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Todoroki Shouto makes him want to explode things.
And yeah, okay, fine, a lot of people make Katsuki want to explode things. Like—a lot. Potentially too many. (Maybe even enough to suggest he might need to work on his people skills.)
The thing though—
The thing is that Todoroki always seems to do it in the ways he least expects.
“Yes, we are friends,” he tells the reporter asking them all these stupid fucking mushy questions that have absolutely nothing to do with hero work. He’s not going to be saving anyone’s life by—by holding fucking half-and-half’s hand or some shit.
Thus, reasonably: an explosion. He yells and he recoils and he denies everything, because All Might forbid someone actually thinks (realizes, figures out, reads it angrily scrawled all over his face) that he cares.
Which.
Maybe he does.
Maybe.
Because maybe he’d stayed, after. When the fight was over and the villain was apprehended and after he’d yelled in Todoroki’s stupid pretty face that he wasn’t going to help with the cleanup.
Maybe he’d stayed.
And helped.
And watched snowflakes get tangled in the red of Todoroki’s hair, and thought ridiculously, stupidly, absurdly—that he was going to miss it, someday. That he would miss Todoroki’s idiotic blank expression and his astronomical lack of self-awareness and the way rose petals seemed to spontaneously manifest in the background whenever he smiled even a little bit and—oh, fuck.
There had been a Realization.
It had felt a lot more like a nuclear explosion, though. Seemingly far enough to be harmless, but not. An irreversible shifting. Fucking—fucking emotional entropy. The ridiculously irrational, writhing mass of supposedly self-governing flesh inside his chest, twisting into pure chaos. Like nitroglycerin burning him from the inside.
So. He’d tried to flee. Finished up as soon as he could and avoided thinking about any of it. It had been working perfectly fine until they sat them on the same damn couch and stuck a camera in their faces.
And now Todoroki is calling him his friend in that same emotionless voice he uses for everything.
Katsuki is not okay.
Of course he screams, of course he yells that they’re not friends just because they spend time together. Coincidence or fate—whichever one pushed them together in the first place—doesn’t make them friends. Doesn’t make them anything.
It’s not enough, coincidence, or fate, or godly will. Whatever it would be, whatever they’d call it if they were to write some cheesy article about two future heroes coming together to surpass hardship and demonstrate the best of what U.A.’s hero course has to offer—
It’s not enough.
That’s the part that stings, if Katsuki is being honest.
The awareness that he had to choose this. That some part of him wants Todoroki fucking Shouto enough that his body feels like it won’t hold up against the worst of it, and there are no stars to blame for it.
Of course they’re not friends.
“You were a little harsh,” Todoroki says, later, long after the camera crew has packed up and the unfortunate soul that had to interview them left looking haggard and potentially permanently traumatized.
Katsuki scoffs. “Me? I was just being honest. Not my fault they came in here looking for the wrong thing.”
(Besides, a little harsh is the best he can do, these days. Todoroki too close makes him feel like he’s about to be crushed alive.)
“I do consider you my friend, Bakugou,” he says, and then he takes a step closer, and then Katsuki has to go back to putting all of his energy into trying really, really hard not to combust.
“Why?” he asks. “Because I helped clean up a little bit of snow and ice with you? Is that all it takes, halfie?”
It’s not, and he knows it. But Todoroki just blinks up at him, once, twice, before saying, “Should it take more?”
Katsuki runs a hand over his face. “Fucking—”
“You have my back during fights, and you stick around when they’re over. Also, you made me soba that one time I got sick.” Todoroki tilts his head. “Is there more to friendship?”
“That’s not the point,” Katsuki says. The soba thing had been a moment of unprecedented weakness, and nothing more. Nothing. At all.
Todoroki keeps staring at him. “Show me,” he says finally.
Katsuki might be dying. He crosses his arms over his chest. “Show you what?”
“Show me what it takes to be friends,” Todoroki says. “And I’ll do it.”
Katsuki never knows whether to be grateful for Todoroki’s bursts of unwavering determination or not. He usually ignores them, because usually they’re not directed at him. It’s a little unnerving to be on the receiving end of the same look Todoroki had given him before he’d lost at the Sports Festival now that—well. Now that they’re not actively trying to maim each other.
Todoroki is asking to be his friend. Is telling him he’s willing to work for it. What the fuck.
“Are you serious?” Katsuki asks.
“Of course I am,” Todoroki says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
It would be nice, Katsuki thinks uselessly, if Todoroki ever bothered to accompany such questions with some kind of emotion. Hopelessly improbable, but nice. “Look,” he says, “I’m not about to hold hands and weave flower crowns with you, so—”
“Do those things count as friendship to you?”
Fucking hell.
“I mean,” Todoroki carries on, seemingly undeterred by the massive crisis he’s causing Katsuki, “I’ve never done that before, but I could try. If that’s what you want.”
“Why the hell does it matter what I want?” Katsuki asks.
Todoroki stares at him. “Is it not obvious?” he says. “I already told you I consider you a friend. That means I care about you.”
It’s not quite like getting punched square in the mouth, but it’s close. “You do?” Katsuki echoes, with wonder in his voice that is neither intended nor acceptable, but slips out anyway.
Todoroki smiles. It’s fucking horrible. It’s preposterous. It’s giving him heart palpitations. It’s—
“Yeah,” he says, easily, because he’s a fucking bastard set on ruining Katsuki’s life, “I do.”
