Chapter Text
The silence in Bakugou’s apartment was heavy.
It wasn’t the peaceful kind of silence that came after a long day of patrolling, the kind where your muscles hummed with a satisfying exhaustion and the quiet felt like a hard-earned reward. This was a suffocating, dusty silence. It tasted like stale air and unspoken things. It felt like the air inside a museum after closing hours; cold, pristine, and entirely devoid of life.
He stared at his phone sitting on the marble kitchen island. The screen was black. It had been black for three hours.
Back at UA, silence was a luxury he used to scream for. He used to threaten murder just to get five minutes of peace without Kaminari short-circuiting in the hallway, or Mina pounding on his door to demand he judge an impromptu dance-off, or Kirishima barrelling into his room just to show him a funny video. He had spent three years pushing them away, barking at them to shut up, to leave him alone, to stop crowding his personal space.
Now he had all the space in the world. And he fucking hated it.
It hadn’t happened all at once. That was the insidious part.
It wasn’t like they graduated, walked across the stage, and decided collectively to delete his number. It was a slow erosion. A drifting of tectonic plates that happened so gradually you didn’t notice the widening gap until you were screaming across a canyon and no one could hear you.
Kirishima was the first to get busy. It made sense. Red Riot was huge. He was everywhere. Billboards, commercials, team-ups, talk shows. He was the sturdy pillar society needed, and he took that responsibility seriously. Their sparring sessions went from three times a week to once a week. Then once every two weeks.
Then came the texts.
So sorry, man! Something came up with the agency. Rain check?
Bakugou always replied with a thumbs-up emoji or a terse Whatever.
He never admitted that he had cleared his entire evening for it. He never mentioned that he had already bought the specific brand of spicy chips Kirishima liked, or that he had turned down an interview request just to keep his schedule open. He just threw the chips in the back of the pantry and went to the gym alone.
Then it was Kaminari and Jirou. They were hitting the circuit hard, doing the whole dual-hero-music-tour thing. They were traveling constantly. Kaminari sent photos of hotel rooms and foreign crowds, brightly lit selfies with captions full of emojis. But the FaceTime calls stopped because of the “time difference.”
Or at least, that was the excuse.
Bakugou knew better. He saw them posting on social media during times they claimed to be asleep. They just apparently didn’t have time for him, specifically.
Mina, on the other hand, was the media darling. She was doing PR, talk shows, reality TV appearances. She was always on. When they did manage to grab drinks a few months ago, she spent the whole time checking her socials and waving at fans who recognized her. She wasn’t… Mina anymore. She was just Pinky—always looking right through him, more concerned with her damn lighting and her angles than with the friend sitting across the table.
Bakugou sat on his couch and pulled his knees up to his chest, making himself small in the empty room.
He knew why it was happening. He wasn’t fucking stupid. He possessed and was known for his tactical brilliance in the field; it wasn’t hard to apply that same analysis to his social life and see the glaring structural failures.
He knew he was difficult and abrasive. He knew, intimately so, that he was a logistical nightmare.
In high school, they had the forced ecosystem of the dorms pushing them together. They had the shared trauma of war bonding them like industrial-grade superglue because when you’re fighting for your life, you don’t care if the guy watching your back is an asshole, as long as his aim is true. You tolerate the shouting because the shouting keeps you alive.
But the war was over. The dust had settled. And without the constant, crushing threat of death, the glue was drying out, turning brittle, and flaking away.
Peacetime required a softness he didn’t possess. It required easy laughter, casual brunch plans, and the ability to sit in a room without vibrating with pent-up kinetic energy.
And Bakugou was the friend you had to handle with oven mitts, a hazard that required constant vigilance. And frankly, they were all probably tired of getting burned. They all probably wanted to hold things with their bare hands now.
They wanted easy. And Bakugou was far from fucking easy. He knew that, and it was fine.
He was the Number Five hero, gunning for Number One with a ferocity that scared the public relations department, for god’s sake. He was a powerhouse, practically a tactical nuke in human form, not a fucking socialite. He didn’t need a damn squad to validate his existence. He didn’t need stupid movie nights or group chats to fill the hours between patrols.
He needed to be sharp. He needed to be lethal.
Attachments were just drag coefficients. Friends were variables that could be exploited by villains. Isolation was basically just another form of resistance training, strengthening the mind to operate in a vacuum.
He stared at the blank television screen, seeing his own distorted reflection in the dark glass. A solitary figure. Unreachable. Unbreakable.
This was fine. He was fine.
The doorbell rang.
Bakugou flinched, his head snapping toward the entrance like he’d heard a gunshot. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He checked the time on the microwave.
It was seven on a Tuesday. No one came over on Tuesdays.
(No one came over anymore in general, really.)
