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Eijirou has known Shouto Todoroki for the grand total of three and a half days when the Crown Prince proposes.
It's beautiful, really. Simple, in a way he's come to expect from the other man, despite his upbringing, and quiet, which also fits his personality. The Prince catches a large fish in the dead time between dinner and everyone going to bed, waits until it's just him and Eijirou on watch, and then offers Eijirou the now-cooked fish he’s been carefully preparing on the campfire he lit earlier in the evening.
"I hope it's okay," he begins, but Eijirou's already devouring it. It's burned on one side, which means there will be a blessing on their wedding day, and cooked all the way through which means Shouto's heart and intentions are pure. Eijirou is very impressed at how manly his new fiance is.
... wait. Not his fiance yet. Eijirou has to have his counter-proposal accepted first.
Oh man! He wasn't expecting to get proposed to so soon after leaving the Mountains where he grew up with the rest of the dragons! He isn't experienced in hunting for acceptable courting gifts down here in the lowlands. He'll just have to do his best tomorrow, and hope that he can find something suitable. Something good enough. Another fish won’t cut it, not for someone as manly as Shouto. He deserves a feast.
"That was amazing," he tells his nearly-fiance. "Thank you, I'm honoured."
Shouto goes pink, which is a very pretty colour on him. "It was just some fish," he mutters. "I didn't even cook it that well."
"It was perfect," Eijirou says happily, too giddy at the thought of someone as manly and powerful as the Crown Prince wanting to marry him to really care about anything else. "I loved it."
He stays close to Shouto for the rest of their watch, heartbeat humming in his chest, and when Tenya and Tsu relieve them just past midnight, he spreads out his bedroll next to the Prince and falls asleep with his brain buzzing like a hive full of idea-bees.
~
The next morning, he wakes up to find Shouto already up and practising with his swords on the far side of the camp. The Crown Prince is almost as mighty a warrior as a dragon, and that's more than enough for Eijirou to decide that even if he’s human, the other dragons will welcome him into their clans as one of them. Not that Eijirou would refuse to go and live with the Prince if he asked him! Eijirou will follow his husband anywhere. But it’s good to think that Eijirou’s side of the family will definitely approve.
He’s just beginning to wonder what a suitable return offering would be when Midoriya the Chosen One realises he’s awake. “Oh, Kirishima, you’re up – here you go, have some breakfast.”
The Chosen One has tracked down an old doe, past her prime and fawnless. He hands Eijirou one of the uncooked haunches and turns back to the fire. Eijirou grins at him, mouth too full to audibly thank him (Midoriya won’t mind, he never does), and hears footsteps behind him. He looks up as Shouto strides past, cheeks glowing with exertion and as beautiful as a summer sky.
"Here you go," the Chosen One says, smiling up at Shouto, and hands him a chunk of sizzling deer on a plate.
Eijirou's heart drops into his feet.
He should have guessed. Of course such a renowned warrior and person of clear status would have other suitors. And the Chosen One is very close to Shouto – they knew each other long before Eijirou and his good friend Katsuki joined the party.
Eijirou kind of wants to roar that Shouto asked him first, that Midoriya has no place making a move on someone who’s already made their decision, but then he remembers that he hasn’t actually made a counter offer yet, so maybe Shouto thinks Eijirou doesn’t want him? He frowns at the raw haunch in his hand and promises himself that he’ll find the best proposal gift anyone’s ever been given.
But he can't find anything all day. He does his best, disappearing off into the underbrush at the slightest hint of a rustle, but all he finds are birds that flap in his face and fly away. It's bad luck to give a bird as a proposal anyway, because like dragons they also fly in the sky. It's not good to give one of your near-kin to your lover to eat. He won’t lie, it stresses him out to think that if he doesn’t make a reply soon, Shouto might think he is rejecting him when that’s the last thing he wants! But there are traditions to follow and meanings to obey, and he needs to find something that fits the honour of being asked to be the Prince’s husband.
When they finally set up camp, things suddenly get a whole lot worse.
