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He doesn’t regret drawing the dick on All Might’s desk.
All Might is an asshole. Anyone with a working brain knows that. Meaning, Bakugou is the only person that realises what a colossal asshole All Might is. Only a complete and utter asshole would dare to try and give Bakugou a pep talk, or go anywhere near him when he’s crying, let alone pat him on the fucking shoulder. Only All Might would have the gall to give him detention for one tiny exploded desk. Which was mostly Deku’s fault, anyway.
Number One Hero, my ass.
But the thing is, Bakugou is sort of an asshole too. Only sometimes, though. But enough of the time to know exactly how to pay an asshole back for being an asshole.
And so he set out with a sharpie and a dream, distracting the teachers with a minor explosion in an empty bathroom and slipping into All Might’s office and hastily scrawling an enormous dick over the hard wood of his desk before leaving as quickly as he came. Hearing All Might’s scream from the other side of the school an hour later almost made up for the mess he was in now.
Almost.
See, Bakugou doesn’t regret defacing All Might’s desk with a sharpie. If he had his way he would’ve drawn more dicks on his desk, or on his car, or on his house, or on his face. The act itself is not what’s worrying Bakugou right now.
What he regrets is getting caught.
“Seriously?” Kirishima says, not even caring that Bakugou is clearly this close to saying fuck it, exploding him, and joining the villains. “His desk. In broad daylight. When the school is full of people. That’s just sloppy.”
Bakugou chooses not to respond, digging his nails into the palms of his hands in an effort to stop himself from blowing anything up.
“I’m surprised it’s only me that noticed. You used a good distraction, but really? You didn’t want to try something that wasn’t so obviously you?”
“All Might didn’t notice.” He mutters, staring over Kirishima’s shoulder and through the door of the empty classroom in an effort to avoid eye contact.
Kirishima doesn’t even try to sound like he’s not laughing. “Yeah, but that won’t stop me from telling him. And when I do, he’s going to be pissed.”
And here is the very source of Bakugou’s regret. He’s good at what he does. He knows that, of course he knows that. He’s the best student U.A has, but that will not stop All Might from expelling him, or killing him, or both, if he finds out that Bakugou drew a dick on his desk.
But there’s no way that he can shut Kirishima up. Anyone else he would be able to intimidate into silence. But firstly, Kirishima’s quirk means he can withstand explosions. Secondly, Kirishima seems to delight in finding ways to torment him and piss him off and just generally get under his skin, worm his way into his brain at the worst possible times and sit there, impossible to ignore. There’s no way Bakugou can scare him into shutting up. Not when he’s got material this good.
Well.
If he can’t scare him, he’ll have to find another way to keep him from talking.
“Is there anything,” He begins, finally looking at Kirishima’s stupid smiling face, “Anything at all, that I could do to stop you from telling him?”
Kirishima’s lips split open to reveal his sharp, white teeth, and Bakugou adds saying “anything at all” to his collection of regrets.
One step. Two steps. Three steps. Kirishima comes closer, and closer until Bakugou can hear him breathing. Jesus, it’s loud. Didn’t anyone ever teach this guy what his nose was for? That’s just unnecessary.
Bakugou lets all the future possibilities pinwheel through his head in the long silence that follows. What could Kirishima possibly want from him, of all people? Money? He doesn’t need it. Anyone with hair that good doesn’t need money from the likes of him. Drugs? Judging by his behaviour he’s probably on several. Does he want more? It’s drugs. It’s definitely drugs. Sh-
“Take me out to dinner.”
His thoughts trip over themselves and crash against the walls of his skull with a series of thuds.
Wait.
What?
What the fuck?
“Excuse me?” He asks through gritted teeth, clenching down so that his screams don’t escape. Kirishima nods, grin still stretching his face wide.
“Yeah. Dinner. Pick somewhere nice and buy me food. On Friday night’s probably best, but we can reschedule if you’re doing something else.”
If Kirishima says more Bakugou doesn’t hear it. He feels like he’s been dunked underwater, unable to breathe and yet entirely weightless as he watches Kirishima’s mouth move, meaningless syllables entering his ears and leaving without stopping by his brain.
