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When the hour is still dark, Bakugou wakes up freezing cold.
Literally - he’s quick to note just how limited his movements are when he attempts to free his arm from his side and finds himself unable to even twitch his fingers.
There’s a body next to him, or maybe it’s the lump of ice that he had somehow found himself half-way inside of throughout the night.
He doesn’t recall at what moment his breath picks up, or when his eyes begin to search for something in the dark desperately, desperate for something, anything, to at least take shape in the quiet - something for him to fight, something that could push him to gain the strength to pull himself out of this numbing constraint.
Something is there, an incoherent mumble, a stuttered shift next to him that inches him along with it, and he blinks the grogginess out of his eyes in realisation, groaning.
The mattress feels like sandpaper under him, but at least he’s now aware that it is a mattress and not a slab of freezing concrete - it’s his mattress in his room, only half of it is taken up by Todorok, who he should’ve kicked out upon arrival earlier that evening. He's still fast asleep.
Bakugou’s left side is under the covers, but it’s frozen anyway, his right completely open and on display to the unwavering air of his bedroom. Who would’ve known that the renowned Todoroki Shouto would be a blanket hogging bastard?
“'Fuck are you doing?” Bakugou speaks up, and the mattress isn’t the only thing that feels like sandpaper, he notices after growling his words out. He clears his throat after speaking, and it's so unnatural in the eerily quiet room, so ear piercingly loud that it somehow shakes Todoroki out of his slumber.
His eyes flutter open, and it’s easier to see everything now that Bakugou’s eyes have gotten used to the dim lighting, the burnt out moonlight as his torch. It’s easier to see the fog in Todoroki's eyes, the line of sweat on his upper lip and above his brows that he pushes into his hair with his shaky, unoccupied hand. It's not hot enough to be sweating, Bakugou thinks; especially with half of your body frozen in ice. Or maybe Todoroki'd grown numb to the sensation.
Todoroki half groans, half hums in question, voice laced with just as much - if not more sleep than Bakugou’s.
The fact that their sides are frozen together settles in just as his eyes meet Bakugou's. His eyes widen, his lips part slightly, and just as Bakugou begins to feel the bones in his left arm ache, Todoroki shifts onto his side and lifts his hand to settle on the blondes wrist; where his right hand had gripped onto him for dear life and frozen them together who knows how long ago. With the way that Bakugou's hand buzzed, it felt like it'd been a year at least.
“Sorry.” Todoroki says, and it's a reflex, a mumble that Bakugou can’t exactly decipher the genuineness of.
Bakugou doesn’t have the energy to do so anyway, to even come up with something snarky to respond with like he usually does in these stupid situations, but this time feels a little different compared to those other ones, and his eyes are suddenly insisting on falling closed again.
“ ‘Ts whatever.” He says instead.
Todoroki’s palm heats up immediately, just the right amount of warmth as to not set the bedding on fire or burn Bakugou even under his objectively protective layer of ice, and Bakugou screws his eyes shut, irritation finding its way into him even when it’s what - he glances at the alarm clock - 2:29 in the goddamn morning.
Because it’s exactly that, it is 2:29 AM yet his stupid boyfriend just can’t help but use his quirk so damn efficiently. Even after some kind of obvious nightmare, even after waking up in an unfamiliar room and unfamiliar bed. Todoroki hadn’t even flinched, yet Bakugou had been on the verge of a fucking panic attack with his arm frozen to the bed.
He opens his eyes again, and immediately, he’s met with Todoroki’s tired face looking back at him. His quirk doesn’t need any flames to defrost the two, so they lay in the dark, but Bakugou can see just how glassy Todoroki’s gaze is clear as day, how washed out he looks.
Todoroki is shivering slightly, they’re both shivering. Sure it felt like they'd been frozen together for a while, but Bakugou can tell that the ice isn’t the only reason that the other boys breathing is unsteady, or why his hand struggles to stay still on Bakugou’s unmoving wrist.
Bakugou narrows his eyes in a lazy glare, and they both know exactly why he does so.
Todoroki sighs. “Don’t say anything.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Bakugou retorts, but doesn’t mention how he wasn’t planning on saying anything in the first place.
So he doesn’t. The ice begins to melt and the water bends and drips and trickles down his flesh and through his mattress, makes an uncomfortable puddle around his left side, but he doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t have the energy to knit his brows together, but Bakugou cringes when Todoroki’s hand makes its way down his side, slowly traveling under the sheets to where his hip meets his thigh, where the ice is thin and breaks apart with ease to ultimately soak through the thin fabric of his boxers.
Bakugou, now capable of moving his left hands’ fingers again, plays with the cold, damp sheets blanketing them, mindless. He thinks about screaming at Todoroki for a moment, and then thinks about teasing him for mishandling his quirk, but knows that he’s done much, much worse himself.
Believe it or not, but consistent nightmares accompanied with the ability to create explosions simply from the buildup of your own sweat, does not make for a good night's sleep. Not only that, but Bakugou’s room growing up had always remained at just the right temperature when he was sleeping, because sweating nitroglycerin while you sleep in general, kind of fucking sucks.
