Archive of Our Own

People always tend to have poetic shit to say about the expanse of space. About the emptiness, or the vastness, or how it makes them feel their own insignificance. Katsuki, as a rule, doesn’t.

He doesn’t have super warm, happy feelings about Earth either, like most people do.

He never spent enough time there. He was born on a starship, grew up on multiple starships, for a while on a starbase, and very, very briefly on a settler colony where his parents were both posted. Given all that, no one place ever felt like home.

This ship came the closest. And maybe that’s why, on top of at least a dozen other reasons, Katsuki will do what he needs to. No matter what it takes.

There isn’t a whole lotta time. Katsuki looks back over his shoulder and sees his tank meter reading. Which only confirms it. Depending on how fast he takes it in, that's enough oxygen to last about a minute.

Good, since it will take about that long for him to reach the damaged thruster window, close it and secure it.

Bad, since it would take a lot longer than that to get back into the ship.

Oh. So he's not going back.

He doesn't even have time to accept it, as he continues his spacewalk. Step after step, as if this is any other spacewalk he’s taken over seven years worth of commissioned service. He keeps his eyes trained ahead, because looking back towards the hull of the ship, illuminated by the nearest star, is blinding.

(He tries not to think of Todoroki now, where he might be. Whether he has Katsuki’s vitals pulled up on the screen at his station, and if he’s watching him breathing.)

It’s quiet out here. The red alert alarms that were going off on every single deck, along with the blaring instructions of the evac sequence are missing out here. The chaos on every deck, officers yelling at each other trying to engage the auto-shutoff—for what Katsuki’s trying to do manually—all of that’s gone now. It’s a vacuum of the feelings, and the rush of people that form the beating heart of a starship.

Katsuki focuses on the silence as he reaches the external ladder. Then starts on the first rung.

He has to do this right and quickly. The ship has about a 95% chance of exploding itself to smithereens in the next few minutes if he doesn't. All the readings around hull integrity exceeded acceptable limits over an hour ago. It's a miracle it hasn't blasted itself apart already.

Maybe you only get one miracle. And this is Katsuki's. That he can be the one who reaches the thruster in time and saves all the people inside that ship, the ones relying on it to keep moving forward and carry what they hope for, whatever reason they came onboard—Katsuki will make sure they aren’t lost out here. Even the ones that he doesn’t particularly give a shit about. Even the ones that he kind of can’t stand.

A starship officer protects everyone. That’s the only perfect victory.

Monoma has a running bet going down in the Engineering section that Katsuki’s going to explode the ship himself one of these days. Through the power of his rage alone. Todoroki told him about it, on one of their rounds, but he wouldn’t say which way he wagered. Katsuki wishes he could see the look on Monoma’s face, when he gets a load of this.

Katsuki wishes—no. He can’t think about that now. Gotta focus.

The window, if you can call it that, is so small. You wouldn’t think the escaping air in this one section could cause a chain reaction that could cripple the whole goddamn thruster. Whole ship’s built so that shit like this doesn’t happen. Redundancies on top of redundancies on top of more. Space is touch-and-go at best. They go in prepared for most of it.

It wouldn’t have been an issue if they hadn’t been under attack. As of now, the whole ship’s systems have been strained beyond what they were ever meant to take. The propulsion system’s been pushed well beyond what it was meant to do in terms of maneuverability. Necessary, so they could make it out alive after taking cover fire for the flagship of the fleet.

At least Katsuki got to see that. Captain Hakamada disabling the computer navigation, taking over manual controls so they could do it. It was fucking incredible. How a ship can really move guided by someone who knows her down to her core. She saved them that day. They both did.

But nothing comes free. Everything was running hot when they made the jump to lightspeed. Something was gonna blow. They just didn’t know when. Or how big.

Katsuki bolts down the window by hand. Securing the forward latches after pushing down with everything he has to get it to jam shut. It’s annoyingly low-tech. But it works. Once they can dock at a starbase they can get everything fixed and re-calibrated. Get enough power running through the ship to re-automate the routine tasks that keep breaks like this from happening.

While they’re docked, maybe they can re-do the minimum amount of oxygen that needs to be in these tanks, since apparently the age of needing to do ten minute spacewalks isn’t behind them. The next fucker that has to do one should be prepared for it.

There’s no blame. He wouldn’t have expected something like this to happen either. A perfect storm of bad karma. After an unexpected hit of good. The flagship survived, and with it the morale of the fleet.

Katsuki’s proud of that victory. Of this ship, for protecting them. And now, with the airlock properly engaged, he’s tried to do her justice. Given his crew one last and final thing. He expects them to take it from here.

And he knows, in his heart, they can. Best crew he’s ever served with.

He should have said that, maybe, instead of calling ‘em loitering ingrates or wastes of oxygen supply from time to time. But he had to keep ‘em on their toes.

Besides, if he was going to give himself away, it would have been to Todoroki first. Then the rest would have come unraveling.

He taps his comm badge, the one hooked onto the shoulder of his space suit. “Bakugou to main bridge. Closed the fucking thing.”

Captain’s always gave him shit about cursing over official comms. Maybe this time he won’t mind it.

Tank is running low. Eight seconds. Maybe less. Not enough to get down the ladder. Not nearly enough to get all the way back to the exit shaft.

He waits for confirmation from the main bridge. An ack.

Main bridge is the last place he saw Todoroki. His oxygen status is probably showing on the monitor, if somebody’s monitoring him. Maybe he’ll get lucky, and Todoroki will be the last person whose voice Katsuki hears.

Todoroki’s voice is as beautiful as the rest of him.

“Main bridge here,” it’s Deku’s voice coming out like a crackle. “The thruster matrix isn’t reporting combustion imminent anymore. It’s-it’s stabilized. We’re in the clear,” his voice falters, and Katsuki knows why, hopes that he of all people won’t take the blame and take it hard. “You did it, Kacchan.”

There’s another thing they’ve been yelled at for saying over official comms: Kacchan and Deku. They can usually manage, but calling him Midoriya has never sat right in Katsuki’s mouth. Calling him Bakugou was never something Deku could do either, and apparently it always came up in his personnel review. In the captain’s words: for the last time, what’s it going to take for you to exclusively refer to each other by your rank or given surname. And the answer is nothing, apparently, because even on death’s door he’s still Kacchan. Like he always has been.

As nice as that thought is, Katsuki’s vision is starting to get blurry. He holds his position with his feet at the top of the ladder and waits. He’d kind of expected more of a goodbye, but he’s happy not to get one. All he waits for now is to hear from Todoroki.

Then he takes another breath in, but there’s nothing. That was it then, huh. He doesn’t panic.

There’s no point in panic. He knows what happens now. There are a couple of hologram programs he made a long time ago, in case something like this ever happened. One for his parents. One for Deku. One for Eiji. One for the captain, who saw something in a loudmouth cadet with anger issues and decided to reform him.

And one for him. Shouto.

That one was modified the most recently. And Katsuki feels a surge of jealousy for hologram Katsuki now. ‘Cause that’s the fucker that gets to tell Todoroki he was always right about them being friends. That Katsuki has always thought he was beautiful and special and that he better be happy or Katsuki will haunt him all the way from hell.

It would have been mean and horrible to confess to more than that. Specifically, the romantic future he’d spent time envisioning. Given the conditions of the program's viewing. Him being dead and all. Hopefully it’s enough as it is. With all the sentiment mined from the deepest parts of his soul, maybe Todoroki will see it and know beyond a doubt that Katsuki loved every single part of him. He better be happy. He better be.

There’s a voice in his head. Deku’s voice. Saying standby.

