Archive of Our Own

Weddings sucked.

Especially if they were fucking Deku’s.

People really ought to just get married by themselves, with their close family and whatever, and leave the rest of the world out of it. Really, who needed a big fancy party at a big fancy hotel? You ended up just as married either way.

Bakugou had escaped the reception as soon as he feasibly could, and now he was perched at a high-top in a dark corner in the hotel bar, nursing his overpriced drink at a speed precisely calibrated to make it last as long as possible without making the bartender suspicious. The TV over the bar was at a volume too low to be intelligible above the noise of the drunks in here – and fuck anyone who said otherwise, his hearing was goddamn perfect – but the subtitles were on. They didn’t help. It was some shitty sport tournament, no quirks allowed, though it looked like they’d just yellow-flagged one of the teams for some quirk-related infraction, so obviously some of the players couldn’t help themselves. Bakugou could not give a shit; Bakugou could not even identify for sure what the sport was: one of those American imports, he thought. He was only watching the TV because if he looked like he was engrossed in it, no one was likely to come up and try to talk to him.

He was also staying quiet. If he spoke out loud, people were more likely to recognize him and want to speak to him. Apparently his voice was distinctive or whatever. He figured he’d be fine if he just kept his mouth shut. It helped that he was wearing a plain dark grey suit. One advantage to having such a garish costume was that he was practically unrecognizable out of it, especially with his hair slicked back and down like it was.

“You know,” he heard from above and to his right, “if you came back inside the ballroom, the drinks would be free.”

Bakugou sighed and turned, looking up and up and up, what the fuck. He kept forgetting how fucking tall fucking Todoroki was now. Back at UA they had been practically the same height – all right, fine, so IcyHot was like 6 centimeters taller than him, whatever – but while Bakugou had grown a more-than-respectable 7 centimeters while they were at school, Todoroki must have grown 15 since their first year; he was a fucking giant now. It shouldn’t have been so shocking as it was. All you had to do was look at his goddamn monster of a father, and his brothers too, what the fuck.

Bakugou had never met any of Todoroki’s siblings — except for Todoroki Touya, sort of, though Bakugou didn't count that; maybe he’d have paid closer attention to Dabi if he’d known he was actually Todoroki’s fucking long-lost brother — but he’d seen a picture of the Todoroki family on the day of the sister’s wedding. Somehow, Todoroki Touya had gotten a day pass from prison to attend, which was weird, since the prick had tried to off Endeavor a few years earlier, but apparently that was all water under the bridge. Anyway, the point was, photos of the Todoroki siblings at the wedding ran in every media outlet in the country so even Bakugou couldn’t help but see them, not that he’d been hoping to: little Todoroki what’s-her-name surrounded by her three gigantic brothers.

Siblings always interested Bakugou since he didn’t have any, and the Todoroki brothers were kind of fascinating, genetically. Or at least phenotypically, whatever. The middle one, whatever the fuck his name was, the med student or whatever the fuck useless thing he did that wasn’t heroics, not that Bakugou gave a shit, was the only one of the three who had inherited Endeavor’s build. He was a little shorter than Half ‘n Half but twice as wide. He was built kind of like a mountain and his hair was pure white and looked like a snowcap. Todoroki Touya was taller, maybe even taller than Endeavor, but he slouched so it was hard to be sure. He was also so skinny that Bakugou had seriously wondered if he was anorexic, or if prison food was just that bad. Todoroki Shouto of course had been goddamn fucking perfect in his perfectly appropriate black suit, not too broad and not too thin, just tall and muscular and fucking gorgeous, the boutonnière in his lapel a dusky shade of blue that somehow brought out both of his eyes.

That had been over a year ago, and time in the interim had continued to be very kind to Todoroki. Any residual trace of baby fat had been stripped away by age and clean living, and his face looked chiseled, every feature perfectly outlined by bone and cartilage. He’d cut his hair, the stupid mop-top finally replaced with a respectable undercut — hair short on the sides but not shaved like Kirishima and fucking Deku. Todoroki kept his hair longer on the top and he still had his bangs, though they were swept elegantly off to the side. He even had even gelled his hair, in honor of the occasion, Bakugou supposed, though it looked like some of that expensive shit that didn’t make your hair feel like you’d glued it in place.

Todoroki was in another black suit, this one less formal than the one he’d worn to his sister’s wedding, no shiny lapels, though he had a yellow boutonnière to match the bridesmaids’ gowns. The suit might have been the most flattering article of clothing Bakugou had ever seen on anyone, broad in the shoulders and trim at the waist, with trousers that somehow emphasized the length and musculature of Todoroki’s legs.

He looked fucking gorgeous.

This was no surprise. The gorgeousness of Todoroki Shouto was unavoidable, even for Bakugou, who liked to pay as little attention as possible to people he didn’t absolutely have to interact with. But even though Bakugou had not, prior to today, seen Todoroki Shouto in person for over two years, he had seen Todoroki Shouto’s gorgeous fucking face and perfect fucking body countless times, because Todoroki Shouto’s gorgeous fucking face and perfect fucking body was plastered over every goddamn billboard in Japan for whatever fucking advertising campaign he was doing: underwear or personal grooming products or some shit.

“Sit down,” Bakugou growled, at fucking perfect Todoroki fucking Shouto. “You’re blocking the light.”

Todoroki did not acknowledge the jab at his freakish height, but he slid onto the stool next to Bakugou and made some signal to the bartender, who came over, looking dazzled. “You’re Hero Shouto,” the bartender breathed.

“Ah,” Todoroki said eloquently. He ran a hand through his perfect fucking hair, somehow managing to magically un-tousle the few strands of red and white that had dared to get slightly disordered. “Yes, I am.” He blinked vapidly at the bartender for a few awkward seconds before he asked, “I would like a beer. Er. Something Japanese.”

The bartender goggled at him for a few moments, then stammered an affirmative and turned away, already tapping away on his phone, no doubt to tell all his friends that he just met Todoroki fucking Shouto and Todoroki Shouto was incomparably gorgeous but also an incoherent ass.

“For fuck’s sake,” Bakugou said, exasperated. “You’re the most goddamn recognizable hero on the planet. How are you still so bad at talking to people?”

Todoroki stared at him, affronted, though not by the dig at his nonexistent people skills. “I am not the most recognizable hero on the planet.”

Bakugou was aware of at least three polls that would beg to differ. But he had a sneaking suspicion that Todoroki was just giving him shit; lack of social skills notwithstanding, Todoroki could be a snarky little bitch. “What are you doing out here?”

The bartender had returned with Todoroki’s beer, a Premium Yebisu, of course, because everyone knew Todoroki Shouto could afford the few extra yen and then some. Todoroki thanked the man politely if not suavely and took a sip, made a face, then cooled the beer down with a quick burst of ice. Bakugou remembered that from UA: Todoroki liked his drinks fucking arctic. “I could,” Todoroki said mildly, “ask you the same question. I left to use the bathroom. What’s your excuse?”

Bakugou was in no particular rush to admit that he had fled the wedding. He saved himself from having to answer immediately through the expedience of choking on a bar nut. Unfortunately, this gave Todoroki the opportunity to thwack him on the back to dislodge the nut, and of course the fucking waiter was filming the whole thing on his phone. Bakugou only hoped his face would not be identifiable. He could just see the headlines now: Shouto saves Ground Zero from death by peanut! He wan’t sure which part of that would be most humiliating, that he was saved by Todoroki, that he was almost killed by a peanut, or that the waiter likely still didn’t realize who he was.

When Bakugou stopped coughing, Todoroki considerately passed him a glass of water and waited for Bakugou’s breathing to return to normal. “If you didn’t want to answer,” Todoroki said in that same mild tone, “you could just have told me it was none of my fucking business.”

Snarky. Little. Bitch.

“It is none of your fucking business.” Bakugou coughed again, involuntarily. Stupid fucking peanuts. He was swearing off them. “I needed a break, is all.”

“Mmm,” Todoroki said. His lack of tonality made it sound like sage fucking wisdom, but Bakugou had known the asshole long enough to know that he hummed when he couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say, which was most of the time. Prettiest hero on the planet, worst fucking conversationalist.

“It’s just fucking weird,” Bakugou said, surprising himself, because he’d been quite certain he wasn’t going to say anything further on the topic.

Todoroki hummed again, this time sounding a little more definitively in agreement. He had already downed half his beer, and signaled the bartender for another. Of course he was as tall as a tree; he could probably have six fucking beers before he got even a little bit buzzed, but he’d gone through the first one pretty fucking quickly, which Bakugou might have been curious about if he cared what was going on in Todoroki’s stupidly pretty head. Which he didn’t. At all.

Todoroki made a vague gesture towards the ballroom, through the doors of which the faint sounds of people tapping their champagne flutes with forks could be heard. “You knew people were going to start getting married eventually,” Todoroki said reasonably. “Yaoyorozu just got engaged to her boyfriend. And Midoriya’s isn’t even the first wedding. I think Aoyama got married last year.”

Bakugou had to think for a minute to remember who the fuck Aoyama was. “Twinkles? He got married?”

“Mmm,” Todoroki said. “In France. His wife’s got a light-based quirk too.”

“Huh,” Bakugou said. “Wait. He married a girl?”

“Woman,” Todoroki said, frowning at him.

“What the fuck ever. I thought he liked guys.”

Todoroki’s mouth formed a perfect little moue of reproach. “You of all people should know better than to make assumptions like that,” he said. “Anyway, he dated girls throughout high school. Usually from general studies.”

“Huh,” Bakugou said, which expressed well his level of utter disinterest in continuing the conversation past this point. “That’s different.” The fuck. How was that different? Why did he say that? Why was he even still talking? He looked suspiciously at his drink. It didn’t taste that strong. Maybe it was the two he’d had in the ballroom before he’d slunk out. Stalked out. Left. Whatever.

The bartender deposited Todoroki’s second beer. Todoroki was still not done with the first, so he tipped his head back to finish it in one long, smooth gulp. Bakugou couldn’t help but watch – it would be criminal not to; Todoroki made drinking a beer look fucking pornographic, just like he had in all those ads last year, the ones Bakugou had seen every time he logged on to social media, not that he’d been looking for them specifically, thank you very much. Even Todoroki’s neck was fucking perfect, long and tanned and smooth. Todoroki deposited the now-empty bottle on the table where it was whisked away by the fawning bartender, and reached a finger out to the second one, icing it over casually, frost spreading smoothly from the neck down the sides, stopping precisely at the bottom of the bottle a millimeter away from the bar. Bakugou took a moment to appreciate Todoroki’s precision. There was a time when icing anything meant icing everything in the immediate vicinity, and sometimes everyone. Bakugou had the pale scars from frostbite to prove it. Or he would, if Recovery Girl hadn’t healed him. Whatever.

“Is it weird because it’s Midoriya?” Todoroki asked, now picking absently at the beer label. His fingers were long and slender with a few scars, only some of which Bakugou knew how he’d gotten. Bakugou found himself vaguely irritated by this, that Todoroki had the nerve to get scars without Bakugou’s knowledge. Like Todoroki should have asked for Bakugou’s permission first. As if Bakugou would ever have given Todoroki permission to get scars on his perfect fucking fingers. For the record, he wouldn’t. Of course he wouldn’t. Not that he cared about Todoroki Shouto’s fingers. What the fuck.

Bakugou grunted in lieu of responding to Todoroki’s stupid question, like Deku getting married might have made this somehow different than any other lame-ass wedding he would have preferred to skip but had been forced into attending by his fucking parents. Todoroki seemed content to let Bakugou sit and stew in silence. Finally, when Todoroki had worked his way through half of his second beer, Bakugou admitted grumpily, “I just never thought he’d get married before me.”

