Of all the glorified chores Shigaraki Tomura tried to pass off as non-combat tasks Katsuki has had to do, Nomu duty is by far his favourite.
He's also one of the few who are both competent enough trust not to fuck it up (because the price for fucking the Nomus up is very, very great), and the only one with an actual preference for it, so he had more or less ended up as their main handler. It was oddly soothing, checking on each Nomu one by one, and re-mixing the chemical agent needed to keep them stable and alive.
Occasionally he would be joined by one of his more competent coworkers, either working in silence while they talked at him and communicating with occasional grunts and nods or making idle chatter while he worked, depending on who it was and his mood for the day.
Most of them though, avoided going in there at all, looking distinctly nauseous whenever they had to crack the heavy iron door open to speak to Katsuki (because while Katsuki does have a phone, there are very few people he can be trusted to take a call from) take over a shift because the handful of people who weren't deathly afraid of them were out doing more interesting assingments for the night.
(And of course, there were some coworkers who were not allowed within 20 feet of the Nomu room, no matter the occasion, with all the delicately whirring machinery and dangerous chimera-creatures it housed. Katsuki had the pleasure of being allowed to punish them however he felt appropriate for the infraction, which meant that there had never been a single infraction while he was on duty.)
He understands why they trigger uncanny valley fight or flight reactions in people, he really does, and to be completely honest he can't even blame them for it (although of course, he will scoff at their trepidation in all given opportunities, because he's still Bakugou Katsuki). He glances over the pinkish-bloody exposed gray matter floating in the vat of clear chemical in front of him, sitting disgustingly atop pairs of too-large eyes – maybe eyeballs would be more accurate – and rows of shiny white teeth, not nearly enough space between them, held together in a vaguely humanoid shape by pallid leather skin that looked unnaturally tight around its own flesh.
In all honesty, Katsuki's almost fond of the fucking things. Dabi had, on one memorable occasion, lewdly hinted-suggested that he should crawl in the tank and fuck one of them if he liked them so much. Smiling, Katsuki had kindly offered to rearrange his features to look like one instead.
Not that it would have been a huge change on him, the freak.
He's jolted out of his thoughts by the unmistakeable sound of the industrial heavy duty doors dragging open, a low, reverbating metallic screech that echoes in his peaceful lab.
"Let me guess," he drawls, not turning around. There's really only two people it could be at this hour, the only others who worked in the lab regularly. "Dabi's out today, so it's gotta be fucking Deku. What the fuck do you want, shitty nerd?"
"Ah, not exactly," says an amused voice behind him. Katsuki pauses between putting the pH meter in the next tank.
"Todo-"
A beat.
"Shouto?" His voice comes out softer, against his will.
"Mhm," Shouto hums, stepping close enough behind him that he can feel his cool breath ghost over his ear, causing the hair on the back of his neck to stick up as if he'd been electrocuted. He's doing it on purpose. Katsuki's fingers twitch, he wants to strangle him.
"You are not fucking me in the Nomu room," Katsuki says with as much venom as he can muster, straightening and turning to face him properly. Shouto tilts his head, causing wisps of white hair to fall over his face, catching in his long lashes. He looks only mildly interested, blinking at him curiously.
"Is that all I'm good for?"
"Clearly," Katsuki sneers, already irked by his perfect composure and face and the distraction it brings. He's not used to being alone with him outside of field jobs (which mostly tended to devolve into something sexual by the end anyway), and he definitely doesn't need him around tonight, with everyone either sleeping or out, in the most secluded wing of the warehouse where it's almost certainly just the two of them, when he has fucking work to do goddamnit. "What do you want."
Shouto takes a step back, and Katsuki almost takes a step forward without thinking about it, catching himself with his foot in the air.
"Shigaraki sent me," he admits, averting his gaze to glance around at the rows of pulsating creature-things encased in vats. "He told me to... tell you to teach me. About the Nomus. Taking care of them."
