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After some months of working in Akatake as a Pro Hero, Katsuki could attest that this district was a calamitous clusterfuck, and he did not use that term lightly. Most districts in Japan were praised on the news with flowery captions like ‘Timeless Snapshots of History’, or ‘The Wonders of Modern Nature’. Not Akatake, though. When news crews dared shine a spotlight on Akatake, it was for headlines like ‘Top Ten Worst Vacation Destinations’, and ‘Scandaled CEO Walks Away Scott-Free’, and ‘Schools Closed after Quail Quirk Bombards Buildings with Rotten Eggs’.
This was the whole reason Katsuki was here. He and his brand-new agency were digging up the corruption and crime in Akatake by the roots, kicking and squealing, and they were going to keep digging through the filth until this neglected trash heap was cleaned up and rat-fucking-free.
Saved, 100%.
These months in of digging, though, and Katsuki was pleasantly surprised to admit that there were a few hard-edged gems hidden amidst the dirt.
Case in point: The (in)famous bar in the heart of Akatake known as Snake Eyes. A ‘benign’ villain bar at its core, most of Snake Eyes’ clientele were members of reformed or registered yakuza and crime families, like the Shie Hassaikai group had been before Overhaul took over. Katsuki liked to pay bars like Snake Eyes the occasional personal visit. Never in uniform, but never in disguise either; it was both a scare tactic and a power move, to help make sure these groups stayed on Katsuki’s side of the law. Nowadays, though, he also stopped by Snake Eyes because the fuckers here were damn fun to play in pool.
He lined up his pool stick on the table, adjusted his angle slightly, and forced his breathing to be light and slow. He gauged the distance and power he needed to make this shot by memory alone… and then he jabbed his pool stick forward. The tip smacked against the white ball, and Katsuki listened, carefully, to the sound of the ball rolling, bouncing off the far wall, colliding into another ball, and – fuck yeah, that had to be the striped-12 sinking into a pocket.
He had a couple seconds to bask in his victory… until he heard the white ball keep rolling, and keep rolling, and knock into something else.
Grimacing, Katsuki stepped a good few meters back from the table and finally lifted his blindfold. He watched, lips pursed, as the white ball nudged the striped-13 ball forward, clearing a critical obstacle that Katsuki had desperately needed to stay in Otoji’s way.
Otoji tipped her head to the side as she listened, and the long tails of her own blindfold spilled over her shoulder. Her Quirk gave her bat-like ears and jacked-up hearing, and she’d been wearing her own blindfold since the beginning of the game. Hadn’t taken it off once, and she was whipping Katsuki’s ass so badly at their supped-up high-stakes version of pool that the bartender had started bringing her crew free drinks two games ago.
“I don’t remember asking you to make this easy for me, Dynamight,” she mused, idly tapping the pool stick in her hand with a manicured nail. A few of her minions cat-called in the background.
Katsuki ignored them. “Won’t happen again,” was his only response. In the back of his head, he was already replaying and tweaking that last move, toning down the power so that it wouldn’t have caused this collateral damage.
Otoji leaned over the table herself, head shifting this way and that way as she lined up her own shot. She wore traditional kimono at every event, even to a shady villain bar like this one; today the fringes of her gown were crisscrossed with purple spiderwebs, which shimmered where they draped over the table.
With a neat flick of her wrist, Otoji sent the white ball hopping right over the striped-14. It collided with the solid-7 ball, and the solid-7 rolled obediently into the far pocket.
Katsuki huffed through his nose. That cute little hop-skip hadn’t even been necessary. “Now you're just fucking with me,” he muttered, as her crew cheered around them.
Her only response to that was a polite smile.
He scratched at his chin idly as he examined the table, before he pulled his blindfold back down and stepped forward again.
He was prepping his next shot to capture the striped-13 when he distantly caught the bar door open. That wasn’t a novelty in itself. No, what was real weird was how the bar suddenly grew quieter, notch by notch, like some giant hand was turning the room’s volume down.
