Chapter Text
It starts, really, during the villain attack on their class at USJ.
When Kurogiri warps him away to the earthquake zone, Bakugou only takes a second to orient to the situation as he rolls to his feet. He takes in the surroundings, analyzes the divide-and-conquer strategy the villains are taking, and guesses that he’ll be outnumbered even before the first villain shows up. Just as he curls a lip, growling and ready to test his powers against some real opponents, there’s a sound of rubble shifting behind him.
Bakugou stops himself a microsecond from blasting Kirishima and his stupid red hair right out the window.
“Bakugou!” Kirishima trots closer, looking glad to see him and not at all concerned about the popping explosion Bakugou just suppressed in his palm. “We must’ve gotten teleported when we tried to attack… What do you think –“
“Shut up,” Bakugou growls. Kirishima stops short, briefly surprised. There’s a heartbeat of silence, then Bakugou whirls around and fires. The camouflaged villain he’d heard slithering in through the collapsed ceiling squawks as they’re hit with the full force of the explosion, and drops to the floor, followed by another chunk of the ceiling that crumbles down on top of them. Their chameleon skin reverts to normal.
Kirishima gapes. “Nice, man, that was amazing!”
“Tch,” Bakgou clicks his tongue; he’s used to people being impressed with him but right now it just makes him irritated that he’ll probably be carrying a classmate’s weight in the fight. “Just stay outta my WAY!” He punctuates his sentence with another blast as the first wave of villains bursts in through every entrance.
It’s the endurance contest he expected. With numbers on their side, the villains are all fresh as they attack. Bakugou’s blasts get wilder and more indiscriminate, taking out as many as he can get at one go — but the whole time, to his surprise, Kirishima’s at his back, not sheltering, but taking point. His moves aren’t flashy, it’s basic strikes with his hardening quirk as an added force, but he’s steady, constant. It doesn’t hurt that with his hardening he can stay close in the fray, the shrapnel and fragments of building that Bakugou sends flying with each explosion just bouncing off his skin.
In the chaos Bakugou sneaks a curious glance at him, and there’s a fraction of a second where their eyes meet just as Kirishima lands a knockout blow on a villain with multiple clawed arms. Kirishima grins at him, and Bakugou turns away to hide his involuntary answering smile. Because Bakugou doesn’t need support, he’s fucking sure of that. But this – fighting with someone at his back, someone who can take care of themselves and lets him do his thing – this is… it’s actually fun. He laughs, feral, and lets himself cut loose.
After everything, after All Might and the Noumu and finally getting out of the stupid giant dome of USJ, they take the bus back to school. One of the police cars has already rushed Aizawa, Deku, and All Might off to see Recovery Girl, and the rest of the students are left to head back together. It feels weirdly normal, loading onto the bus like it’s the end of a regular field trip, except for the intensity of the conversations as everyone catches up on what happened while they were separated. Bakugou manages to keep people at arms length with his usual glares, having no interest in getting chatty, and occupies himself with staring out the window.
“You were with Bakugou?” he hears Kaminari saying through the noise. “I’m surprised he didn’t blow you up, too.”
“No way man,” Kirishima laughs. “He had my back! Besides, it’d be pretty unmanly not to trust each other, right?” The rest of whatever he’s saying gets lost in the general chatter.
Bakugou snorts and looks back out the window, leaning into his hand. Kirishima’s a weird dude, but Bakugou has to admit… he doesn’t hate him.
After that, it creeps up on him.
There’s class, and sparring, and the sports festival with Kirishima grinning his shark-tooth grin — “I’ll be a horse that’ll never waver!” — and Kirishima laughing, dazed, even after Bakugou fully knocks him out in their one-on-one match, and Kirishima walking down the hill with him and listening as he glares at his future and growls his resolve to be number one. He doesn’t really notice, or think about it in a way he’s consciously aware of, until Kamino.
Bakugou would never admit to how trapped and terrified he feels in that empty lot, surrounded by villains that by now he knows could kill him in a fight, stuck in a space with the twin nuclear weapons that are All Might and All For One. And he’s ready to go down, truly ready to die if he can get the grim satisfaction of taking some of them out with him, until like a lightning strike Kirishima’s voice splits the night from above.
