Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts out pretty simply, like this: Class 1-A is enjoying their free period outside, free being a relative term. Normally it’s Supervised Experimental Quirk Training/Conditioning, but Aizawa has foregone the “Supervised” bit in order to attend a meeting, and has therefore designated today’s period as Unsupervised Don’t You Dare Experiment Dangerously When I’m Not There Quirk Training/Conditioning. Iida is in charge.

As such, Class 1-A is spread over one of the grassy lawns of campus engaging each other as they see fit. For the most part, this involves lazy quirk use and cloud watching. It’s more playing around than anything, and no one’s even worked up a sweat, besides Bakugou, but even his sit-ups are more lie-downs than anything else.

This is interrupted by an abrupt tearing sound, like that of tearing fabric. It would be almost comical, if it weren’t so alien and unexpected. A dark slash begins to form in the air, roughly ten feet from the majority of the class.

“Move back!” Iida cries, slashing at the air, and everyone bunches up, shifting nervously. Bakugou sits up from his spot in the grass, rolling up onto the balls of his feet in a low crouch.

The slash opens to a split, like the air in front of them has torn. Kirishima takes a step sideways towards Bakugou, and wills himself not to glance at him. It would do no one good to bring up bad memories now.

There is an explosion of smoke and air. Everyone shrieks, hands grabbing at each other. As the smoke begins to clear, they can make out a figure, hunched over, coughing into his elbow. They step back. He looks up.

Red eyes track over them, narrowed and considering under a mess of blond hair. It is irrefutably, unmistakably, Bakugou.

The class is well and truly panicking now. Iida is ushering people backwards. Momo grabs his shoulder. “Go,” she says, “get Aizawa!” and he rushes off.

Kirishima feels Kaminari grab his shoulder, but he shakes him off and turns to Bakugou – their Bakugou, now standing and slackjawed. “Dude, what the f-”

“Kirishima!” Momo cries, and he snaps his head around fast enough to see a hand reaching for his face, and red eyes staring him down. He cringes, the hand meets his face, and everyone freezes, breaths held.

A thumb smooths over Kirishima’s eyebrow. He cracks an eye open.

Bakugou – the strange one, wearing a sharp toothed-necklace and a cape – is leaning in, staring critically at a spot just above Kirishima’s eye line. The thumb skips over his eyebrow, no, his scar, once more, and the hand tracks down to Kirishima’s jawline. “Hm,” Strange Bakugou says, and forces Kirishima’s mouth open.

Everyone jerks forward at once, but Bakugou just runs the pad of this thumb over the sharp points of Kirishima’s teeth. He hums again, moving his hand back to Kirishima’s cheek, but does not step back. Kirishima snaps his mouth shut. “Dude,” he says.

Bakugou meets his gaze and smiles, sweet and slow and breathtaking, in a way none of them have seen before. The sun backlights him, his hair glowing as the last dust and smoke of his arrival settle in the air around them. His eyes are red and glowing and they drill into Kirishima the way they always have. “Kirishima,” Bakugou says, softly, warmly.

Kirishima’s jaw drops open again. Aizawa says something he can’t make out, loud and firm. And on his left, something explodes.

Once that dust has settled, and angry, familiar Bakugou has been quelled by Aizawa’s glare – no quirk, just exasperation – they manage to get more of a story.

The Weird Shirtless Wonder (Kaminari gets smacked for that) is Bakugou, from another universe, and he was thrown here by a wizard after mouthing off and pissing said wizard off.

(“Sounds like someone we know,” says Kaminari, who gets smacked for that too.)

Also, he must somehow know Kirishima, because he’s stuck to his shoulder like his name should be Sero.

Aizawa is taking a five-minute break to pop an Advil and bang his head against a tree, so the rest of Class 1-A, minus Bakugou, crowds in on Kirishima and…Bakugou.

“Wait, stop, please,” Kirishima says holding a hand up in the face of his classmates’ excitement. “Before we do anything, can we sort out the name thing?” He turns to Bakugou, the one next to him. “Is there something we can call you?”

“Bakugou.”

“Is there something we can call you to differentiate? Like, is there anything else you go by?”

Bakugou mulls this over. “King of Explodo-Kills,” he says and Kaminari and Sero practically start crying.

“No, dude, dude-” Kirishima is swallowing his own laughter. He sees their own Bakugou twitching somewhat violently, a few feet back from the crowd. “Dude-” he wheezes.

“Can’t we just call you Katsuki?” Tsuyu asks. Kirishima is about to nod when Bakugou, the one next to him, fuck this is why they need to sort this out, levels her with an absolutely deadly glare and snaps out “NO.” She holds her hands up, placating.

“Aw, dude, c’mon!” Kirishima cajoles, bumping their shoulders. “It would be so much easier!”

“That’s too personal,” he grumbles, but Kirishima doesn’t relent.

“Do you have a better solution?” Kirishima asks.

“King of Explodo-Kills,” Bakugou snarls at him, and then “Shut the fuck up,” at Sero and Kaminari. He hooks an arm around Kirishima’s shoulder and abruptly goes slack, his weight dragging Kirishima to the ground.

“What the hell?” Kirishima squawks.

“I’m napping. Napping means everyone shuts the fuck up and fucks the hell off,” he growls back, eyes shut. He lays back, his hand shooting out to seize the back of Kirishima’s shirt and drag him down as well. Not seeing much other option, Kirishima lies back and clasps his hands on his stomach.

“We’re calling you Katsuki,” Kirishima says to the clouds.

“Fucking fine,” Katsuki says, and Kirishima shuts his eyes.

Kirishima blinks his eyes open to the feeling of someone tapping roughly on his forehead. Not much time has passed, since the sun is still relatively in the same place, and he doesn’t have that post-nap-what-year-is-it feeling. He turns his head to find Bakugou, and that is Bakugou, scowling down at him. Katsuki is on his other side, and sits up, presumably roused by Kirishima’s movement.

The two glare at each other, before Aizawa coughs in a way that is neither indiscreet nor polite, and Bakugou steps back so Kirishima and Katsuki can turn and face the man.

“Since we have no way to prove that this person is Bakugou Katsuki from another universe-” Katsuki scoffs. “-and we have no way to prove that he isn’t, we’re operating under the assumption that he is. Our first priority is to determine how to send him back.”

Iida and Midoriya perk up, eyes shining. Midoriya has a stack of books nearly half his height. Momo and Uraraka stand beside them with stacks of paper, some from notebooks and others printed over with indecipherable diagrams. Iida opens his mouth to speak.

“You don’t have to,” Katsuki says flatly. They stare.

“Um, dude,” Kirishima says, “I’m pretty sure we d-”

“No,” Katsuki emphasizes. “You don’t have to. I’ll get back, and it will probably happen before you find anything useful.”

“Elaborate,” Aizawa says, pinching the bridge of his nose, as Midoriya squawks “You’ve done this before?”

“Yes,” Katsuki says, looking at him strangely. “Not that I’m a fucking expert in it. The witch is the one who opens the way back.” He nods at Uraraka.

“Me?” She squeaks. “How do I do that?”

