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It didn’t matter how many times his parents went on and on about being each other’s twin flames, Bakugou Katsuki had no interest in meeting his. It wasn’t even common for people to meet their match. Someone could live their entire lives without even glimpsing their twin flame. Even more tragic, when your twin flame passed on, your own flame started dying. Slowly but surely, the light went out and you passed into the next life.
He didn’t understand what “twin flames” were at first.
“Are they fuckin’ soulmates? Am I s’posed to marry them?” He’d interrogated his mother the minute she started spewing about how Masaru was her twin flame.
“No, you brat. A soulmate might share the same energy, but a twin flame is…something else. You and that other person are one soul, split in two. Sometimes you fall in love and it lasts. Sometimes it doesn’t. Some twin flames are just very close friends.”
Mitsuki talked about it like it was this mystical thing. It sounded insane to him; souls split in two, mirroring. He didn’t even know how he’d know his twin flame if he met them.
“You can’t see it, but when you meet your twin flame, they appear wearing flames around their head, like a crown. Only you can see it.”
Bakugou had thought about how he was probably one of those unlucky ones who never met their other half. Even if he did, why would that person ever want to get close to him? He wasn’t just a flame. Katsuki was a cannonblast.
*************
Kirishima Eijirou was so ready to meet his twin flame, to view them with their crown of fire, and begin growing close with them. His parents weren’t each other's, but they knew people who had met theirs. Even when he’d felt less than worthy of his twin flame, less than “manly”, Eijirou kept thinking about how his twin flame would never let him feel low about himself.
Yes, there might be things more important than meeting his mirror soul and seeing their flames, like his first day at U.A., becoming a hero, being manly and courageous, and making new friends, but he wouldn’t deny that it was on his mind.
Eijirou was knocked breathless on his first day of high school. There, sitting with his feet up on the desk, wearing a scowl, no tie with his school uniform, was a boy with gorgeous ash hair and a crown of fire. “Oh. Oh wow.” Kirishima said under his breath, hoping the slowly filling classroom didn’t hear him. He was looking at his twin flame, but the guy wasn’t looking back at him. Not yet at least. That hurt a bit, because it made Eijirou think that maybe he was dreaming the whole thing and that twin flames were on old wives’ tale.
It was eerie how the other boy had just appeared in front of Kirishima’s desk, hand extended like it was a chore. The scowl had lessened and the eyes staring at him now were filled with interest and awe. He can see the fire, can’t he? Eijirou hoped against all hope that this was real, that this boy wasn’t going to be the type to ignore their special connection.
“I’m Bakugou, Bakugou Katsuki.”
A beautiful, striking name. The flames surrounding his head reached up high, like a small veil blown back in the wind.
Kirishima shook his hand and held it just a second longer.
“Kirishima Eijirou. You can just call me Ei though.”
For a moment, Bakugou was looking at him like he had set the stars in the sky.
************
It isn’t fair! Bakugou is infuriated by his twin flame because they are funny, friendly, open, well-liked, and all the things he is not. Katsuki doesn’t play or work well with others, he lends himself to meanness, closes himself off from friends so that they have to force their way in. How can Kirishima be the other part of his soul, unless he means to be all the good, positive traits Bakugou missed out on? It happens first during the attack at USJ, when the boy rallies him to fight together.
Fighting against those villains together, for the first time, feels like a thousand matches are being struck against his skin, but he loves it. He wants more of it.
So, he takes Eijirou to be on his team during the cavalry battle at the Sports Festival. “I’ll be a horse that’ll never waver!” Something about that stirs up a whole lot of feelings in Bakugou’s chest. Their team may not have won, which did get Katsuki’s goat, but that day made him realize just how well Kirishima matched him in strength, personality, Quirks, energy, everything. They might have seemed like polar opposites, but their partnership, their friendship felt like it was forged in something deeper than just companionship.
When Kirishima cheered for Bakugou from the stands, his flames looked like some incredible halo. God, he looked like a saint. Heavenly, Katsuki would remember.
*************
Kirishima doesn’t realize the fear and pain will be amplified for him when Bakugou is kidnapped. Everyone just thinks it is because their friendship is strong, but he knows better. His twin flame is in life-threatening danger. The heat that had been building in Eijirou’s heart for months is burning through his organs, screaming for him to save the other boy.
No one can feel it but him, and maybe Katsuki.
The rescue mission is risky, but it is necessary in Kirishima’s opinion. They haven’t told anyone, especially their classmates that they are twin flames. It would just be the topic of too many conversations and he knows that Bakugou would have hated all the attention towards their bond.
There is a sneaking suspicion that Midoriya knows though. It’s in the way he talks the night they sneak away to save Bakugou, knowing the consequences.
“It’s gotta be you, Kirishima. It can’t be Todoroki or Iida or Yaoyorozu, either…it can’t be me.” Eijirou already feels the fire reaching out through his chest and stomach. “Ever since we entered U.A., you’ve built a relationship with him as equals. If the one who calls out to him is a friend, then…”
Then Bakugou will be saved. That is all Kirishima needs to know. Flying through the air, watching Bakugou catapult himself upwards is the most glorious, wonderful feeling Eijirou thinks he will ever feel. He feels like he’s bathed in fire.
“You stupid or somethin’?” Bakugou jests, squeezing Kirishima’s hand like a lifeline.
In that instant, they weren’t just bathed in fire, they were made of it, born of it.