“Come on!”
After blasting himself skyward with everything he has left, it’s Kirishima’s hand grabbing his in mid-air, and Kirishima’s grin dragging him out of the bizarre nightmare of the past three days. He grins back, fierce enough to cover the shattering relief, but genuine to the core, because in the past he’s had lackeys and stooges and people who tagged along after him. But that thing, that feeling that was creeping up on him over the past months, finally takes form.
Kirishima is his friend.
—
Even after the realization, Bakugou doesn’t think too hard about it. He doesn’t change the amount or volume of his threats and yelling, doesn’t tone down his snarls and glares. But he finds a way to pay Kirishima back for the night-vision goggles he’d bought while trying to find him in Kamino, and he shows up when Kirishima invites him to the movies with Mina and Sero, and he drags Kirishima to the library to study after he hears him lamenting his latest grades.
“You see where you fucked up here, right?” Bakugou jabs his pencil at a sentence in Kirishima’s English homework. Kirishima squints at it as though he can summon the answer by scrunching his face hard enough.
“The… word… order…?”
“No, idiot,” Bakugou pulls the paper over. “You got that fine. It’s the same thing you fucked up last time – this verb is an irregular in the past tense.”
Kirishima groans and flops over onto the table. “Dude, every verb is an irregular in English.”
“Yeah, so then you should have expected that. Look, you just gotta memorize the conjugations, the rest of this shit isn’t terrible.”
“I hate memorization, man, it’s too much sitting still.” Kirishima rolls his head over and eyes Bakugou with a spark in his eye. “Hey, wanna quiz me while we spar?”
Bakugou raises an eyebrow.
“Come on!” Kirishima sits up. “I bet it’ll stick in my head better if I’m landing hits while I’m learning.”
“You WISH you’d be landing hits.”
“Hey, I’ve been training extra with the provisional license exam coming up! Bet you’re not as ahead of me as you think.”
Bakugou narrows his eyes. He knows this is manipulation, but…
“Fine,” Bakugou slams the book shut. “Don’t complain to me when you’ve got a bruise for every wrong answer.”
Kirishima grins.
They find an empty sparring area on campus after grabbing their gym clothes from the dorms. Kirishima warms up in the middle of the hangar, antsy to start as Bakugou dumps his bag and swaggers to meet him, cracking his shoulders and knuckles.
“Ready for some fuckin’ verbs, Shitty Hair?”
“Hit me!” Kirishima laughs. Bakugou obliges.
The hangar is big enough for quirk-powered fights, but they start bareknuckle, settling into a rhythm as they both work up a sweat.
“Speak!” Bakugou jabs and Kirishima slips the punch.
“Uh, spoke—!”
“Pay!”
“Paid!” Kirishima swings with a hook, Bakugou blocks and spins a kick to the head that Kirishima ducks.
“Put!”
“P… Putted?”
“Past tense of ‘put’ is also ‘put’!” Bakugou, true to his word, lands a solid hit to the ribs.
“Aaaghh, okay, put!” Kirishima dances back and keeps up a boxer’s shuffle on his toes as he hisses and rubs his side.
“I think you might’ve been right about this study method,” Bakugou grins at him. Kirishima rolls his eyes but puts his fists back into guard with a crooked smile. They sweat their way through the basic irregulars before Bakugou gets Kirishima cornered and he starts using his quirk.
“Ha!” Bakugou dodges Kirishima’s jagged arm, satisfied that he wasn't the first to break, Kirishima growls, and all verbs are abandoned as they throw themselves into a full quirk-on-quirk battle.
Kirishima hadn’t been fronting when he said he’d been training extra. Bakugou is still faster, he hasn’t met anyone yet who can best his reflexes, but Kirishima’s power and endurance have come a long way since the sports festival. He’s trained his hardening as well, and Bakugou aims stronger and stronger blasts as Kirishima successfully blocks each one. For fun he tries out some quick feints – jetting in from the front, forcing Kirishima to harden his arms to defend against an oncoming explosion-powered strike, but then passing him and using an explosion to instantly change direction and hit from behind. But Kirishima’s gotten faster, too, and instead of trying to shift his hardening to block the punch, he spins, taking the hit as a glancing blow in exchange for a hook to the side of Bakugou’s head.
