Work Text:
Contrary to what his Wikipedia profile and pop culture click-bait sites have to say, Katsuki is not a bona fide adrenaline junkie. At least, not more than the average hero; the job does demand some level of a brazen lack of self-preservation in order to be brave enough to leap into the maws of villainy, after all. But Katsuki holds himself to the most basic and sensible standards of fighting and survival: hit and don't be hit. Any teenage recklessness wore away with time eroding the sharper of his edges down, and also the abject horror of seeing his medical bills skyrocket after he went pro played a major role in keeping him careful.
So, he's a practical guy when it comes down to it — he's got a fully stocked first aid kit in the medicine cabinet and over-the-counter painkillers that a more hedonistic civilian would dream of having access to. Not that he uses it much, because that privilege belonged to his roommate, who so loves bleeding all over the couch for unfathomable reasons.
Katsuki chalks up Todoroki’s complete disregard of his own health as some symptom of growing up filthy rich. The Todorokis had the kind of fuck you money that you could throw at any problem and it would magically get fixed in two to three business days. Todoroki Shouto has probably never looked at an itemized medical bill in his entire life, much less despair over it. But maybe that's just because he doesn't ever seem to go to the hospital.
“It's because of my quirk,” Todoroki had said once after nursing a particularly bulbous bruise on his cheekbone with a block of ice created in the palm of his hand. “I can regulate my body temperature and reduce inflammation or stimulate blood flow to injured areas if I need it. I heal much faster than the average person, so I would rather leave medical services to those who need it the most."
“You piece of shit, that's just unfair."
“You have unexpected side effects to your quirk too. Do you even own lotion?”
So, let the record show: Todoroki is the reckless and constantly injured one, not Katsuki. It's pretty harmless, most days. Cuts that can easily be dressed after picking out whatever splinters or debris still stuck in the bloodied abscess. Todoroki would stretch back the skin around the wound to open it for Katsuki, who goes in with sanitized tweezers and wipes it down with an alcohol pad after. Todoroki would stiffen and inhale deep through his teeth as Katsuki rubs the stinging disinfectant into his wound but he never complained even as Katsuki wraps gauze around his wounds more tight than is probably necessary.
You're really good at this, Todoroki never said out loud but expressed anyway through with quiet, obedient watchfulness.
You refuse to go to a doctor. Someone has to fucking do it, Katsuki never admitted but probably said anyway when he tapes down the bandages and then checks on the dressing every day until it healed. Why not it be me? I already do all the cooking and cleaning over here, why not make me a nurse to top the housewifery off with a nice little bow?
Todoroki always replenishes the used supplies after, ensuring that their apartment is always fully stocked for when he comes back from a mission scratched and bruised up and primed for Katsuki to patch him up. It would be more annoying if it didn't give Katsuki an excuse to tell him that he fucking sucks and rub his superior ranking in Todoroki’s face. As it is, Katsuki would never give that chance up for anything.
-
So when Todoroki comes stumbling into the apartment with a stream of blood running down his obviously misaligned nose, Katsuki says, “You have to be fucking kidding me,” because although he knows that they have this unspoken I'll take care of your idiotic fucking injuries so you don't bleed over our nice furniture as long as you keep covering rent deal, he had always assumed that their agreement only applies to low maintenance injuries. “Are you actually fucking serious right now?”
“Short on medics,” Todoroki rushes out, beelining towards the couch. “It's fine. Just set it.”
Katsuki wants to punch him in the face so bad but Todoroki’s already icing a broken nose with his right hand and Katsuki is not about to make what apparently was his problem even worse. “I'm not setting a broken fucking nose,” he snaps, trying not to shriek. “Did you get permanently concussed too while you were at it? Are you actually fucking stupid?”
“Bakugou,” Todoroki hisses, eyes glinting dark and hard the way they do when he's already firm on a decision. “Just do it. I'm not going to the hospital for this when they're already overwhelmed.”
