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Katsuki hadn’t expected that moving into the dorms would affect his relationships with his classmates in any way. He had planned to stay in his room pretty much the entire time, only coming out for classes, food, and whatever Kirishima would end up dragging him out to do. Unfortunately for him, it turned out that most 15-16 year olds didn’t know how to take care of themselves (surprise, surprise), and only Satou and him had any experience in the kitchen beyond making instant ramen.
Katsuki supposes that’s what got him to this point. Since Satou and him were the only ones who could cook, they ended up in the kitchen together more often than not in order to feed 20 hungry teenagers. This led to them becoming… friends? Katsuki doesn’t really know how to describe it, but his relationship with Satou felt different than his relationship with any of his other friends despite having no other word to describe their relationship.
That’s not the point. The point is that Katsuki had gotten used to having Satou around while he was in the kitchen preparing something. Which is how he got here.
‘Here’ was the kitchen in the middle of the night, the night Katsuki failed his provisional licensing exam. He had originally come down in order to make something sweet (Katsuki was a bit of a stress baker), but, when he started getting the ingredients around for brownies, something felt off.
Katsuki wasn’t stupid enough to fool himself into believing that it was all in his head, despite his desperate desire to just brush it off as that. Unfortunately, he knew that the off feeling would only go away if Satou came down to help him bake. There really was no reason for him to even want that, but feelings were stupid and, as everyone knows, you can’t rationalize stupid things.
Phone in hand, Katsuki worried that he was making a stupid decision. Wait, he doesn’t do stupid decisions. If Satou was up, he’d come down and help. If he wasn’t, then Katsuki could just delete the text before he got up for school. Yeah, that was sound logic. Sighing, Katsuki finally typed out the text that he had been thinking about for the past 3-4 minutes.
Chat between Bakugou Katsuki & Satou Rikidou
Bakugou Katsuki: I’m making brownies rn if you want to join
Satou Rikidou: gimme a couple minutes and ill be down
Okay, that wasn’t so bad, and now Satou will be joining him. Not a bad deal at all, if you ask Katsuki. It slightly worries him how his heart calms so rapidly just knowing that Satou would be joining him. It didn’t make sense. They weren’t that close, but for some reason… Katsuki just wanted more. He didn’t know what that ‘more’ would include, but he’s pretty sure that he wouldn’t be able to pass it off as just friendship (despite how odd Kirishima kept on insisting his version of friendship was).
Katsuki finished gathering ingredients and getting the utensils out for baking some brownies when Satou made his way into the kitchen. Katsuki felt his hands spark off slightly before shoving them into his pockets, not wanting to make it seem as though he wanted to fight the other boy.
Satou greeted him with an easy smile, which made Katsuki’s ball of anxiety in his chest loosen the tiniest bit.
“Brownies?” The taller boy asked, already rolling up the sleeve of his hoodie in order to wash his hands.
Katsuki shrugged, “Comfort food.”
Satou hummed, turning on the tap and starting to wash his hands, “Wanna talk about it?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
And that was that. Satou didn’t press anymore, instead choosing to act as if this was a normal day where they were preparing some dessert for their classmates after they did well on a difficult test or had a hard time in training. Katsuki didn’t realize how much he would appreciate someone giving him the emotional space he wanted, even after he was the one to want Satou there in the first place. It was refreshing.
As soon as Satou dried off his hands, they set to work on the brownies. They worked around each other with ease, something that was also an unexpected consequence of moving into the dorms.
As Katsuki was mixing the wet and dry ingredients together, Satou was preparing the pan and making sure the oven had preheated. While he was doing that, he asked, “Hey, would you mind going over the last English lesson with me while we wait for these to bake? I don’t really understand the irregular verbs.”
“Yeah, I don’t mind.” Katsuki absolutely hated teaching English, if his tutoring sessions with Kirishima were any clue, but he had to repay the favor of making Satou come down here in the middle of night somehow. Teaching an English lesson seemed as good of a price as any. It wasn’t as if Katsuki didn’t understand it, so it would be easy enough as long as Satou stayed focused.
Soon enough, they were set up at the coffee table in the common room with all their English materials. Satou had asked Katsuki to just go over their homework with him in order to see if he missed anything super obvious. Again, an easy enough request to fulfill for Katsuki.
Katsuki looked over Satou’s worksheet, noticing that the other boy had a better understanding of the irregular verbs than he seemed to realize. The only one that seemed to trip Satou up was the verb tenses of ‘spring’. That should be an easy enough fix.
Katsuki did his best to explain the differences in the verb tenses and when to use them to Satou. It was taking a longer time than Katsuki had anticipated. He had kind of assumed that, with Satou understanding the other irregular verbs pretty well, he would understand the slight differences in the word itself and the different uses. Unfortunately, he turned out to be wrong. It was almost as if Satou couldn’t see the differences in spelling at all, which could be entirely possible since they were all spelled similarly and it was a foreign language.
