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The last rays of the summer sun glisten against the blue-white waves, crystal clear with a slightly pungent sparkle of seafoam breaking the ocean’s tide. Kirishima dangles his feet off the wooden dock edge and feels the cold lapping up to his knees, leaning back on his palms as his head swivels left, right, searching with poorly concealed intent. On a quiet Sunday afternoon like this one, especially still in their small seaside town, Bakugo’s boisterous voice is both hard to miss and what Kirishima misses most. Thankfully, it doesn’t take long for the sound of clicking bicycle spokes to travel over the humid air and Kirishima’s leaping off his backyard dock and sprinting into the house, wet footprints haphazardly slapping against the ceramic tile as he meets his visitor in the entryway.
“Bakugo! You’re here!”
“Obviously. You invited me, why wouldn’t I come?”
He’s dressed in a black tanktop and cargo shorts a couple sizes too wide for his frame, and as he leans his bike against the front of the house his biceps bulge and stretch and Kirishima watches them with a mix of admiration and adoration.
“Have you been working out?”
“‘Course. I’m gonna be the best on the wrestling team at Kyodai, so I can’t skip out on conditioning.”
“So manly!” Kirishima grins as he holds the front door open, waving Bakugo through. “What do you wanna do today? Fish? Or play Brawl? We can also–”
“Fishing’s fine.”
They get set up on the dock where Kirishima’d just been sitting, now with buckets of feed plopped onto the wood and their own flimsy fishing poles tucked between their calloused hands. This scene is familiar; Kirishima has watched Bakugo’s idly petulant face from the corner of his eye just like this for the past ten, fifteen years, though maybe their fishing poles were even smaller and flimsier back then and their toes didn’t quite reach into the cool blue water as they do now. Usually the view is comforting, nostalgic, a promise of consistency despite the way they’ve both changed over the years, but this summer is different.
Bakugo seems to feel the same way, catching Kirishima’s unsteady gaze before stating, “I hate that worried look you’ve got going on. Knock it off.”
“Hey, you feel it too, though.” Kirishima knocks his shoulder into Bakugo’s and Bakugo shoves him back with a tsk, reaching over to replace the bait on his string as he speaks.
“What’re you so worried about anyway? ‘S not like I’m leaving the country or anything.”
“Well, we won’t be together anymore, and that’s unusual for us, you know? I’m used to doing everything with you. Who am I gonna hike with?”
“You’ll make friends.”
“But they won’t be you,” Kirishima sighs. The words spill from him easily, loose lips a condition he’d come to develop around Bakugo in their lifelong friendship, but Bakugo’s insight means his haphazard half-confession isn’t able to slip away with the receding tide.
“Why do you care if it's me?”
“Uh, ah,” Kirishima bumbles, eyes darting between the expansive horizon and Bakugo’s expressionless face as he casts the line out again, the plop sound distantly echoing in Kirishima’s scrambling mind, “well, because you’re my best friend and we have a lot of fun together?”
“Is that so?”
No, that’s not it, and Kirishima knows it. When university acceptances came rolling in and their futures suddenly forked into two separate directions, two separate worlds a three hour train ride and four-hundred and fifty kilometers apart from one another, a distance unimaginable compared to the five houses down the road they’d grown accustomed to since grade school, Kirishima felt a twist in his heart that he felt compelled to hide from Bakugo. Realizing the end to their idyllic Ine days was gut wrenching and he’d tried to excuse it as a normal fear of the unknown, but that wasn’t like him, someone who’d been optimistic and headstrong ever since he’d dyed his hair unapologetically red four years ago, so now Kirishima takes Bakugo’s question as one last shot at being honest.
“Sorry, Bakugo, you’re right. It’s not that. Actually, can I tell you something important?”
Bakugo places his rod down by his side and folds his legs up onto the dock, criss-crossed beneath him as he faces Kirishima, who mirrors his pose, except with a pair of stressed hands clenched tight into the fabric of his shorts. The sticky-salty sea air sits thick on Kirishima’s tongue but he pushes forward anyway.
“I like you, Bakugo. I’m not super sure when I started feeling this way but I just know I do, and I know that because I don’t want to be apart from you.”
Like a fluorescent lure yanked along a taut string, Kirishima’s face burns bright as he waits earnestly for a bite, a reaction. His fingers dig deeper wrinkles into his pants.
Finally, Bakugo says, “I know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah, I already knew. I was waiting for you to say it.” His expression is smug, the same one that crops up whenever he beats Kirishima in a kayak race across the marina or after Kirishima compliments his cooking, and it signals Kirishima to breathe because it means Bakugo’s not upset with him for the abrupt confession.
“So?”
“So what?”
Bakugo goes back to casting his line and Kirishima’s brows furrow at the flippancy.
“Hey, I just confessed. Give me something.”
“You’re the one who couldn’t do it until I dragged it out of you, so quit complaining.”
“Don’t get mad at me! Confessing’s hard, you try it!”
“Fine! Watch this!”
With all his typical drama and flair, but still careful enough to not break the metal reel, Bakugo slams his rod down beside him and stands up, pointing a flagrant finger down into Kirishima’s bewildered face.
“Listen up, ‘cause I’m only gonna say this once. I accept your confession. I don’t go around accepting confessions from people I don’t like, so that means I like you, too, and I hope that stupid look on your face means you heard me loud and clear because this is the first, and the last time, I’ll tell you some shit like this ever again.”
“Bakugo! Wait, one more time, please!” Kirishima looks up at him with wide eyes, upturned eyebrows, and pleading hands clasped together, and Bakugo’s face scrunches up into an illegible expression that gives Kirishima hope. “Just once!”
“Fine! If you need to hear it that badly, then, I like you, Kiri–”
Kirishima yanks Bakugo down by his extended forearm and they collide into a mess on the springy wood, wet and whittled down from all the years they’ve spent sundrying their freshly scaled mackerel and dangling their feet off the ledge of this little attached dock, and when their lips smash together mid-collision, Kirishima feels the corners of Bakugo’s mouth turn up ever so slightly against his own massive, ear-to-ear grin and their first kiss is ultimately awkward, thin, somewhat misaligned because they’re both too busy smiling to focus on slotting their lips together properly and that’s perfectly fine with Kirishima, who’s just happy to have Bakugo in his arms like this, sun warming the back of his blonde hair as Kirishima runs a hand through the coarse strands and feels the satisfyingly solid weight on his chest, real and close, and the feelings of nostalgia, comfort, and a promise of things that will always stay the same come flowing back to him, carried along by the pervasive seafoam scent and the ever-shifting currents rocking steadily beneath them.