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Shouto watched Dirty Dancing for the first time toward the end of their first semester when the mission to bring him up to speed on “the classics” was in full swing. He had indulged at the time, his head full of pop culture for the first time ever, and paid rapt attention to the movie.
The first detail to catch him, one which kept its hooks in him throughout the film, was the way the childhood friends of the movie touched each other. Even though he knew it was just acting, the sense of longstanding familiarity, where permission to touch was obsolete and their bodies were as much each other’s as their own was familiar, somehow.
A few short months later, when he had forgotten he had seen the movie at all, it suddenly became glaringly clear why. Izuku and Katsuki moved with the same unity as the characters on the screen, though he supposed theirs came from fighting, rather than dancing.
He wondered; was it a soulmate thing, or a childhood friend thing?
The characters in the movie hadn’t been soulmates, but Kirishima and Ashido were childhood friends and they didn’t act much like that at all. If it was a soulmate thing, where did that leave him?
Being Katsuki Bakugou’s platonic soulmate was not a part of life he had been prepared for in the slightest. He had been content to go through his life markless, no soulmate to speak of.
His sister had been quite troubled when his lack of interest in his hypothetical, perhaps non-existent soulmate was inevitably revealed ‘round the family dinner table. He was apathetic towards nearly everything at the time, but romance especially so. That, at least, hadn’t changed, no matter what prodding his classmates-turned-friends did to recover his lost childhood.
He had considered the possibility of his having a soulmate, of course, but had been unable to escape the prospect of the pain he would bring them. Both with his heavy past and marred skin, and with his inability to love them the way they would love him. It was better, he had decided, that he had no soulmate- and if he did, that they never find each other. He just wasn’t interested.
He supposed they should have realized earlier, being the top students they were, but they were both anti-social. Katsuki didn’t let anyone but Izuku and, on occasion, select members of the self-proclaimed ‘bakusquad’ touch him, and Shouto plain didn’t let anyone touch him.
He had rewatched the tapes, obsessing, and found that they had marked each other during the sports festival, subtly. Wisps just where their sleeves ended and a few brushes hidden by scrapes and bruises. By the time Shouto had returned home to shower, the marks had faded without him ever noticing them.
The plan as it was, to never meet his soulmate, had been thoroughly blown up and smashed for good measure. The introduction of remedial courses into his life ensured such.
He spent more time with Katsuki in the first two days than he had the entire year. Izuku and Shouto had become close friends by then, so they both saw it as a chance to reluctantly learn to get along better, for the sake of someone they cared deeply about. At first, Izuku had been their topic of discussion, but eventually, they moved on to school, training, and then favourite foods, of which Katsuki had very strong opinions. Eventually, they spent the long, crowded train ride discussing their mutually bad childhoods, sharing silent exhales of relief at the notion of not being alone in strife, and hopes for the future. Shouto hadn’t meant to create a future together.
It was on one such train ride that it happened. The hottest day of the year, Katsuki with his blazer around his waist and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Shouto had no such need, regulating his temperature to a comfortable neutral, but days with drastic temperature changes always left him a little distracted.
The train was more crowded than usual and it jerked under them. Shouto, close enough to see the tint of Katauki’s eyeliner, stumbled closer still. Katsuki, reflexes sharpened from Izuku’s natural clumsiness, caught him easily, making himself a lifeline for Shouto’s flailing hands and steadying him on his feet as the train returned to its smooth pace. Only then did they draw away, both of them immediately snapping to look at the smears of colour across their forearms.
Shouto’s hands were painted a bright, chrome orange, the colour not rubbing off no matter how he moved his fingers together.
Together, they stared down at Katsuki’s arms, two purple handprints wrapping around his skin. Izuku’s green was still peeking up over his collar.
“Red and blue make purple?” Katsuki said, “That’s so lame.”
Shouto waited patiently, staring down at his hands and wondering just where they learned such a skill, but Katsuki didn’t say anything else. He didn’t roll his sleeves down to hide the marks, either, and caught Shouto by the collar when he tried to slip off into his own room.