It made no fucking sense. He and Deku and Dabi already covered the shifts between themselves perfectly. And Shouto was an idiot. A very good-looking idiot, that Katsuki worked well with, on field missions. Not in a lab that was already partly breaking down, to add distraction to Katsuki's list of safety hazards and bad protocol that he already had to deal with.
"Why," Katsuki says, choosing his words carefully, "the fuck."
"Apparently," says Shouto, "he wants to double the stock. Three handlers working separately aren't going to be enough." He's still facing away from him, but his eyes flicker back periodically, probably hoping Katsuki wouldn't notice. He does notice.
Fucking hell. If Shigaraki had actually sent him, with a purpose, Katsuki couldn't chase him out.
"We'll be working in pair rotations, when the new batch comes in, but I think you're the one who spends most time in here currently, so..." Shouto trails off. So what, Katsuki wants to say, I have to be your goddamn babysitter?
"'We'," he instead quotes flatly, fishing out the pH meter from the greenish-tinged liquid. He's left it in too long, rendering the reading completely useless. Shouto watches him reset it and put it back in quietly. Katsuki wishes he would look away again.
They wait for it to go off again in silence, listening to the soft bubbling of the tanks and the occasional Nomu gurgle.
"This is happening, no matter how you feel about it, Katsuki," Shouto says finally, breaking the thick air between them. He knows that.
"That's Ground Zero to you," Katsuki mutters under his breath, irritated. Shouto never used anyone's codenames when referring to them, and he didn't have one himself.
He takes out the device out when it beeps again, noting down the value, then stands bent over the the vat for longer than necessary, watching the Nomu's exposed brain mass quiver wetly. A single bubble floats to the surface and pops, a tiny droplet of the solution splashing onto his skin, stinging slightly.
Whatever. Whatever.
"Bring me the hydrogen phosphate," he grunts, not meeting his eye. "It's in the third cabinet, on the left, first row. If you slept through your high school science class, tell me now, so I can kill you and make this easier for both of us."
Shouto offers him an expression that might pass as a smile if Katsuki were being generous (he wasn't), then saunters over to the cabinets obediently (for once in his fucking life) to bring him his phosphate. Katsuki watches the line of his back as he sifts through the racks. He sighs.
"And for the love of god, put a fucking lab coat on."
Whether during their field missions or meetings or simply when their paths had crossed in the medium sized warehouse they currently called base, "methodical" and "precise" were not words Shouto would have applied to Bakugou Katsuki, but they were what came to mind now, watching him carefully calculate exact ratios of chemicals to mix, still-irritated grimace highlighted by the green glow of the vat behind him. Shouto is caught between thinking he looks out of place or that he must have been born to stand around scowling as he looks over a clipboard in a shady bio-engineering lab.
He supposes there's no real contradiction with Katsuki's established character though, having never considered him not methodical or precise. Despite all the chaotic energy he carried, Katsuki was never more than a switch away from distilling all of himself and his rage and his power into a laser pointed precision strike of a person concentrate, focused single-mindedly, absolutely onto his task. All of his actions, his seemingly erratic attack patterns and outbursts had the underlying current of an extremely sharp and methodical mind behind them. Whether he was making split second decisions and running on purely adrenaline and violence or quietly double checking his formula at 2 in the morning didn't matter.
It doesn't surprise him, exactly, but it does leave him feeling rather distinctly out of his element, being around this calmer side of him. He supposes there's a first for everything.
Or a second, or a third. It's been at least a week since he's started coming down here, every night except Wednesdays and Thursdays (which is when Touya has the lab and Touya... does not want Shouto around if at all possible), sometimes finding Izuku but usually Katsuki, working away. Izuku is patient and always slows down everything he's doing to let Shouto have a chance to take it in.
Katsuki, of course, shoots on ahead as he does, barking commands and short explanations at Shouto as he goes along. Shouto is fairly sharp, he knows this, and he doesn't need things spelled out to him to catch on, but Katsuki had been doing this for 3 years before Shouto had even stepped foot in the lab, and he was no born bio-chemist.
