Chapter Text
Sunday passed without incident.
This was, Kirishima thought later, almost impressive.
They woke at different times. Bakugou showered first. Kirishima came downstairs to find him standing at the kitchen counter in an old sweatshirt, arguing with Mitsuki about the correct way to store coffee as though the previous night had not happened at all. Masaru was cutting fruit. Morning light lay across the table. Someone had turned on the radio low enough that the weather report murmured beneath the sound of cupboards opening and Mitsuki telling her son that if he knew so fucking much about coffee he could buy her a better machine. Kirishima sat down. Bakugou told him his hair looked stupid. Kirishima told him his face looked stupid. Mitsuki told both of them to shut up and eat.
And that was that.
There had been no awkward conversation over breakfast, no meaningful look when their knees accidentally knocked beneath the table, no private confrontation in the hallway. Bakugou behaved with such relentless normality that, by ten in the morning, Kirishima had begun to wonder whether he had imagined the whole thing. His mouth remembered otherwise. So did Bakugou, apparently, because the only deviation Kirishima noticed in an otherwise perfectly ordinary Sunday was that Bakugou developed a remarkable talent for ensuring the two of them never ended up alone in his bedroom again. It was subtle. Almost insultingly so. When Kirishima went upstairs to pack, Bakugou remained downstairs helping Masaru with something in the garage. When Bakugou realised he'd left his phone charger beside the bed, he went to retrieve it while Kirishima was brushing his teeth. When Kirishima came back upstairs for the sweatshirt he'd nearly forgotten, Bakugou was already halfway down the stairs. None of it was obvious enough to mention. Kirishima noticed every single time. Then they drove back to Musutafu. Bakugou complained about traffic. Kirishima changed the music twice specifically to annoy him. They stopped for coffee. Kirishima left his bracelet in the cup holder and didn't remember until three hours after Bakugou dropped him home.
Monday came.
Tuesday followed.
By Wednesday morning, Kirishima had almost convinced himself that things were normal again. Bakugou still texted him. That mattered more than Kirishima wanted it to. There were still photographs of badly parked cars accompanied by threats against humanity. There was still a message Monday afternoon asking whether Kirishima had submitted the revised incident report from the transport attack, followed twelve minutes later by Of course you fucking forgot, despite Kirishima never having answered. On Tuesday Bakugou sent him an article about updated rescue regulations with Read this beneath it, and Kirishima replied with a photograph of himself visibly not reading it. Bakugou called him an idiot.
Everything was normal.
Except there were fewer messages.
Kirishima couldn't have produced evidence if someone had asked him to prove it. There was no sudden silence, no unanswered text sitting between them, no obvious withdrawal that would have justified asking what was wrong. There was simply a little more time between things. Kirishima noticed that too. So he matched it. He didn't send the photograph he'd taken Tuesday morning of a dog asleep in the doorway of his agency because Bakugou would have complained about it being in the way and secretly liked it. He didn't ask whether Bakugou wanted dinner after patrol because he'd already asked twice that week before remembering that twice had once been nothing at all. He didn't mention Saturday. He didn't mention the drive home. He didn't mention the fact that sometimes, without warning, he remembered Bakugou's hand at the back of his neck so vividly that the skin there seemed to remember with him. He went to work. He answered emails. He attended a briefing. He spent two hours Tuesday afternoon pulling people from a collapsed apartment stairwell and didn't think about Bakugou once. That felt like an achievement.
Then, Wednesday afternoon, someone told him to look manlier. Kirishima almost laughed.
The studio occupied the top two floors of a building in central Musutafu, all white walls and enormous windows and equipment Kirishima had learned long ago not to touch. He had been there since shortly after noon for a national sportswear campaign his agency had negotiated months earlier, back when his biggest personal concern had been whether Number Nine sounded sufficiently impressive in an advertisement. The campaign was straightforward. Red Riot. Strength. Reliability. There were three clothing changes, two sets, one unnecessarily complicated lighting rig, and enough people adjusting Kirishima's hair to make him wonder why they'd bothered asking him to style it before arriving. He didn't mind photoshoots. They were boring, mostly, but considerably easier than interviews. Nobody asked him about his childhood or his ranking or whether he thought he could beat Dynamight in a fight. He stood where he was told, wore what they gave him, smiled when appropriate, and tried not to blink when the flash went off. He was good at being photographed. Years of hero work had made him good at being looked at.
