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Bakugou can tell something’s off with Kirishima the moment he walks into the classroom. His legs drag and his torso leads with his shoulders rather than his chest. Kirishima usually stands tall and proud, energized and ready to learn (well, try to learn, anyway), but today he slumps in his seat and sinks into the chair, lips downturned in a frown that doesn’t fit his face.
“You’re late Kirishima,” Aizawa’s tired voice drones. Kirishima winces and lifts himself to sit straighter.
“Sorry Mr. Aizawa,” Kirishima apologizes, each word one note and tired. Aizawa raises an eyebrow—Kirishima’s apologies usually consist of three notes or more—but doesn’t question any further. He turns back toward the board and lays out the lesson plan for the day.
Bakugou keeps Kirishima in his periphery, not because he cares or some gross shit like that, but because he and Kirishima are supposed to do homework together later, and Kirishima’s focus is hard enough to keep as it is. If he’s sad about something, it’s only going to make it harder for them to get done what needs to get done.
He watches as Kirishima weakly smiles at his idiot friends. Sparky and Tape-Face chat it up like they don’t notice that Kirishima’s leg won’t stop bouncing or that his laughs are forced from his throat, not bubbling out of his belly like they usually do.
Kirishima catches Bakugou staring and has the fucking audacity to give him that same piece of shit smile that doesn’t reach his stupid ruby red eyes. Bakugou glares and turns away, staring at the face of his desk.
It’s colder than usual in Class 1-A, and Bakugou hates being cold.
“What’s wrong with you today?”
“Hm?” Kirishima looks up from his phone and not his homework. Kirishima sees Bakugou’s eyes narrow and knows he’s been caught.
Bakugou huffs. He glances at Kirishima’s half-eaten sandwich and full basket of french fries. On any normal day Kirishima would have demolished his lunch and ordered seconds by now. “You’ve been acting weird all day.” Bakugou looks back up at Kirishima and crosses his arms. “Spit it out.”
Kirishima’s eyes dart back and forth between Bakugou’s, looking for the faintest possibility, the smallest chance of a way out of this conversation.
He doesn’t find one. He’s not even a little surprised.
“It’s stupid, dude,” Kirishima whines, but Bakugou’s stare doesn’t falter. Kirishima sighs, rests his elbows on the table and buries his hands in his hair.
“It’s the anniversary of the day I…” Kirishima bends his head down and mumbles into his chest, “got broken up with.”
Kirishima stares at his lap, silence wrapping around his neck like a noose. Red creeps up his neck and fills his face, heat threatening to break a sweat on his temple.
He hears Bakugou shift. He looks up. Bakugou’s still glaring at him, arms crossed and back against his chair.
“What’s the big deal? It was a long time ago, right?”
Kirishima squirms. He knew Bakugou wouldn’t get it.
“Yeah, but it was my first relationship, dude. And…” Kirishima trails off, jaw dropping and raising, unable to decide whether to confess this secret to Bakugou of all people.
“And what, Hair for Brains?” Bakugou demands.
Kirishima takes a deep breath. Now’s as good a time as any to come out to your best friend, right?
“He helped me realize I was gay.” Kirishima gathers all his courage and holds eye contact with Bakugou, whose eyes had widened just a fraction, whose knuckles had squeezed his own biceps so briefly Kirishima almost didn’t notice.
It’s news to Bakugou, for sure, but he doesn’t look upset or angry.
That’s good, right?
“And,” Kirishima decides he’s already taken the plunge, he may as well swim around and see what he finds. “He was the only other gay kid in school, so we sort of…” Kirishima rubs his bicep, “went through it together.”
“You got bullied?” Bakugou grinds through shut teeth.
“No, no, nothing like that.” Kirishima waves his hands in front of his face and he sees Bakugou’s shoulders drop. “It’s just like,” Kirishima moves his hands in vague, circular gestures, as if that would help clarify a gay middle schoolers struggle to his probably-straight best friend. “It was nice to have someone who got it. Ya know?”
