Archive of Our Own ^beta

Akihiko yawned as he wove a steady path through the mall; he and Shiraishi were planning on meeting at the food court so they could eat lunch before they walked around all afternoon. They hadn’t had many chances to get together since middle school, what with Shiraishi attending a private art school over in Kanagawa prefecture while Akihiko stayed in Musutafu. Not that Akihiko particularly enjoyed being reminded of middle school; it had ended on a sour note and started on a sourer one—with all the sourest moments in between. 

He wasn’t proud of who he’d been. Who he still was, more often than not. He was knocked out of his bitter mid-morning musings by an arm slung around his shoulders. 

“What’s got ya down, horsey?” Which was a joke that had never and still didn’t make sense to Akihiko. He wondered what mental hoops Shiraishi had jumped through in order to conceive of it in the first place. 

“Shut the hell up,” he chuckled. “It’s too early for lunch,” he yawned again. 

“Just because you have the sleep schedule of an owl doesn’t mean we all think that breakfast should get ate at two in the afternoon,” Shiraishi frowned, “aw, they got rid of the shaved ice stall.”

“Shaved ice isn’t lunch,” he said, eyeing Shiraishi’s gaunt figure suspiciously, “what are they feeding you there?”

“Pencil lead,” said Shiraishi, motioning as if he was chomping down on a pocky. Akihiko shuddered and unceremoniously dumped Shiraishi’s arm off his shoulder. 

“C’mon, let’s get some food.”

They were midway through sitting down at their table—Akihiko with his American-style burger and fries, and Shiraishi with his weird spicy beef that he got every time they went here—when Akihiko’s attention caught on a voice at the edge of the clusters of tables. 

“Kacchan,” the voice implored, and it was something he’d heard ten million times so he stiffened up, “but I…” the rest of the sentence was largely inaudible, but it was just enough for Akihiko’s head to swivel to the right to catch sight of the speaker. 

Sure enough, there stood Midoriya and Bakugou, somehow managing to be less than a foot from each other without causing major injury on one or both counts. It was a little surprising, because midway through middle school Akihiko had developed (and furthermore never truly been able to disprove) the theory that Midoriya and Bakugou were like poles of a magnet with the same charge: if they got too close, they’d rocket away from each other. 

He was suddenly glad for the shroud of people that he’d been annoyed by earlier, hiding him from view. But of course he couldn’t have expected Midoriya’s eyes to just pass right over him and Shiraishi—Midoriya had known Shiraishi for as long as he and Bakugou had known each other, and come middle school Akihiko had been a constant as well. Midoriya had always been too keen for his own good. 

Akihiko made awkward eye contact with his half-eaten burger. He glanced up at Shiraishi, who looked like he hadn’t yet noticed the boy they’d tormented throughout middle school (longer, on Shiraishi’s part) as well as the boy that had led the charge in said boy’s torment—not that all of the blame rested on Bakugou’s shoulders. He just gave them the ideas, they were the ones that ran with them. 

“Kacchan, I think that’s Kimura and Shiraishi!” Midoriya’s voice sounded closer than before. “We should go say hi!”

“Who?” Bakugou grunted. Figured—Midoriya, who had every reason to hate them, remembered their names, while Bakugou (who he had considered a friend), didn’t even remember who they were. He’d known Shiraishi since preschool, why the hell didn’t he remember him?

“Fingers and Pretty Boy?” 

Akihiko frowned. Pretty Boy? He knew that Bakugou had nicknames like that for people, but he couldn’t remember being called anything but extra or hey, you by Bakugou in middle school. Where did Pretty Boy come from? Sure, he was popular with the ladies—he’d had a few girlfriends in middle school, and he was currently dating Honda-chan from class A-5, with her eyes like charcoal and her shiny cropped hair, the slight blush she wore when he took her out to see the sakura blossoms—it didn’t matter, he wasn’t there to wax poetic about his girlfriend. The point was that Bakugou remembering him as Pretty Boy was weird. 