Both of them marched through the halls, Shouto transfixed on the colours in every new lighting, barging through Izuku’s door.
Izuku looked up, having been expecting Katsuki’s return to his company, only to blink at Shouto.
Katsuki kicked the door shut behind them, jerking a thumb at back at Shouto, “Can you believe? Of all the fucks we know, this one’s my platonic soulmate.”
“How do you know it’s platonic?” Shouto had asked. In the moment, he was calm, transfixed and stunned, but in his memory, the panic was alive like wildfire in his chest. He was aware Katsuki already had a soulmate. He was aware he didn’t want one.
Both Katsuki and Izuku looked at him, with that soft and gentle concern he was so unused to. He focused on his long-time friend, not wanting to look at Katsuki and see the proof of their connection on his skin.
He didn’t remember which of them asked- “You're aromatic, aren’t you?” but one google search later and Shouto was staring at himself, summarized in nine words.
having no interest in or desire for romantic relationships.
Funny how there was a word for it.
And thus was born his dilemma. He sighed, he had thought reflection would help him work out a solution, but he was even less sure than he had been before.
Izuku, Katsuki. The way they touched. He hadn’t expected to reach that same level of comfort, that was unrealistic. They had known each other their entire lives, they were soulmates.
But Shouto and Katsuki were soulmates too, and Shouto knew that was supposed to mean something. For all he didn’t know, he knew that.
His parents hadn’t been proper soulmates, so for a long time all he knew about them came from movies, which rarely explored the platonic soulmate bond in depth. What role was he meant to play, exactly?
Once, experimentally, he slipped his hand into Katsuki’s on the walk from the train station, late enough that they had missed first curfew. Aizawa would let it slide, but only if they hurried their pace and didn’t miss second.
Katsuki glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, his gaze sharpened by curiosity, but he laced their fingers together and didn’t let go. They didn’t part until the day's natural going-ons forced them too, Katsuki to make a late dinner and Shouto to Izuku's room, following wordless instructions.
Late diners shared between the three of them became a routine that Shouto became oddly accustomed to. More often than not Shouto and Katsuki returned to find Izuku mid-homework and would join him until lights out when Shouto would gather his things and slip out, sure that he wasn’t allowed to stay.
As remedial courses came to a close and his morning and evening train rides with Katsuki disappeared with them, he found himself more reluctant to leave.
He could understand that part of Izuku that instinctively reached for Katsuki better now. The first morning he woke up and didn’t find Katsuki waiting outside his door, barking that they were going to miss the train felt like when there's one less step than you were expecting. He had been so sure and yet found only empty air.
With nowhere to be, Shouto drifted aimlessly, pulled along by Katsuki’s whims to include him. Izuku became the one to return late from extra training, finding his boyfriend and Shouto existing together late into the night, long past the sun's first dip under the horizon. Had he always been so aimless?
One such night Izuku returned to find Shouto tracing his fingers lightly over the bumps of a sleeping Katsuki’s spine. He would usually still be awake when Izuku got back, but that night he had nudged Shouto towards the bed, stripping himself of his shirt and sliding between Izuku’s sheets.
Shouto, his back straight against the headboard, trapped by Katsuki’s arm around his waist, his nose tucked into the crook of his hips, had stilled when Izuku entered.
“Hey, Sho,” he yawned. Apparently, they were all tired tonight because Shouto felt sleep stinging his eyes too.
“Um, hi, Izuku.” They kept reassuring him it was ok to use their given names, but he found it hard to address them as such out loud. In front of their classmates, he reverted to Midoriya and Bakugou, and they let him.
Izuku crawled into bed where Katsuki had left space for him. Shouto shifted, ready to twist his way out of Katsuki’s hold when Izuku saw the markings he had been painting on Katsuki’s back. It had started as an accidental brush, but then he found himself in awe of the way colour rose under his fingertips and was unable to stop. Weaving lines together intricately over Katsuki’s shoulders, his fingers stained orange to the knuckle from when Katsuki would move and brush their skin together..