It's Uraraka's turn to get dinner, and apparently she's an excellent hunter as well as their best magician because while Eijirou was struggling to find anything, she managed to catch two rabbits. She starts making a thick, rich stew with the meat and some vegetables the Chosen One has been carrying. Eijirou makes a mental note to ask her where she found the rabbits, because that might be a good counter-proposal for the Prince, as long, slow cooking is the most difficult of all and indicates devotion to your partner. But then to his dismay she pours the stew into a bowl and dashes over to where Shouto is swearing at the uncooperative rain shelter, and hands it to him.
Eijirou's heart was in his feet before. Now he's pretty certain it's trampled into the ground under him. He's competing with the Chosen One and Uraraka? Uraraka, who challenged Katsuki himself and made him take her seriously?
Who would choose him over them?
But he's Red Riot, the son of Crimson Riot, and he never gives up. Shouto proposed to him first after all, so all Eijirou has to do is create a good enough counter-proposal before Shouto decides to take one of the others up on their offers. He has to prove he’s the best fiance.
Or – well. Clearly Shouto is the best fiance, because everyone wants him to be their fiance. Eijirou will just have to be the best at getting the best fiance.
Perhaps he should ask Katsuki for help?
~
Katsuki’s response is loud, incredulous and really quite rude. Eijirou pouts, and pokes his guffawing best friend in the ribs as hard as he dares, earning him a casual swipe at his own ribs that doesn't even tickle, despite the explosion in it. Eijirou's skin is too tough for that, even in human form.
"You want to marry Icy-Hot?" Katsuki exclaims when he finally stops laughing. "Why?"
Eijirou draws himself up to his full height, a little taller than Katsuki, not that Katsuki will ever admit this. "Because he's the manliest person I've ever met apart from you, I really like him, and he proposed to me first."
Katsuki blinks. "What?" he asks after a moment. "Icy-Hot proposed to you?"
"Don't act so surprised!" Eijirou objects. "I'm a prince too, sort of!"
Katsuki shakes his head. "No, no, I mean – he actually proposed?"
Eijirou juts his chin out. “He gave me a fish. It was burnt on one side, and cooked all the way through. I told him I liked it, but now I need to find an answer for him before either the Chosen One or Uraraka persuades him to like one of them instead. So please. Help me.”
"Oh," Katsuki says, and his eyes narrow a little bit. Then he grins. "Oh. Oh, no. I get it now. Heh. This is going to be hilarious.”
Eijirou doesn’t get it, but Katsuki at least promises to keep an eye out for any possible counter-proposal gifts.
~
For the next two long, stressful days, the only thing that keeps him even slightly sane is the fact that no-one else in their group tries to propose to Shouto again. A truly worrying amount of cooking happens, but everyone just helps themselves from the central pot which is weird but maybe it makes sense because Katuski said human teeth are weaker than dragon teeth so cooking helps make things… less chewy? Eijirou doesn’t really understand. Anyway, no-one makes any more presentations, least of all to Shouto, and that’s the important thing.
He’s rummaging through the undergrowth around the camp in the vain hopes of finding some more rabbits when something whacks him in the back of the head. When he spins round indignantly, Katsuki tilts his head slightly towards the other side of the camp and then walks off, tossing another little pebble in his hand.
About twenty yards away through the trees is a glade where three stags are peaceably stripping bark off of the beeches. None of them have noticed the motley crew of adventurers settling down not that far away, and Eijirou is able to get very close by sneaking around upwind of them. He knows better than to take all three, no matter how dramatic a declaration that would be, because taking too much for your counter-proposal just shows that you have no control and no respect for the balance of the world around you, which is not a good thing to show someone you are trying to impress! But the biggest stag is perfect. He’s a challenge for Eijirou to take down, which will show Shouto how strong he is and how hard he’s prepared to work to be worthy of Shouto’s regard, and even harder to take down without damaging Eijirou himself or the hide too much.
When he hefts the deer into the camp, slung around his strong shoulders, everyone stops and stares at him. Good! Now they’ll see how well he can provide for his family!
