Not Just Chocolate [FemKacchan Ktdk Fluff]

Katsuki had always hated Valentine’s Day.

From the stupid heart decorations everywhere, to the overpriced roses that were a stupid cliche anyway and just said ‘I don’t know what you actually like’ in Katsuki’s mind, to the ridiculous sexist expectation that all the girls should be doling out homemade chocolates to their male classmates just because they were born with dicks; it was all just a stupid corporate holiday designed to make girls endear themselves to men who didn’t deserve it in the hopes that they wouldn’t die alone.

Katsuki hated that type of shit.

So the fact that she was standing in her parents’ kitchen, surrounded by a thousand dirty pots and pans that her mother was going to kill her for in the morning, really did not add up.

Which was extra weird since she was great at math.

“How are we going in here?”

Katsuki cringed, looking up to see her father’s sleepy eyes peering in at her, with a soft, knowing smile aimed her way.

“Did I wake you up?” she asked, grimacing.

If it had been her mother, Katsuki wouldn’t have given a shit about that. Her father had always had her back, though, and she did feel a little guilty that her hours of crashing around in the kitchen might have been keeping him up.

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “Do you need any help?”

“No.”

“Yeah, you never do,” Masaru chuckled. “Can I help?”

“I’m fine.”

“I know, but I like spending time with you.”

Katsuki snorted, but she nodded anyway, stepping aside to make room for him.

“So are these for your classmates?” Masaru prompted, and Katsuki tensed up immediately. “It’s been a while since you did anything for Valentine’s Day, they must be a good bunch.”

“Everyone else does it,” Katsuki shrugged awkwardly. “They’ll give me shit if I don’t.”

“Oh?” Masaru hummed thoughtfully. “Well then, you’d better make sure yours are the best ones, right?”

“Exactly.” Katsuki smirked, standing a little taller. “I’m gonna kick their asses.”

“Yeah, it looks like it.”

“Those ones are done, I just need to pack them up,” Katsuki explained, gesturing toward a stack of shiny, perfectly set chocolates piled off to one side. “These ones just need decorating and stuff still.”

“Would you like me to start boxing them?” Masaru offered, glancing at a stack of orange card cut-outs ready to be folded into tiny gift boxes. “You can tell me how to do it, if you want it done a particular way.”

“S’fine,” Katsuki nodded. “Thanks.”

“One of each kind per box?”

“Yeah. There’s some tissue paper there to line it with.”

“Got it.”

Katsuki watched for a moment as Masaru began carefully assembling a box, then turned back to her own task, carefully drizzling little truffles with neat lines of melted chocolate.

“They all look great,” Masaru praised, when he started carefully stacking the first set in the confines of their gift box. “You’ve done an amazing job.”

“Yeah,” Katsuki mumbled. “Um, thanks.”

A pile of boxes began to grow on the counter at Masaru’s side, and by the time Katsuki finished decorating the last of the truffles, the packaging was all but complete.

“Twenty,” Masaru confirmed, as he neatly packed up the last set of chocolates. “One extra?”

“In case anything happens,” Katsuki confirmed. “Or I forget someone, or whatever. Maybe one of my teachers, if that isn’t too weird.”

“I’m sure they would understand and appreciate the sentiment, I don’t think it would be weird.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Together they loaded the gift boxes into a bag for transporting, and Masaru rearranged the fridge contents to make space for it, slotting it away safely for Katsuki to take with her to school in the morning.

“You should get some sleep,” Masaru suggested, patting Katsuki’s shoulder lightly. “You’ve done a great job, but you need your rest, too. Another week of school ahead of you, gotta go show them all how it’s done.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, glancing back at the sealed fridge door. “I’ll just... clean up a little, first.”

“I’ll give you a hand.”

“No, go back to bed,” Katsuki said firmly, staring at the stack of dirty dishes and the melted chocolate all over the counter. “I’ll do what I can tonight, I know you’ll end up finishing it off for me in the morning anyway.”

“Okay,” Masaru smiled softly. “Thanks for letting me join you, it was fun. Maybe next time you come home we can cook dinner together, I’ve missed having you in the kitchen.”

“Sure,” Katsuki agreed. “I guess I kind of have too. Missed it, I mean.”

“Don’t stay up too late.”

“I won’t. G’night.”

“Goodnight, Katsuki.”

