Chapter Text
"I don't get why people are so convinced love is supposed to be hard and hurtful. Loving him was the easiest, safest, most familiar thing I'd ever done. It felt as if my soul was always meant to be in awe of his."
The blond man smiles at his friend's words. A sad arch in his lips, but a smile nonetheless. He missed the long nights of listening to him ramble on and on about this boy he loved, the one with the permanent scowl and soft round cheeks. He realizes the redhead hasn't talked about him in a long time.
Not about the boy, nor the man he became. Maybe this drunken talk is what his friend has been needing for a while now. It's clear his tongue has missed the feel of the other man’s name as it leaves his lips, and his lungs have missed the way he exhales the last syllable of it.
Most of all, it's clear Kirishima misses Bakugou. Tremendously.
"I don't get it, Denks. Am I the one missing something here?" Someone, certainly. Something? Denki can't tell yet.
"What do you mean?" The blonde questions, pouring what's left at the bottom of the whiskey into his glass. The amber colored liquid crashes against the remaining ice cubes that haven’t yet succumbed to the heat of a late July evening, unlike the frost that still lingered in a thin layer of coldness over the outer surface of the bottle just a minute ago, now falling in slow rivulets onto the table.
Denki pushes the glass towards his friend, knowing full well Shinsou would make him sleep on the couch if he comes back home reeking of alcohol. Kirishima, on the other hand, needs the drink, and tonight, at least, he'll let him have his fill.
"Well, it seems like everywhere I look, there's people fighting and hurting for their love! Like it's a battle to be won and they're proud of the scars it's left! What the fuck! When I think of how much I love him, all I want to do is dance! Take his hand in mine and dance!"
/Love/. That's his second slip up of the night. Denki doesn't mention it. Kirishima has expressed /still/ loving Bakugou twice tonight, and his friend knows he'll be hating himself about it come morning.
However, he'd rather be there for him with a bowl of hangover soup than have him lie to himself much longer.
"The only thing that's ever hurt is the..." His voice trails into incoherent mumbling and for a second Denki assumes Kirishima is officially too drunk to function, but then he sees it. That gleam in his eyes as they follow whoever just walked into the bar.
His friend follows his line of sight until he sees it too. The object of Kirishima's greatest joys and bitterest drinks.
"The regret... Bakugou..." His name is barely a whisper, squeezing its way through the redhead’s parted lips. Denki still catches it, despite the bar's naturally noisy environment.
"Kiri, maybe we should-"
"I'm gonna do it."
Oh no. No no no no /no/. Denki leaves his bar stool to hold his friend back, but this is Kirishima. It would take three other Denkis just to slow him down, not even stop him from advancing any further.
"Kirishima, listen to me, this is not the place for it. Come on, you know better than-"
"HEY BAKUGOU!"
Ah fuck.
Well. There's no stopping him now. The best Denki can do is get a car ready for them to leave and then find a way to drag him into it. He lets go of his friend's shoulders, realizing quickly how little effect his hold had on him anyways, and is quick to dial his boyfriend's number.
As well as a few old friends. He's going to need backup...
"Oh, hi, Kirishima. Denki." Bakugou is as cold and curt as he always is around the redhead these days. Kaminari can't help but wonder when exactly their hugs and playful punches turned into nods of mere acknowledgement.
The why is rather easy to guess...
"Hi there, Mr. hero! Why are you here alone? Husband can't hold his alcohol? Or is the dog barking too loud and you'd rather listen to drunk men barking instead?" Kirishima giggles, drunk and stupid, a duo that guarantees disaster.
Bakugou doesn't look at him as he answers, but instead it is Denki who finds himself burdened with the weight of that pained gaze of his. The shorter blond man wishes he could look away from those tired scarlet eyes, and act like he can't see the silent plea hidden in them.
"Just got off my shift, Rei's meeting me here in a few minutes."
That's his way of subtly telling Denki to get Kirishima out of the bar before tomorrow's headlines embarrass the entirety of hero society. The electric hero nods his understanding and wraps a hand around the redhead’s bicep, starting his second attempt at dragging him away.
