Chapter Text
Shouto got his first apartment right out of high school.
A little before that, he’d signed with his agency—a small start-up located in the more rural parts of Musutafu, buried between unknown landmarks and even more unknown establishments.
He had spent most of his life in the limelight, first as Endeavour’s son, then as one of the many up-and-coming heroes of UA. So he’d been thoroughly enticed by the anonymity his current agency afforded him, and his agency, in turn, welcomed the publicity that came with signing him on. It was after all of that that he signed the lease for his first apartment; a quaint little thing, located one station away from his agency.
Midoriya had whispered, “Quaint?” in slight disbelief when he visited Shouto’s apartment for the very first time, and Shouto stopped referring to it as “quaint” after.
He stayed there for the first three years of his career. Familiarising himself with the shops that lined his streets, memorising the train schedule through repeated visits, decorating his apartment with everything of his own.
After three years, he said goodbye to it all. His entire apartment was packed into five cardboard boxes, stacked side by side in the corridors, and eventually moved thirty minutes by truck to the Todoroki family home.
Shouto hadn’t wanted the house. He’d move far from it, after all, just so he didn’t ever need to look back on it. But his father didn’t want the house either. He’d retired, or in industry terms, he’d become “on demand”, meaning he didn’t work unless there was a catastrophic situation that required him to. And because of that, he had no need for a big house, with his big office and his big home gym, and its myriad of empty rooms, opting for a penthouse in an apartment building located in the outskirts of the city.
Shouto barely recognised the man anymore. He’d retired.
Talk of who the house was going to be handed over to became a topic that he and his siblings frequented, though the answer had always been clear. Natsuo wasn’t going to be in the country for much longer, crossing oceans to Canada to pursue his Masters. Fuyumi opened a shop in a prefecture more than an hour away, and with her pregnancy coming to term soon, moving around was out of the question for her. Touya was still going through the motions of rehabilitation, and Shouto thought that even if he weren’t presently occupied, Touya wouldn’t want to step anywhere near the Todoroki family home any time soon.
And his mother, having recently been discharged, had purchased an apartment unit somewhere along the coasts, far from the hustle and bustle of city life. She chose to live there in solitude, sending Shouto the odd text here and there with updates on how she lived life.
So really, Shouto had been the answer all along, except he wanted nothing to do with the house at all. For three months, they talked about what to do with it. Rent it out? But who would manage the renters? Maintain the house? Go through all the duties of a landlord for that period of time? They thought of leaving it be, but letting it collect dust as the years went on felt wrong somehow. It was a house that contained many memories. Granted not very many fond ones, but a house that lived in them anyway, so to neglect it didn’t feel right. And when talk of selling the house came about, Shouto had given in and decided that he’d move in after all.
The decision hadn’t come easy. Shouto gave it much thought, sometimes laying on his bed in the darkness of his room, trying to imagine new people living their new lives in his family home. He imagined them being a family, with normal, loving parents and a few adorable kids. He imagined family dinners with home-cooked food. He imagined movie nights in the living room. He imagined birthday celebrations with decorations tacked onto the walls of their living space. He imagined—well, he imagined what he probably pictured a happy family to look like. And for a bit, it was an okay thought. The house was due for better care under better people to air out the hauntings of their past.
But then, he’d thought, what if it didn’t go to better people with better care for a space meant to be precious and warm? What if it went to people who were worse? What if instead of making his house a better place, they ruined it to the point of no return? The thought didn’t sit well with him, and he’d realised then, that perhaps he could make his house better. Perhaps he could be the one to replace the negativity etched into the space with happiness.
And so he packed his apartment, put the important things into boxes, and shipped them to his family home.
The first few weeks in the house were dreadful. He barely ventured far into it, occupying the space in the guest bedroom right beside the kitchen, only ever returning home in between his shifts. There was something about the house that felt more daunting now compared to the past; kind of like visiting an old friend you had a falling out with, just to discover that you had fallen out for a reason.
The house had simply been so silent. Even during the worst of their family history, the house still felt alive, with bits and pieces of his family scattered all over. The sounds of feet on floorboards, the sounds of a distant tap running water on occasion, the scent of food wafting from the kitchen every now and then. While his family was slowly deteriorating, the house still felt a bit like a home.
With everyone else gone, it felt like a husk emptied out. Something missing that made the house feel so foreign, made him feel out of depth and not in control. And he hated being in the house.
When he had said all this to Midoriya and Uraraka a month into staying there, they’d looked at one another, then back at Shouto.
“Todoroki, you’re allowed to change things in the house, you know,” Midoriya said, and Shouto hadn’t understood that at all.
Afterwards, Shouto had gone back to the house, still and silent, and understood a little of what Midoriya had said.
He hadn’t moved from the west wing—or to be precise, he hadn’t moved beyond the kitchen or the guest bedroom. Had barely unpacked the five boxes he’d brought over from his apartment. Hadn’t even kept his toothbrush in the bathroom he’d been using. He hadn’t changed anything at all, despite coming all the way over here just so he could change something.
First, he laid his toothbrush on the little ledge between his bathroom mirror and the sink. Then, he unpacked the five boxes in the guest bedroom; his clothes went into the wardrobe, his small collection of pictures and frames went onto the desk beside the bed, his books went onto the bedside drawer stacked one atop the other. Slowly, the guest bedroom turned into his room, filled with his things, filled with his apartment, and everything felt all the more lighter.
He moved onto the kitchen next. Shouto had always been the type to order takeout. Not that he didn’t enjoy cooking, but with a job that demanded his time and energy around the clock, cooking had gradually turned into a nuisance over time. The only things of his that occupied the kitchen had been the many takeout boxes thrown into the bin. He bought groceries. And at first, he hadn’t stuck to his well-meaning plan of cooking for himself, having to clean out one too many rotten waste out of his fridge almost weekly. He eventually got used to reminding himself about the food in the fridge, and home-cooked meals every few days eventually turned into home-cooked meals every other day.
It was good. He liked it. He liked doing things in the house. He liked adding bits and pieces of himself to it. Leaving a book on the coffee table after spending his weekend on the living room couch reading. Leftovers placed into containers and stuffed into the fridge for the next day. His washed-and-dried laundry hung over the backs of furniture or wherever he felt convenient, waiting to be folded. His shoes laid haphazardly in the entryway.
It was good.
Two and a half months in, his mother sent him a package.
It was by no means big, but big enough that Shouto knew that it didn’t contain just a simple letter. He opened it, cutting the top off with a pair of scissors, careful not to accidentally cut through any of the package’s contents. What he found inside made his heart stutter.
The package contained a short letter from his mother, detailing brief updates of her life in her apartment.