Odd. Katsuki couldn’t see what was happening with his blindfold, though, so he strained his ears even as he lined up his pool stick.
“Holy shit,” he heard someone mutter. “That’s… That’s Deku.”
Katsuki’s hand jerked forward so badly he almost snapped the pool stick in two. The white ball went careening away from his sloppy hit, ricocheted off the table wall, and made a dejected thumping noise as it sunk itself in one of the pockets.
Katsuki barely even registered the loss. He ripped off his blindfold to see, against all odds, Izuku, dressed down in faded jeans and a ‘cool t-shirt’ beneath his beloved ‘All M’ jacket, waltzing into this bar like he came here every other Friday.
Like this wasn’t a whole-ass villain bar. In Katsuki’s territory.
Izuku walked a winding, leisurely path around tables and people to the back counter, iconic curls and green eyes and freckles on display for absolutely everyone to recognize as Pro Hero Deku, and goons around the room were starting to sweat bullets. Katsuki could almost smell their fear.
Damn straight, they’d better be scared. The bare thought of Deku and Dynamight showing up to shut shit down should have all of these grunts quaking in their boots. Even though that wasn’t… whatever this was.
“Is this a bust?” He heard someone whisper.
“Oh gods,” one of Otoji’s crew gasped, “oh gods – “
“Dynamight, we swear,” cut in some minion at a nearby pool table, “we ain’t done shit, we swear – “
“Quiet,” Otoji ordered them all, voice as cool as ice.
Every person within hearing range shut the fuck up immediately.
Otoji merely adjusted her sleeves. She tilted a long ear, slowly, to Katsuki. “What is this, Dynamight?”
“I don’t know,” he told her, completely honestly.
He pulled out his phone, and a few quick swipes told him that no, Izuku hadn’t texted or called him, and no, there was no trouble in Izuku’s district or anywhere in Katsuki’s, so, no, Izuku popping up this deep in Katsuki’s territory without telling Katsuki made no goddamn sense whatsoever.
He snagged his ginger beer and took a measured sip as he looked Izuku over properly, watched him sit at the bar counter through half-squinted eyes…
He was fooled for all of six seconds, and then he almost spit out his drink.
“Gonna have to rematch you some other time,” he muttered to Otoji. And then he passed off his pool stick to the closest of Otoji’s minions – who fumbled with the stick for a few seconds, almost dropping it – and made his way over to join “Izuku” in the back.
When Katsuki stepped up to the counter beside her, she tipped her head to the side and welcomed him with her wide, wide smile. She did not look surprised to see him. At all. “Hiiii,” she said, in Izuku’s voice, dragging the cheery greeting out over several seconds.
“If you’re here to start shit, don’t,” he warned her, in greeting.
“I’d never,” she hummed. “I’m just here to get a drink, with my best friend.”
He blinked at her. Slowly.
Toga had always been as predictable as a fair dice roll, even after the war, and right now Katsuki was drawing total blanks and empty chalkboards to explain what, in all hells, she was doing here.
He slid onto the barstool next to her, set his drink on a coaster, and stared her down with narrowed eyes. “How d’you even have any of his blood?” He challenged her. “You two get in a fight?”
She propped her elbow on the counter and settled her chin in her palm. “Oh, not at all. He gives me a little, to reward my good behavior.” Dropping her voice to a secretive whisper, she added, “He doesn’t know how much I’ve been stockpiling.”
Well, fuck if this was anything but red flags and alarm bells. The only reason Katsuki was sitting here and not hauling her ass out of the bar was because he was quickly and furiously texting Izuku one-handed in his lap under the counter, tilted so she couldn’t see the screen:
Katsuki: u and vamp fight
Katsuki: shes u right now its fucking weird
And to his lead Sidekick Mirror, he texted:
Katsuki: vamp @Snake Eyes, no action but could be others
Katsuki: put night shift on alert
Toga-Izuku spun a little on her stool and sighed like she was the happiest kid on holiday. “I went to the grocery store earlier today,” she offered, conversationally. “I bought a bunch of potato chips, all kinds of flavors and colors. I don’t know which flavor he likes, so I’m going to send them all to his office. Do you think he’ll eat any of them for me?”
