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"You really didn't need to come back with me," Shouto says, for what is probably the 5th time. Bakugou doesn't answer; he'd stopped at the third time, but before that he'd always say the same thing, which was, "Shut the fuck up, they told me to."
Shouto has gotten a lot better at understanding Bakugou through the years. A few years ago, when they were in school, Shouto would have taken Bakugou at his word, and probably would have felt like shit over it. But now he knows differently, knows that Bakugou never does anything if he doesn’t want to, whether someone told him to or not. Which means if he’s here it’s because he, on some level at least, is worried about Shouto. Makes it almost worth the head injury.
“I’m just saying,” Shouto says, in answer to Bakugou’s unspoken response. “I don’t think I have a concussion. I didn’t get hit that hard.”
Bakugou yanks Shouto’s keys out of his hand and uses them to unlock the front door of his apartment, kicking his door open and throwing the keys on the table. Shouto follows after him as Bakugou enters his home like it’s his own.
“Bakugou—”
“Holy fucking shit, Icyhot, sit down and shut up.” Bakugou heads into Shouto’s kitchen and immediately starts pulling stuff down.
“What are you doing?”
Bakugou slams his palms on the counter and then turns around; he stomps over to where Shouto is standing and wraps his hand around his arm, pulling him over to the couch and pushing him down. “Sit down,” he snaps. “Shut up.”
Shouto settles back into the couch and watches as Bakugou heads back into the kitchen. He puts water on and starts rifling through Shouto’s cupboards. He envies the easy way Bakugou fits into any situation, how he carves out a space for himself. Shouto has lived in this tiny apartment for eight months, and it still kind of just feels like a place where he sleeps at night. But watching Bakugou in his kitchen, for the first time it feels like something a little more.
Bakugou brings him a cup of tea and then sits down on the other side of the couch from him. Shouto has a television, because his friends had told him he needed one, and Bakugou grabs the remote and turns it on, flicking through the channels as if this was something the two of them did often.
“Um… Bakugou?”
“What.”
“Are you… staying?”
“For now,” he says, not expanding on that. Shouto watches him for a few moments, at the easy way he reclines on Shouto’s couch. Definitely worth getting hit on the head.
Bakugou watches television for a bit before he gets up and disappears out of the room; he doesn’t say where he’s going, and Shouto doesn’t ask, because he’s kind of afraid that if he keeps bringing attention to it, Bakugou will decide his head injury is fine, now, and he’ll leave.
When Bakugou comes back into the room, he has a grin on his face, and he looks at Shouto expectantly.
“What?”
Bakugou twirls something in his fingers. “Why do you have a joint hidden in your bathroom drawer?”
“Oh,” Shouto says. He shifts and says, “Uh, Hanta and Kaminari gave it to me. They said I should try to, uh… chillax.”
Bakugou rolls his eyes. “Sounds like them,” he says. Then he jerks his head towards Shouto’s small balcony and says, “C’mon.”
“C’mon where?”
“Kaminari was right,” Bakugou says, opening up the window that leads out to it and crawling out. “You do need to ‘chillax.’”
Shouto can do nothing except follow Bakugou outside. It’s a chilly night, and they sit side by side with their backs against the wall, legs sticking out through the grates of the balcony fence. Bakugou lights the joint and then takes a drag from it, and then he holds it out to Shouto with long fingers. Shouto gets kind of distracted by them, actually, and it takes him a moment to take the joint from Bakugou. The tip is slightly wet from Bakugou’s lips, which Shouto finds very distracting, actually.
He takes an inhale from the joint— way too much, and he immediately regrets it. Smoke floods his lungs and burns down his throat and he starts to cough, deep, harsh coughs that make his chest hurt. Bakugou brings a hand to his back and lets it rest there as Shouto continues to hack out his lungs.
When he’s able to catch a few heaving breaths, Bakugou takes the joint out of Shouto’s hands and laughs. “That was really embarrassing,” he says. He takes another drag from the joint and then he says, “Come here.” He grabs the back of Shouto’s head and brings him in close, close, really close, Shouto can see the intense red of his eyes and the jagged edges of the scar that cuts across his face. For one brief moment he thinks Bakugou is going to kiss him, but instead he stops a hair’s breadth away. He breathes out the smoke through pursed lips into Shouto’s mouth, and he inhales it, because he doesn’t really know what else to do. It goes down much smoother this time; he doesn’t cough at all, and he’s not sure if the lightheadedness is from the pot or from the wicked smirk that Bakugou gives him.