“I just said I don’t fucking know,” Katsuki bites out. “Do I look like a damn witch?” He stands shirtless and scowling, necklaces, fluff, cape and all, and unthinkingly, Kirishima says ,“You look like a king.”

Katsuki smiles at him. And on his left, something explodes.

“Dude,” Kirishima says to Bakugou. “You gotta stop.”

“Fuck off,” Bakugou snaps back. They are making their way back to the classroom, Aizawa has decided that if there’s nothing to be done about Katsuki, there’s no reason not to go back to lessons. He’s actually making them stay late to make up for the delay they suffered that afternoon.

Bakugou and Kirishima are walking shoulder to shoulder, Bakugou constantly trying to outpace him just slightly. Katsuki is a few feet back, surrounded for the most part by their classmates, who are peppering him with questions about their daily life. Kirishima has heard at least four rounds of “Is there a Fantasy Me/should I know who the fuck you are?” but for the most part Katsuki gives decent, if clipped, responses. It seems the class has moved out of their “Oh Fuck There’s Two” phase and into a “Oh Sick We Can Speak To This One Without Being Snarled At” phase. It has, for the time being, removed Katsuki from Kirishima’s personal space bubble. It’s a relief, but Kirishima isn’t blaming him, because even if you’ve done it before being booted into another reality must be pretty scary, and he’d want to find someone familiar too.

“I mean, I know this must be really weird,” he says to Bakugou, “obviously, but you don’t have to rip his head off every time he talks.”

“Have I ripped his head off?” Bakugou demands. “If I wanted to kill him he’d be fucking dead.”

“Right, good,” Kirishima says slowly.

“Could say the same for you, too, you fucking idiot,” he spits at Kirishima. Kirishima rears back.

“What are you talking about?”

“He went for your face! And you didn’t even activate your quirk! What the hell kind of reaction is that? Don’t you have instincts?!”

“Of course I didn’t!” Kirishima defends. “I didn’t think to! He’s you.” Kirishima doesn’t know what, but something in this throws Katsuki, and all the anger slips off his face to make way for a cracked-open looking confusion, a vulnerability that Kirishima can barely recognize on Bakugou, much less classify.

True to form, though, the anger comes back in seconds. “You don’t know that!” he howls, and slams his way into the classroom. Kirishima stands dumbfounded in the doorway. His classmates must have caught up, one of them shoves him forwards gently into the room. But it’s not a classmate, because the hand doesn’t leave when he steps forward, and Katsuki presses into his shoulder, shadowing him to his desk.

Momo is already making him a chair, and Kirishima despairs only slightly when Katsuki places it so close that their arms press together for the remainder of the school day.

The thing is, Kirishima thinks to himself that night in the Class 1-A common area, this would be a lot easier if he wasn’t in love with Bakugou.

Because loving Bakugou, for Kirishima, is easy to do by himself. Bakugou is strong, and brave, and determined, and passionate, and a hero, and he works hard, and never quits, and he could do a hell of a lot worse on the whole physical appearance thing. And sure, he’s an asshole, but Kirishima is certain he’s making strides on that, with Kirishima’s help, no less.

But Bakugou is also distant, and prickly. And that makes it easy. Because Kirishima can love him from far away, and be his friend from close up, and deal with things like that.

But Katsuki has his legs in Kirishima’s lap. And that is not easy.

Bakugou is reading a book on the other couch, extremely passive aggressively. It actually dips into aggressive aggressively, giving the way he shoots glares at them and tears the pages a bit. Mina is leering.

“Do you know where you’re sleeping tonight?” She asks, innocent in the face of Kirishima’s scowl. “Like, are they getting you an extra bed, or…”

“Outside,” Katsuki says.

“Outside?” Kirishima repeats.

“I like it better,” he shrugs.

They basically pass the evening that way, with the others peppering Katsuki with questions, Katsuki infringing on Kirishima’s personal space, and Bakugou angrily reading his book. Eventually, Kirishima makes his excuses and stands up for bed, dropping Katsuki’s feet to the floor in the process. Before he can step away, a warm, rough hand finds his wrist, and he looks down to meet Katsuki’s eyes.

Katsuki squeezes once, before letting him go, and leans back into the couch, unbothered. Kirishima walks stiffly to the stairs.

As he lies awake in bed, he tries to calm himself down, but he can’t. Because Katsuki – Katsuki feels like he’s loving him close up, and Kirishima doesn’t know what to do with that.

He rolls over and tries to sleep.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Kirishima drags himself into the classroom. He found earlier, after banging his head into his doorframe and nearly tripping down the stairs, that the overall situation has not been conducive to a good night's sleep. Happily, though, he notes the improved reaction time of his quirk: his head barely hurts.

He stops at his desk. Katsuki is already there. 

"Morning," Kirishima says, for lack of anything better. 

"For now," Katsuki says blankly. There's a pause in which Kirishima just stares. Is this a cultural barrier thing? He's never even been out of the country, he's not sure how to deal with- Katsuki's mouth twitches into a smile.

"Oh dude," Kirishima laughs. "Don't do that!"

"Don't do what," Kaminari says, sliding into his seat.

"He was messing with me. It's too early for that, I thought I was about to be in a fistfight or something!"

"He can mess?" Kaminari demands, peering at Katsuki. "You can mess?"

Katsuki raises an eyebrow at him. "Why the surprise?" Kirishima asks, confused. "Bakugou can mess."

"Bakugou can mess?" 

Kirishima throws up his hands. "Of course he can mess! Stop making me use mess as a verb!"

"He never messes with me," Kaminari says, doubtful.

"Well now that we've looped back around into proper usage, yes, he does. He messes with you all the time."

"Shut up. Go back to your fistfight." Kaminari collapses forwards onto his desk. "At least one of us can win something today."

"Says who," Katsuki says, evidently just to be contrary, and his hand bursts into flame.

Several minutes later, the class, the majority having shuffled in while Kirishima was engaged with Kaminari, has quieted down enough that individual voices can be distinguished.

"But you don't," Midoriya stutters, "You don't have a quirk! We tested yesterday to make sure you weren't disguised!" 

"Disguised?" Katsuki says, then shakes his head to dismiss Midoriya's response. "Quirk?" He says instead. "What the fuck is a quirk?"

"Your...your ability," Midoriya says. "The explosion."

"What? What the fuck is a quirk?" He repeats. "That's just magic."

There is a brief pause. Kirishima braces himself.

"Why even design a damn lesson plan," Aizawa says, and lays down in his sleeping bag to wait it out.

Eventually class gets back on track, thanks to Bakugou of all people, who ignites his hands with more noise than actual heat and demands that everyone better shut the fuck up so he can actually fucking learn something at this piece of shit school or he'll tear everyone's textbooks in half and do something exceedingly unpleasant with the remains.

It actually quiets everyone down long enough for Aizawa to clear his throat pointedly and begin writing on the board.

"Class president 2.0," Uraraka stage whispers to Midoriya, who stifles a nervous laugh. Iida wilts, looking extremely contrite.

"Oh, no, not really, Iida," Uraraka assures as Bakugou hisses, "Not on your life," at the back of her head.

