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Kirishima Eijirou doesn’t typically have a lot of feeling on his skin. He wonders if it’s because of his quirk. Even when not using it, his skin is not particularly sensitive. It’s what allows him to bumble around with the grace of an excited labrador puppy when he’s not fully awake in the mornings, what lets him run shirtless in the snow without consequence, without getting pneumonia.
The summer air is warm on his skin tonight, aided by the added temperature of the fireworks in close proximity. The heat of Bakugou’s eyes on him is warmer.
Kirishima keeps his eyes on the sparkler in his hands, letting the warm tingly feeling of ruby red eyes wash over him quietly. Kaminari’s loud teasing of Uraraka and Mina and the girls’ answering giggles blur in the distance, and Kirishima finds himself captivated by his proximity to fireworks.
Bakugou crouches beside him, face devoid of his signature scowl, looking mildly disinterested in the happenings around him. He holds his sparkler much too close to the fire, and Kirishima wonders if he’s so used to the heat that he doesn’t fear being burnt by it.
Kirishima thinks about fire and brimstone, of volcanoes that contain lava and are also made by lava, shaped by the violent expulsion of fiery heat, growing taller with every such instance. He fixates on the sparkles as they fizzle out into the night, his and Bakugou’s together, dousing them in a momentary darkness before Kaminari and the girls sprint by again, fireworks in hand, illuminating them all over again. Bakugou’s gaze returns to him then, liquid heat, and Kirishima shivers in the summer evening.
He lazily plucks the now-dead sparkler from Kirishima’s grip and flings it into the water bucket with his own. He takes out two new wands from the box and holds one out to Kirishima, red eyes glowing in the night. Kirishima grins at him, and Bakugou’s pointed gaze pierces him like pinpricks. He feels a little stiff and he kind of wants to rub his neck. Bakugou turns his head away, and Kirishima decides to sit down.
He touches the tip of his sparkler to that of Kirishima’s and sparks his hand near them to light them both together. He mimics Kirishima’s stance, sitting cross legged on the ground, furrowing his brow as he concentrates his quirk to light the sparklers. Their knees touch, and Kirishima sees fireworks.
Kaminari stumbles somewhere to his right, and Mina pauses in her sprint to turn around and stick her tongue out at him. Uraraka laughs, free and happy, and it chimes like bells in the wind. Kirishima focuses his eyes on the sparkler in his hand, the bare skin of his knee burning where it grazes the fabric of Bakugou’s sweatpants.
Kirishima hears the crack of a slap and turns to see Kaminari’s hand on his shoulder. “Mina wants to do a dance with the lit fireworks and see if it looks cool like in the videos!” Kaminari exclaims, giddy with excitement.
“That sounds so cool! You should record it!” Kirishima replies with a grin, and Kaminari squeezes where his hand rests on the redhead. He’s buzzing with anticipation, and Kirishima smiles so wide his eyes scrunch shut.
“I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna record it and it’s going to be awesome!” Kaminari laughs, and in his excitement releases a little electricity.
Bakugou’s eyes widen beside him. “Oi!” he shouts at his yellow-headed friend.
“Shit, sorry!” Kaminari is sheepish, still bouncing on his toes. His hair stands up with static. “You’re okay, right?” he asks.
“Yeah man, I didn’t even feel it”, Kirishima answers with a laugh, and Kaminari shakes his shoulder.
“See, not everyone is grumpy like you, Kacchan!” Kaminari makes eyes at Bakugou and runs off before the blonde can curse at him, shouting after the girls. Kirishima feels the ghosts of tingles in the shape of fingers on his shoulder.
His second sparkler burns out. There are many more in the boxes. Bakugou exhales quietly as he absentmindedly fiddles with the end of the stick in his hand. Kirishima swallows and reaches to take more out. Bakugou levels him with a look. A lit sparkler goes flying past his head and lands a few feet in front of them. Kirishima gawks at it.
“KAMINARI-KUN!” comes Uraraka’s horrified shout, followed by the sound of Mina probably pushing him.
“Fuck you, Dunce Face!” Bakugou turns around and barks at them, and Kirishima hears Kaminari yelp behind him.
The stray firework sparks awkwardly on the ground, burning its way to destiny with a sputtering grace. Bakugou scoffs at it and pulls out four from the box nearby, a pair for each of them. He lights up his palm again and Kirishima watches the sparks go off on his skin with soft fascination. A pinprick of light from Bakugou’s sparkler floats over to Kirishima’s arm and stings his skin with quiet persuasion. Kirishima startles at the sudden sensation, and as he stares at the point of impact he wonders if it will leave a mark on his skin. He wonders if a bigger spark would burn a hole through him, giving him reason to wince at the burn and stare straight into his insides.
Uraraka and Kaminari are having a heated argument about what song to pick as Mina wails “I need good dance music” in the background. Kirishima exhales a small laugh from his nose, and Bakugou turns to him again.
Kirishima’s not really looking, he’s focusing on the pretty lights in his hand, the shadows they cast around them. His peripheral vision still picks out the red right beside him, and Kirishima’s neck itches. He wonders what the blonde is quietly observing in between moments. He wonders why Bakugou doesn’t say anything, he just looks from time to time.
Kirishima feels it wash over him like syrup, warm and sticky, not really drenching, but still clinging to his skin wherever it touches. Bakugou’s gaze lingers on him like volcanic lava, moving slow and sure, glacial in pace but burning in purpose. He feels the shape of it, draping over him and building something, carving something onto the very geography of his skin, flowing liquid over the rocky spikes of his quirk and smoothening out the edges of it. He feels the heat of it lingering long after Bakugou looks away, turning his attention to Mina’s sparkler dance with a vaguely bored expression on his face.
