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He hadn’t expected it to be so crowded. He always refused to show up to these stupid things, he didn’t see the point of them honestly. The only problem was this time he ranked number 1 on the Pro-Heroes billboard and Deku insisted he must go because how could the current number 1 hero not attend something ‘so important’.
Important, my ass. He thought.
So here he was, the current number 1 hero in Japan attending a stupid hero gala because apparently he just has to be here and now he’s constantly being bothered by a bunch of nobodies asking him weird questions that he doesn’t even bother answering as he tries to move through the crowd to avoid it all. How other heroes do this on the regular is completely beyond him. The food wasn’t even good enough to persuade him to attend again just to have it for free. He thought about killing Deku for making him come to this damn thing.
Katsuki’s eyes scan across the room, trying to locate the damn man but it was hard to see him through the amount of people. He does manage to catch the eye of Kirishima and is immediately being waved over. As he passes through the crowd to get to his friend, he keeps an eye out for Deku so he can promptly tell him he’s leaving and this was a waste of his time.
“Congrats on ranking first, man!” Kirishima says as he claps a hand on his back.
“What did you expect!? Of course I’m number one.” Katsuki tells him.
“You worked hard for it, don’t forget that.” Kirishima reminds him and honestly he’s kind of glad for him. He always tries to remind Katsuki just how hard he actually worked to even get into the top 10 at such a young age and it’s nice to have that reminder, even if he acts like it was easy, it definitely wasn’t and he does like his efforts to be noticed. “Surprised you actually came here, though.” Kirishima adds on.
“Deku made me.” Katsuki shrugs and takes a glass of wine from the waiter that passes by carrying a tray full of them. He downs it in one and places it back on the tray before the waiter even has a chance to move away from them. He hears Kirishima snort. “This place is a fucking abysmal.” He grumbles. “Too many people in my damn business and the food is just shit, how do people eat that crap?”
“They usually don’t. You go to one once and you realise it’s not really edible so you either eat before attending or after. I carry these with me to tide me over.” Kirishima says and pulls out a packet of candy from his blazer pocket and Katsuki rolls his eyes at it. “Want one?” He asks.
“Absolutely not, they probably taste like shit too.” He says as he watches Kirishima reach into the bag and he pulls out a wrapped candy. Katsuki can see the blue colouring of it through the wrapper and decides there’s no way in hell he’d be eating that radioactive looking shit. Kirishima pays no mind to the disgust clearly on his face and just places the candy into his hand.
“It’s sour, thought you’d like that.” Kirishima shrugs. “I’m going to go find Kaminari, heard he’s finally plucked up the courage to ask Shinso out so I want all that gossip.” With that, he leaves through the crowd and Katsuki just pockets the candy he had given him.
He spends the next half an hour fighting to get through the masses of people, being stopped here and there to be congratulated on his new ranking and not once finding Deku in sight. He mutters under his breath and decides he’s had enough and just texts the damn bastard to tell him he’s leaving and he’s never going to one of these events ever again. He gets a text back almost immediately from him reading “too bad you’re not having fun. get back safe. rody says hi!” attached to it is a picture of Deku and Rody together, smiling wide at the camera and Katsuki adds the thumbs down reaction to it.
Katsuki makes his final attempt to get through the crowd as he shuffles past people to head towards the exit. Most people are smart enough not to get in his way and move over slightly to allow him to pass as he maneuvers through quickly. He notices a small crowd up ahead, all congregated together and they make no attempts to move as Katsuki approaches them. It’s fine, he thinks he can easily get around them. He spots a familiar someone as he gets closer to them all and he’s glad they have their back to him because he really just wants to leave. As he goes to pass through, the person turns around quickly and Katsuki’s shoulder smashes into them.
“Fucking Hell, Icyhot! Watch where you’re go-” Katsuki’s words die in his throat as he catches sight of Shouto’s face. He hears the people that had been around him calling his name but Shouto doesn’t react. His eyes appear to be glazed over and Katsuki looks down to notice Shouto’s hands shake. “Woah, hey.” Katsuki places his hands firmly on his shoulders and spins him around. He pushes Shouto along, guides him through the crowd and glares at anyone that looks like they’re about to attempt to speak to either of them.
He finally manages to get out of the main hall and he pushes Shouto a little further down the corridor before turning him to face him again and pressing his back into the wall. He keeps his distance but keeps his hands firmly on his shoulders still. Shouto’s eyes dart around as his breathing keeps picking up rapidly.
