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Eager and restless, it’s easier for Katsuki to work than it is for him to sleep. The house is steeped in silence, lavender and chamomile like what’s brewed into his Dynamight mug, the kind only late night could bring. The clock has long slipped past midnight, yet Katsuki remains in the kitchen, hunched over the island. The soft glow of the stove light casts a dim, solitary halo around him, orange light from a grease stained bulb weakly illuminating just enough to reveal a worn manila folder in his hands. There’s a stack of bills to the left of his steaming mug but Izuku handles making those phone calls better than he does. He’s gone through enough cellphones to have learned there’s only so much diaphragmatic breathing he can do.
Todoroki is asleep in the next room, undisturbed by Katsuki’s quiet presence. He has been since eight PM.
He glances at the clock again, feeling the weight of each passing minute as he waits for Izuku to return home from his night shift. They were scheduled on opposite shifts this week. He misses him. Shoto misses him. He doesn’t really know how to say that, so he packs him bento boxes of his favorite lunches with a note stuck to the top that reads ‘I’ll kick your ass if you lose today.’
Deku always laughs when he reads them.
Katsuki flips the page of the file he’s reading. There’s a case in Cambodia, some fucker who goes by Pinocchio with a dollification quirk. The file says the quirk user can imprison people by turning them into look-alike dolls and has been leaving them in temples or museums as some twisted form of reparation. Instead of colonizing sacred land, he’s leaving behind people he deems as deserving of spending the rest of their life as a Russian nesting doll. It’s fucked up.
It’s a little funny.
Hawks laughed when he asked if the guy was European. (He is.)
The National Quirk Research and Development Agency, in cold, clinical language says the last place that was hit was the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia. Jirou is a shoo-in, but she’s on vacation in Maldives, probably traumatizing the hotel workers with how loud Denki can be. Yaoyorozu is already working overtime, if the agency gives her a minute more they’ll have a lawsuit on their hands. Iida is too busy with his brats, Eijirou is on another case, Shinsou is too. He’d ask Izuku but they’re trying not to take cases while they try to get their agency off the ground, and he’d ask Todoroki but he’s—
A faint shuffle behind him grabs his attention. He doesn’t need to look up to know it was Shoto, his socked footsteps unmistakable. Even with a hearing aid in his left ear, he never stopped being vigilant, no one can sneak up on him. He glances over his shoulder to see his boyfriend emerging from the hallway, sick and bleary-eyed, wrapped in the ugliest Deku merchandise hoodie he’s ever seen and a thick wool blanket.
Shoto pauses in the threshold, half-asleep and disoriented, his breath rattling noisily from the cold that had him bedridden since early evening.
Katsuki snorts. “Go back to bed.”
Shoto seems to register for the first time that he’s actually there. There’s a wet, glass-like sheen to his multicolored cat eyes that begs a fever. Shoto steps further into the dim lighting and Katsuki can see how mussed his hair is, wild enough from sleep that he can’t tell where the line in the red and white is, they bleed together and stick askew at gravity defying angles.
He looks so sweet, so untouched by the ugliness they see every day. Katsuki is breathless.
“I’m thirsty,” Shoto drives the heel of his hand into his eye, and yawns. The look on Katsuki’s face morphs from something fond to a bit snarky and amused.
“Here, I got you.”
They switch positions. Shoto takes a seat on the stool at the counter, while Bakugou fills a glass with ice and water. He sticks a straw in it and then slides it across the bar to his partner. Shoto takes it wordlessly and takes a sip. Bakugou likes to think he’s healthily observant, cataloging the way Todoroki’s pink, chapped lips close around the straw, or the way his Adam's apple bobs with each swallow. His beauty is effortless, otherworldly even at 1:21 AM while he’s got a head full of snot.
They sit in companionable silence for a minute, the almost comforting clock ticking on the wall the only thing to be heard.
Bakugou watches him, face void of feeling. Calm, calculating, like he’s studying something on Todoroki’s face, or committing it to memory. There’s not yelling or explosions or snarky comebacks. Just the two of them, in the kitchen; together.
Shoto looks back.
Eventually, Shoto sniffles and leans back to wipe his running nose on the cuff of his hoodie and Bakugou swipes his glass and fills it with water again.
“You knocked out pretty early tonight.”
“Yeah,” he rasps. “I felt pretty bad after my shift.”
“I can tell. Think you’re running a temperature?”
Todoroki stops, thinks, and then nods. “It’s been hard to regulate my temperature, courtesy of my quirk.” Case in point, when he exhales, condensation curls from between his lips, frosting the air into a vapor cloud. He must be chilly right now, which explains the blanket.
Katsuki balks at him. “You mean, you’re manually keeping your temperature in check right now?”
“I could hurt someone if I don’t.” Shoto pulls the hem of the blanket over his mouth and coughs. Katsuki watches his thin shoulders tremble. “If I get too hot, or if I get too cold. Either way, it’s bad.”
Katsuki isn’t sure how to refute that, how to comfort him about the side effects of his quirk. Katsuki has a similar predicament with illness, with fever making sweat roll off of him and igniting everything in his way on fire. It makes him so angry when it happens that he usually isolates until it’s over. He doesn’t know if Todoroki is mad too.
“Luckily,” Shoto continues. “This cold seems to have settled in my head. Nothing too terrible, just a little…” His voice begins to quiver, his eyes fluttering.
Katsuki wishes that Izuku was here more than anything now.
Shoto lifts the hem of the blanket over the lower half of his face, like he’s shielding Katsuki from his cold, like they don’t share a bed. It doesn’t hide his full face, the way his eyebrows knit, and he gasps, jackknifing towards the island.
“ih’zshHhht—iew!”
Katsuki only stares.