He stomped over to the door, his socks sliding slightly on the polished hardwood. He was ready to blast a salesperson, a neighbor complaining about noise he hadn’t made, or a fan who had somehow bypassed the building’s security. He ripped the door open with a scowl already firmly in place.
Sero Hanta stood there.
He looked nothing like a pro hero. He was wearing a casual grey hoodie that looked two sizes too big, the sleeves bunching at his wrists, and loose sweatpants. He was holding a plastic bag that smelled aggressively of grease, spices, and heaven.
“Hey,” Sero said. “Thai food.”
Bakugou stared at him. He blinked, his brain stuttering. “What the fuck?”
“I got Thai food,” Sero repeated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He didn’t look intimidated by Bakugou’s glare. He just looked tired, in the same bone-deep way Bakugou felt tired. “I ordered too much. Pad Thai and some spring rolls. Figured you could help me destroy the evidence.”
Bakugou didn’t move. His brain was trying to recalibrate.
Sero was part of the group, sure. But he was usually the background radiation. The guy who taped things together so the others could shine. The guy who laughed at jokes but rarely took center stage. They had never really hung out one-on-one. Not like this. Not without Kirishima or Kaminari acting as a buffer.
“I didn’t fucking invite you,” Bakugou said. The words lacked his usual bite. They sounded more confused than angry.
Sero shrugged, a simple roll of his shoulders. “I know. Can I come in? My arms are getting tired and this bag is leaking heat.”
Bakugou looked at the bag, then up at Sero’s face. Sero wasn’t smiling his usual dopey, wide grin. He looked calm. Expectant. There was no pity in his eyes, no hidden agenda, no camera crew waiting in the hallway. Just Sero.
Bakugou stepped aside.
The action was almost involuntary. The silence behind him was so loud, so crushing, that the prospect of a guy in a baggy hoodie eating noodles on his floor seemed like a lifeline.
That was how it started. That Tuesday.
They ate Pad Thai on the floor of the living room because Bakugou hadn’t bothered to buy a dining table yet. They watched a shitty action movie where the physics made absolutely no sense.
But the important part, to Bakugou, was what didn’t happen. They barely spoke. Sero didn’t ask how he was doing. He didn’t ask about the agency or the crushing weight of public expectation. He just chewed his noodles, laughed at the bad CGI explosions, and then left at around ten.
Bakugou stood in the hallway after the door clicked shut, staring at the empty spot on the floor where Sero had been sitting. The silence rushed back in, but it felt different now. Less heavy.
It was, undeniably, the most normal he had felt in six months.
The next week, Sero came back.
“Pizza,” Sero announced the moment Bakugou opened the door. He held the box up like a shield. “Deep dish. Don’t start complaining about the calories, I know you burned five thousand today chasing that villain downtown.”
Bakugou scoffed, stepping back to let him in. “I wasn’t gonna complain. I was gonna say you have shit taste in toppings.”
“Pineapple belongs on pizza, Bakugou. Deal with it.”
It became a routine. A ritual etched into the calendar. Every Tuesday, and sometimes Friday if their patrols aligned. Sero just showed up. He never texted first to ask permission, which should have annoyed Bakugou, but somehow didn’t. He just appeared with food, a movie, or a video game, treating Bakugou’s fortress of solitude like a casual hangout spot.
It was baffling.
Bakugou kept waiting for the catch. He kept waiting for Sero to pull out a planner and try to schedule a group meet-up. He waited for Sero to say, Hey, Kiri really misses you, you should call him. He waited for the pity to shine through the cracks in Sero’s easygoing smile.
But it never came.
Tonight was a Friday. It had been pouring for three days straight, a solid wall of water that turned the city into a blurred watercolor painting and grounded every aerial patrol in the prefecture.
The humidity was a nightmare for his physiology. The air in the apartment was heavy and sticky, making Bakugou’s palms sweat excessively. The nitroglycerin accumulated faster than he could wash it off, resulting in tiny, microscopic snaps against the denim of his jeans every time he clenched his hands.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
It was maddening. An itch he couldn’t scratch without blowing something up.
He paced the living room, a caged tiger in a high-rise zoo. He had checked his phone fifteen times in the last hour alone. The group chat was a digital graveyard. No memes. No chaotic updates. Just a timestamp from two weeks ago that mocked him with its age.
When the doorbell rang, cutting through the drumming of the rain, Bakugou didn’t feel relief. He felt a spike of pure, white-hot irritation. It flared like a magnesium strip ignited in the dark.
He stomped to the entryway and yanked the door open with enough force to rattle the frame.
Sero was standing there, looking like he’d swum over. He held an umbrella, but it was a lost cause; inverted by the wind, a skeleton of metal and fabric that was completely useless. In his other hand, he clutched a grease-stained paper bag from the burger joint three blocks away, protecting it against his chest like it was a vital organ.