“Bakugou? Hey, Bakugou? Dude. You’re scaring me.”
Bakugou’s mouth feels like an ashtray. “Fine. I’ll take you out to dinner.”
Kirishima’s mouth cracks open like the sun rising. “Great! Let me know where, and what time!”
Bakugou tries to frown at him. It feels like he’s lifting a truck.
He barely even notices when Kirishima turns to go. Just stares at his hands and tries not to blow anything up.
He’s halfway out of the building when he remembers that he doesn’t have Kirishima’s number.
That means he’ll actually have to speak to him to tell him where they’re going.
Fuck.
This is how Bakugou finds himself freezing his ass off outside the restaurant, waiting for Kirishima to arrive and trying to become one with the wall. The bastard’s late. He told Deku to tell him to come at eight o’clock, and almost lit a fire under his ass when Deku told him how happy he was that he and Kirishima were going on a date together. A date. He couldn’t even tell him that he was being blackmailed, or he’d be in an even bigger mess than he was now. All he could do was tell him in his most intimidating voice that he better not tell anyone if he wants to see the age of sixteen, I swear, Deku.
He didn’t even look slightly scared. Just laughed a little and promised not to tell anyone before going on his merry way.
Maybe Bakugou’s losing his touch.
Deku better have told Kirishima the right time. He is really very cold, and he might actually die of hypothermia if he doesn’t get inside.
To distract himself from what is possibly impending frostbite Bakugou watches the people inside the restaurant. It’s a 50’s style diner that specialises in burgers, fries, and romanticising a period where most minorities were barely considered people, with tiled floors and waitresses in vintage getup and an honest to God jukebox in one corner. Not that he doesn’t appreciate the aesthetic- in fact, he makes a mental note to ask the waitresses how they get the wings on their eyeliner so sharp. He always fucks his up and then destroys his eyeliner pencils out of rage.
“Bakugou!”
He doesn’t bother greeting Kirishima properly, “You’re late.” Dickhead. He thinks, but doesn’t say.
“Sorry! This place is kind of hard to find.”
Bakugou knows this. That’s why he chose it, so no one from school would see them together. Not that Kirishima needs to know that.
“You look nice. Your pants are barely even sagging.”
“Excuse me?” Bakugou asks, narrowing his eyes. Legality be damned, he will kill Kirishima if he makes another crack about his pants.
Kirishima seems to pick up on this. “Nothing! Nothing. Nope, nothing at all. Why don’t we go inside? It’s kind of cold out here, hey?”
“I’ve noticed.” Bakugou mutters through clenched teeth as Kirishima pushes open the door to the diner.
Fuck you, Kirishima. He thinks, as he follows him inside. My pants are cool.
Bakugou has made a mistake.
The diner’s crowded. The tables are packed rows and rows of people smiling and shovelling food into their mouths as the pastel-haired waitresses twirl and spin around them, carrying trays of food in one hand and holding the hems of their huge, colourful circle skirts with the other. Bakugou’s glad the diner stopped short of putting them in roller skates or there would probably be a serious accident.
A girl with a purple dress and hair to match shimmies up to them and pulls them to a tiny corner booth, one that was clearly not made with two tall, muscular teenage boys in mind. Bakugou sits first and then realises his mistake as Kirishima squeezes in after him, pressing him against the wall.
“Get. Off. Me.” He huffs out, cheek squished against Kirishima’s shoulder, which shakes with barely controlled laughter.
“Sorry, Bakugou, can’t do it. There’s not enough room.”
He turns next to the waitress for help. “Is there another table you could put us at?” He asks, with all the dignity he can muster when Kirishima’s practically sat on top of him.
“Sorry sugar, we’re almost full.” She sets two menus on the table, and he feels Kirishima chuckle. “But y’all enjoy your date, alright?”
The small amount of air that remained in Bakugou’s lungs after Kirishima squashed him escapes his body entirely. “We’re not on a date!” He wheezes to her retreating back, and Kirishima lets out a full-blown laugh as he rolls off him.
