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“Sooo,” Kirishima trailed off. “‘Always on my mind’, huh?”
Bakugou looked up from his book, on the bed next to Kirishima. They’ve been hanging out all morning, the rain bleeding the times together into one continuously long and grey day. Bakugou had sat closer to his balcony, using the pillow from the head of his bed as a cushion as he leaned against the wall. Kirishima opted to lean against the wall without any cushion, switching between scrolling through his phone or looking out the glass sliding door to stare at the rain.
The two had officially been dating for two days—two entire days!—after a semi-rocky confession. Kirishima couldn’t even believe it, he didn’t really expect them to be dating at any point of his time at UA; it was pretty much a pipe dream for a chunk of their first year. Now that it’s a reality, he can’t help but think that he’s the luckiest guy in the world.
Even luckier, in fact, because the entire school has been given an extended four day weekend, so the two have been hanging out in each other’s rooms since. After Kirishima had (miraculously) gotten Bakugou to go back to sleep with him on Sunday morning, the two had woken up to heavy rain pelting the side of the dorm building. A few minutes into being awake, an announcement was sent out stating that a part of the school building needed a few days for repairs due to water damage.
At least, that’s what Kirishima thinks it said, considering he’d been distracted by the fact that his arms were wrapped around Bakugou and he was letting him do it. Bakugou had been the one holding his phone and reading the announcement, pressed up against Kirishima like the whole thing was as simple as sitting in a chair. Cuddling. Spooning.
Can we just go back to that, though? Bakugou actually has romantic feelings for him, and now they’re dating. Dating . Like actually, real life, “I like you” “I like you, too” dating. Dating as in “wow we can and will kiss one day”. Dating as in “ I’ve been acting like such a fucking moron for weeks because of you ” and dating as in “ Bakugou, I like you a lot. Romantically ”.
“—shima.”
Dating as in “ You’re always on my fucking mind ”.
“—Shitty Hair. Oi .”
Did Bakugou actually mean that?
“Oi!! ”
Thunk. Kirishima felt something knock against the side of his head—nothing too hard that would hurt, but still enough to snap him out of his train of thought. Rubbing his head, he turned to the source of whatever hit him, only to find Bakugou (his boyfriend , oh man) scowling at him. One hand was raised and oh, he must’ve been what hit Kirishima’s head. Bakugou sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fucking hell, you ask a question and then fucking space out before you get an answer?”
Kirishima blinked before realizing what he was talking about. “Oh! Oh damn, I guess I did. What did you say, dude?”
Bakugou crossed his arms over his chest. “I just asked about what you said, Hair for Brains. Considering you essentially mumbled the entire fucking question.”
“Ah,” Kirishima says, because to be honest, he didn’t mean to ask it out loud—not yet, at least. But he’s not going to try and take what he said back, because he just has to know. “I just asked, like—so you know how you confessed and everything?”
“I was there for that, so no shit.” Bakugou snorts. Kirishima playfully shoved him with his shoulder and rolled his eyes, inevitably scooting closer. He continued. “And you know how you were yelling a bunch of stuff about how it wasn’t my fault yet somehow it was?”
He watches Bakugou cringe, brow furrowing, almost looking like he’s about to start pouting. God, he looks cute, way too cute to be legal—
Focus .
“I fuckin’ remember that.”
Kirishima hums. He averted his eyes to the weather outside, in case Bakugou catches him staring (you can’t really blame him, he got way too used to secretly staring at Bakugou, so now it’s a force of habit). “Yeah, well, you had said that I’m ‘always on your mind’ and stuff, so I was just wondering what you meant by that? I mean, did you really mean that I was always on your mind? And since when, ya know?”
When he looks back at Bakugou, he’s staring at him, book face down on his lap. He looks just shy of embarrassed. He looked a bit surprised, like he didn’t expect the question. It’s kind of funny, and Kirishima tries to hold back a smile and ultimately fails, nudging Bakugou’s shoulder again. “What, you said it, not me! C’mon, tell me what you meant by that! C’mooooooon.”
Bakugou completely turns the other way, hiking his shoulders up and hugging himself tighter. He tries leaning away, but Kirishima just leans into him further, digging his head and shoulder into Bakugou’s arm and stays there. Thankfully, Bakugou doesn’t even attempt to shove him off. It’s nice being able to stay there and tease Bakugou (and get away with it).
