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Todoroki was well known throughout the school (and the internet) for his theories that were, all things considered, weirder than a carrot dancing in a pile of hot horse shit with a top hat and full musical entourage. So don’t blame anyone for ignoring what he said when he came into consciousness one Sunday morning and said:
“Bakugou can do the splits.”
Forgive them all for thinking he had either finally gone insane from his trauma or just come back from getting high with the Bakusquad. Because Todoroki may have come up with some really shit theories but this one, this casual comment, was possibly (definitely) the worst one yet.
Half of the class hadn’t even processed what he said before he had left the kitchen and gone back to his room. It was too early for anyone to even try and understand why he thought Bakugou of all people could do any form of gymnastics. 11am was too early to think, period.
Midoriya wasn’t helping either. The self-sacrificial idiot chugging the last of his triple shot espresso and nodding as if what Todoroki had just said was anything less than utter bullshit. If Bakugou came back and found the two of them spouting shit lies about him, the common room would get another, human shaped, window to go with the other four currently being covered by carefully hung curtains and oversized paintings.
Bakugou being able to do the splits was a stupid idea and a risky thought, not only for someone's physical health (should said boy overhear), but their mental wellbeing (should the mental image burn through their remaining brain cells). It just didn’t make sense. It was stupid and Todoroki had no sources to back up his claim bar a green a haired insomniac with a record for getting himself into deadly situations (most of which included the resident hot-head) at least once a month.
But, because the thought was so incredibly moronic, it meant Todoroki couldn’t have made it up, hell even Kaminari couldn’t have come up with something that insane. There had to be some truth to it, but, not wanting to become a new wall decoration, everyone quickly put the thought to the side and blamed the early hours for them even thinking that one of Todoroki’s late night theories could have been true. There was one lingering question though; Where did this theory come from?
Well, in the even earlier hours of that same morning, before anyone else had woken up, Bakugou was in the kitchen. Not unusual, given that he was the only one in the class to have both a consistent sleep schedule AND a working understanding of all the kitchen appliances. What was unusual was that Todoroki was also in the kitchen, and not because he had woken up from another PTSD-fuelled nightmare about his dad or a sentient kettle that taunted him with playground insults. He was just awake at 6am, staring through the wall above the stove as he sat on the kitchen counter, legs inconveniently hanging in front of a cupboard and stopping Bakugou from getting to the cereal.
Said cereal cupboard contained a surprisingly well constructed “cereal-shrine” that was made of images printed from Jiro’s half-dead laptop and looked like someone had increased the saturations to a level that burned any eyes that looked at them.
Captain Crunch looked ready to murder the first person to try and take his hat, the fruit loops looks like colourful rings of radiation and all the chocolate cereals were just black squares with edges cut with those special, pattern cutting scissors.
The main piece of the shrine was the box of Churros that were in the centre of the cupboard. The box itself sat in a pool of golden fabric that had more glitter on it than Tinkerbell when she gets high and had small strings of fairy lights hanging around it. Surrounding this royal setting, were small cut outs of each and everyone in Class 1-A, all praying to their cereal overlord (Mineta’s cut-out was hanging from the top of the cupboard above a bowl of off-brand, vegan friendly, gluten free, extreme fibre, high protein, 0 carb cereal that hadn’t been touched in 2 years and Shinso’s cut-out was noticeably less dusty).
This box of oat-based cereal rings was treated better than the Queen of England.
And Bakugou needed to get to it.
Running on a combination of lack of sleep, limited brain function from the nights tutoring session and ability to give literally zero fucks about anything, Bakugou stood in front of Todoroki and dropped into the splits. The shock caused Todoroki to pull his legs up onto the counter as his mouth hit the floor with nearly as much velocity as Bakugou had just dropped with.
There was nothing in the way of Bakugou getting to his cereal now. So, with a self-satisfactory smirk, he opened the cupboard, dodged the “highly religious” decorations and grabbed his cereal.