Bakugou dodges but just barely, hurling himself forward and down to roll past Kirishima and force him to turn a second time to face him again. There’s a heartbeat where their eyes lock and they’re both grinning like maniacs through the sweat, but Bakugou knows not to rest on his laurels, and brings both hands up to fire a focused blast with his full power. The explosion rocks the hangar and blows Kirishima all the way to the wall; his hardened back slams into it and leaves a solid dent. He barely has time to recover before Bakugou uses his explosions to jet himself forward, turning mid-air to aim a flying kick at Kirishima’s head. Kirishima throws himself out of the way, but before he can roll to his feet Bakugou springboards off the wall and knocks the wind out of Kirishima by landing with a knee on his chest, pinning his arms to the ground on either side with both hands.
“Win,” Bakugou says, chest heaving as he catches his breath.
“Won,” Kirishima wheezes.
Bakugou rolls off him and they both lie on the floor, panting. Next to him Kirishima laughs.
“Pretty good study session, dude.”
Bakugou snorts. “You better pass the English test on Monday.”
Kirishima lifts a fist into the air. “A manly battle… for my GPA…”
Bakugou smiles at the ceiling in a way he never would if he knew Kirishima could see his face. He doesn’t dwell on it, but there’s something about being with Kirishima that’s just… easy. With anyone else there’s these layers of complication and politics and pride that grate on him – he’s always calculating people’s strength in the hierarchy of heroes in training, filing away the competition, keeping up his focus and projecting the short fuse of his temper because he doesn’t want the distractions and the time-wasting of socializing. But Kirishima’s somehow made it in past all his anger and irritation, and is just there, unshakeable and uncomplicated and strong enough to match whatever Bakugou throws at him.
Bakugou does a kip-up and lands on his feet.
“Come on,” he holds a hand out to Kirishima, who, despite taking several massive direct hits from Bakugou’s explosions, looks dazedly content. He’s got a bruise blooming on the side of his eye that looks like it might turn into a shiner, but he grins with that uncomplicated joy, and takes Bakugou’s hand.
—
And then there’s the raid.
In total, they’re only gone for two days.
The first begins with their conspicuous absence from class – four empty desks, Present Mic teaching a long English block in the morning, and Midnight subbing for Aizawa Sensei during their afternoon practical.
“Yeah, Uraraka and Tsu-chan wouldn’t say anything!” Ashido moans to Kaminari as they wait their turn on the timed obstacle course.
“Kirishima neither,” Kaminari grumbles, then in a passable imitation, one fist raised with determination: “‘They put their trust in me, it’d be pretty unmanly to let them down!’”
Ashido giggles as Bakugou clicks his tongue under his breath. He’s not jealous, he tells himself, only angry that he fucked up his chance to be out there with his provisional license already. He definitely isn’t imagining Kirishima and Frog girl and Round Face and fucking Deku taking down real villains, doing real work, as he blows up a stupid practice laser trap.
“What youthful vigor!” Midnight exclaims in delight as Bakugou kicks over a piece of the smoking wreckage and stomps back to the bleachers the rest of the class is watching from. He has the best time in the class, but there’s no satisfaction in it.
The second day, Bakugou wakes up in a mood. He knows being stuck without an internship is his own stupid fault for not passing the provisional exam. He stalks to class with a determination to focus, even if it’s out of spite. So he’s already irritable when he catches Kaminari kicking Ashido under her desk to get her attention in the middle of Ectoplasm Sensei’s morning math lessons. He glares at them out the side of his eye – Sero’s now craning his neck to get a look over Kaminari’s shoulder at his phone. And then Sero’s eyes widen and flick over to Kirishima’s empty spot, then to Bakugou. Their eyes meet for a fraction of a second - Bakugou turns away just too slow not to be caught.
