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Bakugou squints up at the arrivals and departures board, his eyes gritty from wearing his contacts for too long. Every single flight on the board is flashing red, the words “DELAYED” or “CANCELED” next to them.
Fuck.
He doesn’t remember the last time he ate, much less slept. Showering is a distant dream. It had been a sixteen hour flight from Honolulu to Sapporo, and the one hour flight from there to Aomori had been delayed for eight hours. Now that he’s finally on the mainland, he still has an hour and thirty minute flight down to his home in Nagoya, but it looks like that’s not happening anytime soon.
Bakugou hates using his hero status for any kind of special treatment, but sometimes needs must. The woman at the reservation desk is apologetic: the hotel they shunt passengers with canceled flights to is completely full. They do, like most hotels, have a set of hero quarters that are set aside for heroes traveling to emergencies, but even those are full.
A decade of media training is the only thing that has Bakugou holding onto his temper. “Do you know when flights will resume, at least?”
The woman bites her lip and shakes her head. “It was a surprise snowstorm - we get those here even this late in the year. Aomori has the heaviest snowfall in the country, even more than Hokkaido. All I can tell you is to keep checking the airline website.”
Nodding tightly, Bakugou grits his teeth as he turns and walks away. This isn’t a huge airport, but it has to have public showers, right? God, please let there be showers somewhere.
There are no showers.
Bakugou can feel his hair, lying limp and greasy across his forehead. He’s fairly sure that his clothing would stand up on its own if he took it off, and even brushing his teeth in the small public toilets just makes his grossness have a minty fresh coating.
His arms are crossed tightly as he stares out the window at the snowy tarmac, wondering if he could explode it free of snow. He has half a mind to call up Todoroki and see where he is and if he feels like doing some public service by burning the snow away.
Phone in hand, he’s racking his brain to think where Deku said Todoroki was these days when a voice says, “Katsuki?”
He blinks. The number of people that call him by his given name without getting an explosion to his face is vanishingly small. It’s pretty much limited to his parents, Auntie Inko, and -
“Eijirou?” There’s a flash of white grin and red hair before Bakugou is enveloped in a hug. And enveloped is the right word - he can barely breathe from the force of the enormous arms wrapped around him and how his face is smashed into a muscular shoulder. “Can’t…breathe…” he manages to wheeze out before he’s released.
Kirishima Eijirou stands in front of him, shark tooth smile just as wide as Bakugou remembers. They haven’t seen each other in…god, at least seven or eight years at this point. Class A tried to do a few reunions over the past decade they've been out of school, but everyone was so busy and scattered across the country that no one could actually make it. But somehow here Kirishima is, large - larger than Bakugou’s memory - than life.
“What the hell are you doing here? Your flight canceled too?”
Kirishima shakes his head. His long red hair, half tied up in a loose bun, slides over his shoulder with the movement. It looks significantly cleaner than Bakugou’s greasy self. “Nah man, I just flew in from Seoul. I’m based here now, actually.” Sharp red eyes look over Bakugou’s bedraggled form. “No offense bro, but you look kinda rough. You doing okay?”
With a sigh, Bakugou runs a tired hand through his hair. “I’ve been in airports or on flights for over twenty four hours, and everything is canceled. All the hotels are full, too.”
Kirishima winces in sympathy. “Yeah, these storms can get pretty bad. The whole city tends to shut down for a few days, transportation included.”
Bakugou’s fairly sure he would burst into frustrated tears like an overtired toddler if his eyes weren’t bone dry from his contacts. Kirishima tilts his head. “Listen - you’re not getting out of here anytime soon. Why don’t you come home with me, you can at least get a shower and sleep and some food. We can keep an eye on the flights, maybe the trains will be up sooner. Where are you headed?”
“Nagoya. It’s not like it’s a long flight, but it’s still a thousand kilometers and that’s more than I want to drive.”
Kirishima leans down and grabs up Bakugou’s duffel, slinging it over his shoulder. “You got anything in baggage claim?”
“Nah, just this shit. You don’t have to carry it,” Bakugou says, feeling awkward as he shifts his satchel strap higher on his shoulder.
“It’s fine, bro. I barely have anything myself.”
Bakugou nods, too tired to come up with any other response. He follows Kirishima docilely through the airport crowds, his enormous frame parting the sea of travelers like the bow of a ship. Bakugou is no slouch - a bit over six feet and a solid musculature that’s kept in peak shape from heroing, but Kirishima makes him feel downright short. He has to have half a head on Bakugou, with shoulders that look like they shouldn’t fit through doorways.
As they enter the snowy hellscape outside, Bakugou idly wonders if Kirishima’s hero costume is the same, if he’s still all bare chest and nips out the way he was in high school. He kind of wants to see that with how he looks now.
“This is me,” Kirishima says, and Bakugou shakes himself out of his vaguely inappropriate daydreams. They’re standing in front of a small pickup truck - red, of course. It’s not enormous, Japan doesn’t really allow for big cars unless you’re in farmland, but the chains on the tires says that it won’t have a problem dealing with the weather. Kirishima slings their bags into the back of the cab and they hop in.
The truck is freezing cold, clearly having been sitting there for several days. Kirishima turns the heat up as high as it will go and pulls a snow brush out from where it’s tucked into the footwell. Before he can get out to clean the windshield off, Bakugou stops him.
“Gimme a sec,” he says, and hops out. With a quick look around to make sure no one can see them - even with a hero license, you’re only supposed to use your quirks for the sake of heroing - he pulls off his gloves.
The past decade Bakugou has worked nonstop on fine control, and it’s times like this that it can unexpectedly come in handy. He fires off a few tiny explosions that are mostly air and very little fire, and in just a few seconds the entire truck is clear of snow and steaming slightly. Getting back in, he gives Kirishima a smirk.
“Holy shit, man! Look at you with the finesse!” Kirishima is grinning so hard that every one of his shark teeth are on display. “That must come in handy all the time!”
“Not really, we don’t get that much snow in Nagoya,” Bakugou says as he buckles in. “I can be a pretty fuckin’ high powered leaf blower in fall, though.”
The conversation dies away as they pull out of the airport parking lot - the snow is coming down heavily, and Kirishima needs every bit of his attention to keep them on the road. The world outside is a cloud of cotton, buildings and roads hidden by the falling snow. Bakugou has no idea how Kirishima is navigating, the road in front of them is barely visible.
