Chapter Text
“Fear and flee the wolf; for, worst of all, the wolf may be more than he seems.” – The Company of Wolves, Angela Carter.
Reality doesn’t work like a carousel.
It would be ideal: to ride that merry roundabout with its soft ups-and-downs for an easy lifetime, watching the ones you love gesture at you as you spin slowly past, blinking in the click-flash of their disposable camera as you come round again. Realising that you can rely on the rotation as surely as the sun’s slow, arching passage across the azure sky, and know in the comfortable hum of the jingling refrain, that you’ll do it all again, and be content.
Reality doesn’t work like that. There’s always something – someone – powering through the candy-floss crowd, to seize the carousel from underneath like your life weighs nothing at all, and toss it into the nearest lake.
Katsuki Bakugou – the bastard son of fire and fission – was good at such things.
Midoriya didn’t think he meant to be – it’s the sort of thing that happened when you were so focused on a goal that the odd toppled fairground ride was a necessary sacrifice, even if there were a lot of people on it at the time. So Midoriya’s merry-go-round sunk listlessly into the water, and he hoped what was left of the little plastic horse would be enough to prance him back to solid ground.
Bakugou feared no-one; consequently he accepted no guilt for his wreckages.
Some men wanted to watch the world burn, but Bakugou was more the type to pump it full of so much flammable gas that you couldn’t strike a match for fear of blowing a hole in the continent. The coarse nature of what he was – a creature on all fours that sprints for the deer in the pasture – was as unchangeable as the goals he set his mind to. He was as devastating as a hurricane, chasing the fiery thrum of his heart, and literally blasting aside anyone who got in his way. Bridges crumbled.
Midoriya had tried fruitlessly – as he tries with everyone – to help him rebuild. All he could do now was wait, and hope for an event bigger than he was to change the path of nature.
But like the Butterfly Effect, sometimes all you need is something small.
It was a warm afternoon. The thick, white clouds in the baby blue sky above split like the Red Sea in a spear’s throw from the UA school building to the horizon. Beyond the trees of the surrounding woodland, the hills sat heavy in great mounds, grey as huge elephant backs. The sizzling sounds of a barbeque filled the air, along with the heady smell of grilling sausages, the scent of it as thick as soup on the back of your tongue; the first barbeque of summer.
Kirishima, tall and lithe, his red hair pulled back to avoid singeing the tips, flipped a burger on the grill and grinned at Midoriya, who stood beside him with his head craned up, since he was a victim of unlucky genetics and got stuck at least foot shorter than everyone else.
“How’d you like it?” Kirishima asked, reaching for Midoriya’s paper plate. Midoriya shrugged, smiling big in the way he always did – in a way he couldn’t help. Having grown up picked on and alone, he unconsciously made it known how greatly he enjoyed Kirishima’s easy-going company.
“Just so it won’t kill me,” he said sheepishly. “I don’t think Mineta will ever really recover from your first attempt.”
“That was two years ago,” said Kirishima with mock-indignation, a tone one adopts when one has been teased mercilessly for an event for an unreasonably long time. “And he didn’t die.” He glanced over at stumpy Mineta, at his sloping eyes and mouth curved like a fat sausage. “At least, I don’t think so.”
Midoriya laughed, moving around to avoid the smoke from the barbeque getting into his eyes. Kirishima flipped him a burger onto his paper plate. It dripped with grease, staining the plate with a great oozing spread of yellow. Midoriya drooled. Despite his being teased, Kirishima’s grill-cooking was top notch these days. ‘Gotta learn how to do it,’ he’d said once, tearing into a packet of sausages at three in the morning, high off his face on training adrenaline and cheap coffee. ‘It’s manly.’
Midoriya gestured to Mineta with a shoulder, piling his new burger with salad one-handed. “He’s been a lot more… gentlemanly,” he said with a lilt, searching for the right word. “Since then. Maybe that was why.”
“You think I poisoned the pervert out of him?” Kirishima asked, glancing over at Mineta, who had hopped onto a wooden bench next to gangly Kaminari. Even sat down, Mineta barely reached Kaminari’s bony shoulder, and that was post-growth spurt. “Would make sense. I’ve never seen so much stuff come out of one tiny person. Did he even eat carrots that day?”
Midoriya slowly put down his burger that had been halfway to his mouth.
“Oh, sorry,” Kirishima laughed. “But you brought it up.”
“Please don’t phrase it like that.”
Presently, sweet, curvaceous Uraraka sashayed past, chest a-bounce. Her body squeezed into most things like pillows secured with layers of wrap, and as such her every asset was a closely-guarded secret. There was no invitation in her voluptuous jounce and more fool to those who assumed otherwise – Midoriya had once seen her punch clean through a wall.
You do not want knuckles that hardy threatening your valuables.
Kaminari and Mineta were widely known to be unabashed in their ogling and had somehow side-stepped nut-punches with a weaving of naïve charm. So when Uraraka bounced past them on the bench, two pairs of eyes tracked her movement with stares like a couple of hypnotised Great Potoo watching a mobile vertical tennis match.
Kirishima and Midoriya shared a glance, and the question as to whether Mineta had been gastronomically strong-armed into decency was disregarded with a quiet,
“Never mind.”
“Hey guys!” Uraraka said brightly as she approached the grill. “Got any more sausages?”
“You know we do!” Kirishima crowed, flipping a wurst. But Uraraka wasn’t listening; she spotted Midoriya’s untouched burger with animal greed in her bright, brown eyes, like a Labrador.
“Aw, you got seconds, Deku? Lucky!”
“Here, you can have it,” said Midoriya, pushing the plate into her grabby hands. “Kirishima put me off.”
“Just for the record, I’d like to say that it was entirely his own fault,” Kirishima interjected. “And there’s more where that one came from!” He flipped the wurst again.
