Archive of Our Own

Above all else, Shouto knows how to compartmentalize. 

He sees it all with his mind’s eye, everything in its place. Each of his traumas neatly packaged and preserved, ready to be taken off the shelves and unwrapped only when he’s sitting across from his therapist. Spaces for all the happier memories, too, kept where he can easily reach them - time spent with friends, the alley cats that have warmed up to his cool touch, his mother drenched in sunlight at her window. 

Then, there is Bakugou. 

Wild and untamable, unrelenting on his good days and downright ruthless on his bad ones. Absolutely irresistible on all of them. 

Shouto is far from the only person to have fallen into his orbit, inexplicably drawn in by how vehemently he tries to force them out. Bakugou is the world’s most unwilling magnet, surrounded and smothered by those who intrinsically thrive amidst spikes and thorns. 

Shouto grew up in that sort of barren, unforgiving wasteland, first in his family home and then to the sound of Bakugou making purposeful and extraneous noise below his dorm room. He is one of the precious few in possession of the Complete Guidebook to Taming Your Local Katsuki, armed with years of patience and a placid demeanor and maybe an industrial-strength weed whacker, just in case. 

And yet, this is all to say that - Bakugou has no compartment, and never will. Shouto has tried and failed time and time again. To attempt to pin Bakugou down, to hold him close - it’s like trying to cage the wind, or bottle the sunshine for a rainy day. An act forbidden by nature itself, and Shouto is only human, after all.

Bakugou was never his to keep, anyway.

As with so many of his worst decisions, this installment begins in Bakugou’s office. 

They’re both riding the high of stopping some two-bit villain with a liquid control quirk from putting half of downtown underwater. Shouto’s quite tired from overusing his fire to stop the flood from spreading, but the resulting steam-laden air had left Bakugou primed to go absolutely feral on the poor guy. Probably a bit overkill on both of their parts, but sometimes it’s good to let loose a little if the threat of property damage isn’t too severe. 

The street will need some repairs in the spot where Bakugou cracked the concrete in his fervor - the city’s road work crew is like his second shadow these days. But Shouto supposes that it’s better than the first half dozen stories of every building being water-logged. 

Plus, if Bakugou’s tired himself out working today, he’ll be much more agreeable when Shouto presents his frankly incredible plan to spend the rest of their evening taking him apart piece by piece.

It’s not quite a habit or a routine, but this thing between them can’t really be called spontaneous anymore, either, not after they’ve spent the better part of a decade keeping it up. It comes and goes in waves, stretches of time where they spend every night together followed by weeks or even months of little more than quiet lunches and lingering glances.

Currently, they’re somewhere in the middle, drifting between each other’s beds with a frequency that feels...right. He would say it feels easy, if anything about having Bakugou in his life could be remotely classified as such. In the twilight of a waning Friday, as he makes his way down the hall from his own office, Shouto daydreams of a long weekend with Bakugou pressed into his sheets, a fantasy that he’ll surely be denied in full. 

You just want me to stay so you don’t have to cook, Bakugou will say, and he’ll mean we don’t do that, Todoroki. Remember?

He remembers, yes. But he’s come to detest the shape of his family name in Bakugou’s mouth, misses the sound of please, Shou, yes, floating amidst a sea of curse words and stupid nicknames that hold none of their intended malice.

The ache of all these things he can’t have - that he can hide away. Locked behind careful neutrality and an impassive mask, he can pretend that every time they walk away from each other isn’t a punch to the gut.

He pushes this train of thought into its allotted mental compartment as he turns the corner of the hallway. Bakugou’s left his office door open, and the sound of him speaking to someone over the phone carries down the corridor. It’s probably not a business call, or else he wouldn’t be broadcasting it to half the office. Plus, the timbre of his voice is pitched lower, more casual - there’s even the gruff bark of his laughter filling the silence where the other person speaks. 

Shouto stops when he reaches the threshold, leaning up against the doorframe. 

“...and fucking tell Pikachu that I’ll blast his ass into next week if he doesn’t stop with the- no, you tell him, Ei, I’m not fucking getting involved!”

Ah. A personal call, then. Bakugou glances up when he notices Shouto standing there, rolling his eyes and making a few obscene gestures at the phone before holding up one finger to him in the universal signal for hang on a minute. 

That’s fine. Shouto has nowhere in particular to be, really. There’s no one here to question his lingering in the doorway, most of their colleagues having already gone home for the weekend or headed out on their second shift patrol routes. So he makes himself comfortable against the wall and decides that he’s allowed to just...look.

The sun has already begun to dip behind the buildings, but Bakugou hasn’t bothered to turn any lights on in his office. The shadows cast themselves long and dark across the room, silhouetting everything in their path. Bakugou is tipped back precariously on two legs of his chair, feet propped up on his desk and one arm tucked behind his head. His hair is damp from the shower, drying frizzy and wild as he tugs at the strands absently while he talks. 

Shouto lets his eyes linger at the dip of his collarbones, the curve of his jaw. There’s a bruise faded to pale green-yellow high on his left cheekbone where Midoriya had gotten in a good hit during their spar earlier this week. No matter what, Bakugou wears his scars like badges of honor, proof littered across his body that he’s always getting better, stronger, faster.

“Yeah, alright, I gotta go, Ei. Icyhot’s here.”

Shouto focuses his attention back to the present, straightening up out of his doorway slouch. A smile flickers over Bakugou’s face at whatever Kirishima says in the pause, and Shouto’s distracted by it enough that he misses the actual end of the call.

Bakugou’s boot-clad feet thunk down onto the hardwood. “The hell you want?” he addresses Shouto, back to his standard gruffness. He sweeps a stack of paperwork off his desk and into his bag, obviously preparing to go home for the evening. Perfect.