When Todoroki asked him to come live for free in his very nice high-rise apartment in central Shibuya, this was not what Katsuki thought he was signing up for. Housework, sure. Potentially disfiguring the top ranked man for Most Attractive Male Hero three years running via amateur medical procedure that absolutely should be performed by an actual doctor? Definitely the fuck not. Katsuki feels a little delirious, and a laugh rips out of his mouth before he can stop it.
Todoroki’s foot taps feverishly on their hardwood floor and he grips his left hand on the armrest tightly. “Are you going to do it or not?” he snaps, clenching his jaw.
“Jesus, fuck,” Katsuki spits, but he goes over to the couch and sits down next to him.
Todoroki's expression goes from terse to apprehensive, and he removes his impromptu ice pack away from his face to reveal the issue at hand. Looking at it a bit more closely, it doesn't look as bad as Katsuki initially thought — a fracture right at the center of the bridge, if he had to guess, which he absolutely does, because Bakugou Katsuki might be a lot of things but he is definitely not a licensed medical professional. The blood that has now started to cake around Todoroki's nostrils and in the cracks of his lips might have made it look worse than it is.
Katsuki reaches up to touch his face, but Todoroki tenses before he even makes contact, his fingers only hovering the injury. He frowns, dread prickling up his spine. “Second thoughts already?”
“Just do it,” Todoroki repeats, but it's quieter, something hanging off the edge of his tone. “It's faster this way.”
“You really need to get over your hate of hospitals thing,” Katsuki mutters. “I better not get sued for ruining your pretty face if this goes badly.”
“Wouldn't dream of it,” Todoroki's breathes, voice still tinged with something that Katsuki can't quite place. His chest falls up and down with quickened breathing, mismatched eyes veering slightly crossed fixed right on Katsuki’s still hovering hand. It's only now when Katsuki realizes how close they are, facing each other on their egregiously large velvet couch with their knees pressed flushed together and Katsuki only inches away from Todoroki’s face after he leaned in earlier to inspect the wound. He tries not to shiver.
“Do you want me to count to three or do you want me to be a surprise?” Katsuki murmurs.
“Whichever,” Todoroki says, like they're talking about something completely innocuous like the weather or what's for dinner. “I don't care either way.”
Three years of living with this freak and Katsuki still cannot get used to how absolutely ridiculous Todoroki Shouto is. He bring his other hand up to clutch at Todoroki's cheek for a bracing grip, holding his face in place. The pads of Katsuki's fingers fit right in the cleft of his cheekbone and the base of his palm resting firmly under his jaw for support.
Todoroki inhales sharply. So does Katsuki.
One, two. Katsuki thinks, trying to steady himself. Then, he grabs the base of Todoroki’s nose and tugs.
An unfamiliar sound tears out of Todoroki's throat, guttural and low, and it brings the whirling in Katsuki's brain to a screeching, terrifying halt. He has barely any time to register it as Todoroki jerks and lurches forward, but Katsuki's existing hold on his face tightens involuntarily to keep him steady and Todoroki makes another sound again and Katsuki has no idea what it fucking was, a groan of pain? But Todoroki’s blood is rushing up to his cheeks and Katsuki knows this only because his palm warms inexplicably and he's still holding onto Todoroki’s face as he commits the unforgivable sin of shifting his attention to Todoroki's eyes, which have gone half-lidded with something so incredibly insane to even begin to decipher, so unthinkable that Katsuki goes so hot that he feels cold with the shudders that immediately run through his body at the sight.
Todoroki chokes out an unmistakable whimper. Katsuki snaps back as if burned, yanking his hands away from Todoroki's face.
Flushed, lips parted, pupils blown wide.
“What…” Katsuki croaks, throat dry. “What the fuck was that?”
His words do some work in cutting the stifling tension that has suddenly filled their living room, because Todoroki blinks back to reality, bleary eyes regaining just a bit of focus. He clears his throat. “How do I look?”
Like you just had the best orgasm of your life, Katsuki answers mentally. Like I just had my hand around your cock instead of your fucking broken nose. I could've gone my entire life without knowing what that might've looked like and now when I go to sleep tonight I'll know it'll be haunting my dreams.
“Pretty as fucking ever, Princess,” Katsuki tries, going for sarcasm. He misses pathetically and lands on broken sincerity instead.
