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It's the silverware that pushes Bakugou Katsuki over the edge.
It is a Friday afternoon. The weather is pleasant; the sunset, picturesque. Combat training went fucking great. Quirk training went very fucking great. Katsuki has already finished half the homework he's been assigned over break, because he is just that good. All the extras have already gone back home to spend the break with their families. Katsuki is just finishing the last of his curry before he, too, will go to his home (ugh), and spend the break with his family (even more ugh).
Whatever. He's training to be a hero. He can take the hag's annoying nagging.
He goes to wash his empty bowl in the sink. Or he would, except the sink is already occupied by an explosion of kitchenware. Knives, spoons, and chopsticks all litter the bottom of the sink. Atop them rests a Jenga tower of plates that begins to teeter as soon as Katsuki gives it the stink-eye. A set of pots boasts a charred, blackened crust that Katsuki suspects might have once been tomato sauce.
And the icing on the cake is — they're not even soaking. They're all just, sitting there, dry as Aizawa's wit, as if the magical fucking kitchen fairy is going to wave a magic fucking wand and they'll all find 500 yen under their pillow for every plate they've left to disintegrate into oblivion.
Katsuki sets his bowl down and grumbles to himself as he starts repairing the damages. He's always been a stickler for keeping things tidy (sue him) and he knows that if he just leaves them, it'll linger in the back of his head and annoy him all break. Besides, it's Friday, and he can't exactly blame the extras for wanting to enjoy whatever personal time they can get their hands on. Not to mention, it means Katsuki can put off interaction with the hag for another hour.
He stuffs his hands full of spaghetti-sauce-splattered plates and greasy bowls, then tugs open the dishwasher. Which is also full. And the dishes there are also unwashed. Of fucking course. Why the fuck bother with a dishwasher if you're not going to turn it fucking on?
Once the dishwasher is actually doing its fucking job, Katsuki tackles the mess in the sink. Little by little, the plates assemble themselves on the drying rack, and the sink begins to look less like the aftermath of a villain attack. The only things left are a pair of forks sticking straight out of the drain. He yanks them loose and glares at them. Their tines are bent and crooked. He glares at the garbage disposal. He flips the garbage disposal switch. The disposal groans into life, then makes a choking, gurgling noise like a drowning animal, before succumbing to its injuries and sputtering completely out. Katsuki gives it a silent prayer. It had fought a valiant battle against cutlery and died a hero's death.
Okay, so apparently the idiots are that fucking idiotic, but what's done is done. Kastuki will look at the glass half-full — sure, the glass may not have been washed in weeks — but it's half-full! And while the forks are an affront to Katsuki's not-that-latent perfectionism, they're still usable. They'll have to get the disposal repaired, but it could've been something more important, like the refrigerator. Or the oven. Or the…
Katsuki's eyes go wide. Fuck, what happened to the microwave.
The microwave looks like someone dropped it from a three-story building, and the door is practically glued shut. When Katsuki finally manages to pry it open, he's met by a mélange of soup stains, smeared grease, and splattered flecks of what could once be very generously described as food. It looks as if someone swallowed a Jackson Pollock painting and then took an explosive dump. The internal light flickers ominously, as if from a horror movie. Strictly speaking, it's a fucking health code violation. Katsuki starts counting to ten before giving up halfway through and replacing numbers with curse words of escalating volume and intensity.
This is fine. This is okay. Not everybody can be as perfect a chef as Katsuki; Katsuki knows this, both because he is Katsuki and therefore definitionally the best at everything, and also because he's eaten the extras' cooking and so has firsthand experience with what shit tastes like. He scans the kitchen, taking stock of exactly how royally every single one of these asshat extras has fucked up the kitchen.
He keeps his cool when he finds the pair of knives sticking blade-out on the topmost shelf. He stays calm after he nearly slips on a water slick in the corner that was never cleaned up. He holds his shit together when he discovers that someone had left the rice in the rice cooker, and as a result is now hosting an objectively impressive variety of mold species. Katsuki grinds his teeth and swallows his rage while he cleans, tidies, and rearranges until the kitchen is shining brighter than Sparkles vomiting up glitter and rainbows.