“Are… are you okay, Kirishima?” the Chosen One asks as Eijirou goes about the careful work of gathering the hottest embers together to make a roasting pit. This is the first time he’s ever actually cooked for someone, so he wants to get it right. “Do you need more food? We can make sure we get more when we’re hunting, you shouldn’t have to go and catch your own if you need extra, it’s fine! You should tell us these things! I don’t know anything about how much dragons need to eat but no-one wants you to go hungry! Is it a whole deer every day, or more? Less, I guess, because you haven’t really done this before – unless that’s why you keep wandering off behind us? Oh no, are you-”
“Deku,” Katsuki snaps, and the Chosen One’s mouth closes with a click. “Leave it. He knows what he’s doing. It’s fine.”
Eijirou ignores them all. It’s fiddly work with his claws, taking the hide off. A knife would be easier, but claws are luckier for a peaceful, long-lived union so Eijirou commits himself to the work the way he intends to commit himself to the Prince. Then he carefully takes the best cut of the meat, to show that he’ll be generous and honest in his dealings with his husband, and wraps it in leaves the way his grandmother taught him, in order to invoke the care and good wishes of his whole family on their union.
It’s almost completely dark by the time he finishes, and the meat smells so good. He kind of gets why some dragons carry on giving each other betrothal gifts after their weddings if this is what cooking does to food. Once they’re married, he’ll ask Shouto if they can do that too.
Talking of Shouto, he’s sitting on his own on the other side of camp, drawing in the dirt in front of him with a stick. Eijirou takes a deep, bracing breath, and picks the beautifully cooked venison up and carries it over to him.
“Shouto?” he says, and can’t help the smile that spreads over his face when Shouto looks up with a little smile of his own. “I’m sorry it took me so long, but this is yours.”
“O-oh,” Shouto says, looking simultaneously shocked and happy. “Thank you. I… you didn’t have to.”
“Yes I did,” Eijirou objects. “You gave me the fish, this is my answer.”
Shouto looks down at the carefully roasted meat and then back up at Eijirou. “Thank you,” he says softly. His lovely face is full of confusion, but in a happy sort of way. Eijirou’s a bit puzzled, because the Prince was the one who proposed first. But maybe he’d just done it in the same desperately hopeful way that Eijirou had responded, not believing that his feelings were returned.
Well. That won’t do at all. Shouto deserves to know that Eijirou wants to meet his manly courage in declaring his feelings with the same bravery. He resolves to make sure that, now they are proper fiances, Shouto knows with absolute certainty how much he is loved, how much he is wanted, how happy Eijirou is that the Prince chose him and wants him in return.
~
"Katsuki?" Eijirou overhears his fiance saying one day as they're trekking up yet another mountain. "Why does Eijirou keep giving me things?"
Katsuki sniggers. "Why don't you ask him?"
"I did. He said he wanted to make me happy. But I am happy."
"What's he offered you?"
Eijirou looks up the path to where his fiance is counting things off on his fingers. "Four and a half fish, two whole deer, a wild boar, a pile of quartz, a river stone with a hole in it, and a cave. Well. He hasn’t actually given me a cave yet. He said he'd find a nice one for me when we finished this ending-of-the-world stuff." He forgot the berries, but Eijirou forgives him. “I just… I like the presents. No-one’s ever given me presents just to make me happy before. I’m just not sure what it means.”
Eijirou’s heart turns cold like a snuffed ember. No. How – how could Shouto not know? He gave Eijirou the fish and seemed so happy to get the deer in return. He walks with Eijirou and talks with him and sets their bedrolls together (not together, because they haven’t spoken before the elders yet, but they’re right next to each other) and he always smiles so beautifully when Eijirou gives him something, or even when he just sits down next to him at dinner.
How has Eijirou still managed to fail him?
Katsuki, in perfect opposition to the turmoil in Eijirou’s soul, bursts out laughing. Shouto looks shocked, and then a little bit insulted, and Eijirou wants to fix that but he doesn’t know how.
“You don’t know!” Katsuki howls, almost incoherent with laughter at this point. "Icy-Hot, you – you’ve married him!”
“Married?” Shouto exclaims.
