Chapter Text
The agency smelled like fresh black coffee and stale printer ink, the same as always.
Bakugou Katsuki had learned, over the years, to find comfort in consistency. The same mug; black, thin handle, and stolen from the break room at Shoto’s agency office in Musutafu. The same chair, pushed two inches back from where the cleaning staff left it every morning, because he hated his knees hitting the desk. The same route in, the same route out. Consistency was his armour, as well as his form of exercising control.
He was very, very good at both.
What he was less good at, what he had never in his twenty-seven years managed to master, was this thing happening right now. Right in front of his eyes. Through the glass partition of the shared meeting lounge.
Midoriya Izuku was laughing.
It wasn't unusual. Deku laughed all the time now. Whether it was at hero debriefs, at cross-agency fundraisers, or in the mess of former Class 1A group chats that Bakugou had on permanent mute. What was unusual was the way he was laughing right now. Head tipped back, eyes closed shut, hands clutching his stomach, and the echo of his voice through the glass. Uraraka Ochaco had apparently said something utterly hilarious because she was laughing too, and she'd reached across the table to grab his wrist. Easy, proprietary, natural; the gesture of someone who touched that wrist a thousand times and had the right to touch it a thousand more.
Deku turned his hand over and laced his fingers through hers.
Bakugou immediately turned his eyes back at his monitor.
He had a report to write and submit by tonight. He had thirtyfour pending notifications. He had three villain sightings to cross-reference with patrol schedules, a budget request from one of the junior heroes that needed approval or denial before the end of business, and a call at four with the HPSC liaison who somehow always mispronounced his name.
He proceeded to file the report. He cleared the notifications. He cross-referenced the sightings.
He did not look through the glass partition again. He was extremely disciplined. He didn’t care about Deku’s personal life. He had no right to. Deku was married. Bakugou was one of the top five heroes in Japan. He did not look through the glass partition. He had no right to-
He looked through the glass partition.
They were gone. The lounge was empty except for two matching mugs on the table, and a scattering of papers. Someone had left the whiteboard marker uncapped, which would dry it out. Probably Deku. Even back in middle school, he’d always forget.
Bakugou stood up, walked into the lounge, capped the marker, and stood there for a moment in the pin-drop silence.
The coffee in one of the mugs was barely touched. Uraraka’s. She never liked coffee, but she would grab one anyways to keep her husband company. The other was nearly empty, with a ring of dried foam near the lip. Deku’s, for sure. He'd started drinking lattes with way too much sugar and creamer somewhere in the last two years, which was new. There was a lot about Deku that was new. Weirdly unfamiliar. Most of it, Bakugou had no excuse not to have noticed. He'd just been busy telling himself he wasn't paying attention and that he ‘didn’t care’.
He left the lounge. He had a four o'clock call.
The HPSC liaison, indeed, mispronounced his name twice.
—
Kirishima Eijirou found him on the roof at 6:15PM sharp, which was not a surprise. The roof was where Bakugou went when he didn't want to be found, which Kirishima had apparently long since interpreted as ‘where Bakugou goes when he needs someone to come find him’. It was mildly annoying. It was also, if Bakugou was honest (which he almost never was), the only reason he kept going up there.
"Rough day?" Kirishima dropped down next to him on the concrete ledge, legs dangling, utterly unbothered by the 30 metre drop. His hair was down, which meant he was off-duty proper. It made him look younger. Less of Red Riot, more of the idiot who'd grabbed Bakugou's hand in a war zone and held on.
"Every day is a rough day," Bakugou said. "That's what running an agency feels like."
"Right, yeah." Kirishima squinted out at the city. The sun was doing something sentimental on the horizon, all orange and deep red. "You wanna tell me what actually happened, or am I gonna be sitting here awkwardly for longer than I should?”
"No."
"Cool." Kirishima pulled a can of beer from somewhere in his jacket. Unfortunately warm since it was sitting in his pocket for far too long, and the cheap convenience store kind at that. Bakugou took it without a glance.
They sat in the kind of silence that only worked between people who had known each other long enough to stop filling it. Kirishima had always been good at this sort of thing. Bakugou had spent years being privately (secretly) grateful for it, while also being publicly irritable about it. Which was basically the story of their entire friendship, summed up.
"Deku and Uraraka," Bakugou said, eventually.
Kirishima didn't move. "Yeah?"
"They're..." He couldn't finish the sentence. It sat in his chest like an ember that had no business still flickering.
"It's been two years."
"I know it's been two years- I’m aware of how time works, Shitty-hair."
"I know you know." Kirishima's voice was careful, the way it only got when he was choosing every word. "I just mean… yeah. Two years is a long time.”
Bakugou crushed the empty beer can slowly, methodically, watching the aluminium crack under his fingers. “Don’t do that. That damn way you speak, stop it.”
Kirishima finally looked over at him. Bakugou could feel it; that particular look that Kirishima had in his eyes, like being stood in a patch of sunlight. Warm and steady and a little too much to look at directly.
"Okay," Kirishima said.
"Don't ‘okay’ me in that tone.”
"What tone?"
"That ‘I’m-being-patient-with-you’ tone. I hate it."
"You hate everything."
"I hate that specifically."
Kirishima was quiet for a moment. Then, very gently: "You're allowed to be sad about it, man. You’re not weak for having feelings. I’ve always told you that.”
Bakugou said nothing. Below them, the city kept moving. Cars, pedestrians, the distant sound of a siren that was someone else's problem tonight. He was tired. So tired. The kind of tiredness that came after having fought with your mind, rather than your body. The kind with no outlet, left to squeeze and fill to the brim.
"I don't know what I feel," he admitted to the city, rather than to Kirishima. "I thought I did. I thought it was..." He stopped. “Fuck, whatever. It doesn't matter what I thought."
"It does matter.” Kirishima said, stern and immediate. Bakugou didn't have an answer to that.
By now, the sun has finished setting. The city lit up instead, beautiful in the way that cities were. Bakugou had always found them somehow comforting. That there was so much of it; an endless sea of life that kept moving, regardless of which direction his thoughts or feelings would take at any point in time.
"Thanks.” he said. It cost him nothing, so he just said it.
Kirishima smiled. Bakugou could hear it somehow, even without looking. "Anytime."