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Bakugou is kind of pretty, this close. When he’s quiet and not yelling and can’t, for his own safety, threaten to explode anything.
Maybe there are worse situations to be in.
“Oi, spread your legs wider, you useless pretty boy.”
Then again, it is Bakugou. But that does make it even more obvious that he’s being nice right now. Well—nice for him, at least.
Shouto has never been stuck in a box with someone before. It’s kind of nice. Bakugou’s eyes are kind of mesmerizing. Like glimmering rubies, the kind you might steal from a mythical beast while on a fantastical quest to save the people of your kingdom and find your destiny. (Could Bakugou be that for Shouto? His prize and his destiny, all in one?)
“That doesn’t sound right,” Shouto points out.
Immediately, like flicking some kind of metaphysical, Bakugou-specific switch, the red in Bakugou’s eyes is accompanied by a brighter one on his cheeks. Impulsively and without an excuse for it, Shouto’s fingers twitch. He almost reaches out to touch. Because—
It’s Bakugou, so it’s safe. Even if they’re not exactly sure what the villain’s quirk does or how long it lasts or if there’s anything specific that they need to do to get out of here.
Shouto could get used to this. To Bakugou red-faced and on top of him, pressed too close, breathing hard. Could learn to enjoy it. Especially if Bakugou did it without an excuse, without strange yet frequent circumstances pushing them together for extra classes and villain attacks and—most recently—boxes. Which—Shouto winces—also sounds vaguely wrong and euphemistic.
“Shut up,” says Bakugou. “You’re so goddamn annoying. You and your stupid fabric softener.”
Shouto blinks. “Fabric softener?” he repeats. “That bothers you?”
Bakugou coughs. (Shouto wonders if it loosens anything up inside him, if it starts a chain reaction of tiny explosions inside his chest. If maybe he’d be warmer to the touch now.) “Yeah,” he says quietly. “You fuckin’—bother me immensely.”
“Oh,” Shouto says. He finally shifts a little so Bakugou can settle more comfortably between his thighs. (He’s vaguely certain they’re as spread as they’re going to get with this much space.) “I’m sorry then.”
He doesn’t—
Exactly like that. Being the cause of something uncomfortable for Bakugou, being directly associated with annoyance. He likes the softer parts of it, maybe. Bakugou calling him spoiled before making him food or saying he hates him before ruffling his hair or—
Just. The implied intimacy of it all. Shouto isn’t always good at realizing subtleties without having to be explicitly told, but he likes that Bakugou’s actions—around him, specifically?—are loud enough to know anyway. To know he only acts like he’s being forced into finding Shouto vaguely tolerable because he has no problem actively wanting him around.
Right now it’s starting to look like he might genuinely not like him, though. And that—
It feels uncomfortably cold even with the warmth of Bakugou’s firm body on him. Feels wrong and empty and like when the sun is warm and the air smells like spring so you run and you run and you run without looking down because there’s something big and shapeless and endlessly bright to catch up to, but you don’t see where you’re going (you don’t look down) so you trip. And it hurts and you don’t—
Well.
Shouto learned how to lick his wounds young. Nobody else there to do it for him. But he didn’t think he’d have to do that with Bakugou. Went ahead and kind of assumed Bakugou would yell and pout and huff his way through a lifetime of holding Shouto’s hand just because Shouto decided to let him, decided he wanted him to.
But maybe—
Bakugou huffs loudly. “Not like that,” he says, like it pains him immensely to admit.
“Like what, then?”
“Like—,”
“Yes?”
“Fuck. Okay, listen. Don’t make this harder than it already is. Not that—stop that thing you’re doing with your eyebrows, I didn’t mean it like that.”
Shouto can’t even hide his smile, this close. (Doesn’t particularly want to hide anything if it’s up to him. Bakugou has seen the worst of it, and he’s still not pulling away.) “How did you mean it?” he asks. “Do enlighten me, please.”
“Fucking brat,” Bakugou says. “You know damn well what I wanna say. That—that your smile is probably what convinces the sun to shine each morning. That I learned how to make strawberry shortcake from scratch just because you mentioned wanting to try it that one time after you and Ponytail and the damn nerd watched that fancy cooking show together. That—if I could fucking—dunno, ask for one thing I know I could never deserve no matter how much and how desperately I tried, I’d ask for you.”
Oh, Shouto thinks. Then, because he can’t let himself have nice things, or even the prickly, barely blooming, Bakugou-shaped beginnings of them, he opens his mouth and says, “This would all be very romantic if your belt buckle wasn’t poking me.”
“Uh,” Bakugou says. Shouto kind of wants to kiss him. “That’s not my belt buckle.”
Ah. Well, in that case—
“I can help with that when we get out of here if you promise to stop saying you hate me and we’re not friends.”
“I do hate you and we’re not friends,” Bakugou points out. “You’re a spoiled little princess.”
Shouto really, really wants to kiss him. It’s possible that he might have questionable taste in men. Bakugou doesn’t look like the kind of person to let him empirically test that hypothesis, though. Looks like he might just force himself to be brave enough, and keep Shouto all to himself.
Shouto hums contemplatively. “If I agree, can we be boyfriends instead?” he asks. “I think boyfriends can hate each other and not be friends. And as far as intimacy goes, this is already pretty—,”
“Shut up,” Bakugou hisses. “Oh my fucking god. We can do whatever you want, just—be quiet.”
“Will you kiss me?”
Bakugou makes a resigned choking sound.
“On the mouth?” Shouto clarifies, just in case.
“You’re damn lucky you’re cute and I love you,” Bakugou says, and—
Oh, okay actually. Shouto definitely likes being stuck in a box. (But maybe the company is nice too.)