Work Text:
“Won’t you get in the pool, Kirishima?” Kaminari asked. A towel hung around his shoulders, presumptably only for aesthetic, as he ran dangerously across that edge of the pool people always tell kids not to run across. Kirishima was sitting in a spot of shadow not too far from the pool bar. He looked like he was enjoying himself, talking with literally every fucking person that walked within a 10 feet radius of him and laughing and smiling and being his usual merry self, but it was nevertheless strange that he wouldn’t get into the pool. Only the nerds stay outside, really—Tokoyami, Iida, and Yaomomo, for instance. The first was excused by a unanimous unexpressed feeling, the second was just a killjoy, and the third had no explainable reason besides something about not wanting to mess up her hair. She was even in her bikini, who the hell gets in a swimsuit if they are not going to dive in? Sunbathing my ass. But along with the three nerds, there was Kirishima, styling red flashy swimtrucks and with no excuse whatsoever.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know how to swim” Bakugou said with a sneer, somehow letting himself into the conversation despite being on the other side of the pool.
“Of course I know!” Kirishima shouted, offended. Bakugou shrugged, and, not seeing any more potential to mess Kirishima in the conversation, he resumed whatever business he had with the struggling bush of green hair he was holding under the water.
Kaminari carried on his insistent complaints—he wanted to get all the bakusquad to jump at the same time and record it for a Tik Tok or something, and it would be much more impressive if Bakugou and Kirishima were in it, because, damn, if there was someone in this planet that knew how to do a cannonball, that must have been one of those two, but it started to look like he would never know.
The pool party continued, unfazed by Kaminari’s disgrace. The sunbathing, the actual bathing, the splashing, the unconsented videos that would make powerful blackmail, and the sodas at the pool’s bar because they are too young to have cocktails or whatever. Half an hour into the party, Kirishima was still warming up his spot “ like a fucking loser,” Bakugou thought as he made his way to get a drink. Lifeless Deku was no longer any fun so he either found someone else to piss off or he would have to leave all those dipshits to rot by themselves in their lame pool party. Admittedly (not by him, he would never admit it), the first one sounded better, so he gave a slick step closer to an oblivious Kirishima and snatched him from the floor on which he was so peacefully relaxing. He lifted him up like he weighed nothing—not… not like a manly gloom, lifting his spouse, but rather like the (also manly) David of Michelangelo. With one hand he lifted him like he was a small pebble, and with the same strength as if he had been wanting to kill the very Goliath, he sent Kirishima flying into the pool. The redhead yelped in surprise before splashing into it.
His quirk came in handy, otherwise, his flat landing would have left his whole body marked in red to match his hair in the most painful of ways, counter back? The splash took out more water than Deku had swallowed, and, unfortunately, no matter what Uraraka made everyone believe in the sports festival, rocks do not float.
All of those who were laughing at Kirishima, and all of those who were nagging Bakugou about it, had to shift their attention as they didn’t receive any kind of acknowledgment from the redhead in question. Bubbles rose to the surface from a blurry and panicky red shape beneath the water.
The fed-up expression Bakugou had adopted while he was scolded by Iida changed ever so slightly to show a hint of worry, and he made his way to where Kirishima was before anyone else—due to matters of proximity, obviously.
He reached his arm into the water. It was the deepest end, so he had to lean forward until his fingers finally dived into the pleasant texture of Kirishima’s wet hair. Gently, if the action left any room for gentleness at all, he grasped the bush of hair and pulled it out of the water.
Kirishima came out coughing and gasping for air, his eyes tightly closed. If his character had been any similar to Bakugou’s, he would have been swearing and cursing as much as his vocabulary permitted.
“Deactivate your quirk, dumbass,” Bakugou said, feeling the Deja Voo , and Kirishima complied. Once his skin had become soft and his breath fairly steady, but before he had the chance to say anything, Bakugou called it done and let go of his hair, only to watch it immediately disappear again, Kirishima’s hand failing in its desperate attempt to hold onto the edge of the pool. He was sinking again.