Katsuki was saved the trouble of not answering that when his phone vibrated, and he glanced down to see new incoming texts from Mirror and Izuku:
Mirror: Done, Boss. Patrol’s on its way to monitor the site.
Izuku: No, we haven’t fought?
Izuku: I give her blood every few weeks.
Izuku: Not a lot!
Izuku: But it’s the only thing she’s ever asked for
Izuku: She stockpiles it, saves it up to turn into me on some full moons. I don’t know why, don’t ask.
Izuku: Been keeping an eye on her, but she doesn’t ever do anything wrong or weird
Izuku: And it’s not like she can do anything with my Quirk, just like how Monoma can’t, so it’s… fine?
Izuku: Whenever she turns into me, she just shops or walks around town or talks to me or visits Ochako and Tsuyu-chan
Izuku: Don’t know why she’s in your district this time, though
Izuku: Everybody in my district knows about it now
Izuku: On full moons there’s even a tabloid that runs an edition called ‘Where’s Toga?’ where they try to find her and get pics of …
That was as far as Katsuki got before he put his phone down, because he’d needed an answer not a damn essay.
Thing was, the moon wasn’t full tonight. Barely a half-moon, if he remembered correctly.
That, and Katsuki wasn’t Izuku, and he sure as all hells wasn’t Uraraka, or Asui. Katsuki didn’t fall anywhere in the bucket of people that Toga now preciously coveted as ‘friends’.
He was tempted to kick her out purely on principle, but it was better to keep an eye on her, especially since she was off routine. “How many hours of his blood have you stockpiled?”
“Not enough,” she sighed.
Katsuki fought the urge to roll his eyes. At least she hadn’t lied. “The fuck are you really doing in my district? Don’t,” he added to a goon farther down the counter, who was doing a decent job of sneaking in a photo of the two of them. The goon startled so badly he dropped his phone, which hit the ground with a nasty clatter.
“I told you.” Toga-Izuku tilted her head to the other side. Her long smile looked almost… alien, on Izuku’s mouth. “Just here to have a drink with my best friend.”
“You’re really here to get a drink,” he echoed, after a moment. “With me.”
“My best friend,” she agreed.
“Right,” he said, voice as dry as he could make it. “Right.” He drained the rest of his drink and stood up from the stool. “Come on,” he ordered her. “We’re going for a walk.”
Like Dabi, Toga had spent the months after the war in intense recovery, and then in intense rehabilitation and therapy, under both the Commission’s sheltering wing and watchful eye. She’d endured the process willingly, hadn’t complained or caused trouble even once. Izuku, Uraraka, and Asui had all visited her many times during her healing, and as far as Katsuki could judge they’d been the most important terms in the equation.
After she’d cleared her counseling, the Commission had offered her either 1) training and work as one of their restricted agents, or 2) years and years of rotting in Tartarus. Toga had jumped on their first offer like some grinning cheshire cat.
Katsuki had no idea what exactly she did for the Commission now, other than that it was real classified shit. He got the sense that the Commission was benefiting from their arrangement far more than they should be… but, according to Izuku at least, Toga was genuinely happy now, and never so much as toed the lines of the strict rules in her contract with the Commission.
All the more reason that this little stint of hers in his district had Katsuki double-checking every shadow.
He steered their path to a cluster of old warehouses farther in his territory, deserted at this late hour. He scanned the roofs and shady alleys as they passed, but so far he couldn’t see or sense any threats that might be with her.
“How’d you know it was me?” Toga-Izuku asked him, long after they’d left the noise and lights of Snake Eyes’ block behind. “You knew the whole time, I could tell.”
He ignored her, still, until the streets had narrowed and emptied, and it was only them, them and the half-moon shining above, quiet save for the electric hum of the streetlights and the distant mewling of strays.