Izuku smiled at him, and that smile seemed to freeze him in place. Accepting, fond. All the things he was unfamiliar with.
“I used to do that too,” he hovered his fingers around Shouto’s work, but he didn’t touch. Following the flow of the lines, he didn’t leave his green over top. “But I was never as artistic about it as you.”
Shouto faltered, not sure how to ask if he had done something wrong.
Izuku said, “He’ll like it,” and yawned again. He gave Shouto another sleepy grin before his eyes slipped shut.
“Night, Sho.”
Vaguely, Shouto felt he’d upset them if he left now, so he shuffled until he was lying down, the blankets around his shoulders and Katsuki’s face less than an inch from his.
——
He had expected morning in Izuku’s room to be an embarrassing, uncomfortable affair, but they had dressed in the dawn light, laughing as Katsuki recounted the bakusquad’s conversation in the group chat from the night before.
Shouto only chuckled once, then looked up to see them both staring at him. All those things he was unfamiliar with swimming in their eyes. He tied his tie wrong in his rush to leave the room, and it stayed that way until Izuku cornered him mid-way through lunch.
“Katsuki was glad to see you this morning,” he said, his fingers straightening Shouto’s tie. “I know he doesn’t say it, but he really does-”
Izuku was still talking, but Shouto was watching the scuffle between Kirishima and Katsuki across the room. Kirishima has his hands resting on Katsuki's shoulders, laughing loudly as Katsuki swatted at him. Shouto could hear him swear from his place by the doors.
Unable to stop himself, he thought that Kirishima should have been Katsuki’s second soulmate instead. Kirishima wouldn’t be afraid to touch, he wouldn’t feel like he was invading. Shouto had seen Kirishima’s red splayed across Kaminari’s hands. The shade would look just as beautiful on Katsuki’s, not like the awkward purple that Shouto’s touch left. Maybe Fate had made a mistake, just this once.
He watched them pull apart, bickering and laughing, Katsuki reluctantly enjoying himself. He watched closely, trying to see if, maybe, Fate had realized its mistake and corrected it.
But, when they both sat down again, Katsuki had no beautiful red to show for it.
“Shouto?” Izuku called distantly, clearly not for the first time. Shouto looked at him, his face folded in worry, teeth plunking his bottom lip. His face was splattered with freckles and a permanent soulmark under his right eye- like he had been crying and Katsuki had brushed away the tears.
Permanent soulmarks were uncommon, only formed when soulmates touched under extreme emotional circumstances. The science behind it was that it occurred when the soulbond manifested strongly to remind the pair that they loved each other, as a self-defence mechanism when too much strain was put on the bond. Usually, they were associated with domestic abuse and couples who lived through near-death experiences together. His mother had one, dark red like a burn around her wrist. At least, he’d always been told it was a soulmark.
Shouto’s scar tingled faintly, as it did when he became too hyper-aware of it, and he wondered what the circumstances were that the marks had been made under.
Katsuki had one too, he knew, two of Izuku’s fingers curled around his left hip.
The bell rang overhead and throughout the room, everyone began packing up. Shouto had never eaten, but he turned away from Izuku regardless.
“We shouldn’t be late to class,” he said.
Izuku followed wordlessly, and Shouto just wanted this to end.
Unfortunately, things rarely go his way and his day instead got progressively worse.
Whatever scuffle they had had at lunch surged back to life in the locker room while they were changing for heroics class. This time with Kaminari involved, it was a miracle they all managed to stay standing as they wrestled. In the end, Kaminari had a nasty bruise to expect and Katsuki lost his shirt.
“Woah, dude! You found your other soulmate!” Kirishima exclaimed. Shouto cringed, knowing what was coming. He should have known better. He shouldn’t have touched.
“Who’s the artist, man?” The crowd around Katsuki had expanded, and Kaminari was shameless as he admired the swooping lines on Katsuki’s back.
“It looks like a galaxy,” Sero tilted his head at it. Katsuki finally batted all of them away, grabbing the top of his hero costume out of Kirishima's hands.
