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Todoroki drops the pot on the counter a little too harshly and a little too soon and it wobbles for a moment, splashing some of the boiling soup on his hands. Panicking, he pulls his hands away quickly and takes fast steps backwards until his back hits the fridge. Bakugou immediately turns his attention to him, a worry written all over his face in the way his brows furrow and his eyes scan Todoroki up and down.
“Are you okay?”
Todoroki lets him take a look at his hands as he finds the air to breathe in and talk, “I’m fine. I just dropped it too fast, that’s all.”
By the look he gives him, it’s obvious Bakugou doesn’t buy it but it’s not the place or time for that conversation so, luckily for Todoroki, he decides to drop.
Turning back to his own dish Bakugou calls him out, “you’re not gonna fucking beat me if you can’t get a pot out of the stove,” and like that they go back to cooking again.
The first thing Todoroki says about him is, “he doesn't look like someone who thinks a lot about strategy,” followed by an explanation on Bakugou's apparently reckless but actually calculated way of fighting. Watching him fight through multiple screens and angles is the first time Todoroki finds his attention drawn to Bakugou, yet it's quickly overshadowed by Midoriya.
For a couple of weeks he focuses on the green haired boy, watching him closely and almost forgets completely about Bakugou (almost— because the blonde has a tendency to find any and every moment to scream at him for reasons Todoroki doesn't care enough about to remember).
When the sports festival happens and Todoroki has to deal with his own feelings and emotions, he learns as much about Bakugou as he learns about himself and Midoriya. It takes him a couple of weeks to realise why Bakugou had been so upset and angry about their fight, but when he does, well, his opinion on Bakugou starts changing.
Like everything between Bakugou and Todoroki their current situation starts with a taunt. Hungry from all the illicit 1.A.M. training they had been doing, they decided to get some food from the kitchen. Todoroki volunteered to make them something but Bakugou refused to get his food made by someone else and so it had quickly escalated to discussing who was going make their food, who was better at cooking, who was the best.
Bakugou isn’t scared to say anything and everything that runs through his head and certainly is an interesting opponent that maybe Todoroki should have taken more seriously from the beginning. When he does, a slow, gradual change happens between them without either of the boys realising. Maybe it was because they didn't fear each other, maybe it was because they both liked to one up the other, maybe it was the thrill of a good fight or maybe the exchange of snarky remarks and comebacks. Whatever it was, it had sowed the seed of their friendship to be.
“Is soup the only thing you can fucking cook?”
Todoroki frowns offended because it is, but Bakugou doesn’t need to know (it’s better for Todoroki’s pride if he doesn’t) so rather than answering he plays dirty. “Is with fire the only way you can cook?” He asks, freezing with a swipe of his hand Bakugou’s stove.
He gets pushed roughly for it, “Fucker! That’s not even fair!”
Failing their provisional license exam breaks them into pieces of glass and rebuilds them stronger than marble statues. Going from the top of their class to the bottom is an experience they don't share with anyone else but each other and although the start is rough (for they are not friends yet) it's then when they soften around each other. They certainly don't mean to, it's just sort of happens because Bakugou's there when Enji appears and Todoroki is the only person Bakugou finds himself good at working with.
He slices carefully the vegetables he managed to get his hands on, trying not to be distracted by Bakugou’s intense stare. The kitchen is quiet save for the slight buzzing of the fridge and the meat frying on Bakugou’s pan. These are the moments he treasures the most, calm and quiet in the midst of chaos their lives have become.
He loves to fight, to build 10 meters tall walls of ice that could shield him from a storm, to feel the thrill of adrenaline running through his body -- he’s even learned to love the power spike of having flames dance around him. It’s an incredible feeling, being (almost) a hero and he is impatient to be out in the street rescuing civilians and fighting villains but he knows once they’re out, in the real world and out of Yuuei, their days of lazing around will be over. So Todoroki makes the most of those calm moments he can get, to make up for the ones he didn’t have and for the ones he won’t have.
As loud as Bakugou is most of the time he doesn’t seem to mind sitting in silence next to him when Todoroki comes into his room exhausted and lays down on the floor without a word. Like right now, as Todoroki cuts one by one the vegetables in silence and Bakugou doesn’t say a word, only repositioning his hand the right way when he deems it necessary.
(Because as competitive as Bakugou is, he won’t take a win if it’s not fair and their improvised cooking competition apparently isn’t fair if Todoroki doesn’t know all the slicing techniques Bakugou does.)