He scowls down at his notes and refuses to look back and try and catch what Ashido and Kaminari are whispering about, because he’s not a loser, and isn’t suddenly, desperately curious. He focuses on the equations in front of him and definitely, definitely isn’t distracted by what feels distinctly like jealousy at the possibility that Kirishima and Deku and the rest have gotten to do something momentous and worthwhile and cool while he’s stuck doing math.
Soon, though, the increasing number of whispers and shuffles and phones under desks becomes too noticeable to ignore, and Ectoplasm pauses in the middle of an equation.
“I can tell you’re all focused on something else, and if it’s concerning enough to disrupt lessons I think we should address it.”
“Sensei!” Ashido beats them all to it, up on her feet. “The news, do you know about –“ she glances at the empty desks.
Ectoplasm sighs, puts down the chalk and nods, turning to the class with his full attention. “I’m aware of the general scope of the mission your classmates are a part of, yes. And I am also aware,” he adds carefully, “that they are all safe, Aizawa included. Recovery Girl left for the hospital just prior to this class block, so there’s nothing-”
The class erupts. Everyone is suddenly on their feet, bombarding Ectoplasm and each other with questions.
“The hospital?”
“Who got hurt, who needs – “
“Wait, show me the article, what site are you —“
“It doesn’t say anything about —“
“Everyone, please, we must try not to—“
As everyone talks over each other, Bakugou feels a coil of unease in his gut, pulling at something he can’t quite put his finger on. Recovery Girl must be going over for Deku – he probably broke his stupid bones again, that’s almost a guarantee at this point. Round Face is strong, she’ll have kept it together. Maybe Frog Girl got a little banged up. But they’ll all be fine. His brain skips over Kirishima like a stone on water as he mentally analyzes the possibilities, because – His train of thought abruptly truncates and he loses the reason. Because it’s Kirishima, he assumes. Bakugou doesn’t worry about Kirishima.
“Everyone, please settle down —“ Ectoplasm is trying with only marginal success to wrangle attention, as more and more phones are being passed around and everyone talks over each other.
Under the cover of the chaos, Bakugou takes his phone out of his pocket and opens the first hero news site he has bookmarked. No one’s paying attention, he can satisfy his curiosity. The front page image loads — it’s an amazing shot, Bakugou’s got enough of his parents’ designer’s eyes to know that. A shattered street, bright morning light bathing the rubble and dust in an unearthly glow, and small in the center, a tiny figure, heroic in its isolation, with a little girl on his back. Deku. Of course. Bakugou clicks his tongue under his breath and scrolls past irritably. Then he sees the second photo and for a second all the noise around him drops out, as cleanly as if he’d plunged underwater.
The image is small on his phone screen, and crowded with people and activity: Deku, Uraraka, and Tsu all gather around a bizarrely emaciated FatGum, recognizable only by his costume and wide eyes, which look exhausted and bright with tears. First responders are frozen mid-action, directing one another through the shattered rubble of a once-grand building. But in the middle of it all, its bright contrast impossible to miss, is a shock of red hair against the white bed of an ambulance gurney. Most of the body attached to it is hidden behind the emergency workers rushing past, but what is visible looks either bandaged or the kind of dark purple he’s seen on Deku’s shattered arms.
Bakugou doesn’t worry about Kirishima.
Bakugou doesn’t worry about Kirishima because this shit doesn’t happen to Kirishima. The image doesn’t feel real. There has to have been another idiot with obnoxiously red hair at the raid.
Sound filters back to him and Bakugou realizes he’s gripping his phone almost hard enough to crack the case. He scrolls through the rest of the article, eyes flickering over the text without really seeing it. Something weird happens to his throat and chest when he sees the next photo about halfway down. The focus is on Ryukyu in her human form coordinating with some officers, but the photographer had gotten much closer in, and behind her, just slightly out of focus, is the ambulance and the gurney being loaded onto it.
It’s him.
The blurriness of the focal plane somehow makes it more unsettling. It’s clear enough to be undeniably sure that that’s Kirishima’s stupid, stupid hair, but blurred enough that his face, half turned away, becomes a smudge. Whether he’s conscious or unconscious is unreadable. The white of bandages covering his body blend into the sheets of the gurney. There are dark spots that could be shadows but they’re a little too red and a little too many for that.