It’s fucking weird, in Katsuki’s opinion, that a higher power or whatever would choose to welcome him to the afterlife using the voice of his childhood best friend to say that of all things. But it’s fine, whatever’s here, as long as Todoroki and Deku aren’t too quick to follow him.

He feels traces of his consciousness leave, and his mind starts to fade. Somehow, somewhere, it feels like it’s raining.

There’s a light. Bright. White.

And wait…red?

He’s taking another breath, and oh, fuck, there’s air. There’s someone else. Someone stupid enough to have connected their own oxygen supply to Katsuki’s. Someone…

He blinks twice. Trying to figure it out, before his grip on the thruster slips and when he expects the unending fall, someone catches him. He blinks again and sees the unfathomable beauty of space—and he sees what people write poems about—fucking finally, at last, not as it’s all around him, but reflected in blue and gray, and a soft voice that’s saying I got you, Katsuki.

-

The next thing he knows he’s in the depressure chamber under the bolted shut exit shaft. The vacuum’s been closed off, and the area re-pressurized so they can exist in it normally. His helmet’s been taken off so he can breathe. And breath he does, hard and fast.

He’s pressed up against someone else in this narrow space meant for one. He’s alive.

“I have him. I have-I have Katsuki.”

Third break in comms etiquette today. Captain’s gonna kill himself.

Katsuki’s oxygen-deprived ass can’t even say a word. He’s still coming back to his body. He felt himself slipping away, in the last moments. It felt final. Now he’s back.

He’s so glad he’s back. It wasn’t-wasn’t bad, in the moment, he wasn’t afraid. So why is it now that he feels like fucking crying?

Todoroki retracted the clear shell of his own helmet (like popping the frame out of glasses), so he could breathe. But he’s still wearing the big clunky thing. ‘Cause he only bothered to take Katsuki’s off all the way. His gaze roves all over Katsuki’s body, his face, like he’s making sure he brought back all the right pieces.

Katsuki taps on the neck of Todoroki’s suit, telling him to get the dang helmet off, and when he actually listens for once, Katsuki leans his forehead against Todoroki’s. He breathes in the same rhythm, so they match, nudges their noses together, almost a kiss.

He looks up at Todoroki through his eyelashes, and he can’t say anything of substance yet. Still catching his breath. So he whispers the word beautiful on an exhale, and lets himself really look at those eyes, and that scar, not at all cautious in what his expression gives away as he takes in everything Todoroki is.

“You’re delirious,” Todoroki notes, concerned, and Katsuki’s heart sinks thinking that’s the only way Todoroki can rationalize something like that being said to him.

“Is he stable?” the captain’s voice comes from the other end of Todoroki’s comm.

Todoroki’s two fingers go to his pulse point. “Getting there. He can’t support his own weight yet, but I will get him to the med bay as soon as I can.”

Katsuki wants to protest, but his legs feel like jelly, and Todoroki must have taken him across the exterior hull of the ship while he was passed out. He probably does need a minute.

“Acknowledged. Keep me advised, lieutenant.”

“Yes sir,” Katsuki answers at the same time Todoroki does.

They used to hate always being at the same rank at the same time. Neither having true seniority. The elusive right to be petty and order the other around. But now it’s kind of funny. Or maybe Katsuki is still coming back to himself, and the ego and need to win at all costs are the last pieces to slot back in place. Maybe this is him without any of the things that hold him back from what he wants the most. From openly loving Todoroki. 

He wants to tell Todoroki, now that he's got the chance, that what he did was stupid. Katsuki was the one sent to fix it because he has the best record of successful spacewalks, and he’s young enough not to bust a lung doing it. Everyone’s turn comes up someday to do something like that. When it does all that’s left to do is minimize collateral damage. Limit the casualties.

Todoroki shouldn’t have risked his own skin comin’ after him.

Katsuki expected him on the ship. Safe. ‘Cause it’s one thing if he’s the one who lost consciousness and drifted out, untethered. But Todoroki needs a better ending than that. Old, surrounded by people who love him, in a bed somewhere where there’s grass outside. Because Todoroki likes dirt and earth. He likes visiting planets, and he’s got plants in his quarters to remind him of what it’s like on land. He likes Earth, proper—it’s where his mother is.

Katsuki wants to tell Todoroki how mad he is that he risked that ending. That future that Katsuki’s chosen for him. Happy and loved. Even if Katsuki himself isn’t in it.

He doesn’t, doesn’t have the words to say it properly.

What he does do is roll his eyes. “‘Course it’s you and me.”

Now that’s something he’s said dozens of times. When upset, as a cadet, that he’d been paired with Todoroki and desperate to show him up. When frustrated, on their first interstellar outing, when they’d come out with matching times piloting shuttlecraft through the rings of Jupiter, because Katsuki really wanted that win.

This time it comes out with a kind of reverence, a quiet thank you to all of those other times (swathed in disbelief). All the crisscrossing through stars that brought them here, to uncharted space, and the painful descent of a hard-won victory.

“I had a feeling you might not make it,” Todoroki answers, his voice strained. “The others were considering detaching the thruster from the ship entirely, so we would float around waiting for a neutral or friendly party to answer our distress call.”

What? It would have been suicide. “That would make us sitting ducks. Ripe for anyone who came lookin’.”

“I know. Without other options I knew you were our only chance. I left the bridge a few minutes after you.”

“You knew?” Katsuki’s surprised.

Given the position of the open window being somewhat ambiguous. Katsuki was prepared to traverse the entire surface area until he found it. The upper limit of oxygen required wasn’t clear. Even if he had known, there wasn’t time to connect two tanks together, which it looks like Todoroki ultimately did.

“Midoriya and the captain both suspected. Even if they hadn’t, they would have had to detain me to stop me from coming here.”

“Wouldn’t be your first demerit,” Katsuki scoffs.

“No,” Todoroki admits. “It wouldn’t.”

Might not be in good taste to bring it up now, but, in fairness, Katsuki’s never claimed to have any.

Todoroki’s all calm and cool now, sure. But he was kind of a hothead, at times, when they were cadets. He’s got one official reprimand on his record for disobeying a direct order (Katsuki may or may not have been snooping the personnel files, when he found that out).

That’s one more than Katsuki—for all his temper and outbursts—has on his. And fuck if that isn’t at least a little bit funny.

Katsuki never asked what it was for. They weren’t on the same command when they graduated, so it must have happened then. He’s sure it was something stupid noble. Principled and stubborn. He doesn’t think Todoroki would do that unless there was a good reason.

Maybe that’s something he can ask him about now. Since he gets to live. Since his holographic self doesn’t have to tie up the loose ends of his life. The threads that connect him to Todoroki are his for the taking.

“I-” he falters. “Listen. I had things to say to you. And I thought—well, seeing as...”

Todoroki waits, and he looks so stupid pretty even in an ugly spacesuit, he has that look that’s always made Katsuki weak at the knees, like what Katsuki’s saying is extremely important, and he really, really cares about it. “Yes?”

Katsuki considers that maybe he wants to do this somewhere other than a crowded exit shaft. Some time when he can feel his own toes and his extremities aren’t weirdly cold while the rest of him is way too hot. He’s sweating up a storm in this bulky suit.

“We’re friends,” he offers for the time being, even though he feels really stupid saying it. “I’ve always thought of you as one of my closest.”

We’re friends, like he’s with Deku again, five years old and linking pinkies, talking about how they’re gonna grow up and be fleet admirals in the interstellar navy. Fuckin’ nerds.

It’s embarrassing.