He also, really needs to find a better sleep schedule to accomodate his now-daily shifts.
He can't complain too much, at any rate, becase Katsuki does look rather nice in his lab coat (lightly stained with who knows what), leaning over the vat to reach the heavy machine behind it, pen clamped between his teeth and clipboard between his arm as he adjusts the temperature with a few short clicks on the ancient looking monitor mounted on the side of it.
Shouto likes how the sharp point of his canines just out just slightly over the rest of the even rows of teeth around the pen, the pearly enamel glinting dangerously in the dim light of the lab. It makes him want to reach out and feel them for himself, draw the pad of his thumb over the pointed edges until they make his hands bleed, or until Katsuki rolls his eyes and pushes him off or demands he do something else.
He's been staring, he realises, but if Katsuki has noticed he doesn't say anything. Katsuki should say something, it's weirding him out, but he continues to squint at his work, the steady stream of explanation and commands from earlier faded out as his concentration shifts.
"You're oddly professional in here," Shouto comments, knowing it's the wrong thing to say. Katsuki's head immediately snaps up to him, glowering. Ah, there he is.
"The fuck is that supposed to mean?" he demands, lips pulling back into a snarl, baring more of those teeth that Shouto likes so much. He shrugs.
"Quieter. More focused. More agreeable. Not throwing things around. It's weird," he informs him, and is rewarded for his honesty with the metal point of a clipboard smacking him in the face.
"I'm always professional," Katsuki growls. "Who the fuck do you think I am?" He raises the clipboard again, apparently satisfied by the yelp of surprise it had earned him, and Shouto grabs his arm mid-swing, shooting him a reproachful look. He doesn't tell him that he enjoys his company equally either way, tempting as it is to see the reaction it would draw, because Katsuki doesn't need to know that.
"Is this the last one?" he asks instead, changing the subject. Katsuki gives him a nasty glare (but no more nasty than usual), yanking his arm and clipboard back from his grip.
"No," he says, stalking over to the large cylindrical tank in the back of the room that Shouto had for some reason assumed wasn't part of Katsuki's job. The light from it is blue, instead of the filthy algaea-green of the smaller tanks, and the nomu inside it is at least twice the size of the other ones, and shiny black instead of white. There's a narrow set of aluminum stairs leading up the side to an deck at the top that would definitely not pass safety regulations in any legitimite laboratory. Katsuki knocks against the glass a couple times as he passes by it toward the ladder, almost like a greeting. Shouto eyes the Nomu warily for signs of a response, unsure about its level of consciousness and sentience. He really wishes he could be home in his small apartment right now sleeping instead.
Katsuki's taken a single step on the ladder – but just the one, paused and staring at the clipboard in his hand as if he's noticed something wrong. He steps off, checking both of his hands and his shirt, then turns back to look at Shouto, eyes scanning his entire body in a fraction of a moment. He scoffs.
"What are you, made of glass?" he says, looking inconvenienced. Shouto raises an eyebrow, coming to a halt several feet behind him next to the tank. "I didn't even hit you that hard."
"What?" he says. Katsuki stares at him carefully, scrunitizing his entire face. He blinks back, completely nonplussed.
"You're bleeding," he says slowly, almost accusingly. Shouto runs his hand over his face, feeling a warm wetness around his right cheekbone. His fingers come away bright red. Huh. From the clipboard?
"So I am," he mutters, turning to squint at his reflection in the glass tank. Katsuki has an odd expression on his face, he can see out of the corner of his eye, quietly watching him as he pokes carefully at the bloody gash under his eye.
It's a lot deeper than he thought, almost a half centimeter into his face – he didn't even think he had much flesh to cut through there, but the shock of blood gushing out from under his eye says otherwise. How sharp was the point of that thing? He's even got some blood on his coat, bright red droplets dying the absorbent cloth.