“Dude, it’s apocalyptic out there,” Sero announced, shaking his head. Water sprayed from his hair in a wide arc, splattering across the walls and Bakugou’s pristine hardwood floor. “I think I saw a villain floating down the street on a door. Like Titanic, but wetter, if you get what I mean.”
Bakugou stared at the water hitting his floor. He watched a muddy droplet slide off the tip of Sero’s nose and land on the polished wood.
It was such a small thing. A bit of water. A bit of mud. But in Bakugou’s hyper-tense, overstimulated state, it felt like a violation. It was the mess of the world invading his controlled, sterile sanctuary.
“You’re dripping,” Bakugou said. His voice was low, vibrating with a dangerous frequency.
Sero paused mid-shake, blinking water out of his eyes. “Oh. My bad. I’ll just kick these sneakers off outside—”
“Why the fuck are you here?”
The question came out sharper than Bakugou intended. It sounded like a detonation in the small space.
Sero froze, one shoe half-pried off his heel. He looked up, his dark eyes wide and confused, hair plastered to his forehead.
“Ideally? To eat burgers,” Sero said slowly, his tone cautious, as if he were negotiating a hostage release. “I got the spicy one. Extra jalapeños. I thought… well, it’s Friday.”
“I didn’t ask about the fucking menu,” Bakugou snapped. He could feel the heat rising in his neck, a physical manifestation of the storm inside him. The agitation from the paperwork, the humidity making his palms itch, the suffocating silence of the last two weeks—it all coalesced into a single, blinding point of rage. “I asked why you’re here. In my damn apartment. Again.”
Sero set the grease-stained bag down on the entry table. He did it carefully, deliberately. He straightened up, wiping rain from his forehead with the back of his hand. The easygoing slouch evaporated, replaced by a sudden, attentive stillness.
“It’s Friday,” Sero repeated, his voice level. “We usually do this on Fridays.”
“We don’t do anything,” Bakugou spat. He crossed his arms, his biceps straining against the fabric of his black t-shirt. “You show up. You feed me like I’m a stray dog you found in the alley. You sit on my floor. And then you leave.”
Sero watched him. He didn’t look scared. He didn’t look ready to bolt. He looked… so fucking maddeningly patient. That patience was like gasoline on the fire. And Bakugou wanted a reaction. He wanted fear. Anything. He wanted Sero to yell back so he could feel justified in screaming.
“Okay,” Sero said softly. “I thought we were friends.”
“Friends?” Bakugou let out a harsh, jagged laugh that sounded like metal shearing. “Friends don’t just show up because they feel sorry for the headcase. Is that it? Is that what this is? Community service?”
He took a step forward, his voice rising. “Did Eijirou put you up to this? Did Mina draw the short straw and tell you to go check on the explosive lonely guy so he doesn’t blow up a fucking city block out of boredom?”
Sero’s face hardened. The softness around his eyes vanished. “No one told me to do anything.”
“Bullshit!” Bakugou yelled. The volume felt good. It scraped the inside of his throat, filling the empty space, chasing away the quiet that had been haunting him. “Everyone else is gone! Everyone else got the memo! They have lives. They have careers. They have better things to do than manage a piece of shit like me.”
He stepped closer, invading Sero’s personal space aggressively. He was close enough to see the droplets caught in Sero’s eyelashes, close enough to smell the ozone of the storm clinging to his jacket mixed with the scent of cheap fry oil.
He wanted Sero to flinch. He wanted Sero to prove him right—that Bakugou was too much, too loud, and too fucking jagged to be held.
“But here you are,” Bakugou seethed, looming over him. “Every fucking week. Like clockwork. So why? Why are you the only one who hasn’t figured it out yet?”
Smoke began to curl from his palms, wispy and gray. “I’m difficult. I’m an asshole. I drive people away like it’s my fucking specialty. That’s what I do. So why are you still standing here with your soggy shoes and your stupid pity burgers?”
The silence that followed was deafening. The rain hammered against the windowpane, a chaotic, drumming rhythm against the sudden stillness inside the apartment.
Sero didn’t flinch. He didn’t step back. He didn’t look at the bared teeth or the popping veins in Bakugou’s neck. He just stood there, hands loose at his sides, watching Bakugou with a maddening, patient exhaustion. He looked like a man watching a toddler tire himself out.
“You finished?” Sero asked.
The casualness of it was a spark in a powder keg. Bakugou’s hands curled into fists so tight his knuckles turned white, small, uncontrolled pops of nitroglycerin snapping against his palms.
“I’m done when I say I’m done!”
“You’re terrified,” Sero said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. The words cut through the noise simply by being true.
“I am not—”
“You are.” Sero took a step forward. It was a small movement, but in the charged air between them, it felt like a challenge. “You think if you scream loud enough, if you make yourself ugly enough, you can force me to leave. You want to fire me before I even have the chance to quit.”