Shouto steps fully into the office, letting the door slip shut behind him. It’s even darker in the room without the light spilling in from the hall. 

“Come home with me tonight.”

They’ve never been anything but direct with each other, and Shouto likes it that way. No drama, no pretense, no skirting around what they’re really after. It was always more difficult with his other partners, Midoriya or Inasa or whoever else wanted to fall into his bed. More difficult for them to step away afterwards, to understand that Shouto preferred they do exactly that, to articulate what they wanted and didn’t want from him. 

But Bakugou is decisive, unashamed. Shouto trusts him with his life and his body and everything in between. They don’t have anything to hide from each other, not anything that matters.

And so if Shouto has ignored any midnight calls from anyone but him for the last year or three, that’s his problem to deal with. To shove into its allotted compartment and continue to pretend that it doesn’t exist. 

“Oi, Icyhot.” Bakugou snaps his fingers in front of his face, apparently having crossed the room to him while Shouto was thinking about their arrangement. “Don’t fucking space out on me. Did you even hear what I said?”

“No, sorry.” 

“Like hell you are. Stop eye-fucking me for thirty seconds and pay attention, I said I got other plans tonight.”

“Cancel them.”

Bakugou peers at him in the darkness. 

“No.”

He loops the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder and pushes past him towards the door, dismissive. It prickles something in Shouto’s chest, like his fire curled up hot under his ribs. He reaches out to catch Bakugou by the wrist before he can stop himself. 

Bakugou stops, one hand on the doorknob. He glances down pointedly at Shouto’s left hand wrapped around his wrist.

“Ow,” he says mildly, and Shouto lets go immediately, realizing too late the way the heat of his flames had crept to the surface without his permission.

Bakugou rolls his eyes and steps out into the hall, and Shouto follows him so he can lock the door behind them.

“Sorry,” he says, and means it this time. The skin of Bakugou’s wrist is rosy pink where it peeks out from under the sleeve of his jacket. Shouto, with some effort, drags his gaze away. “Plans with who?”

“Tch. None of your fuckin’ business.”

“Kirishima?”

Shouto doesn’t know why he presses. He doesn’t care if Bakugou goes to see Kirishima, or Camie, or whoever else he’s keeping on his hook these days. He doesn’t.

Consciously ticking down the temperature of his left side by a few degrees, he follows Bakugou down the hall to the elevator. Bakugou jams the down button with considerably more force than necessary.

“Obviously,” he says. “What’s it to you?”

Shouto shrugs. It’s nothing to him.

“Just curious.”

“Don’t fucking eavesdrop on my phone calls if you don’t wanna know. Jealousy’s a bad look on you.”

Shouto frowns. He’s not jealous.

“I’m not jealous,” he says out loud as the elevator dings to signal its arrival. They step on, and Bakugou pushes the 1☆ button with, again, far too much vigor.

Shouto can hear him grinding his teeth together over the tinny elevator music. 

“It’s just dinner,” Bakugou says, weirdly quiet for all the tension evident in his body language. “I’m not even fucking him anymore, not that it’s any of your business.”

The floor number ticks down, the little panel casting a blue glow over them in the dim light. 15, 14, 13, 12...

He has no reason to think that Bakugou’s lying. But Shouto remembers the curve of his smile when it’d been Kirishima on the other end of the phone, remembers the ease of his given name falling from Bakugou’s lips, and alright, it’s possible that he needs a new container labeled jealousy.

“Right,” Shouto says, monotone even for him. He keeps his eyes forward, but Bakugou’s red, angry stare is blistering and unmissable. 

9, 8, 7...

“Whatever,” he spits. “Don’t fucking believe me, I don’t care.” 

“Me either.”

This gets him the full weight of Bakugou’s attention. It’s not at all gratifying. It’s not.

4, 3, 2...

“You got a fucking problem with me, Todoroki, huh?”

Ding. The doors slide open and Shouto steps off first, for no other reason than that it is sure to annoy Bakugou. 

“Of course not. Enjoy your date, tell Kirishima I said hello.”

He ignores whatever insults Bakugou yells at him and the stares of the people in the agency lobby, letting his long stride carry him through the front doors and out onto the street.

Shouto can’t sleep.

He’s angry at himself for losing his cool today, angry for letting his jealousy boil over when he was always so sure to keep it at a simmer. Angry at Bakugou for calling him on it, for reading him so easily. 

He turns onto his other side and tries in vain to push all thoughts of Bakugou from his head. 

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when he fell in love. 

It used to be so simple. When they were sixteen and reckless, drunk on each other and the newness of it all, they never had to worry about what any of it meant. Even as they left school and took placements on different ends of the city, they were always finding their way back to each other’s beds. A meetup organized by one of their more extroverted classmates, a constantly overlapping group of friends that inevitably landed them across the table from each other at some dim-lit izakaya. Easy, easy, to beg off early the way they used to in high school and take the train in the same direction instead of opposite ones. 

Easier yet when they’d both ended up at the same agency, Bakugou in search of more notoriety in his relentless pursuit of the top ranking, Shouto in search of a more permanent escape from his father’s too-large shadow. The proximity only poured fuel onto a fire they had never managed to put out, fanning the flames into something they had no hope of being able to control.

Somewhere between finding a few of Bakugou’s t-shirts in his laundry and concocting excuse after excuse to keep his other partners out of his bed, Shouto had thought, oh.

It didn’t hurt to realize it. One day, one of these long, long days, they would grow apart again. Bakugou would stop wanting him and Shouto would let himself stop wanting more than he could have, and he’d tuck Bakugou away in a little compartment in the corner of his heart for safekeeping.