“Oh,” said Bakugou, close enough to their table by then that even unobservant Shiraishi had looked up and noticed them. “The ones that hung around me all the time?”

“Yep! You were always getting on them for smoking.”

How did Midoriya even remember that? Shiraishi had quit smoking after middle school—the dorms at his school had a no-smoking policy, and he didn’t go out often enough for it to really be worth it, he said—but Akihiko’s habit stuck around like dried glue. Honda-chan hated the smell, but quitting was too much effort, so Akihiko just started using cologne. 

Akihiko looked up when he saw two figures park themselves in his periphery. Shiraishi was unabashedly staring at Midoriya and Bakugou, munching on—was that one of his fries? He scowled and snatched a piece of spicy beef in retribution, pausing only once the beef was in his mouth and he remembered why he didn’t order that shit. Discreetly, he spit the half-chewed meal into his napkin. 

“Hi guys! Shiraishi and Kimura, right? We went to school together,” Midoriya said, smiling widely and bouncing on the balls of his feet. Despite the heat, he was wearing a hoodie and a pair of loose pants—the same sort of thing he’d wear on weekends in middle school. Even with the modest clothes, it would take a blind man to miss the way he’d filled out. Bakugou stood by his side, fists shoved in the pockets of his slouchy pants. He looked like a sulky teenager being forced to greet his parents’ friends. The mental image almost made Akihiko laugh despite himself. 

“Deku,” Shiraishi greeted, through a mouthful of rice. “Bakugou.”

“Oh, you remember me?” Midoriya asked, seeming almost surprised. 

Of course we do, Akihiko almost said, it’s not like your specter haunts my waking nightmares or anything. It’s not like you land somewhere near the top of my list of regrets or anything. 

Instead he said, “yeah. ’Course. Midoriya.”

Midoriya’s smile only grew brighter, and Akihiko couldn’t help but wonder why that was, when he was faced with the three people who’d bullied him the most. Maybe he was one of those people that smiled as they murdered someone. Maybe he was getting ready to deal out retribution. Somewhere deep inside, he knew Midoriya was too good a person for something like that.

“Awesome! It’s been awhile, huh?” Midoriya asked, instead of saying something like come out back with me so I can finally have my revenge. “Mind if we join you?” He lifted his tray a bit to emphasize his point. 

Yes, Akihiko minded very much, but he was suddenly feeling very guilty and so all he could do was squeak out a half-formed “sure.” This earned him a glare from Shiraishi; Akihiko became very invested in the particular shape of a paper shopping bag that sat on the table to his left. 

Bakugou dragged an extra chair from the empty table behind them instead of sitting in the chair opposite of Midoriya, putting himself in between Midoriya and Shiraishi. Akihiko had to scoot his chair over to the left a bit to keep from brushing shoulders with Midoriya. 

“So, Shiraishi, you’re going to an art school, right?”

Shiraishi nodded, but said nothing else. He was eyeing the centimeter of air between Midoriya and Bakugou’s shoulders with an inscrutable gaze. 

“What about you, Kimura? I don’t think I ever heard.”

Before Akihiko could open his mouth, Bakugou grunted, “Musutafu Municipal.” 

Akihiko’s eyebrows rose to his hairline in shock. Bakugou couldn’t remember his name—which he was pretty sure he’d reminded Bakugou of almost every week—but he could remember which high school he was going to even though he’d barely even mentioned it in passing? He’d never even had a proper conversation with Bakugou about it, really—he’d just talked about it with Shiraishi while Bakugou was in earshot. 

“Oh, they’ve got a good soccer team, don’t they? Do you still play?”

Akihiko wondered why this conversation was making him feel so hunted. “Yeah, uh, yeah.” He wasn’t a starter, yet, but their coach said it was likely to happen before this batch of third years quit so they could prepare for exams. 