But it’s easily the equivalent worth of Todoroki having saved his life: admitting it, finally, in words. They’ve both known it, in their own way for years now. Saying it is just different. Open.

Katsuki’s seen a fair amount of stars in his time, white dwarfs and red giants and two that were circling each other about to go supernova. None of ‘em brighter than Todoroki now.

With his mouth dropping open for a second followed by a soft little smile. “I consider you one of my closest friends too.”

Embarrassing. But-

It’s a huge weight off of Katsuki’s chest. That Todoroki knows now, for fucking certain, that he means that much to Katsuki.

Not that it’ll make the other part any easier. What he couldn’t even say in his if I die and you fuckers need closure messages. The love that feels too big for his chest. Too big for this suit. Too big for this ship and maybe the entire frontier of space.

When he felt himself slipping, he didn't really care that he never made captain. His own command didn’t cross his mind then. What he thought of was Todoroki. More important than his own commission, and the only person Katsuki can imagine settling down with, on an M-class planet somewhere with lots of open space and mature trees. They could go see the waterfalls on Iridia Three. The constant meteor showers on Omicron Theta. Somewhere Todoroki would smile at him like that. Somewhere pretty. 

“I never thought you would admit that,” Todoroki says, just as Katsuki’s thinking about how his eyes would shine in the glow of the Binar Nebula on the edge of the neutral territories. “Thank you, Katsuki.”

-

The thank you is what resonates in his head, and surfaces in his mind when he wakes up in the med bay. That, and indignation at the idea that Todoroki either gave him some form of tranquilizer before taking him down to the med bay, or worse, if Katsuki somehow fell asleep on him.

Thank you, like any of that wasn’t the bare fucking minimum. To be friends with someone you would risk your life for. That you did risk your life for.

“Where is he? I need to see him,” he asks the second he wakes up, and Yaoyorozu gives him a dark look. “Escape my med bay again, and I won’t be as understanding as I was before. Even if you saved the ship.”

“It was one time, and I was totally fine, you’re overreacting.”

“Careful lieutenant,” she takes on the tone she had when Katsuki brought an overworked Todoroki down here one time (when he refused to rest), the one that means she isn’t open to taking anyone’s shit.

He grumbles, but he lies back down on the cot and lets her continue to scan him. “What’s wrong? Is my brain in the wrong place or something?”

She’s a good doctor. That’s not the problem. But he doesn’t need a doctor right now. He needs Todoroki.

“No, but there’s a cactus where your heart should be,” Jirou shows up at his side, and the look of her uniform (blue like all the science officers wear, makes him think, for a second, that it might be Todoroki). “Didn’t he bring you back in? You should have told him then. If you’re asking about him now it means you chickened out.”

“Hah? I-oi!” he winces as Yaoyorozu injects something directly into his bloodstream (without any warning). “I was kinda busy out there, saving your dumb asses. You don’t think I need a little time? And who the fuck yells at someone on their sick bed, anyway?”

“Well, you would, and I do. It’s how we show we care,” she glances at Yaoyorozu. “You gonna take his blood now? I only came by to tell him Todoroki’s back on duty.”

“He is?” Katsuki asks, somewhat hurt. “Why isn’t he-”

“Down here with you?” Yaoyorozu directs a syringe into the vein at the inside of his elbow, and she moves so quickly he can barely feel a prick. “He was. Commander Midoriya was here too. They were called to the bridge for an emergency meeting.”

“Then I should be there too. If the captain wants-”

“No actually, here I outrank the captain. You’re staying here for another few minutes so I can monitor you and run these tests.”

“You really like sayin’ that huh?” he crosses his arms over his chest. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Definitely back to normal then,” Yaoyorozu notes, and Katsuki can tell she’s relieved. “I gave you something that should calm you down a little. A higher dose than I give most people. Once you seem okay, I can discharge you. But you’re not cleared for duty until tomorrow morning.”

“Calm me down. I’d like to see it-” he does feel an artificial sense of lightness. “Fine. Not like I gotta choice then is it.”

“No,” Yaoyorozu concludes with absolutely no fanfare. “You’re completely at my mercy.”

“What I wouldn’t give,” Jirou looks at her adoringly and Katsuki turns to his side, in case they’re about to kiss or something (gross).

He feels Jirou’s hand in his hair, and allows it to be ruffled (blaming it on the drug). “Come talk to me if you need to, okay?”

Talking to her about the Todoroki-wanting part of his life was a mistake in the first place (given the shit he's getting now). But he likes the lack of nonsense she brings to the table, tolerates the occasional judgment and appreciates the hard push in the right direction.

Four years on this crew together and she's always been the one to call him out for being an asshole when what he really wants is to be soft as shit.

For that dumb Halfie. For the look on his face when he said thank you.

“Fuck off.”

“I will,” she says. “Bye babe.” (to Yaoyorozu).

Then she’s gone, and Yaoyorozu hands him his comm badge back, which he clutches tightly in his palm. “Here. Five minutes.”

-

By the time Katsuki’s discharged, it’s time for ‘night hours’ on the ship. That’s when the lights are dimmed in the hallways on each deck and everyone’s supposed to pretend like it’s ‘nighttime’ like it would be on Earth.

Light-years away and they’re all still acting like they’re back there. Even though most of them have different home planets. Monoma, for example, was born on a planet with an eight-hour day. He brings it up all the time, blaming everything that ever goes wrong on Earth-normativity. Which Katsuki privately agrees with, to some extent.

Most starbases have an artificial rotation like Earth. But the one Katsuki spent the most time on as a kid was slower, an infrastructure problem they never got around to fixing. Which meant around a sixteen-hour day instead of twelve.

All the officers have bridge command at least once a week while it’s supposed to be night. That’s to make sure the Captain gets some sleep and isn’t off his rocker during fake ‘daylight’ hours. Once Katsuki’s stopped in the hallway on deck six, just off the med bay, he brings up a computer panel from the wall and confirms who it is this time. Even though he's got a hunch about it. 

When Deku’s face and rank comes up, he’s a bit disappointed (but not surprised). After an incident like today’s, he’d have wanted Deku to pass over bridge duty to someone else (to get some fucking rest). He didn’t expect it—as it turns out, rightfully so—since after an incident like today’s, Deku wouldn’t have even wanted to leave the ship to anyone else.

Night shifts on the bridge are supposed to be low stakes—you’re supposed to wake up the captain if anything serious happens. But Katsuki can bet his life that Deku’s taking this one serious serious.

As if anything else that could require what Katsuki did is his own personal responsibility and problem. That's just who he is. 

The rest of the current bridge crew is also displayed on the computer panel. Kendo at the security station. Some ensign he doesn’t recognize is at comms. Then the name he’s looking for: Todoroki Shouto, Lieutenant Commander, navigation. Shift time remaining: four hours, thirty-two minutes.

Katsuki could wait.

He doesn’t want to wait.

When he gets into the elevator it’s empty. “Deck six to bridge. Authorization Katsuki alpha two.”

“You are not assigned as part of the current bridge complement. Do you want me to request the current commanding officer, Midoriya Izuku, to assign you?” the computer replies, in its regular smooth, female voice.

“Nah, don’t. I’m not staying.”

There’s a beep noise, which is the acknowledgement, and then he can vaguely feel the elevator moving. It doesn’t stop to let anyone else in between decks, maybe because going to the bridge is considered a priority. Maybe because everyone else is successfully sync-ed up to Earth time, and already in their quarters, in bed.

Then the elevator doors open, and he walks onto the bridge. Realizing a bit too late that he didn’t actually change back into uniform before coming. Still in the civvies that someone (Jirou?) brought for him in the med bay.

