A full table. It's the first thing Katsuki notices when he gets his head out of his ass: three children; their father. Two guests in place of the mother and missing brother. None of them want to be there, except the sister, who set the table with a fastidious plenty and uncomfortable cheer.

Uncomfortable, like being in their fucking house in the first place. Todoroki's half-and-halfwit self sits there like a particularly picturesque neanderthal as he practically parades their godawful family drama out for company like it's supposed to be entertainment. His sister puts on a brave face to smile and sweat through it the same way Katsuki's father does whenever his wife and son got into a fight in front of company.

Like someone else he knows.

Katsuki's eyes stay on his food even though in his mind, he's side-eyeing Deku, who is sitting at his right hand – like he's got any goddamn right to do so – and telegraphing his discomfort like he's an electronic billboard in the middle of the main thoroughfare. Not that Katsuki's any better, but at least he doesn't gulp and guffaw and stare with his big, dewy eyes like a brain-dead cow. Useless idiot – shoving food in his mouth like a goat in the pen of a neurotic racehorse. Katsuki's the racehorse.

The food's good, at least. Spicy. Maybe it'll give everyone else an ulcer as karma for putting him and Deku through this endurance test of a dinner. Not him, though.

"There's plenty," says Todoroki's sister, gesturing to the table. "Please help yourself!"

Katsuki does. Izuku, meanwhile, takes the time to evaluate the food like it's a science project and Katsuki restrains himself from shoving his freckled face into the table. It's almost normal, in a caustically moronic way, because Katsuki and Izuku built an entire lifetime together out of normalizing emotionally volatile conflict and pretending it's tepid. Ice and fire meet in the face of Bakugo-Midoriya to become: baby's first bathwater.

Fuck you, Todoroki. Miss me with your rich boy daddy issues. Ain't shit.

Katsuki reaches for the bowl of mapo tofu and pretends he's too stupid to realize the inherent hypocrisy of his entitled discomfort. He's subjected Todoroki to the same runoff interpersonal exposure through Deku, more or less, and Todoroki endured it like a snowball with an uncanny affinity for hell.

Two wrongs ain't gonna make it right, though, he thinks, somewhere between sanctimonious and chickenshit anxious about his lack of control for the entire ordeal.

Todoroki's sister smiles at Katsuki as he shovels more mapo tofu into his mouth. Katsuki avoids her in favor of staring at the food like it owes him money and also insulted his mother. Only Katsuki is allowed to insult his mother. Because fuck.

Fuck!

They're in this house and it is somehow both massive and suffocating and also beautiful and hellish. They're in Todoroki's house like they're close and they're important and his big sister is smiling at them. Katsuki's skin itches like he's been stripped down at the door and then swaddled in some kind of too-big-too-loose chafing fur robe and then told all sorts of embarrassing drivel meant to make him blush, but instead only succeeds in pissing him off.

Big sister's plush cheeks swell beneath her glittering eyes as she engages them with partial success from across the table. Her hair is a combination of unsettling auburn and uncanny white, like her little brother's, but instead of a hard dichotomy they mix like bits of red earth peeking up beneath a thick snowfall. Katsuki doesn't know what to call it. Doesn't know what to call her. She gave her name, but that doesn't mean he can actually use it.

Fuyumi. Winter. Winter and beautiful.

"It's so nice to meet my brother's friends!" Todoroki's sister says, like Katsuki hadn't rankled like a cat at her outstretched hand and the offer of food by it. Like it didn't send him into river-water shivers at the sight of it and the old feelings it unfurled in his chest like the reprise to some barely-there memory. Like he hadn't heard it the first twenty-something times she'd said it.

Twenty-something. She's, what, twenty-something? Twenty three, twenty four? Twenty five? Is she twenty five and looking after her stupid brothers and their asshole father with no other prospects? She's out of school and teaching. Teaching, right? Someone mentioned she's a teacher or something, right? Surrounded by fucking kids all day and then slated to come home to all of this. Someone ought to step in and tell her to save her damn self until she does it. She oughta do it herself. Surely she knows she can do it her own damn self. Not that Katsuki cares. Not that it's his business. Not like they're close. Not like Katsuki is friends with the Todorokis and eating dinner at their mother fucking house like he's privvy to their shit. Not like he's eating this goddamned tofu like the goddamned best house guest he can goddamned be.