She’d settled in nicely apparently, making quick friends with her neighbours. She’d been very reluctant at first, conscious of the fact that she hadn’t made her own friends in years, but slowly warmed up to them after frequent bump-ins.
She liked her life there, and asked Shouto of his life in their old home, inquired about the state it was in, whether Shouto was liking it. At the end, she explained that she’d taken up painting, encouraged by one of her neighbours, who was an illustrationist for children’s books. And how that, along with this short letter, the package also held four of her more recent paintings that she thought Shouto should have.
They were all of different sizes; two bigger ones and two smaller ones, canvas papers hand-cut into four. Shouto could tell that his mother had cut the four pieces of paper from one larger piece of paper herself, judging by the uneven sizes and jagged edges, clearly cut by someone with an unsteady or inexperienced hand. It immediately felt precious, like his mother had given to him a piece of her heart poured into watercolour on paper. And without thinking, he went over to the kitchen to stick all four of them onto the fridge, only to realise that he didn’t have any fridge magnets to hold them up.
A quick trip to the stores had fixed that problem almost instantly, and soon his mother’s paintings were tacked onto the fridge for anyone to see.
If Shouto wasn’t being biassed, he’d say that the paintings weren’t very good. The paint was streaky across the canvas and colours bled into one another in a way that he knew his mother hadn’t intended for. Not much of the paintings were legible, shapes and figures here and there to make up the bulk of it. Everything looked very cartoon-ish, as if his mother’s attempt at art was based on a very loose understanding of how art actually was.
But Shouto felt they were beautiful anyway. He could see his mother in the runny watercolour on the canvas. Could kind of see what his mother was trying to paint and convey. Like how, after staring at it every day while eating his meals, he’d finally figured out that one of the larger paintings consisted of the view from the window of his mother’s apartment. Blue representing the vast sky that seemed to stretch out forever, green representing the trees that lined the pathway just outside her apartment, the sides of the painting coloured a light beige to represent the wooden pane of her window.
With her paintings on the fridge, everything seemed better. And soon, Shouto ventured beyond the guest bedroom and the kitchen, further into the depths of the house.
The sparring room had been a difficult place to start, but Shouto figured that getting the worst room out of the way first would make everything else feel light in comparison. He’d been sick of this room ever since he was a child, might as well take a bit of frustration out on it.
He wanted to uproot the entire room, floorboard from one end to the other. Peel the paint off the walls and slap an entirely different colour on. He wanted to make it so unrecognisable from the one in his memories that he no longer referred to this room as “the sparring room”. But when he’d finally crossed the familiar halls and slid open the even more familiar wooden sliding doors, he discovered that someone else had already done what he’d intended to do.
It used to be a wide, open space, ground covered in mats, with a punching bag strung up in one corner. None of that was here any longer. The mats were gone and replaced with a large patterned rug occupying the centre of the room. The punching bag was still there, though it wasn’t strung high anymore, left to collect dust on the ground in the corner of the room, wedged between a work desk and a wooden shelf spanning the entire left wall. Books filled the majority of the shelf, interrupted occasionally with the odd decorative knick-knack. There was still so much unoccupied space in the room however, as if his father had run out of ideas and given up on it entirely.
Upon seeing that, Shouto had stepped back out and slid the panel door shut. He never returned to that room again.
The sparring room was out, so Shouto hit all the rooms nearest to the kitchen instead. The second guest bedroom was easy enough. All he had to do was open the windows, air the room out, and clear the space of the dust that had accumulated from disuse. There was not much he could do for a room that he wasn’t going to use, so he figured cleaning it was good enough.
In the living room, along with the stacks of books that had been growing after many weekends spent lounging around, he placed throw pillows all over the couch, maximising his comfort before anything. He even designated the couch closest to the TV as his laundry-folding corner, leaving the now-empty laundry basket right by it.
Then, he came to tackle the storage room.
There weren’t many things in it to begin with. His father had clearly gone through spring cleaning sometime between Shouto and his siblings moving out until now. Shouto wasn’t going to complain. It wasn’t as if he was looking forward to sorting through old stuff they’ve hoarded for years. But a small part of him resented that he hadn’t been the one to do it anyway.
He was halfway carding through a few stacks of older photo albums when he spotted it. It was barely noticeable, a dark silhouette hidden between towering boxes, cleaning supplies, and a stack of toilet paper. But once Shouto set his eyes on it, he realised that it was all he could see in the dimly-lit room.
It wasn’t scary, or if Shouto was being really honest, he’d seen scarier. At least, this… thing hadn’t attacked him on sight, hadn’t lunged at him with the ferocity of someone intending to kill, only stayed in that corner between a myriad of the Todoroki household items, and stared with wide, seemingly-glowing eyes at Shouto.
It didn’t blink, only stared. Eyes wide and gleaming golden in the dark corner. At first, Shouto didn’t know what to do, body frozen with a sense of trepidation. Again, he wasn’t afraid because the thing looked scary, but afraid because he didn’t know what it was or what it could do.
Minutes seemed to go by; mismatched eyes blinking into unmoving, bright yellow ones. It was a minute more before Shouto did anything at all, jolting into action abruptly based on adrenaline alone. His feet picked up before his brain could process his body moving, and he was out the storage room in a second.
Once out, he stood by the storage room door for a few seconds, eyes peering into the dark space of the room, anticipating something—anything—to happen. Except nothing ever did. Whatever Shouto had seen there had stayed there.
It was Uraraka’s birthday when Shouto saw Bakugou again.
Yaoyorozu had rented out a Korean BBQ place in one of the trendier parts of Tokyo. Shouto travelled almost two hours from his family home just to be there. But he didn’t have any complaints, simply happy to be out of that house if at all. And also happy because he hadn’t seen his friends in quite a while.
When he arrived, most people were already there, mingling around the grills with drinks in hand. People he knew, people he didn’t, people he had heard of in passing.
Shouto had barely taken his shoes off at the entryway before being dragged to one of the tables by a slightly tipsy Midoriya, hands gripped onto Shouto’s arm so tight as if he thought Shouto would flee otherwise.
Shouto instantly spotted Bakugou on the other end of the table, hands busy manning the grill, eyes too focussed on grilling the meat to notice Shouto arriving.
“Todoroki!” Someone shouted over the many conversations occurring all over the restaurant, and it was only then did Bakugou finally lift his head, eyes off the grill to look over at Shouto.
Shouto offered a greeting smile, and Bakugou gave him a nod in return.
That had been the extent of their interaction for most of the evening. Shouto had quickly been sucked into conversations on his end of the table, Midoriya and Uraraka talking nonstop over one another, both clearly already way past the point of sobriety.