“Commander. Entry on the bridge,” the ensign spots him first, and announces like some sort of medieval Earth herald.

Katsuki already sees a flash of green hair peeking out behind the captain’s chair. Then his eyes go to Todoroki’s back, the back of his two-toned hair at the navigation station towards the front.

“Kacchan, you’re awake!” Deku turns to the ensign. “You can-why don’t you, um-sit down.”

Then he’s standing in front of Katsuki, and his eyes are all big and watery. “I knew, I mean-I sent Todoroki-kun after you. But for a moment I thought I might-you know…both of you.”

Katsuki doesn’t lie, as a rule. Even to reassure someone. He has no way of guaranteeing this, so in that sense, maybe it is a lie. Or maybe it’s a sign of faith. In this ship and its crew.

“We’re not that easy to get rid of. Stupid nerd.”

“Are we allowed to hug on the bridge?” Deku asks, lowering his voice, as if that’s the only thing preventing Katsuki from publically hugging his childhood close friend/academy rival/current a-lot-of-things right here on the fucking bridge.

(It is.)

There is a certain formality expected in the public areas of the ship. Katsuki doesn’t know if this is one of them, seeing as he was never one to live and die by the handbook. Neither is Deku, on a higher level, but he’ll follow all minor regulation to a fucking T.

Mostly, as he crushes Katsuki into a tight hug. Without waiting for an answer.

Katsuki pats his hair in an attempt to comfort him back, and over his shoulder he’s watching Todoroki. He’s still at his station, even though he’s probably already set in coordinates, and doesn’t need to be glued down to the chair.

Katsuki makes the universal ‘get over here then’ gesture with his free hand.

“Ensign Chu, take over at my station and monitor our course,” Todoroki gets up, and taps the station monitor a few times to clear his name, readying it to transfer control over to her.

Then he’s walking over the ramp to the back part of the bridge, where Deku, embarrassingly enough, still has not let go.

Most people, as a rule, don’t look hot in regulation uniform. Todoroki’s an exception in that just like he is in everything else. The blue and the black fits over his form like a glove and the utilitarian vibe it gives off contrasts well with him being beautiful, otherworldly pretty.

“Bakugou,” Todoroki greets him first, then turns to Deku. “Commander.”

It’s still weird thinking of the green little nerd as a commander outright, also a little annoying that he made it there before Katsuki. Might have something to do with his training under Yagi, since serving on the flagship—which sees more combat and more high-risk situations—always pushes you ahead. Katsuki’s assignments before this one were less high profile, and maybe the difference in experiences shows. As much as it pains him to admit it. 

It never mattered as much to Todoroki, the son of an ex-Admiral, since he maintains rank isn't a 1:1 measure of an officer’s worth to a ship. He’d probably been sick of that kind of pageantry years ago, surrounded by it since birth. And he's right when it comes down to it. 

“Sorry,” Deku mumbles, letting go and taking a step back. “It’s nice to hear him breathing, you know. It’s nice that we get to breathe at all.”

“Yeah. Last few days have been shit,” Katsuki shrugs, trying not to look directly at the bright beams of affection coming out of big green eyes.

“You almost died?” Deku exclaims. “That’s more than shit. That’s…”

“At minimum, shit,” Todoroki, thankfully, agrees with him. “Can I be relieved?”

“From-from the bridge? Yeah. You can be relieved. I-you’re relieved. You two’ve got a lot to talk about. Not that I know anything, or anyone’s told me about things that were said!” Deku waves his hands in front of his chest in a show of fake innocence.

And he definitely knows something from Todoroki’s side, then.

“Thank you,” Todoroki nods to Deku, and then looks to Katsuki. “Let’s go.”

Kinda brazen, assuming Katsuki came here so that they could fuck off somewhere (correct though). “Who said I’m going anywhere with you?”

Todoroki shakes his head, too-used to his antics, and Katsuki actually laughs as his elbow is grabbed and he’s directed to the elevator.

When the doors close behind them it’s quiet, and Katsuki wonders if it would be sorta juvenile to skip the talk and just kiss him in the elevator. Something cadets get caught for doing, their first times on star ships. He and Todoroki were cadets together, and they never did that. It would be tempting—Katsuki glances at Todoroki’s mouth—to make up for lost time.

“Bridge to deck three,” Todoroki speaks first.

His grip on Katsuki’s elbow has slipped. And now they’re just standing way too close, hands brushing against each other and shoulders touching. There’s more room here than in the exit shaft, but it feels smaller.

Deck three. Todoroki’s quarters are on that deck. So are Katsuki’s. It’s mostly a personnel deck, with one cargo bay and a shuttle dock. Nothing else. Where does Todoroki even think they’re going then?

Taking someone back to your own quarters during night hours means something pretty universal. Something even Todoroki couldn’t miss (right?).

Katsuki’s throat is suddenly very dry. He wants this more than he knows how to actually say, and all the time is still ticking by.

“Yours or mine?” Todoroki asks, making it simple, so simple.

“Yours,” he chooses, unsure of why.

“Okay,” Todoroki says.

He didn’t need to ask this soon, because the path they’re taking in the hallway is pretty much the same. Todoroki slept a few doors down from Katsuki this whole time. They always bump into each other in the morning, going to find a less lonely spot to eat. Picking one together as a matter of convenience, the first time, but really forming a tradition they haven't broken since. 

Katsuki wonders if Todoroki's figured out what this talk they’re gonna have really is. If he knows about the feelings, and if he remembers how Katsuki lost his mind and actually told him he was beautiful, to his face, while his brain was still low on oxygen supply.

He’ll know after tonight.

“I’m sorry we weren’t there when you woke up,” Todoroki says as he steps in front of his own door, and presses in a code into the keypad on the side.

Katsuki follows him in, and takes off the black leather shoes he wears on the decks. Todoroki does it too. It’s funny how certain practices follow you no matter where you go. They take their shoes off when they get to a place that can be considered home. Todoroki eats replicator-made soba, and Katsuki had a 22nd century kitchen installed in his quarters to cook like his grandparents (the last generation of Bakugous born on Earth) did.

“It’s fine,” Katsuki says, looking around at the familiar decor.

Tatami mats. On a starship. Fuck’s sake. Only Todoroki Shouto.

“We were still at red-alert, and I left you in capable hands. The captain said a few words about you, by the way. He was proud of you, and said you were an example of the very best of what our service represents.”

“Bunch a bullshit,” Katsuki flushes, because he knows that from Hakamada, it’s high praise.

Other than plants and scratching posts for his cat, Todoroki’s quarters are fairly sparsely furnished. He’s got one teeny-weeny table, and three chairs to sit around it. Katsuki sits down in one, and he waits. His knee keeps bobbing up and down, which is a shame, since that’s one of the tells that Katsuki clocks as anxiety in other people.

And he can barely afford it, being alone with the person he’s liked probably for years, in his quarters, a few feet away from his fucking bed.

Todoroki sits down on the chair next to him, instead of the one across from him, and fixes him with this gentle and curious stare. “Did you want me to be with you when you woke up?”

Oh. So now he’s questioning it.

“Obviously, yes,” Katsuki answers, because apparently that’s how they’re doing this, blisteringly direct. “It’s fine that you weren’t. There was shit to do. I get that.”

“You also-” Todoroki stops, then starts again. “You said something to me in the exit shaft. It’s okay if you don’t remember.”

He’s giving Katsuki an out. Even if they both remember, he’ll let it go.

