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It’s not the first time they’ve done this.
It’s obvious, by the way Eijirou slides the bag over his arm with easy familiarity, nudges the automatic sliding door behind them closed like a practiced song and dance as Katsuki cracks open his soda bottle and takes a swig. The door has been mildly broken since their first trip to this particular convenience store: it shuts automatically, but pauses at the last minute, keeping a crack open for the spring pollen to seep through.
“C’mon already,” Katsuki calls as he hops up on the stone wall outside the shop. “So damn slow.”
“Hey now, if I let the mosquitoes in to bite our very kind Yamada-san, that wouldn’t be very manly of me.” Eijirou grins at him as he steps in front of Katsuki, dropping the bag on top of his lap. “He’s been giving us discounts forever, the least I can do is make sure his door stays closed.”
Katsuki rolls his eyes, setting the bag off to the side as Eijirou hoists himself to the top of the wall and settles, his legs dangling over the edge. “Like any mosquitoes would want Yamada-san’s old ass blood anyways.”
“Yeah, because they’re gonna be sucking yours instead. They’re asshole bugs, of course they’d be interested in their own kind.”
Katsuki responds by chucking Eijirou’s ramune ice pop at his face. It sails right towards his target (because his aim is obviously impeccable), but Eijirou catches it moments before it hits his face, snickering under his breath.
“Petty much?”
“You bring out the worst in me,” Katsuki shoots back. He plunges his hands into their endless piles of snacks and comes up with a pork bun. “You make me a worse person.”
“Uh huh, right.” There’s a crinkle of plastic and Katsuki fights the urge to watch Eijirou peel the wrapper and slide the whole popsicle in his mouth. “And apparently a worse liar,” he adds idly, like an afterthought.
“I’ll kill you,” he tells him, and Eijirou snorts.
“I’d like to see you try.”
The silence settles between them, quiet and comforting, and Katsuki leans back to take in the starry lit sky and the chirruping cicadas’ echoing song. It’s just like every other one of their nights at this particular konbini: Eijirou and his ice pop, Katsuki and his pork buns, and two lemon sodas, bubbling matching lemon fizz.
If Katsuki closes his eyes, he might actually think he’s back to being sixteen. Sixteen and brash and rowdy, without a care in the world for anyone but himself. Sixteen and young (too young, but he’s always been too young for the things that have happened to him), and fresh from fights behind the schoolyard instead of from fights on a battlefield hovering in the sky.
But here’s the thing about Katsuki at sixteen: it’s that he had been at this particular konbini, almost three long years ago, but he had never walked out with a full bag of sweets. He had been at this konbini early in his first year, sat in this exact spot with his lemon soda and pork buns, but there had never been a matching bottle and a ramune ice pop next to him.
And now, years later, on their very last day—
Katsuki steals a glance at Eijirou, and his heart feels sticky like candy and tumultuous in its rhythmic thud in his chest when he finds Eijirou looking back, a soft, pensive smile written across his lips.
“What’re you thinking about?” Eijirou tips his head to the side, his ice pop wet against his lips as he kicks his feet against the wall.
The cicadas croon, the night breeze whistles a merry tune against Katsuki’s ears, and he wonders what it would take to capture this shot in a freeze frame—to stop the film reel as it’s rolling and leave it to replay on the same scene (his favorite scene) forever and ever.
(His favorite clip in three, two, one—action: Eijirou is perched on the wall outside the konbini, an ice pop between his teeth because he’s an idiot who chews on them, the ramune juice glistening against his lips. He’s backlit with argentine moonshine and the symphony of cicadas, signaling the slow calendar change to summer. Eijirou will tilt his head to look at Katsuki, his smile knowing and everything screaming of open secrets, of their clandestine adventures to the market past curfew, and just a hint of the buzz that arcs under Katsuki’s skin like a live wire. Eijirou will blink then, in time with the thud of Katsuki’s heart, his lashes flush against his rosy freckles, and Katsuki thinks that if he believed in wishing on loose eyelashes and dandelion seeds and shooting stars, he’d wish on him. End scene.)
“Nothin’,” he grunts, burying himself into a steaming pork bun. “Don’t chew on your fuckin’ popsicle, you’ll give yourself a headache.”
He’s deflecting and Eijirou knows it (Eijirou always knows it and he lets him anyway).
“If I wanna give myself a brain freeze, so be it. A guy’s gotta live every once in a while,” Eijirou says snidely, as he takes a defiant chomp into his popsicle.
Katsuki rolls his eyes. “And when the sturdy Red Riot becomes a victim of a fucking ramune ice pop, don’t come crying to me. I’ll just tell them all that I told you so.”