“And then,” Uraraka was saying, stuffing a piece of grilled beef into her mouth. “He told me I wasn’t qualified enough—”
“What!” Midoriya cut in, stabbing his chopsticks in Uraraka’s direction to broadcast his disbelief. “What does he know?!”
“Exactly!” Uraraka nodded her head, though her mouth was so stuffed with food at this point that the word had come out all muffled. She chewed for a few moments, both Shouto and Midoriya waiting. She swallowed, picking up a napkin to dab at the corners of her mouth before continuing, “He’s one to talk! He’s only director because his father’s on the board!”
Midoriya gasped, immediately offering words of distaste about whoever Uraraka was ranting about. Shouto could only guess, they’d already been on this topic by the time he had settled down beside them, getting bits and pieces of the conversation over the din of conversations happening all around them. And really, he hoped Uraraka didn’t mind, but he was far more interested in the grilled meat going around at the moment than he was of her disrespectful director.
He was thankful that Midoriya and Uraraka acted as great buffers for Shouto whenever they were all in conversation with one another. Oftentimes they jumped from one topic to the next at a speed Shouto could never bother trying to keep up with. He was happy simply to be there, being a part of their lives even though he felt he rarely contributed much when he was around.
Amidst the conversation, Shouto laid a few pieces of meat on the grill, tongs in hand as he watched the sizzle of the oil. He was so caught up with not accidentally burning the meat that when Bakugou slipped into the empty seat directly in front of him, he barely noticed.
“Hey,” Bakugou said, and Shouto’s so startled by the sound of Bakugou’s voice that he dropped his tongs onto the grill.
Bakugou shot him a look that said he wasn’t very impressed by Shouto’s carelessness. He didn’t verbally voice his thoughts out though, allowing Shouto to pick his tongs back up with some sense of dignity intact.
“Hi,” Shouto said back.
“Heard you moved back home.”
Home, thought Shouto. If they were being strictly technical, then yes, Shouto had moved back home. But in every other sense of the word, Shouto had never once thought of that house as his home. He felt that he shouldn’t overcomplicate things however, much less with Bakugou of all people, so he simply nodded like he agreed.
“Okay, listen.” And Bakugou appeared a little sheepish, hand coming up to rest at the back of his neck. Shouto watched the movement, Bakugou’s hand rubbing up and down his neck in a nervous gesture, before prying his eyes away to look back up at Bakugou’s face. “I need a place to stay.”
Shouto blinked, because out of every possible subject that he’d thought Bakugou would bring up, this hadn’t even come close to being the answer. “Oh?”
Bakugou straightened up, hand coming down to rest on the table, seemingly already rid of his hesitant edge. “Yeah. Lots of shit happened. Some kid in my building manifested his quirk. Something related to electricity or some shit—short-circuited the entire building’s electrical framework, caused a fire or two. Anyways, my building’s basically out of order for who-the-fuck knows how long. Been crashing at Ei’s, but he’s only got a spare couch for me to sleep on. Tried Izuku’s for maybe a week. But he snores, and his apartment’s ‘bout as big as a damn closet. Can’t escape him—trust me, I’ve tried. ‘Sides, they live too damn far away from where I operate, ya know?”
Nodding along, Shouto kept his eyes on the grill, flipping a few pieces of meat over as he did so. A sense of foreboding came over Shouto, already knowing where this line of conversation was headed to before Bakugou had even asked what he wanted to.
He felt a little like he really needed a glass of water, but all they had on the table at hand were opened cans of chilled beer and a few scattered cups of soju.
He swallowed, a lump forming in his throat almost instantly. He also felt a bit bad, considering if it was anyone but Bakugou who was asking for a place to stay, he would have agreed without a second thought.
“So, is that cool? You have a couple rooms to spare, don’t you? I’ll pay rent and everything,” Bakugou asked coolly. Then, after a beat, immediately amended with, “I mean, feel free to tell me to fuck off, too. I’ll find some place else.”
Except there was no real reason Shouto would say no to this. Or no real reason that didn’t involve thinking about Bakugou in a way he didn’t think about his friends. It was one thing to say yes to Midoriya or Uraraka or even Iida living in his house, and it was something else entirely to say yes to Bakugou.
Shouto watched the oil sizzle on the grill, watched the fire surge when a drop of oil had seeped through the gaps and into the pit of charcoal at the bottom, watched the meat sear a tasty brown colour. Then, he eventually looked up, right into Bakugou’s eyes.
There was a bit of discomfort there. A twist of his mouth that depicted a little reluctance at the ask. Shouto could somehow tell that Bakugou had left him as a last resort, otherwise he wouldn’t have even come over to ask. He’d exhausted all other possibilities before landing on Shouto, because even he could tell that they had a reason to not be living with one another.
Bakugou was desperate.
And well, a friend in need to Shouto was worth tossing aside his slight uneasiness for. “Of course you can.”
For Shouto to pinpoint where exactly his and Bakugou’s friendship had gone from friendly to decidedly tense, he’d need to think back to the first year after high school.
The first half of that year, the both of them barely saw each other. Bakugou moved to the bustling city of Tokyo, centre of all the attention, and made his mark. Big-name agency, shadowing a top-twenty hero, securing all the newsworthy cases one after the other.
His pro hero debut could only be described as extremely lucky. Not that Shouto thought he needed the luck, but it’d certainly helped.
Shouto knew Bakugou was good, but what he hadn’t known was that he was also careful. Too careful, in fact; an understanding already drawn from one bad public appearance after the other. He was still the same Bakugou. Still outrageously loud in his opinions. Still not afraid to give back as good as he got. But there was a certain finesse to how he did it once he made his debut. He knew how and where to hold back—when he needed to hold his peace. It was so strange yet also quite Bakugou-like; the more reserved, calculating side of him that only surfaced when his pro hero-goals were of focus.
Shouto admired all that from afar. Watched interview clips where he recognised the restraint by the purse of Bakugou’s mouth. Saw how he walked around in branded sportswear, clearly sponsored, when he used to simply throw on anything that was available from his wardrobe in the past.
When Bakugou’s carefulness came crumbling down a year later, Shouto had also observed from afar.
It made headlines, as did almost everything Bakugou had done after high school. Hero Dynamight Sues SuperX Over Unauthorised Use of Identity, the headline read, as Shouto stared down at his phone, a blurry image of Bakugou leaving his agency right below, flashing the cameraman the finger.
In just a year, Bakugou said fuck careful and chose to sue his own agency. Until this day, Shouto didn’t know the full, unadulterated story that led to that. All he knew came from skimming news articles and social media, whispers between ex-classmates and coworkers, and what he’d glimpsed from afar.
