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“You’re really cute,” is what the little girl says to Bakugou, clapping her hands to his cheeks and squishing them (it punches a wheeze of laughter from Kirishima’s lungs), “but you’d be even cuter as a catboy.”
They’re on their biweekly student patrol and this is the most exciting thing that’s happened in six hours. The kid can’t be more than five years old and she had gotten separated from her parents at a crosswalk. Her parents were already on the other side of the street by the time they realized their daughter wasn’t with them, and when they looked back to see her still standing anxiously on the other street corner, traffic had already started back up again. Kirishima and Bakugou were paused at the same corner as the little girl and noticed her parents nervously calling to her, telling her to stay right there and wait for the signal to cross.
Kirishima is leagues better at dealing with little kids than Bakugou, but he’s still got pale blue goop on his hands from when they stopped to help a guy with a gelatinous Quirk who had fallen down into a grate on the sidewalk (Bakugou had laughed at him, unprofessionally, and Kirishima had politely waited until they had helped him out and gotten him on his way to kick Bakugou in the shin for it and then admit that the jelly was super gross) so Bakugou was the one who had grabbed the little girl’s hand and said sharply, “The hell, kid, you never heard of holding hands to cross the street? Hang onto your mom next time,” and then marched with her directly into oncoming traffic.
Kirishima had already pressed the button for the crosswalk so all they had to do was wait for, like, fifteen seconds. Bakugou has never been a fan of waiting. Cars skidded to a halt or swerved around him and the little girl, honking furiously. He gave everybody the finger, which, combined with the gauntlet on his arms, also served as a warning to back the fuck off. Exasperated, Kirishima followed, since traffic had effectively stopped for Bakugou anyway.
“Thank you, but please don’t drag our daughter into traffic,” the girl’s father, a guy who looks like a cat, had said upon the delivery of his kid.
“Whatever, I got her to you, didn’t I?” Bakugou snapped. “You’re welcome.”
“Dude.” Kirishima elbowed him, and then crouched to smile at the little girl. “But do as my partner says in the future, alright? Always hold hands crossing the street!”
“You didn’t hold his hand.”
“Yeah, well.” He didn’t really have anything to say to that, so he just nudged Bakugou in the knee and motioned for him to lower himself to the girl’s level too, which he did, but not before scoffing theatrically first.
Which is when the kid squished his face in her hands and said he’d be cuter as a catboy, whatever that means.
“Oh, Haru, don’t—” The kid’s mother, who doesn’t look like a cat, drops her face into her hand with a put-upon sigh as Bakugou jolts and stands up, looking at the girl with some alarm and a lot of fury.
“It’s not permanent,” the father says immediately, also looking very tired.
“What happened?” Kirishima says, wisely leaning away when the girl starts to reach for his face too.
“What’d she do?” Bakugou demands, his hands coming up to rub his cheeks and then the top of his head for some reason.
“It’s her Quirk,” says the mother, “she just got it. It’s nothing harmful or permanent, it just gives people she touches with her bare hands, uh, feline qualities.” She nods her head towards her husband, who is quietly scolding his daughter for touching people without permission.
“Am I gonna look like this guy?” Bakugou snaps, jerking his thumb in the direction of the husband too, who looks a little peeved. Then again, cats always kind of look a little peeved.
“Probably not,” says the mom. “You’ll get ears and a tail, maybe whiskers. So far that’s all that’s really happened to people she’s used her Quirk on, including me.”
“It’ll go away in less than a week,” says the cat dad. He points at Bakugou’s head. “And yup, there’s the ears.”
Kirishima looks, and he can’t stop himself from bursting out laughing. Two little pale, wheat-colored triangles are starting to emerge from the explosion of Bakugou’s blond hair. Bakugou looks pissed, touching them.
“Fuck you, kid.”
“Hey,” the mother says sharply.
“Don’t go using your Quirk on people without permission! You don’t see me going around blowing people up whenever I feel like it.”
“You do that all the time, dude.”
“Yeah, at school.”
They leave shortly after that, after the parents assure and reassure Bakugou that the Quirk’s effects are harmless and temporary. They only give lukewarm thanks for getting their kid across the street for them (makes sense that nobody is really all that grateful if they have to deal with Bakugou after) and they don’t really acknowledge Kirishima at all (also makes sense, he didn’t actually do anything and he’s nothing special compared to Bakugou).
