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Eijirou’s pretty sure Bakugou is bigger than life.
And, for lack of a better term, Eijirou is a nervous wreck.
He’s not sure if these feelings are normal, or… mutual, or what. He’d like to think those stolen glances and those brushes of hands are purposeful and full of something beyond what he can comprehend, but really, what does he know? He can be a little dense, and Bakugou is hard to read.
Bakugou is unpredictable, and spontaneous, and intense. Contradictory on the best of days, yet so consistent it makes Eijirou’s bones ache.
He thinks about it in the dark. When he’s cold in his dorm room and bundled under blankets that do very little to help, Eijirou thinks about what it’d be like to try containing that Bigger Than Lifeness—try to condense it to a digestible, considerable form. Though really, it’s an awfully roundabout way to say he’d like to know how Bakugou feels wrapped in his arms. It’s an awfully roundabout way to say he wants to bury his nose against the nape of Bakugou’s neck and just sit there, breathing, not thinking of anything because he doesn’t need to. It’s an awfully roundabout way to say he craves the warmth of another person.
So what if it’s his best friend? So what, if it helps him sleep at night? No one has to know—he doesn’t have to tell anyone and he sure as hell doesn’t have to act on it.
He’ll settle for looking when he shouldn’t and bantering when Bakugou lets them. He’ll settle for the brief closeness. Those stolen glances, those brushes of hands, as they study in Eijirou’s room under a fan that shouldn’t even be on when it’s this chilly. And when he breaks out a blanket or pretends to show off a new technique when he’s actually just trying to conserve heat, he also tries not to think about how he keeps the fan on for Bakugou. Because he’s bigger than life, and he radiates warmth like a space-heater gone rogue, and he’s never been too good at keeping cool.
All it took was one wayward comment of “It’s hot in here, shitty-hair, you’ll give yourself heatstroke,” for Eijirou to make a conscious effort to make his room more comfortable for Bakugou. Sometimes, on some days, in some ways, Eijirou thinks he may have overreacted. But Bakugou hasn’t complained about the cold, not once, so the fan will remain on. And he’ll stockpile blankets, instead, just on the off-chance that it stays that way for months to come.
As the first term comes and goes, and as their study sessions become more frequent—and often delve into nonsensical arguments about the pettiest of things just because Bakugou seems to come alive when proving himself right (because Eijirou almost always takes the stupidest positions to see Bakugou look happy, just for a minute)—Eijirou starts to think about it more. The days get colder, and shorter, and he exercises serious willpower not to turn on the heater, but he’s got it. He brings a bundle of thick wool blankets his mom bought him.
And Eijirou buys Bakugou a charm that smells like lavender. Lavender is supposed to help someone calm down, he thinks. He knows that Bakugou’s anger isn’t always anger, it’s just how he metabolizes all of his emotions. It’s the only way he knows how to get them out. And maybe it’s a stupid thought, to think a charm would help him out—but maybe Bakugou will like the smell of lavender, and maybe it’ll be a bonus that it helps him feel less anxious and more at ease.
Come second term, falling back into the habit of studying together is easy.
They usually sit on Eijirou’s floor, but the bed is more welcoming for this time of year. Eijirou sets the pillows aside and smooths out the blanket. Out come the textbooks and computers and assignment lists, out come pencils and pens and a highlighter or two that rarely, if ever, get used. Bakugou hops up, and Eijirou joins him.
Bakugou always gets this uber-serious face when he focuses hard on something. His brows twitch down and he has his jaw clenched. Every so often, he’ll rub his nose with the side of his finger or twist his mouth as he strains for an answer. And sometimes, if Eijirou is really lucky, he’ll hear Bakugou start to murmur aloud to himself as he processes the words on the page.
(Sometimes he’ll come to conclusions and snicker to himself and write it down faster than Eijirou ever could.)
Not for the first time, Eijirou wonders what it’d feel like to kiss him.