Bakugou settles back into his seat, knuckles white around his pen, and Kirishima thinks maybe it wasn't that surprising after all. He glances at Katsuki next to him, the very picture of bored grace. 

Yeah, Kirishima thinks. Just...yeah.

After their lessons break for lunch, Kirishima pulls his sandwich and drink out of his bag and sets them on his desk.

"Oh, shoot," he says turning his shoulders slightly to Katsuki, but still rummaging through his bag.  "Do you need something? We can go grab you something."

"I'm fine," Katsuki says, and his voice is quiet and low and near enough that Kirishima's eyes snap to him.

Which is a mistake, because his face is very close.

He's leaning a cheek on hand, elbow resting on the edge of Kirishima's desk. His weight is pitched forward, and his torso is twisted to face...uh, to face...

We really need to something about the shirtlessness, Kirishima thinks, only slightly hysterically. Out loud he says, "Do you want my chips?"

"He never gives me his chips," Mina says to Hagakure. Kirishima is going to kill her. "You never deserve my chips," he snipes.

"What'd he do to deserve your chips?!"

"He doesn't have a lunch- oh hang on." He shoves his chair back. Katsuki stands.

"No, just, stay," Kirishima says, and maybe it was a little forceful, but the concern he can already see in Katsuki's eyes is not going to soothe his panic. He gentles his tone. "I'll be back in a second."

Katsuki hums and sits back down. Kirishima tosses him the chips from his bag and scoots around him to the door.

He bangs his head lightly against a vending machine. "Get it together," he mutters. He pulls in a deep breath, then another, and straightens up.

There is a dent in the vending machine.

Oh, damn, this is why his door didn't line up proper with the frame this morning. Kirishima decides to again, mark this as a positive: his quirk is super strong!

Back in the classroom, Kirishima throws Mina a bag of chips.

"Kiri, you really didn't have to! I was joking!" 

"That's why they're your least-favorite favorite," Kirishima tells her seriously.

"Ugh! You monster!" She tears the bag open.

"Last but not least," Kirishima says, turning around. "Because you are the one person who does deserve them." He drops a second bag of chips on the desk.

"What the fuck," Bakugou says. 

"Hey, you earned them," Kirishima says. "You're the one who got class back on track this morning." He grins. "It was actually pretty cool. That blast was all noise and hot air, your quirk control is amazing!"

"I," Bakugou says. "That. Fucking obviously." His face is a little red.

"It is, dude," Kirishima agrees. "Obvious, I mean." 

Bakugou is staring.

"You like spicy, right?" Krishima asks, concerned. "I got the spiciest ones there were." 

"...Yes," Bakugou says shortly, picking them up. Kirishima grins again. Bakugou, in the process of tearing open the bag, mangles it, fingers tensing.

Too social?, Kirishima thinks. "Uh, well, enjoy! I'm gonna go eat lunch!"

As he flops down in his seat, he notices the expression on Katsuki's face. 

"What's so funny?" He asks, but Katsuki just nods, the humor slipping into something like fondness, and Kirishima quickly turns back to his sandwich.

Chapter Text

After lessons (morning lecture, afternoon lecture, no-quirk physical conditioning- and what did they ever do to Aizawa to deserve this? Kirishima actually decides not to dwell on that, since he’s pretty sure he could come up with a few things, and it’s not like he doesn’t like the exercise), most of the class settles outside on the grounds to relax. A few of the more dedicated students have their homework with them. The weather’s been nice lately, and they’re all trying to take advantage before the inevitable downturn.

Kirishima rolls out of a deep leg stretch when he sees Midoriya and Iida approaching. Uraraka is sitting with Asui, but it’s clear she’s keeping an eye. Kirishima glances at Katsuki, but none of the tell-tale annoyance is gathering on his face. Kirishima glances at Bakugou- well, he tries to, but he’s not anywhere to be found.

He scans the students scattered across the grass, but doesn’t spot another head of wild blond hair, save Kaminari. Maybe he’s inside, Kirishima thinks, disappointed. His shoulders slump. Someone snorts.

Kirishima cranes his head back, and back, and back, and once he’s lying flat on the grass with his chin tilted up and the top of his head on the ground he spots the sneaker hanging over the branch of a tree almost directly behind him. From there he follows the line of the person’s leg, to their propped up knee, and finally meets Bakugou’s bemused eyes.

“Sneaky,” he says, and Bakugou snorts again, but before he can say anything else, he’s distracted by an uncertain “Um?” He sits up, hissing at the burn in his abs. Fucking Aizawa. Who only wants the best for them! Kirishima reminds himself.

He turns his eyes up to see Midoriya, shuffling his feet. Iida is at his shoulder with a familiar stack of heavy books, the ones from yesterday. Not homework after all, then.

“Excuse me, Kacch-um, Katsu. Katsuki,” Midoriya says. “I, we, we were wondering if we could ask you some more questions.”

Katsuki lifts a hand, and there’s a split second where half the class tenses, but he just gestures vaguely towards the ground in front of him.

“Don’t hover, Izuku,” he says mildly.

Everybody freezes.

“Izuku?” Midoriya squeaks.

“What, is that not your name in this one?” Katsuki demands. “Fucking Deku, always so sensitive.”

“Deku,” Midoriya breathes, and collapses with his legs crossed under him, looking a little relieved. Iida sits neatly beside him, arranging the books at their knees.

“You can’t possibly prefer that,” Katsuki deadpans. “But, hell, what do I know. You’re still using it back home.”

“You call him Deku in your world, too?” Kirishima asks.

“I used to,” Katsuki says. “And now everybody does.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Katsuki flicks his hand dismissively. “If it was on purpose or not. But that’s the name he’s known for across the kingdoms.”

“Midoriya’s famous?” Kirishima says. Katsuki eyes him, frown pulling at his mouth.

“Not as famous as me.”

“Um,” Midoriya says, and they turn to face him again. “What do you call me?”

“I don’t call you anything,” Katsuki says. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Why not?”

Katsuki growls, frustrated. “The world’s a big place?” he suggests, this side of sarcastic. “Damn, Izuku.”

“Why don’t you ask your other questions,” Kirishima suggests. He looks at Midoriya, who seems slightly overwhelmed. “You…did have other questions, right?”

“Uh, yes!” Midoriya says, scrambling for a pen. “I was hoping Katsuki could tell us a little bit about magic.”

“You wanna learn magic?” Katsuki says doubtfully.

“No, I just want to learn about your world.”

“Alright, good,” Katsuki says, settling back. “Because my Izuku couldn’t learn shit.” There’s a crack that sounds suspiciously like a tree branch behind them. Kirishima’s not sure if it was vindication at Midoriya’s magical incapability or outrage at “my Izuku.” Since nothing explodes, Kirishima decides it either was the former or the two canceled out.

“So you’re saying magic is learned?” Midoriya is asking, already scribbling notes.