Bakugou won't stop fidgeting with his new cat ears. “Fucking hell, everything is so loud!”
“Well yeah, you got four ears now, and these ones probably aren’t deaf.”
“I have a fucking…” His gait is a little off as they walk, shifting uncomfortably. “...tail. Holy shit, it’s in my pants.”
“Haha! Where?”
“It’s like—down my pant leg—”
“Here, stop for a second.” They duck into an alley briefly, where Bakugou bitches and turns bright red and hisses “I don’t need your help” and Kirishima just says, “Just turn around, I can—there.” He rips a discreet hole in the back of Bakugou’s pants near the waistband, and grins when he splutters in embarrassment as Kirishima reaches into the waistband to help feed the tail through the hole.
It’s slender and soft and fluffed up with agitation. It’s a shade darker than Bakugou’s hair, with stripes at the end the same cream color as his new cat ears.
“Alright, I think we better get back to campus. Probably gotta let Aizawa-sensei know about your condition.”
“Fine, whatever, get your fucking hand out of my pants!” Bakugou stomps on Kirishima’s foot, hard. It hurts because he didn’t harden in time.
“Ow! Bakugou!”
“Quit whining! Come the fuck on!”
Kirishima follows his swishing, twitching tail back out of the alley. Bakugou’s new ears are laid back flat, just like a bad-tempered cat, and his normal ears are glowing scarlet. Kirishima bites back more laughter.
It’s surprisingly normal when they get back. There are only four people in the common room when they return and Todoroki is among them, and he’s the only one who goes, “Is that a tail?” which he says too quietly for anybody else to notice and look. Bakugou just flips him off, and Kirishima gives him a thumbs-up. Todoroki doesn’t care enough to pursue any further questioning.
Kirishima heard from Tsuyu that Aizawa really likes cats, so he was hoping for more of a reaction from him when they reported to him after their patrol—maybe he’d try to pet Bakugou, or call him adorable to his face—but Aizawa is a consummate professional and had only made a note of the incident they reported and suggested that Bakugou ask Yaoyorozu to make some specially-shaped earplugs for his temporary cat ears to prevent further hearing loss from his own explosions while he has them. The school won’t pay for a pair of cat hearing aids that’ll only be used for a week, he says.
After that, Kirishima and Bakugou spend about fifteen minutes sitting on the floor of Bakugou’s room carefully cutting holes in the backs of Bakugou’s uniform pants.
“I’ll stitch ‘em back up once this dumb Quirk goes away,” Bakugou mutters, passing the sewing scissors back to Kirishima for his turn.
“You can sew?”
“Duh. You can’t?”
“No. Should I be able to?”
“Fucking hell, Shitty Hair.”
Bakugou has his arm wrapped around the post of his bed, leaning his cheek against it sleepily as Kirishima opens up a hole in his pants. He slides his cheek up and down the metal bed frame, then rolls his forehead against it, then presses his other cheek against it.
“Dude, what are you doing.”
Bakugou stops, blinks, and then leans away from his bed with a deep scowl. Kirishima can’t stop the grin that splits his face.
“Oh man, were you doing that scent thing cats do?”
“I don’t fucking know!” Bakugou yells. He rubs his cheeks with both hands, growling. “Fuck, my face is so fucking sensitive!”
Now Kirishima feels kind of bad. He stops smiling. “Like, it hurts?”
“No, like when your allergies are acting up and your face gets all tender so every time your hair touches your own forehead it feels like fucking torture.”
“Oh man, I hate that.”
“It’s just my cheeks though, what the hell.”
“Ohhh, maybe you were supposed to grow whiskers with the Quirk but didn’t and so your nerves are kinda fried."
Bakugou flops onto the floor with a loud, angry groan. Kirishima lets him wallow and finishes mutilating his uniforms, then puts the pants back in Bakugou’s closet for him while he sulks. He returns and sits next to Bakugou’s prone form on the floor.
The new ears look so soft. They twitch with every slight eddy of air that stirs near them. Kirishima steels himself for what he’s about to attempt, and reaches out. With just one knuckle, he gently brushes the side of the nearest cat ear.