It’s kind of making Katsuki wish desperately that he could kiss him.
“Whatever,” Katsuki says. He hopes his cheeks don’t look as red as they feel.
“Should we build a snowman?” Todoroki asks, the strangest non-sequitur of Katsuki’s whole life.
He blinks. “Excuse me?”
“That movie Midoriya was watching with Eri,” Todoroki explains, “Building a snowman was set up as a rather important bonding experience. It’s snowing outside right now—”
“You can make ice,” Katsuki interrupts. “It’s literally your quirk.”
“I know,” Todoroki says. Katsuki watches him gnaw at the inside of his mouth. “I just figured the setting was important. Like, thematically?”
Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. They used to do shit like this when they were kids, he and Deku, play outside when it snowed until their mothers started chasing after them with promises of hot chocolate to get them to go back inside. It’s not the kind of thing he’s ever imagined himself doing with Todoroki, but he wouldn’t admit to most of the things he’s imagined doing with Todoroki under gunpoint. He’s got a feeling Deku would never let him live it down.
“If I agree to this,” Katsuki says—and fuck Todoroki’s smile is already widening, God obviously hates him— “then will you be satisfied?”
Todoroki hums, considering. “I suppose,” he says, and the rational part of Katsuki still hasn’t caught up, can’t believe he just agreed to any of this ridiculous bullshit, but he hastily tugs on a coat and winter boots and follows Todoroki out the door anyway, so.
Clearly, rationality has nothing to with their current situation.
It escalates, is the thing. Somehow, it manages to get even worse.
Katsuki knows himself. Knows his strengths. Knows they can just as easily be weaknesses. Knows that he’s way too competitive and that his reflexes might be quick but that just means you’re 30% more likely to get blasted through the ceiling if you try to wake him up before nine, and he knows perfectly well what the sight of Todoroki Shouto’s smug face does to his brain.
It’s a targeted attack, really.
Because one moment Todoroki is picking up snow, and the next he’s giving Katsuki a contemplative look before throwing it his way. Throwing. Todoroki. Katsuki blinks. Todoroki just threw a snowball in his face. He was obviously not expecting that.
It lands. Snow splatters all over the front of his coat.
“Oh, you’re on,” Katsuki yells. He didn’t sit through almost a year of combat training for nothing. This fucker is going down.
Except—
Except.
Todoroki runs, so Katsuki chases after him, but none of it feels—
It doesn’t feel like sparring, or like the rush of the Sports Festival, or like trying to take down a villain.
It feels like a game, and the thought startles Katsuki enough that he staggers. Trips. Falls. The snow hasn’t really had time to harden yet, so the fall isn’t catastrophic, but it still sucks. Still feels too much like losing.
Especially with Todoroki looking down at him like that. “Are you alright?”
“The fuck’s it look like to you, candy cane?”
“Like you might need a hand?” Todoroki suggests.
Katsuki scowls. A year or a month—hell, maybe even half a day—ago, he would have already threatened to blast Todoroki to bits, but now—well, maybe he could work with a little help. “You know what,” he says. “I think I do.”
Todoroki looks surprised for one single millisecond, pretty mismatched eyes going wide before he extends a hand, and then—Katsuki strikes. With all the strength he can push into it, he tugs, and Todoroki falls.
Todoroki falls right on top of him.
Maybe he should have thought this through a little more. That—probably couldn’t have hurt. Because now Todoroki is trying to shake the snow out of his hair, and his face is dangerously close to the crook of Katsuki’s neck, and Katsuki has never had any fucking self-preservation instincts.
He’s also never done the flight thing when his heart started beating way too fast before. He fights instead. He’s good at it too. Although in this particular instance it probably helps a little that Todoroki isn’t expecting to be flipped and pinned to the snow.
Katsuki doesn’t even know why he does it, beyond the ever-persistent urge to win. To one-up Todoroki. To see something more than just emptiness on his face. Staring into Todoroki’s eyes pressed this close almost feels like a loss, though.
Like Icarus too close to the sun.
They’re both breathing a little hard, still, and he’s looking at Katsuki like he’s—like he’s waiting for something, and Katsuki couldn’t even begin to guess what.
“Got you,” Katsuki says. It doesn’t come out nearly as triumphant as he had hoped it would. It comes out winded and a little too honest. A little too much.
Todoroki doesn’t struggle. Katsuki isn’t even gripping hard enough for him to need to, if he wanted to break free, but Todoroki just keeps looking at him. Keeps staring, strangely expectant.
Katsuki could count his eyelashes, this close.
It’s a ridiculous thought.
(He has a lot of those around Todoroki.)
Something in the back of his head whispers Don’t be a coward. Whispers Tell him. Whispers He said he cares about you.
Katsuki, like Icarus about to plunge into the sea, leans down, and brushes his lips against Todoroki’s. It feels like he’s drowning, for the few breaths it takes Todoroki to kiss back. And then it just—it registers, slowly, what it means that Todoroki is kissing back, that Todoroki is kissing him back, clumsy and eager, and even though everything is way too damn cold and he’s got snow in way too many places, and it should, objectively, be The Worst Kiss of His Life, but.
It’s not.
It’s kind of the best.
“Is this what friends do?” Todoroki asks, blushing, but still annoyingly perfect in a way that makes Katsuki want to lean in and memorize him slowly, take his time until he’s got Todoroki a writhing mess beneath him.
Katsuki laughs. “We’re not friends,” he says, and kisses him again before he can say anything else.