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“Pardon me, but would you have any food to spare?” Katsuki hears from right behind him, so close that the stranger’s breath puffs against his neck.
As he shoots to his feet with a shout — like anyone would do if someone snuck up on them in a forest that was supposedly haunted by a wendigo — the stranger grunts as he gets an elbow to the gut. He doesn’t move back though, doesn’t so much as blink as Katsuki whirls around and snarls in his face, and his expression is infuriatingly placid (and possibly a little puppy-like) as he adds, “Whatever you’re making smells really good… Even a mouthful would be nice.”
Katsuki opens his mouth, then closes it and grinds his teeth. There are so many things that are wrong with the stranger’s words that he doesn’t know how he should start responding to it all, but he eventually settles with a withering glare and an equally irritable, “You’ve got some nerve to waltz up to a stranger and beg for food.”
“I don’t think I know how to waltz.”
“Of course you didn’t — it’s a figure of speech. Are you seriously arguing with me when you want my food for free?”
“When you put it that way…”
Katsuki might possibly muffle a scream behind his tightly clenched jaw at that — but if the stranger notices, he doesn’t acknowledge it beyond a long, slow blink. Now that Katsuki’s looking more closely at him, however, there’s something oddly… unsettling about him.
It’s a combination of the stranger’s dumb expression and the discoloured patch on his face, Katsuki quickly concludes. All of him is discoloured in some way, from his pallid skin to his candy-cane-coloured hair, and Katsuki finds himself shivering as heterochromatic eyes turn to pin him in place.
“You’re here for the wendigo, aren’t you? That would explain why you’re alone in a forest, jumping at every sound, unless you happen to be a poltergeist who floated past all those fences to make yourself a nice organic meal in the woods.”
Katsuki opens his mouth, outrage and suspicion warring in his eyes, but the stranger nods and adds before Katsuki can interject, “I happen to have heard of the wendigo too — and I guarantee you that I know more about him than anyone else.”
As Katsuki rolls his eyes and mutters something rude and disbelieving under his breath, the stranger shrugs and takes a seat by his partially banked fire. Most people look unflattering this close to a flickering fire, but the stranger looks… just as terrible as he’d initially looked.
The bowl he’s suddenly got in his hand only makes him look worse — and is he scooping out his soup right in front of Katsuki? Even though Katsuki hadn’t remembered giving him permission to do anything, much less freeload off him?!
“Come, sit,” the stranger offers, like he’s the one who spent literal hours finding a good place to set up camp and gather enough food for a good meal. “Let’s get to know one another. You can call me Asekou, Mr Poltergeist.”
“Who the hell are you calling Mr Poltergeist?!” Katsuki snatches the ladle out of Asekou’s hand, but doesn’t make a move to snatch his bowl or keep him from consuming his contents as he grumbles, “I’m Bakugou Katsuki, and I’m gonna make you into soup if you don’t keep your promise.”
“Yes, Mr Poltergeist.”
“I just told you my name, you freaking weirdo!”
Asekou looks him right in the eyes as he sips his soup, somehow conveying smugness despite his utterly blank expression.
Yeah, Katsuki thinks to himself, as Asekou takes back the ladle and helps himself to more soup without breaking eye contact with Katsuki, this is gonna be a long couple of days, I can feel it already.
“Ah,” Asekou says, with a particular inflection in his voice that Katsuki’s gotten to know (and hate) intimately over the past few days. “The wendigo was here recently —”
“But it’s not here now.”
“No, it appears not.”
Katsuki half-turns away and sucks in a deep breath — partially because the mostly-dry lake they’ve found themselves near reeks, but partially because he’s on the verge of setting Asekou on fire. The sad thing is that it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened, but at least the first time had been an accident.
If he sets Asekou on fire this time, Katsuki will be in full control of the situation. He’ll even use the scent of perfectly cooked idiot to lure in an equally idiotic wendigo — and then, then he’ll rid himself of this forest and get back to his life (and a proper kitchen).
It’s at this moment that Asekou’s stomach rumbles, shattering the loaded silence hanging between them. This is also a common occurrence that Katsuki’s practically become inured to, but all he does is roll his eyes and stalk back the way they came. Experience has taught Katsuki that Asekou will follow him no matter how stealthy he tries to be — which he does moments later, falling into step behind Katsuki with a murmured, “We’ll be sure to catch them next time.”
“Like you said the last five times?”
Asekou coughs awkwardly, but his voice remains steady as he says, “It’s not like everyone is fortunate enough to meet a wendigo — or come out of it alive.”
