Chapter Text
Katsuki defines his life through victories coming hand-in-hand with defeats.
Case A: surviving a fall into a shallow creek at age six, but Deku still making it sound like he’d needed help. Case B: winning a sports tournament in high school, but only because Todoroki had been too distracted to give it his all. Case C: being accepted into a chemistry research facility shortly after freshman year, but getting stuck with an infuriating advisor. He can never win, when he puts it in those terms—a constant balanced scale act that never stops bothering him with bitter memories of everyone involved.
It’s complicated, when everything else is hard-wired for success.
Summer that year comes as a push-and-pull event.
In late July, he makes a breakthrough with the research lab he’s been assigned to, just before the first term ends. He gets a week to relish in the victory—contributing to research before you’d even graduated, huh—to relish in Jeanist scheduling their attendance to the September conference, to relish in everyone’s wow, did you hear about Bakugou, to relish in being on TV for something unrelated to the downtown incident in middle school. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard from the moment he’d been able to read complicated kanji, but there’s a sense of unconquerable self-satisfaction in being rightfully recognized for something he’d excelled at.
But in the last week of July, someone unidentified breaks into Jeanist’s office, leaving behind a mess on the desk and no fingerprints. Within the next two hours, all the data is wiped from the computers, all the folders shredded. Katsuki’s old lab is cleared out, and he’s coaxed into promising the police not to write down any of the research. He’s not stupid, and he tells Jeanist so, and that had been that.
Except his neighbor reports that someone was trying to get into your place this morning, Bakugou, and Katsuki has to argue with the building owner to have the lock changed. He moves the bed, despite himself, as far from the studio apartment’s door as possible.
He stopped opening his windows, that July.
But summer that year sharpens into focus in the high degrees, bearable cloudy afternoons one day and sweltering heat the next morning. Summer that year reinstates wariness that Katsuki had only known in middle school, and summer that year brings too many packets of instant ramen in the trash.
Summer that year took Katsuki’s rightful victory, and screwed it over in less than a minute.
He’d done the math—twenty seconds for the knocks on the door to exhaust themselves, ten seconds for him to grumpily find his way out of his bed at 3AM, five seconds for him to unlock and open it, and all the rest of it for the red-headed fucker standing in the hall to turn around, smile, wave—
And say: "Hi. I’m Kirishima. I’ll be living here from now on."
Summer that year brought Kirishima Eijirou in Crocs and a Hawaiian Shirt.
┉
Katsuki is hard-pressed to buy any of this.
He’s always taken pride in believing that U.A is a myth—kind of like an FBI sector made up specifically for a crime TV show, or something to make the newest All Might movie flow more smoothly. They don’t actually have access to Pentagon records, and they don’t actually deploy undercover agents to stop black market art theft. Katsuki is smart, and he believes that if the Japanese government really had a special unit that dealt with weird cases, they wouldn’t advertise it and allow it to be talked about as much as U.A had been in his high school.
Hell, Deku had wanted to get in when they were ten. Katsuki had wanted to punch him for being so dumbly idealistic.
But there are two people in his apartment trying to prove that theory wrong. One had handed him a business card when he’d called bullshit on their act—and Katsuki wants to point out that it isn’t as if you couldn’t forge that sort of shit, no matter how cleanly printed the name Yaoyorozu Momo is on the white surface.
"Get out of my house or I’ll kill you," he says, crossing his legs. If he could burn anything in his hands at will, the card would be ashes by now. "Then you’ll be fucking dead."
"Well, yeah," Hawaiian Shirt calls cheerfully from the kitchen. "Because you’ll have killed us. Even though we’re here to make sure no one kills you."
His red spikes are annoying, a sorry excuse for hair that Katsuki’s research advisor would have comb-wrestled into submission if given the chance, and it makes him, by extension, annoying. That, and the fact that he’s sorting through Katsuki’s refrigerator, humming as he pulls out a carton of milk.
"Hey," he barks, and he doesn’t care how harsh he sounds. He’s never cared. "I’m gonna—"
"Bakugou," Yaoyorozu says, not at all fazed. She’s wearing a full suit, something straight out of Men in Black, and it’s somehow offensive. "We’re not here to play around."