The conversation continued regardless as Kaminari elbowed him, “Looks like fire to me.”
“Fire isn’t purple, idiot.”
“Neither is the galaxy!”
“Some galaxies are,” Sero retorted.
Soon the whole locker room was involved. Shouto wanted to escape the conversation but knew leaving would draw attention to himself. Instead, he curled his hands into fists to hide his fingers and schooled his expression. At least if they were arguing over what it was they weren’t thinking about who put it there.
“It kinda looks like something Picasso would paint,” Shoji, who had been otherwise silent, commented.
Katsuki had been letting his visible irritation speak for him, but at this he finally turned back to them, the only one other than Shouto fully changed.
“Picasso was a punk-ass bitch,” he said, “Shouto could kick his ass.”
The room erupted and suddenly everyone was looking at Shouto, exclamations of “Todoroki?!” in the air. He seized up, tension building in his shoulders as he struggled to hold his expression blank. Usually, his face was carefully blank by default, but something about the way everyone was looking at him made him want to fidget. He could see the scenarios flicking through their minds, vaguely uncomfortable with everyone taking on the assumption that he and Katsuki were like that.
Katsuki must have been able to read it on his expression because when Sero looked between the two of them, saying “so, wait, you guys are soulmates?” he closed his locker and replied, “Platonic,” as he dragged Shouto from the locker room.
Katsuki dragged him to the farthest training space, where there would be as much distance from them and everyone else as possible, past Aizawa, supervising, and Izuku, who had changed fast enough to escape the scandal in the locker room, and was already sparing with Iida. The two people who could have saved him, absent in his time of need.
Shouto looked forward at Katsuki, stretching in preparation for their spar. Instead, Katsuki had been the one to rescue him, somehow able to sense his discomfort when everyone else was oblivious to it.
“Hey, Icyhot,” Katsuki grunted, “start fucking stretching. We’re fighting for real here, no pansy shit like you pulled at the sports festival.”
Shouto sighed, but he felt relieved. “You’re still not over that?”
“Not over- I’m gonna kick your ass, pretty boy!”
“You think I’m pretty?” Paused mid-stretch, one arm crossed over the other, Shouto watched disbelievingly as a red blush spread across Katsuki’s face.
Funny- he was right. Red was a good colour on Katsuki.
“I‘m gonna kick your ass!” Katsuki deflected, raising his fists. Shouto dropped his arms, staying light on his feet, ready to dodge any of Katsuki’s explosions.
Katsuki didn’t hold back, rapidly closing the distance between them, poised for attack. Shouto, admittedly, let Katsuki drag him under the lull of the fight. When Katsuki pulled, enticing Shouto with a particularly artful right hook, Shouto followed, deflecting the force behind the hit and grabbing Katsuki’s wrist. He shifted their weight, using Katsuki’s own momentum to throw him towards the boundary of their section. Part of their training was learning how to keep a fight contained, but they were fighting by sports festival rules.
The other fights blurred around them. Shouto’s head was filled with the boom of Katsuki’s quirk, the sweet caramel-smell of nitroglycerin enveloping him.
Not to mention, fighting with Katsuki was the most mutual physical touch- affection, if it could be called that- that he’d gotten since his fingers started leaving purple stains.
He was so lost in the fight, breathing easily for what felt like the first time in days, that he didn’t even realize there was ice creeping along his neck and an ache in his arm until Katsuki pinned him.
“Ow,” he muttered, deadpan. It didn’t really hurt, but Katsuki pulled him up anyway.
Katsuki brushed the ice off his neck and he shuttered. Like Izuku, Katsuki’s costume incorporated gloves, so there was no chance of a mark appearing there. He wondered if that was a coordinated decision. Neither Izuku nor Katsuki had hidden their bond- though they did appear to have been going through something the beginning of their first year- but that didn't mean they would be so open about it as pros.
“I told you to stretch, idiot.” Katsuki manhandled him so that he was facing away, then Shouto heard his gloves hit the ground and felt Katsuki’s strong hands digging into his shoulders.
