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The hospital room is just shy of silent, and somehow it’s worse than if the room were overflowing with noise and activity. It’s not people urgently crowding the bed and the beep of a heart monitor; it’s the low whir of the outdated air conditioning unit and the rustling of bandages. It’s the clack of a woman’s heels as she passes by the room, the soft sipping of water from a clear plastic cup and the ticking of the clock.
Bakugou’s head is going to fucking explode.
Hell, he wouldn’t even complain if it actually did, but he’s stuck in the buildup to it, the pulsing at the base of his skull and the painful dry-eyed haze. It’s too late -- maybe it’s too early, he lost track long ago -- to be awake and thinking still.
Kirishima is in stable condition, no thanks to his own stupidity. His injury is on the side opposite Bakugou, and with the nurse between them he can’t even see where the worst of the damage is. Still, the memory from only a few hours ago is fresh in his mind.
It was a botched heist. The villain’s quirk, despite being visually impressive, was not inherently geared towards combat; where their hands should have been, there was instead a pair of large mining drills. The danger was in the villain’s formidable strength, size, and stamina more than anything else.
The fight drew out for too long before other heroes showed up, presumably busy taking out more villains that were involved with the attempted break-in -- long enough that Kirishima was nearly exhausted. Bakugou had been cornered, but the wall behind him was a floor-to-ceiling window. The villain was lining up a blow with terrifying precision, but he could have blasted the window and gotten out. Kirishima shouldn’t have jumped in, it was never necessary.
The side of the villain’s drill caught Kirishima’s side and ripped through his skin. Bakugou tastes blood just remembering it. The gash wasn’t deep, but it bled heavily, and the force of impact had fractured some ribs and punctured a lung.
Not that Bakugou figured that out himself. No, he was busy with containing the villain and trying to ignore Kirishima’s heavy, wet coughs and pained gasps. He wouldn’t have been able to keep up the fight if he let that distract him.
Even after the villain went down only a few minutes later, he was useless. Yaoyorozu came running, yelling jargon over comms that he didn’t understand and producing medical tools from the palms of her hands. If she hadn’t arrived when she did…
Bakugou forces the thought from his mind. None of it was life-threatening, he’d been told. He doesn’t owe her anything.
The nurse who had been re-dressing Kirishima’s wound excuses herself, and the soft scratch of her footsteps against the tile echoes softly through the hall. He focuses on the sound for as long as he can, tracking the rhythm that’s only a millisecond out of step with the clock’s ticking, until the distant sea of hospital noises swallows it entirely.
Bakugou tries to take a deep breath, but his lungs shudder with repressed rage and he can’t force it to stay. With trembling hands, he shuts the door and takes his place at Kirishima’s side. He pulls up a chair, but doesn’t sit. They need to talk.
The anxiety in his chest, coiled tight enough to mimic rage after years of practice, has loosened just a hair, and he despises it. He isn’t opposed to conversation -- not with Kirishima, at least -- but he doesn’t want to right now.
What he wants to do is find an empty room, crush all the equipment in it between his palms, explode the scraps, and shatter everything else. He wants to scream and curse and kick and come back when he’s less worked up about everything, but he can’t. The small, recurring sounds of the room remind him all too well of how quiet it is, how quiet he needs to be.
The almost-silence drags on for too long while Bakugou looks for the words he needs. He never finds them, but makes himself speak up anyway.
“How many times,” he manages through gritted teeth, “do I have to tell you not to throw yourself into fucking danger for me?”
Kirishima groans, his breathing still labored. Though the danger has been resolved, he’s clearly still in pain.
“I’m a hero. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”
And, shit, Bakugou wants to smack that sad, righteous look off his face.
“Yeah, well I’m a hero too, moron. I can handle myself.” Bakugou squeezes the stupid pink bear his parents had made him buy, squeezes it so hard he can feel himself form a solid fist around it. It’s too plush for him to pop it, but he wishes he fucking could.
Kirishima has been pulling this bullshit since Yuuei - at Kamino, at the provisional licensing exam… pretty much anytime the two of them have been together during a major event. Sure, it’s actually saved him a couple times, but he had an opening this time. He could have stopped the villain, or at the very least gotten out of the way without Kirishima jumping in to get himself hurt.
The memory replays in his head uninvited once again, and he can’t help his grimace, eyes fixed on Kirishima’s left side where the villain’s drill had hit. Residual terror still simmers in his chest, and he can’t fight it off.
“Dude, I know.” Kirishima reaches out to tug at Bakugou’s hand. He thinks he can hide his pained little grunts, or the way his face twinges when he moves too much, and it’s infuriating. Insulting. “I know you can take care of yourself. I love that about you. But…”
Bakugou flinches. He knows that tone -- delicate yet serious, like he’s something dangerous, to be tiptoed around, to be coddled. He’s heard it so many times over the years from his father, from Deku, from countless people in his life that see more weakness in him than power. He just never thought he’d hear it from Eijirou.
“We had ‘em pretty well contained, y’know? Like, you were the only thing between the villain and escape. If they got through that wall, we could’ve lost ‘em, or they could’ve plowed through civilians to get away. I couldn’t let that happen, and you would never forgive yourself for it either. Besides, I knew I could take the hit.” Kirishima lets out a quiet cough, then clutches at his chest and suppresses a whine. He fixes Bakugou with a feral grin. “And I knew you could take that asshole out by yourself if I just gave you a shot.”
Oh.
Bakugou feels some small amount of the weight on his shoulders lift. It wasn’t the reasoning he’d expected.
A guilty blush spreads across his cheeks, and he resents it. He turns to stare at the wall, hoping that Kirishima can’t reposition far enough to catch a glimpse of his face. Even so, he lets his hands fall slack from the fists he’d been clenching. His palms sting where his nails had dug in.