She watched his back as he departed, listening to his socked feet pad up the stairs toward his bedroom, and when the house was quiet again around them, she plucked one last tray of chocolates from the freezer.

There was a reason she had so many red, blue, and yellow candy melts left, after all.

─────

One of the perks of being an early bird, Katsuki thought, was that she always managed to slip back into her dorm room without being accosted by classmates asking questions. She always got up on a Monday morning with plenty of time to go for a morning run, shower, say goodbye to her parents as they got up to prepare for work, and catch the first train back to UA while her classmates were still sound asleep in their beds.

Honestly, she was pretty sure it was the only reason she got away with staying over for that extra night – most of her classmates were back Sunday night to sleep on campus before their Monday classes, but Katsuki flew under the radar every week, always back in the dorm building before anyone knew she was missing. She suspected it would have been noticed more if they didn’t have such a division of male and female dorm rooms, especially since she’d miraculously ended up with her own floor. No one had to see her go in and out of the bedroom.

Actually, that had probably been intentional. By the time they moved in, Aizawa and the other teachers were already well aware of her personality and how much quieter the dorms would be if she didn’t have neighbours to argue with. So “miraculously” was probably less accurate than “due to a smart decision by her teachers”.

Her guy friends would have noticed her absence immediately; someone like Kirishima would have gone knocking on her door for help with his homework or something equally stupid, and would have panicked when he found the room empty. She was just lucky that Mina and Kyouka had more of an understanding of personal space. She’d only had to tell them one time, ‘I don’t like having people in my room’, and it had been accepted immediately – they invited her to come hang out. She got texts most nights from Mina asking to get dinner or do their homework together, and it wasn’t uncommon for Katsuki and Kyouka to stand on their balconies playing each other some new band they’d just discovered, but they never just showed up to demand entry into her private bedroom.

Actually, having Kyouka’s room above hers was one of the best parts of the dorms. Not just for the music, but for all the little moments; like when the common area was crowded and noisy, so they threw each other snacks instead of braving the nightmare that was their classmates; or that one time Katsuki had managed to lock herself out of her bedroom, and instead of having to admit her fuck up to the teachers and let everyone see the walk of shame as someone brought over the master key, she’d just made a short climb down to the thankfully-unlocked balcony door.

So when she arrived bright and early Monday morning, on that stupid ‘holiday’, she made it up to her bedroom without being seen or disturbed, to set her bag down and flop onto the neatly-made bed. The bag just sat there, staring at her, reminding her of the awkwardness about to come, and she rolled over quickly to hide from its judgmental gaze.

If she planned it all out carefully enough, she knew she could mitigate most of the annoying comments. Her annoying friends were usually running late for class, so she could get them out to most of their classmates before the Idiot Squad showed up. Most of them would be polite about it, would just smile and thank her and move on like it wasn’t a big deal. The girls would all be exchanging them with each other, too, so she’d just be a part of the crowd, no big deal.

In fact, maybe she’d head in extra early, and just leave them on everyone’s desks. Then she wouldn’t even have to deal with the interactions. How had she not thought of that sooner?

Redetermined, she stood up again, heading for the closet to grab a clean uniform. She was always careful to leave everything clean and ready when she went home on Saturday afternoons, never wanted to come back to a mess right before a whole new week of classes. Or, god forbid, have something get in the way of coming back on time, and return to a full, stinking trash bin, or dirty clothes that reeked of week-old sweat.

As soon as she was dressed, she grabbed her bags to head out, ignoring the few stray classmates stumbling zombie-like through the common areas as they began to ready themselves for school. Iida opened his mouth to say hello, but she was past him before he could get it out, clutching the extra bag tight to her side lest anyone dare to question her about it and ruin things.

The classroom was unlocked when she arrived, thankfully, but no one else had yet made it inside, and Katsuki breathed a sigh of relief. Halfway there she’d started to worry that someone else might have had the same idea, but thankfully it seemed none of them had dragged themselves in as early as she had.

She’d picked the orange gift boxes exactly for this purpose – to identify who they came from without having to make it a big deal. They matched her costume, after all. As she began to take an armful from the bag, though, she found black marks on one corner of each box, her own name carefully inked out in tiny characters that she definitely hadn’t put there herself.

Damn her sappy father and his incessant need to make her take credit for embarrassing things.