“Well,” Todoroki said, very matter-of-factly. “It’s not like you could even if you wanted to, so I don’t see why you’re so upset about it.”

“... the fuck?” Bakugou wasn't sure what Todoroki meant by that, except for maybe the most obvious interpretation, but Bakugou doubted that was what Todoroki was actually suggesting. Though Bakugou had no idea what else Todoroki could have meant. Bakugou narrowed his eyes at Todoroki suspiciously.

“I guess you could always go to America,” Todoroki continued, oblivious to Bakugou’s narrowed eyes, as he was oblivious to every social cue that ever existed. “Japan would recognize it if you got married there.” He peered at Bakugou from underneath his perfect fucking bangs, the fringe falling artfully over the right side of his face, putting his scar on full display. Perversely, the patch of pale pink puckered skin only emphasized how gorgeous the rest of his face was, the lone flaw highlighting the remaining perfection of his features: his hypnotizing dual-colored eyes, his aristocratic nose, his delicate ears, and his goddamn impossible cheekbones. Say what you wanted about Todoroki Enji, he had incredible bone structure, and he’d passed it on to Todoroki Shouto, gifting a whole new generation the opportunity to pray at the altar of the Todoroki cheekbones.

Todoroki and his cheekbones looked at Bakugou curiously. “Is there someone you want to marry? Or are you just upset on principle?”

Bakugou was still speechless. Mostly speechless. He was never entirely speechless: There was always space in any given conversation for a ‘fuck’ or two. “The fuck are you on about?”

Todoroki blinked. “Gay marriage,” he said. “It’s still not legal here.”

Bakugou gaped, then slammed his jaw shut so violently he might have cracked a filling. “What.” His voice sounded funny in his ears. “How did you …" It wasn’t like he cared if Todoroki knew, exactly; he wasn’t ashamed or anything; it’s just that he hadn’t figured it out until well after UA, and he hadn’t told anybody from high school because he hardly spoke with them and on those rare occasions he did, his sexuality never seemed especially relevant. It’s not like he was going to have a big fucking coming out party, and even if he did — which he wouldn’t because he wasn’t fucking lame — even if he did, he wouldn’t invite most of the losers he knew from high school anyway. Definitely not fucking Deku or whatshisname, Ayomama or whatever. Maybe IcyHot, though, because he would make Bakugou sound more articulate by contrast, and he’d raise the hotness factor of the crowd by ten billion percent.

Todoroki was watching him thoughtfully, head tilted to the side. When Bakugou hadn’t been paying attention, Todoroki had been given a third beer by his biggest fan, the bartender. “Well,” Todoroki said carefully, “you were the only other gay kid I knew, so …” He shrugged.

“I was not,” Bakugou said immediately, without even thinking.

Todoroki blinked at him. “You were,” he said. “I didn’t meet any other gay people until after I graduated.”

“That’s not what I—” Bakugou said. “I mean, I wasn’t a gay kid.”

Todoroki stared at him, eyes a little wide in obvious bafflement. “Um,” he said. “You’re not gay?”

“Well, I am now,” Bakugou said truculently.

Todoroki stared at him some more. Bakugou looked away because Todoroki still didn’t seem to have figured out that staring at people without blinking was fucking rude and fucking weird. Bakugou settled for taking another sip of his drink, which was rapidly warming from being cradled too tightly in his always-sweaty-but-particularly-sweaty-at-the-moment palms. Bakugou considered asking Todoroki to cool the drink back down, but discarded the idea instantly; Todoroki was too distracted. He would probably just freeze then explode Bakugou’s drink by accident.

“It’s not a switch you can turn on and off,” Todoroki said eventually. “If you’re gay now, you were gay then.”

“Well, I didn’t know it then, so fuck you,” Bakugou said.

Todoroki went faintly pink around the ears, and busied himself by downing the rest of his beer.

Even being conservative, Bakugou figured he must have said ‘fuck you’ to Todoroki approximately 10,000 times in the three years they were at UA; there was no particular reason for Todoroki to get bent out of shape over this one instance. Bakugou attributed it to the three beers Todoroki had downed in the past twenty minutes.

Bakugou picked through the bowl of bar nuts and settled on a pretzel – less of a choking hazard than the fucking peanuts – and then sipped at his drink some more, watching the unidentified American (maybe) sports game on the TV. The game remained incomprehensible and uninteresting. Why the fuck did anybody watch this quirkless bullshit? People had quirks. Some people could fly. Couldn’t they play quidditch or something? With that, what was it called, a twitch? A switch? Was that game even a real thing? Bakugou couldn’t remember.

After a time, the silence began to grow slightly oppressive. The bartender had refilled the bowl without being asked, probably expecting a big tip from Todoroki, and Todoroki was apparently content to just sit there eating peanuts forever. But Bakugou had a limited tolerance for dead conversational space. True, his limit was bigger than most other people’s, but it was real, existing somewhere in the space between “Shut up and let me finish my sentence,” and “What were we talking about again?”

“How did you know that I was gay?” Bakugou asked eventually, when it became clear that Todoroki was not going to contribute to the conversation – no surprise there. The surprising thing was that Bakugou’s mouth had apparently decided to continue speaking without direction from Bakugou’s brain, because if Bakugou’s brain had been in control it would have picked another topic altogether.

Todoroki had another beer in front of him, but he was sipping at this one much more slowly, maybe contemplating the mysteries of life, or perhaps the mystery of how Midoriya Izuku had found himself a wife when he couldn’t find a pair of shoes that wasn’t red sneakers. “Hmm,” Todoroki said.

“Don’t fucking hum at me, IcyHot. Use your goddamn words.”

Todoroki raised an eyebrow at him – the white one – and sipped at his beer. Then he put his beer bottle down on the table, precisely in the middle of the lacy white doily-thing the bartender had apparently given him for just this purpose. “Well,” Todoroki said reflectively, “I could see the way you watched the other guys in the locker room.”

Bakugou was briefly horrified. “I did not fucking watch the other guys in the fucking locker room.”

“But you did,” Todoroki said, blunt and relentless as a freight train. “Not in a weird way or anything. I don’t think anyone else noticed.”

Bakugou considered this. Todoroki was suggesting that he, Todoroki, had noticed something about Bakugou that nobody else in Class A had. Something that Bakugou himself hadn’t noticed for another couple of years. Had Bakugou not in fact turned out to be gay, he would have dismissed Todoroki’s claim as typical Todoroki bullshit. The thing was, Todoroki was utterly socially stunted. That was all Endeavor's fucking fault; Todoroki had apparently not been allowed to associate with anyone outside his immediate family and his tutors until he’d entered UA, which was fucked the fuck up. Still, Bakugou felt he had to at least consider the possibility that Todoroki, oblivious to most social norms, had in fact picked up on something that might have been invisible to anyone with normal behavioral perception filters.

It didn’t, on the face of it, seem very plausible. But there was the not-insignificant fact that Todoroki had been fucking right.

Bakugou took another sip of his drink, watching Todoroki surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye. If Todoroki was aware that he was being observed, he didn’t seem to mind, but Bakugou felt funny staring at him now, given that Todoroki knew Bakugou was gay and might take it the wrong way. Or. Well. He might take it the right way. Todoroki was kind of a freak but he was also, as previously noted, fucking gorgeous, and he filled out a suit like no one’s business.

The suit, Bakugou reflected in a little mental side-trip, was probably custom-made. Todoroki was loaded. The Todorokis had been one of the first families to monetize their quirk, and the Todoroki Corporation still employed several thousand people across Japan. Not to mention that Endeavor had been the number two hero for more than a decade before he reached number one, and when he retired he gave IcyHot his whole fucking agency, which was probably worth at least several hundred million yen on its own.

Bakugou did not begrudge Todoroki his money. Bakugou was doing fine on his own, so he had no reason to be envious, and Todoroki, at least according to the interviews that Bakugou read when he was in the fucking dentist chair or wherever, it’s not like he went online to find them, gave generously to charity and supported several foundations for abused children – a little on the nose, though the media considerately never asked him why those charities in particular. Todoroki could spend his money however the fuck he wanted. It was just that Bakugou just had to confess, if only to himself, in the privacy of his own head, that Todoroki’s bespoke suit looked fucking fantastic.

“I’m sorry,” Todoroki said suddenly.

Bakugou mentally rewound the last several minutes of their conversation, but couldn’t find anything that Todoroki might be apologizing for. Todoroki wasn’t fucking Deku. The word ‘sorry’ did not often appear in his vocabulary. “What the fuck for?”

“For watching you.”

“The fuck do you mean? In high school? For fuck’s sake, I didn’t even notice.”

“I’m still sorry,” Todoroki said stubbornly. He grimaced at his mostly empty beer and soldiered on. “I invaded your privacy and that was wrong.”

Bakugou could not have cared less. It wasn’t like anything had ever come of it. Todoroki had obviously never told anyone anyway. “Eh,” Bakugou said magnanimously. Then he added, in English, “No harm no foul.”

Todoroki grinned at him. That was new. The Todoroki of the UA years had not smiled very often. Smiling still did not appear to be a natural action for the Todoroki of now, but it was closer. He was getting there. Bakugou kind of liked it; Todoroki’s smile was subtle, very like Todoroki himself, not at all like Kirishima and Deku, who smiled so widely Bakugou had always kind of marveled that their mouths didn’t accidentally bisect their heads when they did it.

“Cheers,” Todoroki answered back, also in English, and clinked his bottle against Bakugou’s glass. Then he downed the rest of the fourth beer and placed it carefully on the bar. Bakugou wondered if he would get a fifth, which would be impressive and maybe a little scary, but when the waiter came by, Todoroki shook his head.

“We should probably go back inside,” Todoroki said. He didn’t sound very enthusiastic about the prospect, not that he ever sounded enthusiastic about anything.

“And watch fucking Deku cry all over his wife’s gown? No the fuck thank you.”

“You have an amazing capacity to insert the word ‘fuck’ into your speech,” Todoroki observed. “It’s like a second quirk.”

Bakugou laughed, surprising himself and Todoroki both, and Todoroki grinned again, looking self-satisfied.

They fell into companionable silence for a few moments, Todoroki picking out the choking-hazard peanuts from the bowl, Bakugou eating everything else, even the spicy bits, because who was going to care if his breath smelled like wasabi? No one, that’s who. Then Bakugou said, startling himself, “The only other gay kid?”

Todoroki eyed him suspiciously, not like he thought Bakugou was doing something wrong, but like he thought Bakugou was being particularly dense. “Yes.”

“You’re gay.”

Todoroki raised an eyebrow at him. The red one this time, what the fuck. Bakugou couldn’t raise either of his eyebrows. Trust Todoroki to have ambidextrous eyebrows or whatever. “Yes.”

The fuck. There went the dreams of several million teenage girls swooning over their Hero Shouto posters. Wait. Really? “Really?”

“Really.” Todoroki looked at his empty beer bottle a little forlornly, but settled for eating a wasabi pea. He chewed and swallowed then made an awful kind of choking sound. Bakugou vaguely remembered Todoroki eating cold soba morning, noon and night back at UA and avoiding all spicy food, not that Bakugou had been paying special attention to Todoroki's dietary habits or whatever, but Todoroki and his fucking cold soba was kind of a thing.

“Here,” Bakugou said, pushing the glass of water back over. He didn’t think Todoroki was going to care about the germs. His quirk made him immune to most illnesses, or some shit. He could raise his body temperature and burn them out or whatever.