Then he opens the cutlery drawer.
See, the thing with the cutlery drawer is that it's like one of those games for toddlers where you're teaching them shapes. There's a triangle-shaped block, which you put in the triangle-shaped hole. There's a circle block that goes in the circle hole, and so on. The cutlery drawer is just like that. It has spoon-shaped indentations to place spoons, and knife-shaped indentations to place knives, one for every single type of cutlery they have. It's so simple that a fucking two-year old can figure it out.
So when Katsuki stares into the drawer, only to see the chopsticks all piled in the spot for spoons, and the spoons all piled in the spot for knives, and the knives all scattered every which way as if they were dropped there by a tornado, Katsuki's thin veneer of calm goes up in literal smoke. As in, his palms explode and singe the drawer. Katsuki closes his eyes. He allows his mind to go blank.
And then Bakugou Katsuki officially flips his shit.
It is a godawful Monday morning, and after a full week of kitchen renovations, Katsuki is on cloud-fucking-nine. Amazing what a little elbow grease can do for a man.
"Good morning, Shark Week," he says when he spots Kirishima on his way down to the common room.
Kirishima looks struck by a bolt of lightning. "Uh," he intelligently answers. "What?"
"I said, it feels like a good fucking morning."
Kirishima blinks once, then again, and then rubs hard at his eyes, and then blinks at Katsuki again. "Um. Sure, I guess."
They take the elevator. Katsuki hums a tune to himself the entire way.
"Are you… humming?" Kirishima wonders in disbelief.
"Huh. Guess I am. Song's catchy as fuck."
Kirishima turns to face him. His eyes are wide in concern. "Bro. Are you okay?"
Katsuki grins. "Never felt fucking better," he declares, just as the elevator doors ding open, and he swaggers into the common room.
After a moment when Kirishima looks like he is strongly considering finding the nearest couch in order to faint on it, he darts after Bakugou and begins babbling.
"Oookay, uh, really Bakugou, don't get me wrong, I'm super happy that you're super happy, but I'm also honestly a little terrified right now? If there was a quirk accident or something happened, you can totally talk to me —" The avalanche of words tumbling from his mouth abruptly stops when they turn the corner and spot a commotion in front of the kitchen. "…What's going on?"
The two of them approach where their classmates are gathered. Round Cheeks' cheeks are puffed in frustration and bafflement; Raccoon Eyes is waving her hands animatedly at Ears, who shakes her head back at her. Glasses looks somewhere between stunned into silence and blowing a gasket. There is an air of unease, a sense of confusion, and just a hint of chaos ready to be tugged forth at the slightest provocation. Katsuki's heart fucking sings.
"Hey, uh, guys," Kirishima ventures. "Everything cool?"
Iida stands at attention. "Kirishima! Bakugou! Good morning!" he booms, far too loudly in the morning, which Katsuki would normally gripe about, but right now not even Sir Chops-A-Lot himself will bring his mood down. "All of us in the 1-A dorms appear to be faced with a strange conundrum!"
Kirishima looks like he will need the fainting couch again. "I don't know if I can take more weirdness this morning…" he mutters.
Iida pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Well. It is perhaps best you see for yourself," he announces, and gestures past the students gathered in front of the kitchen door.
Which they now have. A door, to the kitchen, that is. A very sturdy one, in fact. Nigh-impenetrable, even. Made of a titanium quirk-resistant alloy, and built directly into the frame of the wall. Katsuki can recite the specs by heart. He thinks it is possibly the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.
"What… what is that?" Kirishima manages.
"Our new kitchen door, apparently?" Ashido answers, but her eyebrows are raised as if she's wondering the same question. "I guess it got put in over break."
"But why, though?" Jirou cuts in. "The security outside the building, I get. But if you're a villain trying to break in, why would you care what's in the kitchen?"
"I must say, as class president, I do not understand why I was not informed of this decision. Moreover, I certainly also do not understand the logic!"
"It definitely seems… a lot," Ashido adds.
"What the fuck does it matter?" Katsuki breaks in with a shrug, and all their eyes turn to him. "A door's a fucking door. Why're you all standing around instead of using it?"