Twenty white-knuckled minutes later Kirishima pulls into a garage, breathing easier now they’re out of the weather. He parks by an elevator and they get out of the car with their bags. The building seems solid and well-built, if not exactly brand new. They take the elevator up to the tenth floor, and Kirishima leads the way down a hallway.
“Well, welcome to my humble abode, I guess,” Kirishima says, opening the door to a reveal hardwood floors and a genkan that they dump their snowy shoes in. Curiously, the lights of what looks like the kitchen down at the end of the hallway are on. “Oh nice, she’s still here,” Kirishima says nonsensically, and Bakugou follows him into the apartment.
The hallway opens up into a large space, with a kitchen on one side and a cozy living room on the other. There’s a woman stretched out on the couch, asleep, with a large fuzzy white dog of indeterminate breed sleeping nearly on top of her. The dog pricks its ears up, and seeing Kirishima it barks happily, using the woman as a springboard to jump over the back of the couch and greet them.
“Oof!” the woman says, winded and abruptly awake. She has a wild mop of blonde curls and bright eyes of an odd silver color. She smiles broadly at them, and it shifts her from cute to downright beautiful. Something in Bakugou’s chest seizes up - of course Kirishima would have a gorgeous girlfriend. He’s a handsome, jacked hero in the prime of his career, he no doubt has legions of fangirls vying for his attention. Bakugou frowns at himself. There’s no reason his stomach should be feeling sour right now. He hasn’t seen the guy in years, Kirishima no doubt has a whole life that Bakugou knows nothing about.
“Hi beautiful!” Kirishima exclaims, and while Bakugou expects him to go over and kiss the girl he instead falls to his knees and wraps the dog up in a big hug. “How’s my pretty girl, huh? Have you been good?” The dog’s tongue flops out the side of her mouth, making her look goofy. Bakugou can’t help but smile at it a bit.
“This is Kumo!” Kirishima says, scratching the dog behind her ears and grinning up at Bakugou. “We found a box of abandoned puppies on patrol a few years back and I couldn’t help but take her home.”
“He says that like he didn’t sneak her away by sticking her in a gym bag and then pretended he didn’t know why his sneakers were barking,” the girl says, rolling her eyes. She reaches a hand out to Bakugou. “Tamura Mari, good to meet you.”
“This is Bakugou, he’s one of my oldest friends,” Kirishima says, before Bakugou can introduce himself.
Tamura peers at him closely halfway through the handshake, before her eyebrows raise. “Oh my god, you’re Dynamight! My roommate has a poster of you in her room, she’s gonna flip.”
Bakugou hates marketing more than anything - his manager has to resort to trickery and outright bribes to get him to anything PR-related. Despite his best intentions there is some merchandise out there, though. And fans, unfortunately.
Kirishima laughs as he stands up. “Always knew you’d make it big, man.” He bustles into the kitchen as the dog decides to inspect Bakugou, sniffing him thoroughly. Kirishima returns with a large plastic container and an envelope that he gives to Tamura. “Here you go, and thank you again.”
Tamura opens the lid, revealing stacks of cookies inside. “Sweet! I’m gonna eat all of these and not let Himari have any.” With a final wide smile and wave at the two of them, she’s out the door and gone.
Bakugou clears his throat awkwardly. “She’s not…your girlfriend?”
Kirishima’s laugh is loud and warm. “God, no. Tamura is one of the sidekicks at the agency and lives down on the first floor so I use her for dogsitting.”
Before Bakugou can respond to that, Kirishima grabs up his duffel and motions for him to follow. Kirishima goes into the first room they come to. It’s dark until he pulls the curtains back, the bright snow-reflected light from outside showing a plain but neat guest room. He sets the bag on the bed and points across the hall.
“Bathroom is right there, feel free to use any of my shit except the shampoo in the purple bottle unless you want pink hair. I’ve got no closets in this place so I have clothes in the dresser here, help yourself to whatever. You good with gyudon for dinner?”
Bakugou blinks. “Yeah. Thanks, for all of this.”
With a grin Kirishima is out the door, and moments later sounds of banging around come from the kitchen. Bakugou takes a deep breath, finally alone for the first time in days. One of the things he didn’t expect as a hero was that there was very little alone time. He was always working with someone either on the streets, at a scene, or at the agency. It’s rare that he gets time to be alone with his thoughts other than when he’s at home.
“Down. Down, girl, you have perfectly good food in your bowl!”
Well, sort of alone.
It’s actually one of the reasons he became friends with Kirishima in the first place, Bakugou reminisces as he gets undressed and grabs one of the towels waiting on top of the dresser. Kirishima was always a bright, energetic ray of sunshine, but he was surprisingly good at being quiet and calm. They’d hang out all day during Sundays at UA - working out and eating and playing video games, but also just sitting there. Bakugou would read while Kirishima would mess around on his computer - he spent a full year obsessed with designing buildings in video games, putting together whole towns of meticulously arranged architecture.
The water pressure is incredible, far better than in Bakugou’s own apartment. He makes sure to avoid the color-depositing shampoo (Kaminari once borrowed Kirishima’s shampoo without asking right before school picture day, and the resulting debacle was enough to make all of them read labels carefully). The soap has a scent that bowls Bakugou over with memories - it’s the same lemongrass scent and odd gritty texture that Kirishima swore was good for his hardening skin.
Bakugou takes his time, needing to wash his hair twice before it stops feeling oily. Wrapping himself in a few towels, he goes back across the hall to the guest room. He looks at his bag and pauses. He feels guilty about borrowing clothes, but he has nothing that isn’t filthy right now. Now that he’s out of the shower his drying skin is cold so he shrugs off the awkwardness and starts opening drawers in the dresser.
Sweatpants are easy enough to find, though Bakugou is annoyed that he needs to roll up the cuffs a bit. Fuckin’ tall bastard, daring to keep growing after high school. The t-shirts he finds would all fit him about as well as a tent, until he finds a faded UA sports festival shirt buried in a lower drawer. It was Kirishima’s from their final year, so it fits Bakugou decently now.