So, when Todoroki had thrown himself down on Bakugou’s bed earlier that evening with the intention of staying there, the only thing stopping him from forcing the stubborn boy out the door was that icy right side of his.
The outcome is less than impressive.
Todoroki is just as soaked as Bakugou at this point, but there’s a glint of amusement in his eye. He removes his hand from the side of Bakugou’s hip eventually, and the blond huffs.
“Go get a fucking towel, this shit is disgusting.”
“It’s just water, get over it.” Todoroki offers, lifting himself onto his elbow to look down at Bakugou for a moment, and then, without any warning, latches onto Bakugou’s side.
“Fuck off- hey get off me!” Bakugou struggles, still painfully aware of the wet material clinging to his skin and the shiver it sends up his spine as he squirms.
“It'll dry.” Todoroki mumbles.
Yeah, yeah it’ll dry, but Bakugou wants it to dry right now, he wants to go back to sleep and not worry about waking up sweating because of damp sheets sticking to him, or confronting the fact that apparently they both have trouble sleeping and have never talked about it prior to sharing a goddamn bed, or just how nice Todoroki’s lips feel on his own after having half of his face frozen numb.
Todoroki’s left hand finds a home at the side of Bakugou’s jaw, and he tilts his head so that he has more access to pepper more and more kisses all over him, and Bakugou thinks to himself, that Todoroki must really be tired - either that or he just wants him to shut up.
Bakugou doesn’t care either way, he decides, and continues to shove and kick at Todoroki, but the boy doesn’t stop, no distance is made, and Bakugou’s hands are starting to sweat, explosions surely just short of crackling. He rests them on Todoroki's waist, squeezing his shirt into a fist.
This is why - this is why he had refused to share a bed with Todoroki for so long, because he didn’t want whatever the hell they had going on to turn into this much of a pathetically sappy situation. He didn’t want these soft, barely-there kisses from his sleepy boyfriend; the ones that in the moment he knows aren’t really for him but make his palms sweat and his face flush all the same. Absolutely not. That would be embarrassing.
He doesn’t want it, he tells himself as he kisses back, listing off all of the cons of sharing a bed with Todoroki in his head one by one as he does so, the first obviously being: ‘Waking up in the form of a fucking icicle.’
He wants to pull him closer, but his hands- he drops them to his sides. It'd just be a pain if he made a whole in Todoroki's shirt, he'd be the one paying for it.
“Your quirk.” Todoroki comments vaguely, no doubt feeling the heat of Bakugou’s tiny, unwarranted explosions underneath him, seeing the warm light bounce around from the corner of his eye.
“What the fuck about it.”
Todoroki huffs a small laugh. “You- You’re easy to fluster in the dark.”
There’s a loud thud, and a groan to accompany it not too long after.
The bed is practically empty now, colder, damp and pitiful. Bakugou’s leg is still bent in the position it had been in when making impact with Todoroki’s stomach, and he knows that even without the lights on and Todoroki in his line of sight, they’re both making the same face. Bakugou quickly stuffs a hand over his mouth, cheeks puffing up as he snorts into his grip and giggles.
He really shouldn’t be so surprised. It’s the middle of the night, they’re both half asleep - or, had been prior to Bakugou kicking Todoroki off the side of the bed and flat onto his back.
He doesn’t even pity whoever the hell sleeps on the floor below him, doesn’t even attempt to choke his laughter back, just laughs louder and louder until the mattress dips and Todoroki is by his side again.
It’s hard to see anything through his fit of laughter, but he feels the warm hand cupping his face and the stare he is given, and it dies in his chest, deflates like a tired balloon.
The room is soaked in quiet.
Todoroki’s fingers glide along his skin, along the edge of his jaw all the way to his chin, where he grabs, pulls, and settles his fingers to press down on Bakugou’s bottom lip. His touch is still warm, buzzing with the heat of his only recently used quirk, and it’s nice, Bakugou can allow himself this.
Todoroki gives no warning when he pinches Bakugou’s lips together between his thumb and forefinger, just a smug smirk when the blonde’s eyes burst open in a fit of rage. The cold hits Bakugou first, and it stings this time around, his skin already damp and numb from earlier.
Bakugou can’t feel anything. It’s like those visits to the dentist when he was younger, where his lips and jaw were practically lost to the numbing chemicals placed in his gums. He can’t tell whether his lips are sealed shut with ice or he’s already begun to drool all over the side of his face, but Todoroki’s smirk turns into a soft smile after a few seconds.
It’s wonky, as wonky as Bakugou’s nose after multiple sparring sessions throughout the years, as tender as the freshly defrosted flesh of his cheek.
Bakugou runs his hand up Todoroki’s arm and pushes, testing whether or not his guard is down. It does nothing, they’re both wide awake now.
At his vulnerable position, Bakugou strategises his game plan. He can't push him off again, it'd be too predictable. Kicking, maybe?
There is only so much choice that Bakugou has in what were to happen next, so when Todoroki begins placing his lips to his face again, harder this time, as if he were making a spiteful point, Bakugou can't complain, no matter how hard he's trying to continue this game of how much can we beat each other up.
He doesn’t complain, because there’s nothing to complain about, but he does accept that yeah, maybe the water hasn't dried just yet, but maybe that's okay - at least until the sun rises.