Chapter Text
By the time Kirishima understood that the ceiling was coming down, there was no longer enough time to get out from beneath it.
There were, afterward, a number of people who would tell him that he had been lucky. The word appeared in the preliminary incident report and then again, with the bright thoughtlessness peculiar to morning television, beneath a photograph of him being led through a barricade with half his costume torn open at the ribs. Red Riot Narrowly Escapes Serious Injury in Shinjuku Collapse. Lucky, as though luck had been standing beside him in that ruined corridor, shouldering its share of the concrete. Lucky, as though the difference between catastrophe and an ordinary Tuesday had not been measured in centimetres and seconds and the increasingly treacherous strength of his own body. But before all that, before the hospital and the rain and Bakugou's car idling beneath the yellow lamps of the emergency entrance, there was only the building. It had been a narrow, ugly thing wedged between newer developments, six stories of offices over a row of shops, built during one of those decades when Tokyo seemed to have been constructed in a hurry and with the vague assumption that nothing terrible would ever happen there. Someone attempting to rob a pharmacy had panicked when cornered by a sidekick from a neighbouring agency. His quirk, which converted sharp increases in blood pressure into concussive waves, had done what panic quirks so often did: transformed a stupid crime into a disaster. The villain had been unconscious in police custody for almost fifteen minutes by the time Kirishima arrived. The building, unfortunately, had not received the news that the danger was over. There were twenty-three people inside. Kirishima learned this while pulling on his gloves. Within twelve minutes there were nine. Then six. Then two. He had been a professional hero for long enough that emergencies had ceased to resemble the ones he remembered imagining at sixteen. There was rarely music to them, rarely the grand moral clarity that had filled the exercises at U.A. Mostly there was noise. Dust. People shouting contradictory information. Radios failing at inconvenient moments. Firefighters sweating through their collars. Blood where there ought not to be blood. Somebody's abandoned handbag beneath a chair. A phone ringing over and over in a room where nobody could answer it.
And there was waiting.
That was the part no one put in movies: the terrible amount of waiting required to save someone. Waiting for engineers. Waiting for the gas to be shut off. Waiting for a section of flooring to be declared stable enough that you could risk putting another human being on it. At twenty-five Kirishima was good at waiting. He was better at knowing when not to.
“Not that way.”
The young hero beside him stopped with one foot already raised toward the stairwell. Kirishima had forgotten his name. He felt bad about that. The kid couldn't have been more than seventeen, with a navy costume still clean enough to suggest that he'd received his license recently, and there was something in his expression Kirishima remembered intimately: the frantic desire to be useful before somebody discovered that you didn't know what you were doing.
“Sir?”
Kirishima pointed. A pale fracture ran diagonally from the doorframe toward the ceiling. It was almost invisible beneath the plaster dust.
“Load shifted.”
The kid stared.
“Back up.”
They had scarcely moved when the stairwell folded inward with a tremendous cracking roar, the landing disappearing into a grey avalanche of concrete and steel. The young hero went white. Kirishima clapped him once on the shoulder.
“Good instincts getting this far. Now go help evacuation on the west side.”
The relief on the boy's face embarrassed him somehow.
“Yes, sir.”
Sir.
Kirishima watched him disappear and had the strange, fleeting thought that there had been a time when people older than him had seemed to know everything. Then someone shouted from farther inside, and he forgot about it.
The last two civilians had been found beneath what remained of a dental office on the second floor: a man in his thirties and his son. The father had taken the worst of the collapse. His left leg was pinned, and there was enough blood soaked into the knee of his trousers that Kirishima knew before reaching him that walking out would not be an option. The boy was tucked beneath his father's arm. Seven, perhaps. Eight at most. There was dust in his eyelashes and a shallow cut beneath his chin. He had been crying at some point but wasn't anymore, which Kirishima found considerably more alarming. Children who screamed could be comforted. Children who became very quiet had often traveled somewhere inside themselves that was harder to reach. Kirishima lowered himself carefully through the debris. The boy watched him. Then his eyes widened.