"Good, because neither am I," Katsuki hisses. "So get the fuck out of my house."
"What do you not understand," Yaoyorozu continues, staring ahead so steadily it has to be an act, "about the fact that you’re in danger of being kidnapped?"
"Or worse," Milk Thief chimes in. "Killed."
"Fuck you," Katsuki intones.
He’d gotten away with a lot of things in high school—mostly because he’d kept his grades up and stayed away from the branded troublemakers—but he can’t think of any that would warrant a kidnapping attempt. He’s been on TV more than once, the first time during a hostage incident downtown and the rest when he’d been recognized for his work as a college freshman, but he hadn’t gone out daring people to—
Okay. He had gone out to dare someone, probably, at some point.
Threats and taunts on live television are still, however, not enough reason for someone to need a full-time bodyguard from an elite government unit. The whole situation feels overblown and unnecessary when Katsuki’s of the sound opinion that he doesn’t need protecting, much less from a man-child with spiked hair currently drinking milk in his kitchen at three in the fucking morning.
Shitty Hair chugs loudly, irreverent gulping in direct contrast to Yaoyorozu’s calm face. He swallows—somehow that, too, looks excessively cheerful—and says, "Something about your research?"
Katsuki is pretty sure he hadn’t voiced his thoughts. He scowls without turning to look into the kitchen. "What about it?"
"You’re helping out on a lab study, yes? On nitroglycerin?" Yaoyorozu says, putting her hands together on her lap. There’s something unsettling about her level-headedness, and, like most things and most people, it rubs Katsuki the wrong way. "It’s a chemical often used in medical research. Equally so in military engineering."
"I’m aware," Katsuki tells her flatly, scowl deepening. "Why does it fucking matter?"
"Because whatever your advisor is doing research on," Yaoyorozu continues, wincing a tiny fraction at the curse, "is something that someone out there very much wants."
"Like I could care less."
And he couldn’t. He doesn’t care. But it makes sense—the break-ins, both attempted and successful, Jeanist’s apprehensive order to clear the data, the sense of hurry for the September conference to come. It makes sense, but something about it makes Katsuki feel wronged instead of flattered by whatever attention the research is getting.
"Bakugou, dude." There’s a sudden weight beside him, and when Katsuki looks up, it’s the redhead, having taken his milk to the couch. He feels a forehead vein twitch. "We’re serious. You’re in trouble, and you being in trouble means trouble for us."
More than anything, he doesn’t like the implication that he needs protecting. It reminds him of Deku, and of a hand outstretched towards him, eyes squinted in pity, when he hadn’t fucking needed it.
Katsuki wants to throw the milk onto the guy’s face. "You’re trouble for me, shithead."
"Well, you know," Crocs says. "There’s always the option of putting you under government custody. But—" And he drags out the syllable, every second of it even more annoying than the last. "You have a degree to finish, don’t you, buddy?"
"So?" Katsuki says, glaring down at the glass of milk. "What’s your point, Shitty Hair?"
"Kirishima," he corrects, without missing a beat. "My point is, if you want to continue on with your life despite the target sign on your back, then you’re stuck with me, man. Just until the conference, or whatever."
"I’d rather fucking die," Katsuki tells him, heartfelt.
"That won’t do." Yaoyorozu doesn’t flinch, this time, standing up like her business here is done. "The bottom line of this is that you—and your research—are in danger of falling into the wrong hands," she says, adjusting the front of her blazer. "It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen."
Something about the way she says that settles in Katsuki wrong, too, like water coughed out after being swallowed down the wrong tube, or sitting without raising his feet on anything. It doesn’t fit, but she doesn’t sound like she’s trying to trick him anymore—except that, too, is somehow offensive.
"I don’t need protecting," he grinds out.
"Sure, you’re like a living weapon, with all this taken into account," says—says Kirishima, Katsuki’s head supplies, apparently running out of energy to come up with anything else. There’s only so much stupidity a person can take before even the brain cells give up. "Either way, I’m with you now, buddy."