Eijirou hums in response and Katsuki looks over just to see his tongue lave over the curve of the blue ice. Sticky juice trickles down the corner of his lips, pale frost against the flush of his skin and—
He forcefully pulls his gaze away. Eijirou doesn’t mind him looking and he knows as much because he’s seen the same look in his eyes, the one where he softens around the edges and want creeps around the red pillow corners with all the shyness and wonder of a toddler really seeing the sky for the first time.
(Their wants are the same, Katsuki knows this like he knows the exact shade of Eijirou’s eyes.)
“Sure, whatever you say, bro.” Eijirou’s heels hit the stone wall they’re sitting on. “Everyone already knows that if Red Riot hits the papers for being a victim of a popsicle, the great Dynamight will come running for his bedside.”
Katsuki reaches over the bag and shoves his shoulder with a pop of his hands, snickering as his best friend yelps at the sudden assault. He hardens in time, knocking his almost diamond solid shoulder against Katsuki’s crackling hands.
“Asshole,” he snipes, his body softening as Katsuki leans back on his free hand, rolling his eyes with a smirk.
“Fucking slandering my name. Deserved.”
“Is it slander if it’s actually true?”
“Don’t make me do it again.”
“Yeah? Bring it.”
Katsuki’s attention flicks over to Eijirou and their eyes clash, fierce and heated and familiar. Like tomorrow they’ll collide with each other as they rush for the bathroom to get ready for class. Like they’ll meet up in Gym Gamma after classes have finished for the day and brawl it out until they can barely walk. Like they’ll slip out of the Heights’ Alliance gates after their five minute showers to hike down to the konbini down the street. Like they’ll be sitting like this, side by side, their shared bag of Recovery Girl disapproved snacks open in between, and talking to the sky about the far-off future.
But there’s nothing distant about it, not this time. Tomorrow, they’ll be trudging to the bathroom and bumping elbows as they brush their teeth together for the last time. Tomorrow, they’ll be lined up in seat order and Katsuki will have his tie on for the second time ever in his academic history and Eijirou won’t be sitting next to him, but rather two rows in front. Tomorrow, they’ll be crossing the stage to shake hands with Principal Nezu and Aizawa and All Might, and walking away with diplomas in hand.
Tomorrow, the sky will be open and blue and the sakuras will be blooming overhead as the hero class A gathers as students for the final time, and embrace and cry under the falling petals and butter gold sunshine.
Tonight, Katsuki thinks idly, the rest of their classmates will be gathering in the common room, laughing and crying and pretending like tomorrow is two years away instead of several hours.
Inviting class B to join them had been in the talks a few weeks ago, and he’s pretty sure that once they get back, they’ll find both hero classes crowded in their common room, dressed down in pajamas and music blasting until the late hours of the night. He’ll come back to his kitchen (yes, his because about 70% of the shit in there belongs to him, and he spends the most amount of time in that stupid kitchen, cooking for his stupid friends post hangover and after long intern patrols), and find takeout pizza boxes strewn across the counters and he can’t even be mad because it’s not like he’ll ever use that dormitory kitchen again for the rest of his life.
They’ll go and join them in the next hour. But for now, it feels almost cinematic to have their last quiet moment together, out here amongst the stars and the harsh fluorescent lights and the lingering smell of ice pops and pork buns.
“Hey.”
Katsuki peeks over at Eijirou and—oh. Oh.
There it is again: that look that Katsuki has built memorials for in his memory palace. The one where the curve of his lips is crooked and just as sweet as the sticky juice of the ramune ice pop and his gaze is all crinkled at the corners of his eyes. The one that sings with an affection someone can only have after three years of intimacy past friendship and less than lovers.
The one that tells Katsuki that it’s all there, that it’s never been in his head, and he could have it if only he asked.
(Is it selfish to ask? Is it selfish to want more than what’s offered, even if it’s being freely given on a golden platter?)
“We’ll do this again, right?” Eijirou whispers. A sharpened canine peeks from his upturned lips and his eyes are bright, sincere with an earnest openness that Katsuki’s only seen in moments like these.
(He loves him, by god, Katsuki loves him. He doesn’t think he could have called this, any of this, anything else.)
But—
“Eijirou,” he exhales quietly and he feels drawn, weary and well worn down to his bones. He’s only too familiar with this brand of ache. “You’re moving to Osaka after this, you know.”
And I’ll be in Tokyo, goes unsaid. Eijirou will be in Osaka and Katsuki will be moving out of his hometown to Tokyo, and there’s only so much a text can cover between almost four hundred kilometers of distance.