“Red Riot?”
There it was. Kirishima had seen it hundreds of times and still never quite knew what to do with it: that sudden shift in a child's face when the costume became recognisable, when the blood and dust ceased, for a moment, to matter. Hope was too beautiful a word for it. Expectation, perhaps. The absolute certainty children possessed that adults dressed like heroes could not possibly fail them.
“Hey, buddy.”
The boy's mouth trembled. He was wearing a red backpack, Kirishima noticed. Cheap synthetic material, one strap torn almost through. On the front was an old illustration of Red Riot in his first professional costume, all teeth and ridiculous hair. Kirishima remembered approving that design. He had been twenty. Twenty seemed very young now.
“Dad can't move.”
“I know.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
There were questions heroes learned not to answer. Kirishima smiled anyway.
“We're getting both of you out.”
The boy reached for him. Small fingers closed around the exposed skin between Kirishima's glove and wrist with such confidence that something painful and familiar tightened behind his sternum. Little boys loved Red Riot. Nobody had warned him about that. Girls did too, certainly, and teenagers and grown men and elderly women who occasionally pinched his cheek at public events, but there was something particular about boys between six and twelve. They arrived at agency meet-and-greets with their hair sprayed red and their fists clenched determinedly at their sides. They showed him scraped knees. They asked whether crying after getting hurt meant they weren't brave. Once, a five-year-old had solemnly informed him that he ate broccoli now because Red Riot probably did. Kirishima had thought about that child every time he left broccoli uneaten on his own plate for the next three months.
He lifted the boy first. The kid wrapped both arms around his neck.
“Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Because I'm ugly up close.”
The boy made a startled little noise that might have been a laugh. Kirishima carried him toward the opening. Behind him, the building groaned. Not loudly. That was what frightened him. There were sounds you learned. Steel screamed. Concrete cracked. Timber popped and complained. But sometimes a building about to fall made a sound almost like a sigh.
Kirishima stopped. The rescue worker reaching for the child saw his face.
“What?”
“Take him.”
Something shifted overhead. The boy tightened his arms. Kirishima pulled him loose, handed him across and turned back. The father was still inside. There was no decision involved. People later liked to ask heroes about decisions. What were you thinking when you went back? Were you afraid? Did you consider the danger? Kirishima had never known how to answer. He went back because there was a man inside. That was all. He had just reached him when the ceiling came down. For one bewildering second the world became white with dust. Then weight. His quirk snapped across his body by instinct, hardening skin and muscle an instant before the first slab struck his shoulder. The force drove him down hard enough that his knee shattered tile beneath it. Something else came down across his back. He heard rather than felt the impact. His arms locked. The father screamed beneath him.
“Stay down!”
Another impact. Kirishima tasted blood.
His body had become a pillar wedged between floor and ruin, one hand braced against a buckled support, his back bowed beneath several hundred kilograms of debris that had no business being held by a human body. He knew his limits. That was another thing adulthood had given him. At sixteen, limits had been insults. At twenty-five they were measurements: minutes of maximum hardening, accumulated stress, hydration, temperature, previous injuries, angles of impact. He knew precisely what the trembling beginning in his left arm meant. He knew the hot needle beneath his ribs. He knew the faint crystalline cracking along his shoulder was the outer layer of his hardening beginning to fracture.
“Red Riot?”
The father.
Kirishima forced air back into his lungs.
“Still here.”
He heard voices beyond the debris. Someone shouting. Then, beneath everything else, a sound so familiar that his body recognised it before his mind did.
An explosion.
Kirishima shut his eyes briefly. Of course. There were footsteps in the corridor, quick and heavy, and then Bakugou appeared through the settling dust. He looked furious. Not wild. Not panicked. Kirishima had known Bakugou for nearly ten years and understood the difference better than most people did. Anger loosened him somehow, made him louder, more expansive; fear did the opposite. Fear reduced Bakugou to something cold and exact. His eyes moved once over Kirishima. Then he turned toward the rescue crew. What followed happened quickly. Instructions. Measurements. A series of small explosions placed with astonishing precision along the fractured concrete. Bakugou had become, over the years, frighteningly economical with his quirk; there was none of the enormous theatrical violence people associated with Dynamight when he was seventeen. Every blast had a purpose. Every movement anticipated the next.