He finally stopped outside of Looming Warehouse #7, where the lot was clear other than a few padlocked shipping crates and jagged heavy equipment. Plenty of room here if she did decide to throw down, or if anyone else popped out of the shadows.
Part of him hoped she was here to start shit after all; her wide smile on Izuku’s face was starting to piss him off.
She hadn’t said anything more the whole walk, just let her eyes wander over the storefronts and streets. Now that they’d paused, though, she was looking at him expectantly, like she knew him well enough to know his silence hadn’t been because he wasn’t going to answer.
Somehow that pissed him off even more.
He leaned against a shipping crate as he scanned her up and down, taking in the curly hair, the freckles, the bright green eyes.
The faded jeans, the zipped-up jacket, the red shoes.
The too-wide smile, the gaze that was seeing but not seeing like Izuku could.
“You look like him,” he told her, “but you’re a piss-poor copy. For someone who’s been following him all this time, you don’t know him well at all.”
That too-wide smile went curiously flat.
“Really,” she said, and those green eyes narrowed into slits.
The silence thickened like fog between them.
Abruptly, she looked away. She quirked her mouth in a new little smile…
…and now it was Izuku’s smile: that sheepish smile, the one he wore when the press showered him with too much praise, or when he was dodging his way around the tabloids’ too-personal questions.
Not-Izuku raised a hand and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I guess I should’ve known better,” he laughed – and, fuck, somehow it was Izuku’s laugh now too, low and free. “It’s just… I don’t like being this way for anyone but me, you know?” Green eyes danced up to meet Katsuki’s. “Those people in the bar, or out in the city… they don’t deserve this precious person. They don’t deserve me. But you?” He laughed again, deeper this time, and dropped his tone to a murmur. “Nothing gets past you, Kacchan.”
That pet name in Izuku’s quiet voice slid like a snake down Katsuki’s spine.
“Don’t call me that,” Katsuki warned him, as the hairs rose on the back of his neck.
Not-Izuku’s eyes widened. “I thought you didn’t mind, when I called you Kacchan?”
“You don’t get to call me Kacchan,” Katsuki snapped.
“…Ah.” Not-Izuku nodded to himself. “So. You do like it when I call you Kacchan.” Before Katsuki could do more than bristle at that, Not-Izuku granted him a cheery, lamp-bright smile. “Do you have a precious person?”
Which… fucking what?
Katsuki’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. And then he pinched the bridge of his nose.
The seconds ticked by, so many that the wind picked up and whistled around them. Some blocks away, a stray dog barked out a desperate symphony.
“Nope,” Katsuki decided, finally. “Fuck this. I’m taking you to Izuku’s district. Come willingly, or I drag your ass there.”
And with that, he started walking toward the nearest train station.
Not-Izuku simply fell in step with him, looking disconcertingly smug about something. “I drank Ochako’s blood, years ago,” Not-Izuku offered, keeping this conversation that Katsuki absolutely did not want to have going on his own. “I could taste how I was one of her precious people. Not in the same way as you, I wonder…? But still.” He fisted at his jacket, right above his heart, and it was so like Izuku Katsuki felt a muscle tick in his forehead. “It makes me happy, to be someone that makes her happy.”
Not-Izuku swerved forward suddenly and stopped, blocking Katsuki’s way. “Am I your precious person?” He asked – and then that smile warped, darkened. “Kacchan?”
And Katsuki froze in place.
This was that dark smile: the one that appeared with glowing green eyes and showed too much teeth.
The one that Izuku kept hidden from the rest of the world.
How the hell Toga knew about this smile, Katsuki had no idea… but glimpsing this private, hidden side of Izuku on Not-Izuku had Katsuki seeing red.
In the next few heartbeats, Katsuki had Not-Izuku’s hands twisted behind his back and his face pressed into the concrete ground. “Don’t move,” he threatened, and his voice was barely more than a growl above his rage. “Don’t say a damn word.”
One bright green eye stared back at him, unfazed.
Katsuki touched his earpiece and dialed through to the right phone line.