Soft, he thinks wildly, as Bakugou’s ear twitches violently. Bakugou sits up quickly, outrage evident on his face.
“What the fuck!”
“Sorry!” Kirishima throws his hands up placatingly. “I just wanted to see how it felt!”
“Fucking weirdo, keep your hands to yourself!”
“Did it hurt?”
“No.”
“Can I touch them one more time?” Kirishima presses his hands together pleadingly.
“Again, what the fuck,” Bakugou hisses. “No the fuck you cannot.”
“But what if it feels really good for you?”
“If it feels really good for me then I definitely don’t want you doing it!” Bakugou says, appalled. His face has gone pink.
“Why not?” Kirishima doesn’t know why he’s affronted.
Luckily, that was the exact question to make Bakugou splutter and not be able to come up with an actual answer. His tail flicks around rapidly and he balls his hands into fists.
“Fine,” he snaps, ducking his head and thrusting it towards Kirishima. “Get it out of your system, you fucking freak.”
Delighted, Kirishima reaches out with both hands this time. He lets his first three fingers glide delicately down the length of Bakugou’s new ears, brushing with the direction of the fur. Carefully, he brushes his thumbs along the velvety insides of his ears, so thin and fragile that the light from Bakugou’s desk lamp shines through them, showing the tiny capillaries in the skin. He rubs his thumbs in gentle circles.
Bakugou’s tail thwaps him softly in the hip, but when he glances down he can tell it wasn’t on purpose. Kirishima’s fingers are vibrating gently, and he realizes that Bakugou is purring, his eyelids fluttering as he presses deeper into Kirishima’s hand. Kirishima is sitting with his legs crossed across from him, and suddenly Bakugou has shuffled closer with his knee nearly planted in Kirishima’s lap.
The vibrations from his throat are trembling in Kirishima’s chest for some reason.
“You’re purring,” Kirishima blurts out, a little panicked by how much that interests him.
Bakugou’s head snaps up and clocks Kirishima in the chin (when did he get so close?) which sends him sprawling.
“That’s why I didn’t want to let you fucking pet me, dipshit!”
“I didn’t say it was bad,” Kirishima groans, pained, touching his upper lip where his bottom teeth had stabbed it. His fingers come away bloody. He licks the sore punctures. “It was cute—”
Suddenly Bakugou is right over him, grabbing his face in one hand, fingers and thumb squeezing his cheeks and his palm over his mouth. He’s gonna get blood on him.
“Call me cute again and I’ll rip your fucking tongue out.” His ears are flat, almost hidden in his hair. Kirishima rolls his eyes and knees him in the stomach to get Bakugou off of him. Bakugou can’t intimidate him on a good day, much less a day where he’s got kitty cat ears and a tail that puffs up at the slightest provocation.
The next day is when Bakugou gets the real reactions. The girls all coo delightedly when he comes in, and then so does Kaminari, which flings Bakugou into a whole new realm of pissed off. He sits quietly through class, grinding his teeth with his ears never perking up from their angry, flat position. His tail stays fluffed and furious, whipping poor Midoriya behind him in the face repeatedly.
It’s the middle of study period when Midoriya’s saint-like patience wears just a little bit thin. He sighs and sets down his pencil and gently bats Bakugou’s tail out of his face. He doesn’t hold it, but he does push it down to the surface of his desk and says, “Kacchan, please.”
“You got somethin’ to say, nerd?!” Bakugou is out of his seat and grappling with Midoriya in an instant. It’s nothing new for them, and not particularly alarming whenever Midoriya actively takes part in it instead of crying out and desperately trying to wriggle out of a fight. It’s always amusing whenever they get to see Midoriya stoop to Bakugou’s level. Kirishima stands up from his desk, mostly to get a better view as they scuffle but also just in case he does actually have to break it up.
“You—ow, Kacchan! You’re being a baby, nobody even cares that you’re a cat anymore except for you—”
“Shut the fuck up! I’m gonna fucking rip your—”
“If you didn’t want anybody to comment you should’ve just stayed in your room—”
“Fuck you!”