Number Five.
Kirishima thought it stupidly, distantly, while his arms shook. Then the weight shifted.
“Now.”
Kirishima moved.
The father came free. Hands reached through the opening and dragged him toward safety. Only then did Kirishima allow the hardening to fall away. The pain arrived all at once. His knees buckled, but Bakugou caught him before he could fall. An arm went around his waist and Kirishima sucked in a breath so violently that Bakugou released him at once. For a second neither spoke. There was blood on Bakugou's hand. Kirishima looked at it. Then down at himself. The side of his costume had been torn open. Beneath it was a cut he couldn't properly see, dark blood already soaking into the fabric.
“Huh,” he said.
Bakugou's eyes lifted.
“That's probably not good.”
“Brilliant fucking observation.”
Kirishima laughed. It hurt terribly. Bakugou didn't laugh at all.
—
The hospital smelled of disinfectant, vending-machine coffee and the strange overheated air that seemed to belong exclusively to medical buildings. He had suffered two cracked ribs. A third badly bruised. A strained shoulder. Seven stitches. Quirk exhaustion. And four days without active duty, minimum. Kirishima considered this last injury the most serious. By the time the doctor left, night had fallen beyond the narrow window. Kirishima sat on the edge of the examination bed attempting to pull his shirt over his head one-handed while Bakugou watched from a plastic chair in the corner with the expression of someone observing an animal repeatedly walk into glass.
“What?”
“You're an idiot.”
“I haven't even done anything.”
“You can't lift your arm.”
“I can.”
Kirishima lifted it. Pain flashed hot through his shoulder and, despite himself, his face tightened. Bakugou stared as Kirishima, begrudgingly, lowered his arm.
“Okay, you were right.”
“I’m always right.”
Kirishima laughed again, carefully this time.
In the end Bakugou had to help him with the shirt. Neither mentioned it. They had known each other too long for embarrassment over things like this. Bakugou had seen him unconscious, concussed, vomiting, bleeding, feverish, drunk, half-dressed and once completely naked after an unfortunate incident involving an onsen door and Kaminari's inability to understand simple instructions. Kirishima had returned the favour in almost every category. Still, there was something peculiarly intimate in the quiet way Bakugou pulled the fabric down over his injured side, knuckles brushing Kirishima's ribs, careful despite the irritation carved into his mouth. Kirishima looked at the crown of his head.
“You know, you'd make a terrible nurse.”
“Die.”
“See? Horrible bedside manner.”
Bakugou yanked the hem down.
“Ow.”
“Good.”
—
It was raining when they reached the parking garage. Not much. A fine silver mist blowing through the open sides of the structure, making halos around the fluorescent lights. Bakugou did not ask whether Kirishima needed a ride. Kirishima did not ask for one. They simply walked toward the car. It was a dark, expensive thing Bakugou maintained obsessively while insisting he did not care about cars. Kirishima had heard this claim enough times that he no longer bothered pointing out the contradiction. He opened the passenger door and found, in the usual disorder of familiar objects, the evidence of his own repeated presence: his phone cable in the centre console, an old sweatshirt balled on the back seat, two protein bars he liked tucked into the door, a pair of sunglasses he had been looking for since May.
He sat. The movement pulled at his ribs.
“Fuck.”
Bakugou shut his own door.
“Hospital's still right there if you wanna go back and admit you're injured.”
“I'm fine.”
Kirishima reached for the seat belt and discovered immediately that twisting was a terrible idea. He tried again. Bakugou watched him try and fail.
“Stop it.”
“I've got it.”
“You clearly fucking don't.”
