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“Hey, Bakugo!” Kirishima calls as he runs down the hall to catch up to the stormcloud a few doors away from him. He tightens his grip around his bag and catches his breath as Bakugo comes to a stop.
“What is it?”
Kirishima ignores the way Bakugo avoids eye contact, picking at a cuticle instead. “Were you serious about helping me study for finals? Because, to be honest, I could really use the help...” He winces as Bakugo lets out a sigh and rolls his eyes. While he was only joking earlier about Bakugo’s “virtue”, he realized later in Present Mic’s English class that he may or may not have to rescind his previous comment. “Y’know, that part about tutoring me ‘till I’m dead?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean,” Bakugo interrupts, hiking his bag back up on his shoulder. He starts walking away, and Kirishima lets out a sigh, head aching from wondering how he’s going to fit enough studying in between training and sleep. Feeling defeated, he turns around, before he hears Bakugo say; “You comin’?”
Bakugo’s house is tidier than expected. Okay, maybe it’s not the biggest surprise—for all of Bakugo’s antics and explosiveness, he tends to be quite organized and orderly. One time, Kaminari told him his handwriting looked like a girl’s. Kirishima remembers cutting off the fried ends of his friend’s hair after Bakugo blew up on him for that.
“Thank you for having me,” he says as he enters the home. “Are your parents here?”
“They’re both at work,” Bakugo tells him, kicking off his shoes and somehow landing them perfectly next to each other. “You want a Coke?”
“Uh, sure.” Kirishima obviously wanted to be here, but now that he is, the air feels a little stiff. Bakugo looks more than relaxed, but when doesn’t he? Kirishima feels like he doesn’t know where to sit or stand, so he ends up awkwardly leaning on the kitchen table while Bakugo fetches drinks out of the fridge.
“My room’s the second door in the hall. Help yourself. I gotta take a leak,” he says nonchalantly, tossing over a Coke can that Kirishima almost drops. His casual nature is almost offputting, but Kirishima admires his ability to be so confident. He winds his way through the hall while Bakugo heads the other way.
In between the first door and the second, there are a few family pictures of a younger Bakugo, with whom Kirishima is assuming his parents, all in different styles. In one of them, they’re all wearing traditional kimonos, and younger-Bakugo’s hair is slicked back, all neat. Kirishima fights back a small snort. He can’t imagine Bakugo ever slicking his hair back now. Another one next to it depicts Bakugo holding up an All Might trading card, next to a smaller boy with green hair and freckles.
A creek in the floorboard startles him out of his observation.
“Not a word,” Bakugo says as he walks briskly past the photos and opens the door to his room. Kirishima can’t help the smile that wiggles onto his face, but he makes sure to hide it when he follows suit.
“You have a VR headset?” he finds himself saying instead of the little tease in the back of his head, jumping over to Bakugo’s nightstand which hosts the various gaming consoles and controllers. “Dude, this is sick! We should all have a game night or somethin’—”
“Focus, Shit Hair!” Bakugo barks, punctuated by the loud sound of a textbook hitting the desk. “We have studying to do.”
Kirishima pouts. “Awh. I was thinking we could hang out for a bit before ‘n play some games!”
“Aren’t you the one who asked me for help?”
“Yeah, okayyy,” Kirishima sighs, plopping onto the desk chair Bakugo left for him. “So how are we doing this?”
“You suck at English.” Ouch. Bakugo certainly has no filter. “You’re definitely gonna fail that portion at this rate, so let’s work on that.”
“I thought you struggled with English, too. You were complaining about the class at lunch the other day.”
“I was complaining about Present Mic,” Bakugo clarifies. “My English is fine. Now, read this out to me.”
Kirishima oofs as a heavy book is thrown into his lap, and he recognizes it with a wince as the textbook he’s been neglecting for the majority of the semester. In front of him are neat Roman letters that all mix together into strings of sentences. He finds the indent to the start of the paragraph and starts reading. “This is the final outcome of the cat’s jump.”
“Okay, now, what word can you get rid of to make it more concise?” Bakugo prompts him. Immediately, Kirishima regrets asking for help. He needs it, yes, but his mind is already swimming with the strain of thinking.
“Uh. The?”
“Which one?”
“The first one?” he guesses.
“Wrong. It’s final. Outcome means the result at the end of an action, so you don’t need final.” Bakugo points at the correct answer a few lines down, where a similar explanation is written in Japanese. “Got it?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“Do the next one.”
“Okay. Where can I find the nearest pen to write with?” Kirishima struggles around the syllables and squints his eyes as he finishes the sentence. “I don’t think I said that right.”
“Nah. You’re adding an extra syllable to write—writeu. Try closing your mouth faster when you say it."
