Chapter Text
Adrenaline courses through him, sweat flies, rather than drips, as he tears across the ring and slams his shoulder through the middle of his opponent in a spear, knocking him sailing through the ropes and onto the floor. As the audience cheers around him, he spins and races for the corner to pull off the finishing set. Todoroki Shoto, runs the ropes, light and graceful like a dancer and pulls a perfect Tornillo, bouncing from the top rope into a fluid spin and lands heavy right on his waiting opponent's chest, knocking him to the ground.
The crowd go absolutely crazy, as he stands with feigned dizziness but not feigned breathlessness, and drags the hobbling opponent back through the ropes to the centre of the ring for the pin. Both the referee and crowd chant a 'One! Two! Three!' and his ears ring with the screaming and whistling of the arena.
His arm slips from the raised position in the referees grasp, as he flops back onto the mat and breathes heavily. Feeling high and light despite the aching tiredness he knows will be setting in soon. His body thrums with sharp electric energy and he welcomes the quick spray down of muscle coolant from the ring hands on his left shoulder before he sits back up again to do the finishing bit of media desired crowd-pleasing.
He nods respectfully to his opponent, yanks him to his feet and makes a show of pulling him in close to glare him in the eye. In return, the competitor, Inasa Yoarashi, grins at him threateningly in a you-won this-time-but-ill-get-you-next, type of way, before storming off through the stage entrance.
This leaves Shoto to be presented with the UA Anytime Challenger Title Belt and put on his best 'face of determination' for the many camera flashes coming his way. A handsome picture of strength, elegance and perseverance for the fans. He’s always been smaller but his style uses his whole body against larger opponents in an acrobatic high flying set that they love. Shoto loves the feeling it gives him, to be free and flying through the air, to be challenged in a way that lets him challenge right back. He finds himself smiling as the familiar drug of endorphins make their way through him and he hears a few more camera flashes.
Inside, he’s thinking about the nice hot shower he’ll take and the nice soft hotel bed he’s going to fall into as soon as possible, and the phone calls he’ll take great pleasure in ignoring from his father.
A camera guy gives him the ‘ok’ and sighs with relief, making his way out of the ring to leave through the stage exit tunnel. Any longer and he would have just left regardless. He isn’t in this for the media attention and he’s flattered but perplexed by the number of superfans he seems to get, mainly women. He’s branded as ‘pretty’, ‘handsome’ or ‘elegant’ but he doesn’t try to be. The makeup team do all of that pretty stuff and all he really cares about in terms of gossip is the pleasing narrative that he’s ‘nothing at all like his father was’.
At least if he can’t escape the lineage in name, he can escape it by nature.
The showers were calling to him as the sweat began to cool over his exposed skin in the bright, drafty corridors and he tried to recall where the locker rooms had been. This isn’t their usual arena and he'd arrived late from flight delays so he hadn’t familiarised himself with the building enough.
The muffled shouts of what sounded like arguing, coming from further up, give him a clue. He thinks he can probably guess who it is as well. He makes his way closer to the source of the noise, glad that he isn’t sharing his hotel room with any volatile ring mates later. Absentmindedly he wondered if the room service will have his favourite noodles, as he pushes open the locker room door.
He stops immediately and all thoughts of noodles are quickly and forcibly removed from his head.
He was right about it being who he expected in the room, Deku and Bakugo are both here, and their aggressions are being directed at each other as usual, but not at all in the way he’d expected.
Bakugo: usually picture-of-cockiness, confident, I-don’t-answer-to-anyone, general antagonist and all-round pain in everyone’s ass Bakugo, is naked. Bent over at the waist and being pounded into by a half-naked Deku.
Deku: mild-tempered, kind, friend-to-all in the locker room, unthreatening Deku, has his arms outstretched, fingers clenched into Bakugo’s hair and pulling with a harshness that would make even Shoto wince (and he’s taken many a spinning kick to the face before). Bakugos body is almost bent in half with the sheer power of the pull and as Shoto, rooted to the spot in shock, listens, he finds the shouting he'd heard is not exactly fitting for the situation he’s witnessing.
“You stupid! Pathetic! Moron! Why would you! Think that! Was a good idea?!” Katsuki is complaining, between thrusts, voice slightly ragged from having his throat pulled so taught by the angle his hair is being held at.
“Don’t! For one second! Tell me you wouldn’t! Have done the same, Kacchan! It makes sense! For the storyline!” Deku retorts, voice laboured and still slapping his hips forward harshly and Shoto is absolutely puzzled. They’re talking about in-ring storylines at a time like this? Trust the two of them to be talking shop while they... ’fuck’ comes to Shoto’s mind, for lack of a better word. Although, he muses, they don’t fuck like normal people, of course. They fuck just like they fight apparently - over the top, aggressive and dramatic.
“Don’t fucking! Call me that! Right now! You stupid...” He cuts off when Deku gives a harsh yank on his follicles and slams his hips forward with a resounding echoing ‘slap’ bouching off the tiled walls. Shoto watches, entranced, as Katsuki’s fingers clench into the bench he’s gripping onto for dear life and whines, high in the back of his throat.
There's a little nagging voice in the back of Shoto’s head that’s asking him why he hasn’t turned and walked away yet? Like any normal rational person would upon finding themselves in this situation? But he can’t quite rationalise anything right now as his mental picture of the two of them is crumbling in the back of his mind as he struggles to pull his mismatched eyes away from the absolute trainwreck of a show in front of him.