“Stop it, Kacchan, Aizawa-sensei’s gonna come back in here and we’ll both be in trouble!” Midoriya, wincing and currently held in a headlock, reaches up with a flailing hand and grabs Bakugou by the back of the neck for lack of anything else he can get his fingers around that wouldn’t count as fighting dirty. Kirishima doesn’t expect it to be even a blip on Bakugou’s radar in the fight, but Bakugou goes unexpectedly rigid, and Midoriya is able to slip out of his hold and rear back, not letting go. Bakugou goes with him, and Midoriya stares at him, bewildered.
“What the fuck,” Bakugou mutters, outrage still searing in his eyes but unusually muted.
“Kacchan?” Midoriya says nervously. He clutches the nape of Bakugou’s neck tighter and moves him a little bit to the left.
Stumbling to the left Bakugou snaps, “What the fuck, Deku,” and starts to squirm and thrash again, but Midoriya tightens his grip. Bakugou stills, and Midoriya pushes him down onto his own desk. Bakugou goes without much of a fight, catching himself on his hands on the tabletop, his stomach flat against it.
This is really, really weird. Kirishima can feel it. Midoriya definitely looks like he can feel it. He’s even cringing as he manhandles Bakugou into this position.
“Let me go, Deku,” Bakugou growls. There’s not a lot of heat to it anymore, like his fighting rage has drained away and left him only with irritation as mild as if Midoriya had used up the last of the milk at breakfast.
“I’m not interested in fighting you right now, Kacchan, so I don’t know if I should,” Midoriya says nervously. He casts a deeply unnerved look in Kirishima’s direction. Kirishima can only shrug at the guy. Bakugou should be perfectly able to get out from under Midoriya’s hand, but he’s not.
“Fuck you,” Bakugou gripes, “I’m not gonna fuckin’ attack you!”
“You just did because I touched your tail!”
“I was mad! Don’t touch my fucking tail!”
“Stop hitting me in the face with it!”
“Midoriya,” Aizawa says suddenly, dispassionately from the doorway of the classroom, “stop scruffing Bakugou and sit down.”
Midoriya leaps back from where he has Bakugou bent over the desk (Uh, Kirishima’s mind supplies unhelpfully), abashed, and the class watches nervously as Bakugou pushes himself up straight and pivots to glare at Midoriya again. His ears are still flat against his skull, but his tail has unpuffed for the first time in, like, three hours.
As everybody settles back in their seats for the next lesson, Kaminari suddenly pounds a fist into his palm as the veritable lightbulb goes off above his head, and he says, “Oh yeah, cats have that scruff response thing, don’t they!”
A muted, mildly intrigued “ohhh” murmurs throughout the class.
“Don’t get any fucking ideas!” Bakugou yells.
Day one passes without incident following that. Bakugou stops getting startled by his own tail halfway through the day and performs impeccably in Hero training classes as usual, so it’s not even really all that funny anymore that he’s a catboy.
Day two has a pretty hilarious moment, though, in the afternoon after school when Kirishima and Bakugou go on their daily run together. Their circuit finds them running past a butterfly garden near one of the General Studies dormitories, and Bakugou skids to a halt next to it, one foot in the mulch.
“Oh, fuck yes,” he breathes, and before Kirishima can say anything Bakugou has flung himself directly into the garden, flattening a section of pale purple flowers and sending butterflies and bumblebees scattering into the air. Kirishima can only stare in complete and total shock as Bakugou wriggles among the flowers on his stomach and rolls onto his back, gasping. He sits up, staring around wildly, his ears and tail perkier than Kirishima has seen them before, and he shoves a few green leaves directly into his mouth with an excited moan.
“Dude!” Kirishima yells, finally darting forward into the garden. He hovers uncertainly over Bakugou, who is ignoring him in favor of sitting contentedly in the mulch and uprooting several plants to rub them excitedly in his hands. He keeps chewing the leaves he’s stuck in his mouth. Kirishima grabs his chin and says, “Spit it out! What are you doing?”
Bakugou shakes his head vehemently, frowning at him. His pupils are massive. Drool slicks Kirishima’s fingers distractingly as he tries to wrench Bakugou’s mouth open. Bakugou bites his fingers.
“It’s catnip, relax,” a voice says to their left. They both stiffen and look over. Shinsou is there, watching. “It’s nontoxic. I wish he hadn’t just crushed all my shit, though. I planted that last year. Strays and butterflies love it, and it looks nice.”