This time, he can’t stop thinking about it. It’s a little whirlpool in his head that just keeps spinning and he tries not to lose himself in staring too hard. He knocks his gaze back down to his books but it doesn’t last long before he’s looking up again.
And this time, Bakugou’s looking back.
Eijirou’s face gets hot and his heart stutters in his chest. He picks the corner of the textbook page with the side of his nail.
Bakugou’s eyes are really pretty.
“What are you lookin’ at?” Bakugou asks, in perhaps the least-inflammatory way he can muster. Eijirou doesn’t think he’s ever heard Bakugou sound quite that gentle before, and it does something weird to the inside of his stomach, just beneath his ribs.
“I, uh—” Eijirou snaps his attention back down. The words swim on the pages and he couldn’t focus if he tried. “Well…”
He’s thinking about the nighttime and the sweater he has on. He’s thinking about the lavender charm he has yet to give to Bakugou because he’s nervous Bakugou will think it’s dumb. He’s thinking about what it’d be like to kiss a guy, and tries to figure out what his role model would do. He doesn’t want to mess this up and he doesn’t want to make it weird.
Because Bakugou’s bigger than life, and Eijirou is a nervous wreck.
Just say it, he thinks. Just say it. Blurt it out. You talk all the time, what’s so hard about this?
“Do you ever think about kissing?” Eijirou asks. It doesn’t hit him, at first, just how dumb that question is. That embarrassment hits later, somewhere between Bakugou staring at him and Bakugou finally replying with:
“What?”
“Me,” Eijirou says, and he’s pretty sure he’s just making it worse, but there’s no going back now. “Us—kissing, do you ever think about it?”
“Do you?” asks Bakugou. Eijirou inhales.
“Yes,” he says.
“So do it, then,” Bakugou says, leaning forward in a manner that isn’t inviting so much as it is accusing.
For a moment, Eijirou isn’t sure what to do. He doesn’t know if that’s a joke or if it’s a demand, but then again, Bakugou wouldn’t be so cruel as to mess with him like that. And even if he was, Eijirou would be able to shake it off. He thinks so, at least. He hopes so.
The adrenaline pumping through Eijirou’s veins doesn’t help his case any. He leans forward a little too fast, and his hands come down to support himself on the textbooks rather than the bed. He thinks he hears a page crinkle but he doesn’t have half the mind to concern himself with that right now.
He’s never done this before, and he thinks it’s a little bit extremely obvious when he and Bakugou’s noses bump and he thinks he keeps his eyes open a little too long but he can’t help it, how is he supposed to know where to go otherwise? Their lips finally touch, it’s a little cold and a little warm at the same time. The feeling is nice enough, but the embarrassment outweighs it when he pulls away just about as quickly as he’d lunged.
Bakugou glares like Eijirou had tried to kill his cat.
“What was that?” Bakugou asks.
That’s not a good sign. Eijirou rubs the back of his neck.
“A kiss?” he replies.
“No the fuck it wasn’t,” Bakugou says.
When Bakugou starts to close the textbooks, Eijirou fears he did something unforgivable. His heart sinks in his chest, only to rise back up to his throat as Bakugou loses patience and shoves the books aside instead. Bakugou scoots closer on the bed, taking the space the books previously held, and now they’re close. Their knees touch, and somehow this feels a lot more intimate than when their mouths met just a minute ago.
“Well?” says Bakugou, gesturing to himself. “Try it again—and slowly, idiot.”
Eijirou takes a couple mindful breaths. His head is full of cotton and he’s suddenly too aware of his tongue. He shakes it off, steels himself, and decides he’ll try a different approach.
Taking it slowly like this, he starts to complicate it to an unrecognizable degree. To compensate, he brings his hands up to Bakugou’s face, and the skin he finds there is soft. The hair is soft. The ears are soft. Bakugou’s all hard-edges and angry outbursts but he’s soft, taken slow like this, condensed into a digestible form that’s more than palatable, and Eijirou leans in—slowly.