Bakugou’s breath hitched. It was a sharp, involuntary sound, like a gear slipping in his chest.
“Shut up,” Bakugou gritted out, but the venom was leaking out of his voice, replaced by something jagged and desperate. “Shut the fuck up.”
“You think because the others got busy, it means you’re too much work,” Sero continued, relentless. He took another step. He was in Bakugou’s personal space now, close enough that Bakugou could see the rainwater drying on his eyelashes. “You think you have to be useful to be wanted. You think if you aren’t winning, you aren’t worth keeping. So you’re trying to burn the bridge while I’m still standing right in the middle of it.”
Bakugou took a stumbling step back, his back hitting the wall of the entryway. He felt cornered. Exposed. The smoke rising from his hands was thin and grey, smelling of burnt sugar and panic.
“You should leave,” Bakugou said. His voice cracked, betraying him completely.
“No, I don't think I will,” Sero said gently. He reached out, not to grab, but to bridge the gap, his hand hovering in the space between them. “You asked me why I’m here. You want the actual answer? Not the polite one?”
Bakugou’s throat clicked shut. He wanted to double down. He wanted to scream, to blast Sero out the door and back into the rain where he belonged. But the lie had scraped his throat raw, and he didn’t have the energy to force out another one. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t pull away, either. He just stood there, chest heaving, his silence acting as a reluctant surrender.
Sero took it for what it was. He dropped his hand, his expression sobering into something stark and unmasked.
“I’m here,” Sero said, the words heavy and deliberate, “because you’re the only one who doesn’t treat me like part of the background.”
Bakugou froze. The words bounced around his skull, refusing to settle. “What?”
Sero ran a hand through his damp hair, pushing the bangs back from his forehead with a heavy sigh. The tension in his shoulders dropped all at once, revealing a bone-deep exhaustion that had nothing to do with hero work and everything to do with pretending.
“Look at the others, Bakugou. Look at the media.” Sero’s laugh was a dry, brittle sound. “Who am I to them? I’m Cellophane. I’m the utility guy. I’m the one who catches the falling debris so the real heavy hitters can strike the pose.”
He looked down at his hands, calloused and scarred from years of friction burns. “Even Kiri. Even Kami. I know they love me, but… to them, I’m just ‘Good Old Sero.’ I’m the comic relief. I’m the guy who’s just happy to be included. They talk over me. They make plans without asking me, because they assume I’ll just go with the flow. Because Sero is always chill.”
Bakugou stared at him. He had never heard Sero talk like this. He had never heard the resentment simmering under the surface of the Tape Hero, hidden beneath layers of easygoing smiles and self-deprecating humor.
“But you,” Sero said, his eyes snapping back to Bakugou’s face. “You never do that.”
“I treat you like shit,” Bakugou argued. The defense came out automatic, but weak. “I yell at you constantly. I call you Soy Sauce Face. I call you a damn extra.”
“Yeah, you do,” Sero agreed, taking a step closer. The water from his jacket dripped onto the floorboards, counting seconds. “But you don’t baby me. In training? You never pulled your punches. You blasted me with the exact same force you used on Todoroki or Midoriya. You didn’t slow down for me. You demanded I keep up.”
Sero poked a finger into Bakugou’s chest. “You scream at me when I mess up because you actually think I’m capable of doing it right. You’re the only one who gets pissed off when I lose, because you’re the only one who thinks I should’ve won.”
The distance between them was negligible now. Bakugou could smell the rain on him, mixed with the scent of ozone and the faint, dusty smell of old paper.
“And it’s not just hero work,” Sero said, his voice dropping to a low, rough register that cut under the noise of the rain. “When I’m here, you don’t look through me. You watch me. You remember that I take my coffee with two sugars, not three. You remember I hate jump scares, so you turned off that movie last week without me asking. You actually listen when I talk, instead of just waiting for your turn to speak.”
Bakugou opened his mouth to retort, to deny it, to blow the moment up before it consumed him. But nothing came out. He was disarmed. He had prepared for a fight, not for someone to strip themselves bare in his hallway and thank him for his rudeness.
“I’m not a charity case to you,” Sero said, his voice dropping, stripping away the last of the performative hero persona. “And you’re not a project to me. I come here because it’s the only place where I don’t feel like an extra in someone else’s movie.”
Sero leaned back against the doorframe, his shoulders slumping as the adrenaline faded, leaving him looking smaller, younger. “And I’m so, so tired of always being in the background, Katsuki.”
The use of his given name hit Bakugou harder than any punch. It wasn’t shouted in panic or screamed in battle; it was spoken softly, a plea and a confession all at once.
Bakugou swallowed hard, the lump in his throat expanding until it was painful. He looked down at his hands. The smoke had stopped curling from his palms, extinguished by the raw honesty in the room.