This time around the rest of their classmates had time to react, and they shouted at Bakugou to get him again. He groaned, wishing they could have shut their mouths for once because now it would look like he was fucking obeying them, when he was fucking not, he had decided to help Kirishima way before they had told him so, the credit was all his, fuck them. Still, he couldn’t let Kirishima drown, he was a hero and all that shit, so he reached out his hand and pulled him up by the hair once more. This time, though, Kirishima wasn’t coughing, and his eyes weren't tightly shut, just shut, and Bakugou was the one who gasped for air. He hastened to get him out of the water. For some reason, he felt much heavier now than a few seconds ago when Bakugou had been able to lift him and yeet him with one hand, but he managed nonetheless to set him on the floor, where everybody formed a rather imperfect circle trying to check over the boy to see if he was alright but not really doing anything when they checked that, in fact, he wasn’t alright.
Bakugou leaned over to check his breathing, it was dim, if any, so he grabbed his hand and checked his pulse. Fast, but fine enough.
“Maybe he needs mouth-to-mouth!” Hagakure took her chance to point out. Iida immediately showed his willingness to help a colleague, Kaminari joked that, if not, Tokoyami could do it, and Sero, more slyly, suggested Deku. Bakugou thought to himself irritated that he would be a much better option, for sure! He had aced the written first-aid test, if he needed an argument to prove his point (we will let the practical out of the conversation, though, for the sake of the argument). He barely had any time to yell at anyone, however, as Kirishima opened his eyes and sat up coughing. The teens of class 1A, stared with surgeon-like focus at how the redhead, who desperately coughed out all of the water in his lungs.
Finally, he stopped coughing, straightened up and stretched his body. “Aw man,” he yawned, and, in an instant, he looked perfectly fine, so fine that his classmates couldn’t believe it and hurried to ask him a thousand times about his condition which he answered a thousand times with an “I’m okay, man, really!”
The class (except for Bakugou, needless to say) helped him go sit on a deck-chair like he couldn’t fucking do it for himself and needed twenty bastards for the job, but he somehow managed to convince them that he didn’t need to see Recovery Girl.
“In fact,” he said, stopping the mass that dragged him, “I think I’m going to get lunch already.” Everyone whined, feeling guilty about it, but again he said he was fine, that he was just hungry, and that it was a good time to get going anyway, to “get something in his stomach other than water!”
Bakugou wondered why the fuck was he still so happy—because his smile was genuine and his words truthful, he knew that much—after nearly getting killed, and he thought that Kaminari was probably right (if that was possible in this universe or any versions of it) and Kirishima was a fucking masochist or some shit, but he stuffed his hands on his swimsuit, inside the rubber band, at the lack of pockets, and walked beside the redhead. He didn’t need to announce his departure for it to be noticed.
“Oh! You comin’ for lunch too, Blasty?” Kirishima asked, holding the door onto the building for him. Bakugou ignored his question as if it was one of Iida’s orders—he ignored the shit out of it, really—, and he waited until the door was closed to speak.
“You lied to me.”
“Huh? How so?” Kirishima pouted, confused. God knows he hates lying to his friends, but he had the hope that “lied” meant something else in Bakugou’s language. It meant something really close to everyone’s understanding of the word though, at least on this occasion.
“You said you could swim, you lied, it was not my fault.”
Kirishima's eyes widened, recalling the moment, and he reached an arm to scratch the back of his head. “Ah, yeah, sorry about that.”
“It was not my fault,” Bakugou repeated, overlooking the apology even though it was what he was looking for in the first place.
“No, it was not, bro,” Kirishima reassured.
“It was fucking not!”
“That’s what I said!”
After that, the two fell into a deep, dark hole of silence. Kirishima felt kind of guilty for having lied to his best friend. Stupidly enough, Bakugou was feeling guilty too (even though they had agreed it hadn’t been his fucking fault).
“You are fucking pathetic.”
“No need to be that harsh, man…,” Kirishima looked to the floor. He pointed the words with a chuckle, but it was half-hearted and self-conscious. For some reason, this made Bakugou feel more guilty. That wasn’t what he meant. Not exactly, anyways.
“You can’t be a hero if you don’t know how to swim.”
Kirishima said nothing, so Bakugou resumed his attempts of trying to explain himself.
“There is no point in being unbreakable if one can just pick you up and yeet you into a mass of water and call it an end.”
“Stop it already, Bakugou!” Kirishima shouted, because he may be kind-hearted but he wasn’t going to allow getting bullied by any suicide blond asshole if he could help it.
