SWISS

(narrator voice) the story until now: baku is camp half blood and a very bitter son of aphrodite (lol), todo is camp jupiter and a very vengeful son of pluto (endeavour) as well as a neptune legacy (rei was a neptune kid). todo is praetor, follows a prophecy to chb, fakes being greek for a while as he learns abt the impending titan war, the league attacks (shigaraki et co = luke et co), todo takes the escaping CHB crew to camp jupiter, big fight ensues, bakugou is kidnapped (lol). on bakugou’s side of things he’s held by the league and then picked up/rescued by miruko on a hunt for hawks, then after a brief road trip fucks off to join the final battle where he intervenes to save todoroki after the later pulls a big heroic sacrifice moment. then they kick kronos’ ass alongside midoriya and whatnot. tldr post battle, aphrodite kid baku and pluto kid shouto ok let’s get into it

..

if he lingers for a minute around deku and his groupies, it’s only because if the self-sacrificing idiot drops dead now katsuki is descending into tartarus himself to kill him so good he never reaches elysium. deku, though, meets his eyes over the crushing hug uraraka is strangling him with, and there’s transparent exhaustion beneath the relief and joy and gratitude but nothing alarming- nothing that screams suppressed life-threatening injury rather than deku-typical self-destruction. deku’s stupid green saucers go big with emotion when he locks onto katsuki’s gaze, and katsuki grimaces because the last thing he wants to do after everything that’s gone down is drown in the effusive hysterics of deku and his posse, even though deku’s probably marginally within his rights to freak out since they haven’t spoken since he got yanked by the league. years of working together at camp and months of fighting a war that’s bigger than them have taken them beyond their old routine, though, because deku doesn’t shout him out enthusiastically, just nods his way quickly with a measure of understanding, expression slackening into a more subdued sort of thing with visible restraint. it means talk later, but katsuki can handle that, nowadays. he nods back, doesn’t bother too hard with posturing. it’s good to see everyone intact, even deku, deranged martyr that he is. when they have that talk katsuki is going to chew his ass out for going on some stupid suicide mission the moment his back is turned.

kirishima he’s already checked in on in the makeshift hospital the apollo kids have set up for the less seriously injured, and he’s doing fine, mostly drowsy from the drugs- if he’d been alone katsuki might have coincidentally wound up loitering around the tents until he fell asleep, but the other idiots are all camped out around him as is, so there’s no need. he’ll check back in later.

no, as it is he’s confirmed the usual suspects aren’t six feet under and laid eyes on everybody from camp whose name he actually knows, so there’s no putting it off- he has to go pay his dues to his aberration of a mother.

there’s no one around the altars, which is great, given that he wouldn’t be caught dead actually thanking the old witch for anything, but it’s a severe blow to his pride anyways. her shrine is so fucking gaudy, too, all hearts and glitter. why the fuck he had to be stuck with the worst godly parent in existence he doesn’t know- ares was right there. hell, ares and aphrodite are regular mythological fuckbuddies- in another life he could at least have gone 50/50, but no- that would have been too easy. sure, deku gets to be zeus’ chosen successor, but katsuki gets to have a godly parent who cares more about her milf status than teaching her offspring how to kick ass.

unceremoniously, he dumps what meagre scraps of food he’d held onto from the drive up to new york onto the altar, watches them shrivel as the flames burn hot and iridescent. there. job done. protocol says he should be thanking her aloud, but considering this is the one useful thing she’s done for him in the last fuck knows how long she better be able to know what this is for without his saying so.

of course, his mother has never been especially interested in playing fair or reasonable; he’s barely stepped back to brush sooty palms negligently against his t-shirt when her voice comes ringing shrilly from behind him.

“oh, absolutely not. you think some flat coke and a couple of chips is a worthy offering to your mother?”

“isn’t it the thought that counts?” katsuki snaps, turning irately to find the HBIC herself arms crossed and hip cocked where she’s faux casually leaning against the nearest pillar, hair billowing despite the lack of breeze. it’s adding insult to injury that aphrodite always chooses to present herself like his clone when she’s in a one on one with him- just to rub in that she’s cursed him to look like a fucking bishōnen if he doesn’t take pains to spoil the picture.