Well, at least now Kirishima isn’t sitting on him. But they’re still pressed so close together that their hands brush, and their knees press together, and he can feel Kirishima’s breath on his neck.
Fuck my life.
Bakugou looks through the menu, trying his best to ignore Kirishima. Almost half of the options are made up entirely of vegetables, and they’re all named after 50s celebrities, 50s songs, god-awful puns, or a combination of the three. Fucking hipsters. Was it really necessary to slap kale on a cheeseburger, call it a Boogie Woogie Bugle Burger, and then charge $20 for it? That song was released during World War Two, anyway, not the 1950s.
“Bakugou. Hey. Bakugou.” Kirishima keeps nudging him with his elbow, trying to get his attention. Bakugou refuses to play along, staring so hard at his menu that he thinks he might burn a hole in it.
“Bakugou.” Kirishima says, and sticks his hand in his hair.
“Off.” Bakugou hisses, grabbing Kirishima’s wrist and yanking his hand away. “Don’t mess up my hair.”
“Pick a colour.”
Bakugou stares at him, hand still tight around his wrist. “What?”
Kirishima holds up something that was once a paper napkin, but has now been folded into a chatterbox. “Pick a colour, dude.”
The napkin is green, like mint ice cream, and speckled with white polka dots.
“Red.” Bakugou says.
Kirishima pulls his hand away and flips the chatterbox open and closed. “R-E-D. Pick a number.”
The inside of the chatterbox is completely blank.
“One million.” Bakugou says. That should keep him occupied for a while.
Kirishima shakes his head. “One million isn’t on there. Your options are two, four, six, and eight.”
Bakugou wonders what kind of drugs Kirishima is on, and where he can get some.
“Fine. Eight.”
The chatterbox moves again “One, two, three, four, fi-”
“Count in your head.” Bakugou says, putting his hand over Kirishima’s mouth.
He feels something wet touch his palm.
“Did you just lick me?”
Under his hand he feels the corners of his mouth rising, and he really wishes his quirk worked on Kirishima.
Kirishima says something, but it comes out muffled. Bakugou removes his hand before he can swipe his nasty tongue across it again. “What?”
“You made me lose count!”
Bakugou blinks very slowly. “Seriously? That’s what you want to tell me?”
Kirishima cocks his head, and Bakugou can’t help but think he looks just like a confused puppy. “Of course it was. What were you expecting me to say?”
“How about an explanation for why you just licked my fucking hand, you piece of sh-”
A waitress has just spun over to their table. Not the one that welcomed them in and called him sugar, but one with a green undercut that seems at odds with the soft folds of her dress. First, she sets down a basket of fries. This is understandable. This is logical. He asked for fries, and therefore he is getting them.
But then, she puts down a milkshake.
The silence that follows probably lasts about three seconds, but in Bakugou’s head it stretches out the way careful breath stretches out a chewed-up piece of gum into a bubble. Slow and gentle and fragile, growing in increments until it snaps and sticks to teeth and lips.
The milkshake is pink, and in a tall glass, sitting on the table between him and Kirishima like a question that cannot be answered. It has ice cream, and whipped cream, and a cherry on top.
There are two stripy straws sticking out of it.
Bakugou’s the first to say something.
“We didn’t ord-”
“I know, honey.” The waitress smiles at him and he barely stops himself from asking where she got her lipstick from. “But we felt bad about you boys being stuffed into such a tiny little corner together, so we threw in a Bettie Page for free.”
“Awesome!” Kirishima crows, dragging the milkshake over to himself and shoving his mouth over a straw. “Thank you!” he says, bright and happy around the straw in his mouth, and the waitress grins at him.
“It’s our pleasure, sweetheart. You two are just too cute! How long have you been together for?”
Bakugou seizes the opportunity. “Actually, we-”
“Are on our first date!” Kirishima says, swinging his damn arm around Bakugou like it’s meant to go there. “We’ve only just started going out. Right, Bakugou?”