"Chin down a little."
Kirishima lowered it.
"Perfect. Shoulders toward me."
He shifted.
"Good. Hold that."
The camera clicked rapidly.
He was wearing a sleeveless black training top and loose athletic trousers, both from the company's upcoming winter line. Someone had rubbed something along his arms that made the definition of the muscle show better beneath the studio lights. His hair had been arranged into a slightly cleaner version of the spikes he wore every day. They had left the scars on his arms visible. Apparently focus groups liked the scars. Authentic, someone had called them during the first meeting. Kirishima had thought that was funny.
"That's great, Red Riot. Give me something a little tougher."
Kirishima changed his expression. The camera clicked again.
"Yeah. There. Exactly."
Behind the photographer, several people stood around a monitor reviewing the images as they appeared. Kirishima recognised the creative director, two people from the sportswear company, someone from his agency's publicity department, and a woman whose job he had forgotten approximately three seconds after being introduced to her. They had been talking for most of the afternoon. Kirishima had stopped listening hours ago. Until—
"We really want to lean into the manly hero angle."
The word reached him through the steady click of the camera. Kirishima's attention snagged.
"That's always been his strongest branding," someone else said. "But I don't want it to feel dated."
"No. Not macho."
"Exactly. Masculine, but approachable."
The photographer lowered the camera.
"Can we get the jacket?"
An assistant hurried forward. Kirishima lifted his arms automatically while she helped him into it. Behind her, the conversation continued.
"He's got that old-fashioned masculinity without all the baggage."
Kirishima smiled faintly. He would have liked that description once. Maybe he still did.
"Strong, dependable. Protective."
"That's what people respond to."
"Especially younger men."
"And parents."
"Right. Parents love him."
Someone laughed.
"He's basically the hero fathers want their sons looking up to."
The assistant tugged the jacket straight across Kirishima's shoulders and stepped away.
"Comfortable?" she asked.
"Yeah. Thanks."
The photographer raised the camera again. "Let's get some with the jacket open."
Kirishima hooked his thumbs near the zipper and let the front fall wider.
"Shoulders out a little more."
He adjusted them.
"Perfect."
Manly.
The flash went off. Kirishima blinked against the brief white glare.
"Again."
Another flash.
Masculine.
He looked directly into the lens.
"Great. Hold that."
The hero fathers want their sons looking up to.
The shutter clicked several times in quick succession. Something about the sound made Kirishima suddenly conscious of his own body. He knew what he looked like, of course. He had spent most of his adult life training it, breaking it, rebuilding it. He knew the breadth of his shoulders and chest, the heavy muscle of his arms, every scar and old injury that had left one side fractionally different from the other. Usually, his body was simply the thing he lived inside. Now he became aware of it as something being displayed. The broad shoulders. The arms left bare beneath the lights. The hard line of his jaw. The scars they had deliberately chosen not to cover. All the pieces that, arranged correctly, apparently made him look like a particular kind of man.
The photographer stepped closer. "Square up a little more for me."
Kirishima did.
"Yeah. That's strong."
Something tightened unpleasantly beneath his ribs. He ignored it. The camera clicked again. It was only a word. One Kirishima had loved for most of his life, one he'd used so often it had become almost inseparable from the way he understood himself.
Manly.
God, how many times had he said it?
Hundreds. Thousands, probably. As a kid he'd attached it to nearly everything he admired. Courage was manly. Protecting people was manly. Standing up when you were scared was manly. Crimson Riot had been the manliest person alive because he had admitted openly that fear never disappeared and gone forward anyway. Kirishima had built half his life around the idea. Not because he thought men had to be hard or loud or violent. He'd figured that out young. There was nothing manly about pretending not to hurt. Nothing strong about making other people afraid of you. Kirishima had cried in front of his friends, hugged them, told them he loved them. He had never believed tenderness belonged exclusively to women. Manliness was courage. Integrity. Showing up. Taking the hit when someone behind you couldn’t. Knowing when you were frightened and going anyway. He believed that. He still believed it.
"Beautiful," the photographer said. "That's the one."