Bakugou’s mind feels completely blank, like something has reached in and wiped it clear.
He realizes that the class has quieted down.
“You are all heroes in training,” Ectoplasm is saying. “And for trainees you have been through an extraordinary amount already. So you already understand that the level of risk your classmates faced over these past days is part of the job, and part of what we are preparing you for at UA. Danger and injury are, unfortunately, inevitable for heroes. And part of your work is to learn to focus on the tasks at hand while your friends face that danger. Someday lives may depend on your ability to do so, under much more difficult circumstances than a math class and a local villain hideout raid.”
The room is absolutely silent. Kaminari’s eyes are wide and brow furrowed, Ojiro’s mouth is set in a line. Ectoplasm‘s shoulders relax into a gentler posture.
“For now I can reassure you that all four of your classmates will be home safely by this evening. Though Recovery Girl wasn’t able to tell me much before she left, she did make it clear that they would be physically fine by tonight.” He looks around at the anxious students. “I don’t want to worry you unnecessarily, but I do feel it is important to remind you that even if they are physically fine, everyone processes their battles differently. They may or not seem like themselves for a little while. The best thing you can do is be yourselves, but give them space and time if they need it.”
Bakugou doesn’t realize until later that that’s when the blankness he feels is replaced by a twist in his stomach that feels, strangely, like fear.
—
That night, everyone hangs out in the common area. No one organized it, but through unspoken agreement everyone is there, even Koda and Shouji, who usually prefer the quiet of their dorm rooms.
“Thanks Yaomomo!” Ashido takes a cup from Yaoyorozu, who is bustling around serving tea to everyone who will take it. “Oooh, it smells so good.”
“It’s an herbal blend with bluemallow, I thought it would be nice! Here,” Yaoyorozu finishes pouring and with a smile passes a cup to Todoroki, who accepts with a silent nod.
“Scoot over!” Jirou, acoustic guitar in hand, nudges her way onto the end seat of the couch and Hagakure obligingly makes room, wiggling closer to Ashido, who draws her feet up like an owl and passes the next cup of tea to her.
“Ugh, someone switched all the plugs around,” Kaminari grumbles from behind the TV.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea Kaminari?” Yaoyorozu frowns delicately. “I’m sure they’ll all be exhausted, video games might not be the best welcome home.”
“Its not like I’m gonna force them,” Kaminari arches an eyebrow at her, just barely peeking over the edge of the screen. “Besides, remember what Ectoplasm Sensei said! Just being normal’s probably good right now.”
“Holy shit Denki you almost sound mature,” Sero grins. Kaminari pops back up again to glare at him.
From the kitchen, Bakugou listens to the bickering and chatter as he furiously chops vegetables for a curry. Everyone has left him to his devices after the first few attempts to help resulted in him barking them out of the kitchen, knife in hand. He focuses on cooking, half an eye on the sautéing onions and chicken as he preps the potatoes, apple, carrots, and sets things up to soft-boil eggs to go with the curry. He doesn’t let his hands stop, because its better than waiting or thinking. He stirs in the broth and roux and doesn’t think about the feeling in his stomach that won’t go away. Doesn’t think about why its there or what it means or why a nagging back part of his brain recognizes it as fear, because what does he have to be afraid of?
Bakugou is just pulling the eggs out of the boiling water when there’s an explosion of noise from the common room. He just manages to stop himself from dropping the spoon and splashing scalding water all over himself. Though the voices are indistinct as everyone talks over each other in a ruckus, he can hear the girls exclaiming, and Kaminari’s distinctly fast speech as everyone greets their returning classmates.
He’s still stock-still, holding the ladle for the eggs, when Ashido bursts into the kitchen.
“Bakugou, is the curry ready?”
“Feed us!!” Kaminari slides in after her.
“Bakugou cooked, we’ll bring you some!” Ashido calls back to the group.
“Here, allow me to help!” Iida annoyingly comes in and joins Ashido and Kaminari as they grab bowls and spoons from the cabinets. Shouji quietly hovers by the door, turning each of his tentacles into hands, which Ashido starts filling with food ready to take to their waiting friends.