“I can’t… can’t.” He tries to gasp for air and his shaky hands come up to pull at the tie around his collar, trying to get it off. “Can’t breathe.” He’s tugging at it and his eyes squeeze shut “Need it off… I can’t breathe.” He gasps out and Katsuki quickly moves Shouto’s hands out of the way and undoes Shouto’s tie for him and even goes as far as unbuttoning the first few buttons on his shirt for extra measure.
“Don’t try and talk right now, Shou.” Katsuki tells him. Shouto keeps trying to get air into his lungs but he can’t, he’s gasping and tears are now falling down his face steadily. Katsuki backs up a little, giving him some space and Shouto drops down to crouch to the floor. His hands tug lightly at his own hair as he tries to breathe.
“Hurts. It hurts!” Shouto cries out a strangled noise. “Dying… I’m dying!” Katsuki drops down in front of him, taking his hands gently from his hair. He rubs soothing circles against the back of his hands.
“Listen to me, you're not dying. I need you to breathe, you’re having a panic attack, Shou.” He places Shouto’s hand to his chest and takes a deep breath in before he releases it. “Feel that? I need you to follow my breathing, okay? I know you can do it.” He takes another deep breath in and holds it before breathing out. He keeps repeating the process until Shouto follows his lead and his breathing starts to return to normal.
Somewhere down the corridor a door opens and all the chatter and music from the hall fills the area. Bounces off the walls and it’s like it hits off of Shouto’s head. Shouto looks over at the door, his breathing spiking again. “Hey. Oi! Look at me.” Katsuki reaches out and presses his fingers to Shouto’s cheek and makes him turn his head back to look at him. Shouto’s eyes are wet and tears cling to his mismatched eyelashes. The blue of Shouto’s left eye reminds him of something and he’s quickly digging into his pocket and picking out the damn candy Kirishima had given him.
“Here, eat this. Hopefully it’s sour enough to shock your system out of this.” He says and unwraps the candy before handing it to Shouto. Shouto pops it into his mouth as he’s told. Katsuki briefly takes note of the fact his hand is still pressed against his chest despite Katsuki having let go of his wrist. Shouto stares at him as he sucks onto the candy and Katsuki is glad it seems to be working somewhat. Shouto is so distracted by the candy that he forgets about what made him have the panic attack in the first place.
It takes a little while longer before Shouto slumps back against the wall, his hand pulling back from Katsuki’s chest and he moves his legs so they’re outstretched. He rubs a hand across his face and sighs.
“Sorry.” He says finally and Katsuki scoffs.
“Of course you’d say that after having a damn panic attack.” Katsuki moves himself to sit next to him against the wall. His knees up and he lets his hands hang in between them. “You don’t need to be sorry for shit.”
“Right.” Shouto takes another deep breath in.
“What happened?” Katsuki asks him quietly. He watches Shouto pinch the fabric of his pants leg.
“Too many people, too many questions. I hate these kinds of things, I try to avoid them mostly.” Shouto admits.
“Why are you at this one?” He asks, he doesn’t want Shouto to think too much about the amount of people that had surrounded him.
“I wanted to see you.” Shouto says simply and it feels like an arrow being thrown right at his heart.
“You wanted… to see me?” Katsuki asks dumbly.
“Yeah. Haven’t seen you in a while and I wanted to congratulate you on becoming number one.” Katsuki doesn’t really know what to do with that information. Shouto decided to come to an event he’d usually avoid just because he wanted to see him? They may not be in high school anymore but it makes his heart rate pick up all the same. He curses the little crush he’s been harbouring on Shouto since their second year.
“Well… you saw me.” He says because he doesn’t know what else to say. Shouto lets out a light laugh.
“Yeah. Thank you, by the way. For helping. You were always good at that.” Shouto tells him and Katsuki remembers the handful of times he’s helped Shouto out of a panic attack in school before.
“It’s whatever. What kind of number one would I be if I left you to fend for yourself like that?”
“Oh of course, duty calls sir Dynamight.” Shouto says lightly, Katsuki turns his head to look at him. “Congratulations, Katsuki. I knew you’d make it one day, I’m glad I got to see it happen.” He smiles that small Shouto smile.
“Thanks, Halfie. You’re not doing so bad yourself.” Katsuki says and it was true. Shouto was ranked at 5th currently but he had been out of action for a few months due to an injury he suffered on the field, so it was obvious if that hadn’t been the case he’d have ranked higher.