Because Bakugou doesn’t love him. Bakugou wants him when he needs release, needs to forget, needs an outlet for all the things he mistakenly labels as anger. 

But that’s not love. 

His phone vibrates where it’s tucked charging under his pillow, just once. 

Shouto should ignore it. He should ignore it because it’s midnight on a Friday and there’s only one person who ever texts him at such a late hour. 

The light of the screen makes him squint into the blue brightness.

Bakugou: hey

Shouto stares at the single word until it goes blurry, waiting. Minutes tick by but no other messages come though, there’s not even the three dots to indicate that Bakugou’s typing something. The fire of his anger flares back to life, warm and familiar against his ribs. 

Not anger, no. Jealousy. The word leaves a bitter taste on his tongue, even while confined to the silence of his mind. 

Bakugou: i know ur awake, dumbass. turn read receipts off if u wanna fuckin ghost me
Bakugou: what the hell was ur problem today?

Todoroki: I don’t have a problem.

Bakugou: bullshit

Todoroki: Leave me alone. Haven’t you had enough for one night?

Bakugou: what the fuck

[ incoming call … ]

Shouto stares at his phone while it rings. He sees it in his mind’s eye, the mussed spikes of Kirishima’s hair poking out from under grey sheets. Maybe one arm thrown over Bakugou’s waist, maybe snoring a bit and dreaming peacefully. He bets Bakugou always stays the night with him, he bets Kirishima doesn’t even have to ask. 

Maybe it is anger.

His phone stops vibrating and then immediately starts again, Bakugou’s contact still lighting up the screen. It’s a picture he’d taken a few months ago, Bakugou flipping him off from across their lunch table but there’s a smile tucked into the corners of his eyes. 

The anger burns. Shouto turns onto his left side in an attempt to quell it, taps [ accept ] and presses the phone to his ear.

“Oi, what the f- ”

Shouto cuts him off. “Don’t call me while you have someone else in your bed,” he says, tone coated in fire, and then hangs up.

He shoves his phone back under his pillow. The tears burn, too, and this is stupid, so stupid. It starts vibrating again under his cheek, and he runs a finger along the edge until he finds the power button and silences it for good.

He gives himself five minutes to cry, then forcibly powers down his brain too so he can go to sleep.

If only it was as easy as his phone.

The Monday morning patrol is blissfully quiet and Bakugou-free. One of the interns tags along on his route, and Shouto lets her do most of the work of stopping a minor bank robbery they happen to stumble upon. For the experience, of course, not because he slept restlessly all weekend and isn’t really a morning person to begin with.

He’s signing off on the police forms when the intern bounces over to him, beaming with success. She has some kind of gravity cancellation quirk - he can’t really be bothered to remember the details. Maybe Bakugou’s general distaste for working with the interns is rubbing off on him. 

“Shouto-san?”

The high pitch of her voice grates on his nerves a bit. He inks in the final character of his name on the form, penmanship sloppy even by his standards. 

“Hm?”

“What did you think about the fight?”

Ah, feedback. Right. He hands the forms over to the nearest police officer and indicates for the intern to follow him back to their route, turning the fight over in his mind.

“The way you disrupted the villain’s movement from a distance was good, but you should focus on using your quirk to strengthen your close-combat abilities. He got a hand on you one too many times before you were able to restrain him.”

“Ah, I see,” she says, touching one hand to her cheek thoughtfully. It brings a tiny smile to Shouto’s face, how much she looks like Midoriya at that moment. Midoriya is a good person who likes working with the interns. 

“Do you think that Ground Zero-san would spar with me sometime? His close-combat skills are amazing, don’t you think? Oh, uh, oh gosh, not that I don’t think yours aren’t amazing, too! I just- ”

Shouto holds up a hand to silence her. The beginnings of a migraine are forming behind his eyes. “Bakugou will spar with you,” he tells her. “You can tell him I recommended him personally for the job.”

There is absolutely no one who hates an unbalanced spar with an underleveled opponent more than Bakugou Katsuki, and Shouto is nothing if not a little bit petty.

She thanks him profusely, and Shouto checks be nice to the interns off of his mental to-do list for the day.

“Oi, Half-and-half. You owe me a real spar now, you bastard.”

It’s the next evening, and they’ve both just come off separate late patrols. The agency’s locker room is deserted in the awkward space between shifts, save for the one person Shouto has no desire to interact with, of course. He steps neatly around Bakugou to get to his locker and says nothing in response to his demand, instead rifling a hand through his shower-damp hair to send some water droplets flying purposefully in Bakugou’s direction.

Bakugou is undeterred, standing there unashamedly with a towel barely clinging to his hips. Shouto pointedly does not look at him as he drops it to the bench and starts pulling his civilian clothes from his own locker. 

“Oh, Ground Zero-san, will you please spar with me?” Bakugou has pitched his voice higher in a truly terrible impression of their intern. “Shouto-san said that you could really help me- ”

“That’s not what I said.”

“- and I would just be so grateful to learn from you one-on-one.”

“You should be grateful for the opportunity to develop the best and brightest young heroes, Bakugou.”

“Oh piss off, don’t steal Deku’s lines when he’s not even here to defend his own shitty speeches.”

Shouto dries his hair properly with a fraction of his quirk. “I thought you’d enjoy sparring with her. Her quirk is similar to Uraraka’s, and I know how much you miss getting to train with her since she moved to Kyoto.”

“I do not miss sparring with fucking Pink Cheeks.”

Shouto wisely does not point out that this is in direct contrast to what Bakugou himself had said while less than sober at Uraraka’s going away party last month, which was something to the effect of I’m gonna miss sparring with you, Pink Cheeks. He buttons his jeans up and slips his third-favorite blue hoodie over his head. 