"Ooooh Rei likes bar dates, does he now? That's funny, you always seemed like the type to prefer calm restaurants. You know, like the one we’d go to after fights because the owner never complained about all the dirt and blood. But what do I know, I also thought you preferred cats over dogs." Kirishima shrugs in mock confusion, or maybe it's real. Maybe he's really trying to understand how he could've been so wrong about Bakugou.
Denki can sense the awkwardness that emanates from their once best friend, rivalling his own lightning in the discomfort it has just doused his entire being in. As a hero, it is his duty to save himself from this torturous interaction, as quickly and efficiently as possible.
"Well, have a good time and send him my hellos! We'll be out of here now, right Kirishima? Let's go, Sero and Mina are waiting outside."
As Kirishima is reluctantly dragged out of the bar, Denki throws a final quick glance towards Bakugou, who sits there in the corner booth with a bottle of beer already half emptied in front of him.
For the fraction of a second, Bakugou smiles. A sad arch in his lips, but nothing like Denki's. This sorrow on his face is directed at no one else but himself.
***
Bakugou never liked dogs. Nor did he like unwinding after a long shift at a crowded bar with sticky tables and flickering lightbulbs. He also never liked lying, pathetic bastards. Yet that's what he's become, so what's a shitty beer gonna do? It's not like it can make things worse.
"Hey babe! Have you been waiting for a while?"
Bakugou studies the man squeezing himself into the booth. The chestnut brown of his hair, the shadow of his growing stubble, the natural downturn of his lips. None of it matches the image he once had in his head. The one of the man who would be his husband, his partner in this life and the next. That image has long been discarded of, scribbled over with permanent marker, dissolved in the bitter cup of life he's been dealt.
/Don't you dare play the victim you asshole. /
"Only been here a few minutes." And already he can't wait to leave. Not that he can express that desire, though. Not that he can express /any/ desire these days. The only words he's allowed to use are the ones that have been chosen for him.
"Great! I'm gonna go grab a drink and I'll be back. Want a refill of yours?"
"I'm fine, thanks." Last time he was called for a meeting, they begged him to lace his words with sweetness and greater affection, to kill any doubt Rei might still have of his intentions. However, the man now ordering a beer seems to be completely and utterly oblivious to the devastating lack of honesty whenever Bakugou speaks of his love to him. So why put any extra effort? Rei loves him. He really does. And he believes Bakugou feels the same.
No need for pet names or poetic phrases. No need for soft smiles and softer touches. All Bakugou needs to do now is maintain this trust for just a little while longer. Which also means twisting the knife he dug into Kirishima's heart for just a while longer.
He wonders if there's any bit of the love Kirishima once had for him that would survive this injury. He begs the universe to save some of it, to give him the chance to earn back what would remain once this is all over.
"So, I was thinking for next month, how about you ask for a few days off and we travel somewhere?" Rei asks all enthusiastically as he finds his place back in the booth, a bottle of beer in one hand and a bowl of otsumami in the other. Not even the spicy ones.
It takes Bakugou a moment to realize what next month means to them, and when he does, he has to fight the urge to roll his eyes. Their one-year anniversary. Of course. He couldn't even get a spring wedding, they had to tie the knot in fucking August.
Thankfully, the commission prepared a good enough excuse for him to get out of celebrating the anniversary of his greatest sacrifice to this day. There's no way they'd let him get on a plane to fuck knows where while their biggest operation yet will be in motion. Not even to make Rei happy, which to this point has been their priority.
"About that...babe..." Babe is a good enough pet name, right? Not too dry, nor too intimate, nothing unique to the couple. Hell, Bakugou used to call half his friends back in high school 'babes', so it isn't the hardest word to try and casually roll off his tongue. At least it makes him mentally gag a lot less than 'honey' and 'sweetheart'. Rei looks at him with a concerned furrow to his brows. "I think we'll have to postpone it for at least September."
The hero feigns disappointment and regret, a falsely comforting hand squeezing his falsely loved husband’s own fingers, clenched into a fist on the table.