Shoto cups the blanket over his face tighter. “hh’izSHTT! ih–izshHtiewh!”
“Gesundheit,” Katsuki breathes, sounding vaguely amused. Shoto lifts his head, and his sweet tired eyes are wet. The orange glow of the stove light makes them glitter, feverish and glassy. In the darkness, they almost look the same color but the blue one is still striking, even in the dark.
“Excuse mbe,” Todoroki croaks, sounding more congested than he had just moments before. “Whedn…uh, whedn will Mbidoriya be hobme?”
“Any second now. You miss him?”
Todoroki nods distractedly, he’s too busy digging the heel of his palm into his eye. “He’s been at the agency late every night this week.”
“You know how he gets. He’s got a pile of paperwork to the ceiling, he’s patrolling, he’s been mentoring interns. He won’t rest until he’s satisfied.”
“Or until he winds up in the hospital,” Shoto adds, unhelpfully.
Indignation born of affection flashes across Katsuki’s face. Shoto was unfortunately correct.
“He’d better not piss me off.”
Just as he opened his mouth to say more, they both heard the familiar sound of keys turning in the lock. The front door creaked open and Izuku stepped in, looking exhausted and disheveled but never losing his smile no matter how weary it was.
Conversation halted as Izuku followed the faint light into the kitchen. He regarded them both, let his messenger bag slide off of his shoulder and neatly rest against the refrigerator.
“What are you two doing up?”
Katsuki turns on the stool, opening his arms for Izuku to settle into. Izuku crashes into his embrace and Katsuki seizes him up, arms holding him close in a crushing grip. His face disappears into Izuku’s neck.
“You don’t sound excited to see me. Got a problem, nerd?”
Izuku laughs, turning in Katsuki’s arms so he could face Shoto across the island. Shoto gives him a tired smile, too focused on mouth breathing to do much of anything else.
“No, it’s just late, is all.” Izuku tuts, and reaches across the table, rests a hand on Shoto’s. “How are you feeling? You didn’t sound very good when I left this afternoon.”
Shoto shrugs, waving a noncommittal hand at his face. “It’s a cold.”
“Icy Hot over here has been manually regulating his temperature for the last like six fucking hours. Did you know he did that shit?”
Izuku sighs, and grabs Shoto's cup and takes it to the fridge to refill it with ice chips for him to suck on. “I am aware of that, yes. I also know it isn’t a good sign when he starts sneezing–”
Shoto whips his head away from the table. “hh’zzDShu!”
With the sneeze, comes a flurry of tiny white snowflakes, raining down in the direction Shoto had sneezed.
“–fire. Um, bless you.”
Katsuki can’t keep the amusement out of his voice when he speaks. “Did you just sneeze out snowflakes, Sho? Oh come on, that’s priceless.”
Izuku smacks him on the shoulder but it doesn’t phase him at all. “Kacchan, be nice. I’ve…uh, I’ve never seen snowflakes before. I admit, that was pretty cute.”
Shoto, to his dismay, turns the prettiest shade of pink. “It happens sometimes. Sometimes it’s fire, sometimes it’s uh…snowflakes.”
Katsuki’s frame trembles with poorly concealed snickers.
Izuku circles the island, his hand resting on Shoto’s forehead. He pushes back his bangs and after a moment, he presses their foreheads together. “I picked you up some soba on my way home. If you’re feeling up to it, I can heat some up and you can eat it. Kacchan, where’s he at in his meds?”
“Took two cold and flu tablets before he went to bed at eight. It’s been about four hours. He can take some painkillers. I’ll go grab them.”
Katsuki disappears from the island and Izuku ventures to his bag to collect the brown paper bag with the cup of soba inside. He retrieves a bowl from the cabinet and dishes some noodles and broth into the porcelain.
“We were just talking about you,” Shoto croaks, sipping some of the water from his glass.
Izuku sets the bowl in the microwave and presses start. It hums behind him. “All good things, I hope.”
“Kat thinks you work too hard.”
“He’d wrap me in bubble wrap and lock me in the house if he could, I think.”
Shoto exhales sharply through his nose in a ghost of a laugh. “I don’t disagree with that. But you have been working extra hard lately. I just don’t want you to end up sick like me. Or worse.”
Or worse, hangs in the air like an omen. The microwave beeping saves Midoriya from having to respond immediately. He turns, gathering the bowl and brings it to the island with chopsticks. He sets it in front of his partner.
“Can I just take care of you tonight?”
“You just worked a twelve hour–”
“Please?”
Shoto watches Izuku and the pleading pinch between his eyes.
“Please.”
Shoto acquiesces. He takes a small experimental sip of the broth off of his noodles.
“Go get out of your work clothes,” Katsuki demands as he comes back into the room. “You take these, and then we’re going to bed. No one is going to work tomorrow.”
Shoto’s head snaps towards Bakugo. Has he ever used a sick day before? Has Midoriya?
“But–” Whatever protest Izuku had is silenced by Katsuki’s warning glare.
“But nothing. You, pajamas, now. You, take these.” Katsuki drops two red pills in the center of Shoto’s expecting hand. He sidles back to his corner of the island, grabbing his folders and his Dynamight mug of tea. “Someone’s gotta have some sense around here.”
“I resent that!” Izuku grumbles as he starts for the bedroom.
“Yeah, yeah, cry about it.”
Shoto can’t help but laugh, hiding his smile behind a blanket clad palm.
“What’s so funny, huh?”
Katsuki is illuminated by the greasy stove light again. An orange halo outlines his hair, and casts a glimmer off of his hearing aid. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose by his knuckle, grinning his sharp edged smile. He looks handsome, still himself and yet different. Shoto watches him wet his lips, run a hand through his spiky blonde hair.
Katsuki looks back.
“Nothing. Just– snf! Nothing.”