One pair of warm socks later and Bakugou is padding out into the main apartment. Kirishima is humming to himself as he pokes at a pan on the stove, the scent of beef and onion thick on the air. The dog pricks her ears up at seeing Bakugou and runs over to present herself for scratches. Kneeling down, he indulges her.
Bakugou isn’t much of an animal person, but that’s mostly because he’s not home enough to have one. Kumo seems sweet, even though she’s covering Bakugou’s nice clean arms with dog slobber.
“Feel free to push her off if she gets annoying,” Kirishima says without turning around. “She’ll sit there begging for pets all night if you let her.” Glancing over he blinks and then grins at seeing Bakugou. “I forgot I even owned that shirt, man. What a flashback!”
“Yeah, it was one of the only things I could find that fit,” Bakugou grumbles as he stands up and cracks his back. “Do you just eat the villains nowadays?”
“Hey, I don’t criticize your food habits. There’s beer and soda in the fridge, grab yourself something.”
There’s a small table tucked to the side between the kitchen and living room, already set with utensils. Bakugou grabs two beers out of the surprisingly well-stocked fridge, setting them at the table before sitting down. Kirishima comes over a minute later, setting two large bowls full of rice, beef, onions, and bright orange egg yolks on top in front of them.
It’s good, warm and homey and filling. They eat quietly, other than asking to pass over a napkin or the pepper. Bakugou leans back in his seat - he’s clean, warm, and full of food for the first time since…god, since he left to go on that stupid mission. “You finally learned to cook decently,” he says.
“Hah, yeah,” Kirishima says, returning to the table with another half bowl of rice. “Living alone I had to learn pretty quick how to or else I was just living off of protein bars and eggs. Turns out that’s not actually that good for you.” Reaching behind him, he grabs a plastic container and sets it on the table, pushing it over to Bakugou with a nod.
Bakugou opens the container to find it full of a mixture of Japanese sweets and Western-style cookies. He grabs a few plastic-wrapped daifuku and a chocolate chip cookie, raising his eyebrows at Kirishima.
“You gotta have hobbies, and it turns out that you actually can work out too much,” Kirishima says, with a somewhat bashful smile. “There’s an obaasan on the floor below me that I would help carry groceries for, and she decided to teach me how to bake because her hands hurt too much to do it anymore.”
God. That is…such a Kirishima thing to do. Bakugou says as much and Kirishima shrugs. “It means I can make most of my Christmas presents instead of buying them, and it’s amazing how people will take over a patrol shift for you if you can make their favorite cookies.”
After clearing the table, they end up on the sofa, fresh beers in hand. “So you’re what, part of an agency?” Bakugou asks. “Take me through the last few years.”
“So you know that I went to go sidekick for Fat Gum after graduation,” Kirishima begins and Bakugou nods. After that he joined the agency Amajiki and Toogata started, up in Sendai. “Then I ended up running into Honenuki and Shishida - remember them, from class B? - in a bar, and they invited me to get in on an agency they were starting up here.”
Bakugou remembers Shishida, it’s kind of hard to forget a beast-man trying to rip your head off. He frowns: “Honenuki?”
Kirishima gestures to his mouth. “He’s like, all teeth? He softens stuff as his quirk.”
That’s right. Bakugou remembers that his quirk was okay but he was frustratingly good at strategy. “Oh yeah. So you like it here?”
“Yeah, it’s great!” A wide smile, but there’s nothing behind it.
Bakugou tilts his head. Kirishima always was one of the worst bluffers he’d ever known. “You’re lying. Why?”
The smile falls away as Kirishima scrubs a hand over his face. He grumbles something into his hand before giving Bakugou a half-hearted glare. “I haven’t seen you in forever, man. You’re not supposed to be able to call me out on shit anymore.”
“Learn to lie better than, idiot. Why don’t you like it here?”
Kirishima shrugs, picks at the unraveling edge of a throw blanket. “I like everyone at the agency, they’re not the problem. It’s just…I don’t know. High school was godawful at times, you know? But it was never, ever boring. Yeah we could have used some time to catch our breath, but even after every shitty thing I felt like I grew as a person, I learned from it.”
His gaze goes past Bakugou to look out the window. “Here…there’s just nothing to do. There are no local gangs, there’s no international illegal shit because it’s so hard to get here between the snow and the fog, we don’t even have a national university for some drunk college student shenanigans! We have a stupid amount of snow for half the year, and you know what happens when there’s a shitload of snow? No crime. Criminals are lazy, no one is doing anything when there’s three feet of snow on the streets.”
Kirishima looks at Bakugou sadly. “I even had to add a shirt to my uniform.”
Bakugou nearly snorts beer out of his nose at that. “I have to admit I was wondering about that.”
Giving Bakugou’s leg a lazy kick, Kirishima smiles a bit, before it fades. “My moms retired, down in freaking Kagoshima. Sun, volcanoes, and literally as far away as you can get without being on an island. I can only afford to get down there like once or twice a year.” He sighs. “I’m not…miserable. I’m not. I have friends, I have Kumo, everyone at the agency is great. I just feel…”
“Stagnant?”
“That’s a good word for it.” Rubbing at his eyes, Kirishima sits up straighter, tries to look more cheerful. “Enough about my shit, what have you been up to?”
Bakugou shrugs. “Kind of the same thing. Sidekicked for Mirko for a year but…” he trails off, shaking his head.
“You two are too much alike.”
A smile twists the side of Bakugou’s mouth. “Yeah. Especially back then, fresh out of high school. Ended up teaming up with Deku for a bit. Not as an agency, not even really as partners. Just…we got an apartment and shared the spare bedroom as an office, so we ended up sharing information a lot. Then Deku finally got his shit together with IcyHot and moved out, and I didn’t want to waste the money living there alone.”
“How are they doing, by the way?”
Bakugou rolls his eyes. “I’m sure you’ll be getting a wedding invitation before too long. Fuckin’ idiots.” He stretches his leg out, wincing as his knee cracks. Getting older sucks. “I was in Yokohama for awhile, trying to deal with this gang war that just wouldn’t fuckin’ end. I was technically working for the Heroes Public Safety Commission, because they put me undercover for awhile.”
Kirishima raises his eyebrows. “Didn’t know you’d end up working for The Man.”