Kirishima looked toward the monitor. The photograph filled the screen.
There he was. Red Riot. Broad shoulders beneath black fabric, arms folded across his chest, chin lowered just enough to sharpen the line of his jaw. The studio lights caught the pale scar along his forearm and the harder planes of muscle beneath it. His expression was steady, serious without being severe. He looked exactly the way they had wanted him to look. Strong. Dependable.
Masculine.
Kirishima stared at the image. And then, with no warning at all, a thought slipped beneath everything else.
Would they still think that if they knew?
His stomach turned.
"Red Riot?"
The voice seemed to come from farther away than it should have. Kirishima blinked and looked over. The photographer had lowered the camera and was watching him across the set.
"You good?"
"Yeah." The answer came too quickly. Kirishima summoned a smile. "Sorry. Zoned out."
A few people nearby laughed, easy and unsuspecting.
"Long day?"
“Something like that,” he replied.
The photographer studied him for another moment, then lowered the camera completely. "Want five?"
Relief came quickly enough to embarrass him.
"Yeah," Kirishima said. "Thanks."
He stepped off the set before anyone could change their mind.
The dressing room was mercifully empty. Kirishima shut the door behind him and stood there for several seconds with his hand still resting on the handle. The room smelled faintly of hairspray and hot fabric. Clothes hung from a rail against one wall. Someone had left three open makeup palettes across the counter beneath the mirror, surrounded by brushes and tissues and bottles with labels Kirishima couldn't begin to understand. He looked at himself. It was the same man from the monitor. Broad shoulders. Red hair. Scars. The jacket had been left open across his chest.
Would they still think that if they knew?
Kirishima's jaw tightened.
Knew what? That he'd kissed someone? That the someone had been Bakugou? That he'd liked it? He turned on the tap and ran cold water over his hands. It was stupid. Worse than stupid. It was ugly. Bakugou liked men. Did Kirishima think Bakugou wasn't manly? The answer came so quickly it was almost offensive. Of course not. Bakugou was—
Kirishima shut the tap harder than necessary.
Bakugou was Bakugou. There was no universe in which Kirishima could look at him and think liking men had made him less masculine. It had nothing to do with it. The entire idea was ridiculous. Kirishima braced both hands against the counter. His reflection stared back. So why did the question change when it was him? He imagined the campaign going live. Billboards. Train stations. Social media advertisements. His own face above words about strength and determination and whatever slogan the marketing department eventually settled on. Then he imagined people knowing. Not everyone would care. Mina wouldn’t. Uraraka wouldn’t. Midoriya wouldn’t. Kaminari wouldn’t. But some people would. He had seen what happened when heroes were outed. He had sat beside Bakugou while they talked about it. He had listened to people who had never met someone decide that knowing who they loved gave them the right to reassess everything else about them. There would be comments. People saying they hadn't expected it. People saying they could tell. People saying they couldn’t. People saying it didn't suit him. People saying Red Riot wasn't the kind of hero they'd thought he was. Some father somewhere looking at an advertisement like the one they'd just taken and deciding perhaps there was somebody else his son ought to admire. Kirishima's stomach rolled. He looked away from the mirror. The feeling that followed was worse because he recognised it for what it was.
Shame.
Not of Bakugou.
When Kirishima remembered Saturday night, nothing about Bakugou disgusted him. The memory remained almost painfully warm. Bakugou's palm against his jaw. The careful first kiss. The way he'd frozen when Kirishima said again. His fingers moving gradually from Kirishima's cheek to the back of his neck. The quiet, irritated sound he'd made when Kirishima laughed. Kirishima could remember all of it and want it again. That was the problem. The wanting belonged to him.
Kirishima closed his eyes.
For one horrible moment he wished it didn't.
He wished the last several weeks could be folded backward somehow. Before Natsumi. Before the club. Before he'd looked at Bakugou's mouth and discovered that imagining it wasn't enough. Before Saturday night had turned a possibility into something physical and undeniable. He wanted Bakugou back where he'd always been. His best friend. Safe. Simple. He wanted to love him in the old way, whatever that had been. He wanted to be able to throw an arm around his shoulders without remembering what his mouth tasted like. He wanted Bakugou's hand at his neck to mean nothing except a hand at his neck. He wanted these feelings to go away. The thought made him feel sick. Because even as he wished it, another part of him recoiled. He didn't want to forget Saturday. He didn't want to unknow the precise way Bakugou had looked at him after their second kiss. He didn't want to forget how much he'd liked it.