“Some of it is. Some kinds and sometimes,” Katsuki answers. “I’ve learned more about my magic,” he says. “But the magic has always been mine.” He ignites a tiny rolling crackle of flame in his hand. Different from Bakugou’s sustained explosions, but the heat similar enough that Kirishima leans in to look. Katsuki holds his hand out. “Stuff like this, this is mine. It’s easy, but I can still work to make it better. Other magic, though. It’s hit or miss whether you can do something at all, and if it’s not yours, you’re damn well going to need a book about it.”

Midoriya is scribbling furiously. “Is,” he says, “Are your parents magic? Or do they have magic, I guess? The um, fire, the natural part. Is that passed down?”

Katsuki hums, annoyed. “I haven’t seen consistency.”

“Do I have magic?” Kirishima asks, aware that he’s bouncing his knee giddily. Katsuki turns to him, surprised.

“Don’t you have magic here?”

“No, dude,” Kirishima says, rolling his eyes. “I have a quirk here. It’s like, an individual ability that people get from their DNA.”

“That’s not exactly,” Midoriya says.

“The fuck is DNA,” Katsuki says.

“Why don’t I just show you my quirk,” Kirishima says. He sticks his arms out “Check it out!” He hardens from his elbows to his hands.

Katsuki flinches back, before leaning in, eyes round and curious. He looks up at Kirishima’s face to say something, but before he can, Kirishima bares his teeth in a grin and quirks his whole head. Katsuki jumps.

Kirishima releases his quirk and laughs. “Can I do that?”

“Not that,” Katsuki allows. “But something like it. Do you…do anything else?”

“Mostly just that,” Kirishima says. “But more of it. Why?”

“No reason,” Katsuki says. He turns back to Midoriya and Iida, who are comparing notes. “Are we done here?”

“One last thing!” Midoriya says quickly. “I know we asked yesterday but I was hoping you could expand on what you meant about…getting back by yourself? And Uraraka opening the way back?” Uraraka perks up at this, and Kirishima notices, for the first time, that the entire class is, in fact, listening.

“Yes,” Katsuki says, temper getting shorter as the conversation gets longer. “I said what I said. Yesterday.”

“Okay, but, um, how does Uraraka-”

“I said I don’t know how to open it,” Katsuki snarls. “Or I wouldn’t be stuck having this fucking conversation!”

“Alright!” Midoriya squeaks, and turns back to his notebook.

“I just find it interesting,” Momo says aloud, and Kirishima turns to find her seated with Todoroki a few feet away, “that of all the universes there must be, and of all the places in this one, you just happened to land in front of your own counterpart.”

“I didn’t happen to do anything!” Katsuki snaps. “You clearly don’t fucking understand anything.” He glances at Kirishima, who looks back worriedly. Katsuki, like Bakugou, could definitely use some help with his temper, but being stuck in a strange world and pestered with questions…well, Kirishima can’t entirely blame him for getting frustrated.

Katsuki, though, when he meets Kirishima’s eyes, pauses. He heaves a deep breath, resettles his tensed up shoulders, and turns back to the group. Everyone has abandoned the pretense of their conversations to listen in.

“The universe knows,” Katsuki says quietly. “Where you’re supposed to be. 

“The universe will do its best to put you back in that place. So when that fucking asshole wizard threw me here, he didn’t throw me here. You can’t just go to another world, you don’t get to pick. He opened a portal to ‘somewhere else’, somewhere else happened to be this world, and the universe sorted me to the most correct spot it could.”

“So theoretically,” Momo says, “If you were to open a portal yourself, it would connect you back to your own world?”

“Yes,” Katsuki says, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“But you can’t open a portal,” Kirishima says.

“No,” Katsuki says. “I can’t.”

Chapter Text

The next day Kirishima wakes up feeling much more alert. The rest of yesterday had passed pretty uneventfully. Midoriya and Iida had retreated, Midoriya no doubt theorizing about the inner workings of magic. Maybe they could get Katsuki to practice some of his stuff with them? Kirishima would love to spar. He wonders how differently Katsuki would fight compared to Bakugou.

Bakugou. He’d been…not absent, really, but definitely subdued. Whenever Kirishima paused to look for him, he was just off in the corner of his vision. But surprisingly, he did nothing to approach, not even to pick a fight.

This has got to be extremely weird for him, Kirishima reminds himself, buttoning his uniform shirt. After all, if he was confronted with his own magical self, would he really be comfortable spending a lot of time with him?

Well, yeah, he thinks. That would be cool as hell. But Bakugou, who is obsessed with being number one, with being set apart from everyone else…

We’ve been too hard on him the past two days, Kirishima decides, and lets himself out into the hallway.

Instead of turning and walking to the elevator, he takes the few steps to Bakugou’s door and raps his hand on the wood. “Bro, you still there?” he calls.

A moment passes, and the door is wrenched open, Bakugou scowling behind it.

“You ready for class?” Kirishima asks cheerfully.

Bakugou scoffs and shuts the door behind him. “Fucking clearly. I wouldn’t have opened the damn door if I wasn’t.”

“That hurts dude,” Kirishima laughs. “I’ll have you know I’d skip my hair routine for you!” Bakugou knocks their shoulders together, hard.

“Fucking liar.”

“Well. Maybe if it was serious.” He punches the button for the ground floor.

They ride the elevator in companionable silence. It dings cheerfully upon arrival, and they step out into the common.

“I need to grab my lunch from the kitchen,” Kirishima says. “I forgot to grab it last night.” Generally, Kirishima prepares his own lunch in the communal kitchen the night before, but packs it in his mini-fridge for the next day. There’s a very good reason for this.

“You better hope it’s still there,” Bakugou snorts. It’s not like their classmates make a habit of stealing each other’s food, but desperate teens call for desperate measures, and Dark Shadow in particular is a real snack thief. “Hurry it up,” Bakugou says, and Kirishima realizes he is turning with him, in the direction of the kitchen. Kirishima smiles.

He walks in, waves to Satou, and opens the fridge. His lunch is all the way at the bottom and in the back, and he has to crouch down to reach it.

“Good morning,” someone says, and Kirishima turns to see Katsuki crouched next to him.

“Dude!” Kirishima cries, grabbing a shelf to stay balanced. “Where did you come from!”

“Outside,” Katsuki shrugs.

“Okay…have you eaten?”

“Mm.”

“Okay. Um. Good morning.”

Katsuki smiles.

Kirishima abruptly realizes they’re still crouched in front of the fridge. He grabs his lunch, stuffing it into his bag, and stands.

When he turns, Bakugou is gone from where he stood in the doorway. Kirishima buries his disappointment. Hitching his bag on his shoulder, he jerks his other hand to gesture vaguely in the direction of the exit. “I should, uh, get to class. If you’re coming.” He walks quickly for the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of blond hair down the hall, but. Nothing.

He continues towards class, missing the critical look on Katsuki’s face.

In class, Katsuki is sitting even closer than yesterday, if that's possible. They’re getting through the lesson much more smoothly, no interruptions before the first bell, but Kirishima is having trouble taking decent notes with Katsuki brushing their arms together every so often. Maybe he can borrow from Bakugou.

He glances over at him, but the white knuckles around Bakugou’s pencil tell him it’s probably a no-go. He sighs, and Katsuki makes a quiet questioning noise. Kirishima peeks at him.