“I’m still an asshole,” Bakugou muttered, his voice rough. It was the only defense he had left.
“Yeah,” Sero smiled. It was a small, genuine thing that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “You are. But you’re real. And you’re consistent. I know where I stand with you. I never have to guess which version of you I’m going to get.”
Bakugou looked back up, searching Sero’s face for any sign of deception. “I thought... I thought you were just bored. Or pitying me.”
“I don’t pity you, Katsuki,” Sero said firmly. “I admire you. And... I like being around you. The quiet is nice. We don’t have to perform here. I like that we get to just exist.”
The silence returned, but the texture of it had changed completely. It wasn’t dusty anymore. It wasn’t suffocating. It felt like the air after a violent summer storm—charged, clear, and breathable.
Bakugou let out a long, shuddering breath, his shoulders slumping. He felt drained, but lighter. “The burgers are gonna get cold.”
Sero’s smile widened, returning to something closer to his usual, goofy grin. “They’re probably already cold. Grease congealing and everything. But I can nuke them.”
“Don’t you dare put foil in my microwave again,” Bakugou grumbled, turning toward the kitchen to hide the heat rising in his cheeks. “I’m not buying a third one.”
“That was one time!” Sero laughed, kicking his wet shoes off near the door. His socks padded softly on the wood as he followed Bakugou. “And it was a very scientific experiment!”
They moved into the kitchen with the ease of a routine established over months, not minutes. Sero handled the extraction of the soggy wrappers; Bakugou handled the plates.
It felt dangerously domestic.
As they sat on the floor (Bakugou really, really needed to buy a damn table) eating the slightly lukewarm burgers, Bakugou watched Sero out of the corner of his eye. He traced the sharp line of Sero’s jaw, the knobby, triangular elbows that he had learned to navigate around on the couch, and the dark hair that was starting to dry in rebellious, messy spikes.
He realized then that Sero was right.
He did see him. He had always seen him. Maybe that was why he let him in that first Tuesday. Subconsciously, he had recognized that Sero was made of sterner stuff than the others. Sero was durable. He was the only one who could stand in the center of the blast zone without getting blown away, and more importantly, without trying to put the fire out.
“Hey,” Bakugou said after a while, his voice rougher than he intended.
Sero looked up, a ridiculous smudge of ketchup on his chin ruining the profound moment. “Yeah?”
“I don’t hate you,” Bakugou muttered. He took a massive, aggressive bite of his burger to physically block any further emotional output.
Sero snorted, wiping his chin with his thumb. “I know, man. I don’t hate you either.”
“And…” Bakugou chewed furiously, swallowing hard. “If you want to come over on days that aren’t Tuesday or Friday. That’s… acceptable.”
Sero stopped eating. He lowered his burger to the plate, ignoring the grease on his fingers. He looked at Bakugou with a mixture of surprise and something softer that made the space behind Bakugou’s ribs ache.
“Are you expanding my visitation rights?” Sero teased gently.
“I’m saying,” Bakugou growled, pointing a soggy fry at him like a knife, “that if you’re sick of being background noise, you can come here and be annoying in the fucking foreground. Just don’t make it weird.”
Sero laughed. It was a bright, uninhibited sound that bounced off the walls of the empty apartment, finally chasing away the last of the gloom.
“Okay,” Sero beamed. “Deal. I can be annoying in the foreground.”
“You’re already excelling at it.”
“I’m an overachiever, Blasty. You know this.”
They cleared the debris of dinner with a practiced efficiency. Sero balled up the greasy wrappers while Bakugou queued up the movie—some sprawling sci-fi opera Sero had picked out, thick with zero-gravity politics and loud explosions.
As the opening credits rolled, filling the room with the hum of a synthesized orchestra, Sero dropped onto the couch. But he didn’t take his usual spot on the far left cushion. He didn’t leave the standard two-foot demilitarized zone between them. He sat right next to Bakugou.
Bakugou stiffened, his spine locking up. He could feel the heat radiating off Sero’s arm through the cotton of his shirt. It was a solid, undeniable weight pressing against his personal space.
He didn’t move away.
Instead, he let his breath out slowly and leaned back, deliberately letting his shoulder blade press firmly against Sero’s. It was a small contact, but it hummed. A live wire grounding a restless circuit.
“You know,” Sero said quietly, his eyes fixed on the starship drifting across the screen. “Kiri hit me up yesterday. Asked if I’d seen you. Said you were leaving him on read.”
Bakugou’s muscles seized. The comfortable silence instantly curdled, the old, familiar guilt rising in his throat like bile. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him you were busy,” Sero said. He took a sip of his soda, casual as anything, while an alien city burned on the screen in front of them. “And I told him that if he really wanted to see you, he should try actually showing up at the door instead of apologizing over and over again and not actually doing a single thing about it.”
