Chapter Text
December 14th, eleven days and 3 hours until the annual Todoroki Christmas Party...
Ochako drums her fingers against the steering wheel, nervously watching the gates to the high security facility she’s currently parked outside of. It isn’t as bad as the prison Himiko spent a five year sentence in, or her brief few months in Tartarus before that while the collection of Pro-Heroes and hero students lobbying for the introduction of the now celebrated Villain Rehabilitation Scheme fought for her case in court, but still, the centre Himiko has spent the past three years in isn’t exactly welcoming, with its barbed fences and tall gates.
The work being done inside is revolutionary, though, and something Ochako herself has poured years of effort into. After the war and the shaky but shockingly peaceful resolution to the conflict, what with the League of Villains aiding the heroes in a victory against All For One that no one could deny would have been impossible otherwise, it was controversial to introduce something like villain rehabilitation, but finally, it was at least a conversation. What started as something of a grassroots project amongst the hero students in their last few years at UA was soon brought to the attention of a handful of trusted Pro-Heroes. All Might, Aizawa, Hawks – it was only a matter of time before public support, tentatively, followed suit.
Every single member of the League of Villains agreed, eventually, to a reduced sentence in exchange for being the first to officially enter the Villain Rehabilitation Scheme. Given their cooperation at the end of the war, the absolute chaos of the legal system at the time, and the overall failing of Hero Society that contributed to their becoming villains in the first place, it wasn’t anticipated that any of the League would be given more than a thirty year sentence, but with the negotiations introduced by the rehab scheme, even Shigaraki – with the highest sentence – was looking at only ten years of prison and rehabilitation before he could, depending on good behaviour, get a chance to start integrating into society again.
Himiko had the added legal advantage of being so young when the war happened. She hadn’t committed a single crime as an adult, and Ochako herself had spoken out on her case any chance she could, accepting interviews and appearing in articles to sway public opinion on her and tell the world how the monster they’d come to recognise was not someone they truly knew. Ochako did, though. Himiko had saved her life with a smile that day, had let Ochako see her for the first time, and Ochako had seen something worth saving back.
That was eight years ago. They aren't scared teenagers reaching desperately for each other anymore, and today, after years of observed visitations and scheduled conversations, Himiko will sit in Ochako’s car and they’ll drive off, just the two of them, with Himiko as a free woman.
Ochako can’t help but smile, humming along to the Christmas music playing from her less than stellar radio. It’s the middle of December and grey clouds are gathering in a way that has reporters chirping away about the potential of a white Christmas. She’s desperate for snow this year, picturing Himiko’s first Christmas back in the world and wanting it to be absolutely perfect for her. Izuku had talked Ochako down from several anxious spirals leading up to today, reminding her there’s only so much she can control, and Himiko will be happy just to be free and able to see Ochako again, because she’s always happy to see Ochako again, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting to make it special for the other girl. So few people in Himiko’s life have been kind to her.
The large gates open and Ochako jolts out of her darkening thoughts, spotting a familiar head of blonde hair.
Himiko Toga at twenty-four years old is different to how she was at sixteen. She’s taller than Ochako now by a handful of inches, and her hair falls long and straight down her back, bangs currently pulled out of her face by two butterfly clips. She’s wearing the formless but comfy grey clothes of the rehabilitation centre that only make her look unfairly cute, and even from the car, Ochako feels like she can make out the pull of Himiko’s mouth, forever on the verge of a world-eating grin, and the glow of impossible eyes like pools of butter.
She’s lost the frazzled, manic edge she used to have, as if she’s settled into her body over the years, but it makes her no less excitable, and she throws herself at her therapist who walked her to the gate. The woman has seen Himiko through the entirety of her rehabilitation, and embraces her back just as fiercely now, the two speaking to each other for a few moments with teary smiles before Himiko pulls back and, finally, turns to see Ochako.
Ochako gets out of the car and waves, opening her arms expectantly as Himiko bounds over.
“Hey, cutie!” Himiko beams, lugging her duffel bag over her shoulder with one hand and instantly grabbing Ochako in a hug with the other, squeezing the breath out of her. Ochako chokes on her own grin, hugging Himiko just as tightly and waving away the staff still watching them from the gates. Technically, she’s here as Uravity to help settle Himiko into the apartment Hawks had helped organise and pay for with the influence he has with the – reformed – Hero Public Safety Commission. These days, the HPSC are just relieved he hadn’t sued them into the ground once he went public about his childhood.
