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It wasn’t hard to sneak away from the gala.
All eyes had been on Shouto, and everywhere he turned, there was another camera flashing in his face, another stranger clamoring to ask him a barrage of questions that all melted into each other, a buzz in the too-noisy background. It should have been impossible to get out from under all that attention, but the blinding horror of being there, the centre of the fray, the target of a thousand reporters swarming like insects, gave him the motivation to scope out the quickest escape route—the corridor leading to the bathrooms, connected to the external area of the event hall.
A quick text to Touya and the ensuing diversion of a recently-released ex-villain accidentally knocking over a tower of champagne flutes later, he was out of the hall and halfway down the corridor, his freedom in sight beyond the double doors. He pushes them open and ducks into the almost darkness, chancing a glance over his shoulder to confirm that nobody followed him. This area is calmer, anyway, and with the festivities proceeding inside, there’s no reason for anybody to come out here except him.
A cobbled path leads into the garden, illuminated with candles on each side. It swirls around flowerbeds labelled with neat signposts laying out information about each type of flower, and turns to a bridge over a shallow man-made creek. Lanterns hang from the trees, casting pools of gold over the soil and glinting water, and fireflies flit around the garden. Solid planets and flickering stars in a tiny galaxy.
After the heat inside the main hall, the night air is a welcome reprieve. When Shouto tilts his face up, it catches the breeze, soothing over his tired skin. He closes his eyes, letting it billow over him, relaxing.
He had been dreading this gala for a while.
With his eighteenth birthday left months in the past and no official announcement of his secondary gender made, those who did not arrive at their own assumptions are becoming more and more curious. It had been hard enough to come to terms with the fact that he is a beta without dealing with nosy civilians hoping to have a strong alpha hero who can serve as the perfect archetype of a protector, or an omega they can pick apart.
Being a beta means neither.
He wasn’t born to provide for, nor to take care of. Scientists are divided on the evolutionary purpose of betas, but within the Todoroki family, it has always been clear—they have no real purpose. A useless cog in a machine.
Shouto had been unable to pick up pheromones since he was a child, but when he was young, his father still hoped that capability would manifest someday. Hoped that Shouto would wake up one day in the throngs of a rut, venom dripping from his bared teeth, all of those repressed instincts bursting out. His scenting attempts were only ever met with Shouto blinking up at him cluelessly, too little to understand what was (or wasn’t) happening—why his father had brushed his wrist over his neck and waited, his features growing harder, tighter.
The morning of Shouto’s eighteenth birthday, the latest recorded age at which a presentation had occurred, he had waited for a comment from his father, but none came. Enji just gave him his birthday gift—a custom watch in silvery blue—and made no mention of the truth which had now been confirmed beyond a doubt. A visit to the doctor would provide additional verification, but it didn’t matter. Shouto had always known.
Through middle school, he hadn’t thought about it much, but in U.A., it became clear how different his reality was than that of everybody else. His classmates were clingy around their heats and ruts, sharing nests, scenting each other casually in the common area after dinner. Even if they had invited him into their nests a few times, it wasn’t the same. They never scented him, and even if they tried, he wouldn’t have smelled it, anyway. He couldn’t read all those secret signals that they emitted like second nature.
It seems nice to nest as omegas did, cuddle and be doted upon, or be looked to for care and support like alphas were. Pick up on each other’s scents, understanding each other effortlessly. It’s hard enough to understand social cues without thinking about the world of signals he can’t perceive. A world Shouto had never been a part of.
After circling around the garden a couple of times, he takes a right at a small crossroad that leads him to a gazebo hidden at the end of the path amongst a cluster of tall bushes. Fairy lights are strung up all over it, twinkling in gold, and the inside is lined with a couple of cushioned benches.
He thought it would be a good place to hide, but five minutes have barely passed when footsteps come up the garden path. Shouto’s thinking of the ethics of blasting himself out of here on a pillar of ice when a flash of yellow glints under the lights, and Katsuki emerges from behind a bush.
Immediately, Katsuki frowns. “IcyHot? The hell are you doing here?”
“Taking a break,” he says plainly. It’s not a lie. “You?”