Bakugou leaned across him. The motion was so ordinary that Kirishima thought nothing of it until suddenly Bakugou was close, one arm crossing his chest, his face near Kirishima's shoulder. He smelled like smoke beneath hospital soap, the familiar scorched scent of nitroglycerin sweat clinging faintly to his clothes.
Click.
The belt settled across Kirishima's chest. Bakugou withdrew.
“You’re pathetic.”
Kirishima looked at him.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Walk home.”
“But you already buckled me in.”
Bakugou started the engine.
“Fuck off.”
They were halfway down the ramp when Bakugou asked if he'd eaten. Kirishima realised he hadn’t. Twenty minutes later they were sitting opposite one another in a small yakiniku place they had been going to for years, the kind with scratched wooden booths and permanently fogged windows, where the staff recognised Bakugou and Kirishima without appearing particularly impressed by either of them. It was late. Only three other tables were occupied. The grill hissed between them. Because Kirishima couldn't reach comfortably, Bakugou cooked. This was accompanied by considerable complaining.
Kirishima watched him turn a piece of beef.
“You know they made a cologne for you.”
Bakugou's chopsticks stopped.
“What?”
“The Dynamight one.”
A slow, terrible suspicion entered Bakugou's face.
“You bought it.”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Kirishima grinned.
“What do you think it smells like?”
“I don't give a shit.”
“Gunpowder?”
“Eat.”
“Caramel?”
“I'll leave.”
“Burnt sugar?”
Bakugou dropped meat onto his plate with unnecessary force.
“Shut the hell up.”
“Definitely anger.”
“I'm going to kill you.”
Kirishima began laughing. Bakugou tried not to. Kirishima saw him try: the tightening mouth, the quick downward glance, the little twitch at one corner. That only made Kirishima laugh harder, which hurt his ribs and made him clutch his side, which prompted Bakugou to call him an idiot, and somehow that did it.
Bakugou laughed. It was brief and rough and unexpectedly warm.
Kirishima went quiet. There was nothing remarkable about it. He had heard Bakugou laugh before. Of course he had. Ten years contained thousands of laughs, surely; drunken ones and cruel ones and incredulous ones, the barking laugh Bakugou gave when Todoroki said something unintentionally obscene, the quieter one Kirishima sometimes heard when Kaminari was being particularly stupid. Still, something about this one caught him. Perhaps it was the hour. Perhaps the medication. Perhaps simply that Bakugou's face looked different when he laughed properly, younger without becoming young, the severity around his eyes disappearing for a moment.
“You've got a nice laugh, Bakugou.”
The laugh vanished instantly.
“What?”
Kirishima smiled.
“Your laugh.”
“What about it?”
“It's nice.”
Bakugou stared at him as though Kirishima had begun speaking another language. Kirishima, increasingly entertained, leaned back.
“Like summer rain.”
Silence followed. Deafening in the warmth of the restaurant.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I don't know.”
“You said it.”
“It sounded good in my head.”
The meat struck Kirishima directly in the cheek.
For a moment he sat in astonishment. Then he looked down at the expensive strip of beef now lying beside his elbow.
“You can't waste meat!”
“I'd waste the whole fucking cow if it'd shut you up.”
Kirishima laughed until his ribs protested. And when he looked up again, Bakugou was glaring furiously at the grill. The tips of his ears had gone pink. Kirishima blinked. He supposed he had embarrassed him. The discovery delighted him disproportionately. He stored it away for future use. The conversation wandered afterward, as conversations between people who have known one another for a decade tend to do, moving without structure from an advertisement they'd both hated to agency paperwork to a mutual acquaintance's disastrous haircut. Bakugou told him about a sidekick who had filed three reports incorrectly. Kirishima complained about the new coffee machine at his agency. Nothing mattered. That was the luxury of it. Eventually the food disappeared and the grill quieted.
And Bakugou said, without looking up, “You've gotta stop doing that shit.”
Kirishima knew what he meant. Still, he asked. Bakugou's chopsticks rested beside his plate.
“You knew that ceiling was going.”
“There were people under it.”