Kirishima lowered his head.
"Fuck."
The word disappeared into the empty room.
What kind of coward wanted something only if nobody else could know about it? Bakugou had spent years carrying exactly this fear. Cameras. Sponsors. Headlines. People turning his private life into public property. Kirishima had listened to him. He had understood. Or he'd thought he had. Understanding something happening to someone else, it turned out, was considerably easier than finding it inside yourself.
There was a knock at the door.
"Red Riot? Two minutes."
Kirishima straightened.
"Yeah. Coming."
He looked at himself once more. Then he rolled his shoulders back. By the time he opened the door, Red Riot was smiling.
—
The shoot finished shortly after six. Kirishima changed into his own clothes, thanked everyone, endured fifteen minutes of discussion about approval timelines, and escaped into the evening with a branded sports bag he had not owned that morning and no memory of agreeing to take. Musutafu was beginning to darken. The sky between the buildings had turned the dull blue-grey of early evening, and office workers crowded the pavement around him, coats half-buttoned against the cold. Kirishima pulled his hood up and walked toward the station. His phone rang. He expected his manager. Instead, the screen showed Kaminari’s name.
Kirishima answered. "Hey."
"Hey."
He slowed.
Kaminari sounded almost normal. There was no obvious strain in his voice, no indication that anything was seriously wrong, but Kirishima had known him for too many years to miss the slight flatness beneath the greeting. Kaminari was rarely quiet without a reason.
"You okay?" Kirishima asked.
There was a pause, brief enough that someone else might not have noticed it.
"Yeah."
Kirishima waited. On the other end, Kaminari breathed out.
"Mostly."
That made Kirishima stop walking altogether. For a moment, neither of them said anything. People moved around him toward the station, forcing Kirishima to step aside near the edge of the pavement.
Then Kaminari asked, quieter, "You busy?"
Kirishima glanced back toward the studio. Through the enormous second-floor windows, he could still see the hard white glow of the set he'd just left behind.
"No."
Another small pause.
"Can you hang out?” Kaminari’s voice was flat.
Kirishima adjusted the sports bag higher on his shoulder.
"Yeah," he said. "Of course."
—
They met twenty minutes later outside a convenience store halfway between their agencies.
Kaminari was already there when Kirishima arrived, standing beneath the fluorescent awning with his hands buried in the pockets of his jacket. His hair was flattened strangely on one side, as though he'd been running his fingers through it repeatedly, and the moment Kirishima saw him he knew something had happened. Neither mentioned it immediately. They went inside instead. Kaminari bought instant yakisoba, two onigiri and a canned coffee. Kirishima bought karaage, a rice ball, something allegedly containing vegetables, and another bottle of water because Mina had apparently infected him with permanent guilt about hydration. They carried everything outside. There was a narrow public square half a block away with three benches positioned around a row of young trees. At this hour it was mostly empty. They chose the farthest bench, away from the road, and sat with the convenience-store bags between them. For a few minutes they only ate. Kaminari peeled the lid from his noodles. Kirishima opened the karaage. A bicycle went past. Someone walked a small white dog along the opposite pavement. Kaminari ate approximately four bites before setting the container beside him. Kirishima looked at it. Then at him.
"Jirou?"
Kaminari sighed, his shoulders sinking with it. "Yeah. We had a fight."
Kirishima made a quiet sound of acknowledgement and reached into the paper bag between them for another piece of karaage. He didn't ask immediately. Kaminari had always been the sort of person who needed a little room before saying something he didn't particularly want to say. Pushing usually resulted in three jokes, an abrupt change of subject, and no useful information whatsoever.
"Bad?" he asked eventually.
"I don't know."
Which meant yes.
Kaminari leaned forward until his elbows rested on his knees, the untouched can of coffee hanging loosely between his hands. "We've had worse."
"Okay."
"Which doesn't make me feel better."
"No. I guess it wouldn't."
