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The snow outside was still falling and Shoto had been dozing off in his seat for several minutes before Katsuki understood for the millionth time just how fucked he was—irrevocably, irreversibly, completely fucked—because Shoto was close to falling asleep, his head lolling on its neck before he jerked it upright again, eyelids fluttering. Kirishima and Ashido made fun of him, the rest of the class were surprisingly indifferent, even Midoriya knew something was wrong. And Katsuki was so fucked.
He hadn’t intended to tamp down the thing in his stomach on purpose. In fact, he hadn’t bothered hiding it at all and was intent on letting it run its course, in the hopes that it would eventually burn and fizzle out before he could come to the conclusion that he was…well.
It was a song as old as rhyme: noticing the cherry blossom tip of Shoto’s tongue sticking out between his Chapstick-smeared lips, right below his Cupid’s bow whenever he opened a book, the way he’d kicked out whenever he stretched his thighs, the arc of his spine in the air; an innocent little crush, nothing more or less, and it would have been left at that except—when Katsuki made the mistake of voicing his concerns and suspicions, Kirishima and Ashido started giggling to themselves, one choking grunt away from full-on rolling around on their stomachs and laughing louder.
Shoto was still dozing off.
Katsuki pressed on his shoulder, and Shoto was up in an instant. The snow was still falling, and Katsuki looked once more.
“Stop fucking sleeping. Do you need coffee or something?” he asked.
Shoto rubbed his eyes. There was a red indent on his cheek from where he’d pressed it into his sleeve. “That would be great. Thanks.”
He ignored how Endeavour was glaring at him from where he sat with Midoriya, who had his notebook out again and was talking a mile a minute, black pen poised in his fingers like an old-fashioned journalist. Just a few minutes ago, Shoto had kicked up a fuss about how he was supposed to sit next to his father on the flight—and this was where things got confusing again, as though the dormant mannequins of Katsuki’s affections, something he didn’t even know existed, started stretching and coming to life once more—which had made Katsuki snatch Midoriya’s ticket from him and trade it with Shoto’s. He and his father got into a second argument over this while Katsuki just stood there, hunched over and trying to hide his burning face.
I told you so, Ashido had sneered at him. Or maybe she was only smiling smugly; Katsuki had been too drunk to remember. I was right about you two from the beginning. I told you so, I told you so, she’d gloated, stooping her head down to get eye-level with Katsuki. His cheek had slammed into one of the beer-sticky tables in the common room. Shoto had turned in early that night, which was just as well. It was already embarrassing enough to see Ashido smiling giddily at him and Kirishima biting down on his knuckles to keep from howling with laughter.
I told you so, Ashido had laughed again, swirling some weird-looking green liquid in her glass. Remember how you didn’t wanna believe me at first? I knew it right from the start! I told you so, I told you so!
Katsuki was very aware that his heart wasn’t his own anymore.
Ashido had in fact known about it even before Katsuki himself did, and he nearly blasted the whole dorm apart when she first dared to bring it up. It was something she’d lorded over him for the next few months, like it was some sort of grand accomplishment that she had him all figured out even though Katsuki gradually recognised that yes—he’d been slowly bending towards Shoto all throughout their first two terms, all so he could buy Shoto overpriced airport coffee.
The hot Styrofoam cup in his hands felt so stupid—stupidly small, stupidly stupid, and Shoto was dozing off again when Katsuki got back to their waiting area.
This can’t be worth it, he thought to himself, swallowing hard against his throat when Shoto straightened up and reached for the cup with his long, neat fingers, it’s not worth pretending. Nope, not worth it at all.
The first sip made Shoto blink. The second made him cough.
Katsuki looked past him outside the windows of the airport at the runway, snow slowing to a gentle flurry, counting down along with the watch face on his wrist the seconds it would take for his heart to stop beating. It was not until Shoto set the half-empty cup down on the empty seat beside him with a hollow sound that Katsuki realised he’d been picking at a loose strip of skin around a fingernail, distracted as he was.
“Bakugo,” Shoto said, and Katsuki’s entire morning was derailed.
Galileo Galilei’s studies are as follows: unequal weights of the same material dropped from the Tower of Pisa (or so it was claimed) will fall with the same acceleration. That their time of descent is independent of their mass. In other words, the further an object falls, the faster it moves—so there was no way to slow down the last few months, no way for Katsuki to pause and inspect every single frame of his life slowly, to point at a particular memory he had with Shoto and say, ah yes, this was the first moment I realised I was fucked.