**********
“I’m not good at shit like this…but I waited to long on this, and now I can feel the fire dyin’. You gotta hold on, Ei. You’ve got to.” Katsuki holds Eijirou’s hand in the ICU, where the boy lays bandaged up after his fight with Rappa. After the rescue, their relationship was headed past friendship to something more intense.
Bakugou never intended to do drugs nor had he any experience but being with Kirishima made him a new person. A better version of himself. He wanted to make up for poor behavior, to maintain better friendships, and mostly important, do right.
Shit, he’d wanted to confess to Eijirou too. He wanted to tell the boy how holding his hand made him feel free; he wanted to kiss him and call him ‘Ei’ all the time. More than anything, Bakugou wanted to tell Kirishima that he knew why they were twin flames. Now, he was looking at the other part of his soul, resting in a hospital bed, broken from a fight.
It sent a sickly pain through Katsuki’s soul.
“You have to wake up so you can know, know that you’re the strongest, brightest, kindest fucking person I’ll ever know. You make me see the fuckin’ value in others. I need to hold your hand again. Please be okay.”
He kissed those wrapped up knuckles and left the room. Kirishima needed rest and Bakugou was talking to the air, like a crazy person.
No one was there to see the slow, tired blink, and the weak smile on Eijirou’s face as he sat in the hospital bed, knowing his twin flame needed him.
*************
Kirishima had worked himself quite a bit to confess to Bakugou. Since the evening in the hospital room, things had changed between them in the best of ways. Kirishima saw the way Bakugou tried to make up things to people he was harsh with, how his demeanor had a newfound calmness and reserved tone. It wasn’t that Katsuki didn’t have these aspects to him before, but it came naturally to him now to show these parts of himself.
Something that had stumped Eijirou for the longest time was how Katsuki was this talented, proud, intense, intelligent boy who was his miraculous twin flame. Certainly he couldn’t have measured up to such an impressive person!
Then Bakugou became a bit more humble. He taught Kirishima to value himself, to see his own strength and talent. He took the time to tutor him, spar with him, to take his hand. All of that had set those sneaky little feelings into motion for Kirishima. He was falling hard for his twin flame.
There was no time to waste. Telling Bakugou how he felt became one of the most important things Kirishima would ever do. So there he stood, in the doorway of Bakugou’s dorm room, with his hands shaking something awful, a box of chocolates spiced with chilis in his hands.
“I know that you know, that we’re twin flames. I know you see the fire, and I’m sorry I didn’t admit it earlier. I just didn’t want it to scare you away,” He gulped in air, watching Katsuki’s eyes for any sign of disgust or annoyance. In that gaze he could only find anticipation. “But I can’t ignore this anymore. I’m fallin’ in deep for you, I want to be more than friends, and everything in my soul tells me this is right. Still, if you don’t want that, if you only want to be friends, I’ll stick by your side. I’ll be the light that never goes out.”
Bakugou’s eyes have never been wider and the crown of fire is like a volcano’s explosion. His hands pull Eijirou’s face in with no warning.
That kiss pulled flames up their throats like nothing else.
**********
Time did not change their feelings. They were still slow to tell their friends about being each other’s twin flames, but their parents figured it out soon enough.
Mitsuki sensed that when her son brought his boyfriend over for the first time. She saw how they moved around each other with a kind of invisible pull, the staring at each other’s heads like there were invisible signs up there.
“So you’re twin flames? How does it feel?” She cornered her son in the kitchen while Masaru chatted up Kirishima in the living room. Katsuki had avoided her gaze and tried to brush her off, stirring curry on the stove. She kept pushing and pushing until he said something quiet, like it was a secret.
“He makes the sun look dull.”
Mitsuki doesn’t tease her son about it. Her eyes soften at the admission. She could’ve said the same thing about Masaru, who, and pardon the pun, no one could hold a candle to.
Kirishima’s mothers just came out with it when they picked up the two at the train station to take them out for Eijirou’s birthday one year. They were driving to the barbeque joint when Aimi, the older of the two women, turned around in her seat and asked “So what’s it like? Meetin’ the other half of your soul!” Bakugou had cough-choked at the exclamation and Kirishima had to hold his hand a bit tighter to settle him.
His response was honest and beautiful, just like him.
“It’s one of the greatest things in life. Katsuki makes me want to be a better man.”
Hell, Bakugou knew he was quoting a movie, just a little, but it still made his heart do backflips in his chest.
************
Their wedding isn’t a grand affair, but they invite the important people. Friends, family, some teachers and mentors. What truly matters is that they are there at the altar, wearing suits that compliment each other and readying to put rings on fingers.
A few hundred lanterns are set around the ceremony, held in the woods, near the base of a mountain. The men fell in love with the setting after several hiking trips and picnics. It’s hard to stare at anything else when Kirishima and Bakugou had only see each other, glowing brighter than ever.
The officiant doesn’t know they are twin flames, but some funny little look in his eyes makes the couple think that he can make a well-educated guess. Bakugou immediately cries reading his vows and doesn’t finish the second page he’s written, messily shoving the page in his pocket. Kirishima makes it right to the last sentence, and his crying is most spurred on by how it makes Bakugou’s eyes well up a second time when he reads “You’re everything. You hang the sun in the sky.”
Their rings are simple bands with their anniversary date engraved on the inside. They can’t get the rings on fast enough, and the officiant is rushed to tie their hands together with the red string. Mitsuki had insisted on it, going on and on about fate and whatnot. Bakugou admits it’s a gorgeous touch later on.
When their hands are wrapped together, they speak soft to each other in unison.
“I saw you; saw you in me, and me in you.”