Bakugou doesn’t give him the joint again; instead he keeps doing this, breathing the smoke straight into Shouto’s mouth, a strong hand still firm on the back of his head. Shouto thinks he might pass out, although he’s also not sure if that’s the pot or just Bakugou. Bakugou only gives him a few of these hits before he stubs out the rest of the joint and puts it up on the window sill, but he makes no move to go back inside, so Shouto stays put beside him. He’s starting to feel the pot, like a weird buzzing in his limbs and in his head. He remembers he’d been a little cold before, but he can’t feel it anymore. He feels warm and… floaty. He’s not sure if this is how one ‘chillaxes,’ but it’s a nice enough feeling.
What’s nicer, though, is the heat of Bakugou against his side, and the gruffness in his voice when he talks, or how he tilts his head back against the wall and exposes the length of his neck. Shouto slumps a little, leans against him in a way he probably never would have if he were sober. Bakugou leans into him, too, and they sit in silence for a bit, staring out at the horizon as the pot buzzes through their veins.
He has no idea how long they sit out there for. He has no real concept of time like this; if he had to guess, he’d have said they were out there for multiple hours, but he’s able to recognize that that’s probably not right. His phone is in his pocket, he could get it out and check it if he wanted. It’s in the pocket closest to Bakugou, though— what if Shouto tries to grab his phone and Bakugou thinks he was trying to hold his hand?
“Hey,” Bakugou says, in a rough, gravelly voice. “Todoroki.” Shouto startles, and for one brief moment he’s afraid that somehow Bakugou knew he was thinking about holding his hand. But then he says, “Are you hungry?” And Shouto realizes that—yeah, actually, he’s really fucking hungry.
“Yeah,” he says. His mouth is weirdly dry. “Yes. I’m— I’m very hungry.” His tongue feels too big for his mouth, and his words feel clunky. Bakugou rolls his head to the side so he can look at Shouto, a smirk still on his face. It’s a little softer than his usual one, though, dulled by the pot perhaps.
“I’m gonna cook something,” Bakugou declares, although he makes no move to get up. Shouto just nods.
“Okay,” he says, because if Bakugou cooks, that means Bakugou will stay longer. It’s at that point that Shouto remembers why Bakugou is even there in the first place, and he says, “Do you think this is okay? I mean, with my head injury?”
“Yeah,” Bakugou answers easily. “You didn’t get hit that hard.”
Shouto turns this over in his head. “Then why did you stay?”
“I’m gonna cook something,” Bakugou says again, and this time he does stand up, although he wobbles slightly in a very un-Bakugou like way. He stabilizes himself and then sticks out a hand, and Shouto tries to surreptitiously wipe his sweaty palm before he grabs it. Bakugou hauls him up, and he rests one heavy hand on Shouto’s back to steady him when he sways, too.
“You got any food, Half n’ Half?” Bakugou asks, shimmying through the window back into the apartment. Shouto takes a moment to admire his ass before it disappears into the room, and a moment later Bakugou sticks his head out the window. “Let’s go!”
Shouto falls rather clumsily through the window. His limbs feel a little too big for his body, and it kind of feels like he has an invisible fifth one somewhere on him, weighing him down. Bakugou is already in his kitchen, rifling through his cupboards and his fridge again, pulling various things out and spreading them around the counter. Shouto pads across the floor and comes up behind where Bakugou is filling up a pot with water. He hooks his chin over Bakugou’s shoulder; he’s certain that he would never do this under any other circumstances, but for some reason he can’t bring himself to remember why. He’s also pretty sure that under any other circumstances, Bakugou would have blasted Shouto across his apartment if he’d done this, but this time he just… lets Shouto lean against him, chin on his shoulder. “What are you going to make?”
“You’ll find out,” is all he says, but he doesn’t say anything when Shouto continues to hover, and as he goes through the steps of making dinner he keeps telling Shouto what he’s doing and giving him the occasional taste along the way.
“You’re a lot nicer like this,” he remarks. Bakugou throws him a glare over his shoulder, but it isn’t nearly as severe as it usually is.
“Watch your fucken mouth,” he warns. “Go find something to watch while we eat.”
Shouto does, floating into the sitting room and collapsing into his couch, melting into the cushions and becoming one with it. Bakugou had wanted him to do something, but he’s completely forgotten about it now. He stares at the blank screen of his television, and he thinks about Bakugou in his kitchen, and for some reason he thinks about his mother and father, too.