“Yeah?” Izuku’s voice – the real Izuku’s voice – rang out, tone already in calm-in-crisis mode.
Katsuki sucked a breath in through his teeth. “Izuku, I am three wrong words away from blasting your Vampire through a warehouse and blowing this block sky-high.”
“Okay,” was Izuku’s swift and only response. “I’m… actually already on my way. Pinged your location earlier.”
A smidgeon of the stress bled from Katsuki’s shoulders. Thank the gods Izuku knew him well enough not to question how serious he was.
He wasn’t in the right state of mind to examine the fact that Izuku was… already on his way here, but, well, thank the gods for that too right now.
“It’s quiet on your end,” Izuku ventured. In the background, the calm voice of an intercom announced the next train stop. “What’d she do?”
“She’s…” and even as Katsuki spoke the words, he understood how strange they were. “…Very good at being you.”
“Damn.” Izuku’s answering chuckle was a little strained. “Did I piss you off that much?”
The truth of the matter was that Toga hadn’t done anything wrong. Other than piss him off, apparently. Katsuki didn’t have the calm right now to pinpoint why this chain of events had set him off this badly, but he knew she was toeing real fucking close to his boiling point. He’d sit with a cup of tea and work backwards through this conversation and be furious with himself later for letting her get to him, but right now he just needed an out.
“Just… hurry the fuck up,” he said, instead of answering.
“Kacchan, what the hell did she do?”
That pet name again, but from the real Izuku this time. Below him, Not-Izuku’s face split into a manic grin.
Katsuki tightened his hold on Not-Izuku, as that grin brushed his fur in all the wrong ways. “Izuku – ”
In an instant, Not-Izuku shifted beneath him to the smaller, slighter form of Himiko Toga, and her clothes melted away. Katsuki slid forward in the sudden sludge, and Toga twisted out of his too-loose grip like an eel.
“Fucking – ” Katsuki scrambled to find his footing –
But in a split-second she was Izuku again, strong and muscular and fast, and Not-Izuku knocked Katsuki’s feet out from under him and tumbled them both to the ground.
Katsuki’s back hit the concrete, hard – and then he went completely still.
Not-Izuku had him pinned, was holding him down and leaning in with that glowing gaze and that smile.
That dark smile.
Katsuki had been pinned like this before. After their heaviest and most dangerous sparring matches, the ones where Katsuki was at his worst and the world and its bullshit were like ants on his skin and he just needed someone to ground him, the one person who could bring him back, the one person who got him. Those were the matches where Katsuki left clawed and bruised and oozing blood and calm, calm and quiet.
This was that Izuku – the one hidden from the rest of the world. That Izuku, who enjoyed those brutal spars and bloody battles as much as Katsuki did.
“You don’t think I need this too, Kacchan?” He’d said once, as this dark smile passed over his face.
Fuck, but it was a rush to see Izuku like this. This Izuku, who wasn’t holding back.
In this cross between memories and reality, Katsuki half-expected to hear Izuku laugh, even as he’d be breathing too hard and clutching his side from the fight. “My win this time, Kacchan,” he’d say.
Instead, Not-Izuku lurched forward and sank fangs into Katsuki’s neck.
Katsuki made a strangled sound, half-gasp, half-snarl, and it was like the whole world went fuzzy and glitched around the edges.
This wasn’t just memories, now.
Katsuki had dreamt of this: dreams where he and Izuku were scratched and bloodied from sparring, and Izuku growled at him to yield, Kacchan, yield, and Katsuki, bruised and battered, tipped his head back and yielded, and Izuku smiled that dark smile and leaned in and bit him, on his arms and his legs and his neck, and Katsuki panted and writhed beneath him and not from the pain and –
Fuck, fuck, this was not that, this was not real.
Katsuki shoved Not-Izuku hard enough that he felt the fangs tear from his skin. He kicked out Not-Izuku’s legs, flipped him, and slammed Not-Izuku down by the chest into the ground.
But Not-Izuku was already gone. It was Toga beneath him now, sludge sloughing off her body like its own form of blood.