But none of that mattered much, especially not after Bakugou uprooted himself from his intricately-planned life in Tokyo and moved all the way back to Musutafu. Right back to where Shouto was.
It was great, at first. Most of Shouto’s friends had scattered all throughout Japan, chasing their careers in places that best fit them the most. Even he could admit that keeping lowkey back in their hometown got lonely at times.
They’d met again at the gym Shouto frequented, Bakugou leaving and Shouto only just entering. Shouto had invited him out for dinner, wanting to satiate his burning curiosity over the incident that had caused Bakugou to come back in the first place.
Conversation was easy with Bakugou, which was a step-up from their high school days. By graduation, they’d definitely been considered close friends; there was even a polaroid picture of the two of them side by side holding congratulatory bouquets to prove it. But it certainly hadn’t been like that back then. They didn’t sit in restaurants and talk for hours: about their careers, what they had expected and what had come as a complete surprise. About the choices they regretted making and the ones they’d make over and over if given the chance to again.
That was new.
At the end, Shouto had said, “We should do this again.”
Bakugou had stalled, both of them lingering on the pavement outside the restaurant. Eventually, something seemed to give, and he shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
So they did it again. And again. And again. And Shouto’s life had quickly gone from entirely Bakugou-less to non-stop days with Bakugou. A shift he hadn’t predicted would fit so snugly into his life.
What was it that Yaoyorozu had said when Shouto asked what falling in love was like—that romance in fiction didn’t pose an apt frame of reference of what actual romance would be like. That it wasn’t flashy and obvious. There weren’t going to be signs of it; there were no fireworks going off in the background, no tender music to accompany intimate moments shared between two people.
It was often silent, operating in an almost-imperceivable way. Lingering in the air, echoing in the most mundane of conversations, felt unconsciously amongst other emotions.
But, of course, of the two of them, Bakugou would notice. And he’d gotten one-sidedly antsy over it, randomly cancelling plans whenever he felt like it, only frequenting the gym on days he knew Shouto wouldn’t be there, keeping conversations short when they did meet.
Shouto had noted the change and thought nothing of it. Another bout of weird Bakugou-behaviour that he would probably come to learn of in a few months’ time.
Except before Shouto could understand anything—realise that he might have feelings for Bakugou and that Bakugou was acting weirdly because the feelings were mutual—Bakugou had made up his mind.
The very last time they had hung out with one another was in a quiet, understated izakaya. Bakugou had invited Shouto out, which was a surprise, but a happy one nonetheless, so Shouto had agreed without a second thought.
It was a weekday, something like Tuesday or Wednesday, middle of the week, where most people opted to head on home after work instead of finding themselves in an izakaya for a late night drink. Besides Shouto and Bakugou, the other patrons were few and far between, only one or two occupants at most per table. It was dimly-lit, the warm glow of the lights casting down on them, the stench of alcohol permeating the air and a bit of cold prickling their skin due to the rainy season.
Shouto had sat opposite of Bakugou, their knees touching under the table, beef skewers and sushi scattered in front of them. Even though they’d come all the way to an izakaya, neither of them were drinking. Bakugou hadn’t bothered with alcohol since graduation and Shouto had always been more of a social drinker.
There’d been a tense sort of silence ever since they met up at the station, so walking over to the izakaya had been a quiet affair. Normally, Shouto enjoyed the silence they shared in comfort. But Bakugou was visibly nervous, and it made Shouto feel uncharacteristically nervous too. Because really, what did the both of them need to feel nervous about? When they’d spent so much time alone together already? The unanswered questions stewed in Shouto’s mind and intensified his nervousness.
By the time they'd made it to the izakaya, Shouto had already prepared for some sort of confrontation. Perhaps Bakugou was going to tell him something bad. Perhaps Bakugou was moving back to Tokyo. Or perhaps Bakugou had grown tired of Shouto over the months and was about to tell him off.
But that didn’t align with what Shouto knew about Bakugou. If he was going back to Tokyo, he’d tell Shouto exactly that, bar all the tension. And if he did suddenly hate Shouto’s guts, he’d simply ditch Shouto entirely, not invite him out for food in their free time.
So it had to be something else.
And with their knees grazing one another under the table, Shouto felt his heart beat a little faster. But he dared not let himself come to that conclusion.
That was, until Bakugou let out a stilted breath and forced Shouto to come to that conclusion anyway.
Bakugou had stared down at the beef skewers, fingers drumming idly on the edges of the table. “You know,” he’d said, “I can never tell what you’re thinking.”
“What do you mean?” Shouto had asked back, even though he already had an inkling of what Bakugou had meant.
“You’re just so damn hard to read sometimes. It’s like… someone’s come to me for my opinion on art, when I know fuck all about art. Some shit I get, ya know. If it’s a painting of a horse, then it’s a painting of a horse. But maybe the horse’s got some hidden meaning to it that I’m not reading. Or maybe, there’s nothing hidden at all, but I’ve convinced myself there is.”
Shouto hadn’t understood, but he wanted to try to. “Did someone ask you for an opinion on me?”
“No,” said Bakugou, the meat of his fingers needling against the edges of the table. “‘S just… frustrating when I can’t figure something out.”
“What is there to figure out?” Shouto asked, watching Bakugou’s hands instead of his face. “We’re just having dinner.”
“Are we?”
Bakugou’s knees hit Shouto’s under the table again. This time it lingered, the exposed skin of his knees against Bakugou’s jean-clad ones. It felt oddly warm where they made contact, almost like how Shouto had produced fire from his skin for the first time, lit up from the inside out; exhilarating.
In an effort to ignore how their knees were touching under the table, Shouto relented. “Right now, I’m thinking about why you’ve invited me here. And I’m thinking about why you stopped drinking after graduation. Oh, and also about how these are perhaps some of the best beef skewers I’ve had in a while.”
One side of Bakugou’s mouth was curled up.
“And, I guess, about how much I like spending time with you.”
It was so quiet in the izakaya that Shouto could hear the moment Bakugou’s breath hitched, like a beef skewer had gone down wrong and he had choked on it. Except Bakugou had stopped eating minutes ago.
What happened next was something that Shouto had thought about over and over after the fact. He could blame the alcohol for what he said next. Was it possible to get drunk by association? Everyone around them drinking their hearts out while the two of them remained sober, having what was quite possibly the most confusing conversation of the room, even amongst the many tipsy people surrounding them.
“Like how I like spending time with Midoriya. And Uraraka. And Yaoyorozu,” he added, stupidly, even though that wasn’t what he had meant at all.
By then, Bakugou had gathered his bearings, breathing even and no longer hitched. He went for a beef skewer, picking one up and taking a big bite out of it, swallowing the bite down with complete ease. Mouth full and seemingly less tense than he had been the whole night, he mumbled, “Even I figured that much, idiot.”