“Fuck off. But yeah, that’s why I left there. Just too much paperwork and needing to be polite all the time and shit.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how Hawks has put up with them for so long, I can’t tell you how many times I nearly blew up their head office. Anyways, I’ve been in Nagoya since last year. Gang Orca works out of the port there and I’m kind of loosely affiliated with him.”
Resting his head on a fist Kirishima looks at him, red eyes curious as he echoes Bakugou’s earlier question. “Do you like it there?”
Bakugou shrugs. He doesn’t like to think about it that much, but he supposes if anyone would understand it’s Kirishima. “It’s fine. Orca treats me like a heavy hitter kept in reserve, which is okay. It means I’m on the road a lot - like now, I just got back from Hawaii because they had this volcano-powered villain that I could help with. Two weeks ago I was in Sendai, the week before that was the Philippines.” He runs a hand through slightly damp hair. “I’m fine. I’m in the top ten on the charts. It just feels very…” he waves a hand in the air, not sure of what he wants to say.
“Impermanent?”
“Yeah. I have an apartment, but it’s just a place to stay.”
They’re both quiet. Finally Kirishima sits up, slapping his thighs with his hands. “Okay, we’ve been depressing enough for one night. Wanna play something?”
Bakugou doesn’t even remember the last time he had a chance to sit down with someone and play a video game. “Fuck yeah. Grab me another beer, I’m gonna steal a sweatshirt or something.”
“I can turn the heat up -”
“Nah, it’s just me. You know how I get in the cold.” Bakugou doesn’t function well when the temperature drops - slow to start, nothing as big or strong as it should be. One of the few advantages of having parents that worked in fashion meant that he had an endless supply of well-made sweaters and joggers and other warm clothing. They were sent in random packages every few months accompanied by a packet of cookies and a letter from his mother scolding him for not visiting enough.
Bakugou opens a few drawers, finding shirts and pants but nothing warm. The last drawer bears fruit, however, and Bakugou pulls out an obviously much-loved hoodie with a faded Crimson Riot logo on it. He goes to shut the drawer and stops.
A familiar pattern stares up at him from the drawer, a grinning skull with blank eyes. Bakugou reaches down and pulls it out, eyes going wide in recognition. It’s his sweater, one he wore all the time in high school. It was black and oversized and had skulls on the front and back - of course he would wear it.
It might be another sweater, he tells himself as he checks the collar. No, there’s the logo for Mitsuki’s fashion line on the tag. Laying it down, Bakugou frowns. It’s definitely his old sweater but…it didn’t look like this when he had it. It’s stretched out, the knitted rows uneven as they’ve been pulled apart. The elbows are fraying and a few stitches ripped out at the back, unraveling their way up to leave empty ladders of stitching. Even the skull is fuzzy, having been washed so many times that the white yarn has nearly felted into the surrounding black.
“You coming?” Kirishima calls from the living room.
“Hold your fuckin’ horses, Jesus,” Bakugou barks back, met with a laugh. He mechanically pulls on the hoodie, staring once more at the sweater as soon as his vision clears. Brain blank, he doesn’t know what to think. If he should think. If it matters at all, at that. Shaking his head, he stuffs the sweater back into a drawer and goes out into the living room.
“Get ready for me to crush you, asshole.”
Kirishima laughs, and for a moment it’s like eight years vanish and everything is right again in the world.
-x-x-x-x-x-
Bakugou’s nose wakes up before the rest of him. Bacon. His eyes snap open, staring at the blurry ceiling as he tries to remember where he is. Snowstorm. Aomori. Kirishima. Okay, he’s back with reality. Sitting up he fumbles his glasses onto his face, squinting down at his cellphone. Ten am. Normally incredibly late for him, but he barely knows what time zone he’s in any more so whatever.
Making his way into the living room, he stumbles to a stop as he blinks behind his lenses.
Muscles.
Just…an unholy amount of muscles.
Kirishima stands at the stove, wearing sweatpants that sit low on his hips and an apron and not much fucking else as he cooks up bacon. “Grab a seat,” he says, waving a spatula at the fridge. “Juice in the fridge, coffee’s on the table.”
Coffee. Yes. That would…help. Bakugou sits and pours himself a cup and drinks it down, black and hot enough to scorch his throat. He’s now somewhat more awake but the muscles are still there. Kirishima’s hair is down, damp and soft-looking and long enough to go past his shoulders. His shoulders, with muscles that slide smoothly under skin that’s a little less golden tan than when they were in high school, but still warm-looking.
Bakugou pulls his glasses off, pressing in on his eyes with the fingers of his free hand. He’d been good, hadn’t he? His brain and heart and fuckin’ emotions and shit were behaving, for the most part. He had been doing such a good job of treating Kirishima like the longtime friend that he was, and not the guy that Bakugou had harbored a futile crush on for the majority of high school.
Goddamn muscles.
He shoves his glasses back on his face as Kirishima sets a plate with eggs and bacon and toast in front of him. “I figured we needed something warm and bracing,” Kirishima says, nodding his head at the window. “Doesn’t look like the storm is stopping any time soon.”
Bakugou tears off a piece of toast - the bread is thick and warm and smells amazing - and dips it into the yolk of his egg. “S’good,” he mumbles around a mouthful.
Kirishima smiles softly. “I made it the other day, I’m glad you like it.” Smiling wider, he inspects Bakugou. “Nice specs there, Iida.”
“Ugh shut up,” Bakugou grumbles. He’d had to start with reading glasses just after high school and now he’s stuck wearing vision correction full time. After learning that a good punch to the head could easily knock your contacts out or shatter your glasses, leaving you half-blind, he gained a grudging respect for what Iida had to go through in high school.
“Have you checked the flights?” Kirishima asks.
Bakugou shakes his head, stuffing a rasher of bacon in his mouth as he pulls out his phone. The train station is completely shut down, it looks like, and all flights until at least midnight are canceled. His account is showing his saved ticket, but there’s no flight he could apply it to. With a sigh he tosses the phone down. “Gonna have to impose on you a bit longer, if that’s all right.”
Thankfully Kirishima looks as happy as a clam. “Awesome! I mean, not awesome in that it’d be nice if you could go home, but hey - we get to hang out on a mini vacation!”
Bakugou glares at the fist Kirishima holds up for a bump before finally giving in and tapping his knuckles. Kirishima just grins in satisfaction.