“Quit interrogating them, nerd,” said Bakugou, rolling his eyes. He scooted their basket of dumplings closer to Midoriya. “Eat.”

They proceeded to eat in a semi-awkward silence—awkward on his and Shiraishi’s parts, at least, since Midoriya and Bakugou seemed generally unaffected by the stifling miasma of bad history that sat on the tabletop like a paperweight. 

“So…” ventured Shiraishi, the first to be done, “how’d you hide a quirk for that long?” He looked sort of like talking to Midoriya put a bad taste in his mouth, but clearly his curiosity pushed him past the revulsion he felt at the fact. 

Midoriya immediately turned bright red, waving his hands in front of his face as he stuttered. Akihiko tracked the thick knot of scar tissue on his right hand, and couldn’t remember if it’d always been there or if it was something new. 

“He didn’t know,” grunted Bakugou, since Midoriya’s most coherent word thus far had been a sharply squeaked um! He slurped up a few more noodles before jerking his head towards Midoriya. “Fucker would’a exploded. Shit’s so intense it breaks his bones.”

Akihiko nodded—he’d heard of the phenomenon of quirks that hid themselves to protect the user, ones that would kill or destroy the person if they manifested in childhood. It felt wrong for Midoriya of all people to have one of those. 

“You got diagnosed though, yeah?” Shiraishi squinted. 

“Ah,” Midoriya hunched over in his seat, still tomato-red but having finally regained his footing. He scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “My doctor apparently didn’t do a very thorough job of checking, and my mom didn’t know better. He just checked my foot, instead of doing all of the genetic testing.”

Akihiko didn’t have a clue what feet had to do with anything, but he nodded as if he understood. 

Shiraishi shrugged, like he’d decided it wasn’t worth further questioning. Akihiko watched in sick fascination and Bakugou leaned over to hiss something in Midoriya’s ear, only to be met with a quelling glare from the boy that Akihiko could only ever remember cowering in the face of their intimidation. Shiraishi didn’t miss the interaction either. 

“Let yourself get tamed by Deku?” Shiraishi teased, like he hadn’t just taken a look at the angriest bear in the forest and decided that rather than a stick he’d be poking it with the tip of a sword. 

Rather than being met with explosions, though, Bakugou only snarled in Shiraishi’s general direction.  

Akihiko gulped down his last fry with a growing relief at the base of his chest. “So, uh,” he cleared his throat, wanting to escape and forget that this had ever happened. He sort of wanted to run away, never talk to or look at anyone from middle school ever again. Take refuge in Honda-chan’s sweet perfume, horse around with his buddies from soccer club, maybe forget that he’d ever been a bad enough person to push around some kid whose only real crime was being quirkless. 

“I have to go to the restroom, excuse me,” Midoriya said, pushing his chair out with an abrupt screech. “Play nice, Kacchan.”

The words felt trapping; it felt like he was stuck here until Midoriya bid them leave. He glared at the neon sign above the onigiri shop, wondering why guilt was such a powerful motivator. 

“What’s up with you and Deku?” Shiraishi asked carelessly. “You’re bein’ nice to him. ’S weird.”

Bakugou scowled, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. “None of your fuckin’ business, moron.”

Akihiko opened his mouth, glanced over to Shiraishi, closed it again. Why was he so ashamed to ask…? He thought peer pressure didn’t affect him anymore, not like it had in middle school. Caged in by Shiraishi and Bakugou, he felt small again. He remembered, now, why he’d stepped on people smaller than him. 

“Is Mido—“ he scratched his chin, still unsure. Both Bakugou and Shiraishi looked at him. 

“Is he what?” Bakugou snapped. 

Akihiko wasn’t sure, now that he’d started. He wanted to ask is Midoriya okay? but now that he thought about it it was a really weird question to ask, and what he really wanted to know was am I forgiven but—why would he be? It was a dumb question. He huffed and sunk lower in his seat, mirroring Bakugou’s defensive posture. Shiraishi was still sprawled, open and nonchalant. He’d always been better about rolling with the punches. 

