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“The fuck you mean, ‘nu-uh?’”
“I mean there’s no way! You haven’t even had your first kiss, never mind—“
“The hell does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just saying, it’s unlikely you even have that much dexterity if you’ve never even—“
“Just— fucking give it to me, shitbag, I’ll show you dexterity—“
The force with which Katsuki yanked the cherry from Izuku’s cocktail was, in hindsight, a little bit excessive.
Grenadine-dipped fingertips hadn’t initially been on the agenda, and Katsuki only just managed to keep his grumbling to a bare minimum. “Nasty-ass sugar bomb,” he growled, ripping the maraschino cherry off its stem with a vicious tug of his teeth.
Sighing heavily, Izuku watched Katsuki chew through a sheen of thinly-veiled reluctance.
“You could have at least given the cherry to me,” he pouted, cheek falling squarely into the palm of his hand as he watched the blond swallow with a grimace. “You really that butt-hurt about my first kiss comment?”
It only took two of Katsuki’s fingers to hold onto the cherry stem, so that his middle finger was clear to rise sky-high in opposition.
A powerful argument.
One that had Izuku sputtering past pursed lips, gravity pulling him further and further into the slump he’d formed. “Pissy pants,” he slurred, aiming for sour and inevitably falling short.
There was something sticky southeast of his elbow. A droplet of something viscous that kept Izuku’s focus pinned squarely on the coffee table, instead of on downing the rest of Katsuki’s drink in rebellion.
“Oi. You watching or what?”
“Mm.”
Rolling his eyes lazily from the tabletop to Katsuki’s teeth, he watched the cherry stem clear the edge of his mouth and disappear completely. Blinked sluggishly as Katsuki’s jaw began to hitch this way and that, seconds ticking by in utter silence.
At first, it didn’t seem like much of anything was happening.
When an entire minute passed without concrete results, he had half a mind to call Katsuki a liar, just to see if he could get him to choke on the stem he’d stolen.
The moment Izuku finally chose to bolster his courage, Katsuki’s lips began to part.
Anticipation flooded his system in a rush, his own jaw going slack when he leaned in to inspect the evidence of Katsuki’s success.
“…What?”
There, perched against the flat of Katsuki’s tongue, was the knotted remnants of his cocktail garnish.
Katsuki’s grin was positively shit-eating, smug as could be when he reached up and plucked the stem from the cavern of his mouth. “Told you,” he hummed, flicking the object of Izuku’s fascination right at his chin. Izuku’s teeth came together with a click, the wet smack! of the stem against his skin snapping him out of the trance he’d been in. He fumbled to catch it before it could drop into his lap, gnarled fingers holding fast as he brought it up to his face for further inspection.
“…How did you do this.”
“Practice.”
“What kind?”
“Not kissing, apparently.”
“Kacchan.”
The pout was back in full force. A little fiercer this time, as if Izuku’s drunken mind had begun to reach the end of its rope.
It didn’t appreciate being toyed with. Didn’t appreciate being duped, and swindled, and made out to be some kind of joke—
This wasn’t a joke.
This was serious.
And Izuku wanted to get to the bottom of this impossible feat once and for all.
“Show me,” he demanded, and Katsuki snorted against the rim of his Manhattan.
“I just did, wise guy.”
“No, no, no, you— I need you to show me. Show me how you did this,” he said again, shaking the cherry stem between them insistently.
Katsuki felt his brow pinch against his own brand of irritation. “The fuck are you on about? I just did,” he repeated slowly, as if dragging out each letter might imbed the words into Izuku’s brain.
“Katsuki—“
“What,” he spat back with equal force. “I have to close my mouth to tie it, Izuku! I can’t just— show you what my tongue is doing, it doesn’t work like that, alright? So the fuck do you want me to do? Huh? Shove my phone in there along with it so I can get you a goddamn vide— ouh!”
It was a miracle and a half that Katsuki’s glass didn’t shatter against the table.
The taste of grenadine was the first thing to hit. Saccharine sweet pomegranate syrup; aching gum lines and a slight tingle at the front of his tongue.
He tried to swallow the sensation down the same way he had with the maraschino cherry, and felt a pair of calloused fingertips slip against the motion of it. Watched Izuku’s gaze sear straight through the contour of his upper lip as his throat bobbed uselessly against the reflex.
One second of silence.
Two.
Three.
Izuku’s gaze remained unwavering while he evaluated whether or not Katsuki was liable to try and bite down in defense.
It would have been easy to get Izuku to back off once he started nudging at the lower line of his teeth. Deny his silent request and shove him back across the tabletop. Shout in his face and tell him to fuck off.
Instead, Katsuki obliged.
Relaxed the muscles in his jaw so that Izuku could push in a little further than he already had, sugar-stained skin running slowly across the flat of his tongue.
Gently.
Gingerly.
Afraid that too much pressure might trigger the bear trap.
The tips of Izuku’s fingers finally reached the back of his molars, and Katsuki shuddered for it like a man possessed. Felt his eyelids flutter as heat poured into his cheeks and flooded the base of his belly, common sense stripped bare by the alcohol in his system and the weight of Izuku’s gaze on his mouth.
He fucking hated rum punch, but drooled for it like a goddamn hypocrite when Izuku unapologetically stroked the taste of it into the length of his tongue.
Again, and again, and again.
“I’zu…”
He might have felt embarrassed if Izuku didn’t sound just as breathless when he replied.
“Show me.”
When they finally rose to meet him, Izuku’s irises were black as pitch.
Surely there was some sense of understanding between them. Some acknowledgement of the fact that Katsuki couldn’t possibly go through the motions with any degree of accuracy.
But the taste of pomegranate made it hard to focus on such things.
Rendered the whiskey he’d so carefully selected to nothing more than a distant memory, and made it almost impossible to recall why this might be a bad idea come morning.
“Show me,” Izuku had insisted, as sickly sweet as the syrup being massaged into the roof of his mouth.
And who was Katsuki to deny him the chance to learn a new trick?