"Well, that's the thing," Uraraka pipes up. Katsuki looks to her. She's the one standing closest, and pulls herself away from the card reader with a sigh. "It's locked. And none of our IDs work."
"You're joking," Kirishima says.
"Try it for yourself," Uraraka encourages him. Kirishima gamely steps up to the card reader and flashes his ID. The pad flashes red and announces its rejection with a disapproving grunt.
"Wha- what?" Kirishima mutters. He tries again, with the same results. "You mean — we're all locked out of the kitchen?"
Iida readjusts his glasses again. "It seems incomprehensible that such a major oversight occurred. And yet, that is the situation we find ourselves in."
Katsuki grunts. "Let me try."
Uraraka shrugs. "Go ahead. If none of ours worked, I don't know why yours would."
Katsuki steps up to the door and displays his ID. The pad turns green, chimes — and in a flash, the metal door pulls open with a clang.
"Huh. Worked for me," Katsuki says, stepping into the kitchen. He turns around to gaze out at the crowd of extras, each of them unmoving and staring in disbelief at Katsuki as though he had just pulled fucking Excalibur from a lake.
"Fucking weird," he announces, just before the door slams shut behind him and locks the googly-eyed extras back out of the kitchen.
And now, Katsuki has a correction to make: that is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.
He grins and starts humming to himself again in blissful silence. He figures a celebratory breakfast is in order, and decides to pull out the stops for an omelette florentine. The ingredients are fresh just like they fucking should be, the plates and the utensils are clean and in the cabinets just where they fucking should be, and most importantly of all, there are no damn extras stepping on his toes or twirling knives in their hands or using microwaves for purposes God did not intend. It is the best-tasting omelette florentine he's ever made, and Katsuki wonders why he never did this sooner. Life is fucking good.
Katsuki leaves the kitchen to find everyone standing exactly where he had left them, with eyes as wide as he had left them. There are new additions to the crowd, and their eyes are also wide like startled woodland creatures. Katsuki briefly contemplates whether this is what holding true power feels like.
"K-Kacchan?" Deku sputters as soon as Katsuki exits the kitchen and the door locks shut behind him.
"Morning Deku," Katsuki drawls. Deku flinches at the friendly gesture. "No luck, huh?"
The total silence he is met with is answer in itself. Which is what Katsuki had been expecting, but is no less satisfying to hear — or not hear — for himself.
Katsuki blinks back in affected nonchalance. "Guess not. Strange as fuck." He shrugs, then offers a friendly wave that the class only stares back at. "Anyway, see you extras in class," he tells them, then saunters out of the common room as light as a fucking feather and with the biggest, widest, most shit-eating-est smirk he's ever had.
Katsuki is nothing if not realistic, and as gratifying as the stunned silence is, realistically he doesn't expect it to last long. All day long, guesses are whispered, the rumor mill is churned, and notes are passed that Aizawa respectfully pretends not to see as the class works to decipher what, exactly, is going on. And by the end of the day's classes, Katsuki can tell by the nineteen icy glares directed toward him that the jig is up.
Which is fine. Because Katsuki is a fucking master at jigs, and that means he can now move on to the next jig.
He's mobbed as soon as he sets foot in the common room. Round Cheeks is the one to confront him first — which, respect. "What did you do, Bakugou-kun," she demands, taking a threatening step forward.
Katsuki plays dumb just for her reaction. "The fuck are you talking about, Strawberry Cheeks?"
He is rewarded when her whole face inflates like an overfilled balloon. "You know exactly what I'm talking about! That dumb door that's locked us all out of the kitchen!"
"In case you haven't fucking noticed, Cherry Cheeks, I'm not exactly a fucking mechanic."
"No, you're not," Jirou adds, arms crossed and staring Katsuki down. "But we do have a Support Department."
"Great job, detective. Fucking brain of the century right there."
"And they've already claimed credit."
Katsuki shrugs at her. "Then why aren't you asking those lab rats about it?"
"I did," Jirou glares back. "But they couldn't have been able to install it without someone letting them into Dorm 1-A in the first place."
"And," Uraraka emphasizes, "It seems like too much of a coincidence that you're the only one who has kitchen access, Bakugou-kun."