"You don't feel it?" Katsuki says, considering him as he inspects the wound with eyebrows stitched together.
Shouto shakes his head, pressing a cold hand on it and pinching the edges together to try and still the bloodflow. He could probably cauterize it, but it's really not deep enough to be worth it – not like he doesn't already have enough burn scars on his face as it is. "It's a third degree burn, most of the nerves are gone. Do you have any bandages? I don't really want to drip into the tanks."
Katsuki crosses his arms and leans against the large tank with his shoulder, looking pensive.
"No. Just stay away from them until it dries." A short pause - hesitation? That's new. "Is that from your old man, then? Quirk accident?"
He grins at him wryly. "My mother."
Katsuki's eyebrows raise. Shouto turns to him swiftly, stepping away from the tank. "Are you really interested? I'll tell you if you want."
For a moment it's silence, just the hum of the machines and the creatures around them, Katsuki drops his gaze and kicks at the floor. He reaches over with one hand to punch the sequence in for tank drainage in the numkey, shoving it in his coat pockets afterwards when the confirmation beep sounds, still not meeting Shouto's eye, glaring at the floor as if the dirty tiles had offended him personally, as if they were the source of all of his problems somehow.
"Tell me then," he says at last, managing to sound petulant even through his low growl. He hates it so much when Shouto doesn't just give him what he wants immediately. It's one of Shouto's only sources of entertainment in recent times, riling up the infamously short-fused villain over inconsequental bullshit like this.
He hums, not responding immediately, taking a moment to study the looming black Nomu sort-of floating (starting to crumple down slowly, as the liquid level goes down) in the glorified aquarium over Katsuki's shoulder instead as he muses on how to apprach the topic, ignoring Katsuki's rapidly deepening scowl of impatience.
It's not as ugly as the smaller ones in the other tanks, which isn't a very big compliment. They're all varying shapes of haphazardly sewn together flesh lumps (now that he thinks of it, he wonders if hs brother's had any hand in putting the newer ones together, with All for One and his natural abilities no longer with them), but at least this one has the advantage of not having to look like a bloated corpse with its slick and shiny smooth-ish finish instead of the ashen paper-thin excuse for skin the other ones sported. There are a few rips here and there, especially around its torso where the leather can't quite stretch enough to accomodate the bulging muscles underneath it.
It looms behind Katsuki (who's switched from glaring at the innocent tile patterns to glaring at Shouto) almost threatheningly, like a twisted impression of a bodyguard, giving Shouto the absurd feeling that he might sic it on him if he annoys him too much.
Though really, he notes drily as he takes in the murderous expression on his face (over absolutely nothing, too – he's ridiculously entertaining like this), Katsuki would probably much rather tear him apart with his own hands than get the creature to do his dirty work. He has no doubt he fantasizes about it on a fairly regular basis.
"You've heard of quirk marriages, right?" he says at last, when it looks like Katsuki might be about to burst a vein. He gets a terse nod as reply – of course he's heard of them, probably suspected about Shouto's unusual double quirk being a product of one, always sharper than he let on. "Good. It's something that shouldn't still exist in this day and age, but my father always had a piss-poor excuse for ethics, for someone supposed to be the second greatest hero of all time."
Katsuki's mouth is a thin line. Shouto looks away from it.
"On his own, he never could defeat All Might as the number one hero, so he came up with another plan." The water in the Nomu's tank was drained down to it's stomach. Shouto wishes someone would have thought to put some pants on the thing, not feeling very positively on having to stare at it's unnecessarily anatomically correct crotch while talking about his parents. "With his fame and money, he easily convinced my mother's family to agree to the marriage. All so he could use her, with her complementary quirk, to bear him the perfect heir."
He doesn't have to tell Katsuki that he's standing with him.
"In all the memories I have of her, my mother is always crying," he says, carefully leaving off any emotion from his tone, keeping it a simple stating of facts. "She told me that she couldn't stand to look at my ugly left side, and then dumped boiling water on my face."
