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“Oi, Dimples—” Katsuki calls as he pokes out his head from the weird tangle of thick quilts. The figure of All Might—deformed and wrinkled as Katsuki wraps himself like a caterpillar into its cocoon with his sheets—looks like an alien with his crooked smile in the darkness of the room. It’s honestly comical, and Shouto shoots Katsuki a smile that makes Katsuki scowl harder, “What the hell are you doing up at 2 AM?”
Shouto hums, “You look like a worm.”
“The fuck?” Katsuki says, buried under three thick blankets. Only his spiky hair and his eyes come out, and Shouto chuckles. “Asshole.”
He throws a pillow in Shouto’s direction, and it hits Shouto in the face, but it only makes him laugh harder instead of the expected effect.
“Aren’t you cold?” Katsuki frowns, and sits up, pulling himself out of the bed with reluctance. He wraps himself into one of the blankets and grabs another one into his hands.
“I’m not, really,” Shouto says, just as Katsuki leans down to tuck Shouto into warm cotton. The quilt smells like them—Katsuki’s sugary scent and Shouto’s strawberry shampoo, combined with Katsuki’s detergent.
Katsuki doesn’t really care about Todoroki’s words, making sure to wrap him up properly—putting the blanket over his shoulders and covering well up to his neck, and then pushing Shouto’s legs and feet under it as well.
It makes Shouto smile softly—being taken care of had been always a weird miracle—often by his mom when he was a kid and then later with Fuyumi making sure he ate well and didn’t skip his classes—but with Katsuki, things like this happen more often than not.
Katsuki lends Shouto’s sweaters when it’s too cold, cooks more onigiris so Shouto can have at lunch, adding the things he knows Shouto likes; he studies with Shouto late at night, and listens to him as he talks about the manga he’s been reading all week; he asks him if he slept well, makes sure Shouto always has a place to go and feel safe.
It happens all the time—the way he asks without words if he’s okay, the way he puts Shouto at ease with only a hand on his shoulder or a look from across the classroom to check on him.
When he finishes with the blanket, he looks up and down to make sure everything is alright, and then pokes at Shouto’s right dimple with his index finger—he tends to do that a lot, and hates when Shouto calls him out on it.
(“You know, you seem to be obsessed with my dimples,” Shouto says one time as Katsuki holds his face for the fifth time that week. He’s cupping his cheeks and poking at the dimples with his thumbs, making Shouto’s lips pucker like he’s sending Katsuki a kiss.
Katsuki scowls immediately, and without letting go of Shouto’s face, he grumbles, offended, “I am fucking not.”
Shouto quirks an eyebrow, skeptic, “You even call me that as a pet name—”
“It’s not a pet name, idiot—”
“—And it’s the second time you’ve grabbed my face today,” he continues, “It’s like you want your daily dose of dimples.”
“What the hell is that—”
“I don’t know you but I’d call that an obsession,” Shouto finishes.
“Shut up,” Katsuki frowns. “I’m not the only one that touches your stupid dimples, dumbass.”
“Ah, that’s true—” Shouto tilts his head, recalling Kaminari doing it just minutes ago when he thanked Shouto for his notes for the English homework after failing with Katsuki, “For some reason, you do it even more after other people do it.”
“Hah?” Katsuki crinkles his nose, “Are you trying to imply I’m jealous or something?”
“I didn’t say that, you alone said it—” Todoroki cuts himself and blinks, realizing. “Ah. Is that the reason you do it?”
Katsuki’s face colors a pretty shade of red, scowl deepening as he chokes an, “Of course not!”
Ah. So he is jealous.
Hm.
Katsuki squints his eyes, squeezing Shouto’s cheeks with his fingers in a way that doesn’t hurt, “Why are you smiling like an idiot, dipshit?”
“Oh, nothing,” Shouto says, chuckling, and reaches out to touch Katsuki’s pink cheeks. They’re warm, and got warmer as Shouto’s hands hold them, as if he was somehow heating them up. “You’re cute.”
“Hah?!” Katsuki snaps, sounding like Shouto just insulted him, “Stop doing that!”
Shouto tilts his head, lips curling up in an amused smile, “What thing?”
“Don’t play dumb, Dimples,” Katsuki says, “I know what you’re doing. Stop playing with my cheeks!”
Shouto snickers, “Stop you first.”
Katsuki opens his mouth and then closes it. And then everything again. Finally, “Whatever. I’m not obsessed with your stupid dimples.”
“Mhm,” Shouto hums. He feels like saying “then why are you still touching them?” but he thinks that, if he keeps teasing, Katsuki won’t let him hold his face, maybe he’d even step back and stop touching Shouto’s skin, and he enjoys when Katsuki plays with his dimples. And he enjoys touching Katsuki’s face back, especially when it’s this warm and his skin is dusting a pretty pink, and he looks so ridiculously cute, so at the end, he doesn’t say anything.)