Todoroki hesitated only for a moment, then wrapped his slim, elegant fingers around the glass and took a healthy swallow. He made a face and concentrated; the glass frosted over instantly. Todoroki took another sip, this one seemingly much more palatable. Ice cubes clinked cheerfully within as Todoroki put the glass back on the bar. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome or whatever. I can’t believe you’re gay.”

Todoroki eyed him suspiciously. “I can’t believe you never realized. After the way I—” He stopped himself very suddenly, mouth slamming shut around the words, and waited a cautious moment before speaking again, like he was afraid that whatever he’d been about to say was still lurking there, rattling around his mouth, hiding behind his teeth. “And they say,” he said, “that I’m oblivious.”

There was no point contesting that. As a statement it was both true and accurate. Bakugou had never met anyone as consistently and, some might say, hopefully, oblivious as Todoroki Shouto, who wandered through life perpetually surprised by things that had been right in front of his face all along. Bakugou blamed this utter lack of situational awareness on Endeavor, as he did for most everything that was strange or remarkable about Todoroki, who’d been strong as fuck but not as strong as his father. Bakugou supposed that to Todoroki, Endeavor had always been the biggest threat. Everything else must have fallen by the wayside: not worth worrying about; not even worth noticing.

But Todoroki had just accused Bakugou of being oblivious, which — hello, eye crud laughing at mucous much? — was also disconcerting because Bakugou now had to consider that Todoroki was correct: that Bakugou was guilty of the same failing that he had observed and made hearty fun of in Todoroki himself.

Bakugou grudgingly supposed there was some truth to the accusation. After all, he’d failed to notice his own sexuality until well after the time he could most easily have experimented with it, in his anonymous teen years when everyone he met was basically just one big sea of raging, swelling hormones, even Deku, who’d methodically progressed through the girls of UA like he was completing one of his fucking stupid spreadsheets. And now, uggh, he felt gross because he’d just thought of his sexuality and shitty Deku in close mental proximity.

Todoroki was watching him carefully, a slight frown puckering the otherwise smooth perfection of his forehead.

“What should I have noticed?” Bakugou asked, realizing only afterwards that his tone was maybe a touch aggressive, if the way Todoroki leaned back and away was any indication.

Todoroki looked at him, eyes narrowing, and then, oddly, swiveled in his chair to check out their entire surroundings: the bar, the lobby beyond, the tiny hotel gift shop stuffed with overpriced toiletries and mochi.

“Nothing,” Todoroki said eventually, having apparently concluded he was in a safe space. “Just. You know. Like I said. I watched you. I thought you must have seen.”

Bakugou peered at him, trying to rejigger his memories in his head. It was difficult; he had never paid all that much attention to Todoroki, or anyone else, for that matter, when they weren’t directly competing with each other. Perhaps he’d given Todoroki slightly more of his attention than the extras, but that was only because Todoroki was fucking strong, crazy strong, like insanely fucking powerful. That strength was partly the result of a lifetime of quirk training with his psychopathic father (well, okay, not a psychopath, just an abusive jerk, whatever) but also it was genetics: Todoroki Enji had not reached the position of number one just on the strength of his soul-crushing sneer. The man was a fucking monster from a long line of monsters. If you read the stories about the early days of quirks, the Todorokis were all over them, and some of their exploits were fucking epic. Endeavor had a ridiculously strong quirk, and he’d passed all that strength on to IcyHot, then trained him to make use of it from infancy or whatever. That glacier stunt Todoroki had pulled at the first Sports Festival? That was some seismic level shit. And he’d been fucking fifteen.

So yeah, all right, whatever, Bakugou had maybe kept a closer eye on Todoroki than anyone else, except maybe fucking Deku because he was fucking Deku and his very presence in any room was enough to make Bakugou crazy. And maybe Bakugou had noticed Todoroki’s eyes on him sometimes? But Todoroki staring hadn’t been anything out of the norm. Todoroki used to stare at everyone; it was just a thing he did, and ...

…

…

Bakugou’s brain stuttered, caught, and then restarted itself, slow and reluctant. Had Todoroki stared at everyone? Bakugou rifled through his memories, but dim and dusty as they were, they proved to be little help. At UA, Bakugou had hardly noticed Todoroki staring at him; he doubted that Todoroki staring at anybody else would even have registered. Was Bakugou just assuming now in retrospect that Todoroki had stared at everybody, because he had stared at Bakugou? Wouldn’t people have complained, if Todoroki had been some creepy stalker freak like the strange purple fucker whose name Bakugou could not remember?

Bakugou thought that at the time, he must have assumed the class put up with this weird staring shit from Todoroki because he’d obviously been raised in an isolated cave on a deserted island in a distant ocean on another planet in a different galaxy and UA had been his first experience interacting with actual humans on a regular basis. And he probably meant well and whatever. But maybe people hadn’t actually been putting up with anything because the only one Todoroki had been staring at had been Bakugou, and nobody else gave a single gram of shit about Bakugou more than he gave about them.

Bakugou’s brain began picking up the slack of close to a decade’s worth of inattention to this particular matter. Fact: Todoroki had stared at him for three years at UA, even though Bakugou had had no interest at the time in staring back at Todoroki. Fact: Todoroki had been watching Bakugou closely enough to deduce that he was gay before Bakugou himself had figured it out. Fact: Todoroki was hanging out here in the hotel bar with Bakugou instead of inside the ballroom with a group of people who were ostensibly his actual friends.

“Wait,” Bakugou said slowly. “Did you. Did you used to have a thing for me?”

Todoroki went utterly, uncharacteristically, beet red. So much blood rushed to his face that his scar nearly blended in. “Um,” he said eloquently. Then he clamped his mouth shut again.

That was apparently all Bakugou was going to get, which was unfortunate, because it was neither a definitive yes nor a categorical no. It was a very equivocal maybe.

Bakugou had almost no tolerance for maybes. Maybes were a fucking waste of time, the dead space between asking the question and getting an honest answer. People either liked you or they didn’t. Things either were either right or they were wrong. Maybes were for people who couldn’t be dicked enough to admit what they really thought or felt or wanted.

But Todoroki wasn’t that kind of guy. Todoroki had never had a problem telling people the truth, even if they didn’t want to hear it. If Todoroki had never been attracted to Bakugou, he’d have just said so. He wouldn’t have been concerned about protecting Bakugou’s feelings. It probably wouldn’t even have fucking occurred to him to worry about it.

If Todoroki hadn’t answered the question, he wasn’t protecting Bakugou; he was protecting himself.

And that was. Well. That was something Bakugou understood. Maybe he even empathized a little or whatever.

Bakugou thought about a much younger Todoroki, at UA and out from under his father’s thumb for the first time in his life, desperately unsure how he fit into a world that was so much bigger than the circumscribed one Endeavor had created for him. He’d been shy and blunt and strange. Bakugou had kind of liked him, actually, or at least respected him, because if Todoroki had a problem with you, you fucking knew it. Not that Bakugou had ever told him so outright, of course, because mushy feelings were for losers. Anyway, Bakugou’s focus had at the time been almost exclusively himself: getting stronger, moving up, surpassing the extras and becoming the best hero he could be.

But apparently he’d been so completely and utterly wrapped up in his own shit that he’d missed the fact that the most powerful kid in their class — Bakugou could admit that; most powerful didn’t necessarily mean best — that the most powerful kid in their class had been into him. No matter what Todoroki said now, Todoroki had obviously had a thing for Bakugou then; Bakugou was self-centered but he wasn’t fucking stupid. You don’t sit and stare at someone for three years just because they’re the only other gay kid you know. You sit and stare at someone for three years because you’re hoping that one day, they’ll stare back.

Maybe Todoroki was still hoping for that. Why else was he even here, sitting at the hotel bar with Bakugou, drinking beer for ¥1,000 a pop and eating stale bar peanuts, when he could be inside drinking sake for free and eating exquisitely prepared fresh sushi? Fuck you, Bakugou had said a little while ago, like he’d said thousands of times before, but this time shy blunt strange Todoroki’s ears had turned red.

Bakugou swallowed the rest of his shitty overpriced cocktail in a single gulp. He used a napkin to get rid of any moisture on his palms, all the condensation from the glass and every trace of nitroglycerin, and then placed his hand with careful deliberation on Todoroki’s thigh. “This place blows. You want to go somewhere?”

Todoroki stared at Bakugou’s hand where it lay on his leg. He stared at it for quite a while, actually, long enough for Bakugou to appreciate that the fabric of Todoroki’s exquisite suit felt as incredible as it looked, and that Todoroki’s thigh was cool sculpted marble under Bakugo’s fingers. Todoroki clearly had been keeping up with his leg days in his workout schedule. Bakugou wondered if he still kept track of them with one of Deku’s goddamn spreadsheets.

“Bakugou,” Todoroki said. He swallowed. Bakugou watched his throat bob. “Just to be clear, because I know I often misread social cues. Are you propositioning me?”

Bakugou stroked Todoroki’s thigh. Todoroki had been a very straightforward teenager; Bakugou didn’t know the man very well but he suspected this facet of his personality had not greatly changed. “That depends,” he said. “Would you say yes if I were?”

Todoroki swallowed again and stared down at Bakugou’s hand, seemingly mesmerized. Then he looked back up at Bakugou, mismatched eyes focused and intent. They were fucking unbelievable up close, smoky gray and tropical-ocean blue. “Are you being serious?”

Bakugou was always serious. Saying things you didn’t mean was a waste of everybody’s time. He squeezed his fingers slightly and released them, then rubbed his thumb back and forth over the hard muscle of Todoroki’s thigh under the soft wool of his trousers, which felt fucking fantastic. Bakugou wondered absently how expensive it would be to get himself a suit made out of the same fabric, assuming it could be treated to withstand exposure to nitroglycerin. Probably pretty goddamn expensive. “You think I’m fucking with you?”

Todoroki’s head twitched as Bakugou pressed his thumb in harder, with intent. “Maybe.”

Bakugou leaned in close enough to get a whiff of whatever musky aftershave Todoroki was wearing. Todoroki stiffened and almost — almost — pulled back, but then he straightened his spine and didn’t. Todoroki had never backed away from a challenge in his life, except maybe once, when he was fighting Bakugou at the Sports Festival. That had been a long time ago, when Todoroki was just starting to figure himself out. Bakugou didn’t think Todoroki would make the same call now. If Bakugou fought Todoroki now, Todoroki would not hold back.

The thought was kind of thrilling: Todoroki letting out all his fire and ice and power, unfettered, unbridled. Maybe Bakugou had even imagined it once or twice before, when he’d seen the news clips on his phone, because Kirishima and fucking Deku always fucking forwarded videos of their classmates, not like Bakugou went and looked for them or anything. Usually he just deleted the videos, because he didn’t care about the fucking extras, but he always watched when it was Todoroki, because Todoroki was always fucking amazing.

Todoroki caught mid-fight, shimmering. Ablaze. Maybe ... maybe Bakugou had once or twice wondered what it would be like to have all that passion and power directed at him.

Todoroki’s face was now inches from Bakugou’s own. He smelled fucking amazing. Maybe it wasn’t aftershave at all. Maybe that was pure essence of Todoroki. Bakugou had to restrain himself from a sudden impulse to lap at Todoroki’s neck. “I’m not fucking with you,” Bakugou murmured. “But I know how we could fix that.”

Todoroki’s eyes widened then glazed over completely. He choked back a cough. Then he reached down and removed Bakugou’s hand from his thigh, with slow, careful deliberation. He used his left hand to do it, and his fingers on Bakugou’s wrist were hot as fuck: five tiny furnaces spilling molten heat into Bakugou’s skin.