It’s hard to be anything more than just Ochako with Himiko though. They learned to move past who they were as heroes and villains a long time ago.
“I have so much I want to do!” Himiko immediately begins to rant, her fangs showing past her excited grin. “Good food, for one. Oh my God, you wouldn’t believe how much I’ve been wanting to go to street vendors again. And it’s nearly Christmas so I’m so behind on getting people gifts and I want to host a party and oh, oh! The apartment! You’re gonna have to help me get decorations for it, it has to be the cutest-.”
“Okay, okay,” Ochako giggles, taking Himiko’s bag from her and putting it in the backseat before getting in the car herself, starting the engine when the other girl follows suit, “you gotta slow down! One day at a time, remember? It might be a bit overwhelming at first.”
Himiko huffs loudly but her smile softens into something small and happy. Ochako starts to drive, and Himiko watches the rehabilitation centre get smaller behind them while tapping excitedly at her leg. It isn’t the same there as when she was in prison – she’d been allowed to leave the centre for day excursions, but it had to be approved both by her therapist and a Pro-Hero, who would have to supervise her the entire time she was out. It was a way of giving her increments of freedom to observe how she responded to it while also slowly introducing the public to the idea of seeing her on the streets again.
But this is the first time she truly has independence, after eight long years.
"How are you feeling about today?” Ochako asks, watching the other girl from the corner of her eye.
Himiko looks out as the road becomes more populated, fascinated and giddy. “Good. Really good. It's good to be out.” She turns wide, disarming eyes on Ochako. “Thanks for coming to get me... Thank you for all of it.”
At a red light, Ochako lets herself meet a stare she’s never learned not to melt into, even when her life depended on it, and smiles, reaching across the seats to hold Himiko’s hand and give it a tight squeeze.
“I said I’d save you right back, didn’t I?” she says quietly, before letting out a choked-up laugh. “And look,” she nods at the various festive advertisements and frazzled shoppers on the pavements around them, “we managed it in time for Christmas!”
Himiko laughs with her, but before Ochako can pull her hand back, the other girl holds it close with both of hers, and then the light turns green, and it seems unnecessary to pull away just yet. Himiko's touch is so warm against the chill that had crept in while Ochako was waiting in the car, and it makes something in her chest buzz.
“Sooooo,” Himiko says nosily, “anything exciting happened since you visited last? Any daring, heroic saves? Any villains catch your eye?”
Ochako can't help her fond eyeroll. “No, Himiko, nothing exciting has happened since I saw you a few days ago, unless you want to count a guy who tried to rob a florist yesterday.”
“You saw me three days ago, to be exact,” Himiko says haughtily. “Three whole days!”
Ochako shakes her head with a laugh, squeezing Himiko’s hand again, and silence settles between them, something Himiko doesn’t usually allow, which means she’s more nervous about today than she’s letting on. It tugs at Ochako’s own nerves again, and she wants a return to their easy conversation, if only to distract them both for a bit. Talking with Himiko is so easy, dangerously easy.
Ochako bites her lip against a sudden intense emotion. Excitement, probably. Also some fear. A bit of hysteria, if she’s being completely honest. She pulls her hand from Himiko’s to indicate a left turn, and doesn’t think to return it.
“Actually,” she says quietly, “there is something that happened. I'm... I don’t know for sure, and you can’t say anything-.”
“Oh my God,” Himiko sits bolt upright, “you have a secret. Tell me this instant.”
It fuels Ochako’s own excitement, fingers tapping rapidly against the steering wheel for some sort of outlet.
“I just... I found the box in his jacket yesterday,” she says, voice hushed despite it being just the two of them, “and I shouldn’t have even been snooping! I was doing a dark wash and he always forgets to put that jacket in the basket and I just found it by accident and it makes so much sense with the party coming up and-.”
“Ochako!”
“I think Izuku is going to propose!”
She’d squeaked it out in a rush, gripping the steering wheel as the words hang in the thickening air between them. The silence stretches, and stretches, and stretches, but Himiko just stares at her, mouth open, golden eyes wide and... dull. That usual brightness gone out in an instant, replaced with shock and something Ochako is too scared to call disappointment.
They've never talked about this thing between them, not once. Himiko has had so much on her plate and her life has been so tumultuous since the war and she’s been powerless against it all, and Ochako... She couldn’t add to that stress. She couldn’t give Himiko one more thing. Before she knew it, years had passed, and she shelved it as no more than a teenage crush, heightened emotions from the adrenaline of battle. Fickle. Temporary.