“Yeah, and I intend to do both,” Katsuki snaps, lengthening his stride and gnashing his teeth when Asekou also picks up his pace. “So why don’t you shove off and stop wasting my time?”
“But you make good meals,” Asekou replies, like he thinks that’s a valid excuse.
With the way he’s practically eaten through all of Katsuki’s supplies and has no qualms about eating whatever wild game and edible fungi Katsuki’s come across, Asekou might well believe that it is a valid excuse. If he didn’t know any better, Katsuki might even think Asekou was a hungry ghost or, or —
“A jobless loafer?”
“No, you’re too much of a smooth-talker to be a — what the hell are you doing so close to me?!”
Asekou blinks, then chuckles as he leans smoothly away from Katsuki — and, unfortunately, the punch that immediately follows. As Katsuki staggers and tries to swing at Asekou again, Asekou grabs his wrists and tugs them down in a surprisingly firm hold.
“You stopped walking and started muttering to yourself,” Asekou placidly explains, even as Katsuki snarls and (unsuccessfully) lunges forward to chomp down on Asekou’s nose. “For a moment, I thought you’d been possessed by an evil spirit.”
“You’re possessed by an evil spirit! Your entire family’s possessed by an evil spirit!”
Asekou’s face twitches oddly at that, but it doesn’t take him long before his expression smooths over and he asks, still in that damnably placid tone, “What makes you think that?”
“What makes me think that?” Katsuki echoes, ire spiking to new heights at the faint smile lingering on Asekou’s lips — and the way he’s still holding Katsuki’s wrists, like they’re some gross, sappy couple deepening their feelings in this accursed forest. “You’ve been haunting me since the moment you sniffed out my food!”
“Wouldn’t that make me a dog?”
“I woke up in the middle of the night to find you eating my instant soba noodles! And it was straight from the packet, what the hell?!”
“I had soba cravings. I’m sure you’d do the same thing if you were in my place.”
“I didn’t ask for your stupid justifications!” Katsuki hollers, red-faced and bug-eyed from the sheer rage coursing through his veins. “I didn’t ask for — for you, or your comments, or any of this bullshit! I will do anything for you to go away and leave me alone, you candy cane-looking freak!”
Asekou, the infuriating bastard that he is, weathers his outburst without so much as a blink of his eyes. He even goes so far as to swing their arms, looking for all the world like he isn’t getting verbally eviscerated by a voice that Katsuki’s used to terrify (and deafen) people in the past.
It’s only when Katsuki finally succeeds in yanking his hands free that Asekou asks, “What will you do if I help you find the wendigo then?”
Katsuki would scream at that — but when it’s all too likely that Asekou’s waiting for him to lose it, Katsuki sucks in a deep breath instead, then hisses out through clenched teeth, “You ate all my food and you still think you’re entitled to some sort of special freaking prize?”
“I’ll let you claim you found him on your own,” Asekou adds with a winsome smile — or it would be, if it didn’t look stiff and filled with far too many teeth.
Katsuki pretends to consider it for a moment, then bares his teeth right back and snarls, “That’s bullshit and you know it. You heard about the mayor’s interest in that wendigo too, didn’t you? If you’re that desperate to trade me for his eternal gratitude or whatever, then get to the damn point and just say what you want!”
For a single confounding moment, something that looks like hunger flashes across Asekou’s face — but then Asekou tilts his head to one side and says, “I want you to be my boyfriend.”
“Sure, I’ll promise myself to you for a wendigo — are you sick in the head?” Katsuki grabs Asekou by his stupid collared shirt and shakes him, yelling, “You think I’m gonna sell myself for the mayor’s eternal gratitude or something? Give me a serious answer, you useless bastard!”
When Katsuki finally lets go of Asekou’s collar and steps back to regain his breath (and his composure), Asekou’s eyebrows are scrunched and his lips are pressed into a thin line. It looks so much more natural than his smile — or any of his facial expressions, for that matter — that Katsuki finds himself narrowing his eyes at Asekou.
If he’d been… put off by Asekou’s uncharacteristic display of emotions, however, what Asekou does next is enough to make Katsuki feel something else entirely — something that’s a mix between exasperation, disbelief, and the faintest hint of grudging acceptance as Asekou’s expression smooths out and he says, “Come work for me as my personal chef then.”
“And he accepted that?” Touya asks, eyebrows raised so high that his staples have got to be digging uncomfortably into his skin. “Here I was, thinking the mayor had a few screws loose. It looks like everyone from that pokey little town’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal.”
