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Ochako knows when she arrives home that Katsuki is having a worse day than she is.
Its like remembering to bring her umbrella when it's overcast, it's a special skill she picked up in her Yuuei days. A sixth sense she acquired back when he was Bakugou, not Katsuki, and she was Uraraka, not Cheeks. It is, in essence, a way of reading the room, noting the volume of the music blasting from the stereo, and Katsuki's placement in the apartment.
Which is the kitchen.
Where he always goes when he is in a mood.
Ochako takes a moment to steel herself for what is to come. She had gotten caught in the gale after getting off the train on her way home, nothing and then a sudden blitz of freezing cold rain; soaking her hair and shirt and the bottoms of her jeans before she could get her umbrella up.
The cold is gnawing at her skin. Damp clothes clinging to her skin.
She slides her feet out of her water-logged shoes, mourning briefly over her soaked socks and peels those off as well, before setting them on the mat to dry beside his.
He is not the kind to be slovenly, even in a mood.
His shoes are neatly put away on the rack. His jacket is hung up on the hook. His keys and wallet are laid almost tenderly out on the sideboard. His yellow umbrella is drying, leaning up against the wall, rainwater pooling into a dark puddle on the mat.
Then, a loud bang resounds from the kitchen.
She stands for a moment, sulking over the cold, wet afternoon and crosses the living room.
She resists the urge to tip-toe into the apartment, like she might have back at the dorms, but thinks better of it. It there is anything that pisses off Katsuki more than being ignored, it is being treated delicately when he is already high-strung. It is, admittedly, something both of their tempers can agree upon.
It has been a push and pull, a snap and sink when they first got together.
She peers in, now curious.
Katsuki has his back to her, though he obviously heard her come in. She can see the muscles in his back working through his threadbare shirt as he leans into the counter rhythmically, elbows bent, kneading at a mass of dough that might have been enough to feed the whole building.
He turns, a half-glance over his shoulder, and throws a, "What's up?" into the air between them.
His voice is clipped, bitten-off at the edges so the s rolls through his teeth like a hiss, dropping at the up.
It puts a stiffness in her spine that she pointedly ignores.
"Nothing much," she echoes the same annoying nonchalance and lingers a moment longer, surveying the carnage of growing dishes in the sink; the barmy undertone of a rock song playing from his phone; the overwhelming scent of raw dough and olive oil wrapped around the earthy crush of lemon zest.
Her nose wrinkles in kind.
Their entire counterspace has been cleared of its usual appliances for Katsuki's project, a quiet dictatorship as he often does these days. Her eyes glance over the myriad of ingredients assorted neatly on the countertop, trying to piece together whatever it is he could be making.
Something complicated and ornate, something with lots of steps and precise timing, so he can focus and lose himself in the process.
It's warmer in the kitchen, a welcome shift from the front room, and Ochako wants to curl into that stagnant heat as it washes over her. The clammy sweat-sheen of humidly layers her forehead and prickles at her arms.
Katsuki is still staring at her, almost glowering. His entire body has gone stock-still at her interruption. There is a banal pinch in his brow where the muscles tense and twitch; waiting, watching.
She knows she doesn't have to. She is already tired and worn from the day, the look in his eye, and the rainwater soaking into the calves of her jeans, but she asks anyway, "How was your day?" As she asks, her eyes skip across him to the counter again, to a bowl of dark, tear-shaped fruit—figs maybe—and her puzzlement only grows. Unfocused and benign.
Maybe he is making a pie? Or a fruitcake?
Hopefully not a fruitcake.
"Shitty," he says, the uniform clip of his voice seeming to cut through word like a blade. It's tense. Dismissive. He turns back to his work, shoulders already shifting again. "You?"
"Same."
The word curls in her mouth, all weight. A laden ball of fuck and you that she learned from him.
It makes him stiffen. The grit and grain of the word wrenching in one ear.
He looks back at her a second later and tilts his head to the mass of dough taking shape under his hands. "Can we talk later?" There is just enough push in his tone, an emphasis on the later that makes her feel sequestered and annoyed, and just a tad bit angry, even though the last thing she wants is a fight right now.
It's—
It's a beg-ff. It's a loophole. It's an out.
It's better than nothing, really.
Ochako scratches her hair off her neck. "Okay. I'm gonna shower."
He does not answer nor just she waits for him to do so.
She strips once she is in the bathroom, standing for a moment naked in the cool air of the bathroom before the chill of the afternoon has well and truly sunk into her. She catches her reflection in the mirror above the sink and makes a face. She turns the water up as hot as it will go, and stands under the spray of the shower.
Fall has come early to the city, especially today, sending shivery gust of wind that curled through the buildings and made Ochako consider donning her winter uniform a little early this year. The rain had been a shift towards the cold favor. Sudden and quiet. A slide shift of pale blue to soft gray and opening sky.
It had been that freezing rain. The kind that falls too quick for umbrellas and hits like needles, sinking its cold deep into her skin. Something she can feel in her blood. Grating her with tension.
The warmth of the shower helps, but once the cold has receded, she still finds annoyance prickling at her skin, and ducks her head under the spray of water.
A brief spat with Katsuki about absolutely nothing had not helped either.
It had happened this morning the way it often did. Rare, but curling inside her like those not so subtle jabs the two of them had gotten when they first started dating. They would never work because Ochako is so sweet and Bakugou is so volatile. Advice that came unwarranted, unwelcome, and unnecessary.
She was tired this morning.
She is tired now.
She doesn't want to fight. She wants sleep.
The day has been too long and she is too cold to care about phone alarms, or undulating sentences, or the vault of Katsuki's lip when he's annoyed. She just wants dinner and bed and Katsuki. Always Katsuki.
