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Katsuki loves his boyfriend. They’d known each other for 6 years now, and after running around the same circles for both high school and their work field, he thought he could confidently say that he knew almost everything that you had to know about Shoto Todoroki.
He knew that Shoto was not the best at first impressions (something he could begrudgingly relate to as well) and that he may come off as too blunt and aloof at times, but he also knows that he simply means well and has had to unlearn years of dysfunctional interactions that came from his household. He knew that after breaking through that seemingly cold exterior, there was a kind, warm heart in there that would go to great lengths to protect the people he cared about and to make sure they were safe and happy. He knew that the easiest way to make him smile that stupid soft grin of his is by offering to cook him homemade cold soba, even if it only managed a slight quirk of the corner of his lips on the worse days. He knew that Shoto was one of the strongest people Katsuki can think of, and that he’d trust him with his life.
What he didn’t know, or rather failed to realise, was the extent to which growing up in a rich household had impacted his boyfriend’s life.
Within the first week of moving in with each other, Katsuki noticed that Shoto has no idea how to do household chores. How his pampered, upper-class raised boyfriend managed to get by living alone for the past 3 years without his apartment turning into a landfill is a mystery to him, and since Katsuki is definitely not doing every fucking part of the cleaning himself, he decided to teach him.
“This is a mop,” he says, gesturing to the object in his grasp. An irritated look paints itself on Shoto’s face.
“I know what a mop is.”
“It sure as hell didn’t seem like it when you used it to sweep away the cat’s fur.” Shoto’s mouth tugs deeper into a frown. “ Well it worked didn’t it? There’s no more of Soba-chan’s fur lying around the house.”
“Because I just fucking vacuumed, Icyhot!” Katsuki let out an exasperated sigh. “How did we live together in the dorms for 3 years in the dorms and no one from 1-A realised how bad you were at house chores?”
Shoto looked away, a brush of pink painting his cheeks in embarrassment.
“I always managed to disappear to do extra hero work or run errands instead of staying in on the weekends to clean up.”
Katsuki silently berates himself for not realising this sooner. A core principle he’d ingrained into himself from young was that if one planned to lead an organised, well-planned life, then one should have an organised, well-planned home. And that includes a strict maintenance of cleanliness and orderliness within the household. But perhaps it’s best that he only knew now, because he’d probably have approached this problem in a more brash, unkind way, with a scarce amount of patience back when he was 16 as compared to now. That doesn’t mean the amount of yelling has reduced in the past 6 years though. He is still a Bakugou after all.
Katsuki knew it wasn’t going to be easy teaching Shoto to do chores, but he didn’t realise it was going to be this much of a challenge. He’s now leaning against the kitchen counter, supervising as his boyfriend washes the dishes, because if the incident that occurred barely five minutes ago proved anything, it’s that he should not be left alone with fragile and slippery items.
He was lounging on the sofa reading Shonen Jump when he heard a shattering noise coming from the kitchen. Let’s just say that there was a very broken ceramic plate in the sink and a very unfortunate Shoto who’d had to endure the wrath of the ticking time bomb that is Katsuki. He loves his boyfriend more than the world, but that certainly doesn’t mean he’s immune to Katsuki’s infamous temper – in fact he’s the cause of a solid 80% of his outbursts.
But this time, Katsuki admits that it may have been partly his fault for overlooking the fact that Shoto is a clumsy fucking idiot. There’s no doubt in his mind that Shoto is a capable hero – heck, he’s one of the best pros out there just like Katsuki himself, but if there’s one imminent flaw in the calm and composed dual quirked hero, it’s his clumsiness.
So when Katsuki shoves him to the other side of the sink and soaps the dishes as Shoto rinses them, it’s purely for efficiency and reassurance of his plates’ safety, and absolutely not because of the warm, genuine smile Shoto sends him with every squeaky clean and intact plate. Definitely not because each and every one of Shoto’s smiles makes Katsuki feel as if a garden of flowers were blooming in his heart and they wouldn’t stop growing until it became a field of roses and lilies. Once they’re done and Shoto’s not near to any fragile, breakable ceramic items, Katsuki jabs Shoto in the ribs and triumphantly weaves out an indignant squawk from the other man. “What was that for? I thought it was a success!”
“Breaking one of our ceramic plates is a success to you?”
“It was one plate, Katsuki – what about the 7 others that were perfectly intact by the end of it?”
Katsuki’s patience was clinging on to a thread by now, so he drags his boyfriend by the arms down on their couch and finds creative ways to offer alternatives to what Shoto can do with his mouth other than spew nonsense.
It takes a whopping total of 15 broken and shattered dishes, 2 trips to IKEA for new dinnerware, and a painful dent in Katsuki’s wallet because whenever they go to IKEA, they always return with multiple useless plushies (he cannot, for the life of him, say no to that pretty face), for Shoto to finally wash the plates without breaking anything. Katsuki would be lying if he said that he didn’t feel a sense of pride for him. He would never say that aloud though.
“Soba-chan, I finally did it! With all the dishes in one piece! Are you proud of me?” Shoto coos at the cat while lifting her up in the air. Her response was an annoyed meow which Katsuki can only assume translates to ‘put me down you peasant’, but if Shoto understood that, he promptly ignores it. Katsuki gazes at his boyfriend as he smothers the cat and thinks to himself that he wouldn’t change any part of Shoto for the world, not his clumsiness, not the way he talks in that stupid baby voice to the cat (he’d never admit it out loud, but he secretly finds this incredibly endearing), and certainly not the way that he approaches everything with a persistent stubbornness to succeed.
His next task was to teach Shoto how to cook. But that’s a problem for future him because right now, Katsuki needs a mental break and his wallet is not ready to pay for renovation fees if the apartment gets burnt down to ashes.