Bakugou’s about to object, but a hard squeeze on his shoulder makes his mouth take the opposite direction to his brain. “Yeah.” He manages to grunt, and the waitress giggles.
“Well, isn’t that sweet. Let me know if you boys need anything else!” And with that, she’s whirling through the restaurant again. Probably to relay the gossip to the rest of the waitresses.
Fuck.
“What the hell was that?” He whispers to Kirishima, who shrugs and slurps on the milkshake.
“A free milkshake is a free milkshake, even if it’s named Bettie Page and I have to say I’m dating you to get it. I wasn’t about to let you jeopardise a free drink.”
“There are two straws for a reason, you know.” Bakugou points out. Because a free milkshake is a free milkshake, after all. Even if he has to share it with Kirishima.
Kirishima slides the milkshake across the table, where Bakugou can’t reach it. “Not a chance, dude. If you’re taking me out, you’re going to let me have this milkshake.”
Bakugou growls and presses himself against the wall of the restaurant, shovelling fries into his mouth as the warmth of Kirishima’s body seeps into him, his arm heavy where it still wraps around his shoulders.
He can’t bring himself to push him away.
Here are the (probably) true facts about Kirishima Eijirou that Bakugou learns in the time before their food arrives:
- Kirishima loves tortoises. Like, really loves tortoises. If he had his way, he would keep several as pets, but the apartment he lives in with his family can’t fit the kind of enclosure they need. Bakugou chooses to keep quiet about not knowing what the difference between turtles and tortoises is.
- Kirishima has never heard the song ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ before. Not once in his life. Bakugou can’t believe it.
- However, he does know all the words to "Love is Strange”. He proves this by singing along to it when it plays from the diner’s jukebox.
- His voice is really very good. Bakugou blames his face’s redness on the heat of Kirishima’s body next to his, and not the way his lips curl up as he sings the words “Your sweet lovin’ is better than a kiss” and presses his knee against Bakugou’s.
- Kirishima once used his quirk to harden his hands and feet and scale a barbed wire fence by the side of a bridge at three o’clock in the morning. Just so he could sit on the side of it and dangle his legs over the water. When Bakugou asks why, he just shrugs. “I wanted to get closer to the ocean. I like the sound, and I couldn’t sleep that night.”
- Kirishima ended up getting scared by a passing car, falling off the bridge and being swallowed up by the sea’s mouth. He used his quirk to soften the water’s blow enough that the impact didn’t turn him into soup, but still broke his arm in the fall. He drifted for a while before a houseboat docked in the harbour spotted him and pulled him into the boat, gasping and flopping on its deck like a freshly caught fish. He says he still doesn’t know what was worse- his broken arm and pride or his parents yelling at him when he eventually got back home.
- The arm that he broke still aches when it rains.
- Kirishima is funny. Really funny. And Bakugou doesn’t usually laugh at things other than Deku suffering. Yet in the space of conversation they’ve had, all its twists and turns from pets to music to bad decisions to the soft sound of rain upon a roof, Bakugou’s laughed more times than he has in- God. He doesn’t even know how long.
He’s still laughing at something Kirishima said when the purple-haired waitress comes back to their table with their food.
“Alright. Which one of you asked for the Buddy Holly, again?”
Kirishima raises his hand. “Me!”
“Here you go, pumpkin.” She says, putting his burger down in front of him. “And the Good Golly, Miss Molly?”
“That’s mine.” Bakugou mutters, trying his best not to look her in the eye. It was embarrassing enough to order something with such a stupid name, let alone have to confirm that he was the asshole that asked for it. He just wanted the burger with the most meat and chilies, dammit.
She passes him his food and disappears again. He’s about to put the entire fucking thing in his mouth when a flash of silver catches his eye.
Kirishima has a knife and fork, and he’s cutting a small piece off his burger.
Huh.
That is.
Weirdly dainty, for someone who cares so much about gender roles.
“What?” asks Kirishima, noticing his stare.
“Nothing.” says Bakugou, after a moment. He feels like the answer would just bring more questions. Instead, he changes the subject. “Are you going to let me have some of your shake?”