She didn’t struggle. She just licked the blood from her teeth and smiled her wide, wide smile up at Katsuki. “I knew it.”
“ – Katsuki? Katsuki?”
For the first time, Katsuki registered Izuku shouting in his ear. “Izuku,” he managed to rasp. He was breathing hard, too hard, like he’d run up a mountain.
“What happened?”
Katsuki rolled his shoulder, and the fang marks stretched and burned. “You bit me,” he finally answered, and he could hear the haze creeping over his own voice.
Silence. It stretched and stretched and stretched.
“I’ll use Fa Jin the rest of the way,” Izuku said, and his calm-in-crisis tone had morphed into something else entirely, like a spring drizzle warping into a typhoon. “Be there soon.” And with a click, he hung up.
“You can let me up,” Toga murmured below Katsuki, as soon as the call ended. “I won’t go anywhere. I got what I wanted.”
Katsuki shook his head like he was coming out of water. He moved aside and staggered to his feet on slightly unsteady legs.
Toga picked herself up delicately from the ground. She flicked the last of the sludge from her body and shifted her weight to her toes, hands clasped behind her back. She was fully naked now that the sludge was gone, and didn’t seem to be giving a damn about that.
Wordlessly, Katsuki shrugged off his jacket and gave it to her.
She took it and tugged it on, zipped it up to her collarbone. “You taste better than I thought you would,” she told him, smile as serene as he’d ever seen it.
Katsuki had shit-all to say to that. He was still struggling against the aftershocks of Izuku’s teeth at his neck.
There was the edge of an electric hum, the blur of movement in Katsuki’s peripheral vision –
And then Izuku dropped down beside them both in streaks of cracked lightning.
His curls were ruffled and windswept, his ‘UA’ jacket and small backpack both falling off his shoulders, his cheeks flushed from his sudden mad dash to get here. But he didn’t pause to catch his breath. Instead he simply straightened, gaze flicking between the two of them. Green eyes roamed over Toga’s borrowed jacket, and then settled on the jagged, bleeding fang marks on Katsuki’s neck.
The silence congealed like mud between the three of them. Katsuki watched Izuku’s face flash its way through a dozen emotions, too fast to pick out, before finally parking itself very firmly in neutral. Completely, carefully, neutral.
“I know, I know,” Toga hummed.
Izuku’s gaze snapped to her face.
“I just needed a taste, that’s all,” she said, slipping her hands into Katsuki’s jacket pockets. “Won’t happen again, I promise. And in exchange, I won’t take any more of your blood for a whole six months.” She rocked a little on the balls of her feet. “How’s that for a fair punishment?”
Izuku only blinked at her. Face still as empty as a whiteboard.
“Twelve months,” he corrected her, after a while.
“Twelve?” She spluttered.
“Twelve,” he agreed.
Her face scrunched up in disgust. “Seven months,” she tried.
“Twelve months,” he warned.
“Nine months?”
“This is a complete breach of your contract with the Commission, Himiko,” he countered her. “You want to make this a real punishment, then let’s make it a real punishment. Twelve months.”
She made a grumbly sort of noise from the back of her throat, but didn’t protest any further. “Alright, fine. Twelve months.” After a beat, she asked, “Are you… are you going to tell them? I swear,” she tacked on quickly, as her smile drained away, “it was just a taste, just of him, and I won’t do it again, I promise.”
Izuku shook his head. “I won’t tell them.”
A wave of relief flooded Toga’s face.
“But, Himiko…” Izuku breathed in, held it, and then let the air out in a heavy rush. “What’re you going to do with his blood?”
“Nothing else,” she reassured him. At his skeptical look, she huffed, “I know what’s in my contract. If the Commission found out, they’d send me back to Tartarus, and I am. Not. Going back to Tartarus. I like it out here.”
“If the Commission found out,” Katsuki echoed dryly, folding his arms across his chest.
“I’m not going to turn into anyone else,” she stressed, “I promised. Especially not into you.” With a glance at Izuku, she went on more quietly, “I know you’d hate it, if I did.”