“I actually have a bit of work to do - we get snowed in enough that we all have stuff we can do at home. You think you could entertain yourself for a while, then maybe we could work out?”
“You have a gym here?” Bakugou asks, interested.
“Yep. It’s not amazing, but the equipment is beefed up enough for heroes to use so I’m not complaining.” Shoving the dishes in the dishwasher, Kirishima gestures to the room. “Feel free to do whatever, watch whatever. I’ll be in my room, it’s where I have my office setup.”
Bakugou nods, and once Kirishima is gone he stands up.
Time to be nosy.
The apartment isn’t huge, but it’s well-lit by large windows and everything is the kind of beat-up comfy cozy style that Bakugou isn’t surprised Kirishima evolved into. The couches are soft and big enough to sleep on, the TV is likely the most expensive thing in the apartment, and the bookshelves hold everything from manga to books on Italian architecture, a few plants scattered here and there.
The kitchen is small but functional, with a decent spice selection. Bakugou pokes through the fridge and freezer before pulling out some beef. Rummaging in a cabinet - yes, there are potatoes. All right, he’s making nikujaga for dinner. At least he can pay Kirishima back a little bit by cooking.
Bakugou ends up on the couch with a book stolen from the shelf in hand - it’s something about mountain climbing that he suspects he might have given Kirishima back in high school. Yes - there’s Bakugou’s high school kanji going jaggedly across the inside cover. Kirishima had insisted on Bakugou teaching him how to hike and rock climb, and Bakugou had agreed, after first making sure he read a book on mountain climbing disasters so he’d take it seriously.
Kumo suddenly appears beside him. For such a large dog, she’s surprisingly silent. After giving Bakugou a delicate lick to the back of his hand, she jumps up onto the couch, settling herself over Bakugou’s lower legs and feet like a breathing blanket. She’s soft and warm so he’s not complaining.
He means to read, he really does, but before he knows it Bakugou is asleep.
-x-x-x-x-x-
“Dude, it’s fine.”
“It’s not.”
“It really is -”
“It’s not, okay!” Bakugou knows he has tears in his eyes and he hates it. “This isn’t supposed to happen! How can I be a goddamn hero if one stupid fight messes me up this badly?”
Kirishima stares at him in the near-darkness of Bakugou’s room, his eyes wide and full of some emotion that Bakugou doesn’t want to examine too closely for fear that it’s pity. He opens his mouth to say something, before shutting it silently.
He goes over to Bakugou’s dresser, pulls out a clean t-shirt. “Arms up,” he says softly, and pulls the burn-ridden and sweat soaked shirt that Bakugou is wearing off. He uses the shirt as a rag to wipe the streaks of sweat off of Bakugou’s skin, including very gently wiping at his hands. Pitching the shirt into the fire-proof container that Bakugou uses for anything that gets his explosive sweat on it, Kirishima puts the clean shirt on Bakugou, tugging his arms through like a child.
Pushing the other boy over, he makes Bakugou lay down and pulls the covers up. Climbing in himself, Kirishima lays down, facing Bakugou. “It wasn’t just a fight,” he says quietly. “An entire group kidnapped you and held you and you got out yourself. We helped the rest of the way to make it easier to take the villains down, but you could have done it if you had to.”
Reaching over Kirishima wipes away a traitorous tear from where it’s streaked down Bakugou’s cheek. “We’re sixteen,” he continues. “We’re not heroes yet. And I’m pretty sure that even heroes have nightmares, when they’re targeted like you were.”
He takes Bakugou’s hand, places it on his own bare upper arm. “Here. You can explode however much you want, it won’t hurt me.”
Bakugou stares at Kirishima, eyes glassy and exhausted and barely focusing. He doesn’t know where this big-hearted boy came from nor why he’s decided to waste his time with an asshole like Bakugou, but he’s not complaining. Wordlessly he collapses forward, tucking his head under Kirishima’s chin and wrapping both his arms around one of Kirishima’s.
He breathes in the scent of clean skin and hair, lemongrass soap and salt sweat. The realization, when it comes, hits Bakugou like a punch to the face.
Oh.
Oh no.
He’s glad his head is tucked under Kirishima’s so he can’t see how red Bakugou’s face probably is. His face, that he’s now realizing he wants to put on Kirishima’s face and see what he tastes like.
Kirishima, who rubs his free hand up and down Bakugou’s back and says sleepily, “I’ve got you, man.”
In the last seconds before he falls asleep, Bakugou vows to shove those stupid emotions down as far as he can. Because Kirishima is far too important and special of a friend for Bakugou to fuck it up with no doubt unrequited romantic shit. He needs Kirishima, he can’t help losing him.
It’ll be fine, he tells himself as he falls asleep.
-x-x-x-x-x-
“Hey man.” A hand gently touches Bakugou’s shoulder, shaking him slightly.
Bakugou blinks awake. His glasses slipped off during his nap, so Kirishima is blurry in front of him. All Bakugou can make out is red hair and a white smile, and so for a few seconds reality twists and he’s not sure if he’s sixteen or twenty eight. He fumbles his glasses on and everything resolves itself, finally.
“Good dream?”
Bakugou hopes his face isn’t as flushed as it feels. “Nah, just weird memories from back in the day.”
Kirishima nods seriously - they both have their share of bad memories they’d like to leave behind. Standing, he helps Bakugou disentangle himself from Kumo and get up. “Let me show you the gym, I bet you’ll like it.”
The gym is in the basement. It’s got machines with hero-level extended weights, the usual treadmills and ellipticals, a relatively good set of free weights, and an octagon tucked into the corner surrounded by quirk-resistant chain mesh.
Falling into a routine they’d done a thousand times, Bakugou and Kirishima stretch, do a quick warmup run, and go through the series of twisting and flexibility exercises that Aizawa had drilled into them for years.
Aizawa didn’t have the sheer mass that the heavy fighters like Bakugou or Kirishima had, but thanks to his erasure quirk he’d put every bit of effort into years of hand to hand combat training. To this day, he could probably erase their quirks and hand their asses to them. It impressed on all of Class A that you never knew when your quirk would be negated or equalled, so you needed to be able to defend yourself quirkless.
“There’s a cafe on the first floor,” Kirishima says, then nods at the octagon with a grin. “Loser buys coffee.”