(After that, he tries not to tease Katsuki a lot about it, because the next day after that conversation, he spent over a week being so overly self-conscious about his particular habit, always stopping himself after he lifted his hand to touch or poke at Shouto’s dimples when he smiled, curling his fingers and hiding his hand away, until Shouto got so sad because he didn’t do it anymore and started panicking because he thought Katsuki wouldn’t do it ever again and it was his fault and he missed it a whole lot—so he admitted out loud that he actually liked it and that he missed Katsuki doing it, and then it didn’t seem to be a problem anymore. But Shouto didn’t want to risk it, so he kept the dimple-teasing at the bare minimum.)
He makes sure he’s okay with his work wrapping Shouto up, and then sits on the windowsill with him.
“Thank you. You’re a good mom friend,” Shouto says, smiling, and Katsuki shoots him a look.
“Fuck off,” he says, flipping him off. “I’m not your fucking mom.”
“You’re right,” Shouto hums, “You’re more like a grumpy grandma.”
“I’m really close to revoke your handmade soba privileges, Dimples.”
Shouto’s eyes widen, “Ah. No, wait—”
Katsuki barks out a laugh. He seems to be about to say something else, maybe to joke about Shouto’s “unhealthy (that wasn’t unhealthy at all, thank you very much) obsession with soba”, but then the wind of the night bites at the skin of his neck and he glares at the sky, wrapping himself harder into the All Might blanket.
“Jesus fuck,” he hisses, “It’s freezing.”
Shouto sticks his feet out the carefully wrapped quilt to put them and his puffy socks—the red and blue ones with cat prints on them—over Katsuki’s.
“You can come back to bed,” he says.
Katsuki looks at their feet, and then at Shouto’s face. “Hmph. And why are you sitting your pretty ass here while is freakin’ winter and it’s, may I fucking repeat, two in the morning? I thought you liked cuddling when it’s cold.”
Shouto tilts his head, confused, “I always like to cuddle with you, Katsuki, even when it’s not winter.”
Katsuki’s face gets red, and he stubbornly decides to ignore that to glare at Shouto’s soul. “You’re so embarrassing! Stop saying stuff like that, holy shit—”
Shouto hums. He stares a bit more at Katsuki’s red face—warm out of embarrassment, nose already pink because of the cold, soft hair shining gentle gold with the moonlight. He picks up his legs, hugs his knees against his chest and rests his chin over his thighs so he can look up at Katsuki.
“I’m just watching the sky,” he says, “It’s been a while since we could see stars. They look pretty.”
Katsuki quirks an eyebrow. “Just that?”
Shouto nods, “Yes. I got up to the bathroom and saw out the window and they were there. It was so weird, especially in January…”
He looks to the side. The pitch-black is sprinkled with small balls of lights, stars dancing in the darkness as white flowers swimming on the surface of a pool at night. They’re so beautiful, and make himself feel calm and captivated, and it’s even better with Katsuki there.
“They’re really pretty,” Shouto mumbles, charmed by the beauty of a starry sky, and Katsuki hums in agreement.
Suddenly, he gets the weird urge to watch the stars reflected in Katsuki’s warm dark eyes—back in July, when they went to the summer festival and watched the fireworks show, they looked even better in Katsuki’s pretty eyes than in the sky, so Shouto expects to be amazed now, too.
But, the moment he looks back at him, Katsuki is not looking up, but instead at him. He’s meet with Katsuki’s focused eyes, relaxed face as he leans back on the windowsill and watches Shouto attentively.
For some reason, Shouto’s face gets warm.
“Why are you staring at me?”
Katsuki shrugs, “You looked happy,” he points out, as if that alone explained it.
Shouto makes a weird, nervous, kinda strangled noise at the back of his throat, and feels that familiar tug that pulls at his stomach every time Katsuki stares a bit too much.
“What?” Katsuki leans towards him instead, and gets closer as he tilts his head in front of Shouto’s face. “Are you getting self-conscious, Dimples?”
“It’s—you just—” Shouto’s eyes dart to Katsuki’s lips, curled into a loose, small amused smirk, and then forces himself to look up at his eyes, because he’s getting nervous at being so close. Watching Katsuki’s eyes up close doesn’t help one bit, though, “you—always stare.”
Katsuki hums, then reaches out to brush Shouto’s hair off his forehead, tucking one lock behind his ear, “You’re easy to stare at,” he says, simply, “that’s all.”
Shouto swallows, holding his breath as he feels himself getting pulled into Katsuki’s space. Now that he thinks about it, Katsuki is prettier than any star in the night sky.
“Now get to sleep, moron,” he says, and leans back, “You’re gonna get sick.”
Shouto blinks, feeling weird as Katsuki steps back. It feels like he’s left hanging, though he doesn’t know why.
“Um,” he awkwardly utters, wobbly feet steading him when he gets off the windowsill. “Sorry for waking you up.”
“It’s fine,” Katsuki says, and holds his wrist to pull at him back on the bed, “now warm me up.”
Shouto blinks, and then starts laughing as Katsuki buries himself under the blankets again and pulls at Shouto close.
“What a weird way to ask for cuddles.”
“Shut up.”
Shouto hums, but does as he’s (indirectly) told, and pulls Katsuki close to his chest, and tangles their legs together.
He might not be looking at the starry sky anymore, but at least he’s got cuddles.
And Katsuki is prettier to look at than any star in the night sky, anyway.