Bakugou turned his head slowly. The cold blue light from the TV washed over Sero’s profile, sharpening the angle of his nose and the stubborn, unfamiliar set of his jaw. “You said that?”
“Yup.” Sero shrugged, the movement jostling Bakugou’s shoulder. “Like I said. I’m done being the glue guy. I’m done smoothing over the cracks so everyone else can feel comfortable. If they want us, they can make the effort.”
Us.
The syllable landed between them, heavier than concrete.
Sero could’ve said, If they want you. That would have been the sidekick thing to say. The supportive friend thing to say.
But he didn’t. He said us.
In one word, Sero had redrawn the battle lines. He had taken the sprawling, messy Venn diagram of their fractured friend group and drawn a distinct, bold circle around the two of them. A unit. A team. Separate from the drift.
Bakugou felt a strange, tight sensation in the center of his chest. It wasn’t the anxiety that usually lived there. It was warmer. It felt dangerously like hope.
“Good,” Bakugou breathed out, turning back to the screen so Sero wouldn’t see the look on his face. “Tell him to bring decent snacks next time, too.”
He relaxed into the cushions, letting the tension drain out of his spine. The rain was still hammering against the glass, but it didn’t feel lonely anymore. It felt like a perimeter defense, a wall of water shutting the rest of the world out and keeping them safe inside.
Halfway through the second act, Sero’s head dipped, jerked back up as he blinked rapidly at the screen, and then dipped again. It was a losing war against gravity. Eventually, he surrendered completely, his head coming to rest heavily on Bakugou’s shoulder.
Bakugou froze. He looked down at the mop of black hair splayed against his t-shirt. Sero’s breathing hitched once, then evened out into the slow, heavy rhythm of deep sleep. He was out cold.
Bakugou sat there for a long time, barely daring to expand his lungs.
He should push the idiot off. He should yell at him for drooling on his shirt and invading his personal space.
Instead, he slowly, carefully reached for the remote and lowered the volume until the explosions on screen were little more than a whisper. He shifted his weight imperceptibly, dropping his shoulder an inch so Sero wouldn’t wake up with a crick in his neck.
“Don’t get used to this, stupid Soy Sauce Face,” he whispered to the flickering room.
But as he stared at the screen, listening to the steady, reassuring bellows of Sero’s breathing, Bakugou knew he was lying. He was already used to it.
For the first time since graduation, the future didn’t look like a long, lonely road stretching out into a gray fog. It looked like Tuesday nights. It looked like lukewarm burgers and cheap sci-fi movies. It looked like someone who stayed.
Sero shifted in his sleep, a small murmur escaping his lips. His hand drifted across the cushion, seeking purchase, until it rested against Bakugou’s thigh.
Bakugou looked down at the hand.
It was a hero’s hand. The fingers were long, the knuckles rough, the skin mapped with the silvery friction scars of his quirk.
Unbidden, Bakugou’s mind is suddenly thrown back to the Sports Festival, all those years ago. He remembered watching Sero stand in the arena against Todoroki, knowing he was outmatched in raw power but refusing to give an inch of ground. He remembered thinking, This guy has guts.
Sero wasn’t a background character. He never had been. Bakugou had just been the only one paying close enough attention to notice.
Slowly, deliberately, Bakugou covered Sero’s hand with his own.
Sero’s fingers didn’t pull away. They twitched, recognized the warmth, and instinctively curled around Bakugou’s, holding on tight even in sleep.
Bakugou closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the cushion until it touched Sero’s hair.
“I see you,” he whispered, so low the rain almost drowned it out. “I’ve always seen you.”
The movie flickered on, casting shifting blue shadows across the dark room. Outside, the storm continued its siege against the glass, but inside, the air was still. And Bakugou didn’t move. He sat there, anchored by the steady weight on his shoulder and the warm hand in his own, and finally let the silence settle around them not as a void, but as a shelter.
It was perfect.
The next morning, Bakugou woke up with a jagged crick in his neck and a heavy, unfamiliar weight pinning him to the cushions. The sunlight was streaming through the gaps in the blinds, harsh and unforgiving against his eyelids, demanding he acknowledge the day.
He blinked, disoriented. The ceiling was familiar, but the angle was all wrong. He wasn’t in his bed. He was on the couch.
And Sero was sprawled on top of him.
Well, not entirely on top. It was more like an octopus attack.
Sero was draped sideways, a chaotic tangle of long limbs that defied anatomical logic. His head rested heavily on Bakugou’s sternum, rising and falling in time with Bakugou’s breath, and one leg was thrown carelessly over Bakugou’s thighs, effectively locking him in place. He was snoring softly, a low, rhythmic rumble that vibrated directly against Bakugou’s ribcage.