Slowly, the knots of irritation ease and she rolls her arm in its socket.
When she leaves the shower, she feels warm and clean and sleepier than before. Katsuki has turned his music down just enough for her to hear him banging around the kitchen. Even that is quieter than before. Its oddly domestic. She considers peaking into the kitchen again, but decides against it, meandering down the hall to their bedroom instead.
Ochako pulls on her sleeping clothes from the night before and tosses her towel across the chair before collapsing on the bed, still unmade from this morning. The first point in their morning marriage of errors. The more she thinks on it, the fight seems to drift further and further away, marked by pettiness and pride, and embarrassingly, a misunderstanding.
A misunderstanding that had the two of them out the door and about their business, sorry and annoyed and angry—
But not for long.
Her mind trails after the sweet smells filling the apartment; the aroma of sugar and butter and figs, hanging in the air like a promise for later.
Katsuki's foul mood has come to a simmer as had her own.
They will talk. Everything will resolve itself.
She is caught imagining what new masterpiece Katsuki might be making and her own exhaustion, carries her into a dreamy half-sleep.
She wakes sporadically throughout, as she is prone to do, and blearily wonders if she might have seen Katsuki a few times. Between dreaming and awake, leaning into the doorway, checking over her like some baking sleep paralysis demon. She dozes back, pulling the blanket she doesn't remember grabbing up over her head, and snores.
When she wakes again, it is to a deliberate knock.
Pale evening is sinking in through the open curtains, drawing their bedroom in cool blues and shadow, the rain is long gone, but still clinging to the window with a cool mist. Beyond, Ochako can see the dash of a sunset fizzling out behind the cut of the skyline, day giving into night.
Katsuki is standing in the doorway with a plate, his hand raised to the doorjamb almost as an after-thought. Ochako blinks at him, reassuring herself that he is, in fact, here.
He says nothing as he crosses the room and sets the plate down on the nightstand closest to her. He makes a gesture as if conjuring something, but it is only to emphasize the point. "For you."
Ochako leans up, sleep dragging at her limbs and looks at Katsuki's gift.
There is a sunset-colored marmalade dolloped on a portion of the plate, blood-orange with seeds of lemon zest and ground pits. Then, there are the slices of bread, golden and ribbed, almost lovingly cut into portion sizes.
She takes the plate, feeling the ghost of the warm grip and, experimentally, presses her finger down onto the bread. It crunches accordingly. Loud and crisp.
She smiles, "I love that sound."
Not one to be kept from food, Ochako swipes her slice of bread through the fig jam. It tastes wonderful, of course. Katsuki is stupidly good at everything he tries. The sweetness of the jam bringing out the crust of the bread. Sea salt and olive oil. A marriage of sharp tastes, sweet and savory, and starving.
"It's really good." She says around a mouthful. She brings her other hand up to cover her lips, already swiping the bread into the jam again. "What is it?"
"Fig jam and focaccia." He looks off at the corner of the room, almost thoughtful. "It's an Italian bread."
Katsuki is studying her as she sets the plate on her knee. That curt, off-handed annoyance he carried before seeming to ease from his shoulders into something tense. Not docile and groveling, but apologetic in the shift of his hips and the dip of his frown. He is watching her, waiting for her signals, or waiting for her to throw the plate on the floor and yell at him.
As if she did that sort of thing.
It makes her frown, but she doesn't dare comment.
Not now, at least.
"Wanna tell me how you made it?" She lets the offer stand in the air a moment, gauging for Katsuki's reaction, then she pats the bed beside her, giving him welcome.
Katsuki circles over to the other side as she makes herself comfortable against the pillows and headboard. He seems to sprawl beside her. His knee knocking against her own. His elbow bumping her hip before dragging under him. Then, with his face half-buried in a pillow, he explains to her the arduous process of his afternoon project: pitting the figs, zesting the lemons, waiting for dough to rise, then cooking, then crisping. Measuring out the lemon juice for the jam with equal amounts of sugar. Sweet, but not too much.
Many steps indeed.
He makes it sound so easy. Well, a nuisance, but easy.
She is a decent cook herself, but compared to Katsuki, her skills are pretty basic.
And, honestly if she could convince Katsuki to meal-prep for her, she would probably stop all together.
She enjoys the fruits of his labor as he explains how the focaccia got its strange shape and, guiltily wonders if she could sneak off to get more, but when she's done, she sets the plate onto the bedside table and hunkers down beside him.
Katsuki pretends to eye her as she does so. "Wash your nasty hands. You got jam all over them."
"No, I don't." Ochako lies and wraps an arm around him, keeping her thumb lifted so not to activate her quirk. "I licked it off."
"You're gross."
"No, I'm cute." She affirms, pillowing her cheek on his shoulder. He smells like sugar, more so than usual. It's an easy sort of intimacy that has Ochako sinking against him.
Katsuki wraps an arm around her, displacing her momentarily before settling in the crook of his arm. His hand slides up her back, his fingers brushing at the nape of her neck where her hair is still damp from her shower and, no doubt, puffing up around her face, but she feels far away from self-conscious right now. The heat of his hand is familiar and welcoming, drawing a ripple of goosebumps chasing up her spine. She leans into his touch.
"I'm sorry I was snappy this morning." She mumbles, sleepily.
Katsuki exhales. The sound sends whoosh under her ear. The firm muscles of his arm flex. "'m sorry I was a dick."
"We were both dicks." Ochako concedes, running her hand along his hip. Then, yawning, "Y'wanna talk about it?"
"Nah, I want to sleep."
A man after my own heart.