“Alright,” he says instead, a bit placating because there’s no one else here right now and he’d really rather get out without a confrontation. Fully dressed, he pockets his phone and keys before closing his locker and taking a few steps towards the door. “Well, goodnight.”

For a moment, he thinks Bakugou will actually let him go. If Midoriya was here, Shouto imagines he’d pat him on the shoulder and call him mildly delusional, not unkindly.  

“So this is your genius plan, huh? Just fuckin’ ignore me until you figure out a less shitty reason to be mad at me? Sic the interns on me to make yourself feel better?”

Shouto should keep walking away. The door is right there, and if Bakugou follows him, at least they won’t be alone anymore. 

Bakugou slams his locker shut, the metallic clang echoing harshly off the tile walls. 

“Y’know, it’d almost be satisfying to be getting such a rise outta you if you weren’t being such a little bitch about it.”

Shouto stays facing away from him, clenching and unclenching his left hand. This is what Bakugou does best - the goading is meaningless except for whatever reaction it provokes out of its victim. Staying calm is paramount. He’s already lost his cool once.

“Since when do you get so pissy over the thought of me fucking someone else, huh? You got some possessive streak you ain’t tellin’ me about? Fucking hypocrite, you want me all to yourself while you’ve got half the country waiting in line to sit in your lap, is that it?”

“No.”

Bakugou is radiating body heat behind him, standing closer than Shouto should’ve ever allowed him to get. When he speaks again, his breath is like a ghost draping itself around Shouto’s neck, his voice dripping with the vicious brand of mockery that Bakugou alone holds the patent on.

“No? Well forgive me for not believing that you’ve suddenly become some sorta pillar of virtue. But lucky for you, I’m a generous guy. If you want exclusive access to my dick so badly, all you have to do is ask, Halfie.”

Of all things, this is what finally unsticks Shouto’s feet from the floor and forces him into motion. They’re not having this conversation here, or now, or ever, if Shouto has his way. He gets as far as one hand on the grimy door handle before he’s being yanked back by his hood, the tiny explosions Bakugou pops off in his palm singeing the fabric and ringing in his ears from the proximity. It’s on instinct that he whirls around and connects his elbow to Bakugou’s solar plexus; a thousand spars logged between them make it muscle memory to catch the fist that comes at him from the left. 

But Shouto has one weakness when fighting against Bakugou, which is, of course, Bakugou himself. It is because of this that he finds himself pushed up against the row of lockers anyway, the handle of one digging uncomfortably into his shoulder, his hands pinned to either side of his head by Bakugou’s bruising grip.

Shouto blows his bangs out of his eyes and stares his opponent down, calling up the last shreds of his patience. “Let me go,” he says evenly.

“No.”

“Bakugou.”

If Shouto had any less than two decades of reflex training under his belt, he’d have flinched at the way Bakugou’s grip tightens impossibly around his wrists. “Don’t fucking call me that,” Bakugou spits. “Not like- ”

He cuts himself off, and Shouto’s mind tries desperately to fill in the blanks. Not like what? Not like this, angry and jealous and something breaking between them? Not like they’re strangers, not like they haven’t trusted each other with their lives and more, not like they wouldn’t do it all over again tomorrow? 

Not like Shouto doesn’t love him?

Shouto licks his dry lips. He’s too warm under his clothes, or maybe he’s just burning up from the inside out. 

“Katsuki,” he tries, but doesn’t get to decide what the rest of that sentence is going to be before Bakugou is kissing him. Harsh and messy, more teeth than lips and somehow it’s still like the first lungful of air after nearly being drowned. 

It’s too easy to give in, to tilt his head a bit to fix the angle and give chase into the millimeter of space where Bakugou pulls back to breathe. But Shouto remembers himself in the next moment and calls his fire into his wrist, searing and focused.

Bakugou drops his hold with a hiss and a bite to the lip, and the second of distraction gives Shouto enough leverage to shove him away by the shoulder, his hand still too hot against all that pale, bare skin. This isn’t how this was supposed to go. He risks a glance at Bakugou’s expression and tries very hard to wrangle his heart back into the proper place in his chest.  

Bakugou is staring down at his hand, at his shoulder where the skin’s gone slightly pink and irritated. Shouto chooses this moment to strike, because he has to know or else he suspects the thought will haunt him forever.

“Were you lying to me? About Kirishima?”

Bakugou’s gaze snaps up to meet his, unguarded and a little wild, and Shouto pounces. It only takes a few steps for him to have Bakugou pressed up against the opposite row of lockers. Surprisingly, Bakugou doesn’t fight back, just looks first up at Shouto’s face and then down at where he wraps his left hand around Bakugou’s bicep, right below where the pink is already fading. 

For a moment there’s only the sound of both their labored breathing, the buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead. Shouto’s pulse is roaring hot in his ears, in his fingertips where they touch Bakugou’s skin. 

“What are you gonna do if I was lying, Shouto, huh?” Bakugou asks, weirdly quiet, still looking down at his arm. With noticeable effort, he drags his gaze back up. “If I went home with Shitty Hair that night, if I let him fuck me in his bed? What are you gonna do with all that fire? All that jealousy you claim not to have? Hurt me? Mark me up? Make me untouchable, make sure next time Kirishima sees me, he knows it was you- ”

“Don’t provoke me.”

“Or what, hah?” Bakugou sneers, quietness evaporated in an instant. “Or you’ll actually do it?” He shakes his head, relaxes back against the lockers like Shouto isn’t pinning him there with his bodyweight. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. You have no idea how to take what you fucking want.”

(Oh, but he does know how to take. Just not how to deserve.)