At least he had decent handwriting, she supposed. Better than her own, potentially. She was more inclined to quick, clinical scribbles that she could decipher later as needed – after all, how often did anyone else need to read her notes? Her father, on the other hand, had taken a painstakingly delicate approach – they could almost pass off as a brand logo, if not for the fact that the positioning and spacing differed ever-so-slightly on each one.

She supposed that was why he was the one with a career in design and she was just out blowing up assholes with her hands.

One by one, she laid the boxes out neatly on each desk in the room – from Aoyama beside the classroom door, his desk eternally covered with traces of glitter where they got stuck in the grooves of the wood, all the way back to Uraraka, who she’d developed a peaceful truce with over the course of their first year together. Then the next row, and the next, until she found herself back at her own desk, staring uncomfortably at the seat behind her own.

Once upon a time, it wouldn’t have been a big deal to hand him a Valentine’s gift. Growing up together she’d gotten him something every year, had always picked out the latest All Might Valentine merch and proudly presented it to him as they walked to school together. And he’d done the same for her, a month later – had found something cool, wrapped it up carefully in white paper with a shiny ribbon on it, and handed it over with a hint of pink in his freckled cheeks. It wasn’t until middle school that they’d stopped, after someone had given her shit about it in their last year of primary school and she’d had to play it off as her parents making her do it. She’d felt awkward accepting his White Day gift that year, and the next, she’d shown up empty-handed without saying a word about it.

They hadn’t been walking to school together anymore by that stage anyway.

In the end, she skipped past that desk, laying out matching packages on the two at the back of their row before she returned to consider it some more. She knew she had to put one on it, that it would be way too noticeable if she didn’t. Even if she gave him his gift later, when they were alone together, it would still mean hurting him for that brief moment when he saw his empty desk.

Before she could come up with a satisfactory answer, the classroom door slid open behind her, and she nearly jumped out of her skin as she whirled around. It was still too early for people to be showing up, not even Iida arrived so early on a Monday, and for a moment she felt like she’d been caught doing something wrong.

“Oh! Good morning, Kacchan!”

Katsuki felt like she’d just discovered some latent, untapped quirk. She’d just been thinking about the nerd, about finding a way to get him alone for a few minutes, and suddenly there he was, all wide-eyed and smiley even though he was normally a mess in the mornings.

“Hi,” she answered stupidly, sitting down on the edge of her desk to stop them from trembling in her surprise. “I uh, didn’t... expect you so early.”

“Oh, yeah,” he grinned sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck in that same old nervous twitch he’d had since they were kids. “I kind of forgot about that math homework until super late last night, but I was too tired to do it, so I figured I’d drag myself in here early to finish it off before class. It’s a lot harder to get distracted in here than it is in my dorm.”

“Oh,” Katsuki echoed, cursing her cheeks for growing warm. “Well, um, while you’re here, I guess...”

With her hands surprisingly unsteady, she pulled another box from the bag, the fabric sagging with how empty it had quickly become. Despite looking almost identical to the others – just lacking her father’s handwriting – she still knew exactly which one it was, tucked away in a corner away from the others.

“It’s uh, been a while,” she mumbled, awkwardly holding it out for him to take. “But... yeah.”

“Is this for me?” he asked, his smile still wide despite the watery look quickly coming to his eyes. “I wasn’t expecting anything.”

“Yeah,” she grimaced. “I know. It’s... been a while, like I said.”

“Thank you, Kacchan. I really appreciate it.”

“I made something for everyone,” she said needlessly, glancing around at the orange boxes on every desk. “But yours is different, so I wasn’t sure about leaving it on your desk.”

“Different?” Izuku asked, setting his backpack down to open the box. “What kind of- Oh. My gosh. Kacchan, they’re so cute!”

The mould to set them had actually been designed to make rabbits, but Izuku didn’t need to know that. They’d been perfect for Katsuki’s purposes, with the ‘ears’ covered in yellow and the bodies decked out in red and blue. It had been surprisingly difficult to get all the tiny little lines piped in, but Katsuki was no quitter, and she’d been pretty proud of the result.

“I wasn’t gonna put all that effort in for a bunch of extras who wouldn’t appreciate it,” she shrugged awkwardly. “They just got round shit, so I didn’t want...”

“I get it,” he smiled warmly, so eternally understanding. “I won’t tell anyone they’re different, I promise! But Kacchan, how am I even supposed to eat these?! They’re too perfect to ruin!”

“They’re chocolate,” Katsuki huffed, well-aware that her face had turned bright pink at the praise. “You don’t ruin chocolate by eating it, that’s what it’s for.”