“Still,” he huffs, “I don’t like seeing you hurt.”
The confession almost pains him. Almost. Three, maybe four years ago, it would have been impossible, and even now there’s no one else he’d admit as much to. The tips of his ears burn from it.
“Babe, you don’t have to worry about me,” Kirishima smiles. He reaches for Bakugou’s hand, runs a thumb along the line of Bakugou’s knuckles, as if that’s supposed to comfort him. And maybe it does, a little bit, but so fucking what? He’s still in the right here. “I’m the Sturdy Hero. And that means I’ll never go down after one blow.”
“For the love of… Was that-” Bakugou punches Kirishima in the shoulder, gentler than usual but with enough force that Kirishima still lets out a whine. “Making your hero persona a goddamn Pokémon reference. I cannot fucking believe you.”
Kirishima trails the hand of his good arm up Bakugou’s bicep, feeling the hard muscle. Where Kirishima has always been more solid in his lower half, Bakugou is most defined in his arms; years of holding firm against the force of his own explosions have shaped him well. Kirishima pulls him down to lay against his chest. Bakugou doesn’t miss the way his breath hitches at the pressure so close to his injury; he settles into the chair and makes an effort to support his own weight, but stays put.
“It’s true, man. I know my limits, and when things get rough like that, I know I can take it. Sometimes our best bet to protect others is for me to take a hit, and I’m okay with that. That’s what heroes are here for.”
Bakugou snorts, resting his head against Kirishima’s shoulder. “You and your chivalry. If this fuckin’ mentality gets you killed, you’re dead to me.”
“Come on, Katsuki,” Kirishima whines, drawing out the last syllable. Bakugou bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. “I’m your rock, babe. Your Geodude in shining armor.”
“You’re a fucking idiot pain in my ass is what you are.” He can feel Kirishima’s face pressed against his hair, wants to lean into it. His legs tense to keep the chair from toppling over. “Jesus, Eijirou, you’re so stupid,” he mutters. Then he adds, almost an afterthought, “Love you.”
Kirishima runs a hand through Bakugou’s hair, tracing soft shapes at his temples. “Love you too.”
“But next time you get fucking impaled and then wax poetic about Pokémon, I’m dumpin’ your ass.”
“We both know you wouldn’t last a week without me,” Kirishima sighs, pressing a kiss to his forehead. Bakugou hums a rebuttal into his chest.
“Yeah, ‘cause then I wouldn’t have anyone around to eat all my leftovers without asking.”
“Hey!” Kirishima smacks Bakugou’s arm, the only thing he can reach without moving too much. “Who would grab your ass in public if you dump me? Whose boxers are you stealing in this terrible future?”
“How would I go on without someone forcing me to watch romcoms I don’t care about and then crying for three hours afterwards,” Bakugou smirks. “Or stretching out all my fuckin’ tank tops.”
“Like you could handle going grocery shopping by yourself. Or walking your own lazy ass around the house without me to carry you.”
“You won’t be carrying me anytime soon,” he points out, brushing the edge of Kirishima’s bandages with one finger.
“Well, then who will you carry around when you’ve broken up with me?”
“Shit,” Bakugou shrugs. “You got me there.”
Kirishima runs his hand in measured circles between Bakugou’s shoulder blades, brushing his nails gently over the skin there every so often. He turns his head as far as he can without disturbing Bakugou to peer out the window; he can’t see the clock to tell what time it is, but it’s still dark outside, and the city lights seem as far away as the dim half-moon through the smudged window.
“Hey,” Kirishima murmurs, “Think they’d let you crawl in here to sleep with me?”
Bakugou sits up and stretches upwards with a yawn, popping his neck in the process. This time when he plops into his seat once more, he’s facing Kirishima. Their noses are mere centimeters apart.
“What, and get me chewed out for breaking the rest of your ribs when I toss ‘n turn? Nah, I’ll pass.” He brings up one hand to rest in Kirishima’s hair, massaging his fingers through the loose strands at the back of his head. Craning his neck, he closes the distance between them.
He kisses Kirishima like they have all the time in the world, too worn out to put his usual fire behind it. Then again, he doesn’t need to -- in this dark, barren hospital room, he has nothing to prove and no one to hide from.
Kirishima sighs into his touch, the taste of copper lingering in his breath. Their noses bumping together, Bakugou gasps against his lips and presses in again. His hand slides to the nape of Kirishima’s neck and tangles with the stray hairs there; at the same time, he tugs at Kirishima’s bottom lip with his teeth. That draws a tiny, shuddering moan from him, and Bakugou wants to hear it again and again for the rest of his life.
He doesn’t pull back until he feels Kirishima’s breathing stagger beneath him. They break apart with a soft pop and Kirishima lets out a needy cry, but Bakugou ignores it. He rests his ear over Kirishima’s chest, savors the press of his cheek against the firm muscle there.
“Eijirou,” he sighs, eyes shut tight. “Never pull that shit again.”
That’s all he needs to say, for the moment. Kirishima knows the rest, in the same way that he always knows how Bakugou feels, or what he’s thinking or planning. He’ll say it all someday, in his own time, but he doesn’t have to right now. Not yet. But if they lose each other before he gets the chance…
They won’t. Bakugou won’t let that happen.
The thin sheets of the hospital bed settle over his shoulders, and he curls into Kirishima’s warmth instinctively.
“G’night, Katsuki,” Kirishima whispers, and Bakugou hums his response.
He breathes in time with the rise and fall of Kirishima’s chest, counting the arbitrary beats of the air conditioning’s steady drone. Tension escapes him like steam in the crisp nighttime breeze, and the rest of the world fades to white noise as sleep takes them both.