Todoroki then rose abruptly to his feet, and Bakugou had an instant to worry that he’d misjudged somehow, that maybe he’d scared Todoroki off or offended him — though he didn’t think it was actually possible to offend Todoroki, just piss him off. But then Todoroki reached into the pocket of that fucking spectacular suit jacket and pulled out a wallet that looked like it cost five times as much as all the contents of Bakugou’s apartment put together, the leather dyed so intensely black it was hard to see the edges where they rounded and dropped off into space.

Without taking his eyes off Bakugou, Todoroki pulled out a couple of bills and dropped them on the table. It looked like two ¥10,000 notes, which was fucking crazy for four beers, whatever shitty cocktail Bakugou had ordered and a couple of bowls of nuts. “Come on,” Todoroki said. He pulled Bakugou to his feet with seemingly no effort at all. Bakugou’s brain shorted out just for a moment at the sight of Todoroki Shouto standing directly in front of him: 180 centimeters of perfection decked out in that goddam gorgeous suit, 80 kilograms of muscle and sinew and probably not a single gram of unnecessary body fat.

But then Todoroki was pulling at Bakugou’s arm, tugging him out of the bar and across the lobby to the elevators, drawing him along insistently, not rushing but not meandering either, and Bakugou had to hurry to keep up with Todoroki’s long-legged stride. Todoroki’s hand was clamped tight around Bakugou’s wrist like he was afraid Bakugou was going to try to run. The heat was a little uncomfortable but Bakugou liked it. Todoroki was perfectly able to control his body temperature, so he was either doing it deliberately or he was so turned on he was getting sloppy; either way was fucking hot. No pun intended, or whatever.

The elevator seemed to take for-fucking-ever to arrive. They didn’t speak while they waited. Todoroki was fidgeting uncharacteristically, his fingers a brand around Bakugou’s wrist. As soon as the doors opened Todoroki pulled Bakugou in. He swiped his wristband on the panel and hit the button for the top floor — of fucking course.

Todoroki released Bakugou’s wrist only when a couple of businessmen got in right as the doors were closing. They were heavily drunk, suits disheveled, laughing loudly about something stupid. Then they noticed Todoroki lurking in the corner. One said, “Holy shit, it’s Hero Shouto!” and starting taking pictures of him without asking, like all the other inconsiderate fucks who thought that being famous meant you forfeited all privacy for the rest of your life. Once upon a time Bakugou had destroyed some dumb fuck’s phone for doing the same thing to him, but tonight he was out of costume and unrecognizable, and Todoroki could take care of himself. (Plus the incident had cost Bakugou a fine, a three-day suspension and a two-week mandatory anger management classes; the momentary satisfaction he’d gotten from exploding the phone hadn’t been worth the price.)

Todoroki didn’t melt the phone or ice it over or do anything interesting at all. He just gave his best neutral face for the camera, the way he always did when he knew he was supposed to smile but didn’t find anything particularly amusing. But then he jutted his chin in Bakugou’s direction and said, “That’s Ground Zero,” and Bakugou had to fake a smile for the gaping idiots even though he kind of wanted to blow something up instead.

Three minutes later they were safely off the elevator and in Todoroki’s room, which had a fucking entrance hall and stretched into the dark beyond that. Bakugou toed his shoes off and Todoroki did the same, and then they stared at each other for approximately five seconds, which was a long time to be staring into someone else’s eyes. Todoroki looked nervous. Fuck that, Bakugou thought, and shouldered past him, striding forward as if his own heart wasn’t thundering in his chest.

The lights came on as he walked into the room. No, scratch that, the lights came on as he walked into Todoroki’s fucking palatial suite, what the goddamn fuck? Bakugou took a quick tour, if only because it was big enough to take a fucking tour. Todoroki’s bathroom was literally twice the size of Bakugou’s entire room, and the … living room? Lounge? …. had a fully stocked bar for some inexplicable reason. Who the fuck needed a bar in a hotel room when there was room service? Wasn’t that what room service was for?

Bakugou checked out the bedroom, which was even more extravagant than the rest of the suite. The bed looked larger than king size, though maybe that was because of its enormous ornately carved frame, plush comforter and fifty thousand pillows. An immense aquarium was set into the wall, with actual live fish swimming stupidly around the artificial sea floor. The windows ran from floor to ceiling across an entire wall and the lights of Yokohama glimmered like stars that had fallen to earth, the privacy coating on the glass creating shimmering halos around each twinkling point of brightness.

Soft music was playing from speakers so well camouflaged that Bakugou couldn’t spot them: some mellow pop shit Bakugou doubted was Todoroki’s choice given that Todoroki’s musical taste in high school had started with Bach and ended with Beethoven, all that European classical shit his dad probably thought was sophisticated. Bakugou doubted Todoroki had ever started listening to anything composed in the current century, so the room probably came with a music concierge or whatever.

Bakugou turned around and Todoroki was right there, holy shit. Up close Todoroki was even bigger. Bakugou wasn’t fucking short, especially not in Japan, but Todoroki was goddamn tall everywhere he went, and he was broad, too; the jacket was tailored to mask it a little but up close there was no hiding how fucking wide his shoulders were, not freakishly as wide as his father or even fucking Deku, who was built like a short, sturdy tank, but strong and solid and perfectly proportional in every goddamn possible way.

Suddenly Bakugou wanted very, very badly to see all the magnificent skin underneath the magnificent suit. “Off,” he rasped. He coughed to clear his throat. “Take your suit off.”

Todoroki’s eyes got big and round, and he swallowed thickly. “Um,” he said.

“Nitroglycerin stains. I don’t want to ruin that suit. It’s fucking fantastic. Take it off.”

Todoroki nodded robotically and stripped off the jacket, tossing it with far less care than it deserved over the back of a nearby chair. His shirt was obviously custom-made also; nothing off the rack would have fit his body so perfectly, seams falling precisely at the edges of his shoulders, cuffs ending exactly at his wrists, the bottom of the shirt tapering flatteringly at his trim waist. His cufflinks were gold with his family kanji etched in diamond dust. The effect was elegant, not flashy. Todoroki undid his tie — pale yellow silk with a subtle blue pattern edged in gold thread — and worked open the top button of his shirt, exposing a small smooth triangle of skin and the edge of his collarbone. Bakugou clenched his fists to keep from reaching out and grabbing, then turned on his heel and went to the bathroom to rinse his sweaty palms in an attempt to at least minimize the damage. The sheets were going to be ruined but if IcyHot could afford this suite at probably ¥250,000 a night, he could afford to replace a set of sheets, and Bakugou swore it was going to be worth every fucking yen.

By the time Bakugou exited the bathroom, dressed only in his trousers, belt open and buckle dangling, Todoroki was down to silk boxers, deep maroon speckled with tiny silver diamonds. Bakugou wondered if they were custom-tailored too, given how well they framed his ass. Todoroki was bent over stripping off his socks, and when he stood up, Bakugou’s mouth went completely dry. Goddamn fucking … now he owed his manager ¥10,000 because he’d been sure those Todoroki billboards had been photoshopped to add more musculature than any human possessed, but no. The abs were fucking real.

Todoroki stared back at him, mouth agape, then shook his head really hard and closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them up again, tentatively, one eye then the other, blue following gray. Even with both eyes open he still seemed doubtful, and blinked a few times like he couldn’t get his vision to focus.

“What?” Bakugou said, maybe just a little defensively. He resisted the urge to cross his arms over his chest. Okay, so obviously he wasn’t as tall or as broad as Todoroki but he knew he looked damn good with his clothes off. His weight lifting routine was designed to maximize aesthetic appeal as well as build practical muscle.

“Nothing,” Todoroki said faintly. “It’s just … this is pretty much every wet dream I ever had in high school.” He blushed then, furiously. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

Bakugou shut Todoroki up by making sure his mouth was otherwise occupied with Bakugou’s tongue. When they pulled apart, Todoroki making a faint noise of displeasure, Bakugou dropped his hands to Todoroki’s waist, hooking his thumbs underneath the elastic band of Todoroki’s boxers. Todoroki’s already impressive erection twitched happily, and Todoroki swallowed a small lewd sound that made Bakugou’s cock leap to attention. “Don’t fucking apologize,” Bakugou demanded. “I want to know every single filthy thing you ever thought about me.”

“Um,” Todoroki said, closing his eyes. His boxers were tenting and he looked like he was going into minor respiratory distress. “That would … probably take a while.”

“Brunch doesn’t start until 11 tomorrow,” Bakugou said. “We have all night.” He leaned in for another kiss. Todoroki’s lips were a little chapped, and he tasted of Premium Yebisu and peanuts. Bakugou bit down hard, and Todoroki reared back, hand flying to his mouth. There was a single drop of blood on his lower lip. Todoroki wiped it off, staring at the trace of red on his finger like he was hypnotized.

“I knew you’d be a biter,” he said raggedly, then reached out and dragged his stained finger down and across Bakugou’s lips.

Bakugou’s cock got hard so quickly, the flow of blood south left him lightheaded for a moment, and air escaped his lungs as if he’d been punched in the gut. “Fuck,” he breathed, reaching down to adjust himself. Why was he still wearing his fucking trousers? “Did you used to jack off thinking about me?”

Todoroki nodded jerkily. Another tiny bead of blood welled up on his lips, and he licked it off absently while pinning Bakugou with his eyes. “All the time,” he breathed. “Every night. I imagined sucking you, what you’d taste like, how you’d feel in my mouth, how it’d feel to have your cock in my ass. I … I bought one of those fake cocks and I … I used to fuck myself with it, and I’d imagine it was you and I’d have to put a pillow over my face because I’d come so hard. Your room was right beneath mine and I thought — I was sure sometimes you would hear me and I wondered … I wondered if you were jerking off too, if you could hear me and it made you hot thinking about me the way I was thinking about you, and I—”

“Oh my fucking god shut up,” Bakugou said desperately, slamming a hand over Todoroki’s perfect, gorgeous, filthy mouth. “Shut up unless you want me to come in my fucking pants, fuck.”

Todoroki, the snarky little bitch, licked Bakugou’s hand in protest, and his tongue was hot, it was burning. Goddamn fucking shit, he could control the temperature of his goddamn tongue.

Bakugou pulled his hand away from the devil incarnate and his demon tongue, and stared up at Todoroki, who was staring back down at him. “I don’t want you to come in your pants,” Todoroki said intently, eyes roving all over him like he wanted to devour him but couldn’t decide where to start. “I want you to come in my mouth and then my ass. Can you do that? How many times can you get it up?”

“Nnngh,” Bakugou said intelligently. He took back every single disparaging remark he had ever made about Todoroki’s conversational skills. Right now, Todoroki’s ability to speak far outstripped Bakugou’s. He resorted to his word of choice, the one that never failed to be appropriate for any given situation. “Fuck.”

“Yes please,” Todoroki said instantly. He tugged Bakugou into the bedroom, where he shoved him up against a wall and yanked his trousers down so violently that they scratched Bakugou’s thighs. Todoroki sank swiftly to his knees, pulled Bakugou’s boxers down to his ankles, and slipped his right hand around Bakugou’s cock, giving an experimental tug. His hand was cold as ice and Bakugou shuddered, his mind spinning. Holy fuck, Todoroki was going to kill him. He didn’t think he’d mind, so long as he had those pretty lips wrapped around his cock.

“This first,” Todoroki said, puffing hot air where his hand was trailing ice. The contrast made Bakugou dizzy with need. “You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about this.” Then he leaned forward and swallowed Bakugou down all at once.