Uraraka nodded like this was for granted, her mouth full, holding the burger with a pinky out. Midoriya had always thought that was cute. It didn’t help that she had a face like sunshine and a smile as big and beaming as the crescent moon. She nudged him with a hip playfully, salad flopping out every which-where from the overly-full burger.
“Good training yesterday, Deku,” she said, her big eyes sparkling in the fading sun. “That flip you did right before we stopped was amazing. I think you were the only one who hit all the targets.”
Midoriya felt himself blush. “Thanks! Yours was great too. I think you only missed one or two in the end.”
“Oh come on,” she laughed, good-naturedly. “I missed five. I’m surprised Aizawa didn’t banish me. That course was rough.”
“You still did a great job.”
“You guys are gross.”
The tranquillity was interrupted as Bakugou sauntered up to the grill with a wide, insouciant stride, elbowing Kirishima aside and swiping the tongs. Kirishima didn’t seem to mind, leaning against the table that housed the varied meat and foodstuffs. He straightened a bottle of mayonnaise as Bakugou tossed a sausage onto his plate.
“You still eating, buddy?” he said. “How many beers have you had?”
“Mind your own business, jackass.” Midoriya noticed Bakugou’s speech was slightly slurred, his axis off. He doused his burger in hot sauce and took a sloppy bite, big as a shark’s.
Midoriya and Bakugou’s shaky truce based on a mutual desire to improve was about as steady as a house of straw, but it held. Although their rocky history still flared up like a bad rash occasionally, (particularly when left alone in a room together) proximity was no long culpable for their animosity. Bakugou was too good at his Big Bad Wolf bit; still brash, tall, and overly-lean, with a mean slant to his mouth and eyes. His back was built like it was made of boulders, his arms thick and his knuckles hairy, like an ape. But he seemed to have curbed some animalistic behaviour recently. He hadn’t launched an unprovoked fist at Midoriya in a very long time. A blessing, but Midoriya still pictured fashioning some walls made of bricks and stoking the fireplace sometimes anyway. Just in case.
For Bakugou, Midoriya had recently come to realise, normal human communication was ineffective. He spoke with his body: the weight of his punches, the ridge of his tense shoulders. Midoriya had realised he had experienced more successful conversations with Bakugou during their sparring than he ever had verbally.
The sparring was a new development that had arisen from the cumulative effect of several screaming matches across the training-room floor, with one or more of their respective friends holding them back so that the practice equipment might live to see another day. Eventually Aizawa had announced in a tired voice,
“Bloody Hell, just let them at it. Maybe they’ll learn something and I’ll have less of a stampeding headache for once in three bleeding years.”
Their classmates had been nervous, but after the first four or five matches when neither of them emerged with more threatening injuries than a handful of bruises and, once, a dislocated shoulder, they let them be. After all, Bakugou walked away from most things unscathed, and Midoriya had done worse to himself on many occasions. It wasn’t even that hard to pop his shoulder back in.
Body language. It was all about body language with Bakugou, and although Midoriya was far from fluent, he had come to realise that if Bakugou didn’t leave their matches rolling his joints in agony, then Midoriya hadn’t done a good enough job.
Even here at a social barbeque, from his head to his toes, Bakugou reeked of danger and devilish intent, but Midoriya catalogued the way he tossed the tongs back to Kirishima when he was done loading his plate, handle first, and smiled softly to himself. A calculated throw: soft, angled to be catchable, and easily caught. At this point it was textbook.
“What are you grinning at, Deku?”
“Nothing,” he said, with a shrug. “Kirishima has hot sauce on his face.”
“Oh, man,” Kirishima grumbled, taking a napkin and wiping his cheeks. “You splashed me, dude.”
“You should keep your face out of the way of my food, then,” Bakugou grunted, his mouth full.
In the wake of enjoying their strange display of a unique friendship, Midoriya felt the weight of Uraraka’s shoulder as she leaned dramatically against his side to draw his attention.
“I can’t finish this, Midoriya, help me?” she said, holding up the burger with one lazy arm for him to bite. He laughed, nudging her back upright, taking a big mouthful. Half the salad had fallen out, so it was mostly a soggy mess of meat and bread, but it was still good. He looked up to catch Kirishima and Bakugou openly staring.
A butterfly flitted onto Bakugou’s hand and he shook it off in that sudden panic one is only gripped by when insects touch them unexpectedly.
“What?” Midoriya grunted thickly, still chewing, trying not to laugh at Bakugou’s break in composure.
“Nothing,” Kirishima said too hastily, turning to his burning sausages. “Just thought you were still stuck on Mineta chucking up his guts, that’s all.”
“Yeah, and you two are gross,” Bakugou repeated, not one to mince words. He slung his empty plate onto the table and made to move past them.
Here’s the lay of things: Kirishima was stood at the grill, his cheesy ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron, half-tied and covered in grease splashes. Beside him, directly to his right was Bakugou, peeling away with an expression like they were all doused in excrement. Then, to Bakugou’s right stood Uraraka, her mouth still moving with an overload of burger, her attention elsewhere. Midoriya, finally, stood on her right, his hands empty.
With everyone preoccupied, it was no wonder that no-one but Midoriya was privy to what happened next.
Moving slowly for someone who was so keen on removing himself, Bakugou slipped away from the grill and past Uraraka, who had taken up a conversation with Kirishima about his quirk, and shifted behind Midoriya. Midoriya automatically stiffened, since Big Bad Wolf in his general bubble was usually a reason enough to duck-and-cover, but for a split second nothing happened, and Midoriya thought that he might just walk by.
Midoriya should know better by now than to think he could catch a break.
