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Katsuki was half-straddling Shoto's waist in his dorm room, heavy and warm, with his face tucked right into the crook of Shoto's neck. His breathing was slow, fogging slightly against Shoto's collarbone where the skin was still pink from friction.
A stray strand of red-and-white hair kept tickling Katsuki's jaw, and instead of batting it away, he just reached up with one hand, his fingers tangling softly at the base of Shoto's neck.
“Don't get used to this,” Katsuki muttered into the darkness. His voice was unusually quiet, stripped of its morning-announcement volume. It was the low, raspy tone he only used when the door was locked and the hallway was dead silent.
Shoto shifted, blinking his mismatched eyes against the dim light. "Get used to what?"
"You know what." Katsuki exhaled a slow, shaky breath against Shoto's skin, refusing to look up. His fingers tightened just a fraction in Shoto's hair before relaxing. "Keep this quiet. Between us. I...I don't want the extras making a circus out of it. If Pinky or Dunce Face figures it out, they're never going to shut up. I just want...this. Without questions and cameras shoved in our faces."
He sounded almost defensive, scrambling to explain himself before Shoto could misinterpret it as shame.
Shoto didn't laugh, which was usually his favorite weapon. He just stared up at Katsuki in the dark, his thumb slowly tracing the line of Katsuki's hip through the fabric of his sleep shirt.
"Okay," Shoto said simply.
Katsuki blinked, finally pulling back just enough to look down at him, his crimson eyes narrowing slightly in surprise. "Just okay? You don't care?"
"Not really," Shoto murmured, reaching up to gently brush a stray strand of blonde hair out of Katsuki's eyes. "I like that it's just us. And honestly, listening to Kaminari spiral trying to figure out why you're suddenly not yelling at me quite as loud sounds exhausting anyway."
A faint, reluctant flush dusted the tips of Katsuki's ears. He let out a low, huffed breath that was half-laugh, half-scowl, leaning back down to rest his forehead against Shoto's shoulder. "You're impossible."
"I know."
They stayed like that for another twenty minutes until the digital clock on the bedside table bled into 2:15 AM. Shoto untangled himself with ungraceful reluctance, grabbed his discarded hoodie, and slipped back out into the dorm corridor.
Back in his own room, the air was cold.
Shoto sat on the edge of his mattress, staring at the dark screen of his laptop. The blue light hit his face as he flipped it open, the fan whirring softly in the dead silence of the third-floor boys' wing.
He rested his chin in his hand, looking at the empty search bar.
It wasn't that he didn't trust Katsuki's logic. Keeping it private made sense, and he genuinely preferred keeping the rest of Class 2-A out of their business. But Shoto's experience with conventional human relationships was entirely informed by whatever bizarre advice Izuku had stammered out over the years and whatever vague implications he'd picked up from late-night television dramas playing in the common room.
He needed to know the parameters.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard for a second before he typed it out, pressing enter with absolute, unbothered sincerity:
'Google, how to date in secret'
—
Rule #1: In public spaces, strike only when the area is entirely vacant to avoid detection when establishing physical proximity
The kitchen was blissfully empty at 11:00 PM.
Most of Class 2-A had finally crashed after a brutal day of combat training, leaving the common area in a state of quiet, echoing calm. The overhead fluorescent lights were off, save for the warm, amber glow of the stove hood.
Katsuki stood at the counter with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, moving with a practiced, lethal efficiency that belonged in a Michelin-star restaurant rather than a high school dorm. His knife skills were terrifyingly precise, and his palate was ruthlessly high-standard. Which was precisely why he was currently glaring a hole through a pot of boiling water.
He was plating a fresh batch of homemade, perfectly chilled soba. The noodles had been plunged into an ice bath at the exact second to stop the cooking process, rinsed until they were ice-cold, and arranged neatly on a bamboo mat alongside finely shredded nori and a bowl of impeccably balanced tsuyu dipping sauce.
All because he'd caught Shoto staring longingly at a cup of convenience-store instant soba earlier that week.