“It’d certainly explain his mood swings,” Shouto replies, though most of his words are lost in the mouthful of soba he’s speaking around. “But he’s simple enough, once you understand how he ticks."
"So how does he tick, baby brother?"
Shouto slurps a big mouthful of soba and takes his sweet, sweet time chewing it — time he also spends looking Touya dead in the eye, where hunger and age-old malice glimmer in equal measure — before he mumbles around his half-chewed noodles, “Frequently. Angrily.”
“…And how much of that is because of you, do you think?”
Instead of replying, because there’s really no point when they both know the answer to that, Shouto continues to maintain uncomfortable eye contact with Touya as he slurps another big mouthful of soba. Just as he’s about to slurp another mouthful in obnoxious fashion, however, a hand slaps him upside the head and an all-too-familiar voice snarls, “Quit that shit already! You want me to use your face to mop up your mess?”
Shouto thinks of about three witty comebacks that will probably push Katsuki’s fury to greater heights — but when he’s choking so hard on his soba that some of it threatens to escape from his nose, there’s really no way for him to voice any of them.
Uncaring of the way Shouto’s face turns redder than half of his hair, Katsuki eyes Touya with towering disdain and asks, “This is the wendigo? Looks more like some scruffy drunk you fished out of a dumpster.”
“Better than some boy toy who’s too blond to notice —”
“That this scruffy drunk is a little scruffier than usual?” Shouto gasps in between coughs, thumping on his chest and doing his utmost not to return Touya’s narrow-eyed stare.
There’s no doubt in his mind that Touya knows just why Shouto interjected at that moment, but it’s hard for Shouto to care when Katsuki’s eyes are also narrowing dangerously.
It’s one thing for Touya to be suspicious of him. It’s another entirely for Katsuki, his meal ticket and so much more, to be suspicious of him too.
“Katsuki, this is… Dabi,” Shouto says to Katsuki, when he’s in less imminent danger of asphyxiating and the tension isn’t quite so thick in the air. From the way Katsuki’s eyes gleam at the name, it’s clear that Shouto had made the right call by introducing Touya by his preferred alias. “I believe your mayor misclassified him as a zombie, though I can’t imagine why.”
Katsuki gives him another odd look at that, but quickly shifts his attention to Touya when Touya lounges back in his chair, gives Katsuki a slow once-over, and says, “Does your boy toy over here want to frog-march me back to that psychopath? Because I’m telling you now, I’d sooner eat you and Asekou over here than go through that nonsense again.”
“You know, I thought wendigos would be a little more… bloodthirsty? Intimidating? But you’re just a hobo with an attitude problem.” Katsuki mutters something that’s too quiet for Shouto to hear after that, too absorbed in whatever comments he’s making to notice the way Touya’s eyes darken with greater ill-will, but Katsuki eventually shakes himself from his muttering to ask, “Look, I don’t give a crap about your issues with the mayor. I just want proof you’re not some cosplayer and a contact address I can reach you at — or d’you want me to make him your problem?”
Shouto blinks when Touya pulls a face he’s never seen before (and possibly goes paler in places, though it’s likely a trick of the light), but Touya’s voice is its usual disdainful drawl when he says, “The next time a little birdie tells me to waste my time with socialising, I think I’ll barbecue it. You got to see me with your own eyes and even talk to me without getting eaten — that’s more than most people can claim, kid.”
“Kid? I’ll show you who’s a kid, you —”
“Yeah, yeah, yell about it to someone who cares.” Touya gets up from his seat and leans away from Katsuki’s aggressive lunge for him, then leaves with a jaunty wave and a vaguely smug, “You know where to find me when you’ve got real business, Asekou. I’ll say hi to Hawks for you… or something.”
Shouto watches Katsuki snarl and race after Touya, but doesn’t bother getting up to follow after either of them. The chances of Touya eating Katsuki are about as high as the chances of Katsuki discovering Shouto’s real relationship with Touya. Besides, he still has half a bowl of soba to finish — and as much as Katsuki is better suited to his palate than buckwheat noodles, Katsuki’s cooking is truly the only socially acceptable alternative for staving off his ever-present hunger.
“You’d better set me up with another meeting,” Katsuki snaps once he’s back inside, sans Touya and whatever precarious hold he had on his temper, “or I will make you into soup!”
“I’ll eat anything you make me,” Shouto assures Katsuki, and finds himself smiling when Katsuki throws his hands in the air and stalks off with a muted scream.
It’ll only be a matter of time before he’s mine, Shouto peacefully thinks to himself as he polishes off his bowl, and then Touya-nii won’t be the only one flaunting his partner everywhere.