Eijirou’s horror spreads through his whole body, like being trapped in Shouto’s ice. No. No, it can’t be. Shouto’s a Prince, like Eijirou. He must know the proper courting customs. Why else would he give Eijirou the fish?
Katsuki finally gets control of himself, wiping tears from his cheeks as he does. "Oh, this is even better than I thought. Don’t you remember? About cooked food and dragons?” His grin is so big it must be hurting his mouth. "How's it feel to be married to a fire-breathing lizard?"
Eijirou feels like he’s shaking apart. Shouto frowns. "Eijirou's not a lizard, Bakugou. He's a dragon. You know that. And I have no idea what you’re talking about. What about cooked food?”
Katsuki’s grin starts to slip. “You – oh c’mon, Icy-Hot, you’re a Prince for gods’ sakes. You’ve had all those lessons, they must have taught you about the dragon-ways.” At Shouto’s continued bafflement, his smile falls completely. “Seriously? You don’t know about giving dragons cooked food? What kind of dumb-ass lessons did you have? How to use a hundred different forks? How to sit on a throne without a cushion for ten hours?”
“Yes,” Shouto says, hurt lurking under the confusion and frustration in his voice. Eijirou growls at himself to move, to step forward and help his fiance. But he can’t. If Shouto didn’t know he was proposing, are they even fiances? Has Eijirou made a terrible, terrible mistake?
He promised himself he would never break again, but his heart is shattering inside him.
Katsuki, glancing around, catches sight of Eijirou from the corner of his eye. Something on Eijirou’s face must get through to him, because he sighs. “Your tutors are dumb, and your lessons are stupid, Icy-Hot,” he says. “You’ve seen Eijirou eat raw meat, right? Dragons don’t eat cooked food normally, they don’t need to. Cooking is extra effort, it’s a ceremonial thing. It’s all symbolism and tradition; I’m not a dragon so I don’t know all the details. But I do know they only give cooked food as a betrothal gift, because it’s important to them. If one dragon accepts another's cooked food, and then gives something cooked back, that’s pretty much marriage for them.”
Shouto’s lips part just a little. “The fish,” he says after a moment. “I caught a fish and wanted to share it with him to thank him for taking the night shift with me. But I didn’t cook it very well and then he ate the whole thing. I just thought he was hungry.” He looks down at his hands. “He thought I was proposing?”
Katsuki is mostly facing away from Eijirou now, so he can’t read his expression. His voice is resigned, though. “Yeah. And he gave you that venison, remember. He didn’t give that to anyone else, just you. That was his answer.”
Eijirou’s hearing is sharp enough to pick up Shouto’s sharp intake of breath. “He – he wants to marry me?”
“Yep. All you’ve got to do now is present yourself to the head of his flight and you’re his for life.” Katsuki pauses, then says “Look, you didn’t know. I thought you’d remember when he gave you the venison so I didn’t say anything, but you really didn’t know. If you tell him that, he’ll… he’ll understand. He’s nice like that.”
Can Eijirou really be that kind of brave, as brave as Katsuki thinks he can? He wants to. Katsuki is his friend, and he doesn’t want to let his friend down. But he loves Shouto. He wants to marry him.
If Shouto didn’t know, though, it’s not right to marry him. There’s lots of customs Eijirou knows he doesn’t know about with humans. He should have realised it’s the same for humans with regards to dragons.
“And… and if I don’t want to tell him that?”
Eijirou blinks. Katsuki nearly trips over his own feet. “You – what?”
Shouto draws himself up to his full height, tall and lovely in the midday sun. “I'd much rather be married to him than some random stranger my father chooses for me. I like Eijirou. He’s good and kind and honest and brave and he makes me happy so – no, actually I don’t mind marrying him at all.”
Katsuki hesitates for a second, then almost collapses laughing. “Typical,” is the only word Eijirou can make out from the incomprehensible sounds coming from his friend’s mouth. Then again, the only thing he’s actually paying attention to is Shouto’s face as the Prince finally turns enough to see Eijirou just out of human earshot, and very much not out of dragon earshot.
“Eijirou?” he says, and Eijirou feels his whole face go the colour of his scales as Shouto moves away from the guffawing Katsuki and comes to his side.