Who even told him he had to put himself last like that? If Katsuki ever meets them, he knows an open airlock they could get real well acquainted to. No one should have to go through life thinking they shouldn’t get an answer when they deserve one. And Todoroki deserves a lot more than just that.

“Yeah. I remember what I said. I told you were beautiful.”

Todoroki’s simply no closer to getting it, for how smart he is, talented, as good a shuttlecraft pilot as Katsuki, and now staring at him with wide, questioning eyes and a quiet, barely audible voice. “Why?”

Another out. Katsuki could pretend he doesn’t hear it. And if he says nothing in the next few seconds he’s sure Todoroki has a way to brush it off, change the subject, and make all of this go away.

“‘Cause that’s how you look. All the time. And I didn’t have the balls to make my death hologram fuckin’ say that.”

“Me.”

“You,” Katsuki insists and he wonders if the computer can pick up on his shivers and is turning up the heat, or if the warmth he feels all over is because of something else. “So, so fuckin’ pretty. Don’t you know that?”

“It’s a subjective opinion,” he deflects.

Katsuki takes a chance and brushes a stray piece of red hair behind Todoroki’s ear. “It’s the right fucking opinion. And it’s mine.”

Todoroki catches his hand as it comes down from near his ear, and he holds it loosely before setting back down on the table and slipping his own under it instead of over. So Katsuki’s free to brush his fingers over Todoroki’s knuckles and rub soft circles over the front part of his hand.

The reaction it gets is unbelievable. Todoroki looks at him like he’s a revelation. A face Katsuki’s only seen him make before, twice. Once at the symposium of planets, when he found out about a planet populated exclusively with creatures resembling domestic Earth-cats. The second time, when they met on the starbase and he saw he’d been assigned to this ship with his ‘best friends.’

“You have an in-case-of-death hologram for me?” Todoroki asks.

“What? You don’t have one for me?” Katsuki throws it right back.

He'd be a little offended, if not. It's practically common decency. 

“I do,” Todoroki admits.

“What’s it say?” Katsuki demands, even though it’s not really the kind of thing you should ask. 

He's always been a nosy person. He gets it from his old hag of a mom. 

And, also, it’s a joking demand, and anyone else would probably blow him off, but Todoroki, with all of his breathtaking sincerity, takes a deep breath and actually fucking answers. “The things I would want you to know that I didn’t tell you when I was alive. Also, a request to take care of Soba. Out of my friends, she likes you best.”

“What-what kinda things?”

“Do you really have to ask?” Todoroki flips their hands over, so Katsuki’s got his palm facing up, and he puts his own right over it.

Katsuki follows his lead seamlessly and interlaces their fingers together. Fuck. His hand is so warm. Would all of him feel like that?

Besides the point, he can't believe he's getting drafted to take care of the goddamn hairball of a cat. 

Do you really have to ask? That can only mean-

“Bastard, you were gonna tell me that shit, and be fucking dead? I didn’t put in mine so you wouldn’t have to fucking torture yourself about what coulda been,” Katsuki feels the tears run down his cheeks, as he imagines hearing it for the first time like that, with the empty hole in his chest from Todoroki’s absence, the lack of this warmth. “Jerk.”

“Not in those words. I did consider that and try to soften it. I only enumerated the reasons I liked you, and I told you that you were my most cherished person.”

Katsuki can’t tell, looking at things now, if he would have forced the denial on himself, or whether that alone would have been a clear giveaway. Maybe, possibly. He has a high degree of self-confidence, but it's brutally selective. Being loved for who he is never quite fell into it. But 'most cherished person' is definitely direct. Even he couldn't have argued with it. 

“I would have held onto that for the rest of my life,” Katsuki says, and he knows he would have woven it into everything he ever did. 

He can’t tell whether it would have made him want to achieve something, be better to somehow be worthy of it. Or if it would have driven him crazy, knowing that Todoroki had loved him that much, and he could never say it back, never even reach him.

Todoroki looks down at their joined hands. “What did you say?”

“Same fucking thing. More or less.”

He practiced the lines in the mirror, so they wouldn’t sound rehearsed. And he put them away in that holographic box, like shoving down what he really felt. Stupid. 

“I’m your most cherished person?” Todoroki asks, his lower lip wobbles in disbelief, and that has to go, it has to go.

Now. Somehow. Anyhow. “I-I didn’t say it in those words, but yeah. Who’d you think it was gonna be, Monoma?”

“Midoriya.”

Oh.

Close. Maybe. But-

“Not like this,” Katsuki shakes his head, because Deku doesn’t fit there, where Todoroki belongs. “Not like you.”

“What makes me different?" it’s open on his face, the concern.

Todoroki hates being different. Katsuki knows that. “No. Not different like that. More.”

Katsuki doesn’t know what to say, exactly.

He could explain, maybe, about what it feels like to do the rounds with Todoroki, the easy way they talk, how funny Todoroki is, and how he never laughs like that with anyone else. How it’s been like that since back in their academy days—he just didn’t notice.

He could explain what it feels like to look through star charts with him, pointing at places they’ve never been. Making fantasy routes of places they’d go if they had command of their own ships. Katsuki has Todoroki’s selections committed to heart. All green planets. Full of life.

Maybe it’s all the times Todoroki waits for him after meetings, how he listens while Katsuki’s ranting and alarmed, then responds to his concerns in a way that’s so fucking validating.

Maybe it's what it feels like when they meet for dinner in Katsuki's quarters, and Katsuki asks Todoroki to pick between the replicator-synthesized version of the food and the traditionally-made dish. He's always gotten it right. Saying some bullshit about how he can taste the human imperfections in one, even though Katsuki's cooking is fucking perfect. He gets so open those nights. And he'll tell Katsuki his unfiltered opinions on just about anything. What he's looking forward to and what scares him.

Katsuki never has been the person people go to for comfort, but he is that person for Todoroki, almost as a default. And it's thrilling. It means so fucking much, that Katsuki can be that for him.

That's the real difference. The kissing thing is almost secondary, and comes heavily from the first part. He's always thought Todoroki was attractive. But he wouldn't want him this fucking badly if he didn't know exactly who he was.

That part got built later. The need to be together physically and express affectation the way he knows best. As he thinks Todoroki might like. The way he responds even to the lightest, feather touches—he might like more, bloom like the flowers he loves so much.

Then, if nothing else, it's the way it felt when he realized Todoroki had willingly followed him into that endless darkness, step after step. How the feeling when he said I got you was familiar, because that's how it's felt every single time he's fallen asleep in Todoroki's presence. The same way it feels when they're in combat and Todoroki promises to watch his six. A level of unquestionable safety he never feels from anyone else. One that he desperately hopes Todoroki feels too.

Maybe he does. In the way he sometimes looks up at Katsuki, when he wakes up from an injury and says 'you stayed', like he knew that Katsuki would. The search party for the little girl on Revan Two, where Todoroki ran ahead (thinking he saw her), Katsuki put seven special-calibre bullets into the hell beast that nearly pierced him, and all that dumb bastard had to say was: knew I was safe with you behind me, so I went ahead because I could.

Almost all these things tend to coalesce into only one. That would take longer to explain, so he says so. “How much time you got?”

“The entire night,” Todoroki thinks about it, and Katsuki loves how he can always see it on his face, the wheels turning. “Then we both have to do the rounds, but we could resume, after, if we need to.”

“I thought you were supposed to be an impatient fucker,” Katsuki doesn’t remember a lot of occasions that indicate otherwise.

Since they’re literally holding hands, maybe that’s why it feels reprehensibly flirty when Todoroki replies. “Then, I guess that means, you still don’t know everything about me.”