They had been living together for over a year now. Kirishima had helped carry their sofa up four flights of stairs after it refused to fit inside the elevator, Kaminari pushing uselessly from below while Jirou stood at the top and informed them both that they were idiots. He'd been there the first night everyone came over, when half their old class had ended up cross-legged on the floor because Kaminari and Jirou had somehow moved into an apartment together while owning exactly four chairs. The place had already seemed inseparable from them by then. Jirou's instruments occupied one end of the living room, Kaminari’s gaming equipment had colonised the other. Their mugs didn't match. Their shoes accumulated by the door in untidy pairs. There was a plant on the kitchen windowsill neither of them remembered buying and which, despite their combined neglect, remained inexplicably alive. Kirishima had stopped thinking of it as Kaminari's apartment or Jirou's apartment a long time ago.
It was simply theirs.
"What happened?"
Kaminari worried at the cardboard sleeve around his coffee. "She was trying to talk to me about work. Her agency's been fucking her around about this event next month. They keep changing what they want from her, she's already stressed, and..." His thumb caught beneath the edge of the cardboard. "I made a joke."
Kirishima looked at him.
Kaminari grimaced. "Yeah, I know."
"I didn't say anything."
"Your face did."
"What was the joke?"
"Doesn't matter. It wasn't even funny."
"That's pretty bad for you."
"Thanks, man."
Kirishima smiled slightly, but Kaminari only stared down at his coffee.
"I thought I was helping," he said after a moment. "That's the stupid part."
"Trying to cheer her up?"
"Yeah. That's what I do."
Kirishima knew. Everyone who loved Kaminari knew. He had spent most of his adolescence discovering ways to make unbearable things slightly less unbearable. Hospital rooms, failed missions, awful press conferences, injuries, funerals, the year Bakugou had been so miserable nobody could stand being around him for longer than twenty minutes. Kaminari could find the smallest absurdity in almost anything and hold it up until somebody laughed. It was one of the things Kirishima loved most about him. Sometimes, though, people didn't want to laugh.
"She said I never take anything seriously."
Kirishima's expression softened.
Kaminari kept looking at the pavement. "And I got pissed off."
"What'd you say?"
"Something stupid."
"How stupid?"
Kaminari rubbed both hands over his face. For several seconds, his palms remained pressed over his eyes.
"I told her maybe if she didn't treat every little thing like the end of the fucking world, she wouldn't be stressed all the time."
Kirishima winced before he could stop himself.
Kaminari lowered his hands. "Yeah."
“That is bad."
"I know."
"Sorry."
"No, you're right." He picked up his coffee, stared at it, then put it down again without drinking. "She got really quiet."
Kirishima's stomach sank sympathetically. That was probably worse than shouting.
“Then she said she needed to go for a walk,” Kaminari continued.
"When was this?"
"Like an hour ago."
"And you left too?"
Kaminari nodded. "Didn't want to be sitting there when she came back."
Kirishima watched him for a moment. "Why?"
"I don't know."
Kirishima did. He ate another piece of karaage while he considered how directly to say it.
"You think she's gonna break up with you."
Kaminari's head snapped toward him. "No."
The answer was immediate. Then his face changed.
"I don't know."
Kirishima put the food aside. "Denki."
Kaminari stared at the pavement between his shoes.
"You had an argument. You said something shitty. She probably said something shitty too. That doesn't mean it's over."
"I know that."
Kirishima studied his profile. "You don't look like you know."
"Fuck you."
A smile tugged briefly at Kirishima's mouth, but Kaminari didn't return it, so he let it disappear. For a while they sat without speaking. The convenience store behind them cast a square of fluorescent light across the pavement, and every few minutes the automatic doors opened with the same absurdly cheerful electronic chime. A bicycle rattled past. Somewhere across the street, someone was trying unsuccessfully to convince a small dog to keep walking. Kaminari rolled the coffee can slowly between his palms.
"Sometimes I think she'd be better with somebody else."
Kirishima turned his head.
Kaminari laughed once, but there wasn't much humour in it. "Somebody less annoying."
"That's stupid and you know it."
"Thanks."
"You called me."
"Yeah. Clearly a mistake."
Kirishima nudged the side of Kaminari's shoe with his own. After a second, Kaminari nudged him back, though the movement had none of its usual force.