“If I ever catch you eating that chemical-laced cardboard garbage again, I'm lighting your entire room on fire,” Katsuki had muttered under his breath back then, shoving a freshly made, ice-cold portion into Shoto's hands.
Now, it was becoming a dangerous habit.
The soft, soundless click of the dormitory hallway sliding door shut barely registered over the hum of the refrigerator. Footsteps—light, deliberate, and entirely unbothered—padded across the tile floor.
Before Katsuki could finish garnishing the noodles with a precise pinch of green onions, a pair of heavy, warm arms wrapped securely around his waist from behind.
Katsuki froze, his breath hitting slightly in his throat.
A familiar weight settled against his back as Shoto leaned in, closing the distance completely. Shoto's chin came down softly to rest right on the junction of Katsuki's shoulder and neck, his cool breath ghosting over heated skin.
Katsuki's shoulders jerked upward instinctively, his crimson eyes widening as he hissed in a sharp breath. “What the hell do you think you're doing?” he whisper-yelled, his voice dropping into a panicked register. "The common room is right out there! Anyone could walk in—"
“No one's out there,” Shoto murmured against his skin, his voice thick with late-night fatigue and quiet contentment. He didn't budget an inch; if anything, he only tightened his grip around Katsuki's middle, pulling him flush against his chest. "I checked the hallway. Kaminari is asleep on the couch, and Midoriya is trapped under a fortress of notebooks."
“That doesn't mean you sneak up on me like a goddamn ghost while I'm using a knife—” Katsuki tried to sound threatening, but the furious, spreading red across his cheekbones completely betrayed him. He kept his hands braced on either side of the counter, fingers white-knuckled against the marble, though he didn't actually push Shoto away. "What if Kirishima wandered in for a midnight snack?"
“Then I'd let go,” Shoto replied simply, entirely unbothered by the logistics of their near-exposure. He tilted his head slightly, nuzzling a fraction closer to Katsuki's jawline before his mismatched eyes drifted down to the counter. "Is that mine?"
Katsuki let out a long, ragged exhale through his nose, muttering a string of curses under his breath. But his left hand abandoned the counter, dropping back to hook loosely over Shoto's forearm, his thumb pressing a firm, grounding circle into the fabric of Shoto's sleeve.
"Yeah. It's yours," Katsuki muttered, softening just a fraction. "And it's ice-cold, exactly how you like it, because unlike you, I actually know how to feed a human being properly."
Shoto let out a quiet, rumbling hum of approval against Katsuki's shoulder, finally lifting his chin just enough to press a brief, lingering kiss against the side of Katsuki's neck before pulling back slightly.
“You're too good to me, Katsuki,” Shoto murmured, his voice slipping into that soft, earnest tone that Katsuki pretended to hate but secretly had zero defense against.
“Shut up and eat your noodles before I dump the whole bowl over your head,” Katsuki snapped back automatically, though he turned around in the circle of Shoto's arms, sliding the tray into his hands with a glare that lacked any real venom whatsoever.
—
Rule #2: Never alter your upper-body posture or lean in too closely, as sudden shifts in body language attract unwanted attention.
!! Pro-tip: maintain plausible deniability by keeping your face completely blank while initiating physcial contact below eye level.
A few days later, the common room was deafeningly loud by late afternoon.
Half of Class 2-A was crammed around the couches, arguing passionately over some ridiculous debate about hero agency merchandise, while Kirishima and Kaminari wrestled near the kitchen. Amidst the chaos, Katsuki sat cross-legged on the floor leaning against the low coffee table, aggressively tapping away at his phone as he tried to tune out the noise.
He didn't even hear Shoto approach over the din.
A shadow fell over the table, and a second later, Shoto dropped down right beside him. He didn't sit directly next to Katsuki—that would have been too obvious, based on Google—leaving a careful, casual gap of a few inches between them.
Shoto leaned over, pretending to peer down at Katsuki's phone screen with an expression of intense, blank curiosity.