“But if I eat it, I won’t be able to look at it anymore!”

“So take a damn photo.”

“Oh! That’s so smart!” he beamed, digging his phone out of his pocket and fumbling at the screen to find his camera. “Then I can look at them forever.”

“It’s just chocolate.”

“It’s not just anything,” Izuku pouted. “It’s a present from Kacchan! And a homemade one, at that! And such a thoughtful one! A month is not enough to figure out how I’m gonna top this.”

“Top it?” Katsuki echoed, raising an eyebrow. “You trying to beat me at gifts?”

“Like I could,” Izuku snorted, smiling again all the same. “But sanbae gaeshi, you know? I’ve gotta at least try.”

“You don’t.”

“I will! I always try!”

Katsuki couldn’t help but notice his choice of phrasing, as if those years in between had never existed, but she wasn’t even a little bit surprised by it – it was so typical Izuku, to just move on like it was no big deal, like nothing had ever happened.

“Fine,” she said finally. “But whatever you do, I’m gonna triple it next Valentine’s Day.”

“That’s not how it works!”

“It is now, bitch.”

Izuku laughed brightly, and Katsuki couldn’t help but crack a little smile of her own. It had been a long time since they’d talked like that, so carefree and arguably friendly. They’d had brief moments since they’d started high school together, since things had began to improve between them, but she wasn’t sure they’d ever had a whole conversation of it. It made her heart race, thumping against her ribs, and when he took a step closer, smiling at her so sweetly, her fingers had to tighten around the edge of the desk to stay steady.

“Thank you,” he said softly, so painfully genuine that it made Katsuki bite down on her lower lip to keep from blurting out something stupid. “It really means a lot, Kacchan. I’m glad we’ve been getting closer again lately, been friends again, after so long, and this just... reaffirms it all, tells me I wasn’t imagining it. So I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” Katsuki mumbled. “Happy Valentine’s Day, or whatever.”

Izuku leaned in, and

Katsuki felt every muscle in her body tense up, white noise flooding her brain when a pair of warm lips gently brushed over her cheek. She felt like Kaminari after he’d over-used his quirk, like her brain had just entirely ceased to function, and the strange combination of nervous and smug in Izuku’s expression really didn’t help the matter.

“Again,” she blurted out, kicking herself for it immediately. “I mean-”

“Again is fine,” Izuku grinned, the nerves disappearing in an instant. “If you want.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Izuku chuckled, shifting slightly to plant a less tentative kiss on the other cheek. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

Katsuki was pretty sure it wasn’t what he meant, but her fingers were wrapping around his stupid messy tie before she could even think about it, dragging him in to kiss him on the lips. His eyes flew open at the touch, his whole dumb face turning as red as his stupid shoes, but before Katsuki could second guess herself, she felt his massive hand wrap around behind her, landing on the small of her back to keep her close, his warmth seeping straight through her blazer.

Footsteps in the hallway made them spring apart in a hurry, faces equally red this time, and a wave of noise and excitement quickly hit them, the classroom door sliding open again to let it in. Packages and envelopes were already being handed around, wolf-whistles aimed at couples who dared to share a hug in public, and Katsuki cringed when the first pair of eyes landed on a little orange box.

“Awww, Kacchan!” Kaminari cooed, already opening the lid of his box. “You do have a sentimental side!”

“Fuck off,” Katsuki huffed. “And don’t call me that.”

“But Midoriya does it!”

“Because he can’t pronounce my name.”

“Rude,” Izuku laughed, elbowing her lightly despite the way Katsuki glared at him for it. “I can so, but Kacchan is cuter!”

“Fuck off.”

“Make me.”

Katsuki narrowed her eyes, but Izuku just smirked back, daring her to do it in front of all their classmates. And as much as she wanted to, they both knew she wouldn’t.

“For me?” Todoroki asked, surprised to find a matching box on his own desk, too. “Thank you, Bakugou. It’s very kind of you.”

“Whatever,” Katsuki huffed. “It’s no big deal.”

“Mm!” Mina squeaked through a full mouth. “They’re really good, too! I should have known, Katsuki is always the best cook!”

“Shut up, it’s just chocolate.”

“But it’s so tasty!”

“Ugh.”