Five points of pressure and a hot palm on his lower back, there only long enough for Midoriya to take a stilted breath. His back shivered like someone poured ice down his spine. He froze as the hand moved. Five inches lower: a soft stroke that slipped down to the plane of his pelvis, and was gone. The shadow in his peripheral lifted, and Midoriya turned what felt like a neck made of concrete to watch Bakugou saunter away to play-wrestle Kaminari for his beer.
His personal bubble shrunk in on itself like a hedgehog spooked by a sudden shift in the underbrush.
“Deku, you okay, dude?”
Midoriya had never jumped harder in his life. If he had been holding a drink it would have been all over him.
“Yes!” he squeaked like a prepubescent rodent. Uraraka and Kirishima regarded him with concern. “I just need some water, I think. Uraraka, can you come with me?”
“Uh, sure,” she said. “See you in a bit, Kirishima.”
“No worries, dudes,” he said lightly, then louder, to the crowd on the grounds at large, “Anyone want a taste of one of my sausages?”
Midoriya took Uraraka’s hand and made his way inside to a cacophony of whooping and crude jokes, his burning back to the gathering students.
“Deku, are you okay?” Uraraka said as Midoriya poured himself some tap water with shaking hands. “What happened?”
Midoriya’s knees were like jelly. He forced them to snap back into bone as he chugged the glass as though he had trekked through a desert for three days and this was his first taste of anything besides sand and dry air. Uraraka’s concern was palpable.
“I’m going nuts,” Midoriya gasped, flinching when the glass rattled on the counter with the force of his trembling. How old was he again? Fourteen? When the gentle touch of someone special sent his heart flip-flopping and his hands shaking harder than a stripper making rent? “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“Sure,” said Uraraka, placing a hand on Midoriya’s shoulder to stop his shivering.
How sweet she was: a softness in the harrowing Chokey of his day-to-day. They could have had something – they almost did, but some puzzle pieces refuse to slot, no matter how hard you push. Midoriya sighed, and relayed what had happened in the grounds.
Uraraka’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. “How many beers have you had?” she asked.
“I’m serious!” he gasped. “I wouldn’t lie about this!”
“I know, I know,” she soothed, folding him in her arms. “What do you think it means?”
Curse Bakugou. Curse him and the generous tilting of the world as the carousel of Midoriya’s life rocked from side-to-side like a ship on a turbulent ocean, he clinging pathetically to the horse as he whirled around. He wrung his hands nervously above Uraraka’s back, feeling dizzy.
“Maybe he’s trying to figure out where best to break my spine?” he guessed with a weak laugh. Uraraka pulled back and levelled him with the slant of her brow. “Kidding.”
“You know if he ever really hurt you, I’d snap him like a breadstick.”
“I have never believed anything more strongly,” Midoriya reassured her. “It’s just weird. Why would he do that?”
Something pinged behind Uraraka’s eyes. “Maybe he likes you?”
Midoriya’s heartbeat bounced a funky rhythm up to the barrel of his throat. He choked, and stuffed it back down like gunpowder in a musket.
“Okay, how many beers have you had?” he coughed, wiping an eye with a wrist.
“I’m serious!” she cried. “You don’t just casually touch people like that. It’s not a normal thing to do. Then again, Bakugou’s not exactly normal.”
“I know just...” he trailed off, searching the small kitchen in the dorms as if it would present him the answer, gift-wrapped and neatly tied off from one of the cupboards, like Thing in The Addams Family. “Don’t leave me alone with him tonight?”
“I will stick to you like glue,” she assured him, slipping her arm through to link with his. “Come on, you’ll feel better after you have some more drinks. I snuck in Schnapps! But don’t tell anyone, it’s mostly for me and Tsu.”
They made their way back into the grounds where evening was just beginning to fall. The shadows stretched soft as rugs over the grass and stony pathways. A light breeze sighed through the surrounding woodland. The grill was still smoking, but all the meat was piled up on people’s plates, and the drifting smoke signalled the smouldering end of dinner. Everyone relaxed, their limbs folded over chairs or the grass like a Dali painting, bathing in the orange light from the setting sun. Iida, the class rep, who was sat stiffly on a bench with a book and a hotdog, kept checking his watch: a sure sign that it was getting late.
Midoriya’s eyes found Bakugou, in idle conversation with Kirishima, who had ditched his greasy apron. Midoriya’s knees wobbled back into jelly again. This would be harder than he thought.
“Come on,” said Uraraka, pulling on his arm. She grabbed a couple of solo cups and headed for the wall of the building. Midoriya tripped to follow her as she led him around a corner to cooler tucked underneath a prickly bush. Midoriya was impressed.
“Clever,” he said, as she dragged it out.
“Just a precaution.” She filled the solo cups, handed two to Midoriya and booted the cooler back under the bush. “Pretty sure they wouldn’t steal it if they knew it was mine, but I’m also worried about Iida confiscating it.”
“That’s fair.”
They wandered back to the group, the air now permeated with the sound of music. Kaminari had hooked up his phone to a speaker. He and Jiro leaned over it, her short, dark hair flicking into her face.
“This one’s better,” she said, prodding the screen. “The bass is amazing.”
“I mean, we’re here to chill, not get crunk,” said Kirishima from beside them with a laugh, his legs up on Bakugou’s knees on the bench. “Don’t make it too bouncy or Bakugou here won’t be able to control his rhythm any longer. You know what a party animal he is.”
Bakugou, who looked about the last person aside from Tokoyami who would get up and boogie for anyone, merely snarled and fruitlessly tried to push Kirishima’s legs away.
Something mellow and dripping with soul filled the evening air.
“Oh jeez,” said Kirishima. “Too far the other way.”
“I like it,” said Kaminari, and started to shake his hips slowly. Jiro acted out spanking his gyrating booty.