“Hiding.”
“Oh. I am, too.”
He huffs, stepping into the gazebo and plonking himself down next to Shouto. “Yeah, well. Those goddamn sharks won’t give it a break.”
He’s taken off his jacket, and the white shirt underneath is almost sheer in this light, pale fabric standing stark against his flushed skin. It looks slightly damp, pink, like the event hall was too hot for him, too. Shouto has heard many people talking about how good Katsuki smells, and it makes him ache to know that he will never know it. Never tuck his nose into Katsuki’s neck, lips pressed to his skin, and breathe him in.
Katsuki is the perfect omega. Shouto is nothing. Not even a part of the system.
“Oi. Todoroki.” Katsuki waves a hand in front of his face. “What’s wrong with you? You’re acting weird.”
“I’m fine.”
Shouto does not look fine. It’s clear he’s trying to school his expression into something that may appear normal, but it carries all the ease of an elementary puppet master struggling with too many strings, and he gives up the effort quickly, letting himself fall back into that sulky look.
Katsuki has never understood why so many people seem to consider him emotionless, because he wears them so clearly. Scowls when he’s mad, lets his misery take him over whenever he’s in a bad mood. Whenever he gets something he never had in his childhood—a trip to an arcade, an ice-cream sundae with an extra helping of rainbow sprinkles—his smile illuminates the room in dazzling sunlight.
Trying to get Shouto to open up when something has upset him is never easy, but letting him sit out here all night looking like a storm cloud just unleashed a torrent of rain over him is unthinkable, so Katsuki shuffles closer, knocking his knee against Shouto’s. “You’re thinking so loud I can hear it over here.”
That gets him a slight upcurl of Shouto’s lips. “Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing and tell me what’s up before I beat it out of you.”
He looks down, hair a veil around his face. It looks shinier than usual, as if it has been treated and styled for the night. Less fluffy, but it’s still light enough that the breeze lifts the shortest strands. “It’s a little self-centred. I was thinking about myself. There’s… really no point to me, is there?”
Ice spills down his spine. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
Shouto lifts his head. He has the nerve to look calm after dropping bullshit like that out of nowhere, as if he just said something reasonable. “I can’t scent. I can’t look after anybody the proper way.”
A steady ache’s spawning between his eyebrows. “What—Deku just fell asleep on your shoulder last night. The hell do you call that?”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” he says, frowning, clearly upset that he couldn’t get his point across. Never mind that it’s a stupid fucking point. “I’m not part of the system.”
“Don’t piss me off, Todoroki,” he grits out, fists bunching beside his thighs. “If this is seriously about all that alpha omega shit, you’re blind. Deku shares his soba with you all the time. Shitty Hair keeps going on about how you need more protein and trying to convince me to cook you more meat. Hell, Four Eyes went to you to talk after his brother’s physio session went badly, right?”
“Right.” His tone’s doubtful. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything,” he says, exasperated. “That’s the system. I mean, yeah, you can’t scent, and you don’t have—” He cuts himself off, face hot, waving vaguely at Shouto’s crotch—“You know. But it’s not all scenting and fucking. You make people calm, and you make them want to make you feel that way, too. That counts for a lot more than anything else.”
Shouto blinks, his mouth slightly ajar, eyes wide. Surprise should look stupid on him, but that look settles somewhere in Katsuki’s chest and burns.
The fire in Katsuki's cheeks rises, strengthening. He coughs, turning away, arms crossed. He shouldn’t have let himself get so carried away. It’s all Shouto’s fault, slinking away during a gala where he should have been enjoying himself and sitting here alone with his stupid, sad face. Why does he bring out these parts of Katsuki that he wishes could stay hidden?
“Bakugou."
Katsuki forces himself to drag his eyes up, looking at Shouto. The summer night flush over his cheeks, the shine of his hair under the twinkling lights. Behind him, tiny spots of gold flicker out of the darkness. Fireflies, circling the night-blooming flowers.
“It really wouldn’t matter to you? That I'm a beta?" Shouto prompts, soft with hesitance, and to you spurs Katsuki’s heart into a quick, high thrum. It leaves him wanting for breath.