“Oi!” Bakugou shouts out from the doorway. “I told you to put something on TV!”
Right. That’s what Bakugou had wanted him to do. Shouto fumbles for his remote and turns the television on, scrolling through the options without even really seeing them. His eyes kind of glaze over the titles, and he finally puts on some old All Might animated movie. The colours are bright, and Shouto finds it difficult to follow along. He ends up slumping with his head on the armrest of his couch, eyes open but unseeing. He stays like that for an indeterminable amount of time (if he had to guess he’d say something like six hours) until something warm and delicious smelling is shoved under his nose.
“Food,” Bakugou says. Shouto sits up and takes the bowl from him; the chopsticks feel small and fragile in his fingers, but he sorts them out eventually, digging into his dinner. His brain can’t name what it is— all he knows is that it’s the single greatest meal he’s ever had in his entire life. Shouto inhales the whole thing in approximately thirty seconds, and when he looks back over at Bakugou, he has a look on his face that Shouto can’t quite read. “Good?”
Shouto nods; he puts the bowl on his coffee table, too high and comfortable and fuzzy to care about bringing it back to the kitchen. He slumps back into the couch again, slouching to the side and into Bakugou, who is still eating. “You’re a really good cook,” Shouto mumbles. Bakugou makes a kind of humming sound, and he doesn’t push Shouto away, and everything is warm and floaty and fuzzy, and Bakugou smells like smoke, and when he's finished eating he puts the bowl on the coffee table, too. He reaches out an arm and— pulls Shouto into him, arm wrapped around his shoulders, and this… this is cuddling, right? Like, Shouto can't think of a single other way to describe this other than cuddling.
He doesn't dare mention it. Never look a cuddling Bakugou in the mouth, or whatever the saying is. Much like refusing to bring attention to the fact that Bakugou is still here at all, despite Shouto’s less than pressing head injury. He’s afraid if he looks at it directly it’ll disappear, so he stays secure against Bakugou’s side and watches the movie. He doesn’t pay much attention to it, though; he’s distracted by Bakugou’s gentle breathing, the rise and fall of his chest, the twitching of his fingers against Shouto’s shoulder or the way he fiddles with the sleeve of Shouto’s shirt. He’s paying such careful attention to Bakugou that it doesn’t take him long to pick up on it.
“Are you mouthing all the words?”
He is, he definitely is. Even if Shouto hadn’t been close enough to hear, he would have been able to tell from the defensive glare Bakugou gives him. Shouto had gotten pretty good at deciphering the meanings behind each of Bakugou’s glares.
“Shut up,” he says, another sure fire sign. Bakugou never lied— he just didn’t answer.
“You’ve watched this a lot.” It’s not a question, and Bakugou can’t deny it. A red flush spreads over his cheekbones, and Shouto wants to press his mouth to it.
“Shut up,” he says again. “Izuku and I watched this nonstop when we were kids.”
Shouto feels something strange at that, some unwelcome feeling in his chest when Bakugou mentions Midoriya, at the intimate sound of his name on Bakugou’s lips. He thinks it might be jealousy, and this upsets Shouto. Midoriya is a good friend, and Shouto should be happy that Bakugou has someone like that.
But he still feels that ugly feeling deep inside him at the thought. He’d never had friends growing up— and even though he knows that what Bakugou and Midoriya had growing up can’t really be classified as friendship, he still envies them that history and the way it brought them closer.
“You don’t have to stop,” Shouto says. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“Who’s embarrassed,” Bakugou denies. His fingers are still playing with the fabric of Shouto’s shirt, and he can feel Bakugou’s heart beating. Everything feels like it’s in high definition. If Shouto turned his head, he’d be able to count Bakugou’s eyelashes.
They go back to watching. Bakugou continues to mouth every word, and at some point his fingers slip up beneath Shouto’s sleeve and start tracing circles into Shouto’s bare skin. Shouto hopes Bakugou can’t feel the way his skin erupts into goosebumps at his touch. He’s not sure if it’s the pot or just Bakugou that’s making him feel like this, so calm and content, but Shouto thinks he could pass the rest of his life right here and be perfectly happy.
The movie ends eventually. Bakugou hums the theme to the credits and then turns off the television. He makes no motion to move, though, and so Shouto doesn’t either, staying tucked into his side.
“How’s your head?”
Shouto considers this. “Fuzzy.”
“S’that from the pot or the concussion?”