Or throwing them, he guessed. 

“I dunno,” he said, mournfully, finally. “I guess—I dunno.”

“Yeah,” said Bakugou, still sharp and angry but in a way where it didn’t sound pointed anymore. He wondered when Bakugou had learned how to do that. “He does that. ’S infuriating.”

“You’re… friends, then?” Akihiko ventured, and somehow it felt too personal for the crowded din of a food court, even if it wasn’t. 

Bakugou grunted in a way that meant yes. He finished the broth of his soup, swallowed contemplatively. 

“He forgives you, y’know,” he said, like he finally understood what Akihiko had been struggling to force past the thick lump in his throat. “He shouldn’t, but he does.”

Shiraishi shrugged. “Never asked for his forgiveness,” he said.

“Yeah,” Bakugou handed them both a barked laugh, something more genuine that they’d ever heard from his mouth. It suddenly dawned on Akihiko how miserable Bakugou was in middle school, and he wondered how anybody could move on from that kind of constant anger. Midoriya, for all they’d tried to make his life a living hell, had probably been happier than the three of them combined. “He does that. Forgives people who don’t ask for it. Who don’t deserve it.” He muttered the last part. 

Akihiko didn’t think he was talking about Shiraishi when he said it. 

“He’s…” Akihiko started, but never managed to find the end. Midoriya sat back down, a waft of air carrying over the strong, unplaceable scent of the hand soap in the bathrooms and some sort of herbal cologne that he’d smelled before. 

Then there was a hand on Bakugou’s shoulder, and it was weird to see the difference between them being bridged in such an amicable way. He hadn’t even known he’d still been tensed for Bakugou to jump at Midoriya any second until he watched the boy slump under the gentle squeeze of Midoriya’s scarred hand. 

“Well, we have to go now,” said Midoriya, somehow managing to look regretful at the words, like it’d been a pleasure to have a conversation with his middle school bullies. “We’re expected back at the dorms. It was nice seeing you again!”

As soon as they’d arrived, they left, carrying their trays with them and jostling each other with a kind of practiced ease that he never thought could apply to those two. He watched their retreating backs, and realized that knowing that they were still together—after it all—didn’t settle under his skin as wrongly as it should’ve. 

“Shut up,” he laughed, moving to put Honda-chan in a headlock before the piercing gaze of the shopkeeper halted him in his tracks. He settled for an arm slung heavy over her shoulders. 

He and Shiraishi hadn’t talked about seeing Midoriya and Bakugou after they’d gone, but it still weighed on Akihiko a little. He could tell it didn’t weigh on Shiraishi the same way, but the other boy had been oddly quiet and contemplative for the rest of the day. 

“No, I’m serious!” She cried, brandishing the two taiyaki so close to his face that the words on the packaging blurred. “I found a bone in this flavor once.”

Akihiko snorted, slapping a hand over his mouth at the sound. “They don’t even have animal products in them!”

Honda-chan paused and considered. “Eggs.”

“Point.”

“Wait, do they have eggs? Lemme…” she squinted at the ingredients list. 

The convenience store door chimed open. Akihiko looked over briefly, but quickly turned his attention back to his girlfriend. 

“A-ha! Eggs!” She said, triumphantly holding up the package. 

“That’s why I only buy from street vendors,” said Akihiko, squeezing the arm that held her a little bit. She laughed and ducked out from under him. 

“Pretentious idiot,” she teased, kicking the meat just below his ankle. 

“Ow,” he whined, not quite feigning the pain that lanced through his leg at the contact. “Watch the goods, Honda-chan, this is premium starting forward ankle meat.”

She grimaced. “Never refer to any part of your body as meat ever again.”

He winked. “Not even my—“

In retrospect, he deserved the nut tap he’d been served. 

It was such that he came face-to-face with Midoriya for the second time that year: bent in half in the sweets aisle, being watched over by a smug and unrepentant girlfriend. 