The look on Katsuki's face would perhaps be best described as 'unnerved', but it's ony here for a moment and then it's gone, covered up quickly with a scoff and averted eyes.
"Nice sob story," he mutters, pushing himself off from the now empty tank and making his way over to the barrels of active components on the end of the room behind him, shooting a sneer as his way. Shouto is positive he knocks into his shoulder with more force than necessary on purpose. "Don't have any to exchange."
"Didn't ask," Shouto replies curtly, keeping a wary eye on him. Katsuki grunts back non-committally, slight strain showing in his voice as he lifts one of the barrels up over his shoulders. The muscles in his shoulders ripple delightfully with the movement even through the thick white coat he wears, distracting Shouto briefly from the thoughts that inevitably surface whenever he speaks about either of his parents at any lenght.
There's a subtle, but undeniable awkwardness in the air as Katsuki gets to work in filling up the tank with the correct amounts of various liquids, climbing up and down the ladder with each empty barrel, threathening to blow Shouto's face off and shooing him away whenever he got close or tried to help. He grumbles something about organic contaminants at him, although really, he's already stopped bleeding, and he'd had no problem barking orders at him before.
The tiredness he'd been holding at bay for the past couple of hours suddenly washes over Shouto, with nothing to distract him, coming in waves until he can feel himself sway and the edges of his vision feel blurry.
Resigned, Shouto takes his place sitting at the foot of the tank, feeling rather like he's been put into time-out (for what offense, he can't even fathom – simply existing probably counted in Katsuki's book). He pulls his knees up and rests his chin on them, arms crossed around himself. His wristwatch ticks away next to his ear, and he doesn't need to look at it to know it's nearing 3. His eyes close, once, twice, and when they shut a third time, he doesn't bother opening them again.
"Tell me," Katsuki had said, irritated that he's making him ask, asking despite it.
The half-assed bastard always had a way of pulling words out of Katsuki's mouth, not because he's too stupid to need things spelled out to him, but apparently for the simple hell of it, despite knowing full well how much it gets under his skin – or maybe because of it, he thinks, bristling even further at the thought.
It's not that Katsuki gives a shit. He doesn't. Over the years they'd known each other, he's never once felt inclined to dig into the peppermint-coded assholes past, although he'd always had his vague suspicions. He's never allowed himself to reflect too deeply on or question him directly on them, because it's honestly none of his fucking business and he (really) doesn't care about his tragic backstory.
Still, though, it's difficult not to be a little intrigued by him, even for Katsuki. It wasn't every year that the top graduate student of UA's hero course decided to skip the graduation ceremony in favor of murdering his own father in cold blood. The charred remains of Endeavour's headless corpse had been all the news could speak about for the next year and a half, the shock of the number 2 hero's sudden death shaking the entire country to it's core.
Todoroki Shouto had shown up at their base the next day, and tossed Endeavour's severed head at Shigaraki Tomuras's feet, demanding they let him join their shitty club of misfits. It hadn't been a long discussion.
He stands over Shouto now, taking in the sight of him curled up around himself on the fucking dirty floor, sleeping peacefully as if he were laying on the most comfortable bed in the world. Nobody looking at him now could guess the kind of shit he did for a living.
The blood from the freak gash under his eye has rubbed off on the white sleeve of his coat where his cheek rests against it (and he'd had the nerve to insist to Katsuki that it was already dry and he was fine, the brainless moron). Katsuki has to wrestle down the urge to kick him, right in his pretty face.
Instead, he kneels down in front of him and shakes him awake, parhaps too gently. Shouto awakes with a start anyway, looking so on edge that for one bizarre moment Katsuki thinks he's going to punch him, and he's thinking he should have gone with the kick after all, but then he gains his bearings almost immediately, relaxing visibly he realises it's Katsuki standing over him. Which is fucking stupid, because it's a ridiculous notion that Katsuki would be somehow more safe than anyone else in the building.