“Okay?” Katsuki murmurs.

“I’m fine,” Kirishima whispers back. Katsuki nods, and Kirishima looks back at the board. He’s surprised Katsuki is willing to sit through their lessons, honestly, since he doesn’t appear to have any interest in the material. Katsuki leans heavily into his arm.

Kirishima waits for him to move away, but he doesn’t. Kirishima adjusts the grip on his pen to compensate. A few seats over, Bakugou’s pencil snaps.

An hour later, they have a short break for class change, which Kirishima uses to lean back in his chair and stretch, which finally dislodges Katsuki from his shoulder. Kirishima leans around him to look at Bakugou, but Katsuki gets in his face.

“Can I see your arms again? Like yesterday?” He asks, and Kirishima blinks at him.

“Um, sure,” he says. And offers the arm closest, hardening it. Katsuki makes another small interested noise, and drags a finger down Kirishima’s forearm.

“Do you feel that?” he asks.

“No,” Kirishima says. “Maybe if you hit me, I’d feel the pressure, but not that.”

“I wouldn’t hit you,” Katsuki says, eyebrows drawn, something dark in his eyes. Kirishima doesn’t know if he should look away.

“Not even to spar?” he says, to distract himself from having to decide. “I was gonna ask after classes.” He grins. "C’mon, it’ll be a blast."

“Kiri, that was bad when you used it on Bakugou and it’s even worse now,” Sero says. “On account of the unoriginality.”

“Aw, it’s not like he’s heard it before!” Kirishima complains.

“Are you fucking kidding?” Katsuki says. “I hear that all the time.” His mouth twitches into a smile. Kirishima grins back, helpless. Katsuki’s hand is still on his arm.

A few seats over, Bakugou’s desk snaps.

There’s some commotion at that point, but the rest of their lectures continue through lunch and the afternoon with minimal disruption. For the class, that is.

Kirishima barely keeps up with what’s on the board, on account of Katsuki’s shoulder against his, their legs pressed together, their feet touching, and, for an extremely memorable five minutes (Although not if you asked Midnight. She’d say Kirishima didn’t remember a damn thing.), Katsuki’s head on his shoulder. He’s alone, Kirishima tells himself. And obviously knows me. He can’t begrudge him this comfort, but he knows his grades are gonna suffer later. He’ll definitely have to see if Bakugou can help him out.

It isn’t a successful day for Bakugou either. He goes through a lot of pencils.

Chapter Text

After lessons, Kirishima and Katsuki are going at it outside, the rest of the class watching curiously. As they trade blows - Kirishima bringing a forearm out to block, swinging his other fist in a broad cross, Katsuki tipping backwards out of range, then swiping a crackling hand just short of Kirishima's nose - Kirishima can't help but feel disappointed.

"Dude, what's up?" Kirishima asks, seizing Katsuki's wrist with a quirked out hand. Tellingly, Katsuki does nothing. He doesn't twist out, doesn't come at him with a kick, doesn't ignite the palm Kirishima is holding so close to his face. His arm just goes lax. Kirishima frowns. "You don't wanna fight?"

Katsuki tilts his head. "What do you mean?"

Kirishima hums, frustrated. He releases his quirk and drops his arms. "Well, for the most part, it seems lke you fight just like Bakugou. But right now you're nothing like him. I can think of a million ways Bakugou would've put me down by now, but you don't go after any of them." He shifts uncomfortably. "If you don't want to spar, you should've said."

"Well, one, I'm not your Bakugou, and you're not my Kirishima. I don't know what you usually do, but I won't hurt you." Katsuki is frowning, something severe in his eyes.

Kirishima casts out for a response. He feels weirdly defensive. "He doesn't- we don't hurt each other! It's just sparring."

"You said he puts you down."

"And I always get back up!" He quirks his arms, just for a second, before letting it go again. "We're basically made for each other, we push each other's limits."

Kirishima is abruptly reminded that he is holding Katsuki's wrist when Katsuki turns his hand, sliding their palms together, lacing their fingers.

"I don't want to push your limits," he says quietly. He takes a small step with his left foot, closing the distance between their chests. "For one thing, I don't know your limits." Another step, with the right. "And I don't take chances with you." They're practically nose to nose. "I can't hurt you, and that's not going to be true just because of you. It's me, too." His eyes flicker between Kirishima's. He's warm, every part of him a furnace. Kirishima can't move, can't tilt his head back even a millimeter.

There's a snarl, a crackle of familiar explosions, and a hand in his peripheral vision. By the time he has torn his eyes from Katsuki's face, Katsuki has turned to intercept. He pulls sharply on Kirishima. Kirishima's vision blurs with movement. Someone in the class is yelling.

There is no detonating roar. Kirishima shakes his head sharply, clearing it, and looks up.

He is half behind Katsuki, Katsuki having pulled him there forcibly, his shoulder turned broadly, his other arm up and across his body, defensive.

In front of them stands Bakugou, stance uneven, weight pitched forward, but frozen on the balls of his feet. His palms are up, slick with sweat and completely empty of heat. The expression on his face is something Kirishima doesn't know. There's anger, lots of it, but it's already breaking down into something else.

Katsuki shifts backwards, arm dropping. Bakugou steps forwards into the gap. Katsuki's arm comes back up, and he growls, wordless.

"Stop it," Bakugou chokes out. "Fucking stop it!" He grabs Katsuki's forearm, and for a brief second they wrestle each other before Bakugou rips his hands away with a final shove. "What the f-fuck are you doing?!"

Bakugou’s breaths are getting shorter. Kirishima tries to step to him, but Katsuki shoulders him back, not turning to look.

Bakugou face cracks open. "You think I'm going to hurt him?" He says quietly, outrage overwritten by something else. He sounds like he's choking. "You think I would- You think I'm some kind of-" His eyes are spilling over, the tendons in his arms and neck tight and trembling. His gaze jumps to Kirishima.

Kirishima tries to school his worry into something reassuring, but he must not do a good job. A sob strangles Bakugou, his breath hitching audibly, thickly, like he's been struck in the throat.

He's gone before Kirishima can move.

Chapter Text

Kirishima jolts forward, seizing Katsuki’s shoulder with a carefully un-quirked hand and spinning him. “What was that?” he barks.

“What do you mean?” Katsuki asks. He slides back into normal posture, his tone matching his body language point for point, all bored and uncaring.

“I mean,” Kirishima repeats, “what the hell was that?!” It comes out louder than he intends it to, and it occurs to him sharply that he is, in fact, fucking pissed. “What was that about?!”

“I told you,” Katsuki says. “I don’t take chances with you.” He lifts a hand, maybe to touch Kirishima, but shifts to neatly fold his arms instead.

“Yeah, and you also said I’m not your Kirishima, and you’re not my Bakugou,” Kirishima snarls. “So you don’t get to act like you know him, and you don’t get to make assumptions about him!”

Katsuki narrows his eyes. He begins to speak, but Kirishima cuts him off. “No!” he shouts, before taking a breath and focusing on controlling his tone. “You said yourself, you don’t know us. That’s not what he’s like, and I won’t let anyone treat him that way.” He studies Katsuki, the familiar eyes, the set of his mouth. “So go cool off, and don’t do it again.”

