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In retrospect, it was a questionably-executed idea.
A lot of the things Shouto does when left to his own devices tend to end up in that category, he can admit that much even to himself, it’s just—
Usually, his 2 a.m. impulses don’t end up with him knocking on Bakugou Katsuki’s door with a literal sharp bit of metal stuck in his flesh. Granted, Shouto hasn’t tried to piece his own ears before. First time for everything. Learning experiences, and all that.
(In this particular case, learning that ouch poking yourself with sharp things actually hurts.)
Bakugou had seemed like a good person to come to. What he lacks in subtlety and softness he makes up for with a surprisingly varied amount of knowledge and a perplexing tendency to go along with Shouto’s—ahem. More questionable courses of action.
Still, he takes one look at Shouto, and even with his hair messy from sleep and his gaze a little less sharp than usual, he manages to pack an impressive amount of derision into his scoff.
“Don’t know why,” he says, voice rough from sleep, and—oh. (Shouto is tucking that away for later.) “But I always guessed you’d be the kind of guy to ask for dinner first.”
Shouto blinks. “I came because I wanted you to help with—with my, uh, my unforeseen injury.” He points to his ear. Bakugou follows the motion. Then, he seems to realize something, and reaches forward calmly only to promptly flick Shouto right in the middle of the forehead.
“Dumbass,” he says.
It definitely shouldn’t make Shouto feel warm. Or fuzzy. Those are not the kind of feelings typically associated with being openly and harshly insulted. (It might just be a love language for Bakugou, though. Creative and varied insults.) Shouto still—
He likes it. Likes that Bakugou lets him in, gestures for Shouto to follow inside despite all the scoffing.
That they’re—
This. That there could be more here. (Shouto wants it. Wants more. Wants everything, with Bakugou. Even if admitting it is still a little hard.)
He bites his lip so he doesn’t say something absolutely ridiculous like but your dumbass, right?
“You’ll help, won’t you?”
Bakugou scoffs. “Of course I’ll fucking help,” he says. “What would your pretty boy ass do without me?”
Shouto has an answer to that. Somewhere. Something smart and sharp that succeeds in making the corners of Bakugou’s mouth twitch upwards. But—
Bakugou puts both hands on his shoulders, and leads him to sit in the middle of the bed. Bakugou’s bed. The bed where he sleeps and maybe studies and probably (hopefully) thinks about Shouto, sometimes.
Shouto wonders if—
“Oi, why’s your face red all of a sudden?” Bakugou asks.
Extremely good question. “I was wondering,” Shouto says, and hopes the warmth doesn’t expand. Doesn’t get out of hand.
“About what?” Bakugou asks, even as he tilts Shouto’s chin and inspects his earlobe. With surprising care, far too gentle for anything Bakugou, he tugs the needle out.
It stings. Shouto can feel blood dripping down his earlobe. Clearly, he did things wrong. So much for his meticulously planned teenage rebellion.
“Ah, about—about you.”
“What about me?”
Shouto’s hands clench into firsts on Bakugou’s sheets. The antiseptic stings, too.
If you ever sit here and stare at your ceiling and think about me, Shouto thinks. He’s caught Bakugou staring at his mouth enough times to have a right to want to know. He’s not subtle about it.
They’re both dumb. It’s easy to have things if you just reach for them. But Shouto’s still not quite used to having what he wants, and he’s seen Bakugou reach for everything except him.
“If you want to fuck me half as much as I think you do,” Shouto says, because it’s late and he’s tired and Bakugou keeps letting him in no matter what, anyway.
Bakugou curses. “What the hell?” he says. “You sick or something?”
Shouto shrugs. “Maybe,” he says. “Probably.”
“How do you just say shit like that?”
“With my mouth,” Shouto says, pointing to it, just to get the point across properly.
He knows that’s not what Bakugou meant, but—
It’s a lot of fun to watch him turn red and sputter.
Shouto doesn’t get the opportunity to that often. No one does, really, which is why it’s even more—well. Special. All of the little things Bakugou lets Shouto see, all that he bares willingly feels inevitably special.
Being let in. Chosen. Trusted. Trusting in return. Or something along those lines.
“Do you want to kill me?” Bakugou asks, voice still filled with some of that roughness that makes Shouto’s stomach attempt to do anatomically improbable things. “Are you, like, fucking trying to or what?”
Shouto pouts. Lets his lower lip stick out and puffs his cheeks and generally makes himself look as ridiculous and pitiful as he knows how to. “I’m injured,” he says. “I’ve come to you in a time of undeniable need.”
Bakugou scoffs. “You know exactly what you’re doing, don’t you, you little brat?”
Perhaps a little too deliberately for it to pass as genuine under Bakugou’s scrutinizing gaze, Shouto shrugs. “What am I doing, Bakugou?”
Bakugou leans in, and cups both of his Shouto’s cheeks with one hand, squeezes until it hurts just a bit, and Shouto can do nothing but look at him, meet the question in his eyes head-on.
(He could flee. But what would be the point of that when he came in here willingly? When he asked for all of this?)
“Driving me crazy,” Bakugou says, voice low. “Having your fucking fun with it, too.”
Shouto shakes his head. “Came here so you would take care of me,” he says, even if that isn’t the full truth. “Kiss all my wounds better, and all that.”
Bakugou smirks. It’s just cocky enough for Shouto to wonder what he’s hiding right below. Fear? Excitement? The same nameless but desperate thrumming echoing inside Shouto’s own chest?
He wants to find out. He just—wants.