The door down the hall opens again, the same noise from before falling into the space between them but it doesn’t panic Shouto this time. Katsuki uses the interruption to stand up and he looks down at Shouto. “Get up. We’re going for food. No chance in Hell am I attempting to eat that shit again.” He says and Shouto pushes himself up onto his feet.
“Can we get soba?” Shouto says and Katsuki rolls his eyes.
“You’re killing me, Halfie. I meant real food.” He says as they walk towards the doors to finally make it outside.
“It is real food?” Shouto says it more like a question and Katsuki knows he’s genuinely confused over it.
“Not good food. You need some hearty food in you after that disaster.” He emphasises. Once they made it out into the cold evening air, Katsuki takes the lead to walk them to a restaurant. He notices Shouto purposefully walks with his left side near Katsuki and he can feel the warmth radiating off of him. He’s thankful for it but he doesn’t comment on it. It’s always been a thing Shouto did with his friends. He doesn’t know if it just turned into a habit that he doesn’t even think about before he does it now.
When they finally arrive to the restaurant they get seated quickly and Katsuki makes sure Shouto orders something filling. It suddenly hits him as they’re waiting for their food that they’ve never done this before. They’ve never had a meal just between the two of them, it had always been with other people around. Katsuki wonders if they’d have gone to lunch a few times if they had stayed in touch.
They share some small talk between them, Katsuki asks about the injury that happened. He hadn’t known too much about it and didn’t want to take what he saw on social media as fact. It was surprising to learn that Shouto could have lost all feeling in his right arm if not lost the arm completely and Katsuki could sense how relieved Shouto was that it had been able to recover fully. Shouto then asks about the agency he and Deku run together and apologises for not agreeing to run it as a trio like they had all talked about once before. Katsuki tells him to shut up because he gets it. Shouto needed to do things by himself.
Their food finally arrives and they both dig in as they share more stories about missions they had been sent on and discuss the different villains they had encountered. Katsuki listens intently at whatever Shouto says, he’d never say it out loud but he had missed hearing him talk and he missed being around him.
It’s towards the end of the meal when Shouto suddenly says “Katsuki, is this a date?” and Katsuki almost chokes on his chicken. He has no idea where that question came from. He racks his brain for something to respond with, doesn’t know if he should shut that idea down immediately to avoid any sort of humiliation when Shouto tells him he wouldn’t even dream about going on a date with him.
Instead he replies with “do you want this to be a date?” and he stares hard at Shouto, trying to figure out how he feels about it before he even opens his mouth to respond.
“Would you be mad if I said yes?” Shouto asks and Katsuki thinks this is some kind of joke. Shouto wants this to be a date? The prettiest boy Katsuki has ever laid eyes on wants to be on a date with him?
“What?” Katsuki asks because his brain isn’t functioning correctly right now.
“Would you be mad if I wanted this to be a date?” Shouto asks, making sure Katsuki understands exactly what he’s asking.
“No. Definitely not mad.” Katsuki says.
“Then yes, I’d like this to be a date. If you do… it doesn’t have to be if that wasn’t what this was at all and I’m completely messing this up and maybe I should stop talking.” Shouto clamps his mouth shut and Katsuki snorts and shakes his head at him.
“I’d fucking love for this to be a date.” Katsuki tells him and Shouto smiles softly at him, his eyes crinkling at the sides a little as he does so and Katsuki thinks he’s just so damn pretty.
“Okay, I’m glad. I don’t want this to end once we’re done here so I have an idea where to go next.” Shouto says. Katsuki has no idea what Shouto could have planned in his head in a single moment but at this point he doesn’t care if it means getting to spend longer with him.
As it turns out, Shouto’s idea was to drag Katsuki to a damn candy store. He wanted to comment on the fact he didn’t really eat that much candy, he wasn’t a big fan of all the sweet stuff but seeing the way Shouto’s eyes lit up when they entered he decided against it. He focuses more on Shouto’s hand in his. The taller of the two had grabbed his hand to pull him inside and now he was still pulling him along, a little smile on his face as he pulls Katsuki into the middle of the shop.
“Katsuki look at all of this stuff!” Shouto beams and he’s already pulling a paper bag from the shelf to start placing different pieces of candy into it. He turns back to Katsuki with a questionable look on his face “what was that thing you gave me back in the hallway? The sour candy?” He asks.
“I don’t know. Kiri gave it to me, I didn’t want it so I just had it in my pocket.” Katsuki shrugs.
