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Shouto is being suspicious as fuck again.
Katsuki stares at his boyfriend as he sits with his knees to his chest on the couch, phone clutched close in his hands as he clicks and clacks and nearly gives Katsuki a heart attack when he pauses to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. It shows off a black stud on his newly pierced ear that still drives Katsuki wild.
(Sometimes Katsuki thinks Shouto belongs in a shoujou manga, but then thinks that he's right where he belongs, with Katsuki.)
"Oi, Shouto," Katsuki calls out.
Shouto hums, but doesn't look up. Katsuki stares as Soba climbs on top of Shouto's head, and the idiot just- reaches a hand up and strokes her. Her familiar engine purrs only motivate Shouto to continue petting her, and Katsuki watches the stupid soft interaction grumpily.
Fine. If this is how Shouto wants to play it.
Katsuki gives in, sagging the couch like he's creating an actual ground zero, crater and all. To his delight, Shouto jumps up a little, and Soba clings on tight as she gets jostled. She hisses at Katsuki, who hisses right back because this is his couch too, fuck.
"The couch is going to be destroyed if you keep doing that," Shouto points out.
"Tch, no it's not," Katsuki replies, affronted. He personally picked out this couch for its good quality and ability to take a bit (a lot) of roughing up. He smirks at the thought. "S'gone through a lot worse last night anyways- and it's still holdin' up just fine."
A blush spreads across Shouto's cheeks, though ice counters it on his right side. Katsuki thumbs off the frost, even if his finger becomes a freezer in doing so.
"Wanna watch something?" Katsuki asks, because watch is synonym for cuddle that occasionally extends to something more. Netflix and fuckin' chill, bitches.
"Ok. But give me a minute?" Shouto answers. "You can pick something."
Like Katsuki would say no. He grunts something, and goes to turn on the tv, letting Shouto have his minute that turns into two.
"What're ya even doing?" Katsuki asks, and tries to sneak a look. He glimpses a blue bird on the corner. Huh. "Didn't know you had twitter."
Alright- they all had twitter but it wasn't like they actually represented themselves. Their PR team handled them, which was great because Katsuki did not want to waste energy on a bunch of extras. To see Shouto actively engaging in it was- surprising.
"I don't," Shouto replies, quick as fuck. Too quick. "I'm just. Perusing."
"Perusing."
"Yes. But I'm done now." The phone gets thrown somewhere, and Soba scurries to its fallen location like it's tuna. Dumb cat (affectionate). "Ponyo?"
Katsuki side-eyes Shouto, who just looks back with innocent eyes anything but. He knows it's one of Katsuki's favourite film and it's clearly a ploy for distraction.
(They watch Ponyo. Soba is curled up between them, fluffy tail swishing around every time she sees a fish – or something that looks like a fish – and it thwacks Katsuki's face every damn time.)
.
"Ah, Ground Zero-san," Snakes comes up to him, smiling eerily. All twenty snakes on her head stare at him, but he ignores them, used to their theatrics. "I just wanted to inform you of your ratings recently.”
Katsuki grunts, hitching his bag higher on his shoulder. It’s the least favourite part of his job, hearing from his PR manager. While he knows he needs the public’s approval on his goal to number one since they’re the ones rating him, he’s well aware of his personality not appealing to everyone- not that he needs them to, fuck.
"Your ratings have gone up, and there's been a decrease of negative feedback online," Snakes continues. She drums long fingernails on her clipboard, and the click clack clicks send him to hell. "Seems like you have a knight in shining armour on twitter."
“Whatthefuck,” Katsuki gets out.
Snakes just gives him another eerie smile, and says nothing.
.
With time to kill on the train, he goes on twitter. Searching up his name on it brings up thousands of results, but the one on top is from a user called groundzerohusband. The photo is one from a year back, showing him mid air and firing off a howitzer impact. A grin spreads across his face at the sight.