"Is that a new recipe?" Shoto asked, his voice carrying just enough over the room's noise for anyone nearby to think he was commenting on something mundane.
“None of your damn business, half-and-half,” Katsuki muttered back, keeping his eyes glued to his screen.
Underneath the cover of the low table, safely out of sight from the rest of the room, Shoto's hand slid quietly across the carpet. His long fingers brushed against Katsuki's knuckles before slipping seamlessly between them, lacing their fingers together.
Katsuki's breath hitched for a microsecond.
His eyes darted sideways, locking onto Shoto with a glare sharp enough to draw blood. Shoto's hand was noticeably larger than his—broad-palmed, long-fingered, and radiating that faint, steady chill that Katsuki secretly recognized blindfolded. The contrast of Shoto's larger hand completely swallowing his own sent a sudden, traitorous jolt straight up Katsuki's arm.
It was maddeningly hot, and Shoto knew it.
Katsuki opened his mouth to hiss a string of violent threats, ready to wrench his hand away and tell the bastard to back off. But out of the corner of his eye, he caught Mina gesturing wildly in their direction, trying to drag them into whatever stupid argument was happening across the room.
If Katsuki made a scene, pulled away too fast, or started yelling, heads would turn.
Fucking bastard, Katsuki thought viciously, his jaw tightening.
Instead of ripping his hand away, Katsuki just glared harder at his phone screen, letting out a sharp, huffed breath through his nose. He didn't pull back. In fact, his fingers twitched against Shoto's palm, instinctively tightening their grip just a fraction, letting the larger hand lock securely around his own.
He didn't bother moving his hand away. He just sat there, listening to the muffled chaos of his classmates, while secretly enjoying the heavy, grounding weight of Shoto's fingers tangled with his beneath the table.
Beside him, Shoto didn't say another word about the phone screen. He just kept his gaze fixed forward, a tiny, undetectable smile ghosting over his lips as he gave Katsuki's hand a slow, deliberate squeeze.
—
Rule #3: Avoid lingering in the hallways outside private rooms; slip in quickly and quietly during shift changes or late hours.
By midnight, the third-floor hallway of the dorms was dead silent, save for the faint hum of the vending machines down the hall.
That was when the real routine began. The soft, near-silent click of a door latch, the careful navigation over the one floorboard that always squeaked if you stepped too hard, and the quiet shuffle of bare feet against carpet.
Katsuki's room was dark, lit only by the amber bleed of a streetlamp slicing through the gap in his blinds. They were sprawled across Katsuki's narrow bed, locked in a fierce, barely audible whisper-war over the laptop screen resting between their knees.
“I am not watching a three-hour documentary on deep-sea hydrothermal vents at twelve-thirty in the morning,” Katsuki hissed, his face inches from Shoto's as he glared down at the video queued up.
“It's educational,” Shoto replied lazily, propped up on one elbow with his mismatched eyes half-lidded in the dark. "And you fell asleep halfway through the action movie last time."
“Because your room is a damn sauna—give me the mouse.”
"No."
The argument didn't escalate; It dissolved into a clumsy, tangled mess of limbs as Katsuki lunged to grab the wireless device, only for Shoto to effortlessly catch his wrists and pull him off-balance.
Within seconds, the laptop was abandoned, unceremoniously shoved off the bed to land with a dull thud on the carpet.
They settled into the mattress, heavy-lidded and quiet. Katsuki turned onto his side, stubbornly facing away, muttering a tired string of complaints about body heat and suffocating room temperatures into the dark.
Shoto didn't say anything back. He just slid in close, wrapping a heavy arm around Katsuki's waist and pulling him flush against his chest.
Katsuki let out an exaggerated, huffed sigh, pretending to hate every second of it. He stiffened his shoulders for all of three seconds before his hand came up behind him, fingers curling viciously into the fabric at the small of Shoto's back. He gripped the back of Shoto's shirt with fierce, unconscious possession, bunching the cotton tight in his fist as he finally let himself sink into the warmth.