Katsuki scowls, registering that you don’t know before the coy little Todoroki smile of it all, and he’s immediately assured. “You do know most of it.”

Fucking good. There had better not be-

Anybody.

-Nobody else poking around for the top place in Todoroki’s heart. Because fuck the captain’s chair or a station on the flagship, this is where Katsuki fucking wants to be.

So he might as well start his piece. Slow, probably, like the takeoff sequence of any space-ready vessel worth its salt. Carefully. 

“You know where I was born right?” Katsuki asks.

“On a ship, still in the Sol system,” Todoroki says, and that’s right.

Almost. “We were passing through the rings of Jupiter. And yeah, you might think that’s close enough to Earth, why not have an Earth-born kid? But my old bag of a mom really wanted to leave, and she didn’t think about if it might be better for a kid to be around his fucking grandparents and shit for a few extra months, and actually see a real sky.”

If he sounds bitter, he’s not, since there were good parts about it. Being the only little kid on a spaceship full of adults. He got to sit in the captain’s chair on an empty bridge when he was three-months old.

Had the wanderlust you need to be able to do this job settled in him from the onset.

See how big a starship looks when you're about a foot tall. Wander around in the common areas like a giant playground. See space out of his bedroom window every night and feel free.

“She wasn’t a huge fan of Earth, and being cooped up eight months pregnant didn’t help. So there was no talking her out of it,” he continues. "She was gonna have me where she wanted to have me." 

Todoroki nods along, and Katsuki knows that he doesn’t understand why he needs to hear fucking Katsuki: A Life Story in order to get why the shit between them is the way it is. But he’s going somewhere with this. That’s the only way things make serious sense. With context. With history. 

And god does he want this to make sense to Todoroki. His love, and the sheer fucking depth of his affection, and all of it. He wants it to sink in and protect Todoroki from every bad or negative thought he's ever had. Even if he can't be around forever—and nobody can—he wants Todoroki to have this part of him for keeps. 

“Our next major dock was starbase forty-one. That’s where I met-you know. Fucking nerd.”

“Midoriya told me about life on the starbase, with you,” Todoroki says, and Katsuki makes a mental note to tell Deku to butt out.

Commanding officer or not.

“Yeah. That place was-fine. It was good. There was a school there and everything. Bunch of officer’s kids. Like me. Deku’s mom was one of the teachers. I liked it. I didn’t-I was really fucking mad when we had to go.”

Six years old. With his first group of real friends. And this time it was his dad with the new posting all the way across to the edge of the universe. Unknown to him at the time, it would put him in the same star system as Todoroki, probably for the very first time. Practically in the neutral zone, it would mean he and his parents were physical deterrents to any hostile aliens that’d attack the colonies there.

‘Cause no one wants the deaths of federation citizens, let alone officers, on their heads.

But Katsuki didn’t know all that. He didn’t care about all that. He felt like he was almost ready to call that base a home. And he really, really cried hard when they left. Taking the clay model of Toshinori Yagi’s former ship, U.S.S. All Might, from Deku before they boarded the transfer shuttle. He still has it somewhere, in the pile of stuff he kept from that time.

The ‘Katsuki box’ as his parents called it. With all his momentos from the different places they’d been. Even though, after starbase forty-one, he didn’t get attached. They were all stops along the way, none a destination.

Until this.

“It must have been hard on you, always moving around. I didn’t know that about you when we met at the academy,” Todoroki gives his hand a squeeze.

“Yeah, you were a tool when we met at the academy.”

“I don’t think you were much better,” Todoroki points out.

“Even bigger tool,” Katsuki allows, because he wins even this.

Being the slightly bigger jerk to Todoroki’s pretty-much-a-jerk, all while Deku was dancing around being model cadet/future captain Good Times. That little shit. 

“I didn’t really get why my parents could do all that,” Katsuki explains. “I mean, I was in my own head a lot, so I didn’t think of them as people with their own needs, because I was a punk ass kid and they were my parents. So that’s also a part of it.”

“Yes, I can see how that would be,” Todoroki acknowledges, waiting for him to continue, giving him the space he needs. 

All the postings his parents took were together. Some of the assignments were god-fucking-knows-where because of it. Since it’s harder to station two people as a unit, than simply move around one.

And Katsuki only ever saw that as a disadvantage. Went around saying he would never get married and even if he did, he’d never flush his career down the toilet like that. The usual short-sighted bullshit.

Looking at Todoroki, he understands. “They did all that ‘cause they had someone they could come back to. That’s why this ship is different in my head. That’s us, to me. That’s you. Do you-”

After all that. “Know what I mean?”

“Yes. A home planet,” Todoroki says, simple, simple, simple, as he leans in closer. "That's how you see me?" 

"That's how I see you." 

And Katsuki leans back, drawn in by the kind of gravity space isn’t even supposed to have. Until their faces get close enough, and he closes his eyes to meet Todoroki’s warm, pliant mouth. Even his touches, his cautious hand on Katsuki’s jaw, feel welcoming, beckoning, making space for them to slip even closer. Deepening the kiss, because he’s not a fucking hologram who can’t touch Todoroki’s body when it feels this fucking good.

He’s here, right here. And they’re kissing for the first time like they should have, locked in a supply closet on Kargos Five as cadets, knees and elbows knocking together and touching in all the wrong, or right places. At graduation, when Todoroki said ‘I hope I’m posted with you’ and Katsuki was rendered speechless in the moment. Three months ago, when a bunch of the officers (Katsuki excluded) got bit by an alien tick that makes you sexually promiscuous, and Todoroki was propositioning him in an elevator, dropped down on his knees—no, he made a good call rejecting that one, woulda been awful for him to make that their first.

And not nearly as nice as this.

Kissing while the sounds of the ship, the ever-present hum goes on in the background. With Todoroki as the center of the universe he knows, and him, with his hands itching to be all over, a regular old voyage of discovery—as he’s caught in orbit.

Near Todoroki, who’s so fucking bright it’s blinding, Katsuki’s own perihelion. 

“Come to bed with me,” Todoroki says, after they part, pressing his face into Katsuki’s neck. “I’m tired, but I thought-”

“Yeah,” Katsuki nods, running his fingers through Todoroki’s soft hair. “Just to sleep.”

Then Katsuki’s left alone to get under the covers while Todoroki goes into his closet.

He waits there, on the right side and when he closes his eyes for a second he fully realizes how sleepy he actually is. The weight of the past couple days really hits, it dawns on him that he’s somewhat hungry too, and the only way he managed last week was stubbornness and adrenaline.

When Todoroki slips back into the bed, he’s a welcome warmth, and he nudges Katsuki into facing him.

He’s wearing a light gray shirt with the academy logo emblazoned in the center, and black shorts underneath.

“Hey,” Todoroki says. “I don’t think I’ve ever shared a bed with anyone else. Sorry if I kick you.”

“Tsch. I can take it. C’mere,” he wraps an arm around Todoroki’s waist, and pulls him flush against him, squeezing him tightly, warm, and priceless against his chest.

“Do you kick?” Todoroki asks, getting the hang of things, maybe, as he tucks his head under Katsuki’s chin, and hugs him right back.

“Maybe, I don’t-don’t fucking know.”

Katsuki’s never actually, well, he tends not to linger after sex. And the last person he shared a bed with platonically was Deku, back on starbase forty-one, and he never complained, so.

Todoroki’s leg finds its way between Katsuki’s two, and when they’re completely entangled Todoroki lets out this soft little sigh that takes Katsuki’s breath away.

“I got you,” he whispers, and presses a kiss into Todoroki’s hair. “Shouto.”