Shelved, but never thrown away. A rose-tinted memory for quiet nights.
For the first time in eight years, swallowed whole by Himiko’s silence, Ochako doubts herself, and it feels like she’s choking on dust.
“That’s...” Himiko whispers, barely a breath in the silence. “Will you... Are you going to say yes?”
She looks like a puppet whose strings have been cut, everything dropping all at once from a girl usually so loud, so magnetic, so blinding. Ochako wants nothing more than to bring that light back, to return to whatever stupid conversation they were having before, but she’s pinned in place by golden eyes.
Ochako answers just as quietly as she’s asked, the words weak. A defeated shrug. “Why would I say no?”
Himiko flinches, and just as quickly, she forces a smile so wide that it almost looks painful. “That’s great!” she beams. “That's so great! Oh, I love talking about weddings! I wonder what yours will look like-.”
She trails off into a mindless conversation about decor and colour schemes, jumping from topic to topic rapidly, desperately, and Ochako looks away to stare at the road and hum agreements and considerations whenever necessary.
The scar left from Himiko’s knife aches as she drives, and she pretends not to see Himiko subtly trying to cycle through the coping mechanisms her therapist gave her for when she gets overwhelmed.
Katsuki fucking hates Christmas.
It makes people even more unbearable, for one, which is bad enough for someone who already finds 99% of the population unbearable every other day of the year. You either have assholes trying to shove festive cheer down your throat from as early as November, or stressheads becoming retail monsters in their mission to get everything done by the holiday. Crime goes up every year around Christmas, which is fucking peachy, because Katsuki’s quirk is better suited to hotter temperatures. Not that he can’t handle it – he’s been alternating between the Number 1 and Number 2 Hero spot with Izuku for years now, thank you very much – but it’s fucking annoying all the same.
And worst of all, Christmas is a couples holiday. The romance of it all inundates every television and radio, interviewers get even more vulturous with their questions, and his social circle becomes intolerable to be around with their mushy couples activities. Even Katsuki’s parents start badgering him on when he’s going to bring someone home for Christmas.
If he could, Katsuki would wait the entire season out in a bomb shelter, but he’s no coward, and besides, Izuku loves Christmas. He always has, even when they were kids. He was the type of weirdo who’d create detailed statistical charts trying to figure out how Santa could get everywhere in one night, and he’d try and stay awake every year trying to catch the man in question, much to Inko’s scolding. Katsuki had been dragged along for the festive joyride every year, teasing the entire time, and then, during those difficult years where Katsuki shoved Izuku away and did his very best to destroy their friendship entirely, Christmas became a silent holiday, like something Katsuki experienced through bubble wrap. He'd hated it.
Annoying as the nerd is, it’s better like this.
Even if, every year, Katsuki has to watch Izuku and Ochako sucking face under the mistletoe while he tries to drown himself in the eggnog bowl.
His shoulders hunch at the thought, brows furrowing as he stirs vegetables around the wok for the stir fry he’s cooking with renewed focus. That's... That’s something he’s not thinking about – The Problem. He realised The Problem after the war, or probably sometime during, if he’s being honest. Dying for someone sort of fucks with things. And once he realised The Problem, it was impossible to unrealise, and he’s steadily had to accept over the years that The Problem probably existed for way longer than he’s comfortable admitting. Like elementary school levels of longer.
But Katsuki can handle problems, and he’s handling The Problem just fine. Has done all this time, will continue to do so until he fucking dies, because like hell can he do something about it now. No, that ship has well and truly sailed, because that’s what ships do when they try and land on your shore and you repeatedly try and blow them up. He has no one but himself to blame.
“Kacchan, that smells really good!” Izuku chirps, looking up from the report he’s been writing for his patrol today. He's sat on the opposite side of the kitchen counter to where Katsuki is preparing an early dinner for them both, the two of them existing easily in silence in Katsuki’s apartment, and it’s so grossly domestic that Katsuki is outright refusing to acknowledge it. It makes his chest go all tight, and that is distinctly a symptom of The Problem, which he’s not fucking thinking about.
“Course it does,” Katsuki grumbles, “I’m making it, aren’t I?”
Izuku’s smile is indulgent and fond. “You’ve always been the best cook out of anyone.”
“Say that in front of Fuyumi.” Katsuki looks up from his food prep to give a wicked smile. “Or maybe I’ll tell her.”
