Chapter Text
Sometimes, an isolated campout in the mountains was all a bro really needed.
Kirishima loved his friends, he did, but the occasional time away from them was necessary. No matter how much Kaminari whined, no matter how much Mina begged; Kirishima needed to be alone. He hadn’t been a loner since middle school. High school came and he dyed his hair, made friends, pushed the insecure kid he used to be to the back of his mind. He was nearly done with university now, and the friends he’d made over the years had stuck by him, to his delight. They made him feel like he belonged somewhere. They supported him through everything, no matter how challenging. And of course, they tried to set him up with every decently attractive gay boy they’d find.
“You’re way too cute and sweet to be alone forever, Eiji!”
“Hey dude, he seems really cool, I think you should give him a shot. Plus, his best friend’s pretty hot and I think she’d be more open to a date with me if you agreed to go out with him—”
They meant well. Kirishima knew that.
But he liked being alone. He liked not having to live up to anyone’s expectations anymore. His friends loved him for who he was, why should he waste his time with people who might not?
Yes, Kirishima was still a loner deep down.
That’s why he’d come to the mountains. Once a year, maybe twice if he needed it. Just a few days where he only had to be himself, that black-haired middle school boy who didn’t feel like he was good enough. Nobody to put on a show for. Nobody to smile for. Just himself.
A guttural grunt, and a thud in the trees snapped Kirishima from his usual brooding.
He blinked. “Hello?” he called out, unsure. He’d never encountered another person out here, not once.
“Are you lost? Hurt?” he tried again, and silence answered him a second time.
Then, a whine.
Kirishima was up in an instant, grabbing his first aid kit. He hurried to the treeline, and stopped just before he penetrated the forest within. What was he doing? What if it was a trap? Some deranged serial killer who’d been stalking him and finally decided it was time to strike?
Except, what if it was another hiker? Someone who’d been attacked by a feral animal? What if they’d fallen off a ledge, saw his campsite and trekked through the brush as long as they could to try and reach him?
Before he knew it, Kirishima was moving again. Another sound led him in the right direction, not too far off.
“Can you try and tell me where you—” he stopped again. A body. He found a body! Well, the body was moving. Stumbling around in the bushes, faced away from him, and leaning on whichever tree it was closest to. All Kirishima could see was a mess of blonde hair, sticking up at every end. A few branches and leaves were stuck to the tufts, along with a patch of already drying blood. And below the blonde hair, was…bare shoulders. Bare shoulders, tribal-like tattoos blanketing the tan skin there. Buff bare shoulders, and no real coverage that Kirishima could see…
The body stopped moving. The shoulders tensed. Frozen.
“Hey, dude…?” Kirishima called out, gently. Like he was trying to coax a wild dog to come eat from his palm.
The man turned, and Kirishima could barely make out a flash of red, fiery eyes before he was knocked onto his back. He gasped, the majority of air in his lungs leaving his body in an instant. The fucking speed of this guy, how was that possible if he was injured?
A growl brought him back to the present. Kirishima, in a daze, tried to focus on the face above him, merely inches from his own. Sharp, bared teeth. Those same red eyes. A… a necklace made up of, animal teeth?
“Hello!” Kirishima greeted, flashing his biggest, cheeriest smile. Maybe being nice would hide how fast his heart was pounding. “I’m sorry if I startled you, but I just heard you out here and thought you might be in trouble! I saw the blood on your head, did you fall on something? I’m sure you must be hurting. I brought a first aid kit to help! If you’d just let me go, I can dig around in it and see what I can do for you.”
The blonde’s lips slowly fell, out of that aggressive snarl and more into a confused sneer. His grip on Kirishima loosened, and the redhead took that opportunity to break out of the hold, showing off that he’s strong, too, and maybe you shouldn’t try anything, guy. The stranger fell back onto his ass, disgruntled, but allowing it to happen. “Sorry about that, friend, but I couldn’t very well get into my kit with my arms pinned down, right?”
Kirishima unzipped his kit, keeping the blonde man in his peripheral at all times, in case he made another move. He didn’t. Instead, the guy just… stared at him. At his hair, at his clothes, at his hands, even at his crocs. Studying him.
“Um, would you mind turning around so I can see where you hit your head again? Unless you have any other injuries…” Kirishima finally took the time to get a real, good look at the man.
He looked straight out of a fantasy movie. Those tattoos Kirishima had seen earlier, they covered his shoulders. On one, there was simply a letter “K” amidst all the elaborate blank ink.
His arms were bare otherwise, save for the shirtless sleeves thing he had going on, which only went up to his elbow.
At least he had the decency to wear pants. No shoes.
“So… you some kind of, what? Hunter? Hermit? Crazy person?” Kirishima asked, a teasing edge to his voice. Seeing no further injury, he got out what he needed for the man’s head from his kit.
When no response came, Kirishima spoke up again, “Not much of a talker, huh? Don’t worry about it. You can understand me at least, can’t you? Turn around if you can. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”
A pause. Nothing but a blank stare. Then, finally, he turned.
“So you can understand me!” Kirishima triumphed, before quickly moving to get to work on the wound. He brushed out the debris from the stranger’s head. The wound wasn’t nearly as bad as it’d seemed before. The man was probably just dazed from the fall. Once Kirishima got the dried blood cleaned up, he was able to patch the wound easily.