Kirishima smiles a shark’s smile, a smile that’s planning something. “That depends.”
Bakugou does not like where this is going.
Kirishima hold up the chunk of burger on his fork. “Eat this.”
Wait.
Really?
“I thought this was meant to be a challenge,” Bakugou says, stretching out his hand to take the fork, “Not a-”
Kirishima moves it out of his reach.
“Open your mouth.”
It takes Bakugou approximately two seconds to go from not liking where this is going to fucking hating where this is going.
“You are not serious.”
Kirishima is clearly deadly serious. “Open.”
“You,” Bakugou furiously whispers to avoid attracting the attention of the waitresses, “Are not going to feed me.”
“Why not? We’re a cute couple at a restaurant, it’s what you do. And I’ll let you have some of my shake. Open up.”
“Kirishima, only incredibly obnoxious couples do that shit.” He says, but Kirishima ignores him, prodding the burger at him. “Stop that!”
Kirishima puts his arm around him again. Fuck. “Come on, Bakugou. Do it for me?”
Bakugou narrows his eyes.
“Do it for the shake?”
Well. He has no argument with that.
He looks around the restaurant to make sure no one’s watching, and then slowly opens his mouth.
Kirishima smiles triumphantly and shoves the fork into Bakugou’s mouth, not even flinching when he bites it so hard he’s worried he’ll break the prongs off.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Kirishima says, withdrawing the fork.
“Whatever.” Bakugou mumbles around the food in his mouth. The burger isn’t bad. It’s better when he ignores that it’s named “Buddy Holly” and stops feeling like he’s actually eating part of a dead musician.
“Give me that.” He says once he’s swallowed, and reaches for the milkshake.
Which is once again pushed out of his reach.
“What the f-”
Kirishima opens his mouth. “Ah.”
“Forget it.” Bakugou says, grabbing his burger off his plate.
“Hey! I gave you the first bite of mine, it’s only fair to give me the first bite of yours!”
“You blackmailed me, dickhead!” He whisper-yells, and is immediately hit with Kirishima’s puppy eyes.
“Please?” he says, long and drawn out.
Bakugou is so fucked.
“Here.” He says, and shoves the burger into Kirishima’s mouth.
From somewhere nearby, he hears women breaking into giggles. Beneath the table, his hand clenches a napkin and incinerates it.
The waitresses are always watching.
“Hey! This is actually pretty good!” Kirishima says, going in for another bite and snapping his teeth together when Bakugou moves his burger away.
“Give me my shake.”
Kirishima sighs and finally, mercifully, slides it over to him.
The shake is good too. It’s as sweet as you’d expect from something named after a pin up girl, still cold from the half-melted ice cream and tasting of sugar and cherries and-
From next to him, he hears a slurping sound.
Kirishima has the other straw in his mouth.
“Dude.” He says, taking his mouth off the straw, and Kirishima shrugs.
“We're on a date, of course I’m going to drink this with you.” He replies, smiling like a fucking fool. It’s not endearing. It absolutely is not at all cute.
“This is not a date.” Bakugou hisses, gripping his burger so tight that ketchup squirts onto his plate. “This is extortion.”
Kirishima looks like he’s having the time of his fucking life. “Eat your burger.”
Bakugou growls and shoves his food between his teeth.
“Babe.”
He almost bites a hole through his tongue.
Their burgers are nearly entirely gone when Bakugou realises exactly how far in over his head he is.
He’s not sure what exactly prompted it. Maybe it was Kirishima’s smile as he watched Bakugou eat, creepy and cute all at the same time, like a cat standing on its hind legs. Maybe it’s the way Kirishima’s leaning next to him, eyes never leaving his face as he speaks, like his words are a fish-hook and Kirishima’s caught on its end. Maybe it’s the warmth of his arm still around his body, now idly drawing tiny little circles and shapes on his shoulder like Kirishima doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Whatever it is, Bakugou realises that he is feeling.
