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Katsuki knows it’s ridiculous. He is painfully aware of this simple fact, but that doesn’t stop the thoughts inside his head from continuing to make a fool out of him.
He’s staring. He’s, like, one ounce of self-respect away from making that weird half-choking noise Deku had made the first time he saw Eijirou shirtless.
Todoroki isn’t even shirtless. Todoroki isn’t even—
Katsuki coughs. “Hi,” he says, because obviously eloquence has never in his life failed him. Not even once.
Todoroki smirks at him. Smirks. Like he knows. (Not like Katsuki’s being subtle.) “Hi,” he says, “you must be my new tutor? Bakugou, was it?”
And—
Like.
Here’s the thing.
When Deku said he had a friend who needed organic chem tutoring, Katsuki hadn’t pictured—well, he hadn’t pictured this. Maybe not some mousy bookworm who looked like they’d faint at the mere thought of a gym, because that would be ironic, considering Katsuki’s fucking majoring in organic chem, but still. Not this.
Not every single one of his wet dreams personified. Completely without his own permission, Katsuki wonders if Todoroki likes having his hair pulled. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, Deku said you—that you needed help?”
Great. Just—just fucking fantastic.
“I do,” Todoroki says. “Do you suppose you’re the right fit?”
Mercifully, Katsuki keeps himself from saying something about being sure he could make it fit. “Doubt you can find anyone better than me,” he says, because it’s true. He works hard. He’s good. It doesn’t hurt to acknowledge that. (He’s not trying to show off. He isn’t.)
Besides, Todoroki is looking at him like he’s searching for something, and Katsuki strangely wants to make sure he finds it, whatever it is. Christ’s sake. At least he’s not puffing out his chest and offering to let this annoyingly pretty bastard touch his arm muscles yet.
Being an alpha is kind of really fucking inconvenient sometimes. Like right now. For instance.
The look on Todoroki’s face softens. “Yeah,” he says, with just a hint of a smile left, “I doubt it too.”
…
Katsuki makes it through the tutoring session without:
- getting a sexual harassment lawsuit (which is so fucking far from something he ever thought he would count as an accomplishment in his life it’s not even funny)
- a single clue why he’s there; Todoroki is good, almost as good as Katsuki himself, even, and
- being able to get the sight of Todoroki’s smile out of his head (not the coy put your knot in me one, but the small, self-satisfied one that he couldn’t stifle when he got a difficult problem right on the first try, that one. That one’s fucking haunting him.)
When Deku asks, Katsuki tells him absolutely nothing. They’ve made it this far knowing one another without Katsuki mentioning an omega he’s interested in, and that’s not about to change. Even if before it was just due to an actual lack of omegas he was interested in, and not—not because he likes Deku’s friend. The same friend Deku’s been pushing him to meet since last year.
God. He likes Deku’s friend.
Yeah. Fuck Katsuki’s whole life.
…
It becomes a weekly thing. Katsuki indulging these tutoring sessions Todoroki so clearly doesn’t fucking need. They meet up at the library and in coffee shops where he watches Todoroki order the most ridiculously elaborate piles of sugar on sugar on sugar, and the first time Katsuki lets his indignation show, Todoroki laughs, and adds sprinkles on top of whatever ridiculous thing he just ordered.
It’s—
Fun, in the strangest, most messed-up way. Having someone who’s not afraid to push him back. Who doesn’t see Big, Strong Alpha and get scared. Todoroki keeps up with him, snarks right back and doesn’t even flinch.
(The first time Katsuki calls him princess, Todoroki purses his pretty little mouth in thought, blinks once, and says, “I guess you’re not wrong, exactly.”
Katsuki almost snaps a pencil in half that day.)
…
The first time he slips is an accident.
Todoroki mentions this movie he wants to see once, and Katsuki immediately blurts out, “I’ll take you,” without even thinking about the words leaving his mouth. (About how fucking catastrophic they are.)