"Get to the fucking point, Chestnut Cheeks."
"My cheeks aren't —"
"The fucking point, Apple Cheeks."
"Bakugou," Iida declares solemnly. "Did you truly conspire with the Support Department on this act of treason?"
Katsuki clicks his tongue. "Should've known Binocular Face wouldn't keep her trap shut."
There are gasps of disbelief. Wails of dismay. Katsuki has never felt more alive.
"Wait, Bakugou, it's true?" Kaminari quails. "You sold us out? To the Support Department?"
"Truly, a shadow has fallen over the dorms this day," Tokoyami murmurs.
"Shut it, Nevermore Knockoff," Katsuki warns, offended. "I didn't sell anyone out."
"Sure looks like it to me," Ashido asserts. "This is, like, betrayal."
Yaoyorozu bristles. "Did you really bargain away our access to the kitchen just to preserve your own? I hope for your sake it was worth it."
At that, Katsuki breaks into a grin. "Oh, it was damn worth it," he declares, looking the extras in the eyes, letting the pause linger until the tension is so tight it could snap —
And then he drops the bomb.
"After all, I commissioned the damn thing."
There is dead silence for the third time that day. And for the third time that day, Katsuki has a new most beautiful thing in the world.
What happens next is a bit of a jumble, but it ends with Class 1-A gathered in the common room in emergency session, with the exception of Katsuki, who has been duct-taped to the ceiling fan and is now gently revolving above them.
Katsuki could get down anytime he wants. But it's a lot more entertaining watching the extras struggle to figure out what the fuck they're going to do about that shiny, heaven-sent kitchen door.
"Oi, Soy Sauce, my left leg's coming loose. Better patch it the fuck up unless you want me to fall on you and break your damn neck."
"I say we should lock him in a classroom with Monoma," Sero argues. He shoots a wad of tape at Katsuki's ankle and otherwise refuses to acknowledge Katsuki's existence.
Hagakure sighs. "Honestly, I'd feel bad for Monoma."
"Let's just break into his room and steal his stash!" Mineta demands.
"Ew."
"Gross."
"Hell no."
"Maybe we can tie Bakugou down and find some tigers to feed him to," Ashido huffs. "I'm only half-kidding," she clarifies.
"Fucking liar, you're not kidding at all."
"You're right, I'm not. Hey, Koda, know any tigers?"
Koda shakes his head. The entire class heaves a collective sigh of disappointment.
"We are all ignoring the most obvious solution!" Iida declares with a chop. "We shall simply inform Aizawa-sensei and the other teachers!"
"We can't do that," Deku says grimly.
"Why not?"
"Snitches get stitches."
"Midoriya, what."
"What?"
"Regardless," Yaoyorozu interrupts. She produces an impressive set of legal-looking documents and sets them on the table. "That will not solve the problem. I inquired with the administration, and it seems all the proper protocols to install the door were followed. The paperwork is surprisingly flawless."
"Surprisingly?" Katsuki growls as he floats above her head, before being circled back around to the other side of the room. "I'm the best at fucking everything. If I'm locking you dumbfucks out of the kitchen, I'm doing it right the first fucking time."
"Koda, how about bears?"
"Merde. If Aizawa-sensei can do nothing, then we are at an impasse, non?"
"Well… It just means all the conventional methods of reversing this decision are off the table," Yaoyorozu hedges, biting her lip. "I am not condoning it, but I suppose more… unconventional tactics are possible."
"Unconventional? Like…?" Kaminari wonders.
"She means breaking the door," Jirou tells him.
Katsuki snorts. "Good fucking luck."
"You saying we can't do it?" Uraraka challenges him
"That's exactly what I'm fucking saying, Durian Cheeks."
"Stop inflating the size of my —"
"I already told you morons, I don't waste my time doing anything unless it's the best. That goes for fights, tests, and keeping you pack of brainless mole rats out of the fucking kitchen."
Deku rolls his eyes. "However good tech it is, it's not perfect. It's not like Hatsume made it."
Katsuki says nothing.
Realization blooms like a giant turd-shaped blossom across Deku's face. "Wait. Oh my god, did you commission Hatsume?" Deku gasps.
