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Sometimes, Eijirou and Bakugou eat lunch together out in the grounds as opposed to the cafeteria. Especially on warm days, it’s nice to bask in the sun or nap quietly in the shade, away from the constant buzz of teaching and classmates and dorm life. Eijirou likes loud things (he has to, what with his best friend being the loudest person he’s ever met) but the quiet is comforting and Bakugou seems more at ease with it. It helps them both.
The whole setup is almost like a picnic. Bakugou puts together neatly made bentos and Eijirou brings flasks of icy lemonade. There’s no picnic blanket to sit on, though. Maybe he’ll bring one next time. Something bright and colourful to offset Bakugou and his dark and gloomy wardrobe.
“Hey, Bakugou,” Eijirou muses, “you don’t wear a lot of colour, do you?”
Bakugou does this thing with his face where he looks a little like he’s glaring and a little like he wants to punt Eijirou into the sun but in a… gentle way. A gentle punt. Maybe not into the sun, just a nearby soft patch of grass. Is Eijirou overthinking it? Maybe. Regardless, his friend glares a little and purposefully drags his eyes down Eijirou’s own neon ensemble.
“You have shit to say about my clothes?”
“I mean… I guess so? You have, like, three shirts, bro, and they’re all either black or very very dark grey.”
“My uniform’s white.”
“If that’s what you're reaching for, I think I’ve won.”
“You didn’t win shit, I’m not reaching, I’m—I’m—”
Eijirou raises his eyebrows, half-grin tugging at his lips. His laugh escapes out of the corner of his mouth, which only serves to irritate Bakugou more.
“Yeah? You’re what, bro?”
“I’m going to kill you,” Bakugou seethes, lunging at him. Eijirou chokes on his laughter and rolls out of the way, winces when he feels the chafing against his back, knows his shirt’s probably covered in grass stains. Then Bakugou’s hands are exploding and Eijirou’s got a separate problem—charred fabric can’t be fixed by even the most stubborn of washing machines. Honestly, if Bakugou keeps this up, Eijirou will end up only having three shirts as well.
The nice thing about debuting early is that you get some perks. Eijirou learns this first hand when Fatgum calls him in for a meeting with some snappily-dressed officials and learns that, for some reason, people actually… want Red Riot merchandise.
“Sorry,” he says, in a room full of people that are smiling between themselves, “you’re saying people want shirts with my face on them?”
“Not just shirts,” the lead representative corrects. “Action figures. Posters. We’re doing interest checks on ugly Christmas sweaters.”
“Ugly Christmas sweaters,” Eijirou says faintly. “Red Riot-themed ugly Christmas sweaters.”
“Maybe,” she says, smiling slightly. “Right now, we’ll just have you approving designs for regular sweaters. That okay?”
“More than okay,” Eijirou breathes, still not convinced he’s actually alive and breathing. “Thank you so much.”
“Thank you, ” she replies, smiling openly now. “It’s an honour to work with such a promising young hero.”
“She called me a promising young hero,” Eijirou repeats, still starstruck. Bakugou’s letting him sit on his bed, so something’s got him in a good mood. Eijirou might wonder what it was if he wasn’t still thinking about the meeting, even though it’s been a good week since then.
“And that’s news to you?” Eijirou pauses.
“Bro?”
Bakugou looks up from his homework with an irritated look on his face. Eijirou winces inwardly because a distracted Bakugou is already an irate one and whenever he looks up from his homework with pinched lips it usually means he’s going to call Eijirou “Shitty Hair” and threaten to call his mom.
“You had the most badass debut out of our entire goddamn class,” is what Bakugou says instead.
“What?”
“Kirishima,” Bakugou says, managing an impressive amount of patience, “your first solo fight as a hero was against a villain who was already working with a power boost from Trigger and you won. Saved everyone in the vicinity and looked like a damn beast while you did it. And immediately fucking after that, you raided Overhaul’s damn operation and saved a fucking pro hero. Of course people want merch of your dumb ass. You’re inspiring.”
Eijirou blinks. “You’re… okay, you sound like you’re mad at me but you’re also saying really nice things, give me a second to process that.”
Bakugou huffs but leans back in his chair, spinning his pencil as he waits for Eijirou to speak. The dorm walls are thick, insulated so that the rest of them don’t wake up from quirks flaring up in the middle of the night. It’s calm and quiet inside Bakugou’s room and Eijirou feels comfortable taking a deep breath, running over the words Bakugou had just said.
“The most badass debut, huh?”
“Now you’re fishing for compliments.”
“Hm. Maybe. But that was nice of you,” Eijirou says, smiling. Bakugou’s cheeks pink a little and he glares, bypassing “gentle punt” territory into full out “I’m giving you ten seconds.”
“Not nice. I’m just telling you the fucking truth, shithead.”
“Still. It was nice of you.”
“Are you fucking kidding me—”
“Let me be grateful,” Eijirou whines. “You can’t just—you can’t just say sweet things like that when you’re already someone that inspires me to be better and expect me to just take it! I gotta—I need you to know that I’m grateful. For you saying that.”
Bakugou growls under his breath and slams his pencil down onto his desk. He stands up, all lean muscle, calculated power, and clambers up onto the bed. Sits down beside Eijirou, heat radiating like a summer bonfire. “Show me the designs. She emailed them to you, didn’t she?”
“Oh, yeah!” Eijirou grins, pulling out his laptop. “She sent me stuff for… hoodies, I think? And T-Shirts. That’s the stuff that people tend to buy the most, right off the bat.”