The wall behind Bakugou’s back was a solid support keeping him upright even though his knees were buckling. Todoroki gave head like it was his secret quirk, hot tongue and cold breath or the other way around, using his lips and his teeth and his palm and his fingers, never taking Bakugou far enough in so that he’d make those disgusting gagging noises, but never letting up for an instant either.

Bakugou’s thighs started to tremble and his hips jerked forward of their own accord, fucking deeper into Todoroki’s crazy hot cold warm wet mouth. Todoroki just hummed appreciatively and took it, pushing Bakugou against the wall with his left hand, his skin so hot Bakugou was sure he was going to leave a scald mark on Bakugou’s hip.

“Fuck,” Bakugou said, like a prayer to the no gods he believed in. “Fuck fuck fuck, To …” He couldn’t form all the syllables of Todoroki’s name, but trailed off into a desperate moan.

Todoroki drew off with an absolutely obscene wet slurp. He wiped the saliva from his mouth and peered up at Bakugou from underneath his bangs, now a little tousled, a few strands of red mixing prettily into the white. “It’s a little late to be asking now,” Todoroki said, keeping up a gentle pace with his right hand, fingertips like ice, which was fucking awesome. Bakugou’s legs were quaking. “But you’re clean, right?”

Bakugou pushed his hips forwards into Todoroki’s hand and slammed his head against the wall as Todoroki’s grip tightened. “Uh,” he groaned. “Yes, fuck, yes of course I am; they test us every other week. ‘S not like I’m having a lot of sex anyway, oh … oh fuck, Todoro … fuck fuck fucking … “

Todoroki had swallowed Bakugou neatly back down. All of Bakugou’s coherence packed a bag and fled, leaving him reduced to grunts and groans. Todoroki didn’t seem to mind. This was his game anyway. Bakugou was just along for the ride, but what a fucking ride it was. Todoroki was patient and determined, his technique assured and confident. Bakugou had given head before, and he didn’t do anything unless he could do it well, but it had also always made him feel a little self-conscious.

Not that it was anything to be ashamed of, or emasculating or any fucked up bullshit like that or whatever; he’d just always been embarrassed about how much it turned him on. Todoroki obviously had no similar issues. His cock was jumping in his boxers whenever Bakugou looked down, and he kept making these noises, and every time he pulled off to take a breath he’d stare at Bakugou’s dick like it was the center of the fucking universe.

Todoroki reached down and palmed himself, moaning breathily around Bakugou’s cock, and that was just … that was … “Fuck,” Bakugou whispered. “Fuck, Todoroki, I’m close.”

Todoroki hummed in acknowledgment but didn’t seem to take this as a sign to slow down; if anything he increased his efforts, mouthing wetly at Bakugou’s balls, sucking one into his mouth and then the other, licking his way up Bakugou’s cock, laving at the slit. It was … fuck, Bakugou couldn’t … “Wait,” he said, helplessly. His hips seemed to have developed a mind of their own. “Wait, Todoroki, I’m going to …”

Todoroki popped off. His lips were swollen and shiny with spit and his face was flushed. He looked thoroughly debauched and Bakugou hadn’t even fucking touched him yet. “Good,” Todoroki said. His chest was heaving. “I want you to. I told you, in my mouth and then my ass.”

Then he bent back down and swallowed Bakugou deep, sucking hard, and pushed one fingertip up into Bakugou’s asshole just past the ring of muscle. Bakugou bucked and jerked. He whined out loud, high and frantic, and exploded into orgasm.

Todoroki sucked him gently through the aftershocks, and then while Bakugou was still reeling, Todoroki rose up and pulled Bakugou in for a kiss, which … was kind of ew, because it was his own cum he was tasting, but Todoroki was pretty insistent and it was hard for Bakugou to get too annoyed when he was still so blissed out. And Todoroki’s tongue was doing some pretty amazing things in Bakugou’s mouth, too, so Bakugou forgave him.

“That was fucking amazing,” Bakugou said, when Todoroki finally let up on his oral assault for long enough for them to breathe.

Todoroki beamed at him. Well, he looked at him with his mouth turned up a millimeter at the edges, which was the Todoroki Shouto equivalent of a beam. Todoroki didn’t do the whole smile-with-teeth thing, which Bakugou appreciated because he didn’t do it either, and he didn’t entirely trust people who did.

“Thank you for letting me,” Todoroki said, and fuck if he didn’t look like he actually meant it, which he might, because he was Todoroki fucking Shouto and he was always sincere, but also stupid, because he was Todoroki fucking Shouto and people would pay millions for the privilege of sucking his dick.

“You’re a goddamn freak,” Bakugou said, but he made sure his tone wasn’t mean, and he leaned up to kiss Todoroki again. Kissing Todoroki felt a lot like kissing a firework, or what Bakugou imagined that would feel like, because he wasn’t a fucking moron and wouldn’t actually do that. But Bakugou didn’t have any other explanation for the way the kiss made his head feel a little like it was exploding, and how when he closed his eyes, he actually saw fucking stars.

Bakugou shucked his trousers and his boxers all the way off, then stared at Todoroki pointedly until his boxers hit the floor. Todoroki’s cock was flushed and erect, nestled in a thatch of bi-colored hair, and it resembled Todoroki himself, long and solid and fucking gorgeous.

“Bed,” Bakugou commanded, and reached out and shoved Todoroki backward. Todoroki fell only because he wanted to — shoving him felt a little like shoving a marble statue — but he landed on the bed with a huff of laughter. Before Bakugou could join him, though, Todoroki frowned and said, “Wait, I don’t want to—” and stripped off the fancy comforter and threw all the pillows to the other side of the room. Then Todoroki lay back again, naked and stunning, pale skin practically glowing against the sheets.

The silk sheets, Bakugou discovered when he joined Todoroki on the bed. Bakugou didn’t think he’d ever slept in anything like those sheets; they probably had a thread count of a million or whatever. Which figured; of course the most expensive suite in the hotel had sheets to match, but lying in the bed felt lush and decadent, and Bakugou was almost a little sorry about the drops of nitroglycerin he was bound to sweat out everywhere.

Todoroki’s eyes were on him, hot and hungry. “What do you want to do?” Bakugou asked, trialing his fingers slowly up the soft skin from Todoroki’s hip to his stomach, tracing the outline of his ribs, circling one hardened nipple .

“I told you—”

“Yeah, well that’s going to have to wait for a little bit,” Bakugou said. He switched to the other nipple, tweaking it idly. “I’m not sixteen, and you just blew my brain out through my ears, so … yeah.”

Todoroki hummed and seemed to consider this fact thoughtfully. He crossed his arms behind his head and settled a little more comfortably into the ridiculously accommodating mattress. He was quiet for a long time, eyes roving over Bakugou’s body. Then his gaze landed on Bakugou’s mouth and stopped, and color began creeping slowly up his neck, a pink flush sweeping across his face from chin to cheeks to forehead.

“What?” Bakugou flipped over so he was lying half on top of Todoroki. The heat from Todoroki’s left side made it feel a little like he was lying on top of an electric blanket. While he waited for an answer, Bakugou wrapped his hand around Todoroki’s cock and gave a few lazy pulls. It was the one part of Todoroki's body that seemed uniformly hot.

Todoroki inhaled sharply, hips jerking, and released his breath in a soft grunt of surprise. “Um,” he said. His eyes fluttered closed.

“Don’t um me, IcyHot. You thought of something you wanted me to do. Something specific.” He stroked up and down again, swiping his thumb roughly across Todoroki’s slit, and Todoroki sighed and shuddered against him.

“I just,” Todoroki said. “You could. Maybe.” He shifted restlessly under Bakugou’s touch, cock throbbing and swelling. “Stop. Don’t — I don’t want to come until you’re in me.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You’re not going to come until I say so.” He released Todoroki’s cock and started playing with his balls instead. They were heavy in his hand, the left noticeably warmer than the right, which was hilarious if not unexpected. “So, what was it?”

“Um,” Todoroki said again.

Bakugou slid up his body and kissed him long and deep. Todoroki melted beneath him, soft and pliable, mouth gone slack to accommodate Bakugou’s questing tongue.

“You could eat me out,” Todoroki said in a barely audible whisper, after Bakugou had moved on to nuzzling Todoroki’s ear. “If you, if you do that.”

In fact, that wasn’t something Bakugou had ever done, though it wasn’t something he was averse to on general principles, either. It was just something that he’d never been particularly inclined to try before. But the thought of doing that to Todoroki, of having Todoroki open and vulnerable in front of him, of being able to focus only on making Todoroki feel amazing without being distracted by his the needs of his own cock, of the sounds Todoroki might make as Bakugou explored him with his tongue … Bakugou was all of a sudden very, very inclined to try it right the fuck now.

Of course there were sanitary issues, but Bakugou didn’t think Todoroki would have asked if he weren’t cleaned out and safe, because Todoroki was socially oblivious but he was also smart and thoughtful and considerate in his own quiet way.

“All right,” Bakugou said, and was rewarded with a huff of surprise.

Todoroki pulled back his head to stare at him, eyes wide. “Really?”

“The fuck do you mean, really? I said I would, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” Todoroki said. “But—”

“No butts except this one,” Bakugou said, in English, because he wan’t above switching languages to make a truly lousy joke. He squeezed Todoroki’s ass, which was warm and pleasantly firm, then nudged him with his thigh, trying to get him to roll over. “Hands and knees, Half ‘n Half.”

Todoroki stared at him for a moment longer then scrambled up and over, all his usual grace gone, muttering a startled “oh my god” under his breath.

“What?” Bakugou asked, transfixed by the site of Todoroki’s ass in the air in front of his face, pale and smooth and inviting. “You asked.”

“I know,” Todoroki said, muffled. His head was down and he was peering at Bakugou through the space between his long, muscled legs. “I just …” He jerked at the feel of Bakugou’s hands on his ass, spreading his cheeks apart. “I didn’t think you’d really …” Bakugou ran a spit-moistened finger along Todoroki’s crack, circling his hole, and Todoroki’s voice caught violently in his throat. “Sorry,” he said senselessly. “Fifteen-year-old me is freaking out right now.”

“I wish I’d known,” Bakugou said, meaning it intensely. He remembered Todoroki at that age, coltish, awkward and untouchable, irritated with his own celebrity but unable to escape it, filled with a shit-ton of rage towards his father that he couldn’t get rid of and didn’t know what to do with. But Todoroki had also been tragically beautiful, goofy with a sly sense of humor on the rare occasions he let it out, a guy who harbored a secret weakness for kittens and shojo manga, and for years the photo on his lock-screen had been an ethereal picture of his mother looking dreamily out the window of her hospital room that made Bakugou ache every time he accidentally saw it.

Huh. Maybe Bakugou had been paying more attention to Todoroki than he’d ever realized. Bakugou pressed a kiss to the tender skin of Todoroki’s lower back, pale and dotted with old, faint burn scars. “I wish I’d had a fucking clue.”

“It’s okay,” Todoroki said breathlessly. “It’s okay, I wouldn’t have …” His head crashed down onto the bed and a shudder ran through him. “Fuck,” he whispered. Bakugou had just run his fingers up Todoroki’s crack, pressing in hard.