After that, they never hung out alone again. And Shouto eventually realised, he didn’t know anything about art either.
On the day Bakugou moved in, he only brought a backpack with him.
Shouto tried to contain his questions, but Bakugou could sense them anyway. “The fires I mentioned. One of ‘em was in my apartment,” offered Bakugou as he toed his shoes off in the entryway. “My apartment caught on fire,” he laughed, even though it wasn’t very funny at all. “Thank fuck I wasn’t in it. Would’ve blown the whole place up.”
Shouto could barely listen to Bakugou. His brain was completely trained on the fact that Bakugou’s shoes were in his entryway, next to his own pair that he left askew the night before. Belatedly, he realised he didn’t own any guest house slippers for Bakugou. They used to have a few pairs, he was certain, yet it’s been so long now since he’s had any guests over that he can’t recall offhand where they typically kept them.
Now Bakugou was here, and Shouto had no house slippers for him.
Bakugou didn’t seem to mind, stepping further into his house with his socked feet. His eyes wandered around, onto the beige walls, onto the wooden floorboards, all over the space. Shouto felt self-conscious, even though he had never felt that the house was something to be ashamed of before.
Perhaps Bakugou could feel how off it really was. Could see Shouto’s frail attempts at making this place his. Could see all the Shouto sticking out in stark contrast to the rest of the house.
If he could see all of that in the few seconds he’s spent here, Bakugou held back on commenting, thankfully. Instead, he slipped the straps of his backpack off his shoulders, and asked, “So, where am I staying?”
Shouto guided Bakugou to the second guest bedroom, right next to the one he himself had been staying in for the past few months. Bakugou raised his eyebrows when Shouto had mentioned that fact—that he’d been staying in one of the guest bedrooms and that they would have to share the bathroom downstairs.
“Why?” Bakugou inquired, which gave Shouto pause—because really, Shouto had no idea why.
His childhood bedroom was in the east wing of the house, untouched since the day he moved out and into his apartment. Why, that was a good question.
But before Shouto could even wander down that train of thought to decipher the why, Bakugou had moved on, dumping his backpack onto the edge of the bed. “Thanks, by the way,” he said, so quietly that Shouto thought he imagined it. But then, Katsuki twisted his mouth into a sneer, like he was chastising himself for being cowardly in his gratitude. “Thanks,” he said again, this time louder and more certain of himself.
Shouto shrugged, as if this was no big deal, simply a friend helping out another friend. “It’s no trouble.”
“It’s some trouble,” insisted Bakugou, eyes surveying the state of the room. Shouto was glad that he had made time to put some care into this room in particular in the beginning. “I’ll pay rent, like I said.”
“Sure,” Shouto said offhandedly.
He was too busy making sure nothing was out of place in the room to really pay attention to Bakugou.
The last time they had guests over had been a very long time ago, and in the past, they never really were his guests, only people his parents knew. Midoriya and Bakugou had been the first and only two real guests of his, and even then they had only stayed long enough to have dinner.
“Why’d you say it like that?” asked Bakugou, in the sort of tone that suggested he very much didn’t like what Shouto had said and how he had said it.
Shouto snapped back to attention, ignoring the lint he had discovered hanging on the very edge of the bed. Bakugou looked challenged, as if Shouto had offended him in some way.
“How did I say it?”
“Like you weren’t going to accept me paying rent.”
Oh.
“There’s no need to,” said Shouto, bending a little to sweep the lint off the bed sheet. He felt Bakugou’s stare more than he saw it, lingering at the very tips of his fingers. “The house is paid for. I’m not going to make you pay for nothing.”
Bakugou scoffed. “It’s not for nothing. It’s for me to live here.”
Shouto belatedly realised that Bakugou was serious. “Even I don’t pay rent,” he said, rather uselessly.
“‘Course you don’t. It’s your house.”
His house.
Shouto blinked and could only concede for now. He would figure out how to not accept Bakugou’s payment for rent at a later date.
The next day, Shouto was in his kitchen bright and early, before Bakugou was even awake.
Shouto was not a morning person. In fact, as long as he could help it, he’d attempt not to wake before ten in the morning. But it was different—Bakugou was here in his house, and for some inexplicable reason, Shouto worried about what Bakugou might think about his kitchen.
He hadn’t used to care. Not about how the house looked. Not about how someone felt about his kitchen. Now, he did, and suddenly every inch of his kitchen looked wrong. How precisely it looked wrong, however, Shouto could not figure out.
He’d wiped down the kitchen counters, put all the dishes back in the cupboards where they belonged, and straightened out the placements of the chairs by the table. More than once. Again and again. An embarrassing number of times.
And yet, when Bakugou finally strolled into the kitchen, a quarter past nine in the morning, he hadn’t looked at any of that. He breezed past the dining table with its perfectly-placed chairs, barely spared a glance at the squeaky clean countertops, and stared right at Shouto’s mother’s paintings tacked onto the fridge.
With the tip of his finger grazing the edges of one of them, Bakugou raised an eyebrow and said, “Didn’t think you were the type to keep shit you get from your kid fans.”
Shouto came to stand beside Bakugou, eyeing the painting that Bakugou was looking at specifically: it was one of the smaller ones, an uneven square canvas splattered with a blend of colours all over. He affected confusion on his face and clarified in an equally confused tone, “My mother painted these.”
Though they hadn’t talked in a while, one thing in particular about post-high school Bakugou that Shouto found incredibly funny was that he was attempting to be “less of an asshole”—the exact wording he had used when telling this to Shouto in confidence. Shouto couldn’t remember if Bakugou had been that much of an asshole in school. Few choice words that came to mind were “loud” or “brash” or “in-your-face”, sometimes “slightly annoying”, but never “asshole”.
Nevertheless, that was a new thing that Bakugou was trying out, and it was hilarious. Shouto realised very quickly that Bakugou thought many things that he said were considered assholish; some understandable (see: “Hah! Take that, you fucking loser!” as he pinned Shouto face-first to the ground during their one-and-only sparring session a few months back), and some barely crossed past friendly banter (see: “What, you too chicken to try it?” when Shouto had expressed concern in the red-hot bowl of malatang that Bakugou had ordered). He’d always make this face, as if he immediately regretted whatever he was saying and wanted to swallow it back and take it to his grave. It was a funny look on Bakugou. It was new and unfamiliar, and Shouto wondered if he made the same face in front of other people.
And even now, a year later, it still looked the same—funny, but not new or unfamiliar anymore.