He steps past Katsuki, and Katsuki lets him go. They both know he has somewhere else to be.

Kirishima jogs down the hall. He’s already checked Bakugou’s room, the common room, the kitchen, and the dormitory gym, and he can’t hear any explosions, so he’s kind of just guessing at this point. He just really, really hopes Bakugou isn’t hiding in his room, because he wasn’t actually able to do much more than knock longer than anyone should be able to tolerate. It’s a toss-up on whether that means Bakugou really isn’t in there, because Bakugou is both the most stubborn guy and the shortest fuse Kirishima knows.

He sighs and goes back outside, grateful to see that the class has since dispersed from the site of the debacle nearly an hour ago. He’s sure they’re gossiping about it, but at least they’re doing so discreetly.

Kirishima slams a fist into his palm in sudden realization. He’s an idiot! There’s no way Bakugou would stay anywhere near their classmates after something like that. Kirishima turns and breaks into a jog. If he’s right, he’ll be annoyed with himself for not thinking of it sooner.

He’s right.

Bakugou had left, tearing off and getting, as Kirishima eventually predicted, as far away as he could from anyone.

Kirishima finds him on the opposite side of campus, resting secluded on a branch in a copse of trees.

“Hey,” Kirishima offers quietly, as he comes to stand underneath. Bakugou huffs. “You wanna talk?”

“No, I don’t want to talk,” Bakugou grinds out. “I’m sure everyone else already is.”

“Haven’t heard a word,” Kirishima promises. “Cross my heart. Come on, bro, please?” Bakugou huffs again, but uncurls slightly and tips off his branch. He hits the ground on the balls of his feet, knees sinking into an easy crouch and elbows out for balance, absorbing the small impact like a pro even in such casual context. Kirishima restrains himself from whistling, not wanting to risk driving him off.

Bakugou straightens up and looks around. “Where’s fuckface?”

“Dude, you have the same fa-” Bakugou halts that sentence with a glare. “Cooling his heels.”

“Aizawa?”

“Uh, no. Me.” Bakugou raises his eyebrows. “I kind of told him off,” Kirishima admits.

“Why?” Bakugou asks.

“Because he was out of line,” Kirishima snaps, unable to prevent his voice, at least, from hardening. He hardens a hand instead, flexing it, and softens his tone in exchange. “That wasn’t…it wasn’t nice, the way he treated you, and it wasn’t right either.” He groans out loud and holds up his un-quirked hand to keep Bakugou from responding. “I mean, yeah, it wasn’t right, like it wasn’t good or fair, but what I really mean is it wasn’t correct.”

The defensive look Bakugou had been cultivating gives way for something slightly more tolerant. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s wrong about you,” Kirishima says. “He doesn’t know you. Or me. And it was shitty of him to act like he did, and to treat you like that.”

“Treat me like what?” Brow tensing again, shoulders rising. Kirishima racks his mind for the right words. Something that didn’t say pity, or weak, or lesser, because Bakugou isn’t.

“Like…” Kirishima says helplessly, and decides to just go for the simplest words. “Like someone I need to be afraid of.”

Bakugou stares, eyes narrowed, silent for a few long seconds. “It looked to me like you agreed.”

“What?” Kirishima is startled. “Wha-no! Why? You’re-” He swallows. “You’re a hero, Bakugou, and I don’t just mean in class.” He meets Bakugou’s gaze, hoping he looks as honest as he feels. “I was just…worried.”

“Worried?” Fuck, that tone is dangerous. Kirishima is trying to avoid anything that could be interpreted as pity, and that's a warning sign.

But he sighs, and sticks with it. If Kirishima knows anything, it’s that he’s not elegant. He’s a straightforward guy, and his words are gonna match. He trusts Bakugou to know that. “Yes, worried. Because Katsuki was being shitty to you, and I can tell this has been a lot for you to deal with.”

That seems to catch Bakugou off guard, more so than Kirishima expected.

“You can.” He sounds strangled. “You can tell?” His face is starting to get a bit red.

“Um, yeah, bro.” Kirishima says. “I can’t imagine how weird it must be, to have another dimension’s you show up out of nowhere. And I know he and I have been spending a lot of time…” He trails off, unsure of the sentence. He meant to say that he didn’t want Bakugou to think he was picking sides, or that he favored Katsuki, or anything. But that would mean Bakugou cared if Kirishima wasn’t spending time with him, and that was a big assumption to make. They were friends. No doubt, they were friends. But to imply, however clumsily, that Bakugou might miss him…was too much.

“A lot of time, yeah,” Bakugou says, still distinctly worked up.

“If I can help,” Kirishima tries instead, not really sure what he’s offering but willing to offer all the same.

“I,” Bakugou says, too loud, seeming to reach a resolution. His feet inch apart, shoulders squaring, but his eyes drop down to about chest height, no longer meeting Kirishima’s. He sucks in a breath and lets it out, rattling in a way that speaks more of bound-up energy than anything else. Too much, too tightly wound, explosive as always. “I don’t like it!”

“What-”

“I don’t like-!” His voice is raw. The space around his hands is popping. “I don’t like it when you’re with him, I don’t want to see it-” He chokes on a too harsh breath, agitated like he was earlier, trembling through the shoulders.

Kirishima feels his own throat get tight, his quirk crawling up his forearms in a way he almost wishes was intentional. Bracing for a blow, instinctual.

“I don’t like,” Bakugou gasps out, ragged. “How he is with you.” Perfectly clear, the unspoken how you are with him.

Of course, Kirishima thinks. Of course, of course, of course. He should’ve known: his quirk doesn’t help, never will, against Bakugou.

“Yeah,” he manages, past the knives in his throat. Not upbeat enough. “Yeah! Yeah, dude. I got it.” Of course he doesn’t like it. Of course he doesn’t want to see himself next to Kirishima like that.

Because Kirishima isn’t stupid, and he knows what the last few days looked like. Because he was trying to ignore it. Because if he ignored it then maybe, selfishly, it would last longer. Because every stupid smile, every too-easy touch, was a bright signal flare of his affection.

But Bakugou didn’t like it.

Blinking to keep tears at bay, Kirishima says, “It must be so weird, I got it, no problem.” Brushing it off, best he can. He backs up a few steps, gaze fixed at Bakugou’s feet. “I got it, I got-I gotta go.” He keeps backing up. “I’ll – see you.”

He runs.

Bakugou detonates behind him, all that emotion and nowhere to go but out, a wordless snarl of heat that no doubt knocks out a few branches.

Kirishima’s quirk doesn’t budge an inch in preparation nor reaction. He already knows the only way Bakugou can hurt him, and it isn’t, has never been, like that.

Bakugou sinks down, at the base of the tree this time. He fists his hands in his hair. He pulls at it, hard, but it only makes him angrier and that’s not what he wants right now, so he lets go, dragging his hands through the dirt, counting to fast tens to steady his breathing.