Bakugou stared at the ceiling, his brain rebooting.
The memories of the night before rushed back in a disjointed flood. The relentless, pounding rain. The shouting match in the entryway. The burger grease. Us.
His first instinct was violence.
He should shove the idiot off. He should wake him up with a precise explosion to the face and a screaming demand for personal space. That was protocol. That was the Bakugou Katsuki brand.
But Sero looked so peaceful, so defenseless.
His face was smashed slightly against the fabric of Bakugou’s shirt, mouth open, completely unguarded. He was warm—a steady, radiating heat that had seeped into Bakugou’s bones during the night, chasing away the chill of the air conditioning.
And most importantly, he wasn’t leaving. He was holding on.
Bakugou let out a long breath. He carefully tried to maneuver his right arm out from under Sero’s side, attempting to perform a stealth extraction. He needed coffee. If he was going to deal with the terrifying realization that he had fucking feelings, he needed caffeine immediately.
Sero grumbled something unintelligible, frowned, and tightened his grip on Bakugou’s shirt.
“Five minutes,” Sero mumbled directly into his pectoral muscle. His voice was thick with sleep, rougher than usual like gravel scraping over velvet. “Don’t move.”
Bakugou froze. “You’re awake?”
“Mmm. Mostly.” Sero didn’t open his eyes. He just snuggled closer, effectively pinning the Number Five hero to the upholstery. “You’re comfortable. Who knew?”
“I am rock-hard muscle,” Bakugou argued, though there was zero heat in his tone. He didn’t push him away. He didn’t even twitch. “I am not comfortable.”
“You’re a heated rock,” Sero murmured, shifting his cheek to find a better spot on Bakugou’s chest. “Like those things lizards sleep on at the zoo. Stop moving, you’re ruining the ecosystem.”
“Fuck off, Soy Sauce Face.”
Sero finally peeled one eye open. He looked up at Bakugou, sleepy and disheveled and ridiculously fond. A single strand of black hair stuck up at a definitive ninety-degree angle, defying gravity.
“Morning, Katsuki.”
The domesticity of it hit Bakugou like a physical blow to the solar plexus. The messy hair, the sleep-rough voice, the casual, uncomplicated contact. It wasn’t annoying. It wasn’t crowding him. It felt so, so right, terrifyingly so.
It felt like the missing piece of data he’d been searching for since graduation.
I could get used to this, Bakugou thought, the realization ringing in his head like a church bell. I could do this every single morning.
His heart did a traitorous, acrobatic flip in his chest.
“Morning,” Bakugou grunted.
“So,” Sero said, making absolutely no move to vacate his position as a human blanket. “About last night. Did I hallucinate the part where we held hands, or was that real?”
Bakugou felt the heat rush up his neck, bypassing his collar and settling high on his cheeks. He refused to look down, fixing his gaze intently on a dust mote floating in a sunbeam.
“You were asleep. You grabbed me,” Bakugou lied through his teeth. “It was tactical restraint. Self-defense.”
“Uh-huh.” Sero smiled against the fabric of his shirt. He shifted, propping his chin on Bakugou’s sternum to look him dead in the face. “And you maintained this ‘tactical restraint’ for approximately three hours because…?”
Bakugou glared at him, but it lacked his usual lethal force. It was mostly just defensive posturing. “How do you even know how long it fucking was if you were asleep, Tape Face?”
“I woke up around 3 AM,” Sero admitted. His expression softened, the teasing edge melting away into something terrifyingly sincere. “I realized I was drooling on the Number Five hero. I thought about moving. But then I realized you were holding my hand.” Sero squeezed his fingers slightly, demonstrating the grip. “So I figured, why mess with perfection? I went back to sleep.”
Bakugou opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. There was no retort for that. No explosion could cover the sheer vulnerability of that moment. Sero had woken up, seen Bakugou clinging to him like a lifeline, and decided the best place to be was right there.
“You’re staying for breakfast,” Bakugou stated firmly. It was the only way he knew how to surrender without waving a white flag.
Sero’s grin was blinding, sudden and bright like a camera flash. “I’ll make the eggs. You burn them.”
“I do not burn them! I like them crispy!”
“That’s called burnt, Katsuki.” Sero finally rolled off him, stretching his long limbs with a series of satisfying, grotesque cracks that sounded like bubble wrap popping. He stood up and offered a hand to Bakugou.
Bakugou stared at the hand.
He thought about the squad drifting away to their own lives. He thought about the suffocating silence that usually filled this room on Saturday mornings. He thought about how much he hated being “difficult,” and how Sero didn’t seem to just tolerate the difficulty but navigate it with a map he’d drawn himself.
He took Sero’s hand and let him pull him up from the couch.
“Make the coffee too,” Bakugou ordered as Sero pulled him up, turning sharply toward the bathroom to hide the flush that was definitely not subsiding. “And don’t put sugar in mine.”