“He got hit by a Quirk,” Kirishima explains apologetically, carefully working his fingers out of Bakugou’s mouth.
“Yeah, catboy Quirk, I heard. Cute. Want me to get him on his feet?”
“Would you?”
“Hey, Bakugou.”
Bakugou grunts wordlessly in response, and then his eyes go dull. He goes slack among the flowers.
“Spit the plants out.”
Grossly, Bakugou spits the green mush into Kirishima’s open palms. Kirishima isn’t really sure why he decided he had to catch it. He deposits it in the dirt and wipes his hands on Bakugou’s shirt instead of his own.
“Stand up,” Shinsou suggests. Bakugou complies. “Go with Kirishima back to your dorms.” Bakugou walks out of the garden, back in the direction of their dormitory.
“Thanks, man,” Kirishima says to Shinsou. “I’ll help you replant some stuff this weekend, if you want.”
“Cool, that’ll be great. I’ll let Bakugou go once he’s too far away to pitch a fit at me, but you’re on your own.”
“Yeah, I got it covered.” Kirishima rests his hand on the nape of Bakugou’s neck and walks him back towards their building.
He can feel it when Shinsou lets him go, because Bakugou straightens up and goes, “Ew, what the fuck?” He spits on the grass and wipes his dirty face.
“You good, bro?” Kirishima laughs.
“Did I just eat grass? What the fuck happened to me? I feel awesome.”
Kirishima can’t help but throw his head back and laugh, sliding his hand from Bakugou’s neck to sling his arm around his shoulders. The catnip keeps Bakugou in a good mood despite his confusion and the taste of greenery in his mouth, and Kirishima tries not to stare at how it also apparently makes Bakugou drool nonstop for about fifteen minutes straight. When the effects wear off, so does Bakugou’s good cheer, and he stomps off to the showers to wash dirt and leaf and sweat from himself.
Day three passes without incident, but day four is a little weird.
“Whatcha got there?”
Bakugou, crouched near a corner with his back to Kirishima, goes rigid. His cat ears perk up and his tail gets a little puffy. Kirishima tries very hard not to laugh at him. Abruptly, Bakugou stands up. His tail unfluffs and relaxes, but his ears lie back pissily. He doesn’t turn around. He’s looking at something on the floor.
“I killed a mouse.”
“What?”
“I saw a mouse and killed it.”
Kirishima goes to stand next to him. There on the floor is a little dead mouse. It looks so sad just lying there like that. Kirishima doesn’t see any blood, but it’s definitely super dead. He’s mildly creeped out. Isn’t killing animals, like, a sign of serial killer behavior down the line?
“Dude, why did you do that?”
“I didn’t mean to!” Bakugou snaps. “Or, like...I did mean to, in the moment, but it’s this dumb fucking cat Quirk! I hate this shit!” He crouches again to pick up the dead mouse.
“Oh, bro, don’t touch it anymore, that’s not—” Sanitary. He doesn’t bother finishing. Bakugou’s already got it cupped in his hands. If his scowl wasn’t so deep and powerful, Kirishima would think he looks kind of sad. Hell, he probably is. For all his screaming “DIE! DIE! DIE!” he probably wouldn’t ever normally just kill a defenseless little mouse like that.
For a moment they just stand there, looking at it in Bakugou’s palms. Bakugou’s tail swishes agitatedly.
“Are you gonna eat it?”
“No I’m not gonna fucking eat it!”
“You killed it in a fit of cat behavior, dude, maybe you were gonna eat it in the moment! I don’t know! Just throw it away.”
“I’m not gonna throw a whole fucking mouse in the garbage, what the fuck!”
“What, then, you wanna bury it?”
“Fuck no, it’s just a mouse.”
Kirishima throws his hands in the air, out of ideas and annoyed. He frowns at Bakugou, who frowns at the dead mouse. Then Bakugou’s ears perk up again, his tail rising with interest, and his eyes lose their angry glower as they lock widely onto Kirishima.
Cute, he thinks, startled.
Bakugou holds the mouse out to him, bright-eyed and hopeful. “Here, do you want it?”
Not cute. Kirishima recoils a little, disgusted. “What? No, I don’t want your dead mouse.”