Pleased at the reaction, Bakugou spread Todoroki’s cheeks a little farther apart. He liked the way his fingers looked against Todoroki’s ass; he liked the contrast of his slightly darker skin against Todoroki’s creamy pearl tone. He tightened his grip and spread Todoroki’s cheeks a little more, revealing his asshole, small and puckered. Bakugou’s mouth actually watered at the sight, which was fucking weird, but he knew guys who loved eating pussy and he supposed this was no different. Except that it was different because it was Todoroki fucking Shouto, and Bakugou would never have guessed three hours ago that he’d be here now, and even if he had guessed, he’d never have guessed that he’d be doing this. Fuck it. Overthinking was for losers like Deku. He was here with Todoroki and he was committed. He bent his head down and stuck his tongue in Todoroki’s ass.

Todoroki keened, his whole body jerking. “Holy shit,” he gasped, “fuck …”

Bakugou decided he liked the Todoroki who cursed. He liked being the one who made Todoroki do it. Todoroki’s asshole was tight and warm and smelled vaguely of antiseptic soap. There was nothing disgusting about it. It was just another part of the body, and touching it made Todoroki tremble, which Bakugou liked a lot too. Bakugou licked some more then he dribbled some spit in, because he’d seen guys do that in gay pornos, not that he’d been looking for tutorials or whatever, but sometimes you picked up good shit from watching and it’d be dumb not to use it just because you saw it on PornHub.

The extra moisture made it easier to stick his tongue in farther, and Todoroki shuddered when he did it, collapsing from his hands to his elbows and swearing repeatedly under his breath.

Bakugou rolled his tongue into a little tube and jabbed it in and out a few times. Todoroki fucking fell apart, groaning into the sheets, body jerking. This was more fun that Bakugou would have guessed, maybe even more fun than giving head, though Bakugou wasn’t sure whether he was enjoying it so much because it felt a little illicit or because it was Todoroki he was doing it to. He’d have to make sure to suck Todoroki’s cock too; then he would have a legitimate basis for comparison.

His tongue couldn’t reach very far, so Bakugou switched to his index finger, pushing in slow and deep and twisting until he found … there. Todoroki went rigid and gasped “oh fuck” then pushed back desperately on Bakugou’s hand, groaning low in his throat. His ass clenched hotly around Bakugou’s finger and he moaned.

Bakugou had been fucked before, because he wan’t one of those selfish pricks who thought their asshole was somehow sacred fucking territory, but he couldn’t say he’d ever really loved it. It’d just been part of the deal; it seemed only fair to let his parter have a go at his ass if Bakugou had done the same. He knew how much he enjoyed fucking, and he assumed other guys liked it just as much. It was genetic or evolutionary or whatever.

But Bakugou had had a couple of partners who had truly loved being fucked, one guy who’d even been able to come without Bakugou ever touching his dick at all. Todoroki was one of those guys who loved it, Bakugou concluded, at least based on the way he was shuddering and moaning and generally falling apart. Or else it was just that Bakugou’s first attempt at eating ass was spectacularly successful. Maybe both. Bakugou prided himself on being a quick study, and, yeah, there had been PornHub or whatever.

A few more twisting thrusts with his fingers earned a couple of really satisfying moans, but then Bakugou switched back to his tongue because that’s what Todoroki had asked for, after all. He did the little fucking motion again, in and out and in and out as fast as he could, and Todoroki was wrecked; he was practically sobbing, and Bakugou had a deeply shameful moment of jealousy wondering if Todoroki had reacted like this to the lovers he’d had in the years since they’d graduated, when Bakugou had been stumbling around trying to figure his shit out, too stupid to realize what he’d missed out on in high school.

Todoroki’s cock was bright red and leaking. A single good tug would probably put him over the edge, but Bakugou had made a promise, and he wasn’t about to break it. So he drew up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and gently pushed at Todoroki until Todoroki flipped over onto his back.

“Condom?” Bakugou asked, blurrily. His tongue was fucking exhausted.

Todoroki was wild-eyed and flushed, destroyed. His right side was covered in ice cold sweat; his left was literally steaming. “Nightstand,” he mumbled, clutching at the sheets, maybe to stop himself from grabbing his own dick, which was straining towards the sky. Bakugou slid over and checked the drawer of the nightstand, and there indeed was a box of condoms and a small bottle of lube. Todoroki had either put them there while Bakugou had been in the bathroom, or else Todoroki had been a lot more optimistic than Bakugou would have attributed to him, when he left the hotel room for the evening to go to the wedding.

Bakugou knelt between Todoroki’s legs, bending them up and spreading them apart. He flipped open the lube and poured it down Todoroki’s crack. Todoroki shivered once, a shudder than ran through his entire body, and pulled in a breath that sounded like it hurt. He was crumpling the sheets in his hands. His hips jerked up once, hard. Bakugou leaned over and started trailing kisses along Todoroki’s inner thigh at the same time as he began working the lube into Todoroki’s asshole. He started with one finger in a slow, steady rhythm, and waited to add a second until Todoroki was relaxed again, then eventually a third.

Watching his own fingers slide in and out of Todoroki’s body was hypnotizing, really. He made liberal use of the lube, and by the time he was done the sheets were sticky and gross, but Todoroki was whimpering now and pushing back against Bakugou’s hand, restless and eager.

“Hey,” Bakugou said, twisting his fingers just so; Todoroki groaned and shuddered and cursed. “What does your father think about you being gay?”

Todoroki took so long to answer that Bakugou was about to ask again, but then Todoroki raised his head a bit and said, voice unsteady, “He, uh, he … fuck … he doesn’t love it.”

Bakugou was unsurprised, but he found himself frowning anyway. “Does he give you shit about it?”

“Ah. No, not … not really, we don’t … oh fuck … we don’t talk about it. So long as I have a … a kid with a goo—uhhh—a good quirk, h-he won’t, won’t, fuck, fuck, yes …”

Bakugou pulled his fingers all the way out, and Todoroki moaned in frustration and dropped his head to the bed again.

“A kid with a good quirk? The fuck does that mean?”

Todoroki made a kind of disgusted noise. After a minute with no ass activity, he seemed to get his breathing a little more under control. “You know. He wants to make sure I breed appropriately. Enhance the Todoroki family line. I think he’s got a whole list of potential egg donors and surrogates already picked out.”

“That’s fucking gross,” Bakugou said, offended.

“Yeah.” Todoroki heaved a sigh. “Actually you’d think it’d be better that I’m gay, because then it doesn’t really matter who I end up with, only whose genes we get for the kid. But he’s kind of traditional, so there’s that.” After another minute, he twisted his head around to look Bakugou in the face. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d really rather not be talking about Endeavor when you’re about to put your cock in my ass.” He paused. “You are going to put your cock in my ass soon, right?”

“Patience, padawan,” Bakugou said. He stared down at Todoroki sprawled wantonly on the bed, sweaty, face flushed, legs spread wide and inviting. Bakugou had never seen anyone so fuckable in his life. He wished he had his phone handy. Not that he’d ever show anyone if he did take a picture; fuck that, he wasn’t some sick creep who uploaded sex pictures; but it’d be nice just to have one for himself so he could remember, because it’d be a goddamn shame to forget even a single detail of how Todoroki looked right now. “How’s your dick?”

“…what?”

“You’ve been hard for like an hour. I was afraid you’d come the second I got inside you.”

Todoroki jerked his head up, scowling. “That’s why you asked me about my father?”

“Mmm.” Bakugou jacked himself to full hardness with a few quick strokes and ripped open the condom package with his teeth. “Did it work?”

“Fuck you.” Todoroki sounded pouty. “Yes. Are you going to fuck me now?”

“Yes.” Bakugou pulled on the condom and lubed up. For good measure, he lubed Todoroki’s ass up a little more, too, making sure to twist his fingers just right, until Todoroki’s breath hitched. “Ready?”

“Bakugou,” Todoroki said, very seriously. “I’ve been ready for the past nine years.”

Bakugou felt a jolt of arousal so strong, he had to clutch at his own dick until the urgency passed. Never mind Todoroki coming too quickly, Bakugou was worried he wouldn’t last long enough to make it good for Todoroki. And Bakugou was going to make it absolutely fucking great for Todoroki.

Todoroki’s legs were trembling slightly when Bakugou gripped them, probably just from the stress of holding the awkward position. Bakugou hooked Todoroki’s comfortably warm left leg over his shoulder, wrapped his arm around it and leaned in close. Then he positioned himself carefully and slid inside, just the tip at first, then a little deeper, rocking back and forth until he was fully sheathed.

“Oh fuck,” Todoroki said, craning his neck to stare down at where their bodies were joined together. He was breathing in short little pants. Gasping, really. His whole body was trembling.

Bakugou was mildly alarmed. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Todoroki said. “Fine, I’m fine, I’m just …” He swallowed and dropped his head back to the bed, chest heaving. “I can’t believe this is actually happening. Can you move?”

“Move … move where, am I hurting you?”

“No, I meant—” Todoroki flexed his thigh, the one that was hooked over Bakugou’s shoulder, to pull their bodies a little closer together. “—move.”

“Oh,” Bakugou said, and obeyed. He splayed his left hand on Todoroki’s right hip, clutched onto Todoroki’s left leg like it was an anchor, and started fucking him in earnest, starting slowly and building up speed as Todoroki sighed and relaxed to let Bakugou in. Todoroki’s ass was warm, but one side was hotter than the other and the differential felt unreal on Bakugou’s cock. He wondered what it might feel like without a condom muting the sensation. Maybe one day you’ll find out, he thought, and almost came on the spot.

For such a lousy conversationalist, Todoroki was fucking noisy in bed, grunting with every thrust, moaning when Bakugou dove in at precisely the right angle, pleading obscenely when Bakugou paused to catch his breath or just slow things down. Did fancy hotels have fancy soundproofing too, Bakugou wondered deliriously at one point, when Todoroki was being particularly vocal and enthusiastic. If not, everyone on the floor, possibly everyone on the floor below too, was going to know what they were up to. He hoped they were enjoying it as much as he was.

“Can I—” Todoroki gasped at one point, “can I ride you? I always, ah, fuck, wanted to.”

Bakugou would have agreed to literally fucking anything Todoroki had asked him at that moment. He would have agreed to carry Todoroki’s quirk-bred babies, if only it meant that Todoroki would not separate himself one millimeter from Bakugou’s body. “Whatever you want,” Bakugou managed. His earlier orgasm seemed like it had happened in the far distant past. Bakugou wanted to come very badly but at the same time he wanted this to last for-fucking-ever.

Todoroki pulled himself upright and crushed Bakugou to him for a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss. He still tasted of Bakugou. Then he pushed Bakugou down on his back, right in the middle of the fucking disgusting sheets, damp with sweat and lube and spit. Bakugou did not care about the sheets or the mess. The only thing that mattered was Todoroki above him, positioning himself carefully, then driving his body down with a single firm thrust.

Bakugou hissed, air whistling through his teeth, and clutched desperately at Todoroki’s hips. Todoroki leaned forward, bracing himself on Bakugou’s chest, and began sliding up and down Bakugou’s cock, which was … which felt … “Fuck,” Bakugou said helplessly.

“All right,” Todoroki said, and redoubled his efforts.

Bakugou thought he might have a heart attack.

Todoroki, oblivious to Bakugou’s possible cardiac distress, stared at him like he was the literal sun and moon and fucking stars. Todoroki’s pupils were blown so wide that his eyes looked practically identical. “Bakugou,” Todoroki said, driving himself down hard, “you don’t know how often I … even after UA …”

Bakugou’s cock was hard as diamonds. Hard as titanium. He didn’t think he was going to last very much longer no matter how hard he tried to wait. “Even after UA what?”

“I’d …” Todoroki panted. “All the time. You’re so … Midoriya sends those videos and I always save yours, and I … fuck, I always … fuck, fuck … let me, I need to …” He grabbed at his cock and starting stroking himself, groaning with relief.