Overwhelmed, overwhelming. He shouldn’t have tried to tell Kirishima. Look where it got him, fucking nowhere, fucking useless-

He buries his head between his knees.

He is quiet for a long time.

By the time he’s done, it’s almost curfew, and he’ll have to hustle to get back to the dorms on time. He stands up, knees cracking.

Bakugou takes one long look back at the whole conversation, and sums it up as best he can.

“God fucking damn it.”

Chapter Text

They don’t have class the next day, which is good, because Kirishima isn’t sure he could’ve stood the concentrated focus of his classmates’ curiosity, and he knows he couldn’t have stood another day of Katsuki leaning on his arm.

Instead he works out in his room, coming out once for food and heading straight back in afterwards, laughing off Kaminari and Mina’s questions and claiming he needs to make up for slacking off after class yesterday. It’s the closest he gets to mentioning the aborted spar, and anyway, it isn’t really a lie when he has as much overdue studying as he does.

After another round of crunches, tucking his elbows to his knees across his torso, twisting his body to match his emotions, he finally sprawls across the floor. He pulls his oft-abandoned notebooks towards himself even as he presses up, arms locked, to stretch out. He flips one open and stares down at it. He lets the tension, mental and physical, leave him with the stretch, and focuses on the page.

His notes are terrible.

Groaning, he collapses back to the floor, shoving the notebook away. He shuts his eyes, realizing abruptly that he never got Bakugou’s help like he’d planned, because he knew his notes had been terrible, because he’d been distracted by Katsuki. He thuds his head on the floor.

From through the wall, he hears an almost answering thud. It’s not the first, and not even particularly notable, but all at once Kirishima decides he can’t stand it. It’s nearly 2 PM, he’s been in his room all day. And all day, he’s heard the occasional bump or scrape of a drawer, or of a chair pulling out. The innocuous proof that Bakugou is present and awake on the other side of the wall. It’s driving him crazy.

Giving up entirely, he stacks up his books, shoves them onto his desk, and grabs a towel and a change of clothes. Being sure not to shut his door too softly or too loudly, he sets off for the showers.

Bakugou presses the heel of his hand to his eye. It sounds like Kirishima just left, which shockingly doesn’t help him focus on his textbook any better. He gets a brief spike of vindictive pleasure over the fact that he knows Kirishima hasn’t seen Katsuki today, which immediately converts to crippling embarrassment. He sets his pencil down before he can break it and leans back in the chair.

Yesterday. Yesterday he was upset. Yesterday he reacted poorly, yet again. Yesterday he tried to talk with Kirishima, only to succeed in what? Alienating him?

He rubs his cheeks with rough hands as irritation and shame spills back into him. It seems like Bakugou has succeeded in one thing – Kirishima isn’t spending time with Katsuki. But he’s failed, perhaps catastrophically, in the other.

You win some, you lose some. But Bakugou already knows this about himself, that he wants to win all the time.

Kirishima lets himself back into his room, tossing his dirty clothes and towel in his laundry basket. He’s going to sit down at his desk, maybe take another stab at interpreting his own gibberish, but a breeze from the cracked window catches his attention instead.

Grateful for the fresh air (he learned quickly that it was essential, as someone who works out frequently in his dorm room), he wanders over and shoves the window more fully open, leaning out. He has a decent view of the courtyard where the class tends to gather, and it looks like most of them are out there today, still trying to get the most out of the weather.

Kirishima wants to be out there. He’s about to let it sink into bitterness, when he catches a look at himself in his mirror.

Well, he’s dressed. His hair is put up. And he’s Kirishima damn Eijirou, and he is nothing if not resilient. If he wants to go, he’s going to go. He shoves on a pair of sneakers, grabs a random textbook (he’s under-prepared in everything, frankly, so this isn’t carelessness so much as optimism), and heads to the door.

He pauses with his hand on the doorknob. Without really thinking about it, he says out loud, “I’m going outside.”

It’s not an invitation. He’s just…saying it, is all.

Bakugou lasts eleven and a half minutes. Then he goes outside too.

Kaminari, Mina, and Sero come over to bother him initially, but they settle down a few yards away when it becomes clear that Kirishima isn’t going to talk about yesterday, and is actually making an attempt at reading the textbook material.

His focus is renewed with the change in scenery and he gets through half a chapter on early hero legislation before he sets the book back down. He cracks his neck and glances around. The whole class is here again, today even warmer than yesterday, and most of them with the same noble intentions of studying. He spots Midoriya and Momo seated together with a familiar stack of books. He’s not surprised Midoriya hasn’t quite let go of the topic yet. He counts off everyone on the class roster scattered around them, but no Katsuki.

He’s relieved.

Bakugou is here. He showed up maybe ten, fifteen minutes after Kirishima did, which Kirishima is definitely not reading into. He’s underneath the tree he was in the other day, his own books open around him and his hand scribbling across a page. He hasn’t looked up once. He hasn’t spoken to anyone. Kirishima shoves down the urge to do anything, and turns back to his work.

Well – he would have. But there’s a noise. A weird, warping noise, that Kirishima has only ever heard once before. He startles to his feet, looking up.

It’s the same as when Katsuki arrived, but much higher up, and much, much larger.

The class abandons their pursuits and groups loosely together, readying themselves automatically against the unknown.

“That’s a portal, right?” Uraraka is saying. “It’s another portal.”

“It definitely is,” Midoriya agrees, near the front.

“It’s so far,” Hagakure frets. “Won’t whoever comes out – won’t they fall and hurt themself?”

“I won’t let that happen,” Uraraka declares, puffing her cheeks. “Iida! If someone falls, you carry me underneath them and I’ll use my quirk before they hit the ground!”

“A sound plan,” Iida says, moving to her shoulder and readying himself.

“Guys,” Kaminari says, nerves threading his voice. “Who do you think is gonna come out.”

“My ride,” Katsuki says, appearing at Kirishima’s shoulder. He leans into Kirishima, just for a moment, before walking out a good distance ahead of them all. The portal splits open. “Asshole!” he yells, hands cupped around his mouth. “You took so long!”

Something red comes through the portal. There’s a loud, rending noise, enough that Kirishima almost covers his ears and Jirou definitely does. The portal doesn’t appear to be widening any further, and it takes them all a moment to realize that the noise hadn’t been the portal, it had been the thing.

Which – uncurls – and –

It’s a dragon.

It’s a red, screaming, dragon. Its tail whips out of the edge of the portal hundreds of feet in the air and even at a distance, they can all see its jaws snap open to reveal huge pointed teeth. It free-falls about half the distance to the ground before snapping enormous wings out with an audible crack, whether from its joints or against the air pressure, it’s hard to say.

The motion makes it brake, for an instant, in midair, before it’s flipping end over end towards the ground, tucking into a spiral. Uraraka shrieks, plan entirely forgotten, and they all prepare for the impact.

In the last moments, the dragon tilts its wings out again, banking sharply up from the ground meters away and speeding towards them. The class tenses in preparation to run, but something warps in the dragon's from, and there’s a different type of rending noise, and a shifting that Kirishima wouldn’t know how to describe except that it looks a little like maybe how his quirk feels – the dragon’s last echoing roar gives way to a joyful shout, and a much smaller, more humanoid shape hits the ground with two feet in a stumbling run.