“I don’t have a concussion,” Shouto says stubbornly. Bakugou ignores that, and the hand that had been tracing shapes into his arm moves up. Bakugou’s fingers probe at Shouto’s skull with more gentleness than he thought Bakugou capable of. Shouto idly wonders if he’d actually died during the fight today and this was his version of heaven.
“Where’d he get you?” Bakugou appears to be muttering to himself, continuing his gentle exploration until he presses down lightly on the bump on Shouto’s head, and he hisses in pain.
“Hmm,” Bakugou says thoughtfully. His fingers move away from the tender spot and start massaging the base of Shouto’s skull. It feels better than pretty much anything he’s ever experienced in his life. He’s pretty sure he’d be purring if he was physically able. “Bump’s not too big,” he says, still muttering under his breath. “You haven’t been showing any signs of concussion, either. I told them it wasn’t that bad, your dad just gets fucking weird about you.”
Shouto’s father had been weird about him his entire life, so this is unsurprising. “Is that why you’re here?” He asks, and the words taste like poison on his tongue. “Because Endeavor asked you to?”
Bakugou raises an eyebrow at him, perhaps set off by something in Shouto’s tone. “I’m here because I fucking want to be,” Bakugou says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, like his words aren’t rays of light that warm Shouto from the inside out. “Do you think you should lie down?”
Truthfully, Shouto is tired. It had been a long day even before he’d gotten hurt. But he’s scared that if he goes to lie down, Bakugou will leave. Maybe he’d stay until Shouto fell asleep, but then he’d wake up alone in this apartment that still feels barren and empty. It feels like Bakugou had brought sound and colour with him when he came, and when he leaves he’ll take it away with him, leaving Shouto alone once again in his world of silence and monochrome.
“No,” he says. “Let’s just keep watching stuff.”
He doesn’t look at Bakugou, but he can feel the heat of his gaze on Shouto’s face. His fingers are still pressing into the base of Shouto’s skull, and it’s making it hard to concentrate.
Finally Bakugou shrugs and picks up the remote, finally settling on some countdown of the 30 “Biggest Villain Fails” of the past however long. Shouto doesn’t pay attention, although Bakugou does. He lets out the occasional laugh or snort, and at one point Shouto hears him mutter “I remember that fucker.” His fingers have moved up to tangle in Shouto’s hair; his theory that he died is starting to sound more feasible, because he can’t imagine Bakugou ever being this touchy.
When the show is over Bakugou doesn’t mention Shouto lying down again. He just keeps flipping channels until he finds something he deems acceptable, and then he shoves Shouto off of him. Shouto doesn’t get a lot of time to feel this rejection, though, because Bakugou just lays down, stretching his body out along the couch before he pulls Shouto back down on top of him. The couch isn’t very large, and Shouto is half on top of Bakugou, his leg slung over Bakugou’s, an arm over his waist, head pillowed on his chest, the steady beating of his heart in Shouto’s ear. There’s no way that this isn’t cuddling. This is the single most tender thing Shouto has ever experienced in his life, probably, and the fact that it’s with Bakugou is making his head spin. Or maybe it’s the way that Bakugou smells that’s making him dizzy, or the fact that he’s close enough to know how he smells. He settles an arm around Shouto, fingers stroking against his skin, and then he turns his eyes back to the television. Shouto doesn’t think he could concentrate on the show if you paid him to. All he can focus on is Bakugou’s body beneath him, hard with muscle but surprisingly comfortable and warm, the steady in and out of his breathing soothing and relaxing. It’s making him sleepy, and he knows that if he let himself, he’d be lulled to sleep by it. But he fights against it, and he thinks he’s been doing a pretty good job until Bakugou says, “You can go to sleep if you want. I don’t care.”
Maybe it’s the pot, or maybe it’s the intimacy, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s still not completely convinced he’s not dreaming or dead— whatever it is, it makes Shouto say, “I don’t want you to go.”
Bakugou’s hand flexes on his shoulder, and then he says, “I ain’t gonna be moving for a while. Remind me to ask Sero why the shit he gives you is way better than the shit he gives me.”
It takes Shouto a few moments for this to penetrate his brain. “You do this a lot?”
“Not a lot. Sometimes.”
“Oh.” This surprises Shouto, although it shouldn’t. Bakugou hadn’t been the one coughing up a lung when he’d taken a drag of the joint. “Do you… like it?” That sounds like a stupid fucking question. Why did Shouto even ask that? Why is he being so weird?
“Not— I mean, I guess,” Bakugou says. “It’s not really that, though. It just— it helps me sleep.”