“I would,” Izuku agreed, with a slow nod.
Katsuki's brow furrowed at that. He almost pressed Izuku for more – Izuku was okay with Toga frolicking around looking like Izuku himself, but not as Katsuki? – until he remembered that he himself had spent not even ten minutes talking to Toga-Izuku in this lot and had wanted to blast her through a steel wall.
“Okay, so…” Izuku scrubbed a hand through his hair. “If you’re not going to turn into him… why did you bite him, Himiko?”
Toga tilted her head to the side. “You know I would never bite him,” was her only cryptic response, as her lips quirked into something sly.
Well, that was nonsensical as fuck. Izuku, though, seemed to read whatever she was stitching between the lines, because his eyes widened. He opened his mouth to say something, said absolutely nothing for four seconds, and then just shut his mouth.
“The fuck does she mean?” Katsuki frowned at him.
Izuku rubbed at the back of his neck. “Doesn’t… doesn’t matter. C’mon, Himiko, let’s head back to my district. Train station’s not far.” He shrugged off his backpack and pulled out a bundle of clothes. “Here. Brought these just in case.”
“Oooh,” she said, sounding absolutely delighted, “we should stop by that ice cream shop in our station! My treat.”
“Really?” Izuku’s eyebrows rose. “And it’s not even a full moon today.”
Smirking like a gremlin, she shrugged off Katsuki’s jacket, passed it to Izuku, and started dressing in the new clothes right there in front of them, admiring each piece before she pulled it on like they were rare artifacts at a museum.
Izuku didn’t even bat an eyelash. He just handed the jacket out to Katsuki, eyes flicking again and again to the blatant fang marks on his neck. “Still feel like you’re going to blow up the block?”
Oh, Katsuki was feeling a few somethings, alright. The idea of Izuku and Toga sitting at a booth in the station, not fighting but just, fucking, eating ice cream had his brain tripping circles over itself.
That, and Toga’s fangs might as well have been venomous, the way jitters were still sparking in his bloodstream.
None of this was rage, though, so. “No,” he sighed, taking the jacket. “I’m… fuck, I’m good, I guess. Want me to walk you to the station?” Not that he was keen to spend any more time with Toga. He’d already put up with enough of her shit today, starting with her walking into the Snake Eyes bar in the first place.
“No way,” Toga interrupted. She was dressed now in one of Izuku’s smiley-face t-shirts and a pair of drawstring cloth shorts tied tight, both baggy enough on her to seem like she was making some kind of fashion statement. She spun a little on her bare toes. “It's been a while. We have a lot to catch up on.”
“We do, don’t we,” Izuku hummed, gifting her one of his small, genuine smiles.
“And anyway,” Toga added to Katsuki, eyes crinkling, “you should probably get that bite cleaned. Looks pretty deep.”
Katsuki faced her with the full force of his heaviest, most irritated glare. Even if Toga had changed for the better since the early days of the League, even if she was fighting for the good team now, even if Izuku and Uraraka sincerely called her ‘friend’…
… she was still a cheeky little shit.
“Fuck,” he growled out, “all, the way off.”
“Oh, relax.” That sly smile stretched across her face again. “You know it’s fine. Tasted like you didn’t mind the bite at all.”
And with that she pranced away, laughing like Katsuki was the punchline of the world’s funniest joke.
Izuku shot a strange look at Katsuki, half-apologetic, half-amused, all-curious, before he called after her, steady footfall distinct from her dancer-like steps as he jogged to catch up, until they both disappeared around a corner and out of sight.
In the quiet they left behind, Katsuki shook out his jacket and pulled it on, felt the fabric settle over his shoulders and brush over the still-bleeding fang marks. He zipped the jacket closed, and he caught a waft of some sort of spiced body wash: like clean soap, mixed with apple cider.
From Toga’s skin, of course.
World’s funniest joke, indeed. But for a second there, he’d thought his jacket would smell like Izuku.