“I know.”
“What did you want me to do?”
Bakugou looked at him then. For once, there was no immediate answer.
“I don't fucking know.”
That silenced Kirishima more effectively than anger could have. Bakugou always knew. Or behaved as though he did. He looked tired suddenly. There was dried blood near his temple that Kirishima had not noticed before, and soot still caught along his hairline.
“Just don't act like an idiot and get yourself killed.”
The restaurant seemed very quiet all of a sudden. Kirishima looked at him. Something moved uneasily beneath his ribs, separate from the injury. He understood, with a peculiar delayed clarity, that Bakugou had been frightened today. Of course he had. They were best friends. Kirishima would have been terrified if their positions had been reversed. There was nothing remarkable about that.
“Okay,” he said.
Bakugou's eyes remained on him.
“I'll try.”
“You won't.”
“I'll try to try.”
“That's not a thing.”
“It is now.”
Bakugou rolled his eyes. And just like that the strange thing between them disappeared.
Mostly.
—
The rain had strengthened while they ate. It whispered over the roof of the car and streamed in thin crooked lines across the windshield, Tokyo beyond it dissolving into red taillights and wet neon. Kirishima was halfway home when he remembered. He laughed. Bakugou glanced sideways.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
Kirishima looked out the window, smiling.
“Summer rain.”
“I swear to fucking God.”
The tips of Bakugou's ears turned pink again. Kirishima laughed harder.
After that they fell quiet. The medication had begun pulling heavily at him, softening the edges of everything. He rested his head against the cool window and watched buildings pass. He had spent an astonishing amount of his adult life in this seat. The realisation came without significance. He couldn't remember when Bakugou had begun driving him everywhere. There had never been a conversation about it. No arrangement. At some point there had simply begun appearing messages on Kirishima's phone.
Outside.
Hurry up.
You coming or what?
And Kirishima would go downstairs. After patrols. After parties. After Commission dinners. After his mother's birthday. Once at four in the morning after Kirishima's flight from Osaka had been delayed six hours and Bakugou had appeared at arrivals furious about it as though Kirishima personally controlled aviation. The passenger seat had accumulated him gradually. His charger. His sweatshirt. His sunglasses. His body asleep against the window. His laughter. Years of it. Kirishima closed his eyes.
It was nice, he thought. Having someone who came to get you.
Bakugou pulled up outside his building shortly before midnight. Kirishima reached for the door.
“Oi.”
He turned.
“You're not working tomorrow.”
Kirishima sighed.
“I've got stuff to do.”
“Delegate.”
“I hate delegating.”
“That’s because you're a control freak.”
Kirishima stared at him.
“You cannot possibly be saying that to me.”
“Stay home.”
“Bossy.”
Bakugou's expression suggested murder. Kirishima only smiled at him. Then, because the day had been long and the medication had made him softer than usual, he said, “Thanks.”
Bakugou's hand paused on the steering wheel.
“For what?”
Kirishima could have listed it. Instead, he shrugged carefully.
“You know.”
Bakugou looked through the windshield. Rain slid silver over the glass.
“Whatever.”
Kirishima opened the door. He had almost reached the lobby when he glanced back. The car was still there. Of course it was. Bakugou always waited until he got inside. Kirishima lifted one hand. The headlights flashed once before disappearing down the road.
Inside the elevator, his phone buzzed.
BAKUGOU:
Take the fucking meds.
Kirishima smiled at the screen.
KIRISHIMA:
goodnight summer rain
The answer arrived before the elevator reached his floor.
BAKUGOU:
I'm blocking you.
Kirishima laughed. His ribs hurt when he did, but not enough to stop him.
Later, standing alone in the darkened kitchen of his apartment with a glass of water in one hand and his medication in the other, he could hear the rain against the windows, gentle and persistent, and for no particular reason he thought again of Bakugou bent over the grill, the tips of his ears inexplicably pink. He smiled to himself. Then swallowed the pills and went to bed. By morning, he had almost forgotten about it.