There was this wrinkle in between Bakugou’s brows and his mouth twisted in a way that made it seem like he’d just eaten something outrageously sour. Shouto had anticipated it. Bakugou made that face often when Shouto brought up his mother. As if the topic was something sacred and fragile and that he had to thread very, very carefully. It wasn’t sacred or fragile, not one bit, but Shouto found that even the act of Bakugou being careful about this was a little endearing.
“Well, it—” Bakugou tried. He really did. Shouto watched as many different variations of the conversation played out in Bakugou’s head, all showing so visibly on his face. It was nice that he was attempting to be considerate, especially more so that it was because of his mother. Endearing, something in him whispered. But it was far better when Bakugou didn’t try to be considerate, Shouto would think that they were past that.
It seemed like Bakugou had come to the same conclusion eventually, heaving out a sigh. “She’s definitely painting, that’s for sure.”
Shouto smiled then, not able to even try to be offended on his mother’s behalf. “I like it,” he said.
“‘Course you do,” said Bakugou, hand coming to rest in between them, palm flat against the side of his own thigh. “It’s got character, I guess. And at least it’s recognisable. Decent attempt at your back garden.”
Shouto couldn’t have whipped his head around any faster, eyes locking onto the vague colours of his mother’s painting and registering the outline of the wooden fence in the dull browns. Everything else had come to place immediately after; green for the grass, the mess of pink and white for the peonies.
The back garden didn’t look like that, not exactly. In person, it was far more drab, colours less vibrant and less alive. Either his mother had forgotten how it actually looked, or the colours had gotten monotonous over the years. Or perhaps Shouto had been looking at his back garden all wrong and this was how it actually looked.
“Yeah,” muttered Shouto absentmindedly, stuck on the fact that he had been staring at this painting for months now and yet he hadn’t figured out that it was his back garden.
After Bakugou left for work, Shouto spent a few extra minutes looking at his back garden; through his kitchen window, through the spare bedroom window, and even right outside at the back garden itself. Staring into the dull colours of the flora, Shouto thought about how his mother’s painting portrayed it far better than it could ever look.
Shouto’s phone was ringing. It was an insistent and shrill sound, but he liked it. Needed it even, seeing as it was the only thing giving him a chance to wake himself up.
And that he did.
Peeling his eyes open, Shouto blinked the bleariness in his vision away. His phone, set on his bedside drawer before he fell asleep, was lit up in the darkened space of the spare bedroom, shifting minutely as it vibrated against the surface in time to the ringing.
The next thing Shouto noticed was the fact that it was raining. His curtains were not drawn, but the telltale pitter-patter he could hear under the current of his phone’s way too loud alarm told him all he needed to know.
Blinking rapidly a few more times, Shouto finally felt awake enough to stretch his arm out to take hold of his phone. When he turned his screen to face him however, he realised that his alarm wasn’t going off, someone was calling him.
Bakugou, to be specific.
“Bakugou,” said Shouto, laying his phone flat against the side of his face. He buried the other side deeper into his pillow and closed his eyes, hoping to everything that his phone remained balanced. “It’s raining.”
There was an audible sigh from the other end of the line, unnecessarily long like Bakugou just had to let Shouto know he was beyond over his shit. “Yeah! I know, dipshit! That’s why I’m calling!”
Through the muffle of the phone line, Bakugou sounded softer than he did in person, even though he was clearly yelling. It lulled Shouto into some sense of ease and he hadn’t bothered with a response. Bakugou could keep talking, if he really wanted.
“Hey! Don’t fall asleep! It’s raining! Our laundry’s outside! I’m out on duty right now, you gotta—”
Shouto’s eyes snapped open instantly, not even registering that Bakugou had referred to something as “our”.
Right. Laundry.
He jumped out of bed and hurried over to the back door leading out into the garden, where his drying rack was out and their clothes hung drenched as the rain pelted down. There was no saving them really, so Shouto spent a few seconds longer staring at them disbelievingly from the safety of the house.
It was only when Bakugou went, “You got ‘em?” in his ear that Shouto eventually moved to take the rack in.
Rainwater dripped onto the wooden floor, pooling in the centre of his living room where he’d decided to place his drying rack for the time being.
“They’re drenched, Bakugou,” said Shouto, gravely.
“Ya think?” Bakugou huffed. “Guess we’re gonna have to wash them again. And by ‘we’, I mean you.”
“Do you now?” Shouto asked, settling onto one of the couches. He continued to watch the rainwater pooling on the floors. He should probably figure out some other arrangement instead of leaving the wet clothes out like that.
“Yeah,” said Bakugou, then rather out-of-the-blue, “Sorry.”
Shouto blinked, tearing his eyes away from the laundry to look at his reflection on the darkened TV screen in front of him. “Sorry?”
Bakugou said nothing, probably weighing the pros and cons of continuing the conversation now that his purpose for calling had been settled, re: the laundry. Eventually he seemed to give up, much like how most of their conversation normally went. Shouto has found that waiting around for Bakugou to think his thoughts through instead of insistently badgering him yielded very successful results.
“For calling you ‘dipshit’,” explained Bakugou. “And for yelling,” then after a bit more silence, said, “Actually no. The yelling was needed.”
Smiling, Shouto leaned back against the couch cushions, getting comfortable. He was still rather sleepy. His alarm wasn’t going to sound for another twenty minutes. “Did you? I didn’t notice.”
“Shut up,” Bakugou huffed. “Anyways, my shift ends at seven. You want anything for dinner? Probably gonna stop by that new Chinese place. You know the one near the station?”
“Okay,” agreed Shouto. “I can eat anything. Oh, but I’m heading to work at nine. If you’re running late, then I’ll just cook.”
“Aight, see you.”
Bakugou hung up without waiting for a response. The silence that came after was abrupt, even though all around Shouto the sounds of the rain were more present than ever.
Hm, Shouto thought for a moment, before drifting back to sleep, phone still in hand.
When Shouto woke up next, it was to the sounds of Bakugou in the kitchen. He felt groggy and honestly didn’t feel much like moving. He couldn’t help it; he had spent all of last night up until the early morning today on standby at work, and he was about to do it again tonight. He needed and wanted more sleep.
Blinking slowly at the ceiling, he tried to keep himself awake and get his eyes adjusted to the bright lights all around. Bakugou’s sock-padded footsteps could be heard in the background, growing louder and louder as he approached Shouto.
His face appeared above Shouto, blocking off the glare from the ceiling lights. “Hey,” he said. His brows were scrunched together as he looked down at Shouto. “You didn’t re-wash the laundry.”
“Oh,” Shouto said, sitting up at once. “I’m sor—”
“Whatever, I just started a load. You mind if I dry them indoors after?”
Shouto shook his head. Bakugou could dry them however he wanted, really.
“Cool,” Bakugou replied, walking away. “Where do you keep your toilet paper, by the way? Our bathroom’s out.”