It’s like the sweet chill of ice cream hitting his tongue, or the feeling he gets when he looks outside in early winter and sees the first flakes of snow slowly falling down. It’s the feeling of dunking his head underwater and coming up laughing, the seconds that come after he blasts himself into the air and begins to fall, heart swooping up to beat in his throat.
There is a beauty in crashing when the world expects you to soar.
Kirishima’s arm is heavy where it lies yet so right, and in his mind an ocean wave rises up over him and dumps cold, salty water over his body.
“I have to take a shit.” He says, cutting Kirishima off mid-sentence and tumbling over his lap as he abruptly makes his exit.
“Where are you taking yourself?” Kirishima asks, and he flips him off, ignoring the indignant gasp of the lady at the table next to theirs as he stumbles towards the restaurant’s bathroom.
The bathroom is a single cubicle with a toilet, a mirror, and a sink. Which is very useful when you need somewhere small and quiet to have a minor identity crisis. Bakugou leans over the sink and stares into the mirror, hands pressed on either side of it.
“I do not have a crush on Kirishima.” He says to it.
His own face blinks back, unconvinced in the crappy, flickering light of the bathroom.
“Kirishima’s the worst.” He continues. “He fucking blackmailed me to come on this date. Not that it’s a date. Just two friends having a meal together. Not that we’re friends. Fuck Kirishima, is my point. But not ‘fuck’ in that way.”
The bathroom stays silent other than the dripping of the tap. His reflection offers no answers, only a look that is confused, yet clearly says “quit your bullshit.”
He thinks back over the date. Every brief touch, every moment of laughter, every smile and every stupid little thing Kirishima said or did. He thinks about rain, and the sea, about broken bones and cherry stems. He thinks so much that by the time he’s done someone’s banging their fist on the door of the bathroom so hard he thinks that they might punch a hole through it.
He looks in the mirror, and his reflection is smiling.
Huh.
It hasn’t done that in a while.
“I absolutely have a crush on Kirishima.” He announces to the empty bathroom.
“Fantastic.” Says the voice outside the door. “I’m happy for you, and I hope it works out. Now hurry up and get out of there. Some of us need to piss.”
Bakugou isn’t even mad. He just splashes water on his face to try and erase his blush before unlocking the bathroom door and leaving.
When he gets back to their table Kirishima has the chatterbox between his fingers again, idly flicking it open and closed. In the time they’ve been there the jukebox has progressed from Rockabilly to Doo Wop to Swing to its current style, Blues, and Kirshima’s gently humming along to ‘Love Me Tender’ as he stares up at the roof of the diner.
Bakugou slides across his lap and sandwiches himself back into the corner. “Hey.”
Kirishima stares at him. “Hey.”
They say nothing for a moment.
Then, Kirishima reaches over and grabs his nose with the chatterbox.
I'll be yours through all the years, till the end of time, croons Elvis as Bakugou swats Kirishima’s hand away and gets him in a headlock, hoping he doesn’t realise how hard his heart is beating where his face is shoved against Bakugou’s chest
Oh, he has it bad.
People have slowly been trickling out of the diner as the evening goes on, and the jukebox has wound down and gone silent by the time the green-haired waitress comes over to tell them that she’s sorry to interrupt your conversation, but we’re closing now, so if y’all could just pay and leave, that would be lovely. Bakugou complies, although he’s strangely hesitant to go, and they leave the now empty restaurant followed by a flurry of giggling waitresses telling them to come back soon, boys.
Outside is even colder than it was when the date first started. Bakugou pulls out his phone to check the time- eleven o’clock. How the fuck did he spend three hours just talking to Kirishima? He probably only spent a quarter of that time actually eating, and ten minutes talking himself in the bathroom. Fuck.
Something warm is placed on his shoulders. He touches its soft material, and looks over at Kirishima, whose arms are suddenly bare.
“You looked cold.” He says, shrugging. “You can give it back to me once you walk me home.”
“Who said I was walking you home?” He asks, sliding his arms into the sleeves of the jacket, but there’s no bite to it. Just a hint of a smile under his words, the faintest taste of sweetness. Kirishima bumps him with his hip, his body familiar to Bakugou now that he’s spent so long sitting next to him.