“I–,” Bakugou bit his words, his face contorting into his default scowl because 1) How dare him yell at him; and 2) How dare him misunderstand him like that. He muttered some curses, aware of his very shameful lack of speech skills. Sue him for having one flaw, goddammit. “That’s not— ugh, I just think you should fucking learn.” And if his mind supplied a very unnecessary “it’s dangerous,” that’d stay between him and God; and if underneath that thought lay another that said “and I don’t want you to ever be in danger,” that’d be only for God to know. It was slightly unsettling, to know unbreakable doesn’t mean undefeatable. Regretfully, he noticed that he hated learning about a weak point of Kirishima nearly as much as he loved learning about anyone else’s. Though it was only natural, really. If a horse goes down, its jockey goes down with it.
“Dude, I've tried, really, but rocks don’t float, you know?”
“Are you calling yourself a rock?” Bakugou raised an eyebrow, lowering his volume a little as they entered the dining hall. It might be the noisiest place in the school, yes, but it was also the place where the gossipers met.
“Yes I am! Dude, I swear, it’s impossible that I learn how to swim,” he cried, and Bakugou thanked the opportunity to express the intention of all this bullshit conversation so smoothly.
“Are you fucking challenging me?”
“What do you mean?” Dense motherfucker.
“It means that you are a fucking disgrace but very ridiculously lucky. I’ll make the best fucking swimmer out of you.”
“You…,” the dumbass was almost tearing up, “would you do that for me, Bakugou?!”
If he would risk his damn life for him, he saw no reason not to give him some swimming lessons, or, what is the same: “it’s not that fucking much of a big deal anyway.”
“Bro! You are the best!” Kirishima shouted, being his over-dramatic shitty self and giving him a side hug, and the only reason why Bakugou didn’t explode his stupid face was that his hands were occupied with a tray and his food would have gone to waste—which would have been worth it if it had bee Kaminari or Deku, but wasn’t really worth it if it was only Kirishima—.
“I know,” he replied, forcing the maximum possible amount of conceit in his voice, as if a reminder wasn’t always appreciated, “now you better don’t waste my time.”
“I-I won’t! I'll give my best!”
Bakugou believed his promise. Kirishima always gave his fucking best in everything he did, always, so he didn’t say anything else and ate silently as he listened to stories of young Ei-chan vs his old enemy, water. All the stories were rather tragic, but Kirishima knew how to turn them into comedy by virtue of his smile alone.
“Tomorrow in the pool at five-thirty in the morning, don’t be late,” Bakugou said as they readied themselves to enter their respective rooms, hardly believing that he was going to give up his morning training for this asshole but accepting it pretty damn elegantly because he knew it was going to happen and he couldn’t do anything to stop it.
“Ha? Five thirty?” Kirishima complained. He struggled to wake up at seven thirty so this sounded way too masochistic even for him.
The complaint pissed Bakugou off. He was being damn considerate. “When then, asshole? I hope you haven’t forgotten the math exam on Tuesday because I will blast your face off.”
This made Kirishima let out an “Ah! You are right!” that had a hint of dullness but a whole bunch of embarrassment because he remembered Bakugou had also agreed to help him with math.
Bakugou, guessing this thought, had his cheeks turn pink. He sharply looked away to avoid Kirishima noticing.
He was softening and being willingly helpful. It was fucking embarrassing. “You would be fucking dead without me,” he said, shutting the door of his room behind him and hearing an “I would!” from the other side of it.
He clenched his fists, trapping stray explosions inside them. Who would have told him that he's find himself preventing people from dying? He was... you know, the one supposed to explodokill people, not to save them from getting killed. The hero course was really doing him no good.
The next morning, Bakugou followed his usual routine with his usual precision: Smashing the alarm, shoving some clothes on (a swimsuit in this case), and going downstairs to grab a dark coffee, only that today, instead of heading to the running track, he went to the pool. He arrived there at 5:25, the sun wasn’t out yet and neither was Kirishima. “Fucker,” he scoffed, as if he had had the slightest hope of finding him there earlier than the time scheduled... or on time.
He appeared at 5:32, looking as if he had been dragged out of his grave. It’s not like Bakugou is into necrophilia or anything of the sort, but he thought he looked kind of cute—or amusing, yeah, amusing was a better word. His hair was down and all messed up, and his run was awkward and sloppy. Bakugou was pretty sure his swimsuit was backward, too.
“You are fucking late.”
“Sorry!”
The blond, who was expecting a complaint of the “ only two minutes! ” type, accepted the apology without any further comments.