He doesn’t even have to try to tick him off. Katsuki growls. "So, then, what, he’s going to shadow me every time I leave the house?"
"No, actually," Kirishima sits straighter, beaming, and Katsuki can already tell it’s going to be bullshit coming out of that mouth, "I told you. I’ll be living here from now on."
Complete and utter bullshit. "Says who?"
"Protective custody," Yaoyorozu reminds him.
"I’d. Rather. Fucking. Die."
Kirisihima laughs like he’d just heard a good joke. "Yeah, no can do, we need to monitor you 24/7."
Yaoyorozu’s face does something that hints at a ghost smile, the fucker, and says, "Kirishima’s one of our best."
"Yeah? What’s he fucking wearing, then?"
Kirishima shrugs. "It helps me blend in."
That kind of reasoning is so stupid—so useless and irrational—that Katsuki turns to glare at him, full-force. He doesn’t know how to dignify something so illogical with a response, and he tells him. "This is a fucking set-up," he adds. "If Jeanist sent both of you to make me get my shit together, drink my milk, whatever, call me properly warned, shit, I don’t care, but—"
Not for the first time, Yaoyorozu sighs. "I assure you we’re telling the truth, Bakugou. We have only your safety in mind," she says, and it sounds like she’s reading the words off a placard. "We’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe while we continue investigating what they want with you. For that to happen, you’d have to cooperate with us as well."
Katsuki raises an eyebrow. "If I say no?"
"Ah." Kirishima whistles. "Wouldn’t advise that. U.A takes their tasks seriously."
Their, he says, like he’s not part of them. Katsuki snorts.
"We do." Yaoyorozu nods, as if saying so will seal the deal. "It’s easier, this way, and we’d very much like you to keep going on with your life as it was."
"Except now," Katsuki mutters, making a face at the empty glass and barely containing the urge to throw it in an arc to the kitchen sink. "There’s this."
"There’s this," Kirishima agrees.
He might as well have dug his grave himself, Katsuki will think later, as the two of them set up basic ground rules. No one else can know why he’s living here, she will say, and he’ll think, fuck this. You can pretend I’m a high school friend, Kirishima will suggest, and he’ll say, fuck you.
But he’s never one to blame himself for much when someone else is available, so after Yaoyorozu leaves, he turns to Kirishima.
Kirishima who only grins up at him, feet already up on the coffee table and channel-surfing through crap 4AM shows.
"So where am I sleeping, roomie?"
"The fucking couch," Katsuki hisses.
┉
Katsuki wakes up to obnoxious singing.
He can’t make out the lyrics—doesn’t want to make out the lyrics—but it sounds ridiculously upbeat, the kind of cheerful love songs that Uraraka’s defensive about being rock and not pop.
The song is almost as annoying as the sound of a freeloader taking advantage of his bathroom.
The water shuts off abruptly, and Kirishima is still singing—loudly—to himself above the telltale sounds of things being moved around. "This is how it starts," he’s fucking crooning, loud enough to be heard through the thin walls of probably the entire building. "With a knock, knock, knock against my heart—"
Something clatters to the ground, and Katsuki hears Kirishima chuckle to himself.
Katsuki’s out of his bed in seconds, almost tripping on his own sheets as he goes to pound on the bathroom door. It opens immediately, and Kirishima sticks his head out, hair already sticking up and smile annoyingly bright for ten in the morning.
"Mornin’, Bakugou."
"Get the hell out of my bathroom."
"Sure thing," Kirishima chirps, and everything is so annoying—the way he reaches to adjust a second towel on the rack, the way he kicks closed the bottom sink cupboard, the way he grins as he inches past Katsuki and out of the bathroom. "Oh, Bakugou, you have cute bedhead."
Katsuki slams the bathroom door right on his face.
It’s stupid—stupid because it’s annoying enough when it’s his parents making themselves at home in his apartment, and it’s stupid because having someone he’s only met hours before seem so comfortable in his home is borderline insulting.
But his torment has no end, because when he gets out, hair dripping because he’d been too angry to towel it dry properly, Kirishima’s perched on a kitchen island stool, looking expectant. There’s breakfast utensils arranged in front of him and the stool across, but all that’s on the table is a milk carton.