He pretended he hated being touched. Shoto just closed his eyes, rested his chin against the back of Katsuki's shoulder, and let him hold on.
The room was completely quiet now, save for the steady, rhythmic sound of Shoto's breathing right behind Katsuki's ear. The initial kicking over the laptop had faded away into a heavy, warm exhaustion that settled deep into their bones.
Katsuki's eyes were closed, but he wasn't quite asleep. Seeking out a little more of the chill that always seemed to radiate off Shoto's skin, Katsuki shifted backwards just an inch, pressing closer against him.
Shoto stirred instantly. A heavy arm tightened around Katsuki's waist, hauling him flush until there wasn't a single inch of empty space left between them. At the same time, Shoto pressed a slow, deliberate kiss right against the nape of Katsuki's neck, right where the blonde hair was softest.
Katsuki's breath caught. A violent, scorching flush raced up his neck and flared across his cheeks, hot enough to rival his own explosions.
“Don't you start,” Katsuki gritted out into the dark, his voice a raspy, low-volume warning.
“I didn't say anything,” Shoto murmured back, his voice thick with sleep, rumbling low against Katsuki's shoulder blade.
"You were thinking it."
"I was thinking that you're warm."
“Shut the fuck up and go to sleep.”
Shoto let out a quiet, entirely unbothered hum, resting his forehead against the back of Katsuki's head. He didn't move away, and neither did Katsuki. They lay tangled together in the dark, letting the rest of the world fade completely away.
—
Rule #4: When they are shivering or overheating, mask your physical intervention as simply trying to get comfortable yourself to avoid drawing unwanted curiosity.
The summer heat hanging over the training grounds was brutal, turning the air thick and heavy enough to choke on. Katsuki looked like a walking thundercloud—sweat slicking his ash-blond hair to his forehead, his face flushed an angry, dangerous shade of red, and his breathing dangerously short. He was pushing himself past the breaking point out of sheer stubbornness, marching right toward a heat exhaustion collapse.
Shoto caught it instantly—the slight stagger in Katsuki's step, the glassy frustration in his eyes. Without a word or a drawn-out argument that would only draw unwanted attention, Shoto simply stepped into his path, caught him firmly by the wrist, and steered him away from the main field.
Katsuki opened his mouth, a sharp, ragged snap ready on his tongue, but the words died in his throat. He was too damn exhausted, too dizzy from the oppressive glare of the sun, to fight back. Instead of pulling away, he let himself be hauled around the corner of the auxiliary gym, tucked out of sight into the narrow, shadowed corridor between the storage units where the cool concrete walls offered immediate relief.
The second they were out of sight, Katsuki practically deflated against him. With a low, disgruntled huff, he slumped forward, pressing his burning forehead directly against Shoto's shoulder, immediately seeking out the blessed, freezing temperature radiating from his skin.
Shoto's arm came around his waist instinctively, steadying him, while his left side flared with a gentle, controlled drop in temperature. Cool, crisp air wrapped around them like an oasis, sweeping away the stifling humidity. Katsuki let out a long, shuddering breath against the collar of Shoto's shirt, his shoulders finally dropping as the feverish heat bled out of him.
On the flip side, when winter rolled around and the third-floor dorm hallway turned into a literal freezer, the dynamic completely inverted.
Katsuki hated the cold with a blistering, personal passion. It slowed his reaction time, locked his joints into stiff rebellion, and—worst of all—shut down his sweat glands. Without a steady, high-volume supply of sweat, his nitroglycerin-based quirk was practically useless, reducing his combat capacity to a frustrating crawl.
It left him feeling sluggish, irritable, and aggressively miserable.
One evening, the snow was piling up heavily against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the dorms, casting a pale, dry blue light over the common area. A few classmates were scattered around, huddled in heavy blankets while arguing over a board game, completely absorbed in their own noise.