“So—,” Kirishima stopped his sentence to yawn, “where do we start?”
“In the fucking water,” Bakugou deadpanned. It was unfair, all very unfair. With a hand that Kirishima’s sleepy reflexes were too slow to dodge, he pushed him into the pool.
Eijiro—whether it was for the suddenness of the fall, the panic of drowning, or the temperature of the water waking him up completely—shouted, loud enough to wake everyone had there been dorms in the sports building.
He got on his feet with a gasp (he could now, since Bakugou had cared to push him into the shallower end of the pool) and shook the water off of his hair like the golden retriever he was—Bakugou had to give a jump back to dodge that—.
“Fuck you!” Kirishima complained, and Bakugou raised both eyebrows because that was his catchphrase.
“Do you want to learn how to swim or not?” he teased, leaning over. Kirishima took the chance to attempt to pull him into the water as revenge—“Revenge” in Bakugou’s words “playing along” in Eijiro’s—, and if he had been wearing a t-shirt he would have probably succeeded, but he wasn’t, so he only got to tickle his chest with his fingertips before the other backed off.
“You wish,” Katsuki laughed, straightening up and stepping in Kirishima’s face to shove him into the water.
“Okay okay!” Eijiro whined, pushing the feet away, “just teach me how to swim!”
Bakugou scoffed. “You just…,” he looked into the pool as if he had dropped there the words he couldn’t find. “You just fucking swim, who knows!”
“Come on man!”
The blond sighed, “well, first, don’t drown.”
“Aw, thanks, man, that's incredibly more helpful,” Kirishima joked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“I wasn’t finished!” Bakugou lied, wondering how could he make it any more damn crystal clear, and desperately searching in his memories for that one day of his childhood when he still had his baby teeth and his class was taken into the school’s pee-smelling pool for the first time. “Well, you need to float. Air floats, you know? So you just have to fill your lungs with that motherfucker.”
Kirishima somehow understood. He had a natural talent for translating whatever language the blond spoke. He opened his mouth unnecessarily wide and breathed in. His cheeks were puffed out and Bakugou inadvertently held his breath as well, as one does while watching a movie to check the realism of the scene. Kirishima was the kind of idiot that would forget to breathe until his face was purple, so yeah, it was a safety measure.
The redhead lifted his feet from the bottom of the pool, and right when the hope that he was going to succeed lit the scene, he started going down like he will go down on Bakugou tonight— ahem, I mean, he started sinking.
“Stupid!” Bakugou shouted, smashing his head with a fist as soon as he came out of the water as if he was part of a whack-a-mole machine.
“It’s not my fault! Sixty kilograms of pure muscle are too much for the water to hold!”
“If you mean you are dense as fuck then you’re right,” Bakugou said. He knew the other wouldn’t understand his joke because he had failed physics, but he couldn’t care less. He was busy thinking about sixty kilograms of pure muscle, after all.
“I’m hopeless.”
To Bakugou’s mouth came some reply close to “ there is always hope” but he thought that it would sound too much like something shitty Deku would say, so he stopped himself. “Are you giving up already? Fucking pathetic, try again.”
He tried again. He sank again. He tried again. He sank again. He tried again. He sank again.
“But don’t do exactly the same!” Bakugou clenched his fists, “stupid! If you don’t float, you fucking make yourself float! There’s a reason why I haven’t ripped your limbs off yet! Fucking use them!”
Kirishima thought he understood, did he?
He tried again. He held himself on the surface. He sank again.
“I did it!” he exclaimed, exulting in the scarce ten seconds he had been touching nothing but water.
“You didn’t do shit. Again.”
Thirty minutes later Kirishima could float for 46 seconds (as a record, 27 as an average). Though he kept his bright smile, he was tired, so he conceded himself an unconsented break and Bakugou had to eventually give in.
The redhead put both elbows on the edge of the pool, resting his head in his hands and gazing at the sky. “Do you always wake up this early, Blasty?” he asked, helping a yawn.
“‘course I do.”
“That’s why you go to bed so early then, and we thought you were a sleepy head!”
“You…,” Bakugou’s face started visibly heating with rage, but Kirishima spoke again before he exploded.
“I bet you do it to watch the sunrise, don’t you?” his eyes, which were on the sun, shifted to the blond, inquisitive and soft.
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
“‘cause it’s beautiful.”