Bakugou smirks and they climb in, stretching and loosening up as they go. “No quirks, best out of three,” he says, and Kirishima nods. They both crouch down into fighting stances, and they’re off.
Somewhere in the middle of the second bout, Bakugou realizes that he has a savage grin on his face. He doesn’t have anyone he can fight like this with back home, unless Deku is visiting. There’s something so pure about putting quirks aside and just stretching your body to the limit, figuring out how hard you can go and how much damage you can take before you kill each other.
Bakugou wins the first bout, Kirishima the second, and now they’re circling each other for the third. Kirishima has blood on his chin from a split lip and Bakugou took an elbow to the nose that keeps bleeding into his mouth, but he hasn’t felt so good in what feels like years.
Kirishima is larger and stronger now - Bakugou can freely admit that he can bench press more than Bakugou can right now. He’s a shield, though, an on-the-ground rock of a brawler that’s used to taking all the damage. There’s no quirk to shield him now, and though Bakugou is similarly quirkless he’s far more nimble and acrobatic, able to bounce around Kirishima like a ping pong ball.
Long, sweaty minutes later they’re scrabbling on the ground, Bakugou’s thighs firmly wrapped around Kirishima’s neck. He presses his knees just that little bit closer, and Kirishima’s hand slaps the mat, tapping out. They both roll onto their backs, gasping for breath.
Bakugou thinks his ears are ringing until he gets up and sees that they’ve attracted a crowd that’s now cheering and clapping. Tamura is there, accompanied by a girl with the lower body of a snake that’s curled into a wheelchair. Everyone has mostly dispersed by the time they wipe down the mats, apart from Tamura and her friend.
“That was awesome!” Tamura gushes as they walk over to guzzle from their water bottles and wipe the blood away. “It was like we had a Quirk Championship match right here in the building!”
“Imagine that, three or four times a week for three years,” Kirishima tells her. “That was high school.”
As Tamura shakes her head, the girl with her extends a hand to Bakugou, which is cool and scaly when he shakes it. “Wajima Himari, I’m Tamura’s roommate. And, I admit, a bit of a fan of yours.”
Bakugou smiles at her. “Good to meet you. I’m stuck here for awhile thanks to the storm, so we decided to relive the old days.” He stumbles as Kirishima throws a heavy arm over his shoulders.
“We’re better now than we were back then,” he says happily.
“Get your sweaty self the hell off of me. And I’m better, you just got big and slow,” Bakugou says as he shoves his feet into his sneakers.
“Slow my ass, I am exactly as fast as I need to be!”
“So you needed to lose two matches? You’re buying the coffee by the way.”
“Whatever,” Kirishima grumbles, before smiling at the girls. “You want to join us?”
Coffee is a pleasant affair. Wajima is in tech, she does something involving predictions of quirk-related damage for insurance companies. “Everything is so slow this time of year,” she says, with a sigh, her forked tongue flickering as she talks. “I shouldn’t complain though, it means I can work from home. When it’s warm I can slither around,” she says, gesturing down to her wheelchair. “But this time of year the salt and ice play hell with my scales.”
Bakugou leans back, looking over at Kirishima. “You know, I always did wonder if Endeavor had to have extra insurance policies with how much he always wrecked everything around him.”
Wajima groans. “We studied him specifically in school. He’s every worst case financial scenario in one place.” She shoots Bakugou a measuring glance. “I imagine you have to have fairly hefty damage insurance.”
Bakugou shrugs. “I do, but because I’m still technically under contract with the Commission, the government picks it up.”
They exchange industry small talk for awhile, before Bakugou starts to feel gross from drying sweat and demands a shower. Upstairs, Bakugou starts prepping vegetables while Kirishima showers first, and then goes to take his own turn.
The bathroom is steamy and smells like Kirishima. The pounding water feels good on sore muscles. It’s the kind of soreness that comes from pleasantly exhausting work, though, and Bakugou just…feels good. Good in a way he hasn’t for awhile.
He pulls open drawers as he halfheartedly dries his hair, finding another set of sweatpants and a shirt that advertises Present Mic’s radio show. Despite himself, he tugs open the bottom drawer again and pulls out the sweater.
It’s bothering him, on some level he can’t quite put a finger on. Bakugou remembers when he lost the stupid thing. They were packing up all their stuff to move out of UA, and everyone was discovering what happens when twenty people live in each others’ pockets for three years. Mixed in with his own things Bakugou found several volumes of Kaminari’s manga, a pair of Jirou’s headphones, a teacup that only could have belonged to Yaoyorozu, and more of Kirishima’s stuff than he thinks Kirishima even owned.
He remembers searching for that sweater specifically because he loved it, and wanted to wrap it for protection around the delicate glass trophy he was given for winning the sports festival three years in a row. Eventually time ran out and they had to pack up his dad’s car with all his stuff, and he forgot about the sweater.
But it’s here, with Kirishima. And it’s worn, stretched out and worn to pieces in a way that says it’s a favorite piece of clothing. Despite the damage it’s not thrown out, it’s not stored with other damaged items, it’s just - here. In a drawer.
Bakugou wonders what it means, that it’s here. Wonders what it means that he cares so much.
Trying to put it out of his mind, he goes back out into the kitchen.
Dinner is good, the stew warm and comforting. They end up on the couch after, Kumo taking up half the space so they’re stuck sitting next to each other. Kirishima finds some terrible All Might movie, and they mock it relentlessly as they go through a six pack.
As torpor from the food and alcohol sets in, they lean towards each other more and more until they’re slumped in the middle of the couch, shoulders pressed together. Kirishima is warm, so warm, and Bakugou sleepily rests his head against a well-muscled shoulder. He keeps having to stop himself from reaching the few inches over to Kirishima’s hand and threading their fingers together. Has to stop himself from turning his head and pressing a kiss to the warm skin of Kirishima’s bicep, bared by where his sleeve is rucked up.
Bakugou doesn’t realize he’s staring vacantly at the movie credits until Kirishima nudges him. He rolls his head to look up at where the other man is smiling down at him. “Yen for your thoughts?” he asks, and there’s something fond and familiar and comfortable in his smile.
So comfortable that Bakugou doesn’t think about what he’s saying as he opens his mouth and says, “You have my sweater.”