Or, well. Face-to-familiar red shoe. As stated previously, he was bent in half. 

“Oh, Kimura, hi!” He heard, mid-wince. The shoes shuffled forward a bit, before stopping and shifting nervously. “Uh, are you alright?”

“He’s fine,” Honda-chan said cheerfully. “He deserved it. I’m Honda Emi, Kimura’s girlfriend. How do you know him?”

“A-ah! Hello! I went to middle school with Kimura, we sort of hung out together. Midoriya Izuku.”

It was one way to put it, he supposed. 

“You go to Yuuei, don’t you? Bone-breaking boy? My little sisters are in love with you.”

Akihiko didn’t need to be looking at Midoriya’s face to know it had gone completely red. “R-really? Oh, um, thanks? Uh,” he faltered. “Uh, yeah.”

“Deku-kun!” A girl chirped, and Akihiko had never looked up so fast in his life. He winced and gripped the back of his neck when it gave him minor whiplash. 

“Uraraka!” Midoriya near-screeched, jumping at the call. Akihiko’s nuts finally recovered enough for him to straighten up. 

A brown-haired, female version of Midoriya stood behind his shoulder, leveling both Akihiko and Honda-chan with a mild glare. Akihiko wondered what for. 

“Ah, Uraraka, this is Kimura Akihiko, we went to middle school together.”

“Is he one of your friends?” Uraraka asked, tilting her head. She didn’t seem to know anything about his middle school life, if the innocent way she asked was any indication. 

“Sort of?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “We hung out around each other, but we were never really close. He was more Kacchan’s friend than mine.”

At the sound of Bakugou’s nickname, she tensed—she eyed him suspiciously, muttering something under her breath, but Midoriya planted a hand on her forearm and she forcibly relaxed. 

Akihiko didn’t know what came over him next. He was just staring at Midoriya’s hand, so close to Uraraka’s own, and he blurted out, “Midoriya, is this your girlfriend?”

As soon as he said it, he cursed himself for his bluntness—and then wondered if Midoriya was popular in Yuuei. He had to be, right? With such a powerful quirk. Why had this girl called him Deku? Why would anybody call him that, these days, when he wasn’t useless anymore?

“No,” said Midoriya, with little enough blushing and stammering that it was clear this had been asked before, “we’re just, ah, just friends.” He jerked his hand away from her like he’d been burned, then, and looked to the ceiling with enough intent that it was clear he was more interested in avoidance than the—actually, that was a really weird-shaped stain. He shook his head, looking back down. 

Uraraka’s lips were pursed into a thin line, and she moved to cross her arms tightly. Akihiko winced at his own carelessness—this was clearly a tender topic. Akihiko wondered who’d confessed, but the guilty hunch of Midoriya’s shoulders soon answered the question for him. 

It was weird, because in middle school he jumped at the first sign of mild acceptance from even the worst of his bullies. There were a few weeks where Bakugou let Midoriya tag along after them with minimal grumbling and pushback, and Midoriya had taken that as basically a love confession—

Oh. 

Oh no. 

He stiffened at the realization, suddenly growing frantic with his need to get away. What was it about Midoriya that made him want to scurry away, tail between his legs?

“I need to—“ he said, making a clean one-eighty and stepping to make a bee-line towards the restrooms. 

“What?” Asked Honda-chan, confusion in her voice. 

“Just— gotta take a huge dump, like a really urgent shit, bye-bye,” he said, disappearing before Honda-chan could get in another word and shutting himself into one of the stalls. 

He emerged only when Honda-chan started knocking angrily at the door, shoulders hunched up to his ears and looking around furtively. 

“What the hell was that about?” She demanded, as they left the convenience store. 

“Sorry,” he laughed. “I just—I realized something about Midoriya, I think. I just had to process it.”

Honda-chan looked at him for a long minute, searching for something, before she shrugged, satisfied. “Whatever. Be weird all you want. Let’s go watch a movie.”