“first of all, diet coke’s better for your health and your figure,” aphrodite declares, wrinkling her nose, “and for the favor i did you? you ought to be delivering a gourmet meal.”

“i didn’t ask you to do shit! how is it on me that you stuck your nose into my business?”

“oh, so shouto todoroki’s your business?” aphrodite crows, like the she-devil she is. katsuki bristles violently.

“stop insinuating weird shit! i mean the fact the asshole was dying mid-combat!”

“well, exactly,” aphrodite sniffs, quirking a brow. “i intervened to spare you the distress of the loss. young love, and all that.”

“you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, you old pervert! i bet you just saved his dumbass because you thought he was cute or some shit!”

“hey, watch your damn mouth!” aphrodite snaps, losing the sultry pose for a second before she composes herself. “the boy is cute, i’ll give you that, but it takes more than a pretty face to get me to meddle in your messes. i learnt my lesson the first time around with helen.”

considering the amount of love-related violence that’s plagued humanity in the interim, katsuki highly fucking doubts that, but he curbs his snappy retort in the hopes that less confrontation will bore her faster. the longer he lets this go on for the more likely she is to say some stupid shit that’ll scar him for life.

“‘s not like you even healed him or anything- why’d you make me do that shit myself?”

“well, i had to make sure you could still use charmspeak, considering you refuse to use it,” aphrodite retorts, peevish. “and, of course, it’s a lot more romantic if you’re the one who wakes him up, you know.”

“for the love of zeus, there was nothing romantic about it! he spat poison all over my shoes!”

“really, katsuki, you have so much potential- you’re a natural at charmspeak, you know, you could really achieve something if you just tried a little. and you’re very promising face-wise, if you’d stop with the grimacing. your waist to hip ratio-“

“would you drop it already?!”

“ugh,” aphrodite huffs, releasing her thoughtful grip on his hair, which had gone alarmingly well-behaved under her touch. “i suppose i should console myself with the fact you at least have some sense of style.”

“don’t you have better shit to do than stand here trying to pull a disney channel original makeover moment on me?” katsuki gripes, tussling his hair protectively. aphrodite pouts in a put-upon fashion.

“i think you could still grow out of this narrow-mindedness, you know. it would serve you well.”

“huh?”

“for example, if you weren’t so blinded by bias, you might have noticed there’s a method to my madness,” his mother says, smugness creeping into her plaintive tone. “and all i’m really doing is stalling you.”

“for what? an ambush?” katsuki asks, hands immediately curling into fists. “if you’ve sent eros after me again, i swear i’m breaking more than his bow this time.”

for a brief hopeful moment, aphrodite looks more irked than smug. “no, he’s still mad about that. nice job scarring your own brother, by the way.” 

probably smirking at the reminder isn’t the best move, since in the next moment she’s pushing dramatically off the pillar to spin around him, witch eyes dangerously self-satisfied. “anyways, no tricks involved this time. i’m just making sure you’ll be in position for the big moment.”

“what big-“ katsuki starts, but then there’s a clap of thunder and rain starts abruptly pouring downwards, drenching the camp near-instantaneously, and at the exact same moment he spots todoroki emerging from the hills and making a startled beeline for the altars, seeking refuge. motherfuck. “this is not a shitty romcom, you meddling freak!”

“of course not,” aphrodite hums, all very pleased with herself. “and there’s totally no reason why i’ve had such an easy line to you since pretty boy came to camp, either.”

he’s not touching that with a ten-foot pole, but more importantly todoroki is still coming their way fast and he needs her gone, so he doesn’t even attempt to argue that point, just goes for the easier out. “newsflash, love goddess, that shit’s meant to be a two-way street. forcing a mr darcy moment isn’t doing shit.”

“i’m glad you’ve warmed up to the classics,” says his snake of a mother, and then more ominously winks at him. “some advice? ask him what i was like.”