Shouto laid back down, letting the aroma of the takeaway flood his senses. It’s been a while since he ate out. These days he spent more time cooking than getting takeout, especially from new places.
He made a noncommittal sound, eyes closing despite the fact that he had probably missed his earlier alarm and was due for work soon. He didn’t want to check the time. “Storage room down the hall. At the very end. Door on the left.”
He heard Bakugou mumble a thanks before heading off, footsteps echoing down the hall. Unintentionally, he started to drift off again, feeling oddly content. The clothes that got rained on were in the wash, he had food he’d never tried before on the dining table waiting for him—it was good.
That is, until Bakugou yelled a guttural, “Fuck!”
Shouto was on his feet in a split second, sleepiness immediately gone as he raced out of the living room and towards the storage room down the hall. A villain would be pretty bold to break into the house of two pro heroes, but then again who knew what went through the minds of villains?
Shouto could see Bakugou in the distance, on guard with his hands held in front of him, as if prepared to start attacking if the person in the storage room so much as moved a muscle.
“Bakugou!” Shouto shouted, coming to a halt right beside him. “What’s wrong?”
Bakugou didn’t take his eyes off whoever was in the storage room, gaze glued to them like he was afraid they might take off if he so much as blinked. Shouto peered into the storage room, with its sole light turned on and spotted what had startled Bakugou.
Shouto blinked at it. “Oh, right.”
This had finally made Bakugou snap his attention to Shouto. “Oh, right?! What do you mean ‘oh, right’? You knew?!” He exclaimed, incredulous.
Shrugging, Shouto glanced at the demon-thing nonchalantly. “Well, it’s been here for a while. It slipped my mind when you moved in, I suppose.”
“How long is ‘for a while’? Like, since your childhood? Is this some Todoroki family ancient legend? You can’t just—” Bakugou threw his hands towards the demon-thing— “Not warn someone!”
Shouto raised an eyebrow. “Ancient legend? What? No,” he said, feeling like he ought to be more reactive than he was right now, but simply couldn’t be bothered. “I think I saw it a week or two before Uraraka’s birthday.”
Bakugou closed his eyes and breathed in deep. He opened his eyes after a few seconds, looking like he was trying to contain the frustration he so clearly felt. “Todoroki, there’s been… something living in your storage room for at least a month now and you didn’t think this was important enough to address as soon as I walked in the front door?”
“It does sound alarming now that you’re saying it.”
“Fuck me,” Bakugou mumbled under his breath, though not soft enough for Shouto to not catch it. “My apartment burned down, and now I’m living in a fucking haunted house.”
Shouto looked back into the storage room, seeing the dark silhouette at the very back that he had become very used to now. It was significantly more harmless than most media-depicted entities. It mostly just sat in the storage room—or well, at least that’s what Shouto assumed. He hadn’t seen it anywhere else around the house and every time he came into the storage room for supplies or the like, the demon-thing had not moved an inch from the last time he saw it. As far as Shouto’s concerned, it wasn’t causing any problems for the house or him.
“Is that what you think it is? An apparition?” Shouto mused out loud. “I was thinking more along the lines of a demon.”
“That’s not any better!”
Shouto smiled, because he simply couldn’t help it. Now that he was properly thinking about it—having an unknown entity living in your storage room, next to where you kept your toilet paper, was rather alarming. He had thought so about a month ago when he’d first found it, but so many things had happened in Shouto’s life that maybe housing a demon wasn’t the most bizarre of things.
“Stop smiling!” Bakugou insisted, bopping Shouto lightly on the head. “I’m being serious. We gotta get rid of it or something.”
“How do you suppose we do that?”
The answer to that was an exorcist and a shaman, in that exact order.
The exorcist was an elderly woman, who’d come from a temple way up a mountain or something. Shouto hadn’t asked for the specifics, but Bakugou mentioned something about being referred to her by one of his mother’s friends.
She didn’t look much like she had wanted to come all the way to the house to exorcise a lowly maybe-demon, grumbling all the way from the entrance to the storage room.
In his entryway, she had breathed in deep, as if tasting the scents in the air, and proclaimed that the house was fine—in good hands, even, which Shouto took a sort-of pride in. He’d look at Bakugou as she said this, brows raised, silently going see?
The exorcist’s mood only worsened once they reached the storage room.
“You say it’s in here, boy?” She said this to Bakugou, who’d been hovering very close behind her the entire walk there.
Bakugou nodded, very clearly holding back on commenting on her rotten attitude. Shouto’s mind had supplied him with a few choice words a younger Bakugou might have used; “old hag” standing out amongst them.
Before even opening the door to the storage room, she sighed. “You’re terribly wrong, if so. There’s nothing in here.” Bakugou looked like he was going to argue, but she opened the door and stepped inside without waiting for a response.
At the very back, still next to the stack of toilet paper, sat the thing. It looked at them, unblinking, with its bright yellow eyes, just like it had the previous few times.
“See?” Bakugou said, a bit snooty, throwing an arm towards the direction of where the maybe-demon sat.
The exorcist hadn’t moved a muscle on her face, deadpan as she followed where Bakugou was pointing towards. “See what? I don’t see anything.”
Bakugou grumbled some, and Shouto felt as if high school Bakugou was standing right in front of him, with how he’d looked at the exorcist. “You’re old, so maybe you’re not seeing this shit.” He placed a slightly trembling hand on the exorcist’s back and guided her, far gentler than Shouto would have imagined, to where the maybe-demon was.
Even while the elderly woman was standing directly in front of the demon-thing, she had turned to look at Bakugou, stood behind her, and said, “There’s nothing here, boy.”
Bakugou had a fit right after the exorcist left. A ten-minute rant about phonies and hoaxes and how they’d been scammed, even though the elderly woman hadn’t taken their money at all (“I’m not accepting money for simply having a walk,” she’d said, looking a bit offended when Shouto tried to hand her some cash).
They tried the shaman next. This one they had, rather naively—or stupidly, according to a pissed-off Bakugou minutes after the shaman had left the house—found online. He had good reviews on a site that Bakugou explained was where people did freelance work for a cheap price.
Shouto hadn’t known that freelance shaman existed until then.
When the shaman first arrived, he’d been chewing gum and smacking his lips. He was young, maybe a year or two younger than the both of them, and he didn’t dress much like how Shouto imagined shaman. The elderly woman before had come dressed in traditional clothes and appeared like she did exorcise spirits and demons alike for a living; this man was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt with a graphic of Midoriya as hero Deku on it. Bakugou looked about ready to punch the wall.