In his head, Bakugou had expected a more logical answer (how stupid of him!), and his features loosened dumbly in surprise. He turned to look at the horizon and, hell, the world must be approaching its doom day because Kirishima was right. He stared at it for a few seconds. He had never ever in all his mornings training stopped to behold something as stupid as the sun, and now he felt like an idiot because it was nothing unexpectable that bright and warm and beautiful and stupid came in a pack.
He felt Kirishima’s face nudge his ankle. He looked almost as if he was going to fall asleep against it. “Hey, Bakugou, thank you for doing this for me, really,” he said gently, his hand was now around his ankle too, and Katsuki was spellbound and helpless. “But—.” A strong pull and he had lost his balance. Kirishima’s tired face morphed into a mischievous grin faster than an unattended bag of food in the common room disappears, and Bakugou fell into the pool—more accurately, he fell into Kirishima’s arms.
Bakugou yelped and tried to grab into whatever (also known as Eijiro’s neck) and seeing their faces so close, his pale cheeks turned bright red—his cheeks meaning his whole face, and ears, and neck.
Kirishima held him, hands ON his waist and face struggling not to let his amusement show through—or facking to struggle, rather.
“Fucker!” Bakugou shouted, and he tried to explode his face. He really tried, but hardly a lame sparkle would arise from his hands. His sweat had gotten washed away.
Kirishima gasped, elated. “Water is your weakness too!”
“It is not!”
“Yes it is! You can’t make explosions here!” Kirishima laughed with glee, and he would have raised his fists in the air had his hands been in any less comfortable position. He knew It wasn’t nice to be happy at his friend’s weakness, he wasn’t happy at it, but he couldn’t help liking the feeling of learning he was not falling behind. He was happy they were still equals, as selfish as that was, because only this way could they remain together.
“I can still kill you,” Bakugou threatened.
“How so?”
The blond took that as a challenge, and he started his attempts to drown the other boy, or drag him to the deeper end of the pool and let him drown himself. Eijiro didn’t budge.
“Bastard,” Bakugou let out, gritting his teeth. He tried everything, but he would have more easily moved a two-stories building with one hand. “I hate you,” he said in a final, desperate, attempt to make some harm to the unwavering horse.
“I doubt it!”
Doubt it? Bakugou growled. Kirishima was more of an idiot than he had thought, even if the bar was set lower than Todoroki’s self-esteem. How could he doubt that he hated him if he hit him all the time, even though he warned him with a shout so he had time to activate his quirk? how could he doubt he hated him if he insulted his hair and his intellect, even though he had started to use his name more and more often? How could he doubt he hated him if he had just told him to his face as they stood close together in the middle of the swimming lesson he had agreed to give him to make sure he was safe? Stupid Kirishima. Ridiculous Kirishima.
The redhead giggled, “you okay?”
“Yes–!” well fuck, no. Kirishima’s hair was wet and down and sparkling with the sun, his cheeks slightly flushed, for he was contemplating a similar view.
“You are an asshole, I will fucking leave and let you here if you don’t have the slightest fucking intention to learn how to fucking swim,” he threatened, though his voice lacked passion.
“But I do!”
Bakugou accepted the lame, stark beg. Now that he was inside the water, too, there was no reason not to help Kirishima from there. And it’s a given that his sense of dignity won’t let him admit how he enjoyed such a perfect excuse to touch and hold Kirishima’s naked torso, but maybe, possibly, his face gave it away.
And Kirishima proved to learn faster this way, so it was a win-win situation (Bakugou liked winning, so a double win was about everything he could ask for). Not that Kirishima was close to doing something similar to what is usually considered “swimming,” though.
At times, especially after the first four morning lessons, Bakugou thought that Kirishima really was hopeless and that him learning how to swim was less likely to happen than Mineta getting a girlfriend, even with him as a teacher, and that was saying a LOT. He did not miss his chances to tell him, either. “I’m trying my best!” Kirishima always replied.
“Then your best is not fucking enough!” Bakugou said back once, when he was so pissed that he didn’t give a second thought to his words. It brought to Kirishima’s eyes the insecurity of just not being good enough, which had become scarier for the aspiring heroes than not being able to give their best.
“I cannot give more than my best.”
The blond crouched on the edge of the pool with a sigh. “Then improve your best, fucking moron, and you’ll be able to do better.”