It's so easy to get the nerd worked up. He's stuttering like a high schooler in seconds.
“I- That’s different and you know it! Don't you dare!”
Katsuki snorts, shaking his head. “Whatever. You better bring her something for the party. Icyhot can send all the texts he likes, but everyone knows who the real host is.”
“Obviously we’re going to bring her something, Kacchan,” Izuku huffs, but he’s still smiling a little, warm and tugging up tired, green eyes, soft under the kitchen lowlights, and it would be nice, it would all be so fucking nice, but there it is. We. Always we, because couples need everyone to know that they’re joint at the hip and make every decision and gesture together.
As if mentioning him summoned the annoying bastard, both their phones ping with another text from Shouto to the groupchat all of Class A still have together, that has quickly become a party planning hotspot. Katsuki had it muted for almost two blissful weeks before Momo rang him directly to berate him for ‘avoiding his responsibilities as a party guest.’ Her and Iida, as always, are determined to take the fun out of everything.
Every year, the Todorokis throw a party on Christmas day. A dinner to start with, followed by drinks and music and games. Shouto says it was his mother’s idea, to start establishing her new home after the divorce finally went through, and while Katsuki can imagine Rei and Fuyumi fussing over sophisticated dinner layouts and elaborate food courses, he has a feeling the party that always comes after and the copious amounts of alcohol involved have more to do with Natsuo and one freshly rehabilitated Touya Todoroki.
Of all the League, Touya got out first, courtesy of probably the most extreme case of nepotism to grace the court system. He may have been a shitty deadbeat most of his life, but Endeavour pulled through at the end, putting all his money and reputation into getting his son a reduced sentence and appropriate medical care. As if that wasn’t enough, Hawks also vouched for Touya, and acted as his main Pro-Hero supervisor when reintroducing him to society. Everyone close enough to the case knew it was a dressed-up excuse for the apparently dating couple to move in together, but Hawks kept Touya pretty docile these days, and after enough surgeries to scare a Nomu and permanent quirk supressing bracelets, Touya became a free man after only seven years serving time. It was his choice to bury Dabi, and not an easy made one.
Katsuki had decked him in his no-longer-stapled face the first time he saw him, and Touya had laughed through bloody teeth about it. Both Shouto and Hawks were desperate for the pair to have a better conversation than that, but oddly, Katsuki felt settled by it. There was an understanding between him and Touya that he’d been too scared to look at directly as a teenager. The same burning ambition yanking at their ankles that had tried its damndest to drag them both to hell, and very few people knew what it was to shake that grip off, to feel the skin peel under shackle-tight hands, to crawl to your feet, to start to walk, to try and convince people to love you again afterwards.
The next to be released were Spinner, Twice, Mister Compress, and today, Himiko Toga. Of all of them, Toga probably could have got out the quickest, given her age, but she willingly chose to stay on longer with the rehabilitation scheme after connecting with one of the therapists, deciding for herself that she needed more help before she was ready to come back into the world. It was huge news at the time, a villain willingly prolonging their sentence like that, and even though she was upset to wait even longer, Ochako was thrilled for Toga.
She took over Toga’s case as soon as she got her licence as a Pro-Hero, and even convinced Katsuki to do a brief interview where he, not excessively or with any amount of fondness, confirmed that he supports the League’s rehabilitation. It did more for public opinion than any of Ochako’s latest efforts. Perks of being the brat they kidnapped. Ochako had just been ecstatic to see the conversation starting to turn in Toga’s favour.
And today, the little vampire is out.
Izuku came over to give the girls some space. He has his own key and a habit of showing up even if Katsuki isn’t home. Katsuki pretends to mind it. He pretends a lot of things.
“Toga coming to the party?” he asks, plating up the food.
Izuku lights up when the bowl is placed in front of him, offering a quick thanks and snatching up his chopsticks.
“Ochako wants her to, but it’s early days yet,” he says, shovelling food in his mouth with the speed of someone who hasn’t eaten today. Katsuki narrows his eyes as he picks up his own chopsticks. Knowing the nerd, he probably forgot to eat again.
“We don’t want to put too much on her straight away,” Izuku continues. We. “But it would be great if she decides to come! And I think I’m finally making progress on getting permission for Tomura to come for the day, seeing as there’s going to be so many heroes there. It would be really good for him, I think. He's seen each of the League a bunch over the years, but they haven’t all been together like that since the war. If they were all there...” Izuku’s got that glow in his eyes that he gets when he knows he’s really, truly helping someone, and Katsuki tries not to smile, the expression dropping all by itself when that intense stare focuses properly on him. “Would you mind it?”