In the entryway, the shaman had toed off his shoes, leaving them behind haphazardly, left and right shoe scattered in opposite directions. “This place ain’t haunted, man,” he said in a lazy drawl, eyes darting all over the entrance hall. “Pretty sick place actually.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Bakugou asked. Shouto was certain that he’d wanted to ask the elderly woman the same.
The shaman shrugged. “Just, like, the vibes?”
“The vibes,” Bakugou mumbled, mockingly, as he guided the shaman down the hall towards the storage room.
In the storage room, with its terribly dim lights and all, the shaman had stood in the very middle, staring right at where the demon-thing was. For a second, Shouto was relieved; maybe the exorcist had been having an off day, after all. But then Bakugou asked, “So? How’s the vibes of the room?”
The shaman had hummed, and Shouto hoped for only a second, before he’d turned to them and said, “Same as the rest of the house.”
The next few combinations of exorcists and shamans, with varying ages and genders and personalities, all had very similar opinions of the house; it felt good, it was good, and there was nothing haunting it, especially not in the storage room. By the ninth shaman or exorcist—Shouto had, rather rudely, stopped taking note—they gave up and Bakugou reluctantly accepted living with the demon-thing.
Shouto decided to mail his mother a picture of their back garden, taken with one of the old digital cameras he’d found in a box in the storage room.
He realised he hadn’t actually replied to his mother’s last package containing the four paintings. He figured that he liked the intimacy of receiving a well thought-out package and now felt an odd need to return the favour. He also wanted her to see how the back garden looked now. And wanted to confirm if this was really what one of her paintings depicted. Was this the same back garden she was imagining in her head when she put brush to canvas? Or was this an old, long-forgotten version of the back garden that Shouto could now only see through his mother’s amateur painting?
Placing the wrapped package onto the dining table, he made a mental note to drop it off at the post office on his day off. Though, odds were that he would probably forget a few times before actually dropping it off.
It was almost dinnertime, and it was a rare moment where both Shouto and Bakugou were home after work. He hadn’t seen much of Bakugou however, and decided it was time to go searching for him so that they could come up with a dinner plan.
One new addition to Shouto’s daily routine was now having to consider the amount of food he was cooking. Before, when he was living alone, all he had to do was guess at the portions while he cooked for himself. If there was more, he would keep them in tupperwares and store them in the fridge for the next day. If there was not enough, he would simply brave the slight hunger.
With Bakugou here, more thought and planning had to go into cooking. Were they going to be eating together? Was one of them going to be out the whole day, but would prefer having leftovers in the fridge ready for them to heat up once they got home? Or perhaps, ordering takeout or venturing out in the area for a meal was better?
Shouto didn’t not like it, though sometimes he found it a bit tedious, constantly having to take into account an additional opinion.
But then he’d hear Bakugou make a noise of appreciation after slurping the miso soup he made for breakfast, or hear the distant sounds of Bakugou heating up some leftovers in the kitchen late at night while he laid sleepily in the comforts of his bed, and everything just seemed less tedious than it really was.
Today, Shouto felt like eating out. There was this Thai restaurant just outside of the residential area that Shouto had been meaning to check out. He’d passed by it several times before on his way home. He didn’t know how Bakugou felt about Thai food, but somehow he had no doubts that, in twenty minutes, they’d be sitting across one another, munching on some pad kra pao.
Bakugou wasn’t in his room, nor was he in the bathroom they shared. Shouto thought that maybe he had gone out, but they normally informed one another if they did. Bakugou didn’t seem like someone who would forgo routine once he latched onto it.
Shouto had been prepared to text Bakugou asking his whereabouts, but speaking of the devil, Bakugou appeared in the kitchen with a book in hand.
It wasn’t one that Shouto recognised; that is to say, it wasn’t one of Shouto’s many books now scattered all over the house. This one looked more well-worn. Yellowed pages with the odd brown spot blotched on here and there, spine frayed and wrinkled with use. Shouto didn’t treat his books like that and rarely read the same one twice. His looked more or less the same as when he’d first purchased them off the shelves in shops. These looked—
“Where did you get that?” Shouto asked, trying not to sound too affected.
Instead of answering, Bakugou had a wild glint to his eyes and soon a toothy grin appeared on his face to match it. “Look at this,” he said, all wild-eyed and excited. He shoved the book to Shouto’s face, front cover displayed. It read: “Tales of Superstition”, and then right underneath the main title: “Apparitions, Fiends & The Like”.
Shouto’s eyes widened. “Did you—”
“Found it in your study. Look how worn it is,” marvelled Bakugou, turning the book over in his hands. “Todoroki family ancient legend.”
Study, thought Shouto. There was only one study he knew of, and that was in the east wing, at the very left end of the corridor. He hadn’t frequented it as a child, hadn’t frequented it as a teen, and considering he hadn’t stepped foot into the east wing of the house since moving back in, he certainly hadn’t seen it now.
But Bakugou wouldn’t step into that part of the house either. With Shouto’s very obvious aversion to it, it had become something of an unspoken rule for Bakugou.
“Study,” he muttered aloud. He hadn’t said it as a question, though Bakugou seemed to understand that it was one.
“Yeah,” replied Bakugou, gesturing towards the back, where the door led to the hallway and where the hallway led to, well, everything else in the west wing. As if realising this, he clarified, “Way out back, past the storage room. The one with the sliding doors.”
Study, Shouto thought again, a bit in awe.
“What,” Bakugou said, sensing that Shouto was acting strangely. Lowering the book, he asked, “Is that part of the house off-limits or something?”
Shouto had snapped out of it then, shaking his head. “No, no. It was… I forgot all about the—yeah, the study.”
Bakugou squinted his eyes at him.
Gunning for a distraction, Shouto motioned towards the book in Bakugou’s hand. “What does it say?”
The distraction worked, Bakugou instantly dropping the subject in favour of flipping through the pages of the book. After a few back and forths with him flipping from one end of the book to the other, he found what he was looking for towards the end of the book. Opening it wider with both hands, he turned the book to face Shouto once more. In big bold lettering on the left page read: “Demons and How to Exorcise Them”.
“How convenient,” Shouto stated, very unenthusiastically. If he was being entirely honest, he didn’t mind the demon-thing all that much. It never bothered him and he wasn’t so inclined to spend his times-off trying to get rid of it for no good reason. “Given how… worn the book is, don’t you think whatever’s on here has already been tried? And well, it’s still here, isn’t it?”
The answering grin gave Shouto a bit of a chill. Bakugou was terrifying when he was determined, but then again, Shouto already knew that. He couldn’t believe how he could have possibly forgotten.
“See, whoever that was, it wasn’t me,” Bakugou declared, plain and simple.
Shouto couldn’t help the smile on his face. “I guess you do have a point.”