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You are Denki Kaminari and pro hero Dynamight is at your doorstep.
Well, your good friend Bakugou is at your doorstep. She doesn't have a first name. Only a last name and a hero name. It's all she needs, and if she doesn't need someone they don't need to know.
You cock your head to the side and open your mouth to say something quippy and she sighs and you don't bother, you just don't bother with it. You step aside and she shambles in, hero costume in tatters. She should really be somewhere else, literally anywhere else— you're not a fucking seamstress.
"Denki," Her voice is hoarse as you follow her to your shitty little kitchenette (everyone tells you to upgrade, you have more than enough money to live somewhere far nicer). You listen as she stumbles over syllables and tries to make words work. A frustrated huff is what she manages as she leans up against the counter. "Denki…"
"Yeah?" As you lean up on the counter next to her. You're shorter. And smaller. And it's hard not to notice when you're alone with her.
She leans up against you and the weight of her entire body is in the lean. She's barely upright, is she? Running on fumes.
"Isn't your boyfriend worried about you?"
"You were closer."
You're not.
Hell, you're probably the only pro hero that lives somewhere so dismal. A cruddy little house on the outskirts of the city, kind of dilapidated, really. A fixer upper. But it's important to have heroes everywhere, Iida said that once, in wake of everyone saying your house sucked.
(and there's less paparazzi out here, just a few local kids hounding you for autographs and attention)
You're so far out the way you wouldn't be shocked if she worsened her condition trudging out here to find you. She didn't say anything though, so you don't press.
"Wanna bath or something?"
She shakes her head. "Tired."
"Go home, K—" You cut yourself off.
She leans away to glance at you, nods a bit, as if to say, "Go on."
You hesitate. "Kat, you should go home."
She doesn't answer for a second.
"… I like that name."
"Eh?"
"Can I stay here tonight?" She asks, raw earnest on her tone against the exhaustion and gruffness of it all. It's hot. Like, hotter than you should think it is.
"Yeah, sure."
And how could you say no to her, really?
And again, you find yourself laid out with her on your pull out couch. It's nice. It's quiet. It's close.
You probably shouldn't be this close to her, definitely shouldn't be holding her hand and sizing it up to yours (yours are smaller). You shouldn't. She's got a boyfriend.
Yet she looks at you so gently even when your scars are on display. All of them. Surgical and battleborn and people usually look away.
You wonder if Kirishima would be open to polyamory—
"Kiss me."
You could, yeah.
It's your only chance, that too.
You don't, even if your heart slams in your chest and static crackles across your hair at the thought.
You laugh, quietly. "Naw, Kirishima'd kill me if I kissed his girl."
"He's gay."
He is.
He'd still kill you.
Because he's still dating Kat.
You're just their awkward tranny friend that barely stands to par with either of them.
Kat still looks at you like she's fallen in love, even when your features look softer, more feminine, in the low lights. Even holding your hands, smaller than hers. Even when the proof of fact that you were not always as much of a man as you are now is on display.
She sighs. You can hear a decade of exhaustion on her voice, probably more. You don't care that the dust and blood, half dried, in her hair is getting on your pillow as she rolls onto her back. She's still holding your hand.
"Sorry."
"'S fine."
Is it?
Will it ever be fine?
To keep doing this? Over and over again? Even when you're both painfully sober?
Whose to say.
You do know that you don't want this to end.
Wow.
Selfish much.
Well, you'd think it selfish if she wasn't the one who kept stumbling to your doorstep beaten and battered aching for comfort.