Ah , Kirishima realizes, looking up from his spot against Bakugou’s arm. His ears are pink.
Before he could comment on it, Bakugou mutters something. It’s low and way too garbled to be understood, but his ears are getting darker and his shoulders are raising even higher.
Kirishima stares at his ears. “What’d ya say, man? You were kinda quiet.”
He watched as Bakugou flinched, then mumbled a curse under his breath before repeating. “I had—I started having fucking dreams about you.”
That gets Kirishima up and off of his shoulder. What?
“ Dreams? Like—like, dreams about...you know...” He trailed off, hoping Bakugou could fill in the blanks.
Bakugou probably does, considering the speed at which he turned around. The disgusted face that he’s making would have more effect if his cheeks and ears weren’t all pink. “ What the —Hell no , not like that, what the fuck Kirishima!”
Kirishima held up his hands in defense. “Hey, woah, you can’t blame me for thinking that! Usually when someone dreams about someone else it’s always a weird dream!”
Bakugou groaned, slapping a hand to his forehead. “I meant dreams like,” He dragged a hand down his face. He half glared at Kirishima, also losing its effect with the blush on his cheeks. “We went on a…picnic...and shit. I don’t know, we were by the dorms and you were fucking—you just asked me about some shit I was reading so I explained the plot, so there .”
Oh, that wasn’t so bad. It’s a cute dream, but Bakugou’s looking as if the entire thing was incriminating. “Wait, that’s it? Did anything else happen?”
Bakugou snapped his gaze to the window and the continuous rain. That was definitely not all that happened. He glanced around the rest of his room, pink ears now turning red. “...I said some dumb shit and you laughed at me.”
“Aww, Bakugou! That’s not even that bad,” He tries to lean into Bakugou’s line of sight, but he’s so adamant on averting his eyes that he keeps moving his head, so Kirishima is just rocking back and forth on the bed at this point. “Wait, but—stop moving , Bakugou—you said ‘dreams’, like plural? Were they all just that picnic?”
“No.” Bakugou replied quickly, but he seemed kind of hesitant to say anything else.
Ahhh , Kirishima thought. They must be really embarrassing for him . Wait, crap, am I pushing him too much about this?
He placed his hand on top of Bakugou’s knee and squeezed. Trying to hide his disappointment that he might’ve overstepped, he shows Bakugou a soft smile when he turns back. “Bakugou, you don’t have to tell me if you really don’t want to. I was just curious, but I don’t wanna overstep anything, it’s fine.”
Bakugou brought his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut in frustration. He mumbled something Kirishima couldn’t really hear—he could only catch something that sounded like fucking sunshine —before dropping his hand and rolling his eyes. “You’re fucking not, shut the hell up. I was gonna tell you at some fucking point anyways.”
Kirishima brightened, warmth rushing to his face because oh . “Oh! Neat!”
They sit in silence for a bit. Only the sounds of the continuous storm carry through the room. Eventually, Kirishima scooted back over to Bakugou’s side, resting his head back down on Bakugou’s shoulder. After another minute or two of fiddling with his hands in silence, he decided to break the silence.
“...Can I ask about the other ones?”
Bakugou sighed, sagging a bit against Kirishima.
“Fucking— fine, since you wanna know so bad,” he concedes, but the reciprocated touch doesn’t go unnoticed, and Kirishima has to actively force himself away from the fact that Bakugou is so comfortable—nonchalant?—with physical affection. He has to not lose focus on the entire fact that Bakugou dreams about him.
“—the day we watched that movie.” Bakugou cuts in, and oh he’d been talking while Kirishima was somewhere else. He decides against asking Bakugou to start from the beginning, though. Instead, he just nods, refusing to sound rude (or, well, mainly to avoid Bakugou getting mad).
“So, after that shit, I had a dream that we were watching that fucking movie again , or some videos, I don’t know anymore. Literally just a repeat of what we just fucking did. So I fucking say some shit about how the idiots we call thought we were dating, and you—“
“They what ?! When did they—”
“Shut the fuck up, don’t interrupt me, we’ll get to that later. They’re dumbasses. Anyways, so we were talking about the fucking dating shit and laughing about it, and then you just start acting all—“ He breaks off to gesture vaguely with the hand farthest from Kirishima.