Bakugou’s brow furrows.
“Anyway,” Kirishima continues, “we dated for a couple months until he dumped me when I got into U-A. Said something about not wanting to do long distance and then, uh, kind of completely stopped talking to me.”
“What the fuck?” Bakugou snarls, lower lip jutting out into an angry pout. Kirishima would find it cute if his stomach wasn’t behaving like he’d dived out of an airplane.
“Yeah it...wasn’t great.” Kirishima laughs to dispel Bakugou’s anger and his own insecurity. “It was over text too. Said he was ‘done’ and all that shit.”
“What the fuck?” Bakugou slams his hands on the table. Kirishima jumps, tears his eyes away from the angry inferno that is Bakugou, and looks around the café. A few patrons raise their eyebrows, some whisper to the people they’re here with, but most roll their eyes because well, he and Bakugou have been here before and Bakugou being loud isn’t exactly a new occurrence.
“That’s it.” Bakugou turns one palm up and props his elbow on the table. “Show me this guy.”
Kirishima sputters. “Uh, why?”
“Because dumbass, I wanna know what this fucker looks like in case I run into him.”
Kirishima snickers. “You wanna beat up my ex? That’s so...chivalrous of you, dude.”
Bakugou scrunches his nose and spreads his fingers wider, demanding the phone. “Just show me, asshole!”
Kirishima throws his head back and barks raucous laughter, another familiar sound to the frequenters of this establishment. “Alright man, hold on.” He scrolls through Instagram until he finds who he’s looking for, and places the phone in Bakugou’s waiting hand.
Bakugou sharpens his glare, snatches the phone, and examines the photo. He doesn’t say anything for three beats.
“Which one is he?” he mumbles without looking up.
“The one on the right. The guy on the left is his new boyfriend,” Kirishima emphasizes with a roll of his eyes.
Bakugou taps the screen once, twice, then turns the phone around and shows Kirishima his ex boyfriend’s Instagram profile.
“This guy?”
Kirishima nods. “That’s him.”
Bakugou turns the phone back toward himself. He stares at the profile, thumb sliding up the glass screen again and again. Bakugou puts a hand over his mouth, and the edges of his eyes crinkle into something Kirishima isn’t sure how to interpret.
“Kirishima…” Bakugou finally looks up from the phone and into his eyes. His hand falls from his face and—
he’s smiling.
“This guy is fucking ugly.”
Kirishima starts, surprised reflexes jolting his head back a centimeter, like he needs just a little more physical space to accept a response he did not expect at all.
“What? No he’s not!” Kirishima defends. He grabs for his phone but Bakugou pulls it out of his reach and laughs.
“Yes he is Hair for Brains. Are you blind?” Bakugou asks through chuckles as he scrolls through a few photos and shows him the screen. “He’s got a fuckin’ egg head.”
Kirishima’s jaw drops.
“He does not have an egg head.”
Bakugou shoots Kirishima a look of pure doubt, whips out his own phone with one hand, taps his thumb a few times and turns it around. The dual screens stare Kirishima in the face.
It’s a picture of an egg, next to a picture of his ex.
“His head,” Bakugou smiles over the phones, “is a fuckin’ egg.”
While he keeps up the battle for his phone Kirishima finds himself examining the photo and can’t help but think Huh, I guess his head is kind of eggish.
“And he has a buzz-cut? Come on.” Bakugou smiles wider and rolls his eyes as he retracts his own phone, maintaining his hold on Kirishima’s. “You can’t have a buzz-cut if your head is shaped like an egg, you just can’t.” He bends forward and waves the phone in Kirishima’s face, full-on laughing at his own joke.
Kirishima’s cheeks flush. He’s embarrassed, sure. But it’s also…pretty funny. His ex boyfriend had an egghead. Has an egghead. How had he never noticed? Maybe he had been so excited that someone thought he was special enough to spend time with that he didn’t even really consider what they looked like or even what he was attracted to.