Kirishima blinks. His voice is easy as he says, “What sweater?” but Bakugou can feel the muscles his cheek is resting against tensing, is close enough to hear Kirishima’s breath quicken.
“The sweater, idiot. The skull one I lived in, back in high school. Found it in a drawer when I was looking for a hoodie.”
“Oh, that.” Kirishima laughs, but underneath it’s uncomfortable. “Yeah well, I had that old UA shirt there too, I guess it’s where high school shit ended up.”
“Yeah, no. Not really. It was worn to pieces, falling apart.”
“You wore it a lot back then.”
“And my hag of a mother taught me how to care for wool and knitwear and that ain’t it.”
Kirishima straightens up a bit. Bakugou has to catch himself so as not to fall over. His cheek is cold. “Why does it matter?” Kirishima asks, tiredly.
The same question Bakugou has been asking himself for a day. He stares down at his hands, the chipped nails and prominent veins, the crook in his right ring finger where it didn’t heal correctly after breaking. “I don’t know,” he says.
They’re quiet for a few moments, the only sound the soft mutterings of the television, some infomercial for Kaminari brand batteries that Bakugou wants to laugh at but he’s afraid of what will come out if he opens his mouth.
Bakugou stands up, slowly. For all their history together he’s still a guest here and - he’s not sure if he’s being rude or an asshole or what, but he doesn’t like the feeling. “I’m going to go to bed,” he says quietly, looking at the television and not people that he should be having a conversation with. “News said the storm was getting better.”
The news said no such thing, but Bakugou says it anyways. He turns out the light in the kitchen as he goes, leaving Kirishima lit by the flickering television and a small light on the end table. Quietly shutting the door to the guest room, Bakugou gets into bed. He should take his contacts out, he knows, but he just can’t be fucked right now.
Consciously trying to relax, Bakugou closes his eyes.
-x-x-x-x-x-
Bakugou opens his eyes and snarls silently. He looks at his phone: three am. He’s spent the past few hours alternating staring at the back of his eyelids and staring at the ceiling and he doesn’t know which one annoys him more. His brain won’t fucking shut off, it keeps going ‘you’re going to leave tomorrow and not see him again for another eight years and he’ll be a stranger’.
Shoving the covers back, he gets up. If he can’t sleep, maybe he can watch the local weather forecast. That shit always knocks him out. Two steps out of the hallway, Bakugou stops. He can see that the television is still quietly on - and light is illuminating messy red hair in front of it.
Bakugou walks over, not sure of what he’s going to say. He stops in front of the couch where Kirishima sits, staring blankly at the television. Slowly he looks up at Bakugou, who stands frozen, lips parted and head empty.
Finally something bubbles to the surface. This is Kirishima. Bakugou doesn’t have to think about talking to him, it’s just goddamn Kirishima. His Kirishima.
“I don’t know why it matters but it does,” Bakugou says. Apparently his mouth is just going to take over without his brain getting involved. “It does.”
Ah shit, now his legs are in on it as well. He finds himself walking over, looking down, meeting wide red eyes that are as familiar as his own. It’s awkward to be standing, Bakugou thinks, and before he can process that further he’s slinging a leg over and sitting on Kirishima’s lap. The fucker is tall enough that they’re basically eye to eye.
“It matters because I can’t get the image out of my head of you wearing my sweater around, year after year. It matters because I fuckin’ like that image, and I don’t know why. It matters because I wouldn’t have made it through high school without you and you don’t even realize it. It matters because I’ve felt more like myself, felt more alive in the past day than in the past few years and I don’t know what that means other than…” Bakugou trails off, the breath in his lungs coming a bit too fast. “I don’t know.” He stares at Kirishima’s forehead, afraid of what he might see if he meets his eyes. Afraid of what his own might show.
Bakugou tenses as Kirishima’s hands slide up from where they had been on Bakugou’s thighs, keeping him from slipping off. They slide up the fabric of the borrowed sweatpants, go under the hem of the borrowed t-shirt to settle on Bakugou’s waist. Kirishima’s hands are large, broad - they fit around more of Bakugou than he expects.
“You always did have the smallest waist,” Kirishima mutters. “Model-looking asshole, I was always kind of mad I’d never get a shape like yours no matter how much muscle I put on.” He’s quiet for a moment and Bakugou is painfully aware of every breath he takes, his stomach and ribs moving against Kirishima’s hands.
“Every time we sparred was this tease,” he continues, thumbs stroking along Bakugou’s hipbones. “Because I could touch you everywhere, but only to hurt you.”
Bakugou snorts. “Yeah, like you weren’t the touchiest motherfucker out there, always hugging and shit.”
Kirishima looks up, their eyes finally meeting. It’s like getting hit over the head with someone’s quirk - Bakugou can’t move, can barely breathe. “And why do you think that is?” Kirishima says softly.
“Because that’s who you are, you’re a physical comfort person. You touched everyone.”
“Not like you.”
“Not like me,” Bakugou agrees. “Because I let you. Because it was the one way I could have you.” His hands are resting on Kirishima’s chest. When did that happen?
A hand reaches up, fingers resting on Bakugou’s neck as a thumb strokes the sharp line of his jaw. “You could have had me any time you wanted.”
Bakugou shakes his head. “No, I couldn’t.”
“Yeah you -”
“No, because I couldn’t.” He drops his gaze from Kirishima’s, slouching down a little as he loses the steel from his spine. “I figured out I felt…things…early on but. I didn’t have friends, other friends, not like you. I needed you as a friend more than I needed anything else.”
The thumb on Bakugou’s jaw moves over, traces over his stubbled chin and up around the curve of his lower lip. “Did we miss it?”
Bakugou blinks, meets Kirishima’s eyes. “What?”
He looks so goddamn earnest. “Did we miss the chance for us?”
“It’s..fuck, man, it’s been eight years. We live on opposite ends of the country.”
“And you hate it.”
“What?”
Kirishima sounds confident now. “And you hate it. You travel too much and you’re not attached to your town and I bet my bank account your mom yells at you because you’re too busy and too far away to ever visit your parents.” Bakugou snorts, tries to look away but Kirishima holds his head in place. “And I’m the same. I’m the same, dude.”