“If you wanted a kiss that badly,” Bakugou says, leaning closer, letting Shouto go just to tuck a lock of hair behind his ear. Gently. And that’s the scary part. The gentleness. Bakugou being soft with him. Letting Shouto see just where he could plunge a knife and make it hurt if he felt like it. Willingly. God, that’s—
It’s terrifying. It also makes Shouto want to kiss him more than he wants to breathe. He swallows. “I do,” he says. “I do want a kiss. Please, I—”
I’ll be good? I deserve it? I’ve wanted it since the first time you touched me? Not a single one fits quite right. Not enough. Too small. Too little for all the things Bakugou Katsuki has made him feel, for all the ways Shouto has bitten his bottom lip bloody just to keep from calling out his name. Alone. In his bedroom. In a crowd. In the middle of the battlefield. With blood and scraped skin. Bakugou Katsuki, twined around his whole life, tucked in his darkest and brightest wants.
(Momo calls it poetic, when he wakes her up at 2 a.m. just to talk about it because the words feel too big for his mouth to keep. And then, eventually, she throws a pillow at him and tells him to go to bed. Fair enough, in Shouto’s opinion.)
And now, it’s just—
Bakugou Katsuki, a boy, messy and filled with scars, leaning in to kiss him, brushing a reverent thumb across Shouto’s bottom lip, and then covering Shouto’s mouth with his own, sharing oxygen.
Shouto’s heart stops listening to him entirely.
He kisses back.
He’s not sure how to, the technicalities of it all escape him, which is justified considering a solid 72% of his kissing experience consists of friendly pecks with Momo, but—
He tries. He presses himself against Bakugou and learns. Learns him. Slowly, and without fear of getting burned. The way Shouto knows you’re supposed to do everything with him. Without backing down.
(Like he’d ever, ever back down from this.)
“That wasn’t so hard, right halfie?”
The smugness is—different now. Shouto doesn’t think there’s much left hiding under it.
“No,” Shouto says, “but I bet if you let me sit on your lap that could change rather quickly.”
To Shouto’s surprise, Bakugou throws his head back and laughs. “Thought I was supposed to take care of you?” he says. “Thought I was supposed to help you with your undeniable needs?”
Shouto lets the edge of his mouth curl up. “Human needs are multifaceted,” he says, fighting the urge to bring a hand up to his mouth just to make sure it’s still warm, still carries the traces of Bakugou’s kiss. “Maybe I want you to make me come after you dig out one of those Hello Kitty band-aids you pretend you keep just because Eri told you she liked them once.”
“Fuck you,” Bakugou says, but he’s smiling.
“That’s kind of the point here.”
“Idiot.”
Bakugou does, in fact, dig out his Hello Kitty band-aids, lets Shouto pick out the most obnoxious shade of pink he can pinpoint, and then—gently, still, which hasn’t stopped being terrifying at all—puts it over the disinfected wound.
“What was this about, anyway?” he asks.
Shouto bites at the inside of his mouth. “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I just—I never really had the option to, like, grab a needle and go for it. Like, it was all very—well, you’ve met my dad.”
“Unfortunately,” Bakugou says, which pulls a proper smile out of Shouto.
“Yeah, like that. So I just—I guess I wanted to do it to see that I could. That the world wouldn’t, like, crumble if I wasn’t the perfect son for 0.5 seconds.”
“Probably took more than 0.5 seconds,” Bakugou says. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t fucking doubt your capability to mess up your life in record time, I just hope you sterilized the needle first.”
“I did,” Shouto says. “Fire quirk, remember?”
Bakugou laughs. Like, full-on, proper, non-murderous and/or psychopathic laughter. “Oh my fucking god,” he says. “You’re such a little drama queen. You couldn’t—couldn’t fucking get some ethanol or, like, even a lighter? You know, do it like normal kids trying to piss off their dads?”
“We’re not really normal kids though, are we?”
Bakugou shakes his head. “Doesn’t mean you can’t fucking rebel like one,” he says. “You need the authentic experience, halfie.”
Shouto arches an eyebrow. “And what’s that?” he asks. He is still sitting on Bakugou’s bed. Seems like there’s a lot of opportunities here.
Bakugou makes a nonchalant gesture. “Oh, you know,” he says. “Dye your hair, steal your dad’s credit card, kiss a boy on the backseat of his nicest car… shit like that.”
“But I don’t have a boy to kiss,” Shouto says, as if this is the biggest problem he’s ever faced. (It kind of is.)
“You sure about that?” Bakugou asks.
And then—
And then he’s leaning in, pressing Shouto against the sheets, kissing him like he never wants to do anything else for the rest of his life.
“Wait,” Shouto says, putting a palm on his chest, “should I make a list?”
Bakugou blinks down at him. “What for?”
“Of things,” Shouto says. “You know, for authenticity’s sake.”
“Halfie,” Bakugou says very seriously. “Shut up and let me kiss you.”
Oh.
Okay. Shouto can do that.
Shouto’s pretty happy with that, actually.
(The next morning, when he walks out of Bakugou’s room directly into the kitchen for breakfast, no one mentions the Hello Kitty band-aid. It’s probably because of all the marks the collar of his shirt—not even his, Bakugou’s—can’t cover. The ones Bakugou left on him like if he didn’t Shouto would slip his grip and never return. The ones he kissed as he whispered mine like a promise he was making to Shouto alone.
All in all, seems like a pretty decent start to this whole teenage rebellion thing. Shouto intends to put a lot of effort into whatever comes next, too. As long as Bakugou’s with him, most of it is bound to be good.)