“I did,” Shouto defended lightly, letting his shoulders rollback. His body was buzzing. Aching and buzzing.
“You made of fuckin rocks? Jesus.”
He tried to give a half shrug, only to groan softly when Katsuki pressed his thumbs against one of the knots in his shoulders. Katsuki gave one last dig of his fingers before he seemed to come aware of their being in public and stepped back.
Shouto turned around, ignoring everyone not-watching them. It was worse to feel their side-glances and the weight of their thoughts. He wished they would make up their minds, stare or don’t.
He brushed his own hand over the back of his neck, pulling his hand back to look at it as if the soulmarks worked like that.
There were still ten minutes left of class, but as usual that time was spent recovering, holding cold water bottles to bumps and bruises and chatting loudly. Normally Shouto would make the walk back to the locker room alone, while Katsuki partook in last minute, lazy flexibility training with Izuku. Today, they made the walk together.
“Did you leave-” he resisted the urge to clear his throat- “marks?”
Katsuki was tense, closed-off to the question. “You get what you give, asshole.”
A front. He wondered if this is how Katsuki knew he was uncomfortable in the locker room. The same instinctual way he woke up some blue-sky mornings knowing it was going to rain. Something in the back of his brain that whispered Katsuki’s real feelings.
“You like them?” Shouto asked, not sure which marks he was referring to.
Katsuki’s eyes scanned his face before admitting, “You look good in orange.”
No he didn't.
“You look good in red,” he returned.
“The fuck that mean?” Katsuki shouldered the locker room door open but caught Shouto’s wrist before he could disappear too far into the room.
Shouto turned his wrist, curling his fingers, making sure his skin didn’t brush Katsuki’s.
Katsuki, sharp as he was, caught the moment.
“Ok,” his voice was brewing with heat, “what the fuck Shouto?”
When Shouto tugged his wrist away, Katsuki let it slide from his grip, but didn’t stop his angry lecture.
“You don’t mark me for a month, then you do, and now you won’t again?” His voice was getting progressively louder, but he cut off abruptly exhaling forcefully. He’d come a long way since the start of their first year- he was angry Shouto wasn’t communicating his feelings. Hypocrite.
Small explosions crackled in his palms until he curled his hands into fists, smothering them. His moments jerky and angry, he stalked to his locker and started changing back into his school uniform.
Wearily, Shouto did the same. Keeping his gaze firmly on the inside of his locker, Shouto tried not to think about the mural splayed across Katsuki’s back.
“I didn’t know if I was allowed.”
A quiet, private admission. Shouto didn’t even know if he meant for Katsuki to hear, but he did.
“What?” He must have known Shouto wasn’t going to repeat himself because he didn't give him the chance, “Of course you’re allowed.”
He felt Katsuki stand behind him, urging, “C’mon, Icyhot.” He turned around. “I let you paint Starry Night on my fucking back, what more could you do?”
Katsuki held his hand out to him, waiting. Shouto took a breath, trying to come to terms with the fact that Katsuki had been awake as Shouto
“Picasso didn’t paint Starry Night, that was van Gogh. And it's blue, not purple.”
Katsuki huffed a laugh and Shouto watched his chest rise and fall. “I told you, Picasso was a punk-ass bitch, and Starry Night is whatever fucking colour I say it is.”
Shouto was halfway through saying “that’s not how paintings work,” when Katsuki grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him into a kiss.
When Katsuki pulled back, Shouto didn’t move, his lips still parted.
Katsuki was watching his reaction closely, biting his bottom lip when Shouto didn’t say anything.
“Was that- ok?” He asked, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. It was weird, seeing Katsuki’s lips purple. He was so used to green.
“Um,” Shouto thought about it. He hadn’t hated it, physically it was nice- like the time Izuku showed him what a good and proper hug was like- but he didn't- “It was ok. But-”
“Platonically,” Katsuki summarized for him, nodding.
He smiled, feeling like maybe Katsuki understood him.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “Picasso was a bitch.”