Kirishima feels laughter bubble in his belly and float out of him to dance with Bakugou’s sounds of merriment, and it’s like music to his ears.
He wants more, and despite his better judgement, he wants to keep this going.
This is what people do right? Bash on their exes? It’s a foreign concept to Kirishima, putting someone else down for his own entertainment, but it certainly seems to be entertaining Bakugou, and if Kirishima’s acting mean and selfish just to keep that smile on Bakugou’s face and hear his laughter disrupt the environment of the café, then he’ll be a little mean just this once.
“You know,” Kirishima leans in, smile teasing his lips, “every day for lunch, he’d bring a Ziploc bag of like six hard boiled eggs and that was it.”
Bakugou’s eyes widen to saucers.
“You’re shitting me.”
Kiri giggles, Bakugou’s engrossment in the weirdness of his old flame filling him with energy and power and joy. He leans farther forward and puts on the most serious face he can muster.
“He’d eat all of them.”
Bakugou blows a long raspberry through his lips as he bends forward to plunk his forehead on the table, back and shoulders shaking as he laughs louder than Kirishima has ever heard him laugh before. He bangs his fist on the table three times, each punch rattling the silverware and making a whole lot of noise.
Kirishima doesn’t even look around the café. He couldn’t care even if he tried.
Bakugou leans back in his chair, tears prickling the corners of his eyes as he laughs openly, filling the entire cafe with his beautiful expression of delight, and Kirishima knows that no one around them can fathom how rare this is, just how unprecedented Bakugou Katsuki hollering in a public place is.
No one but Kirishima can understand how special this moment is.
“Oh man,” Bakugou sighs after a full minute of laughing, wiping across both eyes. He looks at the tears on his finger and chuckles to himself. “I can’t believe you dated such a chud.”
Kirishima holds up his hands but he’s still smiling so wide his face could split in two. “In my defense, I didn’t know he was a ‘chud’ at the time.” Kirishima places air quotes around the word “chud”.
“He stuffed his face with hard boiled eggs every fucking day, Kirishima! How could you not know what a total loser this guy was?” Bakugou leans in and yells, but his eyes are stills swimming with mirth.
“First of all, you’re rude, he wasn’t a loser.” Kirishima’s gotta defend his ex against Bakugou’s onslaught at least a little but he still laughs along. He shrugs, continuing. “And I wasn’t super cool in middle school either, dude. I was the total loser,” Kirishima looks down at his palms, remembers the feeling of being him not so long ago.
“You can’t have been as much of a loser as this fuck,” Bakugou looks back at the phone and scrolls through more of his pictures. “What was this guy’s quirk?”
Kirishima picks up a fry and tosses it in his mouth. “He wasn’t a loser,” he reiterates as he chews, “and he could,” he swallows, “solve any math problem just by looking at it.”
“Aaahhh…” Bakugou leans back, crosses his arms, and smirks. “So he’s smart.”
Kiri shovels three more fries into his mouth and nods.
“Super smart.”
Kirishima keeps feeding himself fry after fry when he looks up at Bakugou and sees he’s staring. How long has he been staring?
“What?” Kirishima asks.
Bakugou shrugs.
“I just don’t get why you wasted so much time on such a dumb fuck when you’re clearly miles out of his league.”
Kirishima chokes on his fries.
He coughs, takes a big swig of water to wash his food down.
“What does that mean?”
Bakugou’s brow furrows.
“What do you mean what does it mean? You’re out of his league. He’s not in your league. Do you need me to draw you a fucking picture?”
“But I just told you that he’s a genius. And it’s not a secret that I’m no genius.”
“Yeah you’re an idiot.”
Kirishima throws his hands up, exasperated. “So why the fuck are you saying I’m out of his league?”
“Because you are.” Bakugou leans forward, resting his weight on his forearms, crimson irises meeting ruby, determined to get his point across.