“I’m gonna hurl,” said Bakugou with all the ill grace expected of his charmless disposition.
Across the way, Uraraka dragged Midoriya over to where Asui crouched on a stool and presented her with the solo cup. She popped the angle of her body towards them as they approached, her eyes blinking slowly, slightly out of time with one another. They were wide, and vacant, amphibious in their bulge, and it had taken some time for it to stop unsettling Midoriya that they peered blithely in two outward directions at one time.
He would never admit it because he adored her.
Her curved lips split like melted cheese into a baggy smile as Uraraka held up the cups.
“Drinkies!” she announced.
“About time,” croaked Asui warmly, scrambling up to take the drink. “Where have you guys been?”
“Oh, Deku was having a gentle crisis in the kitchen,” Uraraka said shamelessly, plucking the spare cup from Midoriya’s hand for her own. He made a shocked sound in protestation. He had felt Bakugou’s eyes on him as they had moved around; woe betide all of them should he overhear.
“Oh, yeah?” Asui asked. “What about?”
“Life and stuff,” said Uraraka. “He’s not feeling too… peachy. Bit of a bummer, really. I thought he might crack but there you go.”
“Hah-hah,” grunted Midoriya, sinking into a nearby bench as his legs teetered in the sponge of his muscles like the bone were made of Meccano. Also, when were his knees going to grow back in? Was this knee puberty? “Very funny.”
Asui looked curiously between the two of them.
“Someone touch your butt?” she asked with her usual air of pragmatism. Midoriya choked on his drink as Uraraka burst out laughing. “I’m right?”
“Not my butt,” Midoriya gasped. “Uraraka, you said you wouldn’t tell!”
“I didn’t!” she cried. “She guessed! You were there.”
“Yeah, but you couldn’t have made it more obvious!”
“Who was it?” Asui asked. “Kirishima? It was probably a joke in that case. Kaminari? He talks about butts all the time. It probably doesn’t mean much. What about Todoroki? I know you guys are pretty close. He seems like a butt guy.”
Midoriya choked again, and this time didn’t recover so quickly. Uraraka slapped him casually on the back as she spoke.
“No way, surely Todoroki is a boob guy? Hard not to be with Momo around.”
“Look who’s talking,” said Asui, prodding at Uraraka’s bulging chest. Midoriya thought he might pass out. “I think you’re wrong anyway. He’s totally a butt guy.”
“No way, tenner says he’s a boob guy!”
“I’m pretty sure he’s a guy guy, actually,” came a voice from nearby. Todoroki shuffled towards them, his hands in his pockets.
“Oh,” said Asui, frowning into her cup. “What do we do about the bet, then?” she asked Uraraka, who shrugged.
“I guess technically you win in that case?”
“Nah, we’ll void it,” said Asui. “My gift to you, babe.”
“You’re my hero.”
“Why are you guys talking about me?” said Todoroki, slumping beside Midoriya on the bench, whose face seemed to be trying to go through every shade of red in the spectrum without pause for effect. He drank deeper into the cup to try and hide it.
“Someone touched Midoriya’s butt and we’re trying to figure out who,” said Asui.
“Tsuyu!” gasped Midoriya. “Why did you tell him?”
“You didn’t swear me to secrecy,” she said with a shrug.
“A rampant butt-toucher, huh?” said Todoroki. “Sounds more like Kaminari’s field.”
“That’s what I said,” said Asui.
“So who was it?” said Todoroki. “Need us to break some fingers?”
“Oh, please don’t,” Midoriya wailed, burying his face in his lap, resigned to his death by humiliation. “It’s not a big deal,” he added, voice muffled. Then, in a tone of one projecting a soliloquy on-stage, “Why must you mock me this way? Oh, booze, now you are my only dignity.”
“Au contraire, our sweetest friend,” gushed Asui, tapping the rims of their cups together plastically. “We’re here for you and your butt.”
“Your butt’s integrity,” Todoroki corrected.
“Guys,” Midoriya begged.
“I’m out.” Asui drained her cup, not listening. “Want any more liquid dignity?” she directed at Midoriya, who shook his head.
“I’m good.” He indicated his half-full cup.
“Cool. Uraraka, where’d you stash the goods?”
Uraraka glanced at Midoriya and Todoroki on the bench. “You be alright for a second?” she asked.
“I’ll be fine!” he said miserably. “It’s alright, just go.”
“Okay. Todoroki, you’re on Deku duty.”
“Noted.”
Midoriya spluttered, feeling more and more like the group’s injured child.
“Sorry, Midoriya,” said Asui as she and Uraraka moved away, “but apparently there’s a rampant butt-toucher on the loose. Gotta be careful.”
“Oh my God,” said Midoriya, lapsing his burning face into Todoroki’s shoulder. He patted Midoriya’s hair awkwardly: a stunted but genuine gesture from a reserved friend. “Could she be any louder?”
“They’re just teasing,” said Todoroki as Midoriya resurfaced. “They care about you. We all do.”
“I know,” said Midoriya. “It’s sweet.” He lifted his cup. “You want some?”
“Not for me,” said Todoroki. “But thank you for offering.”
They sat in companionable silence for a moment, listening to the soft music from the speaker on the table. Jiro was crooning the lyrics, Kaminari following her lips like a lovesick fool. Midoriya smiled. Kaminari was tragic; hopelessly in love with all the girls he knew. Midoriya was pretty sure that gunning for Jiro was a swing and a miss, however. She too watched Uraraka’s hips whenever she walked past.
“They’ve been gone a while,” said Todoroki, looking in the direction Uraraka and Asui had disappeared to three songs ago. “I need the bathroom. You be okay here?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Midoriya again as Todoroki slowly stood. “Really. Go do your thing.”