“Show me.”
“Impatient,” Eijirou teases, but he opens the files all the same. Feels something rising up inside him as he looks at the designs. His Unbreakable form, immortalized on something that people want to buy. Wear. Something recognizable.
“That’s fucking incredible,” Bakugou says quietly and he sounds like Eijirou feels. “You know when they’re dropping?”
“Few weeks, I think.”
“They’ve got other shit in the works, right?” And he sounds so interested that Eijirou can’t help but nod, excited, and starts explaining all the cool stuff he’d signed off on. How they’d talked about bringing in young artists for a young hero, letting Eijirou’s debut serve as a debut for designers trying to get their foot in the door. It’s the best thing he can imagine, using his platform to help others, even in ways he’d never thought about before.
“‘Course that’s how it’s happening,” Bakugou mutters, shaking his head. “Can’t help making life better for people, can you?”
Eijirou flushes, happy grin refusing to leave his face. He thinks if he answers genuinely he might end up telling Bakugou that he loves him and that might be too heavy for an afternoon chill session.
“Jealous?” Teasing is safe, he thinks.
Bakugou looks at him. Tilts his head. “Proud of you,” he says.
Eijirou barely remembers to shove his laptop out of his lap before his hands harden and rip through the sleeves of his shirt. He really needs to stop wearing things he actually likes when hanging out with Bakugou.
The common room is busy during weekend afternoons. Satou and Yaomomo are baking in the kitchen, Ashido and Hagakure are choreographing TikTok dances for their couple hundred thousand followers, and at least seven of their classmates are playing an increasingly competitive game of Scrabble around the common room table.
Eijirou’s relaxing on the couch, writing a letter home to his little sister. She likes the idea of receiving letters and he thinks it’s a cute way to communicate, so he has no issue indulging her.
“I’ve got one,” Kaminari says, arranging tiles on the board. “Trekking.” The scrabble table erupts in noise but Kaminari gamely forces his way through, methodically tallying up his score. “That’s twelve points and then, with the triple word score—”
“Thirty-six,” Uraraka huffs, marking it down. “How’d you even do that, I hate you.”
“It’s your turn,” he says, smiling winningly at her. Uraraka opens her mouth to argue, looking ready to float him up at the ceiling—and then Bakugou walks into the room and her eyes go wide, hand falling back down into her lap.
Matter of fact, the entire room’s gone quiet.
Bakugou looks good. He’s wearing a red hoodie, soft across the width of his shoulders. It’s a brilliant, eye-catching red. Eijirou doesn’t think he’s ever seen Bakugou wear something that bright, though he can’t figure out why. Bakugou suits it.
“Oh, nice,” Eijirou says. “Red’s your colour, dude, you look great!”
Bakugou smirks and sits down beside him. “It’s comfy as shit too.”
“Looks like it!”
“Hey, no fair,” Kaminari yells, dragging the room out of its self-imposed silence. “How the hell did you get your hands on that? It was sold out by the time I got there!”
“Kami, c’mon,” Ashido giggles, glancing at him. “He was probably waiting outside the store at four in the morning.”
“Kacchan’s parents work in fashion,” Midoriya says, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Maybe he had them help.”
“Deku,” Bakugou snarls, leaning forward, “are you fucking insinuating something?”
At this angle, Eijirou can see the back of the hoodie, emblazoned with RED RIOT in blocky black letters and a simplistic design of his mask beneath it. Brilliant red, Bakugou wearing colour, Eijirou’s name on his back—“Bakugou,” he breathes, “is that my merch?”
Bakugou just raises his eyebrows. “Weren’t you the fucker that said I didn’t own colourful shit?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you would…”
Would what? Would support him? Bakugou’s his biggest fan, and he’s loud about it too. He’s got Eijirou’s back in every fight, sends him Crimson Riot posts whenever he sees them online. He’s always been the one to tell Eijirou that he’s unbeatable, invincible, stupidly strong.
It makes sense, that Bakugou would do this for him. Of course he would. Of course.
“Kirishima,” Bakugou says, eyes as bright as his hoodie, “you are the only motherfucker on this planet that I would willingly wear this eyesore shit for, okay?”
“You’re calling my merch an eyesore.”
“No.”
Bakugou crosses his arms and leans against the arm of the couch, legs kicked up and thrown across Eijirou’s lap. He looks comfy, if not a little strange, wearing a colour that Eijirou’s never seen on him before.
Eijirou is, suddenly, so fond of him. “If you had merch,” he says slowly, “I’d buy it.”
“You said green isn’t your colour,” Bakugou says, digging his heels into Eijirou’s thigh. “You said that you look like a tacky Christmas tree in it.” His lips are curling up, though, and it’s the two of them sprawled out on the couch, tossing the joke back and forth.
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
“You look fucking awful in it, of course I remember.”
“That’s rude—” But they’re both laughing and Bakugou’s cheeks are pink and his hair is a little mussed and he looks really, really good in fire-hydrant red.
And it’s the knowledge. Of Bakugou going out of his way to support Eijirou because they’re friends. Of him being first in line to buy merch in a colour that he doesn’t even like because he’s proud. His best friend, the best hero he knows, is proud of him. Eijirou feels half-human and half-sun, filled with enough energy and life and love to power the entire world.
“Catch up to me soon,” Eijirou says, grinning. “Can’t have my best bro repping me when I’m not repping him.”
Bakugou grins back, all teeth, looking proud to be wearing Eijirou’s name on his back. “They sent me the designs today,” he says. “Look over them with me.”