Bakugou waspishly elbows his way around them to finish pulling the eggs out and cutting them into halves to throw into the bowls. For a minute he stops thinking about anything else as he deals with the minor chaos of the kitchen. Finally Iida leaves, carrying as many servings as he can, followed out by the others.
“Thanks Bakugou, this is amazing!” Ashido chimes as she and Kaminari push past him into the living room, shoveling rice and curry into their mouths as they go.
“Of course it is, I’m the one who made it,” Bakugou snaps, secretly grateful for any distraction.
“You gonna give me some then?”
Kirishima pops around the doorframe. Bakugou’s brain shorts out for a second, like it’s tripped over that photograph from the article on the way to registering the Kirishima standing in front of him. Aside from a bandage by one eyebrow, he looks… normal. With a lopsided smile he takes a bowl from Bakugou, who is just standing there with what must be a stupidly blank look.
“Did you make this for us? I knew you cared,” Kirishima teases.
“Shut up,” Bakugou growls, more out of reflex than anything. Kirishima just laughs at him around a mouthful of curry.
“Oh my god this is good,” he says with his mouth full, “I’m starving. There’s enough for seconds, right?”
Bakugou rolls his eyes and starts putting together another bowl as Kirishima inhales the rest of the one he’d started on.
“You’re really showing me up out there,” Bakugou says lightly as he ladles curry over the rice. “Saw all those articles about the raid mentioning you.” There’s a fraction of a second of silence behind him that makes his stomach seize before Kirishima laughs – but he must have imagined the hesitation, because it sounds genuine and warm and proud.
“Still chasing your back, bro. Hurry and get your license!” He sidles up next to Bakugou, punches his shoulder, and steals an extra egg that he eats in two bites. “We could be a hero team!” The sentiment is slightly lost around a mouthful of egg.
“Hm,” Bakugou raises an eyebrow at him but can’t help smiling as he hands a second bowl to Kirishima. The knot in his stomach unravels. “I might let you join my agency.”
“Might? You wound me, dude,” Kirishima makes a mock sad face, which also is ruined by the amount of curry rice in his cheeks. Bakugou snorts, catches himself almost laughing, carried away on the sheer relief because Kirishima is himself. Seeing him here and solid and okay, only as battered as he’d be after a quick spar – it’s like it exorcises the specter of those photographs and whatever tendrils of unease they’d started in him.
Bakugou makes himself a bowl of curry, and Kirishima waits for him. Once he’s got it prepared, there’s a beat as they stand in the kitchen, and Bakugou almost wants to make an excuse to ask Kirishima to hang out here, just with him. If Kirishima seems reluctant to go back out to the common room its just his imagination, because he knows Kirishima loves being with people. So –
“Come on,” Bakugou says, and Kirishima flashes him a smile as he steals another egg and they head out.
The evening runs late — it’s a Friday night with no class tomorrow, and the welcome home turns into a night of video games and chatter. There’s a palpable sense of relief at having everyone back safe. The girls all end up cuddling on one of the couches, though Jirou breaks off to stick her feet in Kaminari’s face at just the right moment to make him lose at Mario Kart. Deku seems a little withdrawn, but Iida, Uraraka, and Todoroki end up clustering around him, chatting without expectations in a way that seems comfortable and kind. Kirishima sits with Mina and Sero and Kaminari as they take turns at Mario Kart. Bakugou hangs out nearby, keeping his usual sullen separateness from the conversation, but watches Kirishima laughing and mock-fighting with their friends. It’s reassuring, and a relief, every time he looks over. He forgets the feeling that haunted him all afternoon. Why remember a fear if there’s no reason to have it?
The night wears down, the video games get left on the menu screen and then turned off, and people trickle off to bed. Somewhere in the past hour Kirishima has passed out cold on the couch, and is snoring slightly into a pile of blankets.
“He seems wiped out, I don’t want to wake him,” Mina whispers. Kaminari next to her yawns hugely. Yaoyorozu already turned off most of the lights as one of the last to leave, so it’s dim in the common room.