“Alright, but go to Iida if you…” he trailed off, looking up as someone approached. “Oh, good.”
Midoriya swallowed hard, recognising the shift in Todoroki’s tone could only mean one person had chosen that moment to join them.
“You finally buzzing off, Half ‘n’ Half?” Bakugou grunted. “’Bout time.”
Midoriya, refusing to look anywhere but deep in his cup, could only see the bottom of Bakugou’s dark jeans and his trainers. He wondered, as his ears shot to the temperature of the sun, how much liquid you actually need in order to drown.
“Already making a fool of yourself?” snapped Todoroki. “That might be a new record for you, and that’s saying something.”
“I could beat you into powder if I wanted to,” barked Bakugou, and Midoriya looked up in time to see him flex his ridiculous, rippling arms. “Want to see what it’s like to be a soluble?”
If he didn’t intervene, there would likely be a scrap, and Midoriya didn’t think his nerves could take it. Before Todoroki could retort, Midoriya leapt to his feet and stood between them, seeing Iida’s glare levelled their way. “Don’t you have to use the bathroom, Todoroki?”
“Stand down, Midoriya,” Todoroki said calmly, rolling up his sleeves. “This is more important. Peeing can wait. I’m gonna destroy him.”
“Just go to the bathroom, please,” Midoriya begged.
“I’ll tell you where you can go,” Bakugou roared. “You know where you can go and I’m going to send you there.” Several heads turned in their direction and Kirishima sat up from his lounging position on the bench in concern. There was a ringing silence. Midoriya took another gulp of liquid dignity and put his back to Bakugou.
“Oh!” Midoriya said too loudly. “Isn’t that nice of Kacchan to offer to tell you where the bathroom is, even though you already know, having lived here for ages! Wow, what a nice thing to do. Okay, bye, Todoroki! See you in a minute! If you get lost, he can text you directions.”
“I don’t think that’s what he meant-”
Midoriya wasn’t listening, pushing Todoroki in the direction of the school building.
“Have a good one! Don’t forget to write!”
Todoroki eventually got the message and shrugged Midoriya off, glancing back at them as he mooched away. Halfway to the building, his mooch became a cross-legged jog.
Behind Midoriya, the sounds of the party resumed. He turned just in time to see Bakugou flipping Todoroki the finger.
“Kacchan!” he squawked, trying and failing to lower Bakugou’s brick-wall arm. “Don’t do that!”
“You telling me what to do, nerd?” he snarled down. “That asshole has it coming.” His hot breath fanned over Midoriya’s nose. They were close. Midoriya took a step back, away from the heat that radiated off Bakugou’s furnace skin. He shook his head and sank onto the bench, trying to quiet the hammering in his ribcage. Bakugou glared at him. “You getting mouthy lately.”
The small of his back tingled. Five points of pressure and a hot palm. Bakugou had touched him. Intimately. Midoriya swallowed.
Bakugou dropped on to the bench next to him with a crash. Midoriya was half-tempted to mime a shockwave bounce. How had the last couple of years leant this guy so much strength and size?
Mind you, Midoriya had packed on too, just not as much, it seemed. He settled for making his cup swill.
“What you drinking?” Bakugou demanded. Midoriya blinked into the cup as if he just realised he still had it.
“Uh, water?” he tried.
“Liar.” Bakugou stuck his nose in the drink before Midoriya could stop him. Midoriya had a face-full of wheatgrass hair, smelling like caramel and coconut. His heart hit his Adam’s apple and played a samba in his throat. “You sly piece of shit,” Bakugou leaned away to grin down at him.
Midoriya felt like the proverbial Alice, trapped under the uncanny stretch of a Cheshire cat grin, in a world between worlds. “It’s Schnapps,” he admitted weakly. “But don’t tell anyone. It’s Uraraka’s.”
Unfairly, the sunset made Bakugou glow. The phantom press of his hand on Midoriya’s back burned like a brand. Midoriya’s brain startled like a deer and flipped to autopilot. “Want some?”
Bakugou took it without a word and drank deeply. Midoriya stuffed his sweaty hands in between his thighs.
“Gross,” Bakugou commented to the drink, as if on reflex, but sipped again anyway. He tried to hand it back, but Midoriya didn’t trust his shaking fingers to hold the cup steady.
“It’s fine! You finish it,” he spluttered.
Without a word, Bakugou took one of Midoriya’s arms and pressed the cup into his palm, then squeezed his wrist with just the right pressure to cause his hand to curl around the cup tightly. Then he shoved Midoriya’s shoulder and stood, returning to his original spot next to Kirishima, without looking back once.
Midoriya peered nervously into the suddenly lighter cup, shivered hard, which had nothing to do with the rapid cooling of the evening, and downed the rest.
Uraraka and Asui were crouched in the corner beside the stash-shrub, shoulder-to-shoulder, when Midoriya and Todoroki finally came looking for them. Their heads were ducked, facing the wall in silence.
“You guys in time-out?” said Todoroki. “Draw on the walls again?”
The girls looked up.
“It’s this squirrel,” said Uraraka. “What’s it doing?”
The boys peered over their shoulders. A small, grey squirrel crouched, half-submerged in a hole in the wall, shivering. Its fluffy tail twitched occasionally as they watched.
“Looks like Sero when people tell him he needs a shower,” said Todoroki. “Did you know he flees from soap?”
“Sero smells like citrus and the ocean, so we all know that’s a lie,” said Uraraka. “Maybe it’s having boy trouble,” she suggested, looking pointedly at Midoriya.
Midoriya laughed too loudly when Todoroki glanced at him. “Yes! You know. Because I’m a boy. And I get in trouble.”
“Maybe someone touched its butt?” suggested Asui. Midoriya felt singled-out and took it upon himself to leave.