-

When he hears the beep of an incoming subspace transmission, he’s barely awake, and he acknowledges it only so it doesn’t wake up Shouto.

They’ve changed positions in their sleep, with Katsuki plastered to his back, hugging him from behind, and if any kicking occurred, then they apparently survived it. They’re also, apparently, extremely clingy bastards.

His arm is around Shouto, with Shouto’s hand gripped tightly around his, keeping it there. They’ve thrown off the covers half-way, probably because Shouto’s a little space heater. The light’s changed from being mostly off last night to a slowly warming blue with tinges of orange, trying to simulate the hours before an Earth sunrise.

It’s all so fucking peaceful. And then there’s that goddamn noise.

Shouto makes a disgruntled sound and shakes his head in his sleep when Katsuki tries to turn it off, and he ends up having to try for a verbal shut-off. He’s happily surprised that ‘shut the fuck up already’ happens to be an accepted command.

Then he sits up in the bed enough to the point where Shouto wouldn’t be in the frame, and he receives the message on the lowest possible volume setting.

The message is projected from a central point in his watch. Bright blue light forms an image in front of him that’s between two and three dimensional. First the emblem of the federation. Then of the flagship. And oh, yeah, he knows who this is.

A pre-recorded message plays afterward, and he sees a slightly distorted version of Kirishima’s face. It’s a short message, only asking for Katsuki to meet up with him when they’re both at the starbase. He doesn’t mention the battle they were just in, but Katsuki can see a few cuts on his face that weren’t there before, and that’s worrying. He does mention the ship, apparently it’s not in the best shape, but they’re going to dock at the starbase in under five hours. In the meantime, what Sero’s done down in engineering, holding it together with spit and duct tape, essentially, should be enough to get it there.

The worst is over, for all of ‘em, essentially.

When the message shuts off, he feels Shouto stir, and completely accepts it as Shouto flops over on his other side, and hugs Katsuki’s torso however he can. For his first time sharing a bed, Halfie sure learns fast.

“Who was that?” Shouto asks, eyes still closed.

His voice is low, and grainy in the morning. Even more than it tends to be when they have their earliest meetings.

“Kirishima, they’ve reached starbase before us.”

“Oh? That’s lucky.”

“Lucky? They probably hate us over there, dragging our raggedy asses back with ships stuck together with glue and tape.”

“Everyone on starbases loves starships,” Shouto says, looking cute as all hell with his bedhead in Katsuki’s lap, two-toned hair sticking up every which way. “Didn’t you?”

And that’s not wrong. Katsuki did love them. The ships that seemed to take up the entire horizon. Even if they were smoking or had bits of debris sticking out or whole chunks of the hull missing. That just meant they were hero ships. Who’d been big and strong enough to fight against the unfriendly aliens who would hurt them. A simplification only a kid could make, but it’d been enough to power basically every daydream. Of being a captain, and flying into battle, where only the strongest could win.

He did love them. He does love them. Even after growing up, which makes everything complicated.

“What’s your favorite ship?” Katsuki asks. “And you can’t say U.S.S. All Might.”

If anyone with sense could choose, they would choose the U.S.S. All Might. De-commissioned now, of course, but the flagship of the golden age, when the federation was at its peak. Yagi’s ship, responsible for bringing in more signed treaties than any other ship in history. Survived a head-on collision and could fight 4:1 in battle.

Katsuki knows the log of that ship like he’d been there. And Shouto loves it too. Any line of questioning, if it’s gonna bring up something new, has to exclude it. That’s just a rule.

“What’s the ship that discovered the cat planet?” Shouto muses. “Now that one did a real service to the federation.”

“Hah? You’re completely stupid,” Katsuki says.

“Am I? Is your favorite the Skylark?”

“It’s not the Skylark.”

Fuck. It might be the U.S.S. Skylark, with his first favorite excluded. If he’s going with pure greatness value, here. It has to be. If Kiri were here he’d yell something about the U.S.S. Crimson, which is some bullshit. Skylark charted more unknown space than any ship before her, when the rest of the ships with that same mission didn’t make it through—‘cause the thing about unknown space is that there’s a lotta shit you don’t know about that’s out to get you.

Shouto’s expecting him to pick it though, which means he’s gotta find another one. And he totally can. Especially if he makes room for what he usually doesn’t allow, a little sentimentality.

“This one,” Katsuki decides. “This ship, obviously.”

“Oh. That’s cute, you’re sweet in the morning.”

“Doesn’t suit an academy graduate, ya know. Making conclusions off of one little datapoint. What’d Ecto-sensei think of you?”

“I’ll need more data then, clearly.”

“Fuck yeah you will.”

A statistically significant amount of mornings.

-

Extricating himself from Shouto and going back to his quarters is one of the most difficult things he’s ever had to do. Especially since Katsuki’s doing the exact opposite of actually trying.

They kiss in bed for what feels like hours, and Katsuki turns off every single notification he can possibly get. Subspace transmissions. Personnel review invitations. Low-level ship-wide announcements.

He’s this close to disabling his own comm-badge, but that’d be a step too far. Instead he takes it off and gives it to Shouto’s cat to play with.

“You’re acting strange,” Shouto remarks, happily pinned down under Katsuki’s weight.

“I’m prioritizing, fuck you.”

“I don’t want to be interrupted either,” Shouto admits, letting Katsuki suck on a spot on his lower neck, throws his head back slightly to accommodate, and lets out a surprised little moan.

“That good, huh?” Katsuki asks, because he can’t resist, and keeps lavishing attention on just that one spot, as he reaches up under that soft gray shirt, and brushes his hand against warm skin.

“I-haftareport,” it’s a weak protest, and Shouto’s greedy hands are already on Katsuki’s back, he’s already angling his face up for another kiss, which he should definitely get once his neck’s been well and properly attended to. “So do you.”

“Who’s gonna make me?” Katsuki demands, and maybe that was tempting fate a little, because-

The comm badge buzzes. The vibration scares the cat, who was pushing it around as if it was a fucking catnip mouse. And Katsuki hears the captain’s voice resounding through the room.

“Lieutenant, I hope you’re well rested. I was hoping to speak to you at 0800 hours in my ready room.”

“Yes sir, I’ll be there,” Katsuki says back, trying not to sound like a disgruntled child.

“He said lieutenant. Maybe he meant both of us?” Shouto jokes after the communication cuts.

“Nah. Wait. Shit,” Katsuki can’t believe this. “If he looked up my location before he-fuck.”

Katsuki looks back to Shouto, and processes that he’s exactly the kind of person who’d interpret this as Katsuki being ashamed of him, of them. When that’s-that’s not the fucking point.

“He’s like my dad, okay. I don’t want him to know who I sleep with.”

“Isn’t accidentally calling your captain dad, one of the top reported bad dream fantasies?” Shouto points out, sitting up in bed just as Katsuki does, mirror images.

And yeah. Shit. Katsuki just went and admitted it, freely and with no caveats. “Whatever. I’ve known him way longer than he was in charge of me here. I can think-if I want.”

He can totally see him as a father figure if he wants to. It’s allowed. Deku gets to play surrogate son with Yagi-san as a fucking side-career, then he can-he practically owes his life to Hakamada. One way or another.

“It’s okay,” Shouto says, half-assuring and loving, and half ever-so-smug. “I won’t tell a soul about it.”

-

Once, when they were at the ship’s bar down on deck ten, and Todoroki and Deku had both abandoned him, Captain Hakamada told him his least favorite part of being in starfleet.

Katsuki had been mentally and emotionally prepared for something super fucking deep. Since they’d both been drinking and it felt like that kinda moment.