Despite her grumbles, Katsuki couldn’t help but be a little pleased, watching everyone try the chocolates she’d worked so hard on and apparently enjoy them. She got a few packages of her own in return, including an incredibly expensive-looking box from Momo that she suspected would be delicious, a cellophane-wrapped set of frogs from Tsuyu that made her snort, a box of well-practiced homemade ones from Tooru, and a rather-messy-but-thoughtful-she-supposed attempt from Ochako. Mina and Kyouka, on the other hand, took an entirely different route - Mina proudly presenting her with a bag of homemade potato chips, telling her happily that they were all chilli flavoured, and Kyouka handing her a plastic container full of meatballs – the same recipe Mrs. Jirou had made when they stayed over once, Katsuki assumed, that she had absolutely devoured.

She couldn’t help but be a little touched by the gestures. While she didn’t mind a sweet treat now and then, Katsuki had always favoured savoury snacks over the junk his classmates adored, and it was kind of nice to know his closest friends paid attention to that kind of thing.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Mina grinned, slinging an arm around Katsuki’s shoulders. “You giving out any special gifts today?”

“I made chocolates for Aizawa and All Might,” she answered flatly, pointing at the last two boxes waiting on her desk. “Figured it might help my grades.”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about,” Mina objected, laughing regardless. “Come on, it’s the perfect opportunity!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole.”

“Oh please, you are so deep in denial.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, only Kyouka left smirking along as she continued. “Deku this, Deku that, Stupid Deku won’t leave my stupid head.”

“My head isn’t stupid.”

“That’s the part you choose to object to.”

“Shut up.”

A wave of relief washed through her when Aizawa arrived – surprisingly early, for him. She wriggled her way out of Mina’s grasp in a hurry, carrying one of the little boxes up to the desk at the front, and with Mina and Kyouka still giggling at her back, she slid it across the tabletop.

“This isn’t weird,” she said firmly, when his eyes widened slightly. “It doesn’t mean anything creepy.”

“Thank you, Bakugou,” Aizawa said simply, accepting the package and opening it to take a look inside. “They look delicious.”

“Good. Uh, Sir. Good, Sir.”

He cracked a tiny smile as she excused herself quickly, the annoyingly understanding man that he was, and found herself suddenly caught between a rock and a hard place – the rock of her being an awkward idiot toward authority figures, or the hard place of her friends waiting to tease some more.

Instead, she marched straight past them, to where Izuku had finally moved into his assigned seat. Despite Ochako standing beside him, round cheeks even pinker than usual as she offered him a little package, Katsuki sat herself down heavily on the edge of the desk and shoved him lightly with one of her feet

“Skirt, Kacchan,” Izuku reminded her.

“Stop looking, perv.”

Izuku laughed brightly, and Katsuki couldn’t help but crack a little smile of her own. Ochako had always been more than her, in the girl department – pretty, dainty, cheerful, graceful, all the things Katsuki’s mother had given up on a long time ago. Katsuki had never really cared about girly shit, but in recent months she’d found herself looking at people like Ochako and wondering if maybe, just maybe, there was something to it. It was nice to know she could still distract Izuku from that sort of thing so effortlessly.

“Plans later?” she asked, when Izuku didn’t bother to continue the argument, just averting his eyes instead. “Gym?”

“I’ll be there!” Izuku grinned – they sparred together every Monday, Katsuki wasn’t sure why he was still so cheerful about it. “Unless Kacchan has a date with someone else?”

“Ew,” she snorted, something churning deep in her stomach. “So you don’t, then?”

“Nope!” Izuku answered just as brightly – thankfully not giving Ochako time to interject before he continued. “I’ll buy you dinner after we spar, if you want?”

“Fuck you,” Katsuki huffed. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Yeah?”

“So I’m paying, nerd.”

“I’ll be there!”

Katsuki realised far too late what she’d just done, catching every eye in the room turning their way, Kyouka even conceding a high-five when Mina insisted. Most of their friends just seemed stunned, Ochako maybe a little confused, but Izuku didn’t even look her way, his shiny green eyes locked on Katsuki’s.

“Fine,” Katsuki said finally. “It’s a...”

“It’s a date,” Izuku finished for her, beaming.

“Y-Yeah. That.”

Izuku leaned in, cupping her chin lightly as he pressed another tender little peck to her cheek, and under a chorus of whoops and wolf-whistles, all competing with a rather convenient school bell signalling the start of class, Izuku whispered soft words in her ear.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Kacchan.”

“Do your math homework, nerd.”

[Part Two]