"For once in your shitty-ass life, Deku, you're actually right." Katsuki bangs his fist into the ceiling. A piece of plaster drops right on Deku's face.
"Mmmfff," Deku says.
Jirou raises an eyebrow. "Hatsume's got like fifty irons in the fire. How'd you get on the priority list?"
Katsuki shrugs his shoulders; Sero's tape breaks with the motion because it's weak as fuck. "I called in a favor."
Kirishima goes rigid. "Bakubro, you what?"
"Fucking hell, how many times do I have to say it? No wonder you all do shit on exams."
Kirishima and Deku snap their heads towards each other, exchanging wide-eyed looks.
Kirishima's voice is hoarse. "Midoriya. You heard that, too, right?"
"Yeah," Deku gulps. "And earlier — Kacchan told me good morning —"
"— Me too, he looked actually happy —"
"— Kacchan hates Mondays, I should've known —"
"— and the entire elevator ride he was humming to himself —"
Deku blanches. "Oh god, he was humming? That's the kind of thing you mention first!"
"I didn't think it was this bad!"
"Um, I don't mean to interrupt," Kaminari says, interrupting anyway. "But we've all seen Bakugou when he's pissed. So isn't Bakugou being happy a good thing?"
If Deku and Kirishima shake their heads any faster, they'll pop right off. "Oh no. Nonononono. No," Deku says. "It's not good. In fact, it's very very bad."
Todoroki clears his throat. "Midoriya, Kirishima. Would you care to enlighten the rest of us? I'm afraid you're the only ones who know how to speak feral Bakugou."
"I'll show you fucking feral, fucking Salmon Fishfucker," Katsuki snarls, dropping a piece of the ceiling on him. The shitstick dodges without even bothering to look up. God fucking dammit.
Deku speaks first, plaster still nesting in his mop of hair. "Well," he grimaces. "It means that Kacchan finally snapped."
"But dude, he snaps like three times a day," Kaminari points out.
Deku shakes his head knowingly. "No, that's different — those are regular Kacchan snaps, I think he has a quota he has to meet every day. This means he snapped for real, it's a totally different kind."
"There's more than one kind?" Kaminari wails.
Deku sparkles. "Of course! Kacchan has at least twenty-seven distinct types of anger, possibly more, but that's what I've been able to document so far. It's one of his most versatile emotions, actually, while appearing superficially similar, there are subtle nuances in facial expression and vocal intonation that convey —"
"Oi, Deku."
"Yes, Kacchan?"
Katsuki drops another ceiling piece on him.
"Hrrrkk."
"I think what Midoriya is getting at," Kirishima interrupts, "Is that Bakugou never does anything by halves. And when have you seen Bakugou ask for help? So if he's gone so far as to call in favors for this… It means that he's pulled out all the stops to make sure nobody can get into the kitchen."
Uraraka frowns. "What are you suggesting, Kirishima-kun?"
Kirishima suddenly looks nervous. "Well," he begins, smile forced. "You may not like this. But maybe, we should, uh. Just hear Bakugou out?"
"But I want to feed him to a pack of wolves!" Ashido protests. "Koda, please say you at least know some wolves."
Kirishima holds up his hands placatingly. "Look, I get it, I really do, because I feel the exact same way —"
"What the fuck, Shitty Hair."
"— but as satisfying as watching leopards eat Bakugou's face off might feel —"
"Seriously, Shitty Hair, what the fuck."
"— it doesn't change the fact that we're still locked out of the kitchen."
"But I want to," Kaminari whines.
"The wraiths of nocturne demand a blood sacrifice."
Kirishima runs a hand through his hair. "I'm just saying, if Bakugou's put this much effort into it, we all know it's going to be hell to get rid of the door. It can't hurt to just hear what he has to say."
The room goes silent, seeming to consider Kirishima's suggestion.
Eventually, Iida nods. "Bakugou, we will give you one opportunity to explain your actions."
"You want to fucking know?" Katsuki growls, attempting to look as menacing as it is possible to look while being strapped to a ceiling fan and floating around the room. "Because I've got to say, I didn't expect this much of a bitch fit, seeing as none of you spineless cephalopods even know how to use a kitchen in the first place."