Katsuki irritably pours himself a glass. "You’re fucking great at this."
"I’m not much of a cook." Kirishima looks sheepish, and it doesn’t particularly match the rest of him—he’s like an oversized guard dog trying for a puppy dog look, eyes wide and bottom lip a little jutted out. "Not good at—house stuff."
Katsuki grunts. "Are you good at anything?"
"Of course!" He’d meant it as a jab, but Kirishima brightens, nodding as he goes for the milk. "They wouldn’t give me to you if I couldn’t protect you, dude. I’m really good at that."
"I don’t need protecting," Katsuki grits out. "If that’s all you’re here for, you can fucking leave."
"I’m good with all kinds of people," Kirishima continues, like he hadn’t been interrupted. "I’m not old enough to do much else—don’t even have the experience for other things—but I’m really suited for this sort of basic thing. I’m sort of just—tagging along. But I got you, man, don’t worry."
Katsuki doubts it. He puts his spoon down and squints. "You not in school then?" he asks, and regrets it immediately when Kirishima turns to him with a smile, delighted to be asked.
But the smile fades fast, the mouth clamping shut. "Uh, not allowed to give personal info about myself."
"You just fucking told—" That irritates Katsuki, dislodges his head and leaves behind something acidic. "Whatever, I didn’t wanna fucking know anything about you."
Kirishima laughs. "Yeah, well, I have to know more about you, though."
"My fucking ass you do." Katsuki refills his glass. "You live here, you shut up the hell up."
"What kind of close friend doesn’t know anything about you?" Kirishima frowns, a genuine wrinkle in his forehead. Katsuki wants to flick something at his face. "Oh, oh, oh, should I call you by first name around other people?"
"No," Katsuki hisses. He actually aims his spoon, launching its contents straight upwards.
It ends up scattering across the kitchen island, and Kirishima smiles at the mess, slightly absent-minded. "I’m gonna try it out—Katsuki, right?" He pronounces it easily, the s easy on his tongue, and Katsuki’s mind conjures up kill in response. "How’s that written? Like, ‘to win’? ‘Katsu’ in katsudon? Maybe I’ll just call you Katsu."
Katsuki bares his teeth. "Fucking try it and I’ll cook you."
Kirishima does the same, if only to grin. "While we’re at it, then, what’s your favorite food, Katsuki?"
He’s never wanted to incinerate someone more. "Like fuck I’m gonna tell you."
"Sweet tooth?" Kirishima guesses, wide-eyed, angling his head to peer at Katsuki from different angles. The red spikes barely wobble. "No, wait—spicy? Definitely spicy food. Am I right, am I right?"
He makes a non-committal noise, glaring.
Kirishima beams like he’d gotten a solid affirmative yes. "Nice," he says. "Favorite color?"
"What the fuck is this?" Katsuki pushes his chair back, restless. "It sounds like a fucking online dating site—"
"Ah." Kirishima snaps his fingers and points at him. "Have you signed up for one?"
Katsuki picks up the milk carton—to maybe angrily throw it at the asshole, or maybe pour all of it into his glass—but it’s too light in his hands, no telltale splashing around as he shakes it. The container gives a hollow complaint as he slams it down on the island. "Shitty Hair," he says, venomous.
Kirishima blinks at him. "Yeah?"
"Did you fucking finish the milk?"
┉
"Do you have a favorite vegetable?"
"What the hell?"
"What kind of music do you listen to?"
"I don’t—"
"You don’t listen to music?"
Kirishima, Katsuki has unfortunately already learned, is irritatingly persistent.
Katsuki refused to let U.A and its bullshit get in the way of keeping his refrigerator stocked, and he’d stood up mid-meal when the freeloader had shown no signs of offering to buy new milk. But he’d barely opened the front door before Kirishima was there, too, hands in his pockets and still humming to himself as he’d inched past Katsuki.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
"24/7 surveillance, dude," Kirishima had chirped. "Means that where you go, I go."
Katsuki had gritted his teeth and slammed his own front door closed, his car keys jingling loudly in protest.