"I'm sorry, but the agency is sending me undercover for a few weeks, up to a month or two. And before you ask, no, they can't send someone else. They're already still holding the whole New Year fiasco over my head, so I have no room for negotiation." In their first few months as newlyweds, Bakugou was quick to collect a sturdy deck of cards to subtly use against his husband later on.
Be it by prioritizing him at times over his job and 'getting in trouble' for it with the agency, or using most of his allowed paid leaves and vacation days whenever Rei wanted to hop on a plane just to try the coffee somewhere new, Bakugou made sure come summer he'd manage to play his "troublesome employee" hand in a situation just as this one.
He even managed to get in both real and fake fights with other coworkers, just to add to the workspace tension. He certainly prefers the fake ones though...
He wishes the punch Kirishima landed right across his jaw back in February was as fake as the apologetic eyes he's offering his husband at the moment.
"Undercover... will you be in any danger? I mean, you always are, it comes with the job, but how high are the stakes this time?"
The thought of getting killed on the job floats at the back of Bakugou's mind, and as it sways in the murky waters of his fears, he can sense the ripples of regret that would eat at his rotting flesh the moment his heart would go still. He refuses to die before this mission is over. Even if he must face an army of villains with the worst of quirks out there, he won't go down as a fraud. He won't die a liar. In truth, he refuses to die knowing somewhere out there, a certain redhead still hates him.
"It would be life or death, if it was anyone but me." Bakugou flashes Rei one of his signature arrogant smirks, the ones he once tried to train out of his face's muscles, before Kirishima hit him with a spoon and corrected him.
The redhead had inhaled another spoonful of mango ice cream before using a sticky finger to pull one corner of Bakugou's mouth a hint higher, so it would match the other side.
"There! Now it's a confident smile! And confidence is super manly- /ouch ouch ouch brain freeze!!/"
The memory forces the smirk to molt into a soft smile, one that Rei interprets as affection, Bakugou unable to hide the fact that he's going to miss him.
"That’s my hero." He says with a sad but proud smile, leaning over the table to plant a quick kiss on Bakugou's nose.
/That’s your downfall/ Bakugou corrects him in his head, sending a quick prayer to whichever face of the universe answers this late at night. He doesn't ask for much, really. Just an ending. Good or bad, he'll manage, as long as it comes soon.
The rest of their night out is as uneventful as can be, almost impossibly so; Rei is going on and on about all the alternative trips and destinations they can pick from, now that their anniversary will be in the fall, most probably hoping for his husband’s input here and there. Bakugou, however, seems far too busy counting each and every bubble that pops out of existence in the foam of Rei’s beer to take in any word that’s being said.
The distraction doesn’t last long, unfortunately, and once the beer has completely lost its head, Bakugou decides to go for a drink himself, so as not to lose his own. He’s careful not to get himself drunk, far too aware of the early morning he must face tomorrow to even feign relaxation.
Despite his limited drinking, the empty glasses keep piling up, but on Rei’s side of the table, until a deep flush digs its trail across his cheeks, dusting even the tips of his ears a tipsy red. This could be a good opportunity to get him to talk. Drunk enough, he’ll ramble about any and everything, even what must not be spoken of – /especially/ what must not be spoken of. After all, that’s how this entire mission started. A careless villain who’d had a bit too much to drink and a hero who hadn’t had enough yet. Bakugou considers the situation for a moment, before he makes the decision not to push his luck, not so close to the heroes’ biggest raid yet.
If the smallest particle of doubt was to infiltrate Rei’s mind, it could potentially lead all their careful planning to fall apart, pushing them back to square one. There’s no way in hell Bakugou would let over a year of lies and betrayal go to waste. He already knows he won’t be forgiving himself anytime soon, so if he can’t even have the comfort of having saved the city – the country – to hold on to, he doubts he’ll be able to deal with the guilt.
They end up leaving the bar at around 2AM, one swaying with alcohol, the other with drowsiness, yet both sharply aware of the other’s presence and what it represents.