“Bakugou…,” the redhead looked up at him with shining eyes, “that was so manly!” Had it really been manly or not is arguable, but Kirishima said it with such conviction that the other believed it.
“Shut the fuck up and try again.”
“Yessir!” Eijirou said enthusiastically, determined to act as a man and follow his friend’s advice.
Bakugou watched him splash around like a kid, and between the conceit and the second-hand embarrassment, he found room to feel some kind of soft amusement.
“Hopeless…,” he whispered with a small smirk he made sure to keep to himself.
It got less amusing, though, after seeing him do nothing without stepping on the pool’s bottom for at least ten minutes. Bakugou is not, each and every one of the students of class 1A can give constancy of it, a patient man. “Four days for fuck’s sake!”
“Hey, wait, what are you doing, Bakugou, wait, Bakugou,” Kirishima tried to resist, but Katsuki didn’t listen. He grabbed him ruthlessly, lifting him with a hand, and took him to the other end of the pool, putting up with his vain struggles to free himself.
“Say, Kirishima, do you know how birds learn to fly?”
The redhead’s face churned in anticipation, “come on man—.” Not having done enough to convince Bakugou not to drop him in the middle of the pool, he splashed in with a yelp. After a couple of seconds disappeared, Eijirou rose to the surface, with very pathetic moves and a distressed expression, but he rose and brought himself to the edge where Bakugou waited with his arms crossed—coughing and holding onto it as if his life depended on it but getting there nonetheless.
“Oh! I was blinded by your generosity and didn’t see it was all a trap to murder me!” he cried.
“Asshole!” Bakugou stomped on his head, “but you didn’t die, did you?”
Kirishima sighed, “no, I guess I didn’t.” He fully understood Bakugou’s point, but his method wasn’t particularly to his taste—though on second thought, it had been rather manly.
“You’re welcome.”
“For not killing me?” he raised an eyebrow.
“For saving your life!”
Kirishima giggled, “From yourself?”
“Get out of the pool before I regret it, you bastard.”
“Whatever you say, blasty,” he rolled his eyes, obeying and grabbing the towel the other was handing him. He dried his hair, leaving it messier than it already was, and then wrapped it around his waist. Bakugou, who watched him with a small blush across his face, pushed him towards the changing rooms.
Really, it was shameful that the best hero course in Japan let students graduate without knowing how to fucking swim. I mean… that wasn’t exactly true, they were supposed to get a swim test, but then a certain half-and-half bastard froze the water and the class got canceled with the teachers assuming that everyone knew how to swim.
It had been a relief for Kirishima at the time, but running away from your problems only pays back in the future. It was paying back now, damn was it paying back, but paying quite good, to be honest. Would he have seen so many sunrises by Bakuou’s side otherwise?
“Lets get breakfast, Bakubro,” he smiled with an arm over the blond’s shoulders.
“Don’t call me that,” he replied, but, at the lack of curse words or threats, Kirishima didn’t take him seriously—not that he would have had he threatened to rip off his heart there and then—.
“Hey guys! Where were you?” Kaminari greeted them as they sat on the table with the rest of the squad.
“We were s–!” Kirishima made an attempt to answer, but Bakugou stomping on his foot stopped him. The blond had a faster mind (almost anyone did, but Bakugou’s was way faster), and he had already pictured the scene to follow: “ Where were you?” “We were swimming!” “How so?” “Bakugou’s teaching me!” and then teases and jokes at his expense for the rest of the week or even longer because “ how nice of you Bakugou!” or “ what a good excuse to see Kirishima shirtless Bakugou!” (as if the shithead didn’t go shirtless around all damn day).
“Showering,” he replied, being it the only excuse that justified their wet hairs.
Kaminari squirted his eyes suspiciously, “as in…,” he motioned between the two with a finger, a sneer on his face, and Bakugou quickly caught up on what he meant.
“Fuck no!” he shouted, making Kaminari raise his hands in surrender, and the two—the angry blond and the still puzzled and oblivious redhead—finally took a seat on the table.
A month went by and, surprisingly, Kirishima improved! He wouldn’t win a swimming race, that’s for sure, and he was rather awkward in the water and still sometimes inadvertently turned on his quirk and sank, but he did something that could be considered swimming, and he wouldn’t drown just seconds after getting tossed into the water. Deep inside, despite being aware of the selfishness of it, Katsuki wished he wasn't such a fucking amazing teacher and that Kirishima wasn’t improving so fast because, even though he liked running by himself at dawn, he could admit it was somewhat more boring than spending time alone with his best friend.