“This asshole is smart, sure. He’s probably gonna end up at some business school somewhere and use his big fuckin’ brain to make himself and a few pro hero’s a fuckton of money.” Bakugou uses his index finger and thumb to pick a fry out of the basket and pop it into his mouth. He chews, matter-of-fact eyes piercing right through Kirishima. Bakugou swallows.
Kirishima watches his Adam’s apple bob.
“He’s gonna date and then marry someone way out of his league,” Bakugou continues, another fry in his hand, and gestures to Kirishima with it, using him as an example, to which Kirishima raises a dubious brow, “probably cheat on them with some other attractive fuck that wants his brains and money. He’ll have a good, absurdly indulgent life he doesn’t fuckin’ deserve. But you-” Bakugou jabs his fry at Kirishima’s face, “you’re gonna be out there saving fuckin’ lives. You’re gonna be shielding civilians from who the fuck knows what, reuniting families and stopping the city from burning.” Bakugou puts the fry in his mouth, chews, and brushes his hands of leftover salt. “That’s way fucking cooler than flexing a big brain for yourself. Egg Head wishes he was in your league.”
Kirishima stares, slack-jawed. Bakugou looks back at him like everything he’s said should already be obvious, like Kirishima being dumber than most of the people around him isn’t a bad thing and he should know that.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Kirishima whispers, unable to hold back the question written in neon lights across his brain.
Bakugou’s brows furrow. Kirishima yelps when a sharp pain focuses on a point on his shin. Bakugou relaxes his foot, but keeps the toe of his shoe where it is, touching Kirishima. His eyes narrow but maintain their lock on Kirishima’s,
“I’m not being nice. I’m telling the truth. Anyone with eyes can see you’re way more attractive than he is and anyone who knows you can agree that you deserve better than some weak piece of shit who can’t handle a little distance.”
Kirishima doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to handle Bakugou being so blatantly caring about his feelings, even if he’s trying to mask it behind objectivity. Kirishima’s idiot brain decides not to push his luck, and decides instead to joke.
“You think I’m attractive?” Kirishima asks, loading his voice with suggestion but wiggling his eyebrows for comedic effect.
Bakugou presses his toe further into Kirishima’s shin. “Ow ow ow OW!” Kirishima bends over the table, hardening then retracting his poor shin from Bakugou’s wrath.
When Kirishima opens his eyes Bakugou’s look right back at him, see him, and Kirishima almost gasps when glistening fondness shines crimson, shoots an arrow straight through his heart.
Crimson is definitely his favorite color.
Bakugou’s satisfied smirk makes Kirishima’s palms sweat, warmth washing over him from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.
Bakugou ends whatever moment they may or may not be having when he shoves Kirishima’s textbooks toward him.
“Pack up your shit. I think we’re done for today.” Bakugou waves over the waitress. She bounces over, smile plastered on her face like she wouldn’t rather be anywhere else than this café.
After Bakugou asks her for the check, she hurries away and Kirishima lowers his head, looking over the worksheet they had only managed to complete a fifth of.
“Sorry bro. We barely got anything done today.” Kirishima thinks about how Bakugou will probably have to take even more time out of his day to help him finish it, because these math problems may as well be written in braille for how much he can understand them.
A light whack to the head brings him out of his guilt trip. He picks his head up and watches Bakugou unroll a thick magazine before turning and shoving it in his bag.
“Stop fucking sulking. We’ll finish it tomorrow.” The waitress drops the bill on their table and flounces away as quickly as she came. Bakugou looks at the bill for two seconds, takes a napkin, writes down the amount Kirishima owes for his food and slides it over to him. He takes out his wallet and pulls out 1000 yen, lays it on the table. “For now let’s go back to school and spar or something.”
Kirishima beams. He looks at the napkin, takes out his own wallet, pulls out 2000 yen, and slaps it on the table. He finishes his sandwich in two big bites, standing and swinging his backpack over his shoulders as he chews. Ignoring Bakugou’s grimace directed at his etiquette, he thanks the waitress and apologizes to other patrons for being too rowdy (something that’s become routine whenever they come here) and he can feel Bakugou roll his eyes behind him as they walk out of the café.