Most of Bakugou’s brain cells had turned themselves off for the duration, but he had one or two left, just enough push Todoroki off him and onto the bed, on his back. “Not until I tell you,” he said recklessly, then shoved back in.

Once, twice, half a dozen times, faster and faster, at an exhausting, overwhelming pace. Todoroki was keening beneath him, a soft steady whine that rose and fell with every strangled inhale. “Fuck,” Todoroki gasped. “Fuck, yes, please, I … Bakugou, please.”

Todoroki looked strung out and exhausted, and about as desperate as Bakugou, and he hadn’t had the bonus orgasm to start. So Bakugou leaned forward, pushing in as deep as he could, braced one hand on the bed and wrapped his other around Todoroki’s cock. He stroked hard and fast, hand a blur, and Todoroki’s mouth fell open as he struggled for breath. “Come for me now, Shouto,” Bakugou said.

Todoroki’s eyes flew open wide and he stared at Bakugou, astonished. He dragged in one enormous shuddering breath, body tense and quivering, and came with a wild cry, bucking like he was going into spasm.

In the moment, Todoroki looked absolutely fucking transcendent, open and beautiful and absolutely the most gorgeous goddamn thing Bakugou had ever seen. And in that moment, all Bakugou wanted was to make Todoroki feel that way, look that way, again and again and again, as many times as Todoroki would let him, to make up for all the years he could have been doing exactly that, if only he hadn’t been such a blind idiot a decade ago.

Stupid asshole, Bakugou thought to himself, don’t let him go this time, you fucking oblivious moron. He bent down again, kissed Todoroki’s warm, welcoming mouth, and let himself follow into bliss.

~

Bakugou woke up to the sound of the toilet flushing. The curtains were made of a heavy fabric that vanished every trace of sunlight, and he had no idea what the fuck time it was. It could have been the middle of the night or 11 in the morning already. He rolled over into the space where Todoroki had been and breathed in deep. The bed reeked: the musty smell of sex mixed with Bakugou’s own sweet nitroglycerin sweat and whatever the fuck scent Todoroki had been wearing last night, laced with some April-fresh laundry detergent and fabric softener. He shoved his face into Todoroki’s pillow and lay there, inhaling, until Todoroki emerged from the bathroom and stumbled his way through the dark back to the bed.

Todoroki seemed surprised but not displeased to find Bakugou in his space. “Good morning,” he said, snuggling up close, stroking his hand up and down Bakugou’s hip, warm fingers lingering possessively on the swell of his ass.

“The fuck time is it?” Bakugou grumbled. Todoroki’s hand on his exposed skin felt like sunshine in the middle of winter.

Todoroki hummed. “About 10:15.”

Bakugou sighed drowsily. “Haven’t slept this late in fucking forever.”

“Blackout curtains,” Todoroki said.

“Fantastic sex,” Bakugou countered.

Todoroki’s quiet laughter rumbled in his chest, and his hand on Bakugou’s ass started stroking with a little more purpose.

It felt amazing, but if they got started with anything fun, they’d definitely miss the fucking wedding brunch. Bakugou reluctantly slid out from under Todoroki’s groping hand and sat up. He reached over to turn on the light, squinting against the sudden glare.

Todoroki didn’t flinch — he’d probably had the light on in the bathroom. When Bakugou had blinked his way to vision, Todoroki was lying there just looking at him, hand splayed across his own stomach, thumb at his belly button, the tip of his pinky skirting the edge of his sparse treasure trail. The fine white hairs on the right were almost invisible against his skin, making him look strangely lopsided.

“I’m,” Bakugou said, jerking his thumb toward the bathroom. “Going to brush my teeth.”

“All right,” Todoroki said, and reached for his phone, abs flexing as he stretched across the bed to the nightstand. Bakugou looked at him because he could, then looked away because he really had to piss.

Once in the colossal marble bathroom, bladder emptied, Bakugou realized he didn’t have a toothbrush, but then he reasoned that he’d had his tongue up Todoroki’s ass and in his mouth, and on his cock too in the middle of the night, and Todoroki had had his tongue on practically every inch of Bakugou, so it was silly to start worrying now about sharing germs and whatever. He picked up Todoroki’s toothbrush, which was still damp. Brushing his teeth with the toothbrush that Todoroki had just had in his own mouth a few minutes earlier put Bakugou in an unusually good mood, and he was whistling faintly as he finished his business and went back to the bedroom.

Todoroki was sitting up in bed, cross-legged, back against the headboard, swiping at his phone. The sheets were rucked up messily under and around his legs, hiding nothing worth seeing, which was every square centimeter of his skin, now a little more marked than it had been last night, but still fucking edible. Bakugou swallowed hard. Fucking stupid wedding brunches. He was tempted to skip it altogether and stay here in bed with Todoroki, but then fucking Deku would complain to Auntie and she’d complain to the hag and Bakugou would never hear the end of it for the rest of his life.

Todoroki looked up as Bakugou climbed back into the bed. Bakugou seated himself directly on Todoroki’s lap and kissed him hard.

“Mmm,” Todoroki said appreciatively. “Minty.” His hands settled on Bakugou’s hips like they belonged there. His cock was twitching just a little, but there was less time now than there had been a few minutes ago, so any action in that arena would have to wait.

“What time is checkout?” Bakugou asked.

“Noon, I think. But I can get late checkout.” Todoroki leaned in for another kiss, sighing into Bakugou’s mouth. “I could get another night. I’m sure the room’s not booked. It’s very expensive.”

“No fucking kidding,” Bakugou said. “Let’s just get this fucking brunch over with.”

“All right,” Todoroki said, but he made no move to get out of the bed even when Bakugou slid off his lap. “Bakugou.” His voice was tentative. “I have to tell you something.”

Bakugou stopped in the middle of gathering up his clothing. He straightened and turned slowly, holding his trousers protectively in front of his crotch, readying himself for some kind of blow. “You’d better not be fucking telling me you’ve got a goddamn boyfriend,” he said. “I’d better not be your fucking hall pass.” Todoroki had been on Japan’s most eligible bachelor list since before they graduated UA, not that Bakugou kept up with that or anything, but people tweeted all sorts of shit and whatever, and Kirishima still spammed his Twitter feed for kicks. Bakugou was going to get very angry if Todoroki was involved with someone on the down low, and hadn’t thought to mention that fact before taking Bakugou down his throat and making him have feelings and shit.

But Todoroki just stared at him blankly. “I don’t have a boyfriend. What’s a hall pass?”

The sudden dissipation of the adrenaline rush left Bakugou shaking, but he covered it by bending back down to the floor to find his socks and taking a few deep breaths like he’d learned in that fucking stupid anger management class. When he stood back up, Todoroki was still sitting patiently in the bed, brow furrowed.

“It’s nothing,” Bakugou said. “Just fucking forget it. What do you have to tell me?”

Todoroki coughed and looked away, then took a deep breath and raised his eyes to Bakugou’s, stiffening his spine. “I didn’t leave the wedding to go the bathroom,” he said determinedly. “I was looking for you.”

“Yeah,” Bakugou said, shrugging. “I kind of figured, what with the way you dragged me up here for sex and whatever.”

Todoroki narrowed his eyes. “You were the one who propositioned me,” he said, but he didn’t really sound angry. “But that’s not why I … that’s not why.” He looked down at the sheets, frowning at a stain which was never fucking going to come out no matter how much he rubbed at it. The sheets were toast.

Bakugou busied himself pulling on his boxers. Gross, he was filthy and needed a shower desperately, but he’d take one back in his room where he had clean clothes to change into afterwards. He grit his teeth and pulled on his trousers. Where the fuck was his shirt?

“I had a proposition for you,” Todoroki said. “But not for sex. For work. And I know it might be weird now that we’ve … done this, but I still wanted to ask.”

Bakugou found his shirt on the back of the bathroom door along with his suit jacket and tie. “Ask what?”

Todoroki took a breath. “Do you want to join my agency?”

“… what?” Bakugou stared at Todoroki, who was still sitting naked in bed, and didn’t seem to think that was weird for a business conversation. “Me? Join your agency? I’m not going to fucking work for you, IcyHot.”

“You wouldn’t,” Todoroki said. “That’s not what I … I need a partner. The agency’s too big for me to handle on my own. My father was still sidekicking when he was our age. I don’t think he could have run an agency by himself then, but he doesn’t remember how hard it is, starting out as a pro, and … I don’t want to shut it down, but it’s too much. For me, I mean. It’s too much for me. I need a partner.”

Bakugou sat down on the bed very suddenly. “A partner. Me? Why would you … ” Nobody wanted him in that capacity, least of all Todoroki fucking Shouto who could probably get any goddamn hero he wanted just by smiling, batting his very pretty red and white eyelashes and dangling a million yen carrot. Bakugou was a very good hero but also a very problematic one. He was rough and coarse and he cursed too much and he wasn’t especially nice to children or old people or anybody, really, and there was always a lot of collateral property damage whenever he was on the scene.

But Todoroki just looked back at him, eyes wide and completely sincere. “Of course I want you. You’re Bakugou fucking Katsuki.”

Snarky. Little. Bitch.

“We always worked well together,” Todoroki continued, urgent and relentless. “You’re the most driven hero I know. You’re strong as hell, and you don’t take any bullshit from anybody, and you have a good heart. You’re smart and you’re careful and you want to be the best hero in the world and I think you will be one day. So. That’s why.”

Bakugou found he had nothing to say to that for a solid minute. His heart was pounding wildly in his chest, not so much from what Todoroki had said but how intently he’d been staring at Bakugou while he said it. “Deku,” Bakugou managed eventually. “You two are best friends, why wouldn’t you—”

Todoroki shook his head. “He’s reckless. Too reckless. Impulsive. Not like you. He doesn’t think before he acts and I can’t work like that.” He shrugged. “Anyway, they’re moving to I-Island. Melissa thinks it’ll be better for the baby. Japan and America are too prejudiced against quirkless people.”

Bakugou strained his brain to no avail. “Who the fuck is Melissa?”

“Um. Midoriya’s wife?”

His tone was vaguely reproachful, but it’s not as if Bakugou had paid any attention to the wedding. He’d been playing Candy Crush during the ceremony … with his phone on mute, all right; he wasn’t a complete asshole. But then he said, “Wait. What baby?”

Todoroki blinked at him. “She’s pregnant. That’s why the engagement was so short. You didn’t know?”

“Of course I didn’t fucking know! I don’t give a shit about about fucking Deku and who he’s fucking. But he’s not a complete fucking moron. I know he knows how to use a condom.” The incident in question had been an accidental sighting which had been profoundly scarring on both sides, and its existence is a secret Bakugou will take in silence to his grave. “Were they trying to get pregnant or something?”

“No, I think they were at a party and Midoriya was drunk and something happened with his quirk. I don’t know. I usually tune him out when he starts talking about this stuff.” Todoroki made a face. “He overshares. I don’t need to know the details of his sex life.”

Just thinking about Deku having sex made Bakugou feel slightly nauseated. He looked down and finished buttoning his shirt. They both still needed to shower and change. They were definitely going to be late to brunch.

“Just think about it,” Todoroki said. “I know you might not want to move back to Tokyo, but you can’t sidekick forever.”