“Okay,” he said, even though he hated movies, and let his girlfriend drag him to see Vesuvius II: The Reckoning. 

Akihiko was out with Honda-chan again—she’d told him that he could start calling her Emi, but he wasn’t so sure he was ready for that yet—when he saw Bakugou. It was strange, how he hadn’t seen Bakugou or Midoriya for a little over a year and then suddenly he was seeing them everywhere, like the universe had decided not to let them meet until they were all ready. Not that Akihiko felt very ready—every time he saw one of them, he got the sense of moving backwards while being still—the way standing ankle-deep in the waves while they receded felt. Like it wasn’t him that was moving, but the world. 

They were on a walk, he and Honda-chan, hand-in-hand in the way that had old women titter disapprovingly at their PDA. It was Victory Day, so everyone was off work and school and  the streets of Musutafu were packed. 

“Aw, c’mon,” one of the clump of boys in front of them cried beseechingly. They were all jockeying for—something, it wasn’t particularly clear, but they shifted and pulsed like a throbbing wound in the sidewalk. “He totally likes you!”

“Shut the fuck up, Dunce Face,” a familiar voice growled. Akihiko looked to the sky and wondered at his terrible luck. 

“I’m serious,” the boy, christened Dunce Face, wheedled, and the redhead and boy with black hair shifted to the left, giving Akihiko a view of Dunce Face elbowing Bakugou insistently. “He’s all: you’re so amazing, Kacchan! Wow, Kacchan! So cool, Kacchan! He’d totally jump your bones—“

Bakugou turned to clamp a hand over the yellow-blond’s face, but caught sight of Akihiko before he could do anything like explode some poor boy’s face off. Their eyes met, and their faces turned stricken at the same time. 

Nothing happened, though, because Bakugou’s face slackened into something more accepting. To his surprise, Bakugou actually acknowledged him—just one curt nod. Akihiko lifted his free hand to wave back, but Bakugou had already released his friend and faced forward again. 

“Do you know him?” Honda-chan whispered, leaning in close. Akihiko caught a whiff of her disgusting shampoo and smiled, relaxing. He really did love her. 

“That’s Bakugou,” he said, pecking her on the cheek—just because he could. “I told you about him, didn’t I?”

“Hm, the one you were friends with in middle school?” 

Akihiko nodded, humming. 

“Weird that you’re seeing him—oh, we’re pretty close to Yuuei, aren’t we? Must be why.”

Akihiko nodded again, before spotting a takoyaki stand and dragging Honda-chan off for a snack. 

Somehow, in the press of the crowd, he managed to forget the way that Bakugou’s friend had been trying to convince him that Midoriya liked him. 

Akihiko looked at the message space and the blinking cursor, gnawing on his lip in thought. In the end, he decided to send the message—to Shiraishi, he wrote: yo, i think midoriya has a crush on bakugou. 

He waited a few minutes, texting Emi about her choice in footwear in the meanwhile—Emi was the least fashionable girl he’d ever met, and Akihiko’s mom worked in the fashion industry—before there was another chime from LINE. 

Shiraishi’s message said: old news. Then a few seconds later, he’s been in love with bakugou since always. Then, with a pause as if he was thinking about it, everybody knew but them. Akihiko started to type something back when a fourth message came in, and u i guess lol. unobservant moron. 

Akihiko rolled his eyes, and he and Shiraishi fell into a scathing back-and-forth. Emi settled on the red kitten heels, since they matched her earrings. Akihiko thought about what it would be like to be in love with the same person your whole life—even when they hated you—and if it sounded romantic or sad. 

Akihiko was of the opinion that karaoke in the summer—no matter the quality of the air conditioning—was a resoundingly poor decision. Unfortunately, nobody had asked his opinion, and Tomo, the soccer club’s reserve goalie, had a really compelling sad puppy face. 