Todoroki blinks. “You will? I was going to ask Midoriya, but he was busy with Kirishima, and my friend Momo was—”
“I’ll fucking do it,” Katsuki says, because this is quite a comfortable hole he’s dug for himself here. “I said I’ll do it so I will.”
“Oh,” Todoroki says. Then, “Thank you.” And then he goes back to drawing out his cycloalkanes, and leaves Katsuki to stare at the way he bites his lip in concentration, the absolute bastard.
Katsuki hates him.
(Except he doesn’t.
And that’s the real issue.)
…
Katsuki takes Todoroki to see the stupid movie.
And dresses up for it. Which he vehemently denies when Kaminari asks if he’s wearing cologne and if those are the earrings Deku got him for his last birthday. Because he’s not giving in that easy.
(Even if he’s already in too deep.)
Anyway. He picks him up and everything. Because even though this isn’t the thing he’s not going to mention so he doesn’t think about it as one even inside his own head, he’s still going to be—well. Not nice, maybe, because that’s never been his thing, but—
Fuck.
He can’t even come up with an excuse for himself.
Yeah. Okay. He wants to fucking date the idiot. That’s why he shows up with his nicest leather jacket on his bike with hair he spent twenty-three minutes in front of a mirror trying to get it to look this effortlessly tousled.
Todoroki blinks. “Is that—?”
Katsuki smirks. “Hop on, sweetheart.”
“Of course you have a bike,” Todoroki says, shaking his head like Katsuki’s supposed to understand what the fuck that means. “Of course you do.”
“Are you going to get on it anytime soon?”
Gingerly, like he’s scared to break something (him or the bike, Katsuki doesn’t know) Todoroki does. He puts on the helmet Katsuki hands him, and then wraps both hands around Katsuki’s waist.
He smells like vanilla, pressed this close.
Katsuki wants to taste it. To drag his tongue down Todoroki’s throat. To ask him where he’d like a bite.
He shakes his head and hits the gas pedal.
(Todoroki’s fingers clutch the fabric of his shirt.)
…
The second they leave the theater, Katsuki forgets everything about the movie. All the space in his head is filled with Todoroki, with the way he shivers in that thin button-down, with their hands almost brushing, with him not pulling away, not even bothering to bring a goddamn jacket.
“Come here,” Katsuki says.
Todoroki looks up.
Wordlessly, Katsuki wraps his jacket around Todoroki’s shoulders. “You’ll catch a cold, idiot.”
Todoroki smiles. “You’re very thoughtful for an alpha.”
“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re giving me your jacket, you remembered my coffee order last Thursday—”
“Harder not to remember, you’ll give yourself diabetes before twenty-five.”
“Besides,” Todoroki says, “my dad was never—he never did stuff like that for my mom.” He coughs. “Or—or anyone, really. He still doesn’t.”
“That fucking sucks.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Not all alphas are like that, you know.”
“I know,” Todoroki says. “You aren’t.” He nudges Katsuki’s shoulder. Katsuki just—goes still and stares at the back of his head for a few seconds, before rushing to catch up.
He doesn’t mind touching you, his traitorous mind points out.
(That night, Katsuki can’t close his eyes without remembering the way Todoroki smells. So he just lays in bed and thinks about it. About Todoroki.)
…
The second time is—
Well, it’s not even Katsuki’s fault.
Todoroki drops his goddamn pencil, and instead of picking it up, looks at Katsuki and says, “Can I borrow something?”
“Sure, go ahead. I have pencils in my—”
“No, I meant something else.”
“What?”
“A kiss,” Todoroki says, completely serious. “For good luck. Big test Monday.”
“Bullshit,” Katsuki says. “You don’t need luck. You know all this backwards in your sleep. I don’t even know why I’m here half the time.”
“But I promise to give it back.”
Holy fuck. Why is that—how the hell is that cute instead of revolting? Katsuki must be getting sick.