“fuck off already!”

miracle of miracles, she does, just as todoroki sprints the last stretch towards them and ducks rapidly under the pillars himself, red-white hair plastered to his face and singed camp half-blood shirt sodden. an insidiously familiar voice in katsuki’s head takes great relish in noticing that todoroki somehow manages to make the drowned rat look seem more like conceptual fashion than wet dog.

“you look like you just got baptized in an olympic swimming pool.”

“i think it’s the delayed effect of midoriya’s cloud-punching earlier,” todoroki says, blinking water out of his stupidly long eyelashes. “was that venus just now?”

“unfortunately.”

“oh. i’m sorry i missed her. i haven’t been able to thank her properly yet.”

“never thank her for shit,” katsuki warns, fixing him with a deadly serious glare. “not a single thing she does doesn’t have some fucked up secret agenda behind it, trust me. she’ll help you out one time and then in two months she’ll be knocking on your door in the middle of the night demanding you go bump uglies with mineta or some shit.”

todoroki’s perma-neutral expression slides into a mild grimace. “i see.”

he doesn’t want to ask, but there’s a high likelihood that aphrodite was hedging on his being unwilling enough to ask that he would obsess about the unanswered questions alone for long enough to actually snap and confront her again, and that’s not a risk he wants to take, so he grits his teeth and ignores todoroki’s disgustingly colin-firthy movements as he thoughtlessly pushes wet bangs out of his forehead.

“what’d she do when you were out cold, anyways?”

todoroki pauses, thinks this through. “just talked to me. she explained that she’s often around battles because of heightened passions. and she told me the thing about you getting wrinkles.”

fucking hell. “nothing else?” he guesses he might as well add for completion’s sake: “what’d she look like to you, anyways?”

todoroki blinks, then blinks again. “what do you mean?”

“you know, the whole appearance changing schtick,” katsuki handwaves. “what, lucy liu? rihanna? some weird old-timey japanese shit?”

“oh, no,” todoroki says, back to neutral. “i don’t think she was doing any of that. she just looked like you.”

pointedly, a loud clap of thunder underscores this perfectly oblivious statement, because zeus may be katsuki’s favorite god but he’s still a dick.

“she WHAT?”

“i assumed it was so i’d recognise her,” todoroki continues, slightly wary now. “it’s not like i’ve really seen venus around.”

fuck his entire life; he’s fairly sure his accursed disney princess complexion is bestowing a perfectly rosy blush all over his damn face.

“that’s not how that works, dumbass!”

“how does it work, then?”

“i- figure it out yourself!”

“but you clearly know what it is.”

“says who?!”

“bakugou,” todoroki says, fairly patiently, while katsuki is definitely not losing his shit and also making a really significant and underappreciated effort to turn his sudden awareness of a whole lot of underlying emotions floating around them back the fuck off again. fuck these stupid fucking powers. “can’t you just tell me what i’m missing here?”

“fuck off!”

“i’m going to have to try and guess, then,” todoroki decides, looking skywards. “does she just secretly look like that and you’re her truest heir because you’re the only child who turned out like her?”

“absolutely fucking not! just drop it!” katsuki grates, previously rebuilt defences folding like a house of very shitty cards under the sheer weight of the oblivious implications of katsuki being the truest heir of the goddess of beauty. god, icyhot is dense.

“okay. you’re the secret love child of-“

never mind, he does not have the restraint needed to go through with this.

“for fuck’s sake, half ‘n half, her whole thing is that she makes herself attractive to whoever she’s trying to schmooze!”

in the following beat of silence, as he prays violently for lightning to strike him dead and zeus sadistically does not comply, todoroki’s expression clouds, clears, clouds, then clears again, eyes widening a foreboding fraction.

“...oh.”

the rain, naturally, chooses this exact instant to stop dead, plunging them into dead silence as a bird chirps distantly. a rainbow appears directly above their heads.

“real nice,” katsuki grits out, murderously. iris is next on his divine hit list. 

todoroki’s eyebrows are still slowly climbing off his face with delayed shock.

“oh.”