Katsuki rolls his eyes. “You know I don’t care.”
“It would be fine if you-.”
“I haven’t got a problem with it, Izuku,” Katsuki grumbles, and he means it. He let go of a lot of his resentment towards the villains a long time ago. It’s pretty hard to stay bitter after the trials happened and all the information got out about what truly made each of them turn to villainy. Even Shigaraki, who did his damndest to try and kill Katsuki and very nearly succeeded, had been no more than a puppet for All For One, his own body robbed from him to become no more than a weapon. Katsuki’s still too busy balls deep in an existential crisis about hero society and what exactly he spent his whole life revering to remember that he should probably still be mad. Izuku knows it, too. Knows if Katsuki was really bothered then he’ll be the first to know about it, one way or another. He's just asking to be nice, because Izuku is always nice, has always been nice. Forever a boy reaching his hand out to a dog he knows will bite him.
And this is why The Problem is such a problem, because a thought like that ought to ruin the whole meal, but instead Katsuki feels his lip pulling up smugly at the side, watching with satisfaction as, even after all these years, Izuku still fumbles at hearing his first name on Katsuki’s tongue. He's never once gotten used to it. Katsuki clings to this victory more desperately than any other.
“Well,” Izuku flushes, “anyway! Have you got everyone’s presents yet? I only have Shouji’s left to buy, he’s so hard to buy for! I was thinking...”
Izuku trails off on one of his signature rants and Katsuki is content to eat quietly as he does, soft Christmas music playing from the speakers he has installed around the house, courtesy of Izuku barging in here earlier and immediately kicking him off his own Bluetooth, insisting that he needs to get in the festive spirit.
It's nice like this. It settles something in Katsuki. This is how it’s always been and always should have been. Izuku talks, and Katsuki listens. It's easy, dangerously so, and because of that, it can’t last.
"I actually... kinda wanted to ask you something...” Izuku says, tone suddenly becoming anxious, his smile falling a little.
Katsuki's stupid heart stutters and he blames it on the lasting injury from the war.
“It’s... I was thinking...” Izuku has stopped eating, and refuses to meet Katsuki’s piercing stare.
“Spit it out,” Katsuki snarls, something like dread starting to drag its nails down his spine. It's not often he can’t tell where Izuku is going with something, and it never ends well when he can’t figure it out. All he knows is that this is serious, sees it in the slight tremble of Izuku’s scarred hands, the way he still won’t fucking look at him-.
“I think I’m going to propose to Ochako,” Izuku says suddenly, and just like that, green eyes blink up to meet red in all their intensity, and Katsuki can’t breathe.
Yeah, he thinks distantly, dumbly, deliriously, yeah, this would happen.
Izuku and Ochako have been dating for two years, but they always seemed inevitable before that. They were so... comfortable. Stable. That one textbook couple. Nothing exciting but nothing painful either, and Izuku would rather something like that. The boring, soft kind of love, the kind Katsuki can't offer anyone, let alone him.
Still, the stupid part of him always thought... he’d hoped...
But a ring would sit pretty as a permanent link. It’s over in one sentence. A killing blow.
Katsuki glares at the last of his food, suddenly feeling like everything is too hot, too heavy, too damn much. He's that kid being praised in a classroom again, running the high and terrified of what they’ll do when they realise he’s not really got anything special to offer. This feels like the fall. The vertigo. The crash landing.
“About time,” is all he manages to grumble. “You got a ring?”
Izuku sends him a megawatt grin and that’s how they spend the rest of dinner, with Izuku talking about how nervous he is and what he should say and how he should do it and if it’s a good idea to propose on Christmas day and forever share an anniversary with it but Ochako just loves Christmas, and Katsuki pretends he’s not drowning.
Ochako texts Izuku a few hours later, sooner than either of them expected, saying Toga is settled in her new place but wants to spend the first night alone. It's seems a little unusual for the clingy bloodsucker, but how should Katsuki know? The last time he saw Toga, they were on opposite sides of a battlefield. Izuku leaves with his normal smile and a promise to see him tomorrow when their patrol routes line up. Katsuki tries not to slam the door in his stupid face.