Kirishima’s grin had been easy as they took the stairs down to the parking lot. Katsuki hadn’t indulged him, long since uninterested in his presence, but even that hadn’t discouraged the asshole.
He also stopped trying to dodge the questions, positive he’s losing brain cells just by having to listen.
"Favorite movie?" Kirishima asks now, letting himself into the car without permission.
The second All Might movie flashes in his head, but Katsuki mutters, "Ain’t got one." He slams the car door closed, too. The car starts up quietly underneath them, and it pisses him off a little. His own car’s more calm than he feels around this cross-examining. "When are you gonna stop asking all these fucking questions?"
"Until I know enough," Kirishima sings, strapping himself in. "What about hobbies?"
"When the fuck is enough?" Katsuki’s sure no one else has wanted to know this much about him—and it hits a nerve, the way Kirishima looks genuinely interested, turning his smile from the seatbelt clasp to him. It grates and pokes at him; it’s belittling, and there’s nothing he loathes more than being dismissed without even a proper fight. He doesn’t have time for annoyingly inquisitive freeloaders, so he keeps his mouth closed and stares straight ahead as he backs the car out of the lot and on the way to the supermarket.
Kirishima, for once, seems to take the hint—only that doesn’t equal him shutting up, because all he does is open the window on his side, letting in humid air into a perfectly air-conditioned car, and sticking his head out like a dog. "You’ve got a nice neighborhood here, Bakugou," he says.
He says Katsuki’s name like they’ve been friends forever, none of the stiltedness people use in Jeanist’s office, or even the patronizing politeness Deku’s boyfriend uses whenever they see each other in shared lecture halls. He’s never dignified any of them with a response, and he doesn’t give one to Kirishima now.
It doesn’t deter him at all. "There’s a convenience store right there. Why are we driving all the way to another store to buy—"
Katsuki almost runs the red light. "Shut up," he hisses.
Kirishima blinks at him. "Oh, are you one of those people that can’t talk while driving?"
"No," he snaps. "I’m one of those people who can’t fucking stand dumbasses who yap and yap and yap—"
Kirishima chuckles.
Katsuki wants to close the window right on his face. "Do you ever shut the fuck up?"
"Nah." Kirishima grins. "Come on, Baku—Katsuki, aren’t we friends?"
"It’s barely been a fucking day," Katsuki tells him, inching the car forward with more aggression than the pedal needed. "I don’t fucking know you."
"That’s okay!" Kirishima plays with his seatbelt, still grinning. "Just make up whatever you want, and I’ll play along."
"I’m gonna fucking tell everyone you’re an escaped art thief."
Kirishima seems to take genuine amusement in that, laughing loudly. "That’s the best you could come up with?" Through the rear view mirror, Katsuki sees him wiggle an eyebrow. "I won’t be the one sleeping in the same bed with a criminal on the loose."
The car jerks dangerously to the side as Katsuki takes an aggressive right. "Sleeping where?"
"Where you go," Kirishima chirps, the beginning of what’s starting to sound like an irritating ice cream truck jingle. "I go."
"Keep sleeping on the fucking couch."
"You’re mean, Katsuki. Share your queen bed—" Kirishima breaks off into a series of oohs and ahhs as they pull up in front of the store, Katsuki almost running into someone’s three-wheeled cart. "Whoa, watch out, man."
"You never been to a grocery store or what, douchebag?" Katsuki says, killing the car’s engine. "Milk’s cheaper here, and you just fucking finished my last carton. Either shut up when we get inside or stay out here."
Kirishima does neither. He skips after Katsuki, looking genuinely fascinated by the store, and almost bumps into the double glass doors. He groans, and even that is good-natured. "Aren’t these supposed to open automatically?"
"Probably doesn’t sense useless freeloaders." Katsuki regards him, unimpressed. "Are you fucking sure you’re a U.A agent?"
Kirishima’s looking around the grocery store, wide-eyed, eyes fascinated and searching. He laughs after a good bit of sight-seeing, lowering his voice theatrically to say, "Shh, not so loud."