Deku, who has made it his mission in life to put himself in positions where Katsuki doesn't want him, awkwardly responds to her like the nosy and self-entitled do-gooder he is. But it's fine, honestly. To Katsuki's relief, he hasn't descended into talking about Katsuki like he isn't in the room; hasn't resorted to throwing himself behind Katsuki like "childhood friend" means "special interest social meat shield." And actually, the absence of it chafes the same way a missing tooth creates an abnormal loneliness in the mouth. He doesn't need it, of course. But it might be nice to take just a little bit of the wind out of Todoroki's self-absorbed sails. It might be nice if Deku made it clear that, despite how close he and Todoroki had gotten, that Katsuki was, well.

I was here first, Katsuki thinks. I know shit you don't, you two-toned ass.

It's not like Katsuki needs Deku to put the stars back in his eyes just for him. It's not like he even wants it, either, but it's what Deku always does and it's weird if he doesn't do it. It's weird that he does it at all, but it's weirder if he doesn't. Besides, Katsuki's not sure how incriminating such a thing would even look to the corpse of a family in front of them. Not that they'd have a clue how to handle that, either, and not like they have room to judge. And maybe they ought to know, too. That Deku likes him just as he is. That they should like him just as he is, surly and all. That maybe big sister should ask Izuku about Katsuki and give them something worth talking about.

Izuku doesn't do any of that, though, because of course he never does anything Katsuki wants him to do.

"Shaddup," Katsuki snaps at Deku, though it's not even Deku he's annoyed with, particularly. But fuck Deku. "The more you talk, the crappier this tastes."

"Kacchan!" Deku cries; a rehearsed coda of their earlier routine. His oversized eyes practically blow out of their undersized sockets as they settle on Katsuki. Better.

Next to them, Todoroki looks legitimately entertained in the far-off way of the emotionally distant. Endeavor and his oldest just look constipated. It's probably enough. But big sister smiles and Katsuki might, maybe, possibly feel inclined to sustain the act with more performative fervor than he'll admit.

"Dumbass," he huffs.

Izuku wails. "Kacchan!"

They go at it for a few more rounds of griping before running out of steam. The Todoroki family endures it with varying humors, and then the table falls silent as the two of them fumble in the absence of applause or anything resembling appreciation beyond big sister's blithe smile and Todoroki's blank stare. Whatever.

Next act: Todoroki's older brother and Endeavor manage a fucking tectonic shift of tension in the absence of Katsuki and Deku exposing themselves as socially inept teenaged boys with no sense of social poise and delusions of maturity. Endeavor asks a question; Todoroki interrupts. Big brother snaps. A chill runs through the air like a crack appearing in an overheated glacier. It escalates. Older brother storms out of the room like a winter wind capped in white. Todoroki's sister tries to stop him, though Katsuki can see in her eyes it's futile.

What is this? What is this?! Katsuki agreed to join Todoroki at an internship for their careers, not take part in training together or ride in the car together or watch him confront his big, irredeemable daddy issues together or go to his fucking house and meet his family and watch his brother fall apart and his father expose himself as an asshole in the private life of his home while his sister did her absolute fucking best to save face while Katsuki and Izuku sat there like a pair of puddingbrain extras with their thumbs up their asses and spoons in their mouths.

He hates this worthless helplessness. Katsuki hates when hard work goes unrewarded. Hates that the world wasn't really a meritocracy. Hates that he knows it; hates that he can't rely on it to separate the wheat from the piece of shit chaf and be done with it. Can't rely on anyone or anything.

Big sister watches her older brother go. It's not Katsuki's business. Next to him, Deku watches with his big, goopy eyes full of shiny pain and nauseating empathy. Katsuki's nose wrinkles when he sees them.

Fuck you, Todoroki, he thinks vehemently at pretty much all of them. He's still hemorrhaging sweat like he might produce a river and wash away with the current.

He doesn't. Katsuki and Deku wash dishes alongside Endeavor instead. It's awkward. It sucks. The soap does nothing to carry away the sour note of the dinner's ending. Katsuki says as much when he hears big sister and little brother talking about it like they aren't still there.