The Christmas music gets turned off immediately. He washes the dishes in silence, staring out the window at the night sky, too cloudy to see the moon. He has a nice apartment, courtesy of a top 10 hero’s paycheck, but it’s a studio and he didn’t want anything outrageously big if it was just going to be him alone here. He lived with Eijirou for years after graduating, but he moved in with Ashido a few years back and Katsuki decided to just stick it alone after that. Honestly, of all their class, it’s a wonder those two aren’t the ones engaged yet.
Most nights, he likes his apartment. It's his own space and living alone suits him.
Tonight though, the silence after Izuku leaves feels suffocating. Maybe that’s why he hears it straight away, despite how lost in thought he is. If anyone asks, he’ll say it’s hero instincts working 24/7. The noise is subtle, barely there, but Katsuki freezes with his hands still in soapy water as he strains to hear a faint tapping noise coming from the living room.
It goes silent again for a moment, and then comes the distinct sound of one of his damn windows creaking open and is someone fucking breaking in?
He doesn’t feel fear, or even shock, just immediate, blind rage at the actual nerve of someone to break into his house. How stupid could these villains be? Do they even know where they are right now? Katsuki's going to kill them.
He shakes his hands of water quickly and storms around the kitchen island towards the living room, hands crackling with angry explosions as he goes. He reminds himself to tone it down – redecorating every time he gets too liberal with his quirk gets more embarrassing every time he has to return to the nearby store with his tail between his legs. Maybe he should have just grabbed a knife from the drying rack and done things the old-fashioned way.
“What fucking dumbass-?” Katsuki snarls as he stomps into the living room, before freezing to stare in flabbergasted shock just in time as Himiko Toga – ex-convict, serial killer, previous member of the League of Villains and lieutenant of the Paranormal Liberation Front – tumbles through his window and lands in a heap on the floor with a yelp.
“What the fuck,” Katsuki says.
Toga looks up at him through a mess of blonde bangs. She's still wearing the all-grey outfit of the rehab centre, paired oddly with pink platform boots that she’s now got all over his damn carpet.
She grins victoriously. “Blasty boy! So this was the right house!”
“What the fuck,” Katsuki repeats, and then he starts shouting. “What the fuck?! What the fuck are you doing in my house?! How did you even get my address?!”
Toga jumps to her feet only a little inelegantly, blowing long blonde hair from her face and grinning at him with all her teeth.
“Don’t worry about it!” she chirps.
“I’m fucking worrying about it!”
“Well we have bigger things to worry about!” Toga rolls her eyes like he’s being overdramatic, before pushing past him to walk towards the kitchen she spotted over his shoulder. It takes a pitiful few seconds for Katsuki to recover from the utter shellshock ricocheting through his chest right now before he even thinks to follow her, and by the time he’s whirled around with a face like thunder, she’s perched on one of his barstools like she owns the damn place.
Katsuki's so mad he can only let out an incoherent growl that finally ends in a seethed, “Get out!”
Toga ignores him, pulling something from the handbag she brought with her, and Katsuki shifts his weight ready for a fight. Himiko Toga – quirk: transform. She can change into the appearance of whoever’s blood she drinks and subsequently use their quirks, but despite being released from the rehab scheme, Katsuki knows there will be precautions in place to stop Toga from misusing her quirk. The likelihood is that she can’t weaponise it at all right now, but that doesn’t leave her defenceless. Toga was known for her skill with a knife and close combat fighting. If she has her knives with her now...
But why? It's the question that stops Katsuki even as he feels himself falling into an old mindset of blast off first and think later. He's not the foolhardy teenager he used to be, and something isn’t right here.
It's why he keeps his hands in fists instead of aiming an explosion right at her stupid head as she reaches in her bag, letting the situation play out for a few more seconds.
When she pulls out what looks suspiciously like a whiteboard, Katsuki starts to wonder if he’s just having a really fucked up dream. As if approaching a wild animal, he rounds the island to face her head on, watching in bewilderment as she pulls out a pen and begins writing quickly, tongue between her teeth to reveal a sharp canine.
She looks so much more grown than when they were kids, and that’s what they were, that’s what he’s struggling to reconcile in his mind as he looks at the woman in his kitchen. As young and clueless and stupid as he was, Toga was just the same. Just a kid. He can’t hate her for any of that shit, and he realises with a sudden certainty now that she isn’t here to hurt him, but he’s still gonna be mad about her breaking into his fucking house.
“Start talking, crazy,” he spits.