"Too late for that," Katsuki grumbles.
He stomps straight over to the dairy section, Kirishima easily keeping up, only to bump into someone leaving the frozen food aisle.
"Oh—"
"Fucking—"
"Whatever you’re about to say, Bakugou—" He looks down, scowling. Uraraka Ochako looks up at him, holding at least five boxes of frozen microwaveable mochi. "It’s my line."
"What the fuck," he says, by way of greeting.
"There’s a sale," Uraraka greets back.
He should hate Uraraka by virtue of a lot of things—the biggest reason of which the fact that she’s one of Deku’s best friends, a constant optimistic enabling presence that has never failed to piss Katsuki off for all three years of high school. But moving out of their childhood homes makes Deku a far-away idea, a random thought every now and then that throws him off only if he lets it, and only ever as a distant echo of the insult he’d felt at age six. They don’t share any classes, and, courtesy of not belonging to the same faculty, he sees Deku’s friends far more than he sees him.
By contrast, their university’s science department is an exclusive, limited place, and Katsuki can’t get away from the fact that he will share math classes with Uraraka, whether he likes it or not, and even if her scientific areas of interest—physics and gravity or some shit like that—are wholly different from his own chemistry research.
She’s nagged at him enough, been paired up with him for faculty-wide labs enough times, that he might as well have been conditioned to be grumpy instead of downright hostile around her. But it nevertheless doesn’t stop the irritation simmering under the surface whenever she looks at him like she’s gathering evidence to report back to Deku, eyes as annoyingly curious as his.
Like she’s doing now, bright eyes sliding curiously to—
"Hi," Kirishima says.
Katsuki elbows him hard, before he can think too much about it, and he’s met by a solid weight that doesn’t even budge. "Shut up," he hisses, entirely unsubtle.
"Hi." Unsurprisingly, Uraraka returns the smile easily, introducing herself without pause. "Are you a friend of Bakugou’s?"
Kirishima opens his mouth and tilts his head like he’d done earlier—a small mannerism that he shouldn’t be noticing, but Katsuki realizes a few things in those few milliseconds. They’d both seemed to just accept that he’s going to be posing as Katsuki’s high school friend—but he can’t have that when Deku exists. And especially not when he’s about to introduce himself to someone who has as much access to 90% of Katsuki’s life the way Uraraka, attached to Deku at the hip as she is, does.
He doesn’t care, he really fucking doesn’t, but Yaoyorozu’s no one else can know why he’s living here is pretty insistent in his head. He doesn’t care about people, doesn’t care about consequences in those terms—but he does care a lot about what he’s good at, what he’s praised for, his undeniable victories. It’s all he has, it’s all he’s ever had, and it’s all he’s ever needed. Right now, it’s his research. Research that’s in danger, whether or not he’s chosen to completely believe it.
So he cuts in irritably, before Kirishima has so much as gotten through his hello, "None of your fucking business."
It takes him a second, but Kirishima recovers quickly. It’s oddly perceptive, and Katsuki doesn’t know what to make of that. "Yeah. Something like that." He grins, shrugging at Uraraka like they’re close friends. "Do you go to school with Katsuki?"
She blinks, mouthing Katsuki to herself. "Oh," she says, after a moment—but doesn’t follow up on it. Katsuki eyes her mochi boxes angrily. "Yeah, I do. Same faculty and all. Um. I think I’ve seen you around? Do you go to—"
Kirishima dodges the question smoothly, frowning just the right amount to appear especially curious. "Same faculty? Are you doing chemistry, too?"
He’s making small talk, Katsuki realizes, listening to Kirishima ooh and ahh over Uraraka’s brief detailing of her physics classes like he had at the grocery storefront. He scowls. "Hey."
Kirishima finishes his gushing before turning to him, gaze bright and animated. He looks properly apologetic. "Sorry, sorry. I’m not trying to ignore you."
"Like fuck I care—"
"Last time I checked, Bakugou, you lived twenty minutes away from campus," Uraraka jumps in before Katsuki can finish. "Why are you here?"
He keeps scowling. "I fucking said it was none of your business, angelface."