"She's just..." Kaminari rubbed his palms together. "She's good at saying what she means. Even when it's hard. And I make everything into a joke until she's pissed enough that I can't anymore."
"That doesn't mean she'd be better with somebody else."
"I know."
"And it's something you can work on."
"I know."
"Then what are you doing?"
Kaminari went quiet. The question hung between them long enough that Kirishima wondered whether he'd pushed too far. Eventually, Kaminari looked down at his hands.
"I don't know."
Kirishima understood that answer more deeply than he wanted to.
Kaminari picked up his coffee again, and this time his fingers tightened around the can. "I love her. Like, a lot."
"I know."
"I don't want to fuck it up."
"Then apologise."
"I will."
"Properly."
Kaminari gave him an offended look. "I know how to apologise."
"Don't tell her you're sorry she got upset."
"I'm not an idiot."
Kirishima looked at him.
Kaminari pointed one accusing finger in his direction. "Fuck off."
Kirishima laughed, and this time Kaminari laughed with him. The sound broke strangely near the end, however, and Kaminari dropped his gaze almost immediately. When he spoke again, his voice had lost what little humour remained in it.
"I hate that I made her think I wasn't listening,” he whispered.
Kirishima stayed quiet.
"Because I was. That's the thing." Kaminari swallowed. "I was listening. I knew she was upset. I just wanted her to stop being upset.” There was something almost painfully earnest in the admission. "Sometimes when people I love feel like shit, I want to fix it. And I know I can't actually fix it, so I make them laugh. Usually that helps."
"Usually."
Kaminari's mouth tightened. His eyes had gone wet. He noticed at roughly the same time Kirishima did and scrubbed one hand roughly beneath them.
“Jesus Christ,” he said softly.
Kirishima said nothing.
"This is pathetic."
"No, it isn't."
Kaminari laughed thickly and wiped his face again. "Yeah. Very manly of me."
"Who cares?"
The answer left Kirishima before he'd even properly heard the question. Kaminari looked at him. And something in Kirishima went very still. For a moment the convenience store disappeared behind the remembered glare of studio lights. His own body filled the monitor again: shoulders squared, arms crossed, jaw set, scars deliberately visible.
Masculine, but approachable.
The hero fathers want their sons looking up to.
"Red Riot doesn't care about manliness anymore?" Kaminari asked.
"No, I—"
Kirishima stopped.
Kaminari was sitting beside him on a cheap public bench, wiping tears from his face because he loved his girlfriend and was frightened he had hurt her. And there was nothing weak about him. Nothing shameful. Nothing diminished. The idea that Kaminari might somehow be less of a man because he cried over someone he loved seemed so fundamentally absurd that Kirishima couldn't understand how anyone could believe it. He had spent years saying as much. Courage wasn't the absence of fear. Strength wasn't pretending nothing could hurt you. Being a man didn't require carving every soft thing out of yourself until there was nothing left except whatever other people found acceptable. Kirishima believed that. He believed it so instinctively that who cares? had left his mouth before he'd even thought about it. His gaze dropped to his own hands.
Apparently he did care, but only when it came to himself.
"Nothing," Kirishima said after a moment, quieter now. "I just mean... crying because you care about somebody isn't pathetic."
Kaminari eyed him suspiciously. "That sounded dangerously sincere."
"Shut up."
"You're supposed to tell me I'm manly."
"You're the manliest guy alive."
"Thank you."
"Especially when you cry."
"Okay, fuck you."
Kirishima smiled. Kaminari kicked his shoe again, harder this time.
They stayed on the bench for nearly another half hour. Kaminari talked, Kirishima mostly listened. The longer the argument existed outside Kaminari's head, the smaller it seemed to become; not insignificant, but survivable. Two people who loved each other had failed, for one evening, to understand what the other needed. Kaminari had made a joke when Jirou needed seriousness. Jirou had said something sharp because she was already hurt. Kaminari had answered with something sharper. None of it meant they had stopped loving each other. Eventually, Kaminari checked his phone. The hopeful movement of his thumb made Kirishima's chest ache a little.
Nothing.
“She's probably home,” Kaminari noted.
"Probably."
"I should go back."
"Probably."