"Katsuki..." he mumbles, almost whisper level, even though they're alone in the room. His words slur together sleepily, and he blinks and rubs at his eyes at the harsh glow of the flourescent lights. There's a second in which Katsuki has the thought that he should have turned the lights off so they didn't bother him, and then he kicks himself internally for coming up with an idea stupid enough to rival one of Kaminari Denki's. "What... time is it?"
"4 AM," Katsuki replies, in his usual volume. Shouto flinches at the loud voice in his face. He can fucking deal with it. "We're done. Get the fuck up, princess, I'm not locking you in here."
He lets out a soft moan (what the fuck), and pulls Katsuki towards himself by his shirt to hide his face in his shoulder, as if he's a goddamn pillow or something.
"...What the hell," he says intelligently, stiffening at the unfamiliar contact. He's never actually been in very close proximity to a drowsy Todoroki Shouto before, but it apparently had the unfortunate side effect of frying all of his remaining brain cells.
Shouto, either oblivious (unlikely, even in this state) to his discomfort or choosing deliberately to ignore it, stretches one of his (long, elegant) legs across Katsuki's side. He ends up kneeing him under his arm in their awkward position, causing Katsuki to stumble forward between Shouto's legs and have to brace himself on the tank to avoid toppling directly into him and slamming his pretty head into the glass behind him. Katsuki growls, irked, left hanging precariously over him in a strange not-quite embrace.
"I slept maybe 2 hours last night," Shouto mumbles into his neck, as if expecting him to do something about it. "Give me a few minutes."
Katsuki really, really will strangle him one day.
He does deign to raise his head after around 2 minutes and 30 seconds (he counts) blinking blearily up at him and looking as miserable as Katsuki had ever seen him. It'd be funny if he didn't have to deal with it. A few strands of silky white hair stick messily up around his face, and Katsuki absolutely does not think about reaching out and smoothing them back.
"Let's fucking go then, Sleeping Beauty," he deadpans, ignoring the way he continues to stare at him, and making to get up – but he's interrupted by Shouto grabbing him by the hair at the back of his neck with a grip surprisingly solid for the sorry state he's in, and pulling him crashing down clumsily onto his lips, hot and wet and insistent.
Katsuki sputters, torn between the equally instinctive reactions to kiss him back and to knee him in the gut. He does neither, instead freezing in place as Shouto hums pleasantly into his mouth, his long eyelashes brushing against Katsuki's cheek when he tilts his head to fit their lips together better, dragging his velvety tongue across his mouth and tugging at his lower lip with his teeth. The hand in his hair pulls him in deeper, and fuck it, he's worked hard, he sinks into him with a soft groan, one hand coming up to roughly grip his slender jaw, and Shouto melts into him.
It's uncharacteristic, for Shouto to directly initiate anything, to be so pliant and blatantly wanting for his touch, and Katsuki is enamored completely by the soft, wet sounds Shouto gives him so easily instead of his usual tightly controlled breathing. He's almost worried he's inhaled something he shouldn't have while Katsuki wasn't paying attention, but there's nothing in the lab that could produce a high like that.
He's forced to accept that his own presence is simply that intoxicating. He grins lazily, grazing his teeth and biting roughly into the soft flesh of Shouto's lips, and he's made him bleed for the second time that night (Shouto twitches violently but his mouth falls open and his breath hitches high in his throat and the fist in his hair tightens) and he licks it up, savoring the familiar metallic tang like he'd wanted to earlier with the ridiculous red gash he'd created on that perfectly sharp cheekbone.
His free hand twitches at his side, he wants to run it across Shouto's beautifully toned chest and under his shirt but he knows if he does he won't be able to stop and he has to stop, because they're still in the lab and he can't - breathe -
He pulls away sharply, shaking Shouto's grip off, panting, and takes in his now even more disheveled appearance. He's breathing hard, chest heaving, lips puffy and wet with blood and spit. (Katsuki doesn't want to think about how messed up he himself looks.) His eyes look softer than he remembers them, but maybe its the odd blue light from the tank behind him, and Katsuki's shadow falling on his face where he kneels over him.