Bakugou pries Shouto’s hand off his arm. Shouto lets him, says nothing. 

“I’m going home, Todoroki. Either follow me and prove me wrong, or we’re done. With all of it.”

The door slams shut behind him as Bakugou strides out the locker room, leaving Shouto alone with his fire and his fucked-up lust and the ache of loving the worst man in the world. 

He counts to sixty, and when none of those things have disappeared at sixty-one, he gives in and follows where Bakugou leads him.

Bakugou’s lived in the same apartment since he moved to Tokyo. It’s tiny and has horrible beige walls and is well below his current pro-hero paygrade. When asked why he refuses to move somewhere nicer, he will say it has a kitchen and it’s far away from Deku, which are...two accurate statements, sure. Shouto doesn’t really understand this logic, though, since 1) he’s fairly certain all apartments have kitchens, and 2) Bakugou and Midoriya’s offices are literally right next to one another at their agency. 

Still, he can appreciate the little things about Bakugou’s little apartment - boots kicked off messy in the genkan, a half dozen houseplants clinging to life on the windowsill, the stack of perpetually unfinished novels on the coffee table. Pieces of Bakugou scattered everywhere, all the parts that he doesn’t really let anyone see.

At this particular moment, he’s appreciating the tiny strip of hallway between the entrance and Bakugou’s bedroom, the texture of the plaster wall under his hands as he cages Bakugou against it with his body and kisses him senseless. 

Bakugou is rough and insistent, clawing his nails into Shouto’s shoulders and winding a vice grip into his hair. Shouto lets him lead the kiss, because he’s feeling more than a little mean tonight and it’s always gratifying to give Bakugou the illusion of control before yanking it away. He tucks his hands up under Bakugou’s shirt, settles them against the dips of his waist and thinks about every way he wants to mark up all that perfect, smooth skin. 

He’s used his quirk on Bakugou before this, of course he has. You don’t just have fire and ice and the full range of temperature control at your fingertips and decide not to experiment with that, right? Bakugou likes a little pain and Shouto likes seeing him squirm, likes all the pretty noises that fall from his lips when he forgets himself too much to stop them. 

The idea of branding his own handprint into Bakugou’s skin flits through his brain, and Shouto wonders if he needs to spend some time unpacking just how turned on that kind of possession makes him.

Maybe later. RIght now, he tugs uselessly at the hem of Bakugou’s shirt until he takes the hint and shoves Shouto away for long enough to pull it over his head. They rebound to each other almost instantly, two magnets with opposite poles, perfectly aligned. Shouto attaches his mouth to Bakugou’s collarbone and flicks a warm thumb over his nipple, heats his palm more insistently and places it flat over the bumps of his ribs. 

It’s not nearly enough to burn, hardly even enough to leave rosy pink like he had in the locker room or the hallway outside Bakugou’s office last week. Shouto trusts himself, knows he has complete control. But Bakugou still makes a noise like he’s been punched, arches up off the wall to push his hips into Shouto’s.

“Do it,” he hisses, tangles up red and white in a rough grip and uses the leverage to crash their mouths back together. And god, Shouto wants to, wants to hear Bakugou choke first on the pain of it and then on the rush of pleasure that follows. 

But Shouto has more patience than most people could ever dream of. He’s in the business of denying himself the things he wants, always has been. 

“Not yet.” He slips his hands down under Bakugou’s ass, digs his fingers into the tops of his thighs. “Come on.”

Bakugou huffs but braces his hands on Shouto’s shoulders and hops into the air, wrapping strong legs around his waist. He’s far from light, but Shouto didn’t work his way up to bench pressing twice his own bodyweight for nothing. It’s satisfying in the strangest way, that Bakugou lets himself be held, carried down his own hallway without complaint. He’s hard against Shouto’s torso, combing calloused fingers through his hair in silent ritual, mixing up red and white until they’re inseparable. 

Shouto wants to ruin him, let anyone else who takes him know that it was him who had Bakugou first. Had him when they were sixteen and fumbling, nervous and too keyed-up to last, each other’s first kiss, first everything. At eighteen when the world deemed them ready to hold lives in their hands, at twenty tasting of vodka and birthday cake and all their bad decisions. Through months and years that blur together, celebrations and victories and crushing mistakes, Bakugou on his doorstep begging Shouto to help him forget. Bakugou in his kitchen, rolling omelettes in dim sunlight because the nap they took after they were spent stretched through the night instead of just a few minutes. Bakugou fresh out of his shower, wearing one of Shouto’s blue hoodies and smelling of his soap but never kissing him goodbye. Bakugou, Bakugou, Bakugou, everything comes back to him and it always will and Shouto is so fucking in love with him that the thought of anyone else having him like this burns him up from the inside out. 

He kicks the bedroom door shut behind them as he steps over the threshold, dropping Bakugou onto the bed without ceremony and stepping back to get a grip on himself. Bakugou props himself up on his elbows, gaze dark and hungry in the half-light. 

“You gonna fuck me or just stand there staring all night?”

Shouto could spend a long time just staring. He could take his time laying Bakugou out, kissing over every inch of him, still making up for all the years where Bakugou decided they weren’t allowed to kiss each other. He could sink into him slow and patient, waiting, hold out until Bakugou breaks and begs him for more, faster, harder, until Shouto’s name starts falling from his lips between all of it. 

He thinks of Bakugou taunting him in the locker room, asking what are you gonna do with all that fire, asking him to prove- what, exactly? That’s he’s not a coward? That he’s not afraid to take and take and take until it kills him? 