Katsuki sat on the far end of the communal couch, curled inward with his arms tightly crossed over his chest. He was wearing a thick, oversized black hoodie, but it wasn't doing a damn thing against the chill biting through his bones. His shoulders were trembling—a fine, involuntary shifter that he was trying furiously to suppress, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. He looked pale, sharp-edged, and thoroughly frozen.
Across the room, Shoto was sitting at the low table, a cup of tea cooling between his hands as he half-listened to Izuku ramble about tactical drills to Uraraka. But his attention drifted.
Shoto's mismatched eyes caught the faint, frustrated tremor in Katsuki's shoulders. He didn't hesitate or make a grand performance out of it. He simply set his mug down on the table, stood up with unbothered calm, and walked across the room.
Without a word, Shoto dropped down onto the couch right beside Katsuki.
He didn't make a scene, didn't throw an arm around him where half the class could stare, and didn't draw any unnecessary attention. He just shifted close and angled his left side directly toward Katsuki.
Instantly, a wave of steady, enveloping heat radiated off Shoto like an electric blanket turned all the way up. It wasn't suffocating; it was heavy, localized, and perfectly calibrated to thaw out the bone-deep chill freezing Katsuki's blood.
Katsuki stiffened automatically, his crimson eyes snapping sideways. “What the hell—” he started, his voice raspy and tight from the cold.
“Sit still,” Shoto murmured, his voice dropping into a low, quiet drone that barely carried over the board game chatter across the room. He leaned his shoulder firmly against Katsuki's, effectively trapping him in a pocket of trapped warmth.
The second the heat seeped through the thick cotton of his hoodie, thawing out his locked muscles, a slow, reluctant exhale slipped past Katsuki's lips. His shoulders dropped an inch, the violent trembling finally easing out of his frame.
He didn't move away. Instead, under the heavy cover of the couch cushions, Katsuki shifted just a fraction closer, letting his side press heavily against Shoto's left side, soaking up the heat without a single word of thanks.
Shoto didn't point it out. He just stared straight ahead at the TV screen, casually resting his arm along the back of the sofa, letting Katsuki quietly thaw out right beside him while the rest of the room remained entirely oblivious to the miniature furnace operating under their noses.
—
Rule #5: Try not to get caught!
The air in the common room was thick with the lazy, aimless hum of a Saturday afternoon. Half of Class 2-A was scattered across the couches and the floor, arguing lazily over which movie to put on for a weekend marathon.
Kaminari was already halfway up from the couch, stretching lazily. "Hey, Todoroki. Let me borrow your laptop for a sec, mine's dead and I need to pull up the streaming site."
Shoto didn't even look up from the book he was holding. He just reached into his bag, pulled out his sleek white laptop without a second thought, and slid it casually across the coffee table. "Go ahead."
Kaminari caught the laptop, dropped down onto the floor near the projector cable, and plugged it right in. The screen flickered, casting a massive blue glow against the white wall above the couch.
The moment his cursor hovered over the input box, a neat, highly incriminating drop-down menu of recent searches expanded across the screen in bold black text.
Kaminari blinked. Then he stopped. Then he slowly turned his head to look at the projector wall, a grin breaking across his face.
"Uh. Guys? You might want to see this," Kaminari chuckled, pointing a finger at the screen.
Right there for the entire class to read were Shoto's recent late-night rabbit holes:
'Can plants feel betrayed?'
'How to tell if a pigeon is judging you'
A wave of snickers rippled through the room. Mina burst out laughing, dropping her head onto Kirishima's shoulder.
“They were looking at me funny,” Shoto replied deadpan, entirely unfazed.
“Fair enough,” Kaminari laughed, shaking his head. He clicked his mouse to clear it, but as the auto-fill suggestions shifted, his eye caught the next line down.
He squinted at the next line, his voice pitching upward in utter confusion. "Wait...how do I know if someone is my best friend?"
Shoto's expression didn't change, but his fingers ever twitched so slightly against his knee. Across the room, Katsuki stopped scrolling on his phone. His crimson eyes snapped toward the projector screen, his jaw instantly tightening into a hard, dangerous line.