“Oh,” Shouto says again. “Do you have trouble sleeping?” Another stupid question. Obviously — he’d just said that. Why is he suddenly being so weird? Is it the proximity? Like being so close to Bakugou is making his brain stop working.
“Yeah,” Bakugou says, and Shouto thinks that’s probably all he’s going to say on the matter, but after a moment he says, in a quiet voice that Shouto is unaccustomed to hearing from him, “I get nightmares.”
Oh. Oh. Shouto is afraid to do anything to disturb whatever this is. He doesn’t even want to breathe. Bakugou is trusting him with this, and Shouto feels incredibly honoured by that. “I do too,” he says quietly.
“‘Bout what?”
Where does he even start. “The war. My father. My mother. Touya. The war.”
“You said that already.”
Oh. “Bears repeating,” he says.
After a moment Bakugou returns Shouto’s truthfulness with his own. “Me too. Well— about the war. Not about your fucked up family.” Shouto stifles a laugh into Bakugou’s chest. “But other shit, too. I’ve been gettin’ them since the sludge villain attack.”
“That was seven years ago,” Shouto says.
“Yeah, jackass, I know how to count.”
Shouto considers this. “Thank you for telling me.”
Bakugou snorts. “Don’t be a weirdo, Shouto.”
He can’t tell if Bakugou knows what he’d said, if he’d meant to say Shouto’s given name or if it had just slipped out. He’s not sure which answer he’d prefer— if he likes the idea of Bakugou consciously choosing to say his name more than the idea of it slipping out without meaning, as if that’s how he refers to Shouto in his head.
“Sorry,” he murmurs.
“You don’t have to apologize, stupid. I already know you’re a weirdo.”
Shouto turns his face into Bakugou’s shirt. It smells really nice, actually. Shouto wonders what kind of soap he uses. Would it be weird to ask if the intention is to buy the soap for himself? Probably. Maybe he’ll go visit the apartment Bakugou shares with Midoriya. Midoriya will let him in; maybe he can find out what Bakugou uses for soap.
No, okay, now he’s getting really fucking creepy. He needs to slow it down. He tries to focus his attention back on the television. “What are we watching?”
“You haven’t been paying attention?”
“Not really,” Shouto admits. He’s not going to mention what he has been paying attention to. “Is it another All Might thing?”
“Yeah,” Bakugou admits. There’s a hint of something in his voice that isn’t quite insecurity, but could get there if Bakugou let it. “This one’s kinda dumb—”
“I don’t think it’s dumb,” Shouto says quickly. “What’s this one about?”
There’s the briefest of pauses— and then Bakugou starts talking, filling Shouto in on the show. It’s a show this time, not a movie, and even though it’s some random episode from the middle of some random season, Bakugou is able to place it pretty much immediately, giving Shouto context and explaining who the characters were. Shouto finds it hard to focus on the content of his words, getting lost instead in the cadence of his voice and the rumble of his chest beneath Shouto’s ear. It’s the longest he’s ever heard Bakugou talk for, and he realizes how much he likes the sound of it.
“You’re not paying attention, are you?”
“Yes I am,” Shouto argues immediately. “I like the sound of your voice.”
Bakugou doesn’t answer. Shouto curses himself for saying that out loud.
“Sorry,” Shouto says.
“Stop fuckin’ apologizing for being yourself,” Bakugou says. “‘Course you like the sound of my voice. Who wouldn’t.”
Shouto relaxes slightly. He hadn’t even realized he’d been so tensed up. Overall he doesn’t mind the feeling of being high, but his loose tongue is really starting to stress him out.
“Oi,” Bakugou says. He nudges Shouto. “Stop being so afraid to say the wrong thing. I don’t give a shit.”
Shouto considers this. “You really pay attention.”
And Bakugou says— “Not really. Just to you.”
Shouto freezes. He thinks his entire body stops functioning for a second. Heart stops beating, blood stops flowing, lungs stop breathing. He says, “What does that mean?”
“The fuck do you think I mean?” Bakugou sits up slightly, and Shouto braces himself against his chest as Bakugou moves them so they can be face to face. “How many other people d’you think I’m doing this with?” He gestures with the arm that isn’t around Shouto still, and Shouto knows he means all of this— the cuddling, the pot, the dinner, every fragile, unsure thing that exists between them right now.
“I’m starting to think I hit my head a lot harder than I thought.”
Bakugou scowls and says, “I’m starting to think you’re a lot stupider than I thought.”