Because for all this time, they’ve both been living on longing looks from across classrooms and yearning disguised as fist bumps and knocking shoulders and lingering words that hang over them like summer’s cumulus clouds: summer storms and drizzles camouflaged as quintessential sunny days.
It won’t be enough anymore. It can’t be enough anymore. You can’t live on glances if you’re four hundred kilometers apart.
“I know.” The expression doesn’t shift, only growing pointed and stubborn—as expected as the future sturdy hero Red Riot (and oh, Katsuki loves him bad, loves him from the tips of his shitty red dyed horns to the jut of his lip to his stupid crocs). “But my point still stands. Just because we’re graduating tomorrow doesn’t mean we don’t have to not see each other, Katsuki.”
“I fucking know that, but it’ll be harder to. Four hundred kilometers isn’t exactly a walk in the park,” he snaps back, but there’s no arguing with Eijirou like this.
Not when Katsuki’s already looking for a way to make it happen. Not when he knows he’ll give Eijirou everything he asks for, as long as he asks.
“I’d make the trip, you know,” Eijirou says thoughtfully. “I want us to do this again.”
Katsuki scoffs. “You know you’re not exactly rolling in dough? Red Riot isn’t a household name yet.”
(It’s a name in the Bakugou household for sure, but even Katsuki’s family isn’t enough to make Eijirou the top pro hero he knows his best friend will be.)
“So? You’re worth it,” Eijirou says simply.
And really, it’s as simple as that, isn’t it?
It’s just this: Katsuki loves Eijirou and he knows Eijirou loves him too. Has known Eijirou’s loved him from the start, from the first time their hands clasped in the cavalry battle arena. Their classmates will say it was at the Kamino Ward where Katsuki fell in love, but he knows that it wasn’t Kamino, I-Island, the cavalry battle, or even their first moment of friendship at USJ.
This particular film reel, from three years back: Eijirou is leaning against Katsuki’s desk, prattling about some TV show he had been watching the night before. He’s not paying attention (because then, he’d been far too high strung to really pay attention to anyone but himself), until Eijirou had paused, mid-sentence.
“So, anything you’re watching right now?” he’d asked, blinking his big doe eyes at him.
Katsuki had scowled. “Don’t watch stupid shit like that, Shitty Hair. Got better things to do with my time.”
“Okay then,” Eijirou said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “What do you do then?”
“Hah?!”
“Hobbies,” he clarified. There was a thoughtful sort of expression on his face and his eyes didn't leave Katsuki’s, assessing, curious. “Just curious. What do you do for fun?”
His scowl deepens. “What do you care for?”
“Well, just so I can talk about something you’d be interested in.” He pushed off of Katsuki’s desk, his smile earnest. “I wanna have an actual conversation with you, bro. I don’t wanna just talk your ear off.”
He said it all so easily like breathing, like getting to know Katsuki wasn’t an ordeal but rather something enjoyable. Like there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing.
And Katsuki, for all his time being surrounded by lackeys to boss around and classmates who worshipped him like an idol, had never had an actual friend. Sure, Izuku had been the closest to a friend, but by the time they had gotten to high school, Izuku had just been someone he had used to consider a moving target for practice.
But Eijirou, in spite of his spiel of Katsuki being unmanly on the first day of school, had looked at him with genuine curiosity and earnest eyes. He looked at Katsuki, not like a puzzle, or enigma, or villain, but just as a boy he wanted to know.
And sure, there had been other things: the cavalry battle and their long walks back to the station before the dorms and eating lunch together on the rooftop, but if Katsuki had to pinpoint any moment, any singularity where he first realized he loved Eijirou, it would be then.
Eijirou looked at Katsuki and saw a boy, and in turn, Katsuki cut out his bleeding heart with shaky hands and offered it up to him on a golden platter.
(He doesn’t know how to love otherwise. Bakugou Katsuki has never done anything in halves, much less love someone wholly.)
Love is selfish. Love will demand and take and push and pull, and love only knows how to want with your whole heart and nothing less than that. Love is Eijirou seeing a boy instead of a spitfire villain. Love is Eijirou stretching his hand out for Katsuki to grasp with a flimsy strength he thought he had. Love is Eijirou sitting on the stone wall with Katsuki, sharing a bag of snacks when the moon comes out. Love is Eijirou smiling at him, and telling him he is worth it.
(And Katsuki’s love is selfish. Katsuki only knows how to be selfish, but Eijirou makes him want to give, to keep on giving until he has nothing left to his name but his pearly white bones.)