Bakugou gets up to his knees on the mattress, apparently tired of waiting for Shouto to finish stewing in his own thoughts, and yanks him down to eye level by a fistful of his shirt. Shouto goes easily, puts one knee on the bed between Bakugou’s for balance and kisses the inevitable taunt off his lips. 

“I asked you a fucking question, Halfie,” Bakugou says when they break, tilting his head back and baring his throat for Shouto’s waiting mouth. Shouto laves his tongue over the flutter of his pulse and bites down, forgets to care whether or not he leaves a mark. Bakugou’s hands are pulling at his shirt, at the buttons on both their jeans, desperate for still having so many layers between them. 

“No. I’m not going to fuck you. You don’t deserve that.” This is what Shouto has decided while they were still out in the hall, while they were still in the locker room, while he was walking half-hard twenty paces behind Bakugou to his apartment. He straightens up and takes over the removal of his clothing, biting a back a relieved noise when he finally gets a hand on himself. It’s impossible to resist a few dry strokes as Bakugou does the same, scooting up the bed to sit against the headboard once he’s fully naked. 

Bakugou is watching him intently, his cock smearing precum where it’s curved onto his stomach, but he does not touch himself. Not that Shouto would let him if he tried. “What then?” he asks, and Shouto is transfixed by the pink of his tongue swiping over his swollen lips, by the bruise blossoming on his throat. With some effort, he stops stroking himself and steps across the room to open Bakugou’s bedside drawer, rummaging through the clutter til he finds what he needs.

He kneels on the bed, swinging one leg over Bakugou to straddle his thighs. Bakugou immediately tries to touch him, but Shouto slaps his hands away and begins to slick up his own fingers with the lube. 

“You can watch,” Shouto tells him, “and you can wait. And if you touch yourself before I say so, I’ll freeze you to this bed.” 

“Don’t want your shitty right hand,” Bakugou says, defiant even as his eyes never leave that very hand, tracking every movement as Shouto presses his index finger against himself. 

“What then?” Shouto parrots his earlier question back at him, a mockery. He sinks his finger into the first knuckle and suppresses the noise that threatens to slip out. He won’t give Bakugou the pleasure of hearing him. Not yet. It’s good, though, not enough. It’s never enough until he can sit on Bakugou’s dick like he owns it. 

Bakugou’s biting down on his lower lip, curling his hands in and out of fists where they rest limply on the grey sheets, watching as Shouto presses a second finger against his entrance. Laser-focused on him, the way it should be. He’s never known addiction like Bakugou’s eyes on him. 

“Hurt me.”

The blunt declaration makes Shouto stop, two fingers buried in himself to the knuckle. 

Bakugou senses his hesitation immediately, lip curling up in a sneer. “What? It’s what you want to do, isn’t it?”

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

They’ve logged dozens of negotiations between them, some weeks in advance and some just like this, skin-to-skin and slick hands and Bakugou’s clear red gaze boring into him. 

“I want you to.”

Shouto considers him, starts moving his fingers again. Leans back a bit to deepen the angle and lets Bakugou’s hands come up to his hips to steady him. He trails his left hand feather-light over Bakugou’s arm, feels goosebumps rise in the wake of his touch. 

“Where?”

Bakugou tilts his head back against the headboard and has the audacity to pull Shouto forward in his lap until their cocks brush against each other. Shouto curls his fingers inside himself and wants. 

“Not my forearms. My gauntlets’ll irritate the burns too much.”

Logical. Shouto nods his agreement, bends his wrist and stuffs a third finger in his hole, restless now. 

“And then you’ll be too distracted on your patrols by thinking of me?” Shouto teases, because he can’t help himself and Bakugou makes it so very easy. 

“Fuck you.”

“Maybe.” The mild affect he’s going for is diminished slightly by the way his breath is coming in hot pants now, his wrist aching from being twisted awkwardly behind himself. “I’m still angry with you.” 

Whatever pliantness had come over Bakugou from having Shouto in his lap evaporates in an instant.

“For what? Doing the same fucking thing we’ve always done?” He pushes himself up to get in Shouto’s face about it, scraping blunt nails down his back. “What do you want me to say, Todoroki, huh? That I never wanted anyone else, that you were the best I ever had? That every time I let someone else fuck me right here in this bed, I wished it was you?”

“Not if it’s a lie.”

Bakugou’s expression flashes with anger, hurt, and Shouto hates himself for wanting to hurt him more, to punish him for making Shouto fall in love with him without even trying.

It’s Bakugou’s bicep that takes the first searing brand, right over the barely-there pinkness from earlier back at the agency. His whole body tenses and tries to recoil, fingers digging harshly into Shouto’s thighs, but Shouto doesn’t let up right away. The noise Bakugou makes is somewhere between a hiss and a groan, sweat breaking out along his hairline, and Shouto leans down to capture his mouth in a bruising kiss. 

The mark is a deep, satisfying pink when he pulls back to examine it, matching the color on Bakugou’s cheeks and the flush of his pretty, untouched cock. Bakugou squirms under his weight, reaching around to pull Shouto’s fingers out of his ass and mouthing uselessly at his shoulder. 

“Come on, come on,” he urges, fitting his hands under Shouto’s thighs and pulling him forward, lining himself up. “Want you.”

Shouto is good at denying himself, sure. But denying Bakugou? Denying him like this, flushed and trusting and infuriatingly beautiful?

He never stood a chance.

“Give me another,” Bakugou demands through a gasp, as Shouto raises himself up and reaches behind to slick him with the extra lube. Shouto settles his left hand over the curve of his shoulder, mostly for balance but Bakugou tenses in anticipation anyway.

“Ask me nicely.”

“You and your fucking politeness kink, fuck off.”