Toga holds up a finger as she continues to write, her nails painted blood red because right, yeah, they would be. The sheer nerve of her telling him to wait in such an obnoxious way in his own house after she broke in on her first day out of rehabilitation has him gripping the marble of the island until his knuckles go white. He's practically shaking in rage, and she just continues drawing out... Is that a fucking mind-map? What the fuck is happening right now?
He can’t even read what she’s writing because marui-ji upside down is a fucking nightmare, and when he realises he’s trying to read it instead of demanding answers, he’s so mad about it that he contemplates leaving his own house and going for a calming walk like all of his anger management classes recommend.
“There!” Toga says, grinning at the whiteboard like she’s created a masterpiece. “Katsuki Bakugo, may I introduce you to Operation Christmas!”
“What.”
“What?” Toga cocks her head in a distinctly birdlike fashion, before holding up the whiteboard with all the excitement of a kid showing off a weird bug they found. On it, Katsuki can finally see that the mind-map does centre around ‘Operation Christmas’, written and circled aggressively in a hot pink marker, and coming off it are several branches with labels like ‘Izuku’, ‘Ochako’, and one that makes his stomach nosedive to his feet - ‘Proposal’. It's written with a large X on either side of it.
“What the fuck am I looking at?” Katsuki asks with an extraordinary amount of calm given the everything happening right now. He should really call Ochako, huh? He should be calling someone about the fact Himiko Toga is in his house right now.
“Don’t play dumb,” she huffs, dropping the whiteboard between them dramatically, “it’s so not cute. I thought you’d be on board with this straight away.”
“On board with what?”
She grins maniacally at him, and there’s the crazy bitch he remembers.
“Breaking up Izuku and Ochako before he proposes, of course!”
It's silent for a few seconds, maybe even a whole minute as she blinks at him with giddy excitement and he stares back at her like he’s never encountered a derangement like it. Honestly, he hasn’t. Dying at war made more sense than this. Izuku appearing at UA with a quirk one day made more sense than this. This... He doesn’t know what to do with this, and Katsuki Bakugo isn’t someone who just gets stumped.
“Get, and I cannot stress this enough,” he speaks in a low growl, “the fuck out of my house.”
“No.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“You know we’ve already done this, right?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “You act all growly, we think you’re big and bad, but you just turn out to be a massive softie? Seriously, we kidnapped maybe the most heroic kid on the course. And I know you’re not gonna kick me out because I,” her eyes twinkled smugly here, “have piqued your interest. You're still in love with Izuku, right?”
He opens his mouth, shuts it again, makes a low keening noise as he pictures either smashing her head or his own into the marble counter repeatedly, before blowing all the air out of his lungs and trying to put his thoughts into some sort of order. He's had counselling for stuff like this. He's not gonna flip his shit. Toga is in his house. She isn’t leaving. She just outright acknowledged the kidnapping thing like it's no more than old highschool drama between them. She asked him if he’s still in love with Izuku, and horrifyingly, that’s the worst part of all of this, the part that makes Katsuki feel like he’s suddenly at the firing end of a gun, and she’s got her finger on the trigger. He feels caught.
“What,” he seethes, “do you mean, am I still in love with Izuku?”
She looks at him like he’s stupid and like she’s not singlehandedly blowing up his reality.
“I can always tell when people are in love,” she says, like it's a fact of life. “But even if I couldn’t, you’re kidding, right? You guys were so cute at the training camp! You were all Izuku, stay back and he was all give me back my Kacchan!” She dons a deep, gruff voice for her impersonation of Katsuki and a high-pitched, overly righteous voice for Izuku that has Katsuki’s eye twitching. “Compress even said something! Mind you, we already had the other kid at that point, but Izuku only had eyes for you. Kind of fucked actually now I think about it-.”
“That is not how it went down!” Katsuki explodes, unable to hear any more. “That’s-! It wasn’t like that!”
“It so was.”
“No, it wasn’t!”
“Uhuh.”
Katsuki groans into his hands. “Why the fuck am I even arguing with you? What the fuck is happening?” With a deep breath, he looks at her head on, forcing a calm he doesn’t feel. “I'm gonna say this one time and you’re gonna fucking listen, got it? I am not in love with Izuku. I have never been in love with Izuku. Just because you’ve been obsessed with Ochako this whole time doesn’t mean you get to show up here and ruin my night, let alone their relationship!”
“Wow,” Toga says, actually sounding stunned, “you are seriously repressed. I bet you even convinced all your friends, too! Or at least you definitely think so. Not me though. It's written alllllllll over you. Look! Even now, you’re blushing!”