And Kirishima – Kirishima burns in the fiery pit of something – he feels like he’s swimming in soup, warm and comforting but scalding all the same. There’s darkness in front of him and laughter behind him, and so Kirishima turns to look at his friends, giggling and pushing each other and trying to form intricate patterns with the light for long-exposure shots on shoddy phone cameras. Kirishima watches Mina dance with sparklers, sloppily writing “love” in loopy letters in sparks, and Kirishima feels fireworks beside him.
***
There’s wisdom in summer traditions, Kirishima decides as he helps pick up the corpses of some of the sparklers that didn’t make it to the water bucket. Kaminari and Mina are chattering excitedly about something to his left, and a little ways ahead Uraraka has picked an argument with an irate Bakugou about the pros and cons of explosive fireworks over sparklers.
Mina yelps when she touches a still-hot firework and Kirishima takes it from her with a smile that crinkles his eyes, grasping the offending item between two fingers on the recently-burnt out end. Mina sucks on her burnt fingertips trying to ease the pain and Kirishima throws the sparkler in the bucket with disinterest, the remaining heat of it ineffective against his own mostly unfeeling fingers.
Bakugou has many opinions on explosives, as is to be expected, and Kaminari teases him and makes it much worse. Mina watches the three in amusement while sucking gently on her thumb.
Bakugou claims he’s the best at fireworks and Kaminari snorts at it. Mina openly laughs as Uraraka dares him to prove it and everyone’s hair except Kirishima’s sways in the gentle breeze of the summer night.
Bakugou bares his teeth and holds up both hands with determination, palms facing the sky. He smirks at them and releases a sustained shower of sparks from his palms, unlike anything they’d seen before in class. The other three do a double take as they watch the lights dance on his hands, teasing forgotten. The sparks go up and curve downward in a gentle stream like a fountain of fire, blooming from Bakugou’s skin, and Kirishima rubs at the spot on his arm, feeling the ghost of a sting in the summer night.
Goaded by the oohs and aahs of the others, the blonde does a few tricks, letting the sparks dance, sparkle, and crackle in varying shapes and brightnesses in the dark, and Kirishima stands very still in the night, transfixed by the red of Bakugou’s eyes reflecting the light. They’re red like molten lava, angry but contained, and suddenly they look up at Kirishima, and for a few ethereal moments Kirishima feels the sound of the crackling fireworks drum on the skin of his chest. The eyes soften on him, unblinking, and Kirishima feels liquid, and he wonders what those sparks will feel against his bare skin outside the context of a sparring match. The lights paint Bakugou in soft golden and orange, and Kirishima sees softness in blond spikey hair and feels the warmth of blood flowing in his veins.
The show stops, and his other three friends groan their disappointment. Bakugou sneers at them and they all start making their way back to the dorms. It’s late and the summer air is warm and Kirishima sees ruby red eyes still on him in the dark. They stand out against his silhouette like hot red magma at the edge of a volcano’s peak at night, and Kirishima swallows around the thrumming of his heart in his throat. Bakugou stands, quiet, focused, and the voices of their friends fade into the distance as Kirishima wills himself to follow them.
They walk back, slow and glacial, the two of them, and Kirishima burns where their arms brush. It feels momentous, this night, and Kirishima’s heart stutters in his chest while he questions whether he will survive the aftermath. Bakugou sighs next to him, and the air is warm in its wake.
Kirishima’s mind buzzes with anticipation of something – he wonders if this is what it feels like to stare down a dormant volcano and wonder if the risk of being consumed is worth the exhilaration of scaling it. How do you know when it will erupt, he thinks, as one of Bakugou’s palms finds its way to the small of his back, and Kirishima almost trips at the sensation. Bakugou’s hand sears into his skin through his shirt, it burns a hole through him so deep he can feel the heat in his stomach.
Bakugou sighs again, and this time it sounds purposeful. Does the volcano feel the explosion, Kirishima wonders absentmindedly through a haze, does it understand the force it contains, simultaneously destructive and constructive in its potential?
The hand drags lazily up his back, and Kirishima feels liquid; he leans into Bakugou, bringing them to a stop. The others have long returned to the dorms, and crickets chirp somewhere in the bushes nearby. Bakugou’s chest is warm where Kirishima touches it, it radiates through his skin into his very bones, and his other hand comes up to grasp his.
Kirishima breathes caramel, and it’s intoxicating.
He turns to see red, red eyes, soft and molten, liquid fire to their very core. He feels heady, he wonders if this is what it feels like to teeter on the edge of a volcano. The eyes are now half-lidded and there is warm, warm breath on his face, and Kirishima wonders how it would feel to jump in – to let the heat consume him, to be drowned in red and orange and golden fire, to feel his numbed skin be scorched by the fiery touch of something and then melt into something that is all-consuming, devastating in its power.
Kirishima intertwines his fingers with the hand, pressing the hot, hot palm against his own, feeling the clamminess of it seep through to his joints. There is caramel in his lungs and it’s sticky, and his own breath stutters along Bakugou’s eyelashes. The hand on his back travels up to his gelled spikey hair and dull fingernails scratch at his scalp, and Kirishima feels tingling in his toes.
Kirishima Eijirou doesn’t usually have a lot of feeling on his skin. He thinks it’s probably because of his quirk – he’s numb to most things physical, he can stub his toe and not notice it, walk through fire or snow and not blink at it, stand through a Howitzer Impact without feeling more than a prickle on his skin. Tonight, the night air is warm and his nerves are on fire, there is molten lava in his veins and searing hands on his skin. And tonight, Bakugou’s red, red eyes close as he leans in, and Kirishima tastes fireworks.