"He says milk’s cheaper here," Kirishima supplies. For someone supposed to be undercover, he talks a lot—moves a lot, too, bumping shoulders with Katsuki like they’ve just shared an inside joke. Sheepishly, he adds, "I finished all the milk during breakfast."
Uraraka blinks again, zeroing in on their shoulders. Her eyes are too big, Katsuki decides. "Do you guys live together? Since when?"
"Oh, no." Kirishima chooses that moment to return to the miserably failed puppy dog look, frowning a little. "I’m just—"
"Freeloading," Katsuki mutters. Uraraka’s eyes betray everything she’s thinking, and what he finds in them pisses him off. "He’s just freeloading. And he’s going to fucking get me my milk now."
Kirishima, too, blinks at him.
To direct him, Katsuki glares at a series of industrial refrigerators, stacked up underneath a section header that proclaims Dairy in a fading loopy script.
Kirishima salutes, beaming at Uraraka before excusing himself.
She doesn’t waste time. She never does. "So. ‘Katsuki’, huh."
"Shut the fuck up," Katsuki snaps, and it comes out defensive. He feels his head throb once, twice. "If you say a single fucking word to Deku—"
"Oh my god, am I right?" Uraraka gasps, sounding slightly scandalized. "Have you been dating someone from school all this time?"
"Fuck no." Katsuki’s seeing red—and he feels warm, his vision swimming a little as he looks at her. He contemplates emptying her mochi boxes onto the unsanitary grocery floor. "How did you even fucking get that—"
"He calls you by first name. He ate breakfast at your place—which means he slept over—which means—" Uraraka has always been smart, more than what people give her credit for when they see her round smiling face and hear the way she talks. He’s witnessed it for certain, has always gotten first row seats to what she’s capable of even when he hadn’t wanted to be and even when no one else had noticed. But her alarming ability to think sharp on the spot and make do with what little she has is not, at the moment, endearing her to his limited good graces. Katsuki can feel himself getting warmer with betrayed fury. "You look red, Bakugou, are you blushing—"
He starts to aim for her boxes, but Kirishima comes back, then, two cartons balanced within one arm. "What’s happening?"
"We were having a talk," Uraraka tells him, chirpy.
"She’s saying we’re dating," Katsuki says, trying to put as much disgust into the word as possible. It ends up breathless, and Kirishima looks like he’s more amused than surprised. "Me. Willingly being around your freeloading ass—"
"Ah," Kirishima says. Katsuki thinks he’s definitely developing a special kind of intuition for when Kirishima’s about to dish out bullshit—because he feels it now, watching the guy do that thing where he shrugs and smiles in an attempt to appear innocent. "Katsuki’s a little shy about this sort of thing, you know, and we weren’t going to say anything."
For effect, he ends with an apologetic smile.
It takes Katsuki three whole seconds to process it—a second longer than Uraraka, who raises a finger and gasps out loud. It sounds a little triumphant, but she’s already moved her boxes under her other arm, leaning away from Katsuki as she says, "I knew it. Oh my god, I can’t believe we haven’t met before, Kirishima-kun."
Katsuki clenches his fists at his sides, grinding his teeth together hard enough for it to echo loudly in his ears. "Shut up, fuckmunch—"
"Man, I’ve heard a lot about you, Uraraka." He hasn’t heard a single damn thing about her, but Kirishima’s grinning earnestly from ear to ear, apparently delighted by the lie after lie that just keeps on coming, dragging Katsuki down with it into a pool of bullshit that—from the look on Uraraka’s face—he won’t be getting out of any time soon. "But Katsuki doesn’t vocalize that sort of thing, you know how he is—"
"Yeah, no, I get it." Uraraka nods, as if she totally gets it, beaming brighter than Deku making goo-goo eyes at Todoroki. "Sorry—if he’s like that—wow, I don’t—I wish I can say the same about you, but he doesn’t—"
Kirishima nods, the very picture of sympathetic understanding. Katsuki’s been completely ejected from the conversation, and he stands there, fists clenched and whole body steaming with anger. He doesn’t know where to start, opening and closing his mouth—only for Kirishima, to his horror and eternal torment, to swing an arm around his shoulders and tug them together. "No, it’s alright, I know. It’s not your fault. We talked it over." He frowns then, biting his lip in faux worry as he turns to Katsuki, who glowers back with everything he has. "Oh, wow, babe, you’re really warm."