“I’ll make sure he gets to bed,” Bakugou grumbles. “I gotta stay and do the dishes anyways.”
“Aw, Bakugou, we can help out in the morn… morni—“ Mina interrupts herself with a yawn that rivals Kaminari’s, who is now leaning on her dozily.
“I don’t need help from you losers, go get your fuckin beauty sleep.” Bakugou waves them off, and they nod and head off to the elevators.
He turns off the common room lights after them and spends a half hour quietly cleaning up the kitchen. He can ask Kirishima about what went down in the raid tomorrow, he thinks. Now that he knows Kirishima’s fine, he’s curious and, will admit, still a little jealous. He finishes the dishes and hits the lights in the kitchen. Once his eyes adjust, he heads back to where Kirishima is still snoring gently on the couch. The cushions are a little saggy and it doesn’t look super comfortable. He’s clearly deep asleep, probably exhausted from the raid, but he’ll wake up with his back a mess of knots if he stays here.
“Oi,” Bakugou says in a low voice. “Shitty Hair.” He reaches out and gives Kirishima’s shoulder a little shake to wake him up.
“Mmh…” Kirishima stirs, all soft with sleep, then stiffens. Bakugou feels the change like electricity in the air in the same instant it happens. With the suddenness of a lighting strike, Kirishima’s eyes fly open, wide and wild, and his body crackles as he lunges upright and tessellates into razor spikes.
Bakugou stands frozen, his heart hammering in his chest. Blood trickles down his arm. He feels very far away, and it feels like a very long time before he hears a drop plip onto the carpet. Kirishima doesn’t look human, he thinks. He hasn’t seen Unbreakable yet, and definitely not this close. Even Kirishima’s eyes have become hard-edged fractals. His face, brutal and abstracted, finally matches his teeth. His mouth is a feral nightmare, a lipless rictus of spikes. Nothing moves – not even his chest, not even a breath. But his hand tightens on Bakugou’s forearm, and that tiny motion makes a sound like stone on stone.
“Kirishima,” Bakugou says. He can hear his own pulse in his ears, beating away the impossibly long seconds. The blood on his arm feels hot as it trickles away from the cold sunflare of pain where the edges of what used to look like Kirishima’s hand cut deep. His palms are reflexively sweating, nerve endings screaming for him to set off an explosion.
“Kirishima,” he tries again. He doesn’t know what else to say. “It’s just me.”
There’s a faint pik… pik… sound as Kirishima’s hardening recedes by a fraction. His face softens enough for his eyes to blink and dart around the room. Bakugou can feel him starting to shake through the connection of his grip, still a vice on his arm.
“Where – “ His voice grates, like the inside of his throat is as hardened as his skin.
“The dorms. It’s just me,” Bakugou repeats.
Kirishima’s gaze finally focuses on his face. Bakugou ignores his pounding heart and keeps his expression impassive.
“Just me,” he says a third time, feeling stupid but at a loss for any other words.
Kirishima looks down, and his eyes widen. In a rush he withdraws his hardening completely, jerking his hand back from Bakugou’s arm, and sits down heavily on the couch.
“Sh— shit.”
Bakugou quickly presses a hand to the shredded flesh of his forearm, both to stem the bleeding and to hide how badly he’s shaking. Kirishima has his own trembling hand shielding his face. He’s breathing hard, and through his fingers Bakugou can see him blinking rapidly, trying to control the tears starting at the corners of his eyes.
“Fuck.” Kirishima’s voice wavers and cracks. “I— I’m sorry man, I—“ He blows out a long, unsteady breath. “I dunno what… Are you—?” He lowers his hand enough to get another look at Bakugou’s arm. There’s no hiding it, so Bakugou stands there stupidly, blood leaking between his fingers.
“Ah shit—“ Kirishima reaches out, and just as quickly pulls back. “Fuck, man, I— I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—“ He stands up abruptly. “L— Lemme go get you a— there’s a first aid kit in —“
“Hey.” Bakugou’s voice stops him in his tracks. Kirishima sways. His eyes are still too wide, too wet. He’s still breathing too heavily, and even a few paces away in the dark Bakugou can see him shaking.