The other, though, wasn’t acting any less selfishly. He was aware he had reached (many days ago) the point in which practice was all he needed. He could have kept going to train to the pool by himself, but he still played as if Bakugou being there was necessary, for safety, maybe, but mostly just because he enjoyed having him sit at the deepest end of the pool. His feet would hang on the water, a bored expression on his face, and Kirishima would set it as his goal to reach him and place his arms on his lap, lay his head on them, and look up at the blond under the light of sunrise.
That was why neither of them was really willing to comment on Kirishima’s progress or do something as ridiculous as suggesting the end of the classes. That was, at least, until the necessity to face the facts was forced upon them.
“Oh my God,” Uraraka was the only one who managed to utter anything even though the whole class—almost—was watching the same as her. The exclamation made Bakugou give a little—only a little—of his attention to the TV with an uninterested glance. The news were on. Apparently, a toddler had fallen into the river. The passersby were calling desperately for a hero (ordinary people had become too dependent on heroes, really, and had them as an excuse for not doing anything heroic themselves), but no pro seemed to be on the range. The students didn’t know what to do. They were ready to get up and go to the scene themselves, right when the reporter notified of the arrival of a hero student that had been running along the riverside and had bravely dashed to where the trouble was.
The whole class, wide-eyed, watched how the young Red Riot pulled off his t-shirt and dived into the river without a second thought.
“But…,” his classmates stood up from their seats, still staring at the TV in horror, “Kirishima doesn’t know how to swim!!!”
All of them set off running out of the dorm building—or most, Iida scolded them for getting off campus before following the proper check-out procedure and telling a teacher first—. Without the delegate, Bakugou ran ahead, followed by Midoriya and Sero. He had to get there, he had to because he so fully believed that Kirishima did in fact not know how to swim, not in a river with such a strong stream, not when he would have a kid in his arms, and not when he had so clearly seen him harden part of his body when jumping to the rescue. He sprinted to the location he had memorized in the split second it had appeared on the TV’s screen, knowing he had arrived at the right place because of the journalists and cameramen that surrounded the scene. Pushing past them and already halfway through tossing his t-shirt over his head, all the concern that was making his heart fasten got washed away when his eyes landed on Kirishima. He was standing by the shore of the river, more awkwardly than triumphantly, an embarrassed smile on his face, his hair and clothes damp, and a little kid clinging to his neck.
“Bakugou!” Kirishima turned to receive his friend in between the questions he was being asked.
“For fuck’s sake,” the blond panted, his relief being strong enough to boycott all his attempts of sounding angry. “I can’t believe you fucking did it.”
Kirishima laughed, and, pulling the hem of his t-shirt, brought him close enough to ruffle his hair (which Bakugou didn’t appreciate, given the fact that they were live on national TV). “This man over here taught me how to swim! ‘S his deed,” Eijirou said, flashing a smile to the cameras.
Some more of Kirishima’s classmates arrived, and—when they got past their disbelief—they sighed with a smile and congratulated him, the journalists having already gone back to hide under the rocks they had emerged from because of the smell of fresh news (or something like that) and the little boy having been returned to his worried parents, who thanked the young hero to no end.
“Bakubro,” he said as he put an arm over the other’s shoulders, to which Katsuki groaned, pushing it away.
“Stop, you’re fucking soaked.”
Kirishima only laughed, satisfied with walking close as they made their way back to campus. “Bakugo, thanks for teaching me!”
“Whatever, ‘s not like I did that much.”
“But you did! If you hadn’t dedicated so much time to teaching me, I probably– yeah, I most likely wouldn’t have been able to save that boy,” he looked at the ground, bothered by the possibility, but he quickly found his smile again, “now I can save people in the water too! Like a lifeguard!”
Katsuki liked the comparison. To run in red clothes, shirtless, and looking smoking hot on his way to save people was Kirishima’s shit, definitely. “You would have jumped into the water anyway.”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t have made it!”
Maybe. Maybe Bakugou had kept him safe. Yeah, he was proud of himself—and of Kirishima—. As much as it pained him to admit it, his mornings had been a worthwhile sacrifice. He had gotten into the hero course to kick villains’ asses… but maybe saving people wasn’t that bad, either. “You’re welcome, I guess.”