“Because I’m mad and you’re insane!"
"Those words mean the same thing."
He kind of just yells at her then, no real words coming out but a hell of a lot of noise.
“Look,” Toga sighs, finally losing her patience. “Can you just listen to me instead of it getting drowned out by that loud voice in your head going deny, deny, deny? We're running out of time here, or did you forget the party at the Todorokis is just over a week away?”
Katsuki blinks. “You’re actually coming to that?”
“Duh! All my friends are going!”
Wait. “Go back. How the fuck do you even know about the proposal anyway? Did Ochako say something?”
Toga’s expression drops into a fierce scowl and she begins picking at the edge of her whiteboard. “Yeah, she’s onto him. He couldn’t even keep it as a surprise! She's way too good for him. Don't get me wrong, I like Izuku a lot, but those two just don't work!”
The stupid voice in Katsuki’s head that tends to get loud and hysterical whenever he thinks about The Problem for even two seconds begins chiming up that yes, actually, this is something they can apparently agree on, because why does everyone always insist that Izuku and Ochako are so good together? No one’s ever doubted it before, and like a gossiping auntie with no concern for safety or the general strangeness of the situation, Katsuki tentatively finds himself sitting on one of the barstools.
He crosses his arms moodily. “It’s not that they’re bad together...”
“But the thought of them makes you want to throw up?”
“No-.”
“You think they’re together out of obligation?”
“No-.” A bit.
“They’re kinda like siblings?”
Toga continues looking at him with wide, inquisitive eyes as she suggests things, and Katsuki goes absolutely still because oh shit, he sees it.
“That,” he says slowly, “is not what I was gonna say. What the fuck? I was gonna say they’re just not...”
“Just not right for each other,” Toga finishes, and yeah, there it is. He rolls his eyes and she takes it as the agreement they both know it to be.
“So,” he says, and fuck, he’s going to regret this so, so much, “Operation Christmas?”
Toga’s grin is a slow, unsettling thing. “Operation Christmas. We team up for the good of our respective crushes-.”
“Not a crush.”
“-in order to save them from making a potentially permanent mistake that neither of them truly wants! This is, like, heroic of us or something! It's like a mission!”
“Heroic?” Katsuki says disbelievingly. “You want us to scheme in the lives of our closest friends, consciously and consistently try and break them up less than two weeks before they likely get engaged, all for what you perceive as our own benefit, and you’re calling that heroic? This is what all those years of rehab got you? Really?”
Toga blows a raspberry and gives him an emphatic thumbs down at his analysis.
“So you’re not gonna help me stop this before it’s too late?” she asks, tapping her hot pink whiteboard marker against the big ‘PROPOSAL’ written down. “Does Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight roll over and die now?”
“Like hell I do!”
“So why aren’t you fighting for him?”
Her eyes bear into him like a quirk of their own, all-knowing and stripping him down to something young and embarrassed and, above all, scared. That mouthy, arrogant kid who had to be the best not just because he loved to win, but because he was expected to win. The crushed bones of an inevitable rejection haunt his days and he saw it first in Izuku, even if the other boy never meant for that to happen. He already knows what it is to lose him, to stare at his back unable to catch up, so he’s not fighting it, because in this one thing, he’s always going to be that scared kid. It's not for him to change.
But Toga... Her eyes sparkle in that familiar way when she talks about Ochako, and Katsuki knows how close the two girls are, how present Ochako has been for eight long years now. They have a commitment to each other, and like hell is Toga going to let her get away now she’s finally able to do something about it.
Himiko Toga is a strange spectre of a bloodstained past, but in his kitchen with pink marker on her hands and a determined grin that’s all teeth, Katsuki recognises her. She'll fight for this all by herself if she has to, is probably expecting to, but she came to him first.
She came to him first, and Katsuki is a hero, goddammit. Who is he to run away from this now?
“If we do this,” he says slowly, “we do it on my terms. Nothing crazy, and no one else finds out. Ever.”
She lights up like the shitty Christmas tree in his living room, thrusting her hand forward. “Deal!”
Katsuki sighs, imagining his reputation swirling down the drain as he reaches to shake hands with one of the villains who tried to ruin his life, but he’s not going to half-ass this. He's agreed to it now. No going back. Throw yourself full force off the cliff or stop pussyfooting about at the edge.
They're gonna sabotage the hell out of that stupid engagement.