Kaminari looked at him. "Stop saying probably."
"Then stop asking questions you already know the answer to."
Kaminari sighed and got to his feet. Kirishima began gathering their empty containers into the convenience-store bag.
"What do I say?” Kaminari asked.
"The truth."
"That's fucking useless."
"It's really not."
Kaminari remained standing in front of him expectantly. Kirishima tied the handles of the bag together while he thought.
"Tell her you were listening. Tell her you made the joke because you wanted her to feel better, but you understand now that wasn't what she needed. Tell her what you said afterward was shitty and you didn't mean it."
Kaminari nodded slowly.
“And don't spend twenty minutes explaining why you said it,” Kirishima added on.
"Why?"
"Because then you're making her comfort you."
Kaminari stared at him.
"Jesus. When did you get good at this?” He asked.
Kirishima stood and threw the bag into the nearby bin. "At what?"
"This." Kaminari waved vaguely at him. "Knowing what to say."
Something about that nearly made Kirishima laugh. He shoved his hands into his pockets instead.
"Only when it's other people's problems."
Kaminari snorted. "Yeah. That tracks."
They walked together as far as the corner. Kaminari and Jirou's apartment was fifteen minutes in the opposite direction from Kirishima's station, and Kaminari lingered there for a moment with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, looking considerably less miserable than he had an hour earlier.
“Thanks,” he said.
"Anytime."
Kaminari hesitated, then stepped forward and wrapped both arms around him. Kirishima barely had time to react before Kaminari's face was somewhere near his shoulder. He recovered quickly, one arm coming around Kaminari's back, his palm settling between his shoulder blades. Kaminari squeezed him once.
"You're a good dude, man."
The words landed somewhere unexpectedly tender. Kirishima's arm tightened around him.
"So are you."
When Kaminari pulled away, some of the familiar brightness had returned to his face.
“Tell Jirou I said hi,” Kirishima said.
"If she doesn't murder me."
"She won't."
Kaminari grinned. Then he turned and headed home. Kirishima watched until he disappeared into the evening crowd.
A good dude.
For several seconds, he remained standing on the corner, hands buried in his pockets, thinking about how easily he'd known what to tell Kaminari. How obvious it had seemed when the problem belonged to somebody else. His phone buzzed. Kirishima pulled it out.
It was Bakugou.
His heart reacted before anything else did. He opened the message.
BAKUGOU
Saturday. Training?
Kirishima stared at the screen.
Four nights ago, Kirishima had kissed Bakugou once and then asked him to do it again. The second kiss had become a third, and after that he'd stopped counting. This afternoon he'd stood beneath white studio lights while strangers discussed what made Red Riot masculine and wondered whether those same people would see him differently if they knew. He had wished the feelings would go away. Now Bakugou's name glowed in his palm, and warmth was already spreading through his chest before Kirishima could do anything about it. Apparently wishing wasn't particularly effective.
His thumb hovered over the keyboard before he typed.
KIRISHIMA
yeah
He sent it. A few seconds later, he sent another message.
KIRISHIMA
your agency?
The reply arrived before Kirishima had even started walking again.
BAKUGOU
Obviously
A smile pulled at his mouth. Kirishima stood beneath the streetlight looking at the message while people passed around him, bicycles rattling along the road and the distant electronic chime of the convenience-store doors sounding behind him.
Very manly of me.
Who cares?
He had meant it.
He meant it for Kaminari. He meant it for every frightened boy he'd ever told that fear didn't make him weak. He meant it for Bakugou, who could love another man for years and remain exactly as strong, difficult, infuriating, and unmistakably himself as Kirishima had always known him to be. There was only one person Kirishima couldn't seem to extend the same certainty to.
Himself.
His smile faded, though not entirely. Bakugou's message remained bright on the screen. Nothing had been solved. The thoughts from the studio were still there, and the shame of having thought them at all sat somewhere unpleasant beneath Kirishima's ribs. Some frightened part of him still wanted everything to become simple again, wanted the wanting itself to disappear so that he would never have to decide what it said about him. But Bakugou had texted, and Kirishima had answered. Saturday, they were going to see each other. He slipped the phone into his pocket and started toward the station.
For now, that was as close to normal as Kirishima knew how to get.