Shouto has never really done spontaneity. He’s good at moving and reacting quickly because of his hero training, but that’s different from being spontaneous. From doing something without thinking it through. Without second guessing every word you say. Without telling yourself that there’s no way in hell the beautiful boy in front of you is saying what you think he is. But Shouto knows that if he lets himself think about any of this that he’s going to ruin this. And he really, really doesn’t want to ruin this.
So instead, he leans forward and kisses Bakugou before he can convince himself not to. Shouto has never kissed anyone before, a fact that had never bothered him until right this moment, because he’s not sure if he’s doing it right. Is he supposed to move his lips? Does he open his mouth immediately or is that something they build up to? What is he supposed to do with his hands?
Shouto is approximately three point five seconds away from overthinking and ruining everything when Bakugou solves every problem for him by taking control. He moves them, awkwardly pushing Shouto back until their positions are switched and Shouto is the one beneath Bakugou. Bakugou puts his hand behind Shouto’s head, carefully lowering him so he doesn’t hurt the place where he hit his head earlier. It makes Shouto’s heart feel fit to burst, but he doesn’t have time to really focus on it, what with everything else that’s happening. Bakugou is kind of moving his lips, and Shouto tries to mimic him. He slides his arms up Bakugou’s chest and loops them around his neck, letting his fingers slip into Bakugou’s spiky hair. It’s a lot softer than he expected; Shouto has often thought about touching Bakugou’s hair, but he’d never imagined it to be so soft. Bakugou must take good care of it. He takes good care of his skin, too, Shouto can feel it against him.
Shouto wonders if kissing always feels this good, or if it’s because it’s Bakugou, or if it’s because of the pot— and then he remembers that both of them are under the influence right now, technically, and maybe they shouldn’t be doing this like this.
“Bakugou—” he says, turning his head slightly so Bakugou can’t kiss him anymore. Bakugou makes an annoyed sounding grunt when he is denied access to Shouto’s lips. “We shouldn’t right now— the pot—”
“Not a problem,” Bakugou says, trying to kiss him again, but Shouto remains strong.
“What do you mean?” Shouto asks. He’s anxious about this— he doesn’t want the high to wear off and Bakugou to regret this entire thing.
But Bakugou just rolls his eyes. “I mean I want to kiss you when I’m sober too, idiot.”
Shouto considers this. “Oh,” he says. “Me too.”
“Idiot,” Bakugou says under his breath, before he leans back in again. This time, Shouto doesn’t turn his head away, letting his lips be captured by Bakugou again.
They kiss for days, possibly, or at least that's what it feels like. When they finally pull away Shouto's head is spinning and his lips are wet and swollen, and Bakugou's eyes are hooded and his lips are such a bright red and holy shit, Shouto leans in to kiss him again.
When they pull away again, after a few more days of kissing, Bakugou runs a thumb over Shouto’s lips.
Shouto yawns.
Bakugou raises an eyebrow. "Am I boring you?" He asks dangerously. Shouto reaches out and touches his chest, because he's pretty sure Bakugou will let him, and when Bakugou does let him, he slides his hand up so it rests on Bakugou's collarbone, fingers curled against his skin. If he pulled the shirt to the side he'd be able to see the jagged scar from one of Shigaraki’s puncture wounds, and if he pulled the shirt further he'd be able to see more of the scars that adorn Bakugou's body. Shouto has seen them all, in change rooms and the agency showers, and he knows what most of them are from, but not all. He dreams sometimes of pressing his lips to all of them while Bakugou tells him what each one is from.
"No," Shouto answers, even though he's pretty sure Bakugou was kidding. "I'm sorry. I'm just tired."
Bakugou hums. "Busy day. You should go to bed." Maybe he sees the panic that Shouto is certain is in his eyes, because Bakugou rolls his and shoves Shouto's hair out of his face with a hand. "I'm not going anywhere stupid, I told you."
"You said you couldn't go anywhere," Shouto points out. "Not that you wouldn't." He should probably be worried about how clingy he's being, but the thought of Bakugou leaving is too much. Shouto has a bad feeling that if Bakugou leaves before they talk about this, they won't talk about it at all.
But thankfully, Bakugou just laughs at Shouto's clinginess. "I won't go anywhere either, okay clingy? Will you go lie down if I promise that?"
"Will you lie down with me?" Shouto isn't normally this brazen, but he's feeling powerful with kiss swollen lips. He's pretty sure Bakugou doesn't want to leave either, and that he doesn't mind Shouto's brazenness. His eyes are glinting and his mouth is curved up at the edges. A lot of people tend to notice Bakugou’s loud personality first, and they don't realize how goddamn pretty he is. Shouto knows, though.