“Oh. That was lucky, it helped a lot. I should get some more just in case, I think they’d be good to have on hand so I can have one when I feel a panic attack start up to try and stop it before it gets so bad.” Shouto explains and it’s a good reason, it helped so Katsuki doesn’t see any reason he shouldn’t keep them on hand. He pulls out his phone and shoots off a text to Kirishima.
“I’ve asked him. I’ll let you know when he replies.”
“Thank you.” Shouto turns back to the rows of candy and continues to fill his bag up. Katsuki scans the rows with his eyes, taking note of the types Shouto seems to like the most and stores it into his important Shouto information part of his brain. Kirishima texts back and Katsuki picks up two packs of the sour candies, he wasn’t going to tell Shouto he was keeping one on hand himself just in case there was ever time Shouto forgot to have any already on him or was too panicked to think about the candy.
He pays for them and watches Shouto come up to the register to pay for the bag of candy he picked out and notices him pick up a couple of boxes of Pocky too from the counter.
They leave and Shouto happily pops some of the candy into his mouth as they walk. “So, what’s next on this date?” Katsuki asks and Shouto turns to look at him as he finishes eating whatever candy is in his mouth.
“We can sit somewhere? It’s getting pretty dark out but the park is always nice.” Shouto suggests and Katsuki easily agrees. The temperature is dropping the more the night creeps in but he can’t complain when he has his own personal heater with him. They make it to the park and sit on the wall overlooking the pond. They talk some more about what they’ve been doing since school. Shouto tells him about how hard it was to make the decision to pull away from everyone but Katsuki doesn’t blame him for it at all. No matter how much it hurt and how much he had to deal with Deku worrying over Shouto constantly, he understood Shouto needed the time and space. In return, Katsuki tells him about going to therapy. How hard he found it at first but now was grateful for how much it actually helped him deal with his feelings he had bottled away in school and even since then.
Shouto smiles softly at him and tells him he’s proud and so happy for him. It makes his heart thump harder in his chest.
He watches Shouto open the packet of Pocky and eat it as he looks out into the pond. Katsuki would look too but he doesn’t want to miss a single thing about Todoroki Shouto anymore. He thinks he’s missed too much since school, he doesn’t want to give this up yet.
“Give me a damn Pocky, Icyhot.” He says and Shouto turns to glance at him and eats another one without making a move to give one to Katsuki. “Oi, don’t hog it all!” He says and tries to reach for the pack but Shouto lifts it up above his head and Katsuki scowls because damn his tall ass and long arms. Shouto then takes another piece.
“Get it then.” He says and places it in between his teeth and stares at Katsuki expectantly. Katsuki stares back at him, at the Pocky between his teeth, at his lips. He scoffs before taking the other end between his own teeth and breaks some of it off, he keeps going until he’s close to Shouto and he’s not sure if he should pull back and let Shouto just have the rest. He doesn’t have much time to think though because Shouto takes his last bite and their lips are pressing together. Katsuki can taste the melted chocolate on Shouto’s lips as he kisses him. Shouto pulls back a moment later and Katsuki can’t take his eyes away from his lips.
“You know the whole point of that game is you’re not meant to kiss.” Katsuki tells him and manages to look up to his eyes.
“Oh? My bad. Looks like I lost.” Shouto holds up his hands in fake surrender.
“Did you buy them for that purpose?” Katsuki asks and Shouto doesn’t say anything which makes Katsuki laugh. “Oh my God, you’re such a damn dork. If you wanted to kiss me, you could just ask.”
“Can I kiss you?” Shouto asks as he looks back at him. Katsuki didn’t actually expect him to ask. Didn’t think Shouto would have the courage too but now he’s spluttering and can feel his cheeks heating up at the question. The idea that Shouto wanted to kiss him in the first place was a lot but he wants to do it again?
“Yeah.” Katsuki replies and he doesn’t wait for Shouto to make the move, he’s already moving and grabbing the back of Shouto’s neck to bring him closer as he presses his lips to Shouto’s. He relishes in the surprised noise that comes from Shouto and he feels his hand grab onto his thigh to steady himself but Katsuki wouldn’t let him fall into the water anyway.
They stay at the park, kissing and eating the dumb candy Shouto bought until it gets dark and they decide to leave. On the way back to Shouto’s apartment Katsuki can’t shake off the giddy feeling he has and he doesn’t want to. He had never expected the day turn out this way and he wasn’t sure exactly what this meant for them but he was happy for what it was in this moment.
What he didn’t know at that time was that it meant more kissing in the future, more hand holding, some more dates, a few more panic attacks and sharing candy and a lot more “I love you”s being shared between them.