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Bakugou Katsuki is a boy.
Shouto can’t bring himself to hold this simple fact against him.
It’s endearing, he thinks sometimes. Soft in ways he didn’t get to experience often growing up, despite how prickly Katsuki makes a point out of being on a daily basis. He lets Shouto touch him without trying to hurt him for it, and that’s—
That’s probably why Shouto ends up pressed to his side whenever Denki or Mina (or sometimes even Momo) decides to throw a party. As for why Katsuki lets him—well. Shouto’s best theory also has something to do with the fact that he’s a boy. That they’re—they grew up with war, and the thing is Katsuki did his best to be a hero, but it’s harder to give up peace when you know what it looks like, isn’t it? When you get to go home to it at the end of each day? Maybe that’s why—
Shouto’s therapist says he needs to stop trying to rationalize things that need to be felt, because that just makes them gather like sediment in some important little corner of Shouto’s heart that needs to be unobstructed—that thing that writhes as it beats, that’s soft and warm and—isn’t that funny? How the thing keeping you alive is tender, and yet people struggle so much with it? With tenderness?
(Katsuki doesn’t, though. Not—not with Shouto.)
So. Maybe, all things considered—even the ones Shouto does himself no favors stopping to consider—it’s simple. Maybe he sits next to Katsuki whenever the opportunity presents itself because Katsuki lets him. (Because, after the war, when Katsuki found him having a breakdown in the kitchen in the middle of the night, tears that just wouldn’t stop slipping down his cheeks, he didn’t say anything. No. He just carried Shouto to bed—his bed, not Shouto’s—and squeezed himself in next to him and held him until the sun started peeking through the clouds.)
Shouto doesn’t think anything matters, beyond that. Maybe, if it hadn’t been for the war, he would have worried. Would have spent time with his head on Momo’s lap plucking petals off a daisy thinking loves me, loves me not.
Repetitive actions soothe anxiety. Shouto knows that now. His therapist told him during his second session, because Shouto spent half of his first one refusing to talk, and the second half wiping tears from his overheated cheeks. So they only got to basic anxiety management techniques by the second.
And now—
Momo’s throwing this party. Maybe it’s just for Shouto’s benefit. Because she’s a good friend like that. Because she knows Shouto still struggles with asking for what he wants. And—it’s not so bad, either way. Sitting here. Touching.
The—
The way Katsuki’s breath hitches audibly each time Shouto’s fingers dip under the rips in his jeans to touch bare skin. How he never says anything about it, not even the first time when Shouto only did it because Denki had him doing shots on an empty stomach. (Because why shouldn’t he, anyway? Why shouldn’t he push, when Katsuki keeps pulling him in right back?)
“Katsuki,” he says now. Not loud at all. Their bodies are pressed together from knee to shoulder. Katsuki has an arm slung around Shouto’s neck. He’s warm. Shouto’s leaning into him. Of course he doesn’t need to be loud.
“Yeah?” says Katsuki. Sounds vaguely bothered about it. They don’t talk much, like this.
Shouto bites at the inside of his cheek. Loves me, loves me not, he thinks uselessly, tracing the outline of the rip right above Katsuki’s knee. Was Katsuki wearing ripped jeans the first time they did this? Or did Shouto just keep touching the spot where the fabric had started to fray from wear? Did—did Katsuki go out and buy ripped jeans after that? Has Shouto ever actually seen him wear a pair except when they’re together like this?
Probably not.
“I was thinking,” Shouto says.
Katsuki laughs. Not mean, but—well, it’s Katsuki. He’s a boy. Shouto already laid out the limitations of that. “Hurt your pretty little head yet?”
“By thinking?”
Katsuki laughs. He smells like vanilla. He never drinks at these things. (He wouldn’t taste like fruity alcohol if he kissed Shouto, right now. He’d just—taste like Katsuki.)
“Yeah,” he says. “Don’t you know when you’re that pretty you don’t need to think? You can just sit there, and say the dumbest shit known to mankind, and most idiots would still, like, gladly fall on their sword for you.”
“Fall on their sword?” Shouto repeats. “Am I a prince in this scenario?”
Katsuki considers it. “Nah,” he says eventually, after what can’t be that long but feels like forever when—when Shouto is always the one touching him first. “Probably a princess. Locked away all alone in a tower.”
“Waiting to be saved?” Shouto asks. Is that it? “Would you?”
Katsuki goes rigid. “I always hated that,” he says. “The whole saving thing. And—if it was you, I’d probably—you know.”
“What?” Shouto asks, because he doesn’t. Not really. Because he knows Katsuki, yes, but he doesn’t know what Katsuki would want if he could have anything. If the and they lived happily ever after was guaranteed.
“Come on,” Katsuki says, like even this much is too much. Too much of a confession. “I wouldn’t wanna save you at all,” he says. “I’d just want to keep you.”
“Oh,” says Shouto. “Like a dragon?”
Katsuki laughs. Sounds relieved. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, why not? Like a dragon. They keep treasure, right? Well, you’re—of course you’re a fucking treasure, halfie.”
And, because it really, really doesn’t matter, but Shouto wants to know anyway, he asks, “Does that mean you think I’m precious?”
Katsuki pinches him. “Take a fucking guess,” he says, and—
Oh.
“What if I guess wrong?”
(Loves me, loves me not.)
“Doesn’t matter,” Katsuki says firmly. “You ever heard of a dragon asking before he takes the treasure?”
“I don’t know,” Shouto says. “Maybe the polite ones would. Eijirou might, if he was a dragon.”
“Oi,” says Katsuki. “Don’t be a brat.”
Shouto laughs. It’s—it’s good like this, isn’t it? (They’re good like this.)
“Why?” he asks. “You’ll make me pay for my insolence?”
“Mm,” says Katsuki, twirling a lock of Shouto’s hair around his finger. “On your knees, too.”
Shouto shivers. “Well,” he says. “I guess that’s only fair. I’m taller than you.”
And Katsuki—
Katsuki shifts, taking Shouto’s chin in his hand, and leans in to press their mouths together. “Shut up,” he says, and then not much else because he’s too busy proving beyond all doubt that he does think Shouto’s precious.
Maybe Shouto needs to reassess. Maybe it’s not about what they don’t say. Maybe it’s just—about this part. About knowing, and touching, and the fact Katsuki takes care of him.
“I like being precious,” Shouto whispers. “I might get used to it.”
With you.
Katsuki shakes his head like Shouto’s being particularly slow, blond hair tickling Shouto’s forehead, and kisses him again.
And—
Yeah, this doesn’t seem that hard to get used to. (Shouto could do it forever, could spend the rest of his life letting Katsuki in, in, in.)