Kirishima snorts. “All what?”
Bakugou keeps gesturing, just more aggressively. “Fucking— flirty , or whatever, I don’t know. You just had your head on my shoulder and shit. And then you just asked if I wanted to date, to which I said hell no —“
Kirishima snorts at that. Of course he would, but he still needs to joke about it. So, he presses a bit harder into Bakugou, trying his best to sound the most fake-offended he can. “ Wow , dude, harsh.”
He doesn’t need to look at Bakugou to know that he’s rolling his eyes. He definitely doesn’t need to look to know that he’s laughing a bit too, shoulder shaking a bit as he puffs out a breathy laugh. The quiet, soft sound of it warms Kirishima’s chest, making his stomach fizzle like a sparkler.
Some small part of his brain notes that he just made his boyfriend laugh.
(Yes he still isn’t over that, leave him alone.)
After Bakugou calmed down, he bounced the shoulder that Kirishima was resting on. It wasn’t enough to knock Kirishima off, but it did it’s job of jostling him a little bit. He flicked Kirishima. “Stop interrupting me, asshole, it’s distracting.”
Kirishima couldn’t help but laugh a bit now (no, he was not giggling, shut up ), pressing harder against his shoulder once he settled. Gaining a little bit more courage (read: a lot of mentally psyching himself up), Kirihisma shifted the positioning of his arms just a bit. Then, he slowly placed his hand over Bakugou’s, resting both on his lap.
Now, Kirishima has held Bakugou’s hand before—albeit the situation being a bit too dire to absorb the fact that he was holding Bakugou’s hand. It was only until a few days after the dust settled, where he laid down on the floor of his bedroom at his house—yes, his bedroom floor —that he thought about it in detail. And then the idea of holding Bakugou’s hand had been set on the back burner of his mind while he did the rest of the mess that was his first year of UA. And once he was let out on break, the thoughts of holding his best friend's hand in a non-rescue-mission context had enough time to stay on his mind until it became white noise. It had just become a constant fact: the sky is blue, grass is green, and he wanted to hold his best friend’s hand.
Needless to say, Kirishima finally worked up the courage to actually follow through with something he’s been wanting to do for, well, about a year…
Before he could chicken out, Kirishima wiggled his fingers a bit until they were slotted through Bakugou’s, squeezing nervous fingers in between loose calm ones. His hand is—unsurprisingly—warm almost like he was holding a mug of tea prior to doing anything with his hand. They were rough, too, thick callouses formed on top of the thousands upon thousands of times Bakugou has used his quirk. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, nor unexpected, because it’s not like he’d have soft hands as a result of explosions .
His hands were also extremely sweaty—again, not unexpected in the slightest, his whole quirk has to do with nitroglycerin-like sweat . Distantly, he remembers a time where he overheard the girls talking about their classmates as potential boyfriends. After skirting around his personality (before he went through growth after growth), they all agreed that holding Bakugou Katsuki’s hands would be uncomfortably clammy, therefore unattractive.
But sitting here, Kirishima just couldn’t agree; he never really agreed in the first place. Holding his hand was comforting, the warmth of Bakugou’s hand in his was comforting with the callouses and sweat, and Kirishima wouldn’t change a thing.
“Ooooh,” he teased, mostly to play off the fact that he was effectively going to explode from initiating hand-holding. “You think I’m distracting?”
“ Kirishima, ” Bakugou warned, but didn’t say anything about the hand in his, instead just wordlessly closing his hand in Kirishima’s. But his gaze kept flickering between Kirishima’s face or their joined hand, so there was some kind of acknowledgement there.
Kirishima released a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. Cool, Bakugou is okay with this. 100% okay with this. Nice. Cool . Still didn’t want to make it obvious that that was making him want to scream, so he continued. “Okay, dick . Keep telling me about you totally saying that you’d never ever want to date me to dream-me.”
Bakugou squeezed his hand tightly and turned to grin wickedly out of the corner of his eye— ah . “You fucking know what? Just for that, I’m skipping the rest of the stupid dream.”
Wait, what? No! Kirishima lifted both of hands in disbelief, pulling the hand he was holding up with him. “Wh— Bakugou! ”
“Sucks to fucking suck, the rest of it was stupid as shit anyways.” But Kirishima could see the way that his ears were now a reddish pink, turning a bit darker. Bullshit .