As Katsuki was thinking about this and starting to divert his tutoring efforts towards the differences in spelling, Aizawa came into the common room. Both Satou and Katsuki froze slightly, their conversation dropping as soon as they realized their teacher was there. They both knew that they were technically breaking curfew since they were out of their dorm rooms, but, since they were just in the common room, they didn’t know if Aizawa would actually punish them or not.
Of course, after the three of them awkwardly staring at each other for a few moments, Aizawa broke the silence, “What are you two doing up?”
“He’s helping me with my English homework.” Satou rushed out, clearly hoping that since it was school related the strict teacher would let them off with a warning. However, that plan quickly derailed once the timer on the oven started going off.
Katsuki and Satou exchanged glances before Katsuki spoke up, “We baked brownies, too.”
“And you couldn’t do these things earlier in the day? Or wait until tomorrow?” Aizawa questioned them, lifting a lazy eyebrow.
Katsuki kind of wished that he respected Aizawa less, because then he could just tell him to fuck off. Instead he chose to say, “I didn’t pass my provisional licence exam. I needed… comfort.” Just saying that made Katsuki want to puke, but it was the closest thing to the truth he could get.
Aizawa looked between the boys before nodding to Satou, “Get the brownies.” Satou was quick to comply, getting up and rushing into the kitchen before Aizawa could possibly change his mind. “You’re not usually one for comfort, Bakugou.”
“Just cause I don’t like talking about feelings doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.” Katsuki grumbled out, already not liking where this conversation was heading.
Aizawa crouched down to be closer to eye level to Katsuki, who was sitting on the floor, “I never said you didn’t have feelings, just that you don’t tend to let them affect your schedule.”
Katsuki huffed, “How would you know that?” Aizawa only hummed in response, that bastard, so Katsuki continued, “Look, I worked hard to get where I am, and I’m frustrated that I don’t have anything to show for it except some articles calling me a villain and a kidnapping.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. I don’t wanna talk about it, so I thought that doing something to take my mind off of it would help. Hence the reason it had to be right now.”
“Nightmares?”
“No shit. Satou wasn’t even going to come down here until I texted him, so leave him out of whatever punishment you have prepared, alright?”
“I’m not going to punish you, Bakugou. You are still safe in the dorms, and you didn’t break any rules except for the curfew one for reasons that are completely understandable.” Katsuki relaxed slightly. He thought for sure that Aizawa would play the strict card, but it seems like he’s going the dad route instead. It was kinda weird how contradictory Aizawa’s methods of confrontation were, but at least they were predictable. “I would recommend going to a therapist in the future if the nightmares keep up, but it’s, ultimately, your choice. For now, I just want a brownie and I’ll forget this ever happened.”
Katsuki had figured that one of the teachers would recommend therapy sooner or later, so he wasn’t too surprised at that. He was kind of surprised that it was Aizawa, though, and that he was given the choice as to whether or not he wanted to go rather than it being a required thing. Thanking whatever deities he could think of, Katsuki replied with, “Deal.”
With that, Aizawa got up from his crouching position and walked over to the kitchen to ask Satou for a brownie. Katsuki busied himself with looking over Satou’s worksheet again to see if he could change tactics when it came to explaining the questions.
As he decided his next course of action in the impromptu tutoring session, Aizawa walked out with a brownie in hand and Satou not far behind him. Satou had a plate full of brownies in his hand, with the brownies still steaming slightly from being baked. He sat down next to Katsuki, setting the plate down away from their work.
Satou smiled nervously at Katsuki before saying, “Uh, sorry, but I, uh, heard what you said to Mr. Aizawa.”
“If you say anything to anyone else about tonight, you will wish that you were dealing with the League instead of me, understand?” Katsuki practically growled out, not wanting to be any more vulnerable than he had already been forced to be that night.
Satou held up his hands slightly, as if in surrender, “Got it!” He lowered his hands, picking up his pencil and looking back down to the English work they had been working on. “But, just so you know, if you ever need, or, uh, want, to have another late night baking session… I’m only a text away.”
Katsuki huffed, knowing that this was probably something that was meant to be an emotional moment with vulnerability, but he didn’t want that. He just wanted things to go back to the way they were before Aizawa had interrupted them. Given that this was just a natural human response (for nice people, that is), Katsuki decided to let the pity slide this time, even if it was out of character for him.
“Yeah, I know. Now, time to get back to figuring out where your brain shuts down when it comes to English.”
Satou seemed to understand that this was the most vulnerable thing that Katsuki was willing to do right then, and just smiled as Katsuki started to explain the irregular verbs in English once more.