Their second year comes and goes in a blur of strict trainings and problems that leave them scarred and stronger, internships and villains occupying their days. However, between all that scheduled chaos their friendship becomes solid and they find enough common ground to actually spend time together outside monitored activities. It’s late nights at the gym, working out the stress and pressure of their dreams, sharing bottles of water, whispering their biggest fears.
It’s then when Todoroki tells him about his father, about his mother, about Dabi, about their first year sports festival. Bakugou listens attentively and only when Todoroki is done he says, “I know. I knew some of it.”
“You did?”
“About that piece of shit you have for a father, yeah. I overheard, when you told Deku, I was looking for you to show you who’s the fucking threat.”
“Oh,” it doesn’t change much, but Todoroki appreciates Bakugou waiting for him to tell him. He doesn’t dare to ask if that’s the reason behind Bakugou’s attitude against Endeavour (because he knows it is) or if that’s what was behind all those worried glances he’d gotten and not understood (because he doesn’t know what that would mean).
In exchange, because everything always has to be even for Bakugou, the boy tells him about Midoriya (the whole story, not just the snippets he’s gotten from Izuku), about wanting to be a hero, about the kidnapping.
“That was weeks ago Bakugou and has nothing to do with my cooking abilities.”
Bakugou almosts spits the soup with the way he laughs, “really, Todoroki? Going to buy lunch and coming back with seven oranges has nothing to do with your lack of cooking skills?”
In Todoroki’s defense that situation had been a combination of circumstances. First of all, he’d been really hungry, hungry enough to need to eat as soon as he could get his hands on some food. It was just his luck that the convenience store had run out of his favorite (and only acceptable) flavour of 1 minute noodles, which was the second reason all of that happened. Lastly, he hadn’t brought enough money to buy any pre-cooked food and it had been then that he’d seen the oranges on sale. So, making the intelligent choice, he’d bought as many as could fit in one tiny plastic bag.
Still, even after explaining, Bakugou will not let him live it down and Todoroki can’t help but blush in embarrassment at the comment. He keeps eating whatever dish Bakugou has cooked for him (something with chicken and rice, Bakugou didn’t tell him what it was exactly) and tries to ignore Bakugou’s knowing smirk until it’s unbearable.
“Just eat the soup, Bakugou,” but as much as he wants to sound angry, the way Bakugou is smiling at him dissipates any feelings of anger and instead fills Todoroki with a warmth he’s been incapable of running away from.
When Bakugou wakes up soaked in sweat from a too far of memory turned nightmare Todoroki hears a knock on his balcony door and in return when Enji comes to Yuuei Bakugou stands next to him, a solid presence, a promise of punch to the gut if he asks.
At some point between it all Todoroki finds himself staring longer and longer at Bakugou.
He can’t help it, the staring, Bakugou is just too pretty. He’s pretty when he’s covered in scrapes and smoke and he’s pretty when he’s laying on the kitchen still in sweaty gym clothes. Todoroki’s eyes wander on their own; he looks first at Bakugou’s hands that he keeps closing in a fist and opening to try and relax the muscles of his arms, then at the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes evenly and finally, he takes a good long look at Bakugou’s face until the boy open his eyes and stares right back at him.
“What?”
Todoroki shakes his head softly, but doesn’t tear away his gaze from Bakugou, “nothing, I was just staring at you.”
“You’ve been doing that a fucking lot lately,” is what Bakugou says as he moves through the floor to sit right in front of Todoroki, face resting on the palm of his hand.
The glint in his red eyes and the almost smirk on his lips combined with the slight tilt of his head certainly do not help Todoroki with trying to look away. It’s a sight he likes far too much, Bakugou’s almost soft look.
He mimics the posture, laying his face on the opposite hand to Bakugou’s, making their faces merely a few centimeters apart with they way they’re now sitting cross-legged right in front of each other, knees touching.
Todoroki is going to blame his next words on his tiredness, on the hazy feeling of the late night, but right now all he does is take pleasure in the warmth of their closeness and the sudden bravery a full stomach gives him.
“I like you,” he finally says, so quietly that if Bakugou had been any further away he wouldn’t have heard.
“Your soup was awful but I still ate it,” Bakugou smiles triumphantly, like he’s won some kind of competition aside from their cooking show (and if Todoroki didn’t know better he would call that a smirk, but he knows), “so I guess I like you too.”