“Yeah, yeah,” Bakugou says. He moves away from Shouto, which is bad and sad and unwelcome, but then he sticks out his hand and says, “Let’s fucking go, Shouto,” and the sound of his first name again soothes the hurt.
Bakugou raises an eyebrow when they enter Shouto’s bedroom. He takes a look around at the blank walls and empty tables and says, “You’ve lived here for eight months.”
“Yeah?”
Bakugou shakes his head. “I’m letting this slip to Mina. She’ll come over and make this place look fuckin’ lived in.”
Shouto considers this. Maybe he won’t hate going home so much if home was a little more welcoming.
Tomorrow he’ll wake up with fuzzy teeth and bad breath and will regret not brushing his teeth, but tonight it’s the last thing on his mind as he and Bakugou crawl into his bed. Bakugou turns him onto his side and slides up behind him, an arm coming around Shouto’s waist. He’s warm behind Shouto, radiating heat against his back, breath on the back of Shouto’s neck. He’s surprised at how comfortable and natural it feels, how right.
“Bakugou,” he says quietly. Bakugou grunts to indicate he’s listening. “Will you be here in the morning?”
“Yeah,” Bakugou says gruffly. “I won’t leave without telling you, relax.”
“Sorry,” Shouto says automatically.
“Don’t apologize so much.”
Shouto bites his tongue so he doesn’t immediately say sorry again. He tries to think of something to say, and he thinks for so long that Bakugou’s breathing evens out, and he falls asleep. Shouto thinks this is a great idea, actually— he closes his eyes and drifts off.
Shouto wakes up with an incredibly dry mouth. He ducks out from where Bakugou still has an arm around him and runs to the bathroom to brush his teeth; that’s something simple and easy he can take care of before he even attempts to sort out the fact that Bakugou is in his bed. Even though his memories are a little hazy, he’s certain that there was a lot of kissing last night. He really doesn’t know how to deal with that— so he brushes his teeth instead. Then he puts out a spare toothbrush so Bakugou can brush his teeth. Then he goes to the kitchen and gets two glasses of water. Then he runs out of things to procrastinate on, so he takes the cups and heads back into his bedroom.
Bakugou is asleep, still, spread out on his stomach, cheek pushed against Shouto’s pillows. His sheets will smell like him now. That pillowcase too. Looking at him now, everything feels a lot more manageable, and a lot less scary.
Then Bakugou says, “Stop staring at me, weirdo,” and things get a lot scarier again. Shouto doesn’t answer; he kind of just gapes at him for a moment until Bakugou rolls over and sits up. He isn’t wearing a shirt. There’s a mark on his collarbone that Shouto can vaguely recall giving him. “That water?” Bakugou asks, and Shouto wordlessly holds it out for him. Bakugou takes it and drinks half, and Shouto watches his throat as he swallows it down.
“I have an extra toothbrush,” Shouto says, too mechanically. “In the bathroom.”
Bakugou looks at him for a moment before he puts the water down on the side table and gets up. He doesn’t say anything to Shouto as he walks past him and out to the bathroom. Shouto puts his own water down and then lies back down in his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He’s having a minor crisis. He knows he’s being weird. He can’t help it— his memories from last night are fuzzy and out of order, but Shouto remembers feeling a confidence that is completely absent this morning. He remembers kissing Bakugou, touching Bakugou. He remembers when he’d accidentally tugged on Bakugou’s hair and he’d hissed, and then Shouto had done it again and Bakugou had moaned. He doesn’t recognize the Shouto from these memories. He doesn’t know how to do that in the light of day, without the weed buzzing in his veins. Would Bakugou still want this Shouto, or was it the one last night he’d liked?
“Hey. Todoroki.” He looks up to see Bakugou standing in the doorframe, arms crossed. He looks defensive. Shouto isn’t sure why. “If you wanna pretend this shit didn’t happen it’s fucking fine. You don’t have to be so fucking weird.” Bakugou scowls at the floor, and Shouto clues into what’s happening— Bakugou is misinterpreting his crisis. Bakugou thinks Shouto regrets it.
“I don’t—” he says immediately, wanting to clear it up, because the only thing scarier than Bakugou knowing how Shouto felt about him was Bakugou thinking Shouto didn’t feel that way about him. “I don’t want to pretend that. I’ve wanted to do that for, um. A while.”