“All done!” he announced sometime later. “You’ll want to have that really looked at as soon as you can, though, just in case there’s anything going on on the inside. For now, though, that should do it.”
The man grunted, a thank you, maybe?
“So uh, hey, it’s getting dark soon. Maybe you should come back to my campsite and spend the night? We can try and find some civilization in the morning.” Kirishima wasn’t sure if the man would accept his invitation, but when he got up only a moment after it was offered, the redhead took it as a yes.
“Sweet! It’s this way,” he nodded, before packing up his kit and leading the way.
-
Kirishima made soup and rice for dinner. Something light, and easy for his new injured companion. The man scarfed it down like a rabid wolf, eyeing Kirishima’s own bowl after he was finished. Kirishima sighed, before handing the bowl over, and the man scarfed that one down, too.
“Damn, dude, how long as it been since you ate?”
“I am not ‘dude’.”
Kirishima balked. “You could talk this whole time?!”
The blonde snorted, setting down his bowl, before fixing Kirishima with that same analyzing stare.
“Of course I can talk.”
“Well it would’ve been helpful if you had done it sooner!”
The blonde shrugged. A minute passed, Kirishima’s brain firing questions back and forth.
“So what’s your name? What’s with the get-up? Your tattoos? Why were you out here alone? How did you hurt your head?”
The blonde sighed, rubbing at his temple with two fingers. Maybe Kirishima came off a bit too strong.
“I am Bakugou Katsuki, Barbarian King. I was sent to this place by a witch, and I hit my head as I landed from the sky.”
“I- what?” Right. Okay. Bakugou clearly hit his head harder than Kirishima had previously thought. He decided to play along though, because until they found a doctor, that’d be the best case, right?
“I… okay! Okay. So, you’re a time travelling barbarian sent by a witch. Got it. And uh, the K- for Katsuki, right?” He gestured to the tattoo on Bakugou’s shoulder.
Bakugou huffed, barely glancing at the ink, “No. K for someone else. You don’t believe me,” he stated, like it was fact, which- okay, it was.
“Whaaat? No, dude- uh, Bakugou! Of course, I believe you!”
“You don’t. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be back to my home by morning.”
“Wait, Bakugou, you can’t leave. You’ll get lost out there in the dark.”
Bakugou smirked, “I’m not going anywhere, dude. My partner will bring me back.”
Partner. Right, the K. Kirishima ignored the sudden drop in his stomach. He fell silent, finally unsure of what to say. Kirishima decided to busy his time with clearing up the dishes, and getting some of his things packed up for his morning hike back to civilization.
“What is your name?”
Kirishima looked up, finding Bakugou, once again, staring at him. “O-Oh!” he chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck nervously, “how rude of me, I’m sorry. They call me Kirishima Eijirou! Or, just Kiri. Or Eiji. Depends on who you ask.”
Bakugou’s eyes widened a bit, a flash of the only real emotion Kirishima had seen in them, before it was gone. “Oh.” The blonde’s only response.
“What, you don’t like it?” Kirishima teased, rolling out a sleeping bag for the so-called Barbarian King. He flashed the man a flirty grin, delighting at the way Bakugou averted his eyes.
“It’s a fine name.”
“Ooh, fine, you say?”
“I mean, it’s fine.” The growl that punctuated Bakugou’s sentence left no room for further teasing.
“You remind me of my partner.”
Kirishima was surprised at that, figuring Bakugou was done chatting. He slid into his own sleeping bag, gesturing for the blonde to do the same. “How so?” he asked, softly.
“He’s also a moronic bastard,” the blonde huffed, dropping his head into his pillow.
Kirishima couldn’t help but cackle.
“And his hair is equally as shitty as yours.”
“Hey!” More laughter. This time, even Bakugou joined in.
Kirishima fell asleep laughing, the rest of the night filled with stories from Bakugou’s time. Stories about a mighty red dragon, about great adventures and more treasure than Kirishima could ever imagine.
The next morning, the redhead awoke next to an empty sleeping bag. “Bakugou?” he called out, in a panic. Nothing. No footsteps. No grunts. No fiery blonde anywhere to be seen. Had he dreamt it all?
The empty dish bowls, and the specs of blood left on Kirishima’s spare sleeping bag said that was impossible. Bakugou had been real, and he was gone.
The trek home was usually a happy one. He usually felt refreshed, ready to see his friends again.
This time, Kirishima felt more lonely than ever.
He stumbled over a rock, jutting from the ground. That had not been there the previous day. He knew this path in-and-out, and this rock was never here. It wasn’t new, either, it looked as though it had been there for ages, slowly being buried alive by the soil.
A crudely carved K.
Kirishima gaped, his fingers digging into the soil before he even had a clear thought process. He dug and dug and dug, until his fingers screamed with ache, and then he dug some more. Finally, he yanked the rock from the ground. A small box buried in the mud. Kirishima held the thing in his hands, centuries old it seemed. He opened it.
Neatly, in the box, was an eerily familiar animal tooth necklace. At the bottom of the box, carved straight into the wood, a sketch of a dragon, and his barbarian rider.
And, more importantly, the words,
K –
Find me. I’m waiting.