But what he said was, with all the seriousness in the world. “I hate the uniforms.”

Not following his best judgment, or maybe just fucking curious, Katsuki had encouraged this. “How’d you have done ‘em?”

“Jeans,” the captain shrugged. “They are the best fiber. If I could, I would always be wearing jeans.”

So that was fucking weird. And of course, when he told Todoroki and Deku the next morning, they didn’t believe him. Which sucks ass.

Since he’s the only one now out of the senior officers who knows that their captain, who’s a great captain by any other measure, has a huge thing for jean pants. Or, maybe, they do know, and were just trying to annoy the crap out of him.

Not that it’s, you know, the worst. Everybody has their hobbies. The captain of the flagship apparently sleeps in a yellow sleeping bag, and has it rolled up in his ready room off the main bridge. Katsuki always thought that was just a rumor about Aizawa, but once Sero and Kirishima were posted with him, they basically confirmed it.

If, or actually when, Deku makes captain, his ready room’s gonna be filled with memorabilia of the U.S.S. All Might. Goddamn nerd. And Katsuki-well, he hasn't thought about it super specific.

He’s been in this ready room—called that for whatever reason, but functioning as a place for a ranking officer and their juniors to debrief—dozens of times. Each time a part of him feels like he hasn’t done enough to belong there, with the captain’s ear, worthy of all that responsibility.

This time he almost feels ready. The pair of jeans in a snowglobe on the desk are a decent reminder that everyone’s got their eccentricities. Their own fucking problems. He doesn’t have to be some sort of robot, or colossus, dispatching problems without unease.

“Sit down,” the captain invites, and he’s surveying Katsuki intently.

Katsuki sits. And he waits.

He wonders if maybe he’s in trouble over something. Or if he offended anybody recently and the captain’s here to give him his monthly ‘please be nicer to preserve the peace on my ship’ talk. Can’t be. Mind’s coming up blank.

Maybe he has been nicer recently.

“I wanted to tell you I was very grateful for your actions on the thruster yesterday. You performed the patch faster than what I could have expected, and the ship and everyone on it owes you their gratitude.”

“It was nothing,” Katsuki says, immediately. “You woulda done it.”

“I would have. But I wasn’t in a position to do so, and you did,” the captain’s expression breaks. “I would have hated to have lost you like that.”

“You’re the one who told me you can’t save everyone under your command. When you made me lieutenant. About the hard decisions,” Katsuki points out.

“I said you can’t, and that’s the truth. But I’ll still try my hardest to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he says. “That’s what you did. And I know I give you a hard time about your…behavior, at times. But that was a fine showing. You’re a good officer, and I’m proud to have you onboard this ship.”

Katsuki thought he outgrew needing or wanting praise. He thought he got over that, as a prodigy pre-cadet, being told how good he was from the age of thirteen. He was praised all the time, and it felt empty.

Not like this, the way it fills him up. Being told he’s valued like this, as a member of a crew. For saving.

“Thank you, sir,” he says simply, not wanting to ruin what he feels right now with his usual deflection or general attitude.

He sort of wants to tell Shouto about this. Confide in him why it matters. And show his excitement to his one special person, more or less openly.

“I also want to tell you that we’re going to be at starbase for a while making repairs. I encourage most of my crew to take shore leave.”

“You’ll need me to oversee repairs,” Katsuki can’t imagine not having ten thousand opinions about how best to repair this ship, can’t imagine not being involved.

“Normally, yes. I would agree. But you can’t keep pushing yourself without breaks. You need one. I think your friends among the crew would agree.”

There’s a twinkle in his eye when he says friends among the crew, and Katsuki’s mental siren is going ‘he knows he knows he knows.’ He does, doesn’t he?

“Yeah. Maybe a few days wouldn’t hurt,” Katsuki allows. “Cat planet ain’t around here, is it?”

“Cat planet?” The captain looks confused. “There are several m-class planets in this system suitable for recreation.”

“Forget about the cat thing, I can-I’ll find out where I needa be.”

Other than in a more-or-less willing orbit around Shouto. He'll find a place worth landing. Not too far from here, hopefully. 

-

He meets Shouto after he’s done his rounds, and if his first question is about Monoma it’s only because he needs something to distract him from the fact that he can’t kiss Shouto in the middle of main Engineering.

“What’d he look like?” Katsuki demands.

Fucking Monoma. He’s been antagonizing Katsuki since the moment he stepped aboard the ship. And yeah, Katsuki doesn’t think he’s the shit or anything because of what he did. It was what any officer, including Monoma, would probably do, but it happened to be him. He’s more than willing to rub Monoma’s face in it.

“Pleased,” Shouto says. “He sent a robot to further monitor the thruster window you closed. Apparently you closed it with so much force, they’re going to have to use creative measures to re-open and reseal the thing once maintenance needs to go in.”

“‘Course he’s pleased about that,” Katsuki grumbles.

“He was torn up about almost losing you. Really concerned. I think, deep down, you two do actually care for everyone on board this ship.”

“Try again,” Katsuki says. “I don’t give a shit about him. Or any of these extras.”

“Of course not.”

Katsuki shoves him over and steps in front of the computer panel himself, taking over data entry as Shouto sighs. “How far are we to starbase?”

“Four hours.”

“Then, I guess," he smiles his secret smile that's only for Shouto to see. "We should talk about shore leave.”

-

“I know you confessed your love,” Shouto remarks dryly. “But I didn’t think you’d want to spend two weeks on a tropical planet with me.”

There were plenty of raised eyebrows, some wolf-whistles and he’s pretty sure Jirou and Deku both sighed and said something along the lines of finally, when they filed for identical time off. With the same shuttlecraft booked to get them from point A to point B.

Point B being a notorious honeymoon destination for people in the federation. The most erotic planet, with sex pollen floating in the air apparently. Katsuki hadn’t known that when he picked it. He saw a bunch of plant life, loads of green, and he thought it seemed about Shouto’s speed.

“You can still turn back you know,” he says, laying in the shuttlecraft’s course and speed.

They’re seated side-by-side at the controls. And Katsuki used to make fun of people who dual-pilot and hold hands, until he was the one doing it.

It's fucking great is what it is. All of space ahead of them. Shouto's hand in his. 

There’s enough air in here to cycle and last for days. He finally feels like he can breathe. “It’s all fair game until they open the shuttle bay doors, Shou. Last call.”

“I think I’ve already made it pretty clear I’d follow you anywhere.”

He would, wouldn't he. 

Into the dark, where there isn’t enough air. He’s there in the spaces between real life and dreams.

It happened in more than one way. And he tries to tell Shouto that whenever they kiss, in how it feels. You saved me, you saved me, you saved me.

“I know, I know, always on my ass,” Katsuki clicks in the remainder of the launch sequence. “Shuttlecraft Two to main bridge. Requesting opening of the main shuttlebay doors.”

“Midoriya hurry, he might blow straight through it.”

“Shut up, I’m a better shuttlecraft pilot than you.”

“Acknowledged Shuttlecraft Two. Opening shuttlebay doors now. And if I can add? Please have a good trip?” Deku’s voice, way too cheery.

“I’ll do what I want,” he shuts off the comm, and turns to Shouto, who’s looking at him, smiling knowingly. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing, not nothing with that fucking face. Tell me now.”

“I can’t wait to spend thirty-four straight hours in a shuttlecraft with no one but you,” Shouto says, completely genuinely. “And I love you, Katsuki.”

The second part was redundant given the first. But it’s fine. “Thirty-five, and guess what fucker? Fucking love you too."