Fucking idiot, Katsuki thought viciously, feeling a hot spike of panic punch straight through his ribs.
Before Katsuki could lunge across the room and violently shatter the projector bulb with his bare hands, Kaminari read the next line out loud.
And the entire common room is flatlined.
“ How to tell my best friend that I would be a better boyfriend than his crush. ”
For three solid seconds, nobody breathed. You could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator all the way from the kitchen.
Then, Kaminari let out a sound like a kettle boiling over.
"WHAT?!!"
Chaos erupted instantly.
"Hold on, rewind! Back up!" Mina shrieked, scrambling forward on her hands and knees until she was practically touching the projector screen. "Did I just read that correctly?! Todoroki has a best friend?! And that best friend has a crush?! And Todoroki wants to steal them?!"
"Are you kidding me?!" Kaminari yelled, throwing his hands in the air. "Todoroki Shoto out here writing romance novels in his research history?! Who is the best friend?! Who is the crush?!"
Izuku, sitting calmly on the armchair with his legs crossed, leaned his chin in his hand, a small, amused smile playing at the corner of his lips.
"Well," Izuku spoke up, his voice cutting smoothly through the noise, "considering Todoroki spends most of his free time alternating between complaining about Endeavor and hanging out with Kacchan...I'd say the pool of 'best friends' is remarkably small."
Katsuki looked like he was about to combust. His face had gone from pale shock to a violent, screaming crimson. He was gripping his phone so hard that the plastic casing was beginning to groan.
I am going to murder him, Katsuki thought, his soul is practically leaving his body. The absolute bastard actually googled that.
Because Katsuki knew. God, he knew exactly why Shoto had searched that up.
A few months ago, before they had finally crossed the line into whatever the hell they were now, Shoto had been an absolute nightmare of quiet, smoldering jealousy. Back then, Shoto had watched the way Izuku and Katsuki interacted—the easy way Izuku could hold and pull Katsuki without getting blasted into the stratosphere, the shared tactical shorthand they'd built up from years of history. To Shoto, looking in from the outside, it had looked painfully obvious. He had convinced himself, with all the stubborn conviction in the world, that Katsuki was hopelessly, secretly pining after Izuku.
It wasn't until weeks later, after a very loud, very frustrated argument in the dark where Katsuki had violently shook him and yelled that he didn't give a damn about Izuku romantically, that Shoto had finally understood. 'I only want you, you absolutely moron,' Katsuki had snapped back then, red-faced and angry.
And now, all of those paranoid late-night searches were glowing in 4K resolution on the living room wall for everyone to dissect.
"Then who is the crush?!" Mina demanded, waving her hands wildly. "If the best friend is pining after someone—wait, let's map this out!"
“Nobody is mapping a damn thing out!” Katsuki roared, finally snapping as he bolted up from his chair. His palms sparked with volatile mini-explosions, his voice cracking with sheer, unfiltered panic. “Turn the projector off right now before I melt this entire wall into slag!”
“Whoa, Bakugo, why are you so defensive?” Kaminari pointed at him accusingly, snickering. "You're acting like you're the best friend."
"I am going to launch you into the sun, Dunce face!" Katsuki shrieked, taking a lethal step forward.
Across the room, Shoto sat back on his heels. He didn't look panicked in the slightest. His mismatched eyes slowly drifted from the glowing screen over to Katsuki, catching the murderous, panicked flush burning up the blonde's neck. A small, infuriatingly fond smile touched the corner of Shoto's lips.
“Wait,” Mina whispered, her eyes going wide as saucers as she connected the pieces—the way Shoto always hovered near Katsuki, the way Katsuki never blew him up when he invaded his personal space, the quiet, unspoken dynamic they'd built right under everyone's noses. "Wait. You are the best friend?"
Shoto didn't blink. "Yes."
“And the crush was—wait, you thought Bakugo liked Midoriya?!” Kaminari gasped, his jaw dropped.