"Were you really proposing to me with the venison?" Shouto asks quietly. Eijirou nods. "Why?"
Eijirou can only look at him in bafflement. "Because I think you're good and kind and strong and manly and a really good partner to have. So when you… when I thought you proposed to me, I wanted to say yes."
For some reason, this makes Shouto look away. "Even though I didn't mean to – to ask you that?"
Eijirou digs deep into himself, rooting his courage as firmly as he can. "Maybe you didn't mean it then, because you didn't know, and I didn't know you didn't know. But I meant it. And I still mean it. So if… if you want to, we can, and if you don't want to, we don't have to. Whatever you choose. I don't want you to be sad because of me."
Shouto looks up so sharply that he winces as something clicks. "You really mean that?"
"Of course I do." It would be the height of unmanliness to keep someone in a marriage agreement they didn't actually want, especially as Shouto wasn't a dragon and hadn't understood.
"Oh." Shouto's voice is uncharacteristically little, the sound hiding in his mouth. "No-one's ever said that to me before."
Eijirou can’t stand it a moment longer. He unfurls his wings from their resting place and spreads his arms, baring his chest and the single weak scale hidden between his ribs over his heart. "Then I'll say it again, and again, and again until you believe it. I want you, and I want what you want, and I want you to be happy with what you choose."
Shouto hesitates and then steps closer. The breath that ghosts past Eijirou's cheek is colder than the thin air over the mountain peaks. "I..." Shouto licks his lips and tries again. "I want to stay with… with my husband.” He puts particular emphasis on the last word. “As long as he wants to stay with me."
Joy thrills through Eijirou, and the shatter lines in his heart fill with gold as he wraps his arms and wings around his fiance-for-real-this-time. “Then… will you come and stand before Crimson with me? My family will like you, they won’t mind that you’re human when you’re just as good as a dragon.”
“Yes,” Shouto says, barely hesitating even for a moment. “I’ll stand with you. I want to meet your family too. And you should meet mine. Not my dad, though. You should meet my sister, and my mum. They’ll like you too, I know it.”
Eijirou tightens his arms and his wings around his almost-husband and rumbles deep in his chest, basking in the returning feeling of Nearly Married. Crimson is going to be so, so pleased that Eijirou found such a good partner. “I’m really glad you didn’t want to marry the Chosen One or Uraraka even though they asked you with such nice gifts.”
Shouto frowns, squinting at him. “They didn’t… oh. Oh. The food. They gave me cooked food. Oh. Now I understand why Uraraka thought you were upset with her.”
“Humans don’t give cooked food for betrothals, do they?” Eijirou asks, rather sheepishly. Shouto shakes his head.
“We give circlets of silver or gold,” he says after a moment. “You wear them on your head so people can see you’re betrothed. At the wedding, both circlets are given to the smith and get melted down together. Then the smith makes two rings out of the metal and you wear those for the rest of your life.” He reaches up and touches one of Eijirou’s horns. “I’m sure I can find one that will fit you, if you don’t mind waiting until we get back to the castle.”
Eijirou has a chest at home full of circlets and diadems and crowns and tiaras of every sort and shape. He can definitely find one for Shouto that will suit him. Then everyone will know Shouto is betrothed to him and won’t try to propose to him any more. There might even be one that Shouto will think is suitable for Eijirou, which will save time going back to the castle. He likes this human tradition a lot.
“I like yours better,” Shouto says when he tells him this. “It’s a lot simpler. But I guess it would be too confusing for humans, we can’t eat raw meat or we get very sick.”
“I’ll cook for you every day,” Eijirou promises, almost humming with happiness. He’s not quite over the plummet-and-soar of the last few minutes, his stomach feeling like he’s been caught in the gusts around the hilltops where not even the birds can read the wind.
“You’d propose to me every day?” Shouto asks, and there’s a laugh hiding in his voice quite unlike anything Eijirou’s ever heard before.
“Yes,” he says emphatically, delighted, and then the laughter is no longer hiding but rushing through him like water as Shouto leans up to kiss him square on the mouth.