This theory is only further strengthened by the fact that something in his head tells him it’s a good idea to pull Todoroki in by the collar of his shirt and press his mouth to the top of his forehead. “There,” he says. “Happy?”
Todoroki’s mouth purses. He doesn’t say anything.
…
“Kacchan,” Deku says mildly, in that annoying please don’t set anything on fire inside my dorm tone of his. “Have you considered that you’re, uh, being a little weird? About Todoroki-kun?”
“I’m fucking not,” Katsuki says.
“Dude,” Eijirou says from his spot on the tiny couch, “pouting is so not manly.”
“I’m not fucking pouting either.”
“You sure about that?”
“Okay,” Katsuki says, “so I think about mating him sometimes. Big deal.”
“Uh,” Deku says. “That’s actually a very big deal.”
“Well I also fucked it up. So. Irrelevant.”
“Wait,” Eijirou says. “Backtrack. How, exactly, did you fuck it up?”
Katsuki winces. He shouldn’t have given in and come to them in the first place. “He asked me for a kiss and I kissed his forehead,” he says.
“Oh,” Deku says.
“Yeah,” says Eijirou. “Oh.”
His friends are extremely helpful and not at all useless, clearly.
…
Todoroki doesn’t show up next week. Or the week after that. Eventually, Katsuki gets a perfectly-capitalized-and-punctuated text that boils down to I’m firing you as my tutor. It also implies there was, as Todoroki puts it, unjust motivation behind his need of tutoring in the first place. (I thought you were cute, the one remotely normal-sounding sentence in the whole thing.)
Like Katsuki’s giving up that easily.
(His friends might be useless, but they at least know what kind of flowers Todoroki likes.)
…
Katsuki rings the doorbell, flowers clutched in his hand, and waits.
A woman that looks just like Todoroki answers. “Oh,” she says, staring at Katsuki first with surprise and then with an odd glimmer in her eye, “you must be the boy Shouto’s been talking so much about.”
The collar of Katsuki’s t-shirt feels too tight, suddenly. He also considers that he maybe should have worn something without the words die and fuck on it if he was going to be posing a formal courting request in front of his omega’s family.
Which he’s not actually doing.
Fuck.
“Todoroki talks about me?”
The woman laughs. “Quite a bit,” she says. “I’m Fuyumi, Shouto’s sister, and you are—?”
Potentially in love with your brother, Katsuki thinks. “Bakugou Katsuki.”
…
Eventually, Fuyumi convinces Todoroki to come out and talk to him.
“Look,” he says, before Katsuki has even opened his mouth. “I know I misread the situation. I made that clear in my message. I just—I don’t know, I liked you, I guess, and I thought you liked me too. I mean, you weren’t exactly, uh, subtle, that first day.”
“I wasn’t, no,” Katsuki admits. “Listen, I do like you. Like, I really fucking do. I can’t sleep at night. It’s a fucking problem, sweetheart.”
“Oh,” Todoroki says, in that way Katsuki has just come to think of as endearing. “In that case, I’m—”
“What?”
“Happy.”
Katsuki moves closer. Leaves the stupid flowers on his bike and pulls Todoroki in. “Really?” he asks.
Todoroki nods. “Yes,” he says, “really.”
“I think you owe me a kiss, then.”
Todoroki pouts. Like, an actual pout. Not whatever bullshit Deku and Eijirou were accusing Katsuki of before. “But you didn’t even kiss me properly.”
“Then I owe you one, don’t I?”
Todoroki laughs. His breath tickles Katsuki’s cheek. “That would put us in a vicious circle of kiss debt, alpha,” he says.
Katsuki’s heart stutters. Todoroki just— “Fine by me,” he says.
Then he kisses Todoroki. He has to. It’s impossible to have him this close and not kiss him. Not make up for not doing it earlier. He nips at Todoroki’s lip as they pull apart. “Give it back,” he says.
Todoroki’s smile tastes just as sweet the second time.