So there he was, sweating like a pig in an event room with about half of the soccer club, watching two of their mid-fielders sing a joke song off-key and feeling really foolish for having tried his best singing an oldie earlier. Then Tomo sidled up to him, squeezed his waist until he squeaked, and informed him that more people would be coming soon. 

“One of my buds from Mustafa Middle,” he said, sipping noisily on a salted plum lemonade. The noise was clearly intentional, because the cup was still three-quarters full. “He goes to Yuuei now. He’s bringing a couple of friends with him, ‘cause I said he could. You went to school with some Yuuei kids too, right?”

Akihiko nodded, sighing deep and beleaguered. He then shoved a spoonful of half-melted shaved ice in his mouth, and pretended it made him feel better. 

“Oh, they’re here. Yo, Kiri!”

Akihiko looked to the room’s entrance, where a boy with spiky red hair was walking in, a big smile on his face. Behind him—and Akihiko didn’t even know why he was surprised, anymore—was a sulking Bakugou with a wide-eyed Midoriya nestled into his side. They were accompanied by two other people—Dunce Face, the kid that had been bothering Bakugou on Victory Day, and a pink-skinned girl that Tomo also seemed to know.

He faintly heard Midoriya ask is that Kimura? under the mid-fielder’s extended screech, and watched as Bakugou and Midoriya made their way over to the corner booth he’d tucked himself away in. 

“What are the odds?” Midoriya asked. Akihiko eyed the space—or lack of such—between them, and wondered when that had happened. “I feel like we’ve been seeing you everywhere lately, and after so long without.” 

“Yeah,” said Akihiko, mouth suddenly dry when he noticed the hand on Midoriya’s waist. “Uh, yeah. Super… super crazy.”

Bakugou seemed to notice his line of sight, because he leveled Akihiko with a piercing glare and pulled Midoriya in further. There was a loud burst of laughter from behind them as the pink-skinned girl said something that had the boys in stitches. 

Akihiko gestured vaguely at Bakugou and Midoriya. “So, you… uh… you two?”

Midoriya beamed, “Kirishima finally convinced Kacchan to confess!” He said, clasping his hands together.  He took Akihiko’s question as an invitation, sliding into the booth and taking Bakugou with him. “You have no idea how long I had to wait.”

Bakugou growled. “Shitty nerd, you could’ve confessed.”

Midoriya rolled his eyes. “Yeah, because that would’ve gone over well. Besides, I didn’t know when you’d be ready for something like that! I had to wait for you to come to me.”

Akihiko sort of wanted to ask how long Bakugou had liked Midoriya, and how nobody else had noticed, and how long Midoriya had known that Bakugou liked Midoriya, but he had no idea how to go about it. So he nodded mutely, and felt even more uncomfortable than he had been when he’d arrived. 

“Are you still dating that girl… what was her name… Honda? She seemed sweet.”

“Oh, Emi? Yeah, we’re still together,” he blushed, but felt himself ease up. Emi was safe conversation to make. “Yeah, she’s great.”

“I’m happy for you. You seem a lot happier now,” said Midoriya, before turning to the drink menu. 

You seem a lot happier now. Simple words, something easily slipped into casual conversation, but there was a weight behind them. Akihiko didn’t know what the weight meant. Probably only Midoriya did—he’d always been like that, even in middle school. Looked at people like he knew more about them than they did themselves. It was unnerving then. Akihiko was chagrined to know that it was still unnerving now. 

He wondered if Midoriya knew he did things like that, or if he was oblivious to the own piercing nature of his eyes. Akihiko could remember that in middle school—the few times he’d spared a stray thought to Midoriya—he’d sometimes considered if Midoriya secretly had some sort of analysis or future prediction quirk. 

He stole a glance at the couple, stuck in their own little bubble as they were. They’d come a long way since middle school. 

A karaoke room was no place to have thoughts like these, he reminded himself. He took one last bite of his shaved ice and got up to sing another song.