“Yeah,” Todoroki breathes, agreeing to— what, exactly? Being pretty? Something else entirely? What the fuck was that?
A second stretches and lingers and the silence whips up a hurricane in the pit of Katsuki’s stomach, veins still thrumming hot with the vibrations of Todoroki’s loose, low moan.
“I,” Todoroki starts.
“I am never fucking doing that ever again,” Katsuki blurts.
Todoroki freezes and his eyes go wide with fear which causes Katsuki to freeze too and stare back at Todoroki, who looks a little bit like Katsuki just shot his dog out back instead of telling him that he refuses to set another one of his broken fucking bones. His hair is still mussed and there is still blood dried around his swelling but straighter nose.
“What the fuck is wrong with going to the doctor on this?” Katsuki asks, feeling hysterical. “Why do you insist on me fixing your fucking injuries?”
“It's not about the injuries,” Todoroki says, voice tight.
“Then what?” Katsuki nearly begs and barely demands.
What the fuck do you want from me?
Todoroki pauses, screwing his eyes shut. Then, he says, voice barely above a whisper, “You touch me, when you're patching me up.”
“What?” Katsuki says, distantly wondering if he has, after three years of living with the most beautifully inscrutable man in the world, finally lost it.
“I didn't have a way to ask,” Todoroki continues, suddenly looking exhausted. “This was my only excuse.”
The admission sinks him, then buoys him up in the same breath. Katsuki is being reeled in and tugged away all at once, a victim to high tide, rolling waves and the world-ending realization that Todoroki wants Katsuki to touch him. And now, with the fact laid bare like an open, bloody cut, Katsuki can finally admit something of his own. And that is: sometimes, when he's at his lowest, he wonders what Todoroki's mouth might feel like on his neck or his chest or his cock or maybe just his own mouth and somehow that feels like the worst option of them all, and Katsuki suddenly understands why Todoroki would rather limp into their kitchen and ask for a tourniquet instead of admitting that he wants something else entirely, something entirely forbidden but still lurks underneath their every interaction like a hungry beast at sea, easily ignored if they had just stayed the fucking course.
As it is, they're at ocean depths, and Todoroki looks like he splayed himself open with a knife, sternum down to stomach, and now his guts are spilling out into the floor, endless disgusting ropes of vulnerability unravelling with every second that Katsuki leaves his confession unanswered. Lucky for him, Katsuki’s well practiced in remediation now.
“Ask me, then,” he says shakily.
“What?” Todoroki croaks.
“Ask me,” Katsuki repeats. Then, a plunge deeper. “Whatever you want. I'll give it to you.”
Todoroki's stupid, bloody, beautiful face unfurls, a shy smile working the corners of his mouth up. “Give me everything,” he says, breathless. “Give me you.”
Todoroki says everything and you as if it's the same thing, and it makes Katsuki want to buckle to his knees and tell him the truth, which is: really, when it come down to it, he already had Katsuki the moment he came home with a first aid kit and a scratch on his cheek and a sheepish smile to top it all off. Or maybe before that, when he asked Katsuki to move in with him and he pretended to consider it for two days when he already decided on the spot. Or maybe even before that, when they were boys in school, stealing glances at each other, full of anger and wonder and thinly veiled obsession.
Katsuki wets his thumb and watches, deeply satisfied, as Todoroki’s gaze fixates on the way his lips circle around the pad of his thumb and follows the path to his own face, eyes fluttering down and shut. Katsuki wipes the blood off of Todoroki's mouth with a swipe before leaning in.
Nothing Katsuki has ever done has been gentle, so when he answers Todoroki's request he decides to answers it with the hardest kiss he could muster without it being brutal. Todoroki opens his mouth instantly to receive it, harshness and all. The force of his advance being met with equal ferocity slotting over and between and in return. It's so full of want that it very nearly makes Katsuki buckle to his knees before he remembers his one last condition and pulls away.
“Only if you promise me to go to the medics next time you break your fucking nose,” Katsuki grunts.
Todoroki laughs. It's impossibly light. “Deal.”