He clicks on the account, wondering if this was his knight in shining armour. It still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth- it wasn't like he needed saving, and the term makes him wanna punch something, or someone.
Twitter is- weird as fuck.
Shit. He does one drunken beatbox and suddenly there's a thousand fanarts of him in different colours re-enacting the scene. He wears stirrups one fuckin' time but online it's more than once; there's hundreds of versions of him wearing it. He does an ad to stop a wolf cull and suddenly he lives in the Arctic with only a wolf as his companion. And retweeting all thousands of him is groundzerohusband.
But that's not all. They post articles too, from the main ones depicting his wins to the obscure ones analyzing his moves. For a horrifying second he thinks it's Deku behind all this, but the username does not check out.
The thought of Deku does get the ball rollin' though, right down the hill and off the cliff. Katsuki checks out the tweets and replies, the familiar tone dawning on him in each one.
bktd 💥🍰 @groundzerohusband tweeted • 5 min ago
Ground Zero is hot send tweet.
Comments:
bakuboobs @pecs4life • 4 min ago
I'm confused b/c your username is groundzerohusband but you ship bktd???
bktd 💥🍰 @groundzerohusband tweeted • 4 min ago
...curious and curiouser.
Yeah. He knows who it is.
.
"Shouto," Katsuki says when he opens the door. When he sees his boyfriend, he thinks of all stuff on twitter; the arguments in the comments to mentions of all the civilians he's saved to the hundreds of fanarts of him in stirrups. There's so much he wants to get out, yet the thing that comes out is a, "marry me. Wait. Fuck."
Shouto just tilts his head, unphased. "So you don't want to marry me?"
This is. Not how Katsuki wanted this to go. Not that he thought about how it would, but proposing like an idiot was on the bottom of the list.
"I do! Just- not now." Fuck, Katsuki doesn't get flustered easily and yet Shouto just unravels all his composure with a dumb head tilt and wide eyes. Fuck. He leans on the doorway with a sigh. "Let's just sit down first, yeah?"
He bends down to untie his shoelaces and when he's back up again, Shouto is there to support his back, like he thinks Katsuki is unwell.
"Are you alright?" Shouto asks, and boldly assumes, "Back pain?"
"I'm not that old!" Katsuki defends, tone embarrassingly high. His old man gets back pain, not him.
"Anyone can get back pain," Shouto points out. "Don't underestimate its impact. I got back pain when we were in UA. Oh, though that might have been because we kept on-"
"Stop!"
Fucking hell. Katsuki does not want to get horny while he wants to discuss something serious. Luckily Shouto stops, only a wry smile on his face as he leads them to the kotatsu where takeout is waiting.
They take their seats, and Katsuki opens up the lid of his favourite spicy seafood ramen.
"Itadakimasu!"
Shouto slurps his own non-spicy ramen, and maintains eye contact with Katsuki the whole time. He waits until the fire subsides in his mouth before spilling the damn beans.
"You're groundzerohusband!" Katsuki declares.
It could've gone less accusatory, but. This is just how it's gonna go.
Shouto stops slurping, and it's unfair how he still looks pretty with noodles hanging from his mouth, even if it is dumb and not a look he should emulate on his next edition of ‘most hottest hero of the year.’
"Um," Shouto says. He slurps up the rest of the noodles (thank fuck) and puts his chopsticks down. "No?"
"Is that a question or an answer."
"An answer?"
This is getting nowhere. But Katsuki wants to make it go somewhere, so he continues. "Look, I'm not mad, ok? It's flattering. But you don't have to be my- knight in shining armour or whatever."
"I don't have shiny armour," Shouto says in confusion. "Iida does, though."
Katsuki shovels some squid in his mouth, drenched in chilli sauce and shichimi and a few seconds of peaceful quiet that defuses his exasperation.
"What I mean is." Another bite, because he's not quite sure how to get it out without making Shouto upset. "You don't have to fight my battles for me, especially not with extras online. They're not fuckin' worthit."