Shouto laughs despite himself, trailing off into a moan at the stretch of Bakugou pressing inside him. He closes his eyes and sinks down slowly, Bakugou tense and perfectly still underneath him, unyielding. 

“Fuck,” Bakugou says eloquently when Shouto’s ass is flush to his thighs, voice breathy with the effort of not moving. “You’re so fucking tight, Shou, god. Come on, give me your fire. I want it.”

It’s the smallest fraction of his power, the tiny orange flame he ignites at his fingertip. Second nature, finally, after all these years, like scratching an itch or tucking a stray hair behind his ear. He holds the flame under Bakugou’s chin, far enough away that he’ll only feel the barest lick of heat from it. “Ask me,” Shouto starts, lifting himself up, feeling the delicious drag of Bakugou’s cock along his walls, “nicely.”

Bakugou makes a noise like he’s been punched when Shouto drops down all in one go, curling the flame back into his palm. His fire is singing in his veins, hot and wild, liquid heat so different from what Bakugou carries under his own skin. 

But they’re the same, still, he and Bakugou. They both know how to burn.

Shouto works himself into a rhythm, placing his hand back down on Bakugou’s shoulder for leverage and letting his palm warm gently, nothing more than an April sun on his skin. He can wait forever, probably - it’s no secret who has more patience here. He has no issue with using Bakugou as his personal dildo until he decides to give Shouto what he wants. 

It’s just so good, too, it’s always good when they’re together. Bakugou plants his feet on the mattress and his hands on Shouto’s hips and meets him halfway at every thrust, the sound of their bodies colliding obscene in the quiet night. He pulls Shouto down a bit, helping him fix the angle and reaching up to kiss him messily until Shouto is gasping against his mouth. 

“Please,” Bakugou says, so quietly that Shouto feels the shape of it against his lips more than he hears it. “Please, please.” Hushed supplication, a prayer whispered into whatever space will always stretch between them. Bakugou looks up at him like something sacred and Shouto has never known such power while on his knees. 

It’s enough. He doesn’t know what else to take.

Bakugou doesn’t cry out as Shouto brands a handprint into his shoulder, fingers spread wide over the broad muscle. He breathes shaky and damp against Shouto’s collarbone and digs bruises into his thighs, the rhythm of his hips stuttering even as Shouto continues his relentless pace. Shouto pushes him down against the pillows and presses his searing touch to his chest next, watches with a sort of detached fascination as Bakugou chokes on his own inhale, his eyes going glassy with unshed tears. 

“Tell me,” Shouto demands, backing off the heat and tracing around the edge of the irritated skin with just a fingertip. It looks so beautiful, rosy pink against Bakugou’s winter paleness. “Say you wished it was me, every time someone else had you like this.”

Bakugou blinks up at him, a tear slipping down into his hairline. “Why?”

“Because I wished it was you.” Shouto’s filter is gone, gone, gone, decimated by the white-hot pleasure zipping up his spine and the way Bakugou looks right now. “I wished it was you every time, and it makes me wish I had never had you at all.”

Bakugou doesn’t respond right away, his mouth puckered in a little ‘o,’ hand coming to encircle Shouto’s wrist and press his palm flat over his heart. “Another,” he says, and Shouto doesn’t hesitate this time. Bakugou inhales sharply and grits his teeth, squirms and arches his back and impales Shouto on his cock and Shouto hates him, he hates him, he loves him, none of this is fair. Why couldn’t they play fair?

His orgasm creeps up on him, surging out of nowhere and turning his hearing to static in its intensity. Bakugou fucks him through it, something renewed in his determination as Shouto collapses down onto his chest. He runs his hands down Shouto’s back and doesn’t pull out as he flips them over, doesn’t go anywhere except to close the distance between their mouths again as he rocks into him. 

Shouto whines and bites his lip, oversensitive and aching every time Bakugou brushes against his prostate. “Katsuki,” he breathes, doesn’t know what the rest of the sentence should be. 

“What, what, anything, Shou. Whatever you need.” Bakugou kisses along his jaw, the paper-thin skin under his ear, scrapes his teeth over his pulse point. “Burn me again.”

Shouto shakes his head, hauls Bakugou back to his mouth by a fistful of blond. There’s tears blurring his vision, his whole body hypersensitive, and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

“Need it,” Bakugou gasps out, more air than voice. “Need you.”

“You have me. Come on, Katsuki.”

Bakugou buries his face in Shouto’s shoulder and leaves a bruise on his hip as he comes, desperate and unashamed. Shouto hopes it’ll be a long time before the mark fades. He combs his fingers through Bakugou’s hair and waits for his heart to stop racing, waits to crash back into his body, waits for Bakugou to pull away.

He does, of course he does, kisses Shouto’s shoulder once before getting up and disappearing into the bathroom. Shouto starfishes his body out on the sheets and closes his eyes, breathes through the weird chill left in the space Bakugou vacated.

Bakugou reappears a moment later, flinging a damp washcloth onto Shouto’s stomach and collapsing back onto the bed without a word. Shouto swipes it across all his tacky skin and drops it off the side of the bed when he’s done. It lands with a wet plop on the hardwood and earns him a disgruntled noise from his bedmate.

“You’re so fucking nasty.”

Shouto doesn’t reply. He curls onto his side, finds himself faced with the bare plane of Bakugou’s back. The mark on his shoulder is the only one visible from this angle, but the sight makes Shouto’s chest hurt. The shape of each of his fingers is imprinted there clear as day, red and angry and swollen, and it feels suddenly like there’s not enough air in the room for him to breathe. 

They’re not touching. Bakugou glances back over his shoulder at him, expression unreadable.

“Tch. What’s a guy gotta do to get some aftercare around here?”