"What the hell," he says again, as if he hadn't been kissing him back with more fervor.
"I wanted to kiss you,"says Shouto breathlessly, a good deal more awake and in a better mood than he had been. Katsuki licks his lips.
"You're still not fucking me in the Nomu room."
"I'm too tired to fuck you right now. Just the kiss will do," he says, and it sounds like an apology. He gives Katsuki's hair a light pet (gross) before pushing himself up where he'd slid, back curving as he shifts against the glass. His runs his hand lightly across his own face, touching lightly around the scarred area to locate the newly formed scab on his cheekbone. "How does this look?"
Katsuki doesn't care and doesn't want to think about it, but his mind helpfully flashes back to the story about Shouto's mother pouring water on him, and he can't help but wonder what the aftermath of that had looked like, marveling again at how the objectively ugly scar had done absolutely nothing to diminish the overall beauty of his delicate features. He swallows, hand coming up next to Shouto's own despite himself.
"Better. Hey," he says, ignoring Shouto's wary look. "You said most of the nerves were gone."
"Yes?"
"How much of it can you feel though?" he asks, not bothering to keep the rough edge out of his voice. He runs an experimental finger up the left side of his jaw lightly, carefully scrunitizing his reaction.
"A bit. Katsuki..." he trails off, looking unsure of what to say to him, twisting oddly in his grip.
"Chill the fuck out, I just wanna see," he says, dragging the pad of his thumb across the waxy red tinted skin higher up on his face, pressing harder at the edges where the scar meets smooth skin. He's close enough that their individual breaths ghost over each other, and he can feel Shouto's skin get a bit more chilly in his proximity. "Feel that?"
"Sort of."
He presses higher. "That?"
"No."
He presses his lips there then, smirking to himself at Shouto stiffening – as if he hadn't been all over him moments ago – then nips at the surface of his cheek lightly, pinching the taught skin between his teeth and running his tongue over it.
"Mm?"
Shouto clicks his tongue. "Not really."
He shifts, dragging his lips lightly over his cheek, over the the wound he already knows there's no feeling around, until he reaches where it stretches out across his ear. "How about now?" he says, voice purposefully as breathy as he can make it.
"Yes." Katsuki doesn't miss the small shudder that runs through him. He grins, satisfied, and nips at the ear lightly before pulling back.
Shouto gives him a look that Katsuki doesn't feel like interpreting the meaning of, then stands up abrubtly, almost knocking Katsuki on his ass as he does. He hisses in annoyance, and Shouto tilts his head as he looks down on him, towering.
"I really need to sleep," he offers as explanation, cool and detached. Katsuki aims a kick at his leg, hard, and Shouto winces before dancing out of the way, almost stepping over him, to avoid the next attack aimed at his shin. "Sorry."
The air shifted into something completely different, it's like they had just been discussing weather or a particularly uninteresting piece of news rather than exchanging spit moments ago. Katsuki pushes himself up to his feet with one hand, grinning nastily when Shouto takes several quick steps back towards the door. A much smarter move than letting his guard down enough to sleep in his presence. How laughable.
Shouto stands for a couple more seconds, then gives him a curt nod, turning around swiftly and tossing the white lab coat off onto the rack next to the door. The metal door creaks, and then shuts, and Katsuki is alone again with his beloved lab and the disgusting creatures it houses, just how he likes it.
thanks for reading thus far! this story is meant to be explicit in later chaptersand there is a smutty one-shot (and art) in the same verse but of course, i can't very well post it on , so if you're interested in reading the uncensored version please do head on over to Ao3 for it 3
anoxia
in the truly gruesome (one-shot)
drag me into place (art)