Bakugou’s head snaps up, and his eyes narrow. “How long is a while?” He asks.
“Since first year,” Shouto answers truthfully. Bakugou’s eyes widen, but his posture relaxes, and he throws himself down on the bed beside Shouto.
“You’re so weird,” Bakugou says again. Shouto finds it far more endearing than he does insulting.
“Liking you is weird?” The admission comes out easily, but it feels vastly inadequate. As if liking could come close to describing the way he feels about the person beside him.
“When I was a little fucking prick, yeah.”
“You’re still kind of a prick,” Shouto points out. He doesn’t intend it to be mean— it’s just a statement of fact. Bakugou snorts.
“Fuck you,” he says.
And Shouto says, “Okay.”
Bakugou’s head turns to look at him. It’s one of the rare times when he looks caught off guard. Shouto hurries to cover up his embarrassing slip up.
“I mean— Now now, just. At some point. If you wanted. What I’m trying to say is I want to— I like you and I want—”
Bakugou laughs. “Relax, Icyhot, I can smell your brain smoking. I like you too, you fucking moron.”
Shouto still doesn’t know if Bakugou gets what he’s trying to say. “I’m saying I want to do this for real,” he says. “I want—”
“I know what you want,” Bakugou says. His voice is low. Gruff. Sexy. “I want it too.”
“Oh,” Shouto says, like an idiot. “Okay. That’s nice. Does that mean you’ll kiss me again?”
Bakugou doesn’t answer, at least not with his words. He grabs Shouto’s face and pulls him to him, and he kisses him squarely. Shouto almost gasps. He’s not sure if it’s the lack of memory, or if the pot had dulled his senses— either way the press of Bakugou’s lips against his feels like fireworks, like Bakugou was setting off his quirk with his mouth. Shouto surges forward, desperate for more, and Bakugou makes a bitten off noise as he’s pushed backwards so Shouto can climb on top of him. Bakugou’s hands trace down Shouto’s back, and when he rolls his hips Bakugou lets them go lower, too, grabbing his ass. He opens his mouth beneath Shouto’s and they both try to figure out what to do with their tongues. It’s so much better than the blurry memories in his head; Bakugou tastes like his toothpaste and smells like smoke.
One of Bakugou’s hands leaves his ass and travels back up to cup the back of Shouto’s head with extreme gentleness. “How’s your head?” He mutters against Shouto’s lips. It takes Shouto a solid amount of time to remember that he’d hit it, yesterday, and that’s what had started this whole thing.
“It’s fine,” he says. “I forgot I even got hit.”
“That’s not really helping your case.”
“I’m fine,” Shouto asserts. “Bakugou—”
“Katsuki.”
Shouto pauses, and then he pulls away. “What?”
“You deaf or something?” Bakugou says automatically, a defense mechanism Shouto is hoping to dismantle someday. “It’s my fucking name.”
“Katsuki,” Shouto says. Then he says it again: “Katsuki.”
Bakugou likes that— he surges up to kiss Shouto again, a big hand coming up to cup his cheek. He pulls away to kiss Shouto’s jaw, and Shouto says it again— “ Katsuki.”
“Fuck,” Bakugou— Katsuki says. He really likes it. Shouto puts that in his back pocket to bring out whenever he wants the upper hand.
They’re kissing again when Shouto’s phone rings. He ignores it, but it rings again— when he checks who it is, annoyed, he sees his father’s name. Katsuki laughs.
“You should at least tell the agency that you’re fine,” he says, as Shouto slides off his lap to grab his still ringing phone. “I’m gonna make something to eat.”
“You’re staying then?” He presses the volume button on his phone to silence the ringer; a text comes in from his father that says pick up the phone.
“Unless you want me to leave,” Katsuki says, shrugging like he doesn’t care even though Shouto can tell that he does.
“No,” Shouto says quickly. “I don’t want you to leave.”
Shouto! Comes another text; his phone starts ringing again, and Katsuki gives him a crooked grin.
“Talk to your fucking father and then come eat,” he says, climbing out of bed and picking his shirt up off the ground, pulling it over his head. Shouto watches the hard muscles of his chest disappear with something akin to grief. Before he leaves he walks back over to the bed, and he kisses Shouto once more before heading out the door and into the hall. Shouto watches him go, and he can’t quite force the smile off of his face. It stays there even through his entire conversation with his father, who berates him to be more careful, and Shouto doesn’t even care. Let Endeavor nag— Shouto had a boy in his kitchen making him breakfast, and that is definitely worth the head injury.