"We know how to use a kitchen!" Uraraka says, bless her heart.
"Cepha- what now?" Kaminari says, bless his heart.
"Bakugou's the one throwing a bitch fit," Todoroki says, apparently having chosen death.
Yaoyorozu holds out a hand to silence them. "Assuming your description is accurate — which I should note I am not stipulating to — am I correct in understanding that you want something in exchange for returning rights to the kitchen to the rest of us?"
"At least someone deserves to be top of the class."
Yaoyorozu sighs. "Very well. Bakugou, state your terms."
Moment of fucking truth. "It's simple as fuck, assclowns," Katsuki informs them all as he continues his orbit around the ceiling. "I'm fucking done with you useless crapsacks cooking shit for food and destroying the kitchen and everything in it. The only way that door gets unlocked is when you extras learn how to fucking cook."
Silence drops like a sledgehammer. The class weighs their options: breaking down an indestructible kitchen door that Katsuki had made damn well sure is as impregnable as Fort Knox, sealed inside Alcatraz, sealed inside Tartarus — or for once in their damn lives learning how to fucking cook.
The entire class shares meaningful looks. As one, they turn to Iida to declare the verdict.
"Well," Iida says with a sigh. "Breaking down the door it is."
On Day 1 of the Great 1-A Kitchen Siege, the class tries to break down the door through brute force.
Katsuki very helpfully tells them that it is fucking pointless. He is, of course, ignored.
"Kirishima-kun, what if you try hardening your body at a single point…?" Deku wonders.
"I could give it a shot. Where should I target, though?"
Kaminari crosses his arms. "What about the point where the door meets the wall? That's the weakest, right?"
"You mean the frame? That sounds about right," Kirishima agrees.
"Hey, idiots," Katsuki tells them from where he has planted himself on the couch, munching on a bowl of popcorn doused in chili flakes. Not the healthiest, but today's events clearly called for popcorn. "The frame's fucking load-bearing. It's the strongest part of the whole fucking thing."
"Yeah, the frame, dude, try hitting it at the frame," Kaminari says anyway.
Katsuki rolls his eyes and listens as the crashing sounds of Kirishima's body meeting the door eventually give way to a medley of frustrated groans and sighs. Katsuki tosses another piece of popcorn into his mouth.
"Holy hell, it didn't even budge."
"It's like — huff — the frame is — huff — super strong."
"No shit," Katsuki drawls.
"What if Kirishima-kun hardened his entire body all at once?" Deku starts muttering. "He wouldn't be able to move very well, though, we'd have to find some way to launch him at a very high velocity? Maybe Iida's quirk would work — but Iida usually only has to move himself, factoring in Kirishima's weight, especially in his hardened state…"
Katsuki throws a piece of popcorn at him. It arcs gracefully in the air before landing smack in the middle of Deku's forehead.
Deku startles. He turns and seems to register Katsuki's presence for the first time since they started this harebrained effort hours ago. "Kacchan," he says with a frown. "Don't tease us with food while you've banned us all from the kitchen."
Katsuki rustles his hand in the popcorn bowl extra loudly, just to spite him.
"Good afternoon, Midoriya," Iida announces as he finishes descending the stairs. He marches straight up to the three of them. "Can you provide a status report on your efforts to remove this monstrosity?"
"Fuck you," Katsuki says pointedly, "That door is a thing of fucking beauty."
Deku ignores Katsuki entirely and instead turns to Iida with a sigh. "We just finished trying to use Kirishima's quirk to target a weak point in the door, but it didn't work. Ashido tried her acid earlier, but apparently the metal is made of an alloy that resists corrosion. There was no visible effect."
Kirishima pipes up. "Then Midoriya realized, if the door's so tough, why not try knocking out the electrical panel?"
"So I gave it the old Chargebolt zap tap!"
Iida's eyes go wide. "What a brilliant idea, Midoriya! Did it work?"
Deku fidgets. "…No."
"Yeah, real fucking brilliant, Deku."
Deku attempts to glower at Katuski, but his face looks exactly the same as when they were fucking five-year-olds, so it is literally the furthest thing from intimidating