Bakugou seems to come back to his normal, unpersonable senses. He bristles all over, and draws the mouse back. “Fine, fuck you too.”
“Why are you mad at me for not wanting your fresh kill? What am I supposed to do with it?”
“I’m not mad!” Bakugou yells, mad.
“Just get rid of it, dude.”
“No, it’s mine.” He puts the dead mouse in his pocket for some reason.
“Holy shit. Alright.”
Kirishima actually manages to put the weird incident from his mind. It’s not that hard, since he’s seen Bakugou do weirder stuff even without being affected by a Quirk that turns him into a catboy. He doesn’t think about the mouse again apart from a vague hope that Bakugou doesn’t forget about it in his pocket and then put his pants in the laundry with the mouse still in there.
He remembers it, though, later that evening when they’re in the common room. Several people are down there watching television and doing homework. Kirishima wishes he were in the watching TV group, but Bakugou dragged him into the homework group, although they aren’t doing homework in a group. The two of them occupy a couch, or rather, Kirishima occupies the couch while Bakugou, at one point, slid off to sit on the floor. There is a deep, strange rumbling noise coming from within his chest that Kirishima knows is him purring when he lets Kirishima pet and rub his ears with minimal bitching. Kirishima props his feet on the coffee table as he finishes his calculus homework, and grins whenever Bakugou leans over every now and then to rub his cheek roughly along the side of Kirishima’s knee.
“Do you even have scent glands there?”
“Fuck if I know. Maybe. It feels like the whiskers thing, like how they want to be there but they’re not. Keep your fucking leg still!”
“It’s super weird that you’re doing that to me, bro.” He instantly regrets his honesty when Bakugou stiffens and leans away, ears back, and roughly shoves Kirishima’s legs off the table. “Wait, no—I didn’t mean it was a bad thing, you can keep doing it if you want—”
Bakugou slaps his hand away when Kirishima reaches for his ears again in apology. Good thing he didn’t grow claws with this Quirk. “Fuck off, excuse the fuck outta me if my fuckin’ condition is weirding you out so fucking much—”
“Dude, no! That’s not what I meant!”
“Way to go, Kirishima, you got concrete evidence that Bakugou likes you and you just shit all over it,” Kaminari jeers from the kitchen, having witnessed Kirishima’s fuck-up. Kirishima sends him a withering glare that would have made Bakugou proud if he wasn’t too busy standing up with all of his human hair and tail bristling and standing on end in rage.
“Fuck you, Discount Pikachu—”
Directly upstairs, a clearly audible yelp is heard through the ceiling. Everyone in the common room except for Bakugou looks up. That was Midoriya. There’s a moment of silence, and then they hear the telltale sign of someone thundering down the stairwell. It’s an impressive sound, louder than it should be considering how short Midoriya is. The sound of the stairwell door flying open is like a thunderclap, and there’s Class 1-A’s self-destructive ray of sunshine clutching something in a tissue.
“Kacchan, what is this?!” he wails, distressed. Kirishima knows what it is, and is simultaneously relieved about it because this probably gets him off the hook for hurting Bakugou’s feelings and alarmed/exasperated with Bakugou because—
“Dude, what the hell.”
“The fuck does it look like, Deku, it’s a mouse!”
“Why did you leave a dead mouse outside my door, Kacchan?” Midoriya cries.
“I felt like you needed it!” Bakugou splutters.
“WHY WOULD I NEED THAT?!”
“I DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING ANSWERS FOR YOU, DEKU, I’M A FUCKING CAT RIGHT NOW!”
This is, without a doubt, the strangest yelling match Bakugou and Midoriya have ever gotten into. Kirishima can’t even jump in and deescalate because it’s so weird. He and the rest of their classmates who are down here swivel their heads back and forth between the two.
“Kacchan, I need to know right this second whether this is you bullying me or you being a cat, because I need to know exactly what kind of upset I am right now.” Midoriya’s voice is doing a high-pitched, very fine wobbling thing. He might be holding back tears.
“I’m not—!” Bakugou’s tail and cat ears do a weird thing where they perk and fluff up, then lay back down, then go back up again, repeatedly, like he isn’t quite sure how he feels about this demand. He looks upset, and embarrassed, and extremely angry about feeling either of those things. He crosses his arms. “I’m not bullying you. Fuck.”