Pulling himself up, he deposited the box into Todoroki’s numb, noodle arms before going on the hunt for a bowl that hadn’t been claimed (and decorated accordingly) as a helmet for the weekly Wii sports tournaments. Picking one that had relatively no sharpie and only a few stick-on gems, he handed that to Todoroki as well, setting it over his duel coloured hair like the helmet it was destined to be.
Opening the fridge and staring at the extensive range of milks, Bakugou debated how he was feeling that morning:
Like a white Instagram influencer who wore only active wear? No, Soy milk tasted like shit anyway.
Gay? Yeah, but oat milk and oat cereal was too much oat for him.
A broke ass bitch? Fuck no, skim milk is out then.
He didn’t drink almond milk on principle alone so that one was out as well.
Whole milk? His mother would kill him when she found out at the photoshoot next week… Yep, whole milk it is.
Finally, taking his bowl and cereal off of his living hat stand, he made himself a bowl of Cheerios' with full-fat whole milk (pouring the milk first just to fuck with the frozen Delibird even more).
Quickly he returned the Cheerios' to their throne and offering a “cheers” gesture to the other (still frozen) boy with his breakfast, he sat at the counter and waited.
It took 5 whole minutes for Todoroki to both metaphorically and physically unfreeze, leaving condensation on both the counter and his shattered mental state.
“How did you-”
“Talent, bitch.”
Getting up, Bakugou left, taking his cereal bowl with him. The door closing behind him perfectly timing up with the sound of Todoroki falling sideways off the counter, onto the hardwood flooring and knocking himself the fuck out.
A week passed. Then a month. Then a year.
Of Todoroki’s many theories, Bakugou being able to do the splits was one of the few that stuck throughout their time at the UA. But, no matter how much he persisted, no-one ever believed him. A few dared to wonder, but no-one was willing to ask Bakugou to deny the claims so the thought was cast away quicker than Iida could do a lap of the dorms
Eventually though, the truth came out as it always does. It wasn’t because someone caught Bakugou doing some kind of fancy gymnastics move, and it certainly wasn’t because someone decided to pay attention to Todoroki's many PowerPoint presentations during the dorm PowerPoint nights.
It was because of a fan cam.
Sort of.
Someone had put together clips of Bakugou’s fights with various villains and it had gained far too much publicity for Bakugou or the agency he was working with to ignore. So, they did the only logical thing in the situation.
Publish a YouTube video.
On an early morning in the middle of winter, almost 3 years to the day from when Todoroki watched Bakugou do the splits for the first time a YouTube video was published.
"Yoga with Bakugou"
To say Todoroki was startled when he saw news articles about the video during breakfast, is an understatement. Before watching the video himself, he, of course, sent it to the group chat with his old classmates so they could all enjoy it together.
Sitting down with his daily bowl of cold breakfast soba, Todoroki watched Bakugou perform a variety of yoga poses. He managed to bend himself over like a pretzel before switching and bending over the complete other way, all but folding his own body in on itself.
Quickly, Todoroki pulled out one of his notebooks, flipped halfway through and added:
Bakugou has no bones
As the video continued, Bakugou kept twisting and turning in stupidly difficult ways all while holding himself in the air with one arm and swearing like he was the spawn of Gordan Ramsey and a Life-Style youtuber.
Steadily, the 15 minute long video drew to a close, but the over the top, grandiose yoga poses were not the only thing Bakugou had recorded.
“Oi Icy-hot, I know your dumbass will watch this so pay attention dickwad.”
Shit, had Bakugou found out that Todoroki thought he didn’t have a liver? Or maybe this is about when he had convinced Kirishima to use his head as a battering ram for science. Or he found out that he got Mina to add her acid to a bowl of his chill last week to see if he would notice.
No, instead, Bakugou had dropped into the splits and was eating dry cereal (out of the bowl Bakugou had refused to admitted to stealing from the dorms), all while staring straight into the camera with an expression so flat it rivalled the old soda Kaminari kept in his fridge.
Finally.
Todoroki’s phone sprung to life, beeping and vibrating so much it started to inch towards the edge of the table.
The first message on his phone when Todoroki looked at the screen.
“Shit, Todoroki was right.”
FINALLY!