"If you're gonna have guests, stop airin' your dirty laundry out in front of us! We still got dishes with crap on 'em and we don't need more of it!"

Deku looks at Katsuki like he'd just broken his mother's favorite china and used the pieces to spell out vulgar phrases. Coward. Katsuki knows he is thinking the same thing. He snatches up more plates and turns on his heel to skulk through the paper halls with a face like an oni. Deku, meanwhile, scuttlebutts back to the dining room to tell Todoroki platitudes and preaches forgiveness without a single, solitary thought as to how it scrapes through Katsuki's heart by way of the grooves he himself dug for it in anticipatory self-loathing. Because Deku's a tactless idiot who undervalues Katsuki's feelings almost as much as he does his own. Duh.

And they eat it up like dessert. Todoroki and his sister look at Izuku with big, melancholy eyes full of syrupy hope. Katsuki turns and realizes he's in the hallway with big brother Todoroki himself, who looks like he might cry into his house slippers. Like a little bitch.

Katsuki tries to justify the exorbitant cost of blowing this estate the fuck up to put an end to the whole ordeal. How Endeavor and Shoto managed to not do the same in a fit of flames is a feat of utter wonder – or stupidity, as it might put a violent and final end to all their problems. Morons. He's surrounded by morons, and also Todoroki's sister.

Fuyumi. That's the sister's name. Fuyumi, who invited them to dinner. Who insisted. Who carved out a little space for her brother to have friends while simultaneously using them like adolescent knives held at her family's throat to make them sit down together and act like civilized people – all for her older brother to call her bluff and storm out.

The food she made was good. Katsuki ate enough for two meals. Kept enough of it inside himself for later, until he could take her recipe and make it himself. He can make it himself. He should make it himself. He can figure it out himself. He should make it himself and wash his hands of the whole ordeal. He can figure it out himself. He'll do it himself, because what does he care about giving her the benefit of knowing he liked it? Wasn't that obvious from how much he ate? She'll know. She should know, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nah. She's so flustered as she bundles herself up to see them out that she apologizes to them. It makes Katsuki feel even shittier than he did upon entry when he knew he was owed an apology. Why is it so hard being right all of the time?! Why did it have to be Fuyumi apologizing? Why did she have to invite them over for dinner in the first place?! Why the hell did she have to make Katsuki feel even more like a cesspool of whirling confusion and pissed off anxiety than his recorded baseline?!

Whyyyyy?

Fuck her!

So, fine, he asks her for her recipe. Makes it as gruff as possible, so it doesn't sound like he's doing it to be nice. Makes it sound like she has to respond not because they need to have pleasantries, but because he's a rude asshole and this is transactional. Makes it sound like the bare minimum.

"Gimme that mapo tofu recipe."

Just like that. Both rude and direct. And he says it right as Deku starts bowing and being a general kiss-ass. Perfect.

But then Half-and-half half-turns to them and utterly cuts Katsuki's immaculately obfuscated tether with a nonchalant, "I'll have her text it to me," and Katsuki thinks he might ought to kill him right then and there.

Instead, Katsuki storms to the car. Like a real shithead; not like whatever big brother Natsuo was playing at earlier when he walked out of dinner. Because fuck him.

Meanwhile, Fuyumi again snuggles up in the collar of her down jacket as she sees them off, takes Izuku's hand, and says — and Katsuki swears he doesn't care at all about this. He even sits in the car and juts out his lower lip in a pout to look as disinterested and unaffected as possible — "Thank you for being Shouto's friend."

And Katsuki looks at her smile and Izuku's blushing cheeks and their intertwined hands and Todoroki's cheerfully embarrassed face, and realizes like the stupid child he knows he is:

I want what I don't deserve.

—

Author's Note: Well, from here it's off to the races. Currently I plan for this to be 5-6 parts with part two already finished and waiting in the wings. Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, and if I got you to laugh or think, "oh my god" while covering your face, I have succeeded in my mission. I really hope you like the flavor of "awkward sweaty teenaged shithead" and "absolute social discomfort during Japanese holiday events" because there's going to be a lot of that.

Thanks and thanks again!