Shouto forces himself to exhale, fill his lungs, exhale again. He can’t tear his eyes away from the burn, the shape of his hand etched into Bakugou’s skin. His heart is still beating too fast, thudding painfully against his ribcage. 

“Sorry.” His voice sounds far away to his own ears. He covers his right hand in frost and reaches out to lay it gently over the mark, the shape of it unable to match up.

Bakugou tenses, makes some kind of pained grunt. The ice turns to water and trickles down his back, dampens the grey sheets underneath. 

It’s quiet, or maybe it’s just that Shouto’s ears still feel stuffed with cotton. Bakugou scoots backwards and leans into his chest, exposing the other marks for him to soothe, but Shouto’s hand is shaking where it hovers just over his skin. 

This feels - bad. Why does he feel so bad? He didn’t do anything wrong, he didn’t do anything Bakugou didn’t ask him for. Right? Right? A wave of hot shame crashes over him anyway, stripping him of any afterglow and leaving him feeling raw and exposed, a live wire. He hurt Bakugou. He hurt him and he liked it, what kind of monster gets off on that? On hurting the person they lov-

“Shouto. Shouto, hey.”

Bakugou’s voice cuts cleanly through the haze of his panic, his fingers tracing a wet path over Shouto’s cheeks. Wet?

“You’re crying,” Bakugou says. There’s a furrow in his brow that Shouto wants to touch, wants to kiss away. He did that, he put that sadness there by not being able to handle this, to keep his emotions in their allotted compartment where they belong. 

“I hurt you,” Shouto gasps out, and the furrow deepens, Bakugou frowning down at him. He feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his own skin. 

“I wanted you to. You did good, Shou, just relax, I’m fine. I’ve got you.”

Bakugou settles back onto the pillows and pulls Shouto with him, tugging on his right hand until it’s pressed flat against the burn over his heart, covering it with his own. His heart beats strong and steady under Shouto’s palm, his skin too hot but Shouto can fix that, he can. He fills his lungs with ice and spreads it through his veins, slow and careful so the change in temperature won’t be such a shock this time. 

Bakugou sighs in contentment and curls towards him some more, keeps his hand over Shouto’s even as it gets painted with tiny snowflakes from the contact. Somewhere there’s a clock ticking, and eventually Shouto starts to feel an approximation of normal again. He takes his hand back, shaking the frost off and scrubbing over his eyes before reaching for the edge of the blanket and pulling it up over both of them. 

He wonders if he’s supposed to leave.

Bakugou presses cold toes against his shin, and Shouto stops wondering. 

“Sorry,” Shouto tells him, when he manages to find his voice again. “That was weird.”

“Yeah. You’ve never dropped like that with me.”

“Oh,” Shouto says, because he’s just now realizing that that’s what happened. He’s never dropped like that ever, but the with me bit still stings. “I’m sorry.”

Bakugou huffs, always irritated so easily. “Why? Don’t- just...ugh.” He turns and squishes Shouto’s cheeks together with one hand, levelling him with a glare. It’s not his most menacing attempt. “I’m gonna go get some water. Don’t freak out and try to leave while I’m gone, got it?” 

Shouto scrunches his nose up but nods his agreement, and blinks in mild shock when Bakugou kisses him on the forehead before clambering out of bed. He dresses in clean boxers and a shirt that had been discarded on the chair in the corner, the burns disappearing under the fabric, before slipping out into the hall. 

Shouto listens to the sound of his footsteps, bare feet tacky on the hardwood but surprisingly light. Lots of things about Bakugou can be light, Shouto thinks, his forehead still warm when Bakugou had kissed him. 

He holds that thought close as he gets up and wanders over to Bakugou’s closet, stepping over his own clothes in favor of rummaging for something to borrow. After all these years, Shouto is still taller but Bakugou is much broader, his sweaters and hoodies all stretched out in the arms and loose on Shouto’s more slender frame. 

Bakugou rolls his eyes when he returns and sees Shouto struggling, one arm poking out of the hole meant for his head. He huffs but there’s a smile in his eyes as he stalks over, setting two glasses of water down on the dresser before manhandling Shouto into the hoodie properly and crushing him to his chest in a hug. 

Shouto makes a surprised little oh but goes easily, tilting down to tuck himself into Bakugou’s shoulder. He doesn’t get to hug Bakugou often, or ever really. But it’s nice, he fits nicely against Shouto’s body, hands spread wide over his lower back. Shouto still feels kind of mixed up inside, like someone put his heart in a blender and tried to pour it back into his chest. 

“I wasn’t trying to leave,” he says, muffled, because perhaps that’s why Bakugou has decided to hold him captive like this. He licks his dry lips and eyes up the water sitting right behind them, but something about the way Bakugou is holding him feels more important. LIke he’s doing his best to hold Shouto together when he doesn’t even understand what broke him in the first place.

Shouto loves him. Through anything, through everything, he loves him. One day, one of these long, long days, it will break him for good.

“Katsuki,” he starts, pressing his lips to Bakugou’s temple. “We need to talk, I think.”

“Fucking obviously.”

Shouto prickles, cracks a bit. “Don’t push me away.”

Bakugou sighs, thunks his head down against Shouto’s shoulder. Squeezes him tighter, crushing. “I’m not,” he says. “I’m not trying to. Just- ”

“Just what?” Shouto prompts, when Bakugou doesn’t continue on his own.

The clock ticks. A siren wails outside, bathing the room in red and blue for a moment. He can feel Bakugou’s heart thudding against his where they’re pressed chest-to-chest. 

“Just stay here tonight. And tomorrow let me cook you dinner. And we can talk. About all of it.”

Shouto’s heart does something weird, a long-familiar ache. The ache of loving.

“Okay.”