Bakugou had no intention of sidekicking forever. “I like Tokyo fine,” he said. He grimaced. “But the money is a problem. I can’t fucking afford to buy half an agency.” Not even half of the crap agency where he was working in Kyoto, and certainly not half of one of the top hero agencies in the country. Hero work didn’t pay particularly well until you went pro, and even then, not until you cracked the top 100. Bakugou would probably debut in the high-100s somewhere, if he was lucky. Todoroki had of course debuted around 50 because he was Todoroki fucking Shouto, and he’d been moving up steadily in the rankings since then; some fucking idiots out there claimed nepotism but that was only because they’d never seen him in action. Todoroki couldn’t help being Endeavor’s son, but his work spoke for itself. He was an amazing hero and Bakugou would fucking destroy anybody who said otherwise.

“I don’t need your money,” Todoroki said. He waved his arm at the fucking ridiculous room. “I have more money than I know what to do with. I need a partner.”

Bakugou chewed at his lip, hesitating.

Todoroki watched him with his weird unblinking stare. “If the money’s a problem, we could work something out. I meant it, I don’t need it. But if that makes you uncomfortable, I’m sure the lawyers could come up with something so that I keep all the equity. I don’t think that’s very fair to you, but if that’s how you want it … or you could, I could lend you the money, and you could pay me back over time.”

The Todoroki agency was worth more money than Bakugou was ever likely to make as a hero, unless he got one of those fucking endorsement deals his manager was always on about. That was something Bakugou had never really seriously considered, because making money had never been the point for him — it had never even been a point. He wasn’t materialistic and he didn’t have expensive tastes. His apartment in Kyoto was small and inexpensive because he was hardly ever there, and what money he did spend was mostly related to food: a good set of pots and knives; high quality ingredients for the meals he mostly made himself. He had a great laptop and a good phone. He didn’t really need a lot else. Though maybe, now that he’d tried them, he’d invest in some higher quality sheets.

But for this, well, maybe he could take one of those endorsement deals after all. Or several. The kind of money they threw at you was fucking insane, and popularity bred on itself. If he went pro and joined Todoroki’s agency, he’d get a deal easy, and then once he was established he could get more deals for more money, and then he could start to pay Todoroki back. All it’d take would be a few humiliating photo shoots, and if even Todoroki, who hated being the center of attention, had figured out how to suffer his way through them, Bakugou certainly could. Or he could start out as an employee, as much as that grated, but over time he could buy a stake in the agency, maybe.

Todoroki’s face had settled into kind of a dismal resignation. “If you don’t want to—”

“I want to,” Bakugou said immediately, to wipe that look off Todoroki’s face, permanently, if possible. “Of course I fucking want to.” It was the offer of a lifetime, even if the money was problematic, a point of pride for Bakugou even if Todoroki didn’t care about it. That was a detail, not the main issue. He swallowed. “It’s just.” He waved his hand at Todoroki, then at himself, then at the bed, the room, the everything. “This,” he said, waving some more. “Was great. And I kind of want to do it again. Like, a lot.”

Todoroki was silent, watching him, but a spark of hope had flared to life in his eyes, and that was much better than unhappy acceptance. “Me too.”

“And I. I just.” This was torture. Bakugou didn’t talk about feelings and shit. “If I had to pick. One or the fucking other, I mean. I’d pick this. I’d. I’d fucking love to work with you, I think it’d be fucking amazing, we’d be fucking amazing, but I.” Ugh, this was fucking horrible. He was the worst person in the world at talking about this kind of shit. Bakugou grit his teeth and finished in a rush. “I wouldn’t want that, if it meant not having this.”

Todoroki sat motionless on the bed, searching Bakugou’s face. The fact that he was entirely naked still didn’t seem to bother him. Bakugou envied him that ability to dissociate, or maybe it was simply that Todoroki was completely comfortable in his own skin, after so many years of having every facet of his life scrutinized. “Can’t we have both?”

“I don’t know,” Bakugou said. “Can we?” He turned to the window and pulled open the blinds. Sunlight streamed a startling light into the room, casting shadows on the far side of the bed where Todoroki had last night tossed the comforter and dozen extra pillows. Outside, Yokohama’s unfamiliar skyline rose stark and jagged into the sky, the Cosmo Clock 21 looming over the waterfront. Bakugou wasn’t due back in Kyoto until the next day, and he hadn’t been to Cosmo World since he was a kid. Maybe he’d go later. Maybe Todoroki would come with him and they’d ride the Ferris wheel and make out on the top of the world for a while.

Todoroki rose from the bed and pulled on his boxers before joining Bakugou at the window to gaze in companionable silence at the view. His skin gleamed, painted a warm honey gold by the sun. In the bright morning light, nicks and scars and pockmarks marred his skin, imperfections the rest of the world didn’t see on the airbrushed billboards. Bakugou liked it. It felt like a secret side of Todoroki meant only for Bakugou.

“Bakugou.” Todoroki’s voice was quiet, contemplative. “If you’re worried that we’ll be”—he paused to search for the word—“compromised. If we’re working together and dating.”

Bakugou felt a stupid thrill at the word ‘dating,’ but he didn’t think it showed on his face, and in any event, Todoroki was still gazing out over the city. From this high vantage point, 60-something floors up, they city looked quiet and peaceful. But down below, Bakugou was sure the villains were already active. Bakugou wasn’t even sure who the heroes were in Yokohama. He thought Kaminari might be sidekicking here, or maybe it was whatshisname, the guy with the tail. He wondered why Deku and his wife — shit, that was fucking weird, Deku and his wife — had picked this city for their wedding. Whatshername was American; Bakugou was pretty sure of that, so why here? Maybe Auntie had relatives here. Then Bakugou decided he didn’t really care all that much, or at all, really. He was here and Todoroki was here and that was really the only thing he was interested in at the moment.

“You don’t think we would be?” Bakugou asked. It seemed like an obvious concern. Bakugou had heard plenty of horror stories, even before he’d gotten to UA, and plenty more since then: heroes held hostage one against the other, turning rogue to avenge a lover’s death, making stupid, suicidal decisions simply because they couldn’t see their loved ones’ weaknesses clearly. And there was of course the other side: his own agency had been founded in the wake of Daisy Chain and Sunflower’s nasty divorce, the implosion of their agency and the subsequent destruction of a good chunk of downtown Kyoto to boot.

“I think,” Todoroki said slowly, “that I couldn’t possibly be any more compromised than I already was back at UA. And we worked pretty well together then.” He finally turned his head to look down at Bakugou, then. Bakugou’s breath caught at Todoroki’s sheer prettiness, though maybe part of that was the expression in Todoroki’s eyes when he looked at Bakugou. Maybe that had always been the case, even when Bakugou hadn’t seen it for what it was.

Todoroki reached out to tangle his fingers in Bakugou’s. “I’m willing to risk it. Are you?”

Bakugou hesitated, his heart hammering in his chest. “I’m … kind of a lot,” he said. Todoroki’s fingers were cool and comfortable where they were interlaced with Bakugou’s. No one had ever really held Bakugou’s hand before. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted anyone to do it before. He decided that he liked it. “I’m not … good. With people. I have a bad temper. I mean, I guess you already know that, but it’s still pretty …” He frowned. ”You know what I’m like.”

Todoroki pursed his mouth. “I grew up with Endeavor,” he said dryly. “I can handle Bakugou Katsuki.”

Bakugou laughed unevenly. He felt tense, adrenalized, like he did when he was about to face down a villain with an unknown quirk. “You say that now,” he said roughly. “We’ll see how you feel about it after I’ve exploded every coffee machine in the office.”

Todoroki’s hand twitched and clenched tighter around Bakugou’s.“The office? You mean…”

“The fuck you think I mean? Like I’m gonna back down from a risk you’re willing to take.” He snorted. “Fat fucking chance.”

“Oh,” Todoroki said. His voice was small and amazed. “Really?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Bakugou said. He used his grip on Todoroki’s hand to jerk him him forward, then pulled him in for a kiss, rough and thorough. “Really.”

Brunch, Bakugou decided as Todoroki responded in kind, could wait.

~

Noon had come and gone by the time they finally made it downstairs, Bakugou in jeans and a sweater, Todoroki in dress trousers and a fucking fantastic sports coat. Bakugou stroked the coat idly as they crossed the lobby to the restaurant, because the soft nap felt amazing and also because he could. Because he and Todoroki were dating now, so Bakugou could touch Todoroki whenever he fucking wanted to. And they were going to be heroes together.

Bakugou wanted to tell everyone everything. He could feel the words skittering around in his chest, screaming to be let out. He kind of wanted to run and shout it from a few rooftops. But it was Deku’s wedding, and Bakugou might have been a jerk, but not that big of a jerk; he could let Deku be the center of attention for a while. Anyway he didn’t want to embarrass Todoroki, so he figured he wouldn’t say a fucking word to anyone until Todoroki was ready.

But then they walked into the brunch together. That didn’t have to mean anything. They weren’t touching, it wasn’t weird or whatever, they’d been friends or at least acquaintances in high school and they were staying in the same hotel, so walking into the restaurant together could just have been a coincidence, they might have run into each other in the elevator or whatever — but Kirishima took one look at them and yelled, loud as goddamn fuck, “Holy shit, Bakugou and Todoroki hooked up last night!”

During the ensuing period of excruciating silence, Bakugou wondered if he could blow up Kirishima’s head before the fucking twit could harden enough to withstand the explosion. It was debatable. Kirishima could harden damn near instantaneously now, and he was fucking unbreakable when he did. Bakugou glanced at Todoroki. Todoroki was slowly turning a very guilty shade of red.

“Did you really, ribbit?” The fuck. That was the frog girl. Was their whole fucking class here? Bakugou had not been paying attention yesterday. If the purple freak was here, Bakugou was leaving no matter whose fucking brunch it was, and too fucking bad if it meant the hag was going to bitch at him forever.

“Um,” Todoroki said, eloquent as always. Some things were probably never going to fucking change.

That was all right, Bakugou thought. Some things didn’t have to change, because the rest of life kept insisting on it. It was nice to have some constants to rely on when everything else was happening so quickly. Like fucking nerds getting married and having babies. Like landing terrifying new jobs when you weren’t even looking. Like realizing you were probably already half in love with the guy you slept with for the first time last night, and whatever.

“Don’t say hook up,” Bakugou said, sliding over to Todoroki and grabbing his fucking hand, because who the fuck cared if the whole class knew? He was Bakugo fucking Katsuki and he wasn’t fucking ashamed of anything. “That’s fucking crass.”

Somewhere in the back of the room, Bakugou heard an awful screeching shout, which was undoubtedly the hag reacting to the news that Bakugou had, despite all her dire predictions, actually scored a boyfriend. Well, he’d deal with her later. Preferably by phone, after he was back in Kyoto to hand in his resignation.

Then Deku rushed over from nowhere, maybe he’d been hiding behind the buffet table or wherever, back in jeans and his fucking stupid red sneakers, so he looked more like himself and not a super buff penguin like he had in his tuxedo. He squealed something that Bakugou ignored and then he hugged Bakugou and Todoroki at the same time with his enormous fucking gorilla arms. Bakugou didn’t explode him because it would be bad form the day after the wedding, but he would if Deku ever fucking touched him again without warning.

Deku said, “Did you ask him, Shouto?”

Todoroki nodded, with that millimeter smile that meant he was beaming, and fucking Deku turned to Bakugou and said, “Kacchan! I’m so happy for you! You guys are going to have the world’s best hero agency, I know it!”

Then Deku hugged them both again, gibbering and spilling stupid tears all over Todoroki’s fantastic sports coat. When Deku finally let go and returned to the side of his new and apparently pregnant wife, Todoroki took Bakugou’s hand again, squeezing warm and tight. Bakugo squeezed back and conceded that maybe, just maybe, weddings weren’t so bad after all.

Even if they were fucking Deku’s.

Maybe.

~