“...don’t call me dude when I’m sitting on you.”
“Sorry. The point still stands, though.”
Bakugou shakes Kirishima’s hand off of his face, sits back a bit. “We hate our lives. We also haven’t seen each other in eight years, mind you. So what are you actually saying right now?”
Kirishima shrugs. “I don’t know.” He tilts his head. “Are you very attached to your agency?”
“I barely have an agency.”
“Or your apartment? The city you live in?”
A snort of derision.
“Uh huh. And I already told you that I hate it here, too.”
Kirishima’s eyes are too big and bright for the middle of the night, Bakugou thinks. “So what, Shitty Hair? What are you getting at?”
“Pick a city. Anywhere. One that doesn’t have snow. And let’s move there and start up our own agency.”
Bakugou stares at him, mouth hanging open. “What part of ‘haven’t seen each other in eight years’ did you forget? We have lives -”
“Terrible lives!” Kirishima sits up, putting himself close, so close to Bakugou. “Tell me right now you haven’t felt better just fucking around with me in this apartment than you have being a hero.”
Bakugou wants to say that one day can’t measure up to the kids that hug him when he saves their school, can’t measure up to the people that cheer when they see the great Dynamight in the air, or to all the civilians and heroes that he’s saved.
He’d be lying, though.
“So - what? You want us to just- fuckin’ pack up and move somewhere? Live happily ever after?”
Kirishima shrugs. “Why not?”
“Because…because that’s not how you do it! Because we’re just seeing each other after eight -”
“Yeah after eight years apart, I know.” Kirishima tilts his head. “Does it feel like eight years? Do you or I seem like vastly different people from back then?”
No, and that’s the whole problem. Bakugou takes a deep breath. “I need some fuckin’ clarity here, because we started talking about one thing and now it’s a whole other thing.” He stares at Kirishima, looks into his eyes until it’s uncomfortable and then looks longer. “Are you saying do this as business partners, or- or romantic partners?” His mouth is desert dry.
“I know that I can fight with you,” Kirishima says. “We have balanced abilities and a solid base to build up an agency from. I also know you and your brain and am pretty sure we’ll be fine handling finances and getting all of that set up.” He stops, licks his lips. He looks nervous for the first time tonight. “I - want there to be more. Want you as a partner in everything. I always have. But if we start with one, once we’re settled and established, maybe we can work on the other thing.”
“I guess,” Bakugou says dubiously. “But there’s kind of a problem with that.” Kirishima raises a quizzical eyebrow. Bakugou smirks in response. “I don’t have that kind of patience.”
He leans forward and kisses Kirishima, catching his dry lips with his own. There’s a moment of processing, then Kirishima surges up, one arm around Bakugou’s waist and the other on his shoulder pulling him closer. Kissing him is so easy, like breathing or sparring or any of the thousands of times they’ve had their hands on each other. Why weren’t we doing this the whole time? he thinks to himself fuzzily.
A nip of sharp teeth to his lower lip, and Bakugou’s mouth opens on a gasp. Kirishima takes the opportunity to slip his tongue in and - oh, now things are changing. It’s not long before Bakugou is deliberately grinding his hips down into Kirishima’s lap, the hand that had been at his waist now slipped inside the fabric and stroking slowly along bare skin.
Bakugou’s hands are threaded into thick red hair, he’s pressing close like if he just keeps going maybe they can merge into one person. It’s that thought that spurs him to pull back and catch his breath. Kirishima just continues, mouthing over the sharp edge of Bakugou’s jaw and down onto his neck.
“I think we…” Who gave permission for Kirishima to know how to do that with his tongue? “I think we should probably slow down,” Bakugou says around ragged breaths.
Kirishima finally pulls back, meets Bakugou’s eyes with his own arousal-blown pupils. “It took how long for us to get here and now you want to slow down?” he asks. Hands wander, one of them still resting on Bakugou’s ass as the other one finds where he’s tenting his sweatpants.
Bakugou bites back a moan. “We literally just talked about this, about - oh fuck - about business first…”
“That was before I knew what you tasted like,” Kirishima murmurs, and after that they’re done for.
Everything is hands and lips, fumbling beneath warm fabric to reach warmer skin. They pant raggedly into each others’ mouths until breath is choked off and stuttering into pleasure. Bakugou’s mind has gone a warm shade of white, everything is fuzzy and Kirishima-flavored and nothing hurts.
It’s when Kirishima has sacrificed his shirt to wipe off their hands and stomachs that Bakugou speaks up. “I still think we shouldn’t do too much too soon.”
Kirishima raises an eyebrow. “You want to give all this up, now?” he asks, gesturing at their mussed hair and sticky skin.
Bakugou rolls his eyes. “No, asshole. I’m just saying let’s not like, immediately move in together and adopt a cat or whatever. Getting the business set up should be the priority. We could be…background.”
There’s a smile in Kirishima’s eyes, if not on his lips. “Why Katsuki, do you want to be courted? All formal dates and flowers and -” the words dissolve into laughter as Bakugou hits him, hard.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
They sit looking at each other, smiles falling away as things process. “We’re really going to do this,” Kirishima says, and it’s part a question, part a declaration.
Bakugou shrugs. “Won’t take anything to break my lease. I’ve moved so much I don’t have much shit, either.”
“I’ve been here long enough it’ll be annoying, and I gotta find a place that can take Kumo,” Kirishima says, “And we need to think about the agency building.”
“Yeah. All of that, I’m behind you a hundred percent but,” Bakugou yawns. “Can we sleep first?”
“You’re the one sitting on me.”
“Shut up.” Bakugou gets up onto somewhat shaky legs, gratified when Kirishima stumbles following him. He doesn’t know what the protocol is, what he’s supposed to do until Kirishima ushers him forward with a hand on his lower back, pushes him into a bedroom that’s dark and warm and smells like Kirishima and home.
Bakugou gets pulled into bed, tugged this way and that until his back is against a warm, broad chest and a thick arm is wrapped around his waist.
“Did the news actually say the storm was clearing?” Kirishima says into Bakugou’s ear, sounding an inch away from sleep.
“Dunno. Never actually checked,” Bakugou says, and he falls asleep to the huff of a chuckle against the back of his neck.
Outside the snow falls steadily, wrapping the world in a soft blanket of white.