Babe, Uraraka mouths to herself again, at the same time Katsuki grinds out, half-incredulous and half-murderous, "Babe? Babe? I’ll fucking kill you—"
Kirishima laughs, effectively cutting him off. "Sure."
"I have to go, but—" Uraraka’s practically glowing at them, and Katsuki can see it—can see the text she’ll have sent Deku by the time she gets to the register. He sees nothing but red, looking at her. "It’s really nice to meet you, Kirishima-kun," she says, and the sincerity in her voice is disgusting.
"If you come by Katsuki’s place, I’ll be there," Kirishima returns, the sincerity in his voice downright nauseating. "Good luck with your science stuff. Kick ass."
She laughs, tapping his arm happily before skipping away.
Out of the corner of his glare, Katsuki sees her pull out her phone.
Kirishima finally lets him go, but the grin doesn’t drop. "Well."
"What the hell?" Katsuki shoves at him—again, the guy doesn’t budge, chuckling a little as he transfers one carton from under one arm to the other.
"It’s my job to play along, man. You completely threw away the high school friend excuse." Kirishima shrugs, lowering his voice and stepping closer even though they’re perfectly alone in the aisle. "She presented a perfect alternative, yeah?"
"We went to the same fucking high school," Katsuki hisses, head throbbing badly now. He’s definitely lost years off his life. "Were you even thinking—she’s gonna fucking tell everyone—"
"Good!" Kirishima chirps, and he must be stupid, must be missing something, because there is nothing about this, as far as Katsuki can see, that’s good. "No, but hey, we only have to do this til the September conference, right—" He stops when someone passes by to get to the dairy section, but continues on easily as soon as they’ve moved on. "Tell them we broke up, when that happens. Easy. A bad break-up, and they never have to wonder again."
Katsuki scowls at him, but Kirishima peers over his shoulder, waving and loudly yelling "Bye, Uraraka!" across the grocery store. She can hardly see them, no way she can, but she waves back from the exit, the glass doors sliding automatically for her and her stupid microwaveable mochi.
The idiot has a good point, and he knows it, smiling wide and revoltingly bright. "Hey, look. I’m sorry if this is gonna mess up things with your friends—"
Katsuki rolls his eyes. "What the fuck?"
Kirishima’s smile softens, and he steps back. "I’m sorry about the milk, too. I’ll take care of lunch and dinner."
"How?" Katsuki wrenches the cartons from him and turns away, stomping over to the shortest line for the register. "You can’t fucking cook," he says over his shoulder.
"Well," Kirishima says, easily keeping up yet again. "I never said anything about cooking."
┉
Katsuki dreams again that night.
He wakes up sweaty and out of breath, the back of his shirt sticking to his back and his heart pounding in his chest.
It had been the kind of dream that had felt more than it looked vivid, his memory of it hazy even as he sits up, lungs clamoring for air and his throat feeling sore and scratched. Breathing is difficult, his heart ragged, and he closes his eyes.
Everything remains dark, the solid black behind shut eyelids, but he can hear everything, can feel everything; he can hear the crowd yelling from so far away, can see the cameras behind the police line, can feel himself losing air even though he’d survived that, it’s a long time ago, everyone saw him get out of that alive—
He’d been in his first year of high school, the last time he’d dreamt of the hostage incident.
When Katsuki opens his eyes, the entire studio apartment comes sharply into focus—the light coming in from the streetlamp outside the window, the broken blinds parallel to the TV, the kitchen island stools, the bedside clock flashing 5:27 A.M, and Kirishima’s sleeping form, chest rising and falling calmly, easily.
He’s surprisingly a still, quiet sleeper—a steady rock on the couch, his breathing relaxed and easy, hushed in the quiet of the apartment.
Katsuki lies back down and listens, evening out his own breathing.
He falls back asleep and doesn’t dream.