There was a certain safeness, he supposed, in hanging out with someone and knowing that they most likely, very surely, definitely did not feel the same as you; there was probably no reason for Katsuki to break first and tell Shoto what he’d already told Kirishima and Ashido. But then again it might not be very safe at all, because a few weeks ago Katsuki had been yelling at Shoto about something he did during training, and Shoto had lifted a hand up and brushed his fingers along Katsuki’s jaw, in a casual yet purposeful way.
“How do you ask someone out on a date without letting them know it’s a date?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Bakugo,” Kirishima said in bored irritation, “is this about Todoroki again?”
“That’s a new low, even for you,” Ashido said.
“Where is all this sudden hostility coming from?” Katsuki had snapped at them. “The two of you have been teasing the shit out of me for months so the least you can do now is listen to me complain about him!”
January was usually grey and cold, rain (and snow, today) coming down in ugly, icy sleets. Katsuki couldn’t understand how someone like Shoto could be brought into the world during such a dreadful month.
He was almost Junoesque, touching his fingers to his throat, blinking faintly at Katsuki as he placed the empty coffee cup in his lap.
“Bakugo.” His right palm was spread open, and in the middle sat a hydrangea—iced and exquisite, already melting off the sides.
Katsuki took the sculpture in his hand. “When’d you learn to do this?”
Shoto shrugged.
Katsuki stared at him. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
“I don’t know. I made it for you.” Shoto gestured around vaguely. “You could put it on that seat, I guess. It’ll melt soon.”
“You are so fucking weird.”
“Am I? You’re the one smiling like a maniac.”
Shoto was squinting very hard at him, as if expecting him to talk back like he usually did, but Katsuki was just staring at how a shock of white hair at Shoto’s temple blended perfectly into his skin. The iced-out hydrangea was half-melted in Katsuki’s hand now, pooling in uncomfortable wetness and dripping down his fingers.
He didn’t want to name the thing he was looking for, and it seemed like Shoto didn’t want to either. The soft knuckling Shoto had done was the catalyst for this silent competition that sprung out the second he dared to touch Katsuki—someone was going to have to say it first, and Katsuki didn’t want it to be him. Someone was going to have to make the next move, and Katsuki didn’t want it to be him.
Midoriya had, for the past five minutes, managed to engage Endeavour in conversation about All Might’s Silver Age—whether on purpose for Katsuki’s benefit or because he really was the nerd Katsuki kept accusing him of being—ah, whatever. There was no room in his heart for anything else at the moment.
Shoto smiled at him. Katsuki stared back, dazed.
He shifted to sit sideways in his seat, and was clinging tight to the armrests, like at any moment the airport was going to tilt and all of them would slide to the end.
“Todoroki,” he said.
He still didn’t know what it was, exactly. He didn’t want to think about it. But still, that first time Ashido suggested he might have a crush like some kind of lovesick teenager had pissed him off to no end, but had also seemed so inconsequential; a pebble being dropped into a pond, small rings of ripples. Then the ripples became larger and thicker until they became tidal waves once Shoto touched him, and Katsuki just—didn’t know anymore.
Yes, no, maybe. I don’t know. There was this nagging voice in the back of his head telling him that he should really reconsider what he was getting himself into.
But Katsuki really wanted to kiss him. He really, really, really wanted to—
“You can, you know. If you want to,” said Shoto.
Katsuki had to press the backs of his fingers against his mouth to soften his smile. Thank fucking God Midoriya and Endeavour were still talking. “I was hoping to save our first kiss for when your dad isn’t sitting right there, but alright.”
“What’s the point?” Shoto was leaning in a little. Just a little. Just enough to skewer the airport where it sat and send Katsuki soaring sideways. “You already piss him off just by existing around me.”
For some reason, Katsuki felt privileged to be the recipient of the way Shoto was looking at him now, expression gentle as dayspring and still sleep-warm. The airport was bustling around them—toddlers crying in strollers and ashen-faced tourists blinking at their pamphlets, men in business suits hurrying to the smoking capsule—but it was easy enough to ignore them. Easier still as weeks of ashamedly thinking to himself I really, really, really want to kiss him now bounced in the spaces between their fumbling fingers and cancelled everything else out.
There was so much space on Shoto’s face to kiss.