Despite the unsteadiness that buzzes through him like an electrical field, all energy and glittering potential, he is certain of his answer. Certain of what it will mean.
“It doesn’t.”
For all of Shouto’s obliviousness, he has never misread Katsuki. Never missed a message where it counts.
The unfiltered hope that lights up Shouto’s face is unbearable. Katsuki wants to look away, but gravity has shifted to a new centre at his side, and he’s helpless to the sweet pull of it. To the cool hand that rises, slowly, tentatively, to cup his cheek, sparking radiating tingles that spill down his spine, and the glint in the eyes that don’t break away from his.
A final question. Confirmation.
Katsuki closes his eyes and leans in. There’s an ease in the kiss, as if they’ve done this a thousand times—sat in a garden at midnight, skin pressed to skin, kissing slow and sweet and easy. He sighs into it, wrapping an arm around Shouto’s neck, letting it rest there while his fingers toy with the fluffy hairs at Shouto’s nape.
Shouto smells good. Not a rich, pheromone-deep scent, but clean and light. Soap, maybe, or cologne that almost captures the essence of green tea. It doesn’t affect Katsuki’s instincts, which might be why he likes it so much.
It doesn’t make him crave a knot, ache to be scented. It’s just nice. Pleasant in a simple way. He likes that Shouto takes care of himself, that he uses eucalyptus shampoo, that his kisses are gentle but the way he tilts Katsuki’s chin up to ease the kiss into something wetter and deeper is pushy.
Everybody is always talking about how they can’t help themselves during their heats, or can’t resist certain scents, but Katsuki is treading on steady ground. Walking into this with the person he’s wanted for a long time. He couldn’t give the slightest fuck whether Shouto is a beta. He’s Shouto, who always leaves out food for stray cats and cares deeply for everyone and tries his hardest no matter what he is doing. Designations and stereotypes Katsuki has never cared to fit into anyway mean nothing in comparison to that.
When they break apart, Katsuki is almost dizzy. It must be the lightheadedness that tips his balance and leaves him swaying forward into a second kiss. Shouto smiles into it, and Katsuki drinks up the taste of it for as long as he can before pulling back. “What are you smiling about?”
“I’m happy,” Shouto says. Always so honest. “Aren’t you?”
His fingers drag up to splay in Shouto’s hair. Even with the heady weather, he isn’t sweating—the advantages of built-in thermal regulation. His hair’s cool to the touch, and Katsuki doesn’t bother resisting the urge to comb through the soft strands. “No way.”
Shouto gives him another kiss; a fond, closed-mouth press of their lips that leaves Katsuki yearning for more. “You’re so mean.”
“You like me mean.”
“I do.” He looks so pleased that Katsuki can’t help but lift a hand to push him away—however, Shouto catches his wrist and presses a kiss to the inside of it. “Very much.”
Katsuki swallows, pulling his hand back, hoping his embarrassment hasn’t spread to his face. “Good. ‘Cause I have no interest in being a perfect omega, or getting treated like I’m helpless.”
Shouto isn’t fazed at all, still looking at him with so much unabashed affection it makes Katsuki want to do stupid things like stroke his hair, and make him lots of desserts, and crawl onto his lap to kiss him all night. “I would never treat you that way.”
His earnestness is wildly charming, which annoys the hell out of Katsuki. He shows his displeasure by wrapping his arms around Shouto and kissing him. Maybe it’s inconvenient not to have the excuse of instincts when it comes to this blazing emotion inside him, the sheer force of the want that simmers in his veins and glitters like electricity all through him, but for Shouto, it’s worth it.
Shouto breaks the kiss, his breaths a little shallower. “Do you feel like returning to the gala?”
He tightens his arms around Shouto’s neck, pulling a face. “‘Course not. Besides—” Katsuki reaches up, pushing Shouto’s bangs away so he can press a kiss to the top of his scar. “I still need to show you how dumb you were to think I wouldn’t want you.”
“I’m dumb,” he agrees, his lips quirking up. “Show me.”
Fighting back a smile, Katsuki kisses him again.