“But—”
“Anyways,” He cut in.
“ Oi —”
“ Any fucking ways —”
Kirishima huffed, pulling their joined hands into his lap. No use arguing with him. “ Fine , what was the next one?”
Bakugou looks down at their hands, letting them fall back into a looser hold. The room was silent again, no doubt because he was thinking about how to continue. Which is okay, Kirishima will give him as much time as he needs.
He seemed to decide on a good sentence to start with, because he simply says: “The last one was the reason I fuckin’—”
He waved his hand out in front of him when he paused. “Ya know.”
And that—Kirishima didn’t expect that hesitation. He had no idea that that one was the next dream Bakugou had. Nor that it would be the catalyst for their argument, and subsequently their confessions.
He wants to push—maybe help clear up whatever he was thinking, maybe comfort him, something —but he doesn’t know if Bakugou is going to continue. So, all he can simply say is “Oh.”
Bakugou keeps staring down at their joined hands. More hesitation.
He cleared his throat. “It was just—it was fucking stupid. You were just being an asshole about shit, nothing crazy. It was stupid to even get fucking worked up over it.”
Kirishima ducks sideways and down, off of Bakugou’s shoulder, into his line of sight. He only speaks when Bakugou meets his eyes. “I mean, it's not stupid to get worked up over that. That sounds like a really shitty dream. I’m sorry that you dreamed that, that just sucks.”
He tries to flash the most comforting and reassuring smile he can. “And you don’t need to tell me all of the details for that one—unless you really want to and are really comfortable with it, okay? I’m not gonna expect anything of it from you, so don’t force it out, ya know?”
Bakugou’s eyes flicked down to his mouth, and Kirishima tried to push past the swoop in his stomach in favor of trying to remain somewhat focused. So, he lifted their hands and shook them in front of Bakugou’s face. “And besides! Look at what came out of that whole thing anyways!”
Bakugou raised an eyebrow and smiled (a small one, not one that makes its appearance during school and stuff). “Sure, as if we didn’t literally fucking argue before we even got to that.”
“W-well! Sometimes things like that can be bumpy and—Bakugou, don’t laugh , I’m trying to be serious!” Kirishima tries to argue, before he’s cut off by Bakugou starting to laugh again. Instead of trying to at least seem a bit annoyed at Bakugou laughing, Kirishima just opts to stare. He knows he looks like a lovesick fool, but making Bakugou laugh at his expense is leagues above Bakugou being upset over something. Besides, it’s not everyday he can make Bakugou laugh twice in the span of an hour. Plus, he has a really nice laugh. It’s a little hoarse and kind of squeaky, and people might say it's kind of “ugly”. But it’s contagious and Kirishima loves the dorkiness of it, he simply can’t get enough of it. Gosh , he’s so lucky.
Bakugou eventually stops laughing—or rather, eventually stops snorting and wheezing—and takes a deep breath, as if that was the funniest thing in the world. He turned to Kirishima, the last remaining drags of laughter turning with him. It’s a nearly complete opposite to the Bakugou of five minutes ago, let alone the Bakugou of last week. He looks calm, not paranoid or upset anymore. He looks better, brighter even.
Kirishima returns to his spot on Bakugou’s shoulder—now becoming a favorite place to be—and squeezes his hand. “But seriously, don’t force yourself to go into detail about that. I understand. But, if it means anything, I’d punch that dream version of me into space.”
Bakugou squeezes right back, leaning his head against Kirishima’s. He smiles, and the other can feel it on the crown of his head. “You’re so stupid .”
And Bakugou’s tone when he says “stupid” is too sweet and endearing to sound mean. So Kirishima smiles and says, “Yeah, but I’m your stupid boyfriend. Saying I’d fight a crappy dream for you comes with the job title.”
“Mm,” Bakugou hums in a quieter, softer voice. “It sure fucking does.”
The conversation drifts off after that, a comfortable silence finding them once more. Kirishima loses track of time, sitting side by side on Bakugou’s bed comfortably. After minutes or hours, the rain is still pouring down, cold and dreary outside the window. But it goes unnoticed by the two, caught up in their own warm bubble, hand in hand.
“Okay, but like, hypothetically speaking , if you had any spicy dreams about me, right—”
“ Kirishima!! ”
“ What , I’m just curious— don’t me with the book— ”