Shouto's quiet. He pushes around some pork with too much fat. "But you're worthit."
Shouto looks lost in thought, and Katsuki lets him be until he's back, still mulling over the words. "Remember all the backlash we had in high school? About the whole scandal with Endeavour and my family."
Katsuki nods. It had been a shitshow. He remembered holding Shouto tight as he silently cried; holding his hands tight to stop him from reading the news and the shitty comments from shitty extras who had no heart.
"Everyone told me not to read the news. Because while there were many people supporting me, all those that didn't, hurt. Like, when one bad thing overshadows all the good things. And when I saw it all happening to you, I couldn’t just- do nothing.”
Katsuki swallows. "It's not your battle to fight though. You don't- need to do this, Shou. There’ll always be assholes out there saying shit."
"They shouldn't though,” Shouto rebuts. It’s vehement and angry and makes Katsuki feel worth something beyond his own ego. "You don't... The things they're saying are wrong and I don't want to stand back and let them keep saying it without doing anything. Not again."
They both struggle for words, but sometimes Shouto just says the most genuine of things that piece together clumsily and turn out impactful, like now. He’s just so- good. When life had thrown him lemons, he'd made lemonade and threw it in people's faces, or however the hell that went.
And it's Katsuki who feels at a loss. Because Shouto's there, holding his hands, hot and cold but infinitely warm, with imploring eyes straight into his dark soul, with so much care and love for Katsuki.
"I love you," Katsuki says, because it's all he can say, really.
Shouto's resulting beam makes him think he said the right thing after all.
"I love you," Shouto answers in a heartbeat, sure and steady and alive. He hums. “I can’t take all the credit though. Our friends send me articles about you, and I just post them since I have the largest following."
There’s a sudden epiphany that makes Katsuki scowl. "All those hero analysis sites were from Deku weren't they?!"
"Maybe," there's a soft smile at the edge of Shouto's lips. "Maybe not."
"Tch."
"Plus, twitter isn't so bad," Shouto says, and proceeds to divert Katsuki's attention. He brushes back his bangs, and Katsuki's eyes swoop to see his logo as earrings, dangling prettily on Shouto's ear. "I wouldn't have found out about these without them."
See. It's neat, buying Shouto jewelry. Katsuki can see why people break the bank buying diamonds. Seeing Shouto wear something Katsuki bought for him makes possessive; makes him want to whisper pretty boy on Shouto's swollen lips, who's caged underneath him on ruined sheets and drawing out the prettiest of whines, just for Katsuki.
Seeing Shouto wear Katsuki's brand though, little grenades dangling mockingly from his ear, does Katsuki's heart in like the pin of the grenade came loose, rattling him to the core with the aftermath.
"Fuck," Katsuki says hoarsely.
He takes a step towards Shouto, who's giving a small, secretive smile, the one where Katsuki will tug out all of its secrets by the end of the night, guaranteed.
Brushing Shouto's hair back to see it clearer, Katsuki inspects the tiny grenade. It's so delicate, completely opposite of the real thing where the weight was heavy and laden with consequence. But on Shouto's ear the weapon becomes a pretty little thing- but no less dangerous.
"Do you like them?" Shouto asks, unnecessary, like he hasn't noticed Katsuki's reverence.
"Yeah," Katsuki says, and clears his throat. He tilts Shouto's chin up with a finger, and thinks, this is it. "Wanna be my actual husband, Shou?"
"Ok," Shouto agrees, in the same tone he agrees to eating soba, which- drives Katsuki up the wall.
"Just ok?"
"Maybe more than ok."
Katsuki kisses Shouto's burgeoning smile and tugs on the earrings a little, drawing out a startled hitched breath and, well. They don't talk much after that.
(Actions speak louder than words, anyways. Always does, for them.)
fin.
Extra:
@groundzerohusband changed the name to @therealgroundzerohusband