He considers Deku rather a close friend, he doesn’t have many. Up until now his image of Deku has always been that he’s an incredibly innocent, selfless, powerful, yes, but not an angry or outwardly sexual person. Deku, when upset or angry was more akin to a puppy that had tired itself out - pouty and floppy. He only ever shows aggression in-ring, and even then it’s displayed with such a heroic sense of justice, that the wild and powerfully aggressive hum running through him, is often looked upon with awe. It’s the kind of attitude that made people want to be on his side and forgive him, despite the sometimes unapologetically brutal attitude to his move-set. Deku was the ultimate babyface and with all the evidence that Shoto has from both the media and personally, he’d have summed Deku up for lack of a better word as: ‘cute.’
There was absolutely nothing cute about him right now as Shoto watched him bring a large scarred hand down to slap Katsuki across the right cheek of his ass. Katsuki Bakugo. The Katsuki Bakugo. Fearless, fearsome, King of the Ring Katsuki Bakugo. His name was like a title in itself. Katsuki lives in persona, just as much of a dick outside the ring as he was in it. Though he never used cheap moves because he felt he was above all that, he followed the mantra of ‘whatever it takes to win’ which meant he was often dirty in the ring, pushing boundaries, hitting hard and clawing his way through any situation, no matter how he had to do it. He demanded respect at all times. He had made many a new trainee cry over the years and most avoided him, except Deku, of course, who is shouting at Katsuki again.
“You’re not in! A position! To argue right now!” The word 'position' is punctuated by another slap across Katsuki's cheek and Shoto feels his lips fall open softly in awe.
“FUCK YOU!” Katsuki screams back, sounding worn out. And Shoto, one of the small group of people who isn’t afraid of Katsuki at all and, in fact, quite liked to wind him up at every opportunity, feels himself smirk.
“ Get the fuck out! ”
It takes Shoto a minute to register, as his head snaps away from Katsuki’s face to Deku’s, that it’s him Deku was shouting at. Voice deep and threatening and full of the promise of death if Shoto didn’t listen to him absolutely immediately and get the fuck out of there.
With only the sudden tremor of shock at hearing Deku talk to him, to anyone, that way, spurring him on, he stumbled back through the door, rather ungracefully, dropping his towel as he did.
It slams shut with a heavy thud, the noise of which snaps Shoto to his senses, and face heating, he half runs from the door back down the corridor, flushed and confused.
-
Deku’s deep murderous voice was playing in his mind over and over as he finally steps under a hot shower and closes his eyes in relief.
After a lot of frazzled wandering around he’d discovered that the assigned locker room wasn’t even on the same floor he had been on, but one up from there.
A few of the other wrestlers had congratulated him as he’d burst through the door and a couple had given him concerned looks as he’d stuttered 'thank yous' and hurried off to the cubicle showers. He was not usually so shy, in fact, he was usually very direct so he doesn’t blame them for giving him the confused looks they had. But he just can’t bring himself to look anyone in the eye right now with the imagery that’s playing over and over in his head like a bad dream.
Or a good dream. His brain unhelpfully supplies, and he quashed the thought immediately. Tries to think of anything but Deku and Bakugo fucking each other angrily on the floor below. He scrubs shampoo into his hair more forcefully than usual and only stops when he realises it’s only making him think more about Bakugo’s hair being yanked on. Every time he washes a tender bit of his body and winces, fingers digging into a sore bruise forming on his hip, he’s reminded of the guttural intimate noises the two had been grunting out. He sighs and bangs his forehead lightly on the tile, so much for a nice relaxing night of noodles and sleep.
That voice . That growling, threatening, commanding voice that had come out of Deku from nowhere, never heard before, sounding more like Bakugo than himself. Shoto can’t stop thinking about it. If Deku had directed that voice at anyone else out of the blue he has a feeling they would have likely shit themselves and ran.
And sure Shoto had ran but – he looks down at his traitorous lower half – it hadn’t scared him in the ways it probably should have.
He blames the adrenaline and the endorphins from the match and simply the shock of walking into an unexpected scene, as he runs a hand down his body and touches himself. It was simple. It was well known that dangerous or adrenaline-fueled experiences can lead to erections. That’s all this was. Blood pressure and bodily endorphin response. It happened a lot in their profession, with death-defying stunts and hardcore matches and high flying moves. People made jokes about it all the time in the locker rooms. It was definitely normal and nothing to do with Katsuki’s helpless face or Deku’s commanding voice telling him off.
He chokes on the water slightly as his orgasm hits him harshly, biting down to stop himself making a sound. He tried not to think about how it’s normally very easy not to make any sound. And how he’s normally very quick and detached from these instances. And doesn’t usually have trembling legs or sordid imagery repeating itself in the back of his mind.
He puts the thought to bed immediately, mind calmer as his senses come back to him and he calms down before turning the shower to cold, gritting his teeth against the new sensation. He has to stop . Deku is his friend, and he’d been the one to walk in on a moment that clearly wasn’t intended for him or anyone else to see.
The post adrenaline crash started to run through him from the feet up as he left the shower and his stomach suddenly groaned with hunger and nausea. The aches and pains blooming all over are a welcome distraction and he even briefly contemplates answering his fathers calls later just to take his mind off the events of the night. He’d take great pleasure in knowing his father is just a tool of distraction, being used as a bucket of ice to douse the fire of any potential lingering thoughts of heated encounters.
'Or maybe not' He thinks as he gives Iida a high five in front of the lockers, pulling out his bag. Maybe he’d just take pleasure in leaving his fathers messages on read, and eating his noodles. He’s sure the thoughts of the incident will fade away as the adrenaline leaves him and the scenery changes.
He’s sure they will.