“I’ll be fine,” Bakugou says. “Sit down, I’m just gonna go get a towel.”
They stare each other down for a second, and Bakugou’s heart clenches when Kirishima nods and lowers himself slowly back down onto the couch, because he looks like a stranger, like a ghost.
Bakugou flees to the kitchen.
He’s nothing if not practical in a crisis, so he pops the fridge open to give himself enough light to see by without blinding himself, rinses his bleeding arm in the sink, and makes himself a makeshift bandage with a clean dishcloth and some duct tape from the junk drawer. It looks rough but the pressure of the tape is enough to slow the bleeding pretty effectively. He cleans up, quickly wiping all evidence of blood from the sink, countertops, and floor, then grabs a glass, fills it with water, and elbows the fridge closed. He only hesitates for a heartbeat in the silent dark before striding back into the common room.
Bakugou makes sure his footsteps are audible, heels landing heavy as he approaches the couch. He slows his pace and glances away to give Kirishima a moment to lift his head from his hands and slow his unsteady breaths, and Bakugou pushes down the bubble of panic threatening to pop in his chest because he doesn’t want to think about what this feeling is, what it means. Bakugou gets to the couch and holds the glass of water out to Kirishima without touching him.
“Here.”
Kirishima sniffs wetly and scrubs a forearm over his eyes before reaching up to take the glass. He doesn’t meet Bakugou’s gaze.
“Thanks,” he says to his knees.
Bakugou focuses on the bloodstains on the carpet, on the stuffing coming out of the couch cushions where Kirishima’s quirk shredded them, on the tatters of Kirishima’s shirt. In his head he catalogues a cleanup plan. That, at least, is simple and concrete. The shirt is a loss but Kirishima has others. Salt paste will lift the bloodstains on the carpet. An early visit to Recovery Girl for his arm. He can flip the couch cushions for the night and then kick down Ponytail’s door before anyone else wakes up to get her to make new ones.
Kirishima is still sitting immobile, holding the water like he doesn’t know what to do with it.
“Drink that,” Bakugou says, and immediately cringes inside when Kirishima flinches, almost spilling the water; his voice came out harsher than he meant it to. But Kirishima nods, takes a deep breath and shaky sip. He slowly manages to drink half the glass while Bakugou stands with his hands in his pockets and looks anywhere in the dark room but at him.
Kirishima sniffs again. “Bakugou,” he starts, and that panic in Bakugou’s chest swells to almost breaking because Kirishima sounds… not like Kirishima. He sounds… small, and vulnerable. He sounds scared. “I—“
“Don’t worry about it,” Bakugou cuts him off. He tries desperately to keep his voice level, casual. “It’s fine, forget about it.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth he regrets them.
“Ah. Yeah.” Kirishima’s voice is hoarse. His shoulders look suddenly hunched and guarded under the shreds of his ruined shirt.
“Let’s get to bed,” Bakugou forces himself on.
“Yeah that’s… that’s probably a good idea.”
They take the elevator up together. Neither of them looks at each other in the sickly glow of the night-dimmed hall lights. A few times Kirishima takes an unsteady breath like he’s about to say something, but never does.
When they get to Kirishima’s door, Bakugou finally turns a carefully neutral face to him. “You gonna be ok?” He hates himself because he can’t help but pray that Kirishima will lie.
The silence bears down.
“Yeah,” Kirishima says, finally. “Yeah I… I just need some rest.” A smile flickers over his face but it’s a pale imitation of his usual grin. “I’ll be ok. Thanks, man.”
Bakugou’s stupid, terrible prayer is answered. He nods, and lets Kirishima disappear into the dark and click the door shut between them. He lets it go, and feels something revolting, like Shigaraki’s decay, crumble in his chest.
He goes back downstairs to get the blood out of the carpet.
Alone, kneeling in the dark, he gets as far as pressing the salt paste mixture onto the stains before the bubble in his chest bursts and he can no longer control his breathing. He rides out the panic attack that he doesn’t understand, curled into himself on the floor, gripping his arms hard enough to bruise.