At Iida’s insistence, he joined the clean-up effort at the barbeque site. More than a few of his classmates were staggering across the grass with tables, chairs and crockery in their arms. The beers had had the desired effect: a light mood, soft smiles and laughter. Midoriya scooped a collection of empty bottles into a box and hoisted it into his arms to help.
Suddenly Bakugou appeared beside him, his arms full of more empty bottles. Midoriya jumped at the crashing sound of hollow glass banging about just below his chin as they were dumped unceremoniously in the box. Before he could say anything, Bakugou hefted the load out of his arms and strode away. Midoriya blinked and hastened to catch up.
“I was going to do that, Kacchan!”
“Well, it’s heavy. You’ll just drop it, nerd,” he grunted, shouldering past. “Watch yourself.”
Midoriya stared as he flounced off, indulging in a short fantasy where Bakugou’s fat head got stuck in the kitchen doorway and the class were forced to butter the sides of it and boot it through.
Furiously, he piled up four chairs and carried them in with one hand, just to prove a point.
“Anybody up for a movie?” said Kirishima once all was cleaned up and they lazed around in the living room. Kaminari’s fist shot in the air from the sofa, half his attention on his phone.
“Yeah, boi!” he said, dragging out the vowels. “I’m good for anything.”
“Bet you are,” said Sero, playfully leaping on his belly.
“Dude, no, I’ll barf!”
“I’m off to bed,” said Todoroki demurely. “Goodnight, everyone.” He patted Midoriya on the shoulder as he left, with a soft smile, that Midoriya echoed. Several others followed suit, leaving Kirishima, Kaminari, and Sero on the sofa by the wall, and Ashido, Uraraka and Asui in the kitchenette. Mineta plopped himself onto a cushion on the floor and seemed quite happy there, like a schoolchild in assembly. Bakugou lay draped over the other sofa like he owned it, still taking lazy sucks from the overly-glistening neck of a beer. For doing his best impression of a throw, he took up an awful lot of presence in the room.
Needing a place to sit, lest he stand awkwardly for the duration of a film, Midoriya approached the sofa. He stepped over the leg that shot out expectedly to trip him, and sat on the floor before the telly, his back resting on the bottom of the sofa that Bakugou’s considerable frame occupied the entirety of.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, nerd?” Bakugou demanded in an uncharacteristically low voice, unnervingly near Midoriya’s head.
“What?” said Midoriya. “You can see the screen!”
“Moron.” Bakugou shifted his legs. There was enough room for Midoriya to sit. He waited for a moment to see if it was a trick. The slightest raise of Bakugou’s eyebrows had Midoriya scrambling up to take the spot before Bakugou changed his mind. To top off this bizarre sequence of amicable events, he stretched out his arm in possession of the beer once Midoriya settled, offering him a drink.
With an open mouth of surprise, Midoriya reached for the bottle, only to find it swept out of reach.
“Too slow,” said Bakugou, chugging. To his own surprise, Midoriya burst out laughing.
“I like drunk Kacchan.”
The only response to this was a lingering grimace.
Kirishima hooked up his laptop to the television and finally settled on an action film, since that seemed to be the only genre that didn’t cause at least one person to groan dramatically into the crescent of their hand. The lights were dimmed, and Midoriya became hyper-aware of the sole of Bakugou’s foot pressing against his outer thigh.
Ten minutes in to the film, the door creaked open a slice and Yaoyorozu peered in, her big black ponytail framed by the hallway light.
“Hey guys,” she said brightly, in a stage-whisper. “I just got back from my trip and Todoroki said you were watching a movie in here. May I join you?”
“’Course,” said Kirishima, whacking pause. “Have a sit. Good trip?”
“Exceptionally!” she said, slipping inside the room. “I’ll tell you about it later, though.”
“Oi, Bakubro, budge up,” said Kirishima. Bakugou snarled out a ‘Fuck you’, but heaved himself into a sitting position all the same. Yaoyorozu slotted herself next to him on the other side and he immediately sprawled wide, knocking Midoriya’s knees together.
Probably for the best, thought Midoriya absently.
They resumed, and now not only did Midoriya contend with a whole lot of Bakugou pressed up against his heated side, but also the steady pump of his breath, the heave and shift of his compacted muscles as he sipped his beer. Midoriya peered around the back of the sofa for something to distract him that wasn’t the film’s lengthy dialogue and spotted Uraraka, perched on a barstool in the kitchen. She gave him a goofy thumbs-up and he wrinkled his nose at her.
“Oi, sit down, nerd,” Bakugou breathed beside him, and Midoriya snapped back into a sitting position like his strings had been yanked. Fearing and obeying Bakugou’s gruff wolf-voice, close by and heavy with command, was too recent a habit to break. “You’re gonna miss shit.”
“It’s alright,” Midoriya breathed, quiet to not be heard over the film. “I’ve seen it before.”
“Nerd.”
Bakugou offered the beer again. This time he didn’t whip it away when Midoriya tentatively took it. It was soaked with condensation like a window in spring. He took several gulps, willing his stomach to stop flipping.
“Don’t drink it all,” snapped Bakugou, snatching it back. “Fucking Deku.”
Midoriya’s stomach took up shag dancing with his liver, his skin tingling like Kaminari had electrocuted him on the down-low. That was two drinks they had shared tonight. He allowed himself to feel, for one moment, a little optimistic about their burgeoning new relationship.
He would compartmentalise the rampant butt-touching for now. He had a few boxes in his head for that sort of thing anyway.
A few weeks later, Midoriya felt his bones shiver with the impact of his spine hitting the training mat and reconsidered.
“Come on, young Midoriya!” called All-Might from the edge of the gym.