“I know, I know,” Sero called after him, his voice sounding far too cheerful for the hour. “Black. Like your soul.”
“Shut the hell up, Tape Face!”
“Love you too, Blasty!”
Bakugou slammed the bathroom door shut.
The latch clicked. He stood there in the sudden silence of the tiled room, gripping the edge of the sink until his knuckles turned white. His breathing was coming too fast.
The words bounced around the tiled walls.
Love you too, Blasty!
Sero had thrown it out there so casually. Like a reflex. Like it was a sentence he had been keeping in his back pocket, just waiting for a casual enough moment to drop it so it wouldn’t shatter the floor.
Bakugou leaned forward, staring at his reflection in the mirror. He looked terrified. He looked disheveled. But mostly, he looked… alive. He looked happy.
“God fucking damn it,” he whispered to the mirror.
He splashed his face with freezing water, brushed his teeth with aggressive precision, and took a full minute to compose his features into something resembling his usual scowl.
When he walked back out to the kitchen, the rich, dark smell of coffee had replaced the scent of rain. Sero was standing at the stove, humming some terrible pop song, cracking eggs into a bowl with a rhythmic, happy beat.
The apartment didn’t feel big anymore. It didn’t feel empty.
It felt full. So incredibly full.
Sero didn't turn around immediately. He kept his eyes on the frying pan, but his posture had shifted—shoulders squared, head tilted slightly.
“Hey,” Sero said, his tone casual but carrying a subtle undercurrent of nerves. “I was thinking.”
“Dangerous habit,” Bakugou deadpanned, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms over his chest to hide the fact that his heart was still hammering.
“Ha ha. Very funny.” Sero finally turned around, the spatula held loosely in one hand. He leaned back against the counter, looking at Bakugou with an expression that was searching, open, and slightly vulnerable. “I was thinking… next week is that massive street food festival in District Four. The one with the spicy takoyaki you actually tolerate.”
Sero paused, taking a breath. “We should go. Together.”
Bakugou watched him. He analyzed the tactical layout of the conversation. The lack of a group invite. The specific mention of food he liked. The eye contact.
“Are we talking about two bros getting food?” Bakugou asked, his voice low. “Or are we talking about a date?”
The word hung there between them. A challenge. A classification. A point of no return.
Sero didn’t blink. He didn’t retreat into a joke. “A date. Definitely a date.”
Bakugou studied him. He looked for the punchline. He looked for the hesitation or the pity that used to haunt him. He found neither. He just found Sero, waiting patiently for Bakugou to catch up.
“Okay,” Bakugou said.
Sero’s eyes widened slightly. “Okay?”
“I said okay, didn’t I? Clean the wax out of your ears, Tape Face.”
Bakugou walked past him, suppressing the urge to smile, and grabbed the mug of coffee Sero had poured. He took a sip. It was perfect. Black, strong, and bitter enough to wake the dead.
“Okay,” Sero repeated, a dopey, disbelief-tinged grin spreading across his face. He turned back to the stove to flip the eggs, but Bakugou could see his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Bakugou demanded, lowering his mug.
“Nothing,” Sero said, his voice bright and victorious. “Just… I win.”
“You win what?”
“The bet. With myself.” Sero flipped an egg with expert precision, the grease hissing in the pan. “I bet myself that if I just kept showing up, if I was just stubborn enough and consistent enough, eventually you’d realize you couldn’t get rid of me.”
Bakugou snorted into his coffee. “You’re persistent. It’s annoying.”
“It’s charming.”
“Debatable.”
Bakugou leaned against the counter, watching him cook.
He thought about texting Kirishima later. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d let Kirishima realize the silence on his own. For now, he didn’t care about the drift. He didn’t care about the people who had faded away because they couldn’t handle the heat of his orbit.
He only cared about the guy standing in his kitchen, wearing yesterday’s wrinkled clothes, making eggs that weren’t burnt.
“Hanta,” Bakugou said.
Sero froze. The spatula stopped mid-air. He turned around slowly, eyes wide. It was the first time Bakugou had used his given name without shouting it in the desperation of a battlefield.
“Yeah?” Sero asked, his voice barely a breath.
Bakugou took another sip of coffee to steady his nerves, meeting Sero’s gaze over the rim of the mug. The morning sun caught the side of Sero’s face, and Bakugou thought, Yeah. This is it.
“Don’t burn the toast,” Bakugou said softly.
Sero stared at him for a second, then threw his head back and laughed, loud and bright and joyous. It was a sound that filled the corners of the room, chasing away the last of the dust.
“You’re impossible,” Sero said, shaking his head.
“I know,” Bakugou said.
And for the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel bad about it. He didn’t feel like a problem to be solved or a hazard to be managed.
“I know.”