Their noses still bump but it’s more purposeful this time, like a tease or a reference of what’s to come, a check that it’s what they both want. Bakugou doesn’t say anything. Their eyes remain open, for a little bit, though they’re half-lidded and waiting. It’s patience, and it’s a virtue, and it’s a privilege to see Bakugou like this. It’s a privilege that Eijirou will never take for granted.
Eijirou tilts his head one way, and Bakugou responds by tilting his head the other. They’re close, and Eijirou forgets if he’s supposed to not breathe or if there’s a rule against it—is it suffocating? Is he suffocating?
Bakugou rests a hand on one of Eijirou’s, and he really does run warm. He’s a furnace and Eijirou can’t even feel the cold of the room anymore. His chest fills with something fuzzy, like a rabbit in his ribs. It’s warm, and he wants to sit like this forever.
Even if he suffocates, he wants to sit like this forever.
It’s not eventful, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s just their lips and their hands. It’s just the two of them in a cold room on a firm bed with their knees touching and their breaths ghosting because they’ve both forgotten to pull away.
Until, finally, they do.
Even when they do, it’s not completely. There’s this second where they contemplate a third one—or, Eijirou does, at least, and since Bakugou doesn’t pull away, he thinks he might be down for it. But Eijirou doesn’t want to push his luck, and he doesn’t want to monopolize Bakugou’s time.
And he kind of doesn’t want to look away from Bakugou’s face, because it’s flushed and his pupils are blown and he looks really calm.
Like a dam, it breaks, and they both remove themselves from one another. They separate back into their own little spaces.
Eijirou’s smiling like an idiot. He doesn’t need a mirror to be able to see that. He’s smiling like an idiot, this big dopey grin on his face, and his mouth feels numb and oversensitive all at the same time. His lips are tingling and he bites them to push that feeling away, yet he wants to renew it just a second later.
It doesn’t seem that Bakugou’s much better, because even though he’s manhandling their textbooks back to their original positions, he keeps brushing his mouth with the back of his hand and then prodding his bottom lip with the back of his thumb like he’s trying to cover up the fact that he feels something.
“I have something to give you,” blurts Eijirou, scrambling to his feet and hurrying to his desk. After that, he’s pretty sure he’s got all the confidence in the world to give Bakugou the charm. Even if the first kiss wasn’t great—or maybe even a kiss—he thinks maybe he can make up for it by adding this one little nice thing to the collection.
Before he can get even a foot away from the bed, though, Bakugou snatches his wrist.
There’s no pulling, there’s no forcing, there’s just that immediate grab and a hold to keep him still. Eijirou turns.
“Save it,” Bakugou says. He refuses to make eye contact. At first, Eijirou thinks that to be a sign of something bad. But then Bakugou adds, “For tomorrow. Save it.”
“For tomorrow?” asks Eijirou.
“Yeah, dumbass,” and now Bakugou’s defensive, recoiling from Eijirou and snatching a textbook up into his lap. “When I take you out to lunch. Save it for then.”
Unable to wrap his head around what he just heard, Eijirou parrots, “When you take me out to lunch? Tomorrow?”
“Are you deaf?” Bakugou asks, finally meeting Eijirou’s gaze. Bakugou’s eye twitches, but there’s no way Eijirou can take that frustration seriously when Bakugou’s still flushed pink to the tips of his ears—not that Eijirou’s any better, himself. “Tomorrow. Me, you. Lunch. Twelve-thirty. And for the love of God, practice on a pillow or something—cardboard cutouts are better kissers than you are.”
“So you practice on cardboard cutouts?” Eijirou asks. The look Bakugou gives him borders on murderous, so he brings his hands up in surrender. “Hey, I’m not judging! That’s manly, shows you care.”
“We’re not having this conversation,” says Bakugou. He flips a few pages ahead in the textbook. “Go turn off that stupid fan, would ya? You’ll die of hypothermia at this rate.”
Yeah… Eijirou definitely overreacted with that one. He’ll do better this time, though.
Starting with the fan, then moving onto the pillow.
And a few YouTube tutorials on how to properly kiss a person bigger than life.