“Come on, Deku!” roared Bakugou, almost in tandem from above him, his muscles rippling under his tank top. “If you want to spar, you’ve got to at least give me something to work with.”
Midoriya groaned and heaved himself to his feet. This was the third time today that Bakugou had dragged him into practising CQC. He was bruised, shaky and more than a bit flustered. This new amicable Bakugou was making him so nervous that he made stupid mistakes. Over and over again. Bakugou took advantage every time.
Speaking of; Bakugou stepped into his space, feinting a punch and sweeping his feet out when Midoriya put his focus into dodging it. Falling, again. Frustrated with always being at the disadvantage, he forcibly cleared his head as he toppled, snaking an arm around Bakugou and flipping them so that Bakugou hit the mat first. This would have become a pin, but Midoriya lost himself in the rolling muscles beneath him. His thighs encased hot, heaving flesh, compact as an overstuffed trunk. He faltered, and Bakugou had always been good at finding Midoriya’s loose threads and yanking them. He lurched out from underneath Midoriya and pinned him, face-down on the mat in his favourite hold. The foot on Midoriya’s wrist made it ache.
“Suck it, Deku,” Bakugou spat, and Midoriya tried to blame the heat in his cheeks on exertion.
“Okay,” snapped Aizawa, blowing into their presence like a sand devil. “Midoriya take a short break. Get some water, you look like shit.”
Frustrated, Midoriya ripped himself out of Bakugou’s hold and stomped to the locker room, splashing handfuls of water in his face and willing himself to calm down. He looked at his soggy expression in the mirror. His hair was a matted mess. His skin was bruised and red with the effort of training. He poked a flowering mark under his eye.
There was nothing going on here. He was young. This was a natural reaction from his body. He’d read enough about this stuff to not be concerned.
But then none of his other classmates turned his limbs into melted butter when they brushed past him, smelling of sugar and gasoline. Heat returned to Midoriya’s face. Maybe Uraraka and Asui had a point.
“You done moping, dickhead?” came a wolfish voice from the doorway. In the mirror, Bakugou stood aggressively in the doorframe like a sentry, blocking an escape. Midoriya wondered if throwing a porcelain sink at someone was a federal offence, and if you could get away with it outside of an edgy action film. He closed his eyes and ducked his head, imagining a brick house with four solid walls all built up around him, and a roaring fire in the floo.
Unfortunately, this little piggy was facing a wolf in possession of warheads in the literal palms of his hands, not just a strong respiratory system.
Maybe he could use bigger bricks?
“Oi,” said Bakugou, closer. Midoriya jumped – force of habit – and opened his eyes. Bakugou loomed before him, the menacing flicker in his eye like a distant firework. “Get back out there. You’re stalling.”
“Aizawa sent me in here,” Midoriya protested. “I didn’t just leave.”
“But you wanted to,” Bakugou said. Midoriya couldn’t really argue with that. He knew he made it even plainer by the way his gaze wandered to his feet.
“I’m just tired,” he tried, by way of explanation. Bakugou wasn’t having it.
“You’re not trying,” Bakugou spat. “It was easy as fuck to pin you the last…” He counted on his fingers as Midoriya tried to stave off the humiliation by eyeballing floor tiles. “Seven times. Sort your shit out.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose, Kacchan,” he snapped, louder than he meant to. A mistake, since raising your voice to Bakugou usually resulted in your face taking on Jackson Pollock-esque qualities. As predicted, Bakugou bristled and his palms smouldered as hard as his eyes. Midoriya reflexively shot up two placating hands. “No. Really. I think you’re just better than me. That’s all there is to it.”
“Shut up, Deku,” Bakugou snarled. “That’s a fucking cop-out. I know you can do better than that shit. You’re pushing your luck.”
It was Midoriya’s turn to bristle. Something inside him snapped.
“You just don’t get it, Kacchan. Back off, maybe?”
It had been a couple weeks since Bakugou’s strange behaviour at the barbeque, and not much in their dynamic had evolved at all. Apart from the odd shoulder-barge in the hallway, and snide comment about his hot chocolate at bedtime, Bakugou barely acknowledged him outside of training. Their sparring sessions all ended the same: Bakugou crowing his victory, with Midoriya pinned under him, shivering like the wall-squirrel.
Bakugou would eventually release his elaborate pretzel grip, freeing Midoriya from the hot, trembling sensation that strapped him tight to the mat more absolutely than any wrestling-hold ever could, and storm out the training room. He no longer rolled his joints. It was as if every fight Midoriya lost dealt his partner a personal offence.
As if Midoriya really wasn’t trying.
Wasn’t trying to stave off the violent, angry sensation that thrashed in his abdomen when Bakugou brushed arms with Kaminari, or locked eyes with Kirishima.
Wasn’t trying to force his hands to wander anywhere but over to Bakugou’s sweaty, writhing back when he did one-handed push-ups on the gym floor.
Wasn’t trying to lean back as far as he could in his chair during class, to avoid catching any thin sighs of sea-mineral scent whispering from Bakugou’s clean hair.
It should be noted that, if Midoriya had made a mistake earlier when snapping at Bakugou, he had sat on the nuclear missile launch button by talking back. Bakugou’s eyes flashed.
Midoriya dodged the initial fist aimed at his head but practically walked into the arm that swung around to catch him in a choke-hold. The crook of Bakugou’s arm slammed into his throat and he baulked, falling backwards into Bakugou’s dense chest as he secured the hold, trying to drag Midoriya to the ground with a bellow of rage. Midoriya caught himself, and, standing firm, swept Bakugou’s feet out from under him and twisted free. Bakugou hit the floor hard, but before he could retaliate, Midoriya, fuelled by limitless fury and latent hormones, ripped the entire sink out of the wall using Full-Cowl and lifted it above his head. Porcelain chunks rained down and bounced at their feet. Water sprayed their legs like an aggressive dog at a fire hydrant.