The walk back is more quiet than normal, Kirishima supplying small quips here and there and Bakugou grunting his signature monosyllabic responses, but there are more silences, more room to think about what they talked about back in the café. Is Kirishima really good enough to forget about his old relationship, and chalk it up to the other guy being a jerk? Is he good enough to let himself want something more? Something better?
Is he good enough to want the best?
He glances over at Bakugou, clad head to toe in black, shoulders hanging forward, hands hidden in his pants pockets. He looks comfortable, like he always does.
Kirishima exhales through his nose and shakes his head, redirecting his stare to the ground in front of him. They’re friends. They’re friends, he tells his warm face and quickening heart.
“Oi.”
Kirishima looks at Bakugou. His eyebrow is raised, asking without asking. Kirishima laughs it off.
“Nah man, it’s nothin’.” He looks down at his shoes and kicks a small rock out of his path. “Just thinkin’.”
When they’re outside of the gates of U.A., Bakugou grabs the sleeve of his t-shirt and pulls him to the side. Kirishima yelps as he is tugged out of the gate camera’s line of sight and into a solid, warm body. He stumbles, but Bakugou catches him, and Kirishima breath halts when he feels arms wrap around his middle, sweaty palms—sweatier than usual, enough that he can feel it through his shirt—pressing against his back.
“Uh,” Kirishima blurts, arms up in a defensive pose, because he touches Bakugou all the time but Bakugou has never touched him like this before and frankly, Kirishima isn’t sure what action to take that will result in the least amount of physical damage to his person. Bakugou tightens his embrace, his hair tickling Kirishima’s cheek. Kirishima smells his shampoo and his, well, everything. Soap and burnt sugar fill his nose and cloud his senses and honestly, he feels a little dizzy.
“I’m sorry Egg Head treated you like that,” Bakugou mumbles into Kirishima’s shoulder. “He’s an idiot.”
Even through the sensory overload Kirishima rolls his eyes.
“His name’s not Egg Head, Bakugou.”
“Would you shut up, god I’m trying to—” he cuts himself off. Kirishima feels him press his forehead into his shoulder, feels a puff of hot air as Bakugou sighs. “I don’t want you feeling bad because of some shitty extra. You’re better than he’ll ever be, and...and you deserve the best.”
Kirishima gasps. His heart races, his face heats up for the umpteenth time today, and he can feel the tears coming. Fuck. He’s being so unmanly right now but Bakugou is here and he’s trying to make him feel better and Kirishima’s heart aches and he has so many things he wants to do and say but all he can think of right now is to wrap his arms around Bakugou and rest his chin on his shoulder.
“Thanks man,” Kirishima said, voice wet and broken. He sniffs, and when he again feels Bakugou roll his eyes he can’t stop the smile from splitting his face.
“Are you fucking crying right now? God, fuck.” Bakugou pushes Kirishima away to properly look at him, squinting at the tears and pouting at his smile.
“Sorry, sorry.” Kirishima wipes away his tears with the back of his hand. He sniffs again. “You’re just...a really good friend dude.”
Bakugou appraises him, Kirishima watching as his face morphs from shocked to analytical, watching as his eyes dart over every inch of Kirishima’s face, as if memorizing the wrinkles outside his eyes and the smile lines around his mouth. You smile too much, Shitty Hair, Bakugou had told him once. Crimson bleeds over every point of his teeth before rising to meet ruby once again.
Bakugou smirks.
“The best,” he answers. Before Kirishima can think about the implication behind the words, Bakugou is shoving him away and walking toward the camera. Kirishima stumbles, but his smile doesn’t falter. “Let’s go hit some shit,” Bakugou adds as he steps in front of the camera.
In response to a familiar face, the doors open and they stand and watch. Bakugou’s hands are back in his pockets and Kirishima can’t resist throwing an arm over his shoulders, so he does.