sure why he cries in his empty apartment when no one else is around—his body doesn’t explain anymore. Months ago, it was for the loss of a competitor, a rival, a clandestine lover; weeks after it was for the deadly secret that he kept with sealed lips.
Nowadays, he cries because of locked doors and shut windows. A key left in the hands of a friend and not the man his heart is still desperate to have.