Midoriya buries his face in his hand. The other hand blindly holds out the tissue with the dead mouse to the room. “Can—can someone take this from me, please. Thank you, Kacchan, but I don’t need this.”
Kirishima takes pity on the guy and comes forward to take the tissue. It takes him, like, thirty seconds to step outside, make a trowel with his hand to dig a little hole to deposit the mouse in, and fill the hole back up. When he comes back in to wash his hands, Midoriya is already at the sink washing his hands.
Midoriya’s cheeks are pink and his eyes look a little red. Kirishima can’t tell if it’s from yelling or if maybe he’s kind of tearful. He feels bad for him and for Bakugou, who is still standing stiffly near the couch with his tail swishing, still upset. Their classmates have evidently decided the safest option here is to pretend none of that happened.
“Hey, uh,” Kirishima says, gently elbowing Midoriya to make space at the sink for himself, “he didn’t mean anything bad.”
“I know, I was just worried he was being horrible at first,” Midoriya days with a slight sniff. Aw man, now Kirishima feels really bad for him.
“I can fucking hear you, you know,” Bakugou snaps, “with my four god damn ears.”
They ignore him.
“I stepped on it when I came out of my room, that’s why I was so freaked out. Bare feet and all.”
“Gross. He tried to give it to me too right after he killed it. It was kinda cute in, like, that gruesome way cats can be, you know?”
“I can still fucking hear you!”
“House cats bring their owners prey they’ve caught out of an instinct to feed and care for them, or just to provide a gift,” Midoriya mutters thoughtfully, the pink in his cheeks darkening. Behind them, Bakugou blusters but doesn’t actually manage to make any words. It’s incredibly endearing, as is what Midoriya just implied about him. “Providing them with prey-like toys can redirect that instinct, so maybe—”
Bakugou is suddenly directly behind them at the sink, his approach silent as a...well, cat. His voice is unexpectedly calm, a warning to the depths of his fury: “If either of you dipshits try to give me a fucking cat toy, there will be something infinitely worse than dead mice waiting for you outside your doors.”
Kirishima pauses, then quirks an eyebrow at him. “Your punishment is gonna be...more extravagant cat gifts?”
“What? No!”
“That’s what it is when you leave dead stuff lying around for someone!”
“It’s not a fucking gift if I go into a fucking cat fugue state when I give it!”
“Fugue state? Do you not have any memory of doing this, Kacchan?” Midoriya asks. His initial shock of being given a dead mouse has been shaken off and replaced with curiosity, although his eyes are still kind of wet.
Bakugou crosses his arms again and looks away, pouting. “I remember, it’s just...not myself.”
“I see.” Midoriya looks thoughtful.
“I just thought you needed it at the time.”
“I understand.”
“I wasn’t bullying you.”
“I know you weren’t, Kacchan.”
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“I know.”
Kirishima feels like he doesn’t really belong here for this particular conversation, but he doesn’t remove himself. Instead he lifts a hand to brush the back of his fingers over the shell of one of Bakugou’s furry ears. Bakugou’s eye twitches and his shoulders draw up near his jawline, but he doesn’t move away. Kirishima rubs his ear again and smooths his hand through Bakugou’s hair, over the crown of his head and down to the nape of his neck. Bakugou shudders out a sigh, resolutely staring at a light fixture overhead.
In a move of boldness that surprises and impresses Kirishima, Midoriya reaches out and slides a palm over Bakugou’s cheek, where cats like to be pet. Bakugou grinds his teeth together hard and leans into it.
“Wanna sit back down?” Kirishima finally asks, when the silence and their hands on Bakugou’s skin is charged enough to make him sweat. He nods in the direction of their homework still in the common room.
Bakugou glances over too, drawn by the sound of their other classmates’ conversations in there. His face is boiling red as he goes, “Not—not here.”
“Your room? My room? Midoriya’s?”
“I don’t care.”
“C’mon, then.” They gather their homework into their arms and follow Midoriya to the second floor.
Bakugou’s ears and the tail and the urge to rub his face on every surface available to him do not last into the fifth day, but when they’re gone, he still lets the other two keep their hands in his hair, and house cats aren’t the only creatures perfectly sized to take up space in someone’s lap.