Bakugou’s chest began to heave, his eyes bright and wide.
“Hey guys, Aizawa was just wondering where yo-O-oh my God.”
Kirishima stood in the doorway, frozen in shock, looking from Midoriya, brandishing an entire sink six feet in the air, and Bakugou on the floor, stunned into immobility by the prospect of being smashed into mush with a bathroom fixture. A steady cascade of water from the exposed pipe slowly began to flood the room.
“Hey, Midoriya, you could do that if you want, you know, but I don’t think it would ever get him truly clean,” said Kirishima carefully, clearly wondering if Midoriya had gone to the dark side and would begin some kind of rampage in which he would merrily clobber all in his path with a porcelain sink. “I mean, it is Bakugou.”
“Oh my God,” Midoriya gasped, carefully lowering the weapon into the swimming pool that used to be a locker room. “I don’t know what- Kacchan, I’m sorry!”
“Yeah, okay,” breathed Bakugou, heaving himself out of the puddle and dripping quietly, looking anywhere but Midoriya in the eye. He waded over to Kirishima and gripped him by the shoulder, whispering urgently into his ear. Then he splashed out of the room, squelching into the distance long after he had actually left. Kirishima turned incredulous eyes on Midoriya.
“Alright there, Batman?” he said, approaching slowly. Midoriya nodded, the panic settling in slowly, getting comfortable in his gut. He pulled his hair.
“What did I just do?”
The panic rolled out a futon and started fluffing cushions.
“What did you almost do,” Kirishima corrected. “I don’t think anyone would have blamed you if you had actually hit him with it, though.” He swam over, putting an arm around Midoriya and tugging him away from the washroom carnage. “But I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I gotta go to Aizawa,” he said in a frenzy. “The room is flooding.”
“Eh, we’ll worry about it later.”
“But I broke a sink!”
“I didn’t like that one much anyway,” said Kirishima with a shrug as they squelched in Bakugou’s footprints down the hallway. “It said something tasteless about my sister once.”
Although Aizawa had begrudgingly dubbed the incident, ‘An effective way to weaponise your surroundings’, he still ordered Midoriya to clean up the mess by himself whilst the new sink was being installed. Clearing out a room two-inches full of mouldy water with floating bits of tissue paper is no picnic, so Midoriya resigned himself that the experience would be deservedly dull and demeaning. That was until Bakugou joined him within the first ten minutes, carting a mop and an apologetic grimace.
Not the first time they had served punishment together, and likely not the last. Midoriya was too shy to ask if his presence was voluntary, so they mopped in awkward silence for two hours.
After a long bath and a meal, Midoriya stood in the kitchen, cleaning off his dinner plate at the kitchen sink. The plate dribbled sauce sullenly down the drain, and Midoriya’s self-respect dribbled with it. He wiped the sponge over the plate and slotted it into the dishrack, rinsing the sponge of residual sauce.
“Watch out, lads, he’s got a sink!”
Sero loped into the room like a jackrabbit, nudging Midoriya with one long arm.
“I can’t believe that’s spreading already,” Midoriya groaned. “Who told you?”
“Who cares, dude, it’s fucking great!” Sero hooted. He hooked Midoriya in a light hold and noogied his scalp. “Hope next time it’s something bigger. Like a bath!”
Midoriya wriggled free and flicked suds at Sero, who pretended to cower. Half the class had taken a short Saturday outing into town, and so soon the troops piled in the kitchen-cum-living area, dumping shopping bags into plastic chairs. Kirishima ruffled Midoriya’s soggy hair, and Kaminari insisted on an explosive fist-bump.
“Don’t know what you nerds are celebrating,” barked Bakugou from the doorway, looking effortlessly dishevelled in joggers and a loose tee. His hair was wet. “Deku’s a fucking lunatic.”
“You’re just jealous because you can’t pull a sink out of a wall,” Sero teased, as Midoriya’s mortification hit his hairline.
“Watch it,” Bakugou snarled, ripping into the fridge for a bottle of water.
Ashido, Yaoyorozu and Uraraka bounced into the room; Ashido looking flashy in a new puffy jacket. Uraraka had a pretty red shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She slung her arms around Midoriya in a hearty hug.
“Glad you’re back from solitary,” she told his shoulder. “Was it super gross?”
“No more than I deserved,” Midoriya laughed weakly, with a guilty glance at Bakugou. He wasn’t looking, chugging his water. Did he have to take in the neck of bottles with the whole of his mouth like that? Uraraka stood up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to Midoriya’s ear.
“He didn’t come out with us,” she whispered. “Did he help you?”
Oh God. Voluntary.
“Haha, yup,” Midoriya said at normal volume, patting her back. She broke off with a cheeky grin.
“Pretty impressive,” she said, taking a mug from the cupboard for tea. “Ripping an entire sink out of a wall.”
There was a general murmur of agreement. Sero winked. Behind Uraraka, Bakugou snorted, backwashing into the water bottle.
“Freak,” he said after he swallowed. Midoriya hung his head. “No one else here would pull shit that insane.”
“I dunno.” Kirishima bounded up with a laugh, hooking his arm around Bakugou’s shoulders and activating his hardening quirk so that Bakugou couldn’t shake him off. “Sounds reasonable to me.”
“Fuck off!” Bakugou barked, struggling. “What do you know, shitty hair?”
“Given the option,” Kirishima said loudly to the kitchen, tightening his arm-lock on Bakugou, “who here would have pummelled my brother with that sink?”
Literally every arm in the room shot into the air. Then, of course, every human body in the room became a smoking outline when they all dashed for the exits, as Bakugou’s hands started to spark, and fury set into his face like a bad smell.