“I was mistaken,” Shoto replied evenly, his eyes flicking back to Katsuki, who looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole. "He clarified that he has no romantic interest in Midoriya whatsoever."
"I DIDN'T CLARIFY SHIT, YOU ABSOLUTE PSYCHOPATH!" Katsuki screamed, lunging across the coffee table, tackling Shoto backward onto the rug in a desperate attempt to shut him up before he revealed any more confidential intel.
The weight of Katsuki crashing into Shoto's chest didn't even make the ice-user flinch. Instead, Shoto just let out a quiet, steadying hum, his arms coming up naturally to wrap around Katsuki's back, effectively pinning him down in the middle of the rug while the common room completely exploded into pandemonium.
“Get off me, you piece of garbage,” Katsuki hissed, his face pressed uncomfortably close to Shoto's shoulder as he furiously tried to wrench his wrists free.
“No,” Shoto replied simply, his voice remaining at a calm, conversational volume that somehow made it ten times more infuriating. "You're warm."
"I am going to murder you! I am going to murder all of you!" Katsuki roared, though the threat lost a significant amount of its structural integrity given that he was currently straddling Shoto's waist on all fours with his hair sticking up in every direction.
"Okay, okay, timeout!" Kirishima interrupted, holding his hands up like a referee as he tried to process the sheer quantum mechanics of what had just been revealed. He pointed back and forth between them. "Wait. Let me get this straight. For the last few months, while we thought you two were just glaring at each other slightly less aggressively during sparring, Todoroki was out here secretly compiling case files because he thought Bakugo was pining after Midoriya?"
“I had evidence,” Shoto stated matter-of-factly. "They share an identical tactical vocabulary. They coordinate without speaking. And Midoriya once handed him a protein bar."
"That's—" Izuku started, his tone dripping with a used detachment.
"Shut up, Deku, don't you start!" Katsuki snapped, his face flushing an even deeper, more violent shade of crimson.
"Wait, so if Bakugo wasn't pining after Midoriya..." Mina gasped, her eyes widening as the final puzzle piece clicked violently into place. She slammed a hand down on the coffee table. "Oh my god. You guys are dating. You're literally dating right now."
The room went dead silent again.
Katsuki freezes. His hands, which had been clutching Shoto's collar in a death grip, slowly went slack. For a split second, the frantic, defensive panic in his eyes flickered, replaced by the terrifying realization that there was no way out of this. The secret was out. The projector wall had spoken.
Shoto, sensing the exact microsecond Katsuki's defenses crumbled, didn't waste a heartbeat.
"We kept it a secret for this reason. The attention." Shoto said calmly, "We'd appreciate it if you pretended like nothing happened."
Mina slowly lowered her phone, looking between Katsuki and Shoto with a theatrical, slow-clap expression. "Fine. But we are getting full details later," she declared, though she wisely stepped back and nudged Kaminari toward the laptop. “Come on, Denks, shut the projector off before Blasty actually combusts.”
Katsuki, still pinned flat against the rug with his arm thrown over his eyes, let out a massive, audible sigh of pure, unadulterated relief.
With a few grumbles and murmurs of reluctant agreement, the class began to scatter back toward their previous spots, whispering wildly among themselves while turning their backs to give them a shred of privacy.
Shoto didn't move an inch from where he was hovering over Katsuki. He rested his chin on Katsuki's chest, right above his heart, listening to the heavy, rapid thud that was finally starting to slow down.
“You're heavy,” Katsuki muttered into his forearm, though he didn't try to push him off anymore.
“You're warm,” Shoto replied quietly.
Katsuki let out one last, ragged sigh, slowly lowering his arm just enough to glare up at him through his lashes. But the murderous fire in his eyes was entirely gone, replaced by a reluctant, helpless fond exasperation.
“Fucking asshole,” Katsuki grumbled, though his hand shifted upward, his fingers tangling roughly yet softly into the red-and-white hair at the base of Shoto's neck, pulling him down so he didn't have to look at anyone else.