“Writeu,” Kirishima says, but it still sounds different from the way Bakugo is telling him to say it. The boy bites the end of his pen and looks up, thinking for a moment. Then, he scoots closer to Kirishima on his little stool—the one from his drum set, Kirishima realizes—and, without saying a word, grabs Kirishima’s cheeks between his thumb and pointer finger. “Dude, what—”
“Say it again.”
“Write-u,” Kirishima tries, and as he finishes the word, Bakugo uses his grip to clamp his mouth shut.
“Make it shorter. Do the T sound.”
“Wri-tee,” he tries again, with Bakugo shutting his jaw closed this time. It sounds sharper, and Kirishima’s eyebrows raise as Bakugo’s lips break into a small smile.
There’s a small part of Kirishima's brain, the one not focusing on Bakugo’s sweaty thumb on his cheek, that tells him there isn’t any part of his final that will require speaking or pronunciation. He doesn’t even have to worry about spelling right, but he says “write” again and again nonetheless.
“There. Now you don’t sound like an idiot,” Bakugo says when he finally deems Kirishima worthy of moving on to the next sentence. Mourning the loss of Bakugo’s grip just a little bit, Kirishima adverts his gaze back to the book.
“Uh. Yeah. Thanks.”
“Can’t have you making more of a fool of yourself than you already do,” Bakugo snickers. “With that stupid hair of yours.”
Kirishima flicks his eyes back up. “Hey, man! Your hair is just as spiky, okay? I don’t wanna hear shit from you.”
“Nah, mine’s cool. Yours is just as bad as Present Mic’s.”
Kirishima doesn’t mean to hate on Present Mic in the open way Bakugo does, but the insult goes too far. “Oh, yeah? At least mine holds when someone tries to do this!”
At his exclamation, Kirishima lunges forward, and before Bakugo can react, he grabs his head and shakes his hand vigorously through the blond, sharp spikes. Bakugo dips down and grunts, trying to force Kirishima off with his litany of curses, but by the time he pushes him away by his stomach and onto the floor, his hair is flat and messy.
“Hah. Talk about lame hair,” Kirishima smirks, leaning back onto his palms and looking up at Bakugo, still on his stool. The boy fusses at his hair for a second, and then he sends a mean glare his way. Kirishima waves his hand in front of him. “Sorry, sorry. Just needed some payback. I promise I’m—”
Before he can finish, he feels a cold, shocking wave of water splash onto his head and drip down his face. When he opens his eyes, he can see Bakugo cackling loudly, holding his stomach as Kirishima’s red hair dye starts to drip down his forehead.
“You look like you’re bleeding!” Bakugo snickers, cackling more when Kirishima touches a hand to his forehead.
“Oh, it’s so on.” Kirishima is on his feet in an instant, rising to Bakugo’s height, and the two immediately grab onto each other and throw the crowns of their heads straight down. Their skulls hit with a resounding thud, but neither of them back off, both pushing to see who will give in first. Kirishima can feel more red hair dye dripping down his cheek, and he smirks when he realizes it’s bleeding onto Bakugo’s hair. He pulls back to try and see the piece of artwork he’s created, but just then, he loses his footing, Bakugo using his pause to shove him backward.
Kirishima expects to hit the floor again, but instead, he lands right on the edge of Bakugo’s mattress. With them apart like this, he can see the small red patch on the top of Bakugo’s skull. Just as he goes to point it out, Bakugo shoves again, and he winds up on his back, staring straight into red eyes.
All of the sudden, nothing feels funny anymore. Kirishima forgets about his wet hair, the way he’s staining Bakugo’s sheets, the way his head is throbbing a bit from the initial hit.
The only thing he can focus on now is how Bakugo has him pinned to the bed, jeering over him. “I win,” he says triumphantly. Kirishima doesn’t find it in him to respond. His silence urges Bakugo’s Adam’s apple to bob, and the lingering laughter shifts into quiet breathing. Bakugo doesn’t move. Kirishima doesn’t either, despite feeling heat rise to his face and the uncomfortable amount of sweat culminating on Bakugo’s palms, holding his wrists.
“We should study.” Kirishima suddenly blurts, unable to handle the way Bakugo’s pupils pierce into him. The boy jumps up and off of him, wiping his hands on his shorts.
“Yeah. Yeah, you don’t want to fail your finals or anything. Come on. Lock in.”
Kirishima nods and swallows dryly. He avoids Bakugo’s mirror on his desk when he sits down again.
+
“Ei-ji-ro!” Mina calls gleefully when they all walk out of the room. She’s too joyous for how poorly she’s been doing in some of her classes. “How do you think you did?”
With her arm around his shoulder as she laughs about a section of her math exam, Kirishima ignores the initial question. He feels like a zombie. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Oh? Did you have a weird dream or something?”
His drooping eyelids flicker back open when he sees Bakugo walking out of the bathroom in front of them. His face flushes. “Uhm. Yeah. A weird dream... Let’s go with that.”