But there’s a reason why they’re still here, still sitting shoulder to shoulder on a brick wall with a plastic snack bag as a placeholder for interlaced hands in the cavity between them. It’s not fear, Katsuki thinks as he takes in the sharp jawline of Eijirou’s cheeks, the broad figure he cuts in his snug class 1-A band t-shirt. He’s never been afraid of closing the space between them. Being with Eijirou eases it—the fear is still present, lingering in his chest and the scattered neurons dancing in his head, but Eijirou cups it in his hands, takes Katsuki, all of him, and stifles the noise, swaddles his fears until they’re nothing but a white noise buzz.
Being with Eijirou makes everything easier. But being with Eijirou makes it easy to forget.
There’s so much riding on them now as future pro-heroes. People who look to them for peace and justice and protection, and being a hero means that the people come first, before anything else. Being a hero means that more is on the line than just their lives: it’s everyone else’s safety, it’s the vitality of the city, it’s everything that they hold most dear.
As Dynamight, Katsuki is responsible for all the lives of the people who owe him their trust and he knows that between the world and himself, he will always choose the world. The life of one versus the lives of billions.
But the thing about loving Eijirou, being in love with Eijirou, is that he knows if it was between the world and Kirishima Eijirou, Bakugou Katsuki, not Dynamight, would choose Eijirou every time.
(Because here’s the thing: Eijirou is good. Eijirou is every good thing that Katsuki has witnessed in his eighteen years of life, every good thing that Katsuki wants to shelter with his ribs and shield with his bleeding, beating heart. If Eijirou is gone, what’s left for Katsuki to protect? Would he still find the good in the world if there wasn’t a Kirishima Eijirou living in it?)
If given the chance, Katsuki would love Eijirou, would love him until their hair turns grey and Eijirou’s callused hands turn to gnarled wrinkles and the red dye slowly bleeds back to black. He would love him as the seasons change and the world with it, as heroes faded out of relevance and the powerful and beautiful went from special to simply just people.
At the end of the day, without any pomp or fanfare, Katsuki loves the hell out of Eijirou. Simply. Easily. Just like how he breathes and the planets turn and the sun rises each day.
“You’re worth it too,” Katsuki tells him. “More than anything.”
A smile steals across Eijirou’s face like shooting stars in the night and Katsuki wants to pin his shooting star to the sky and build constellations around his glory.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
It’s past curfew. They need to be inside of Heights’ Alliance’s grounds before Aizawa realizes they’re not in the dorm building. They need to be home to celebrate and mourn and party and cry with the rest of their friends. They need to pack the remainder of their belongings into their suitcases before they go to bed.
But Katsuki has this chance, this final choice to be selfish. To be Bakugou Katsuki, instead of Dynamight. To be a boy in love, instead of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Maybe they haven’t been together for all these years because of Katsuki’s restraint, maybe they never gave form to these feelings with a name because of the looming inevitability of having to choose the world over each other, but also—
Katsuki’s tired of pretending he doesn’t want Eijirou. He’s tired of acting like his desire isn’t eating him alive and his love isn’t spilling over the edge and flooding his chest with a watery ache that only drains when he’s next to his best friend. He’s sick of letting his sick idea of hero’s responsibility decide whether he should ask Eijirou to stay.
Eijirou might make Katsuki want to give, but he will always be Bakugou Katsuki who wants to take.
And so, he nudges closer. Pushes the bag until it’s snug between their thighs. Eijirou looks at him, the realization softening the starlight around his eyes and flushing his cheeks into a pretty blush.
“Katsuki,” he murmurs and it’s caught up in the spring breeze. “Katsuki, is this…?”
Katsuki reaches over the plastic bag, lays his hand right over Eijirou’s, and makes it all too impossible to deny what he’s been wanting for years.
“Can I?” he whispers.
Eijirou reaches out to cup his cheek. His hands are calloused from training and rough from his quirk, but Katsuki feels infinitesimally soft under his touch and his heartbeat strung out in legato, hung in black spotted notes on a line.
“I’ve been waiting,” he teases and his breath is a sweet whisper, centimeters away from Katsuki’s mouth. “C’mon. Take from me, Katsuki. You’ve always been allowed.”
Katsuki leans in and he whispers a secret he’s never admitted out loud. He thinks Eijirou might know this one anyway.
“You’ve always been allowed to be selfish with me too.”
There’s ramune ice pop juice clinging to Eijirou’s lips and Katsuki thinks he can taste Eijirou’s smile before he closes his eyes. The bag between them slips off the edge.