The figure doesn’t slow down, and the class watches in stunned silence as a grinning, laughing, horned Kirishima, red scales glittering across his cheeks, chest, and arms, slams bodily into Katsuki.

Into Katsuki, who has apparently braced himself against this inevitability, and swings the laughing boy in two wide circles, laughing himself.

Kirishima couldn’t pick his jaw up off the ground if he tried.

Katsuki and motherfucking-dragon-Kirishima are gripping each other’s arms, hard, foreheads pressed together.

“You’re just impatient,” real-life-actual-dragon-Kirishima protests, knocking his head forward, mindful of the dark horns jutting from his temples.

“It took you four days,” Katsuki complains, his hands migrating up actual-enormous-flying-possibly-fire-breathing-dragon-Kirishima’s arms to the back of his neck.

“Blame Uraraka!”

“I do, I’m just surprised you lasted this long without me.”

“Asshole,” Kaminari-is-totally-quietly-crying-in-awe-and-jealousy-because-oh-my-god-Kirishima accuses fondly.

“Eijirou,” Katsuki says back, voice as warm as any explosion Kirishima’s ever felt and then – well.

And then they’re kissing.

Kirishima is dimly aware that he’s at some point sunk to his knees in total and complete shock, and he dimly registers Mina shrieking at the top of her lungs and other general uproar from his classmates, but mostly he sees the way Katsuki traces gentle thumbs over the scales on, on Eijirou’s neck, how Eijirou tilts his head just so, clearly already familiar with every motion, how a clawed hand slips into Katsuki’s blond hair, raking through it without injury, how they can’t kiss for longer than a few seconds without laughing into each other’s mouths.

Finally, finally, one of them pulls back, and there’s a manly shoulder punch from Eijirou to Katsuki, who retaliates immediately, until they’re scrapping around in the dirt for several long moments until they end with Eijirou under Katsuki’s arm in a headlock, Katsuki’s knuckles grinding into the top of his head.

Eijirou beams at class 1-A. “Hey!” he says with frankly unfathomable cheer. “Sorry for the yelling! I was excited.”

“It’s…okay,” Iida, ever-diplomatic, manages.

“Oh shit,” Eijirou says, delighted. “What’s up, me!” He’s looking at Kirishima, which prompts the entire class to turn and look at Kirishima, who is relatively certain he might be crying out of sheer reverence for how equally awesome and unfair this is. He’s at least teary-eyed.

“No time to socialize,” Katsuki says. “We have to go back.”

“Go back how?” Momo asks almost immediately, ever-level-headed. Katsuki nods upward and they turn their attention to the portal, still hanging open hundreds of feet up in the air.

“But,” Midoriya says. “But why is this one open when the one Kac-Katsuki came through closed immediately?”

“Wow,” Katsuki says. “None of you morons understand a single thing, huh?” He releases Eijirou and the two of them stand shoulder to shoulder, facing the class.

“Uraraka, the witch, is on the other side, holding the portal open,” he explains. “Which is why we have to go soon, before she can’t manage it and it becomes infinitely more of a pain in the ass to get back.”

“Before you do!” Momo says, quickly. “You said before that if someone opens a portal, they don’t get to pick to which dimension it connects, so how-?”

“You don’t listen,” Katsuki says. “Hear what I’m telling you.” His voice gains a quality Kirishima can’t say he recognizes and it feels…it feels like he’s listening to it from every angle, almost. Or like someone was telling him from very, very close up. But that’s been Katsuki this whole time. Close up.

“The universe knows,” Katsuki says, quiet. “Where you’re supposed to be. The universe will do its best to put you back in that place. To find me, all anyone needs is a portal, and him.” He rocks sideways into Eijirou, who absorb the impact without shifting.

“So,” Midoriya manages quietly, “It would be more difficult to open another portal because…”

“Because as far as the universe is concerned,” Katsuki says, and he turns that smile, the one Kirishima caught a glimpse of when he first arrived, devastatingly, devastatingly soft, to Eijirou. “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

Eijirou smiles back, pressing impossibly closer. Katsuki says something against his mouth, too low to hear over the sound of crackling explosions that seems to come from nowhere. Katsuki fits his palm to Eijirou’s ribs, there is a flash, and suddenly, before them, there is once again a dragon, Katsuki standing tall and proud atop its head, cape whipping behind him.

Like Kirishima thought, he looks every inch the king.

He points down at Kirishima, commanding and fond. “Work hard.” He points at Bakugou. “Be better.” And it’s clearly a challenge, not a criticism.

Dragon-Eijirou unfurls his wings, beats them hard twice, and launches them up from the ground. They streak up into the sky, and Kirishima shadows his eyes against the late afternoon sun to watch them flip into a graceful barrel roll, Katsuki whooping audibly even over that much distance, and dive neatly through the waiting portal. It closes up behind them with a pop.

Kirishima falls backwards straight onto his ass. Then he calls it quits and flops onto his back with his limbs thrown out haphazardly. Carefully, Class 1-A rearranges themselves around him as everyone, minus Bakugou, peers down into his face.

Eventually, someone finds the strength to speak.

“My dude,” Sero says, tone placid. “Holy fucking shit.”

Chapter Text

One by one, his classmates leave him. Midoriya, Iida, and Uraraka are first, each laying a hand in solidarity on Kirishima’s shoulder, before going off to fill in Aizawa. As the minutes go by, it becomes increasingly clear that Kirishima will not be getting up anytime soon, and the rest of 1-A follows suit.

They each give him a pat on the head, knee, shoulder – Mina, Sero, and Kaminari scrub companionable hands through his hair - before making their way inside.

Kirishima stays where he is. It gets dark around him.

Eventually, there’s the thump of a body sitting down somewhere by his feet, and the careful breathing Kirishima knows so well. He tries not to feel creepy about that.

“I didn’t say all that because I don’t like the image of me and you together,” Bakugou says, after what feels like a very long time. “I said it because I was jealous.”

Kirishima thinks his heart is maybe going to beat a hole through his ribs. “Wow,” he croaks. “You’re a really bad communicator.” An excellent complement to Kirishima's own piss-poor listening comprehension.

He hears Bakugou inhale slowly through his nose. “Yeah,” he grinds out carefully. “But you’re okay with that.” His voice tremors on “okay,” allowing doubt to crack through the sentence.

“I’m okay with working on it,” Kirishima says honestly, and finally, finally, sits up.

Bakugou, it seems, sat down right between his extended legs, and is much closer than Kirishima would’ve guessed.

“Sorry,” Kirishima says, hushed, “if I made you uncomfortable.”

“Nah,” Bakugou says. His eyes are very red, and very, very bright. “Sorry that I…that I’m me.”

“Nah,” Kirishima says, "I like that part." And ignoring the ever-present twinge in his abs (damn you, Aizawa, though it’s just as much his own fault this time), he leans the last tiny bit forward.

They clearly don’t have nearly as much practice as their counterparts but, hey. They’re just getting started.