“Hey, be a gentleman. If you take me on a date, you’re supposed to walk me home.”
“Fine.” Bakugou says, a laugh behind his teeth and threatening to bubble out of his mouth. “Lead the way.”
Kirishima turns and grabs his arm to pull him away from the restaurant.
“Babe.”
He falls over his own fucking feet and drags Bakugou down with him.
The walk to where Kirishima lives is mostly uneventful. The streets are quiet at this time of night, just empty concrete and bits of trash and the occasional dog, which Kirishima always demands they stop and pat. They don’t really say much- not from a lack of things to say, at least on Bakugou’s part. He wants to know so much more about Kirishima, from his favourite colour to how he gets his hair so nice to what he uses to make his jacket smell so good. He wants to know everything there is to know about this boy.
But the quiet is good, too. It’s peaceful. Under his breath Kirishima is singing, probably another old love song. Bakugou can’t tell exactly which song, but it's nice. It makes him think of dusty pink lights and laughter, of clandestine kisses and stately slow dances. He looks at Kirishima’s hands where they rest at his sides and thinks of slow dancing with him, gentle and warm. Kirishima is just a bit shorter than Bakugou, and his imagination takes him to Kirishima’s head hooked over his shoulder, broad palms on his back as they dance, all the majesty of the cosmos compressed into hands and smiles and a distant song. Just for an instant.
He’s still thinking of them lazily spinning together when Kirishima stops walking and says, “This is me.”
“Right.” Bakugou says, trying his best to sound brusque and not upset. Judging by the way Kirishima looks at him, he failed.
They stand outside Kirishima’s building for a while, in the cold of the near-midnight air under a blanket of smog pinpricked with stars. Silent.
And then Kirishima steps forward.
“So,” He says, closer than a friendly distance yet altogether too far away, “How about you kiss me goodnight?”
Bakugou heats up so fast he’s afraid he might explode something. “What?”
Kirishima’s voice is playful, teasing. “You took me out on a date and walked me home. Shouldn’t I get a kiss too?”
“Go away. Learn to breathe through your nose, your mouth smells like burgers.” It doesn’t, though. Kirishima smells like sweetness and cherries, and he’s smiling at him with his sharp little teeth.
“So does yours. Give me a kiss.” He screws his face up in an exaggerated pout, eyes scrunched closed, and Bakugou makes another decision he’s sure he’ll regret.
He yanks Kirishima forward and kisses him.
For a while, there’s no movement from Kirishima. He’s still as a lake on a night with no wind.
Ah.
It appears I have made an error of judgeme-
But then his hands are messing up Bakugou’s hair again and his mouth is moving, kissing him so hard he’s afraid they’ll both fall over.
Never mind.
Kirishima’s mouth tastes like cherries too, and it is remarkably soft. Distantly, Bakugou feels him remove one hand from his head and punch the air with it.
When they pull apart Bakugou can feel himself smiling like he just roundhouse kicked All Might in the head, and Kirishima’s grin is almost bright enough to rival a nearby streetlamp.
“Damn.” He says, breathing hard and looping his arms around Bakugou’s neck. “If I’d known that would happen I would have asked you for a kiss earlier.”
“Idiot.” Bakugou snorts, leaning their foreheads together.
“I’m an idiot, but I’m your idiot, right?” Kirishima asks, and Bakugou can’t help but kiss his stupid mouth again.
It’s nearly midnight when they’re done kissing each other, and Kirishima’s phone has been vibrating with texts from his parents for the past fifteen minutes, so he drops a kiss on Bakugou’s lips, then runs to his apartment building. Then runs back and kisses him one more time before leaving. Bakugou stares up at Kirishima’s building for a long while after that, certain that there are hearts and stars spinning over his head in a whirl of colours.
He’s halfway through his punch-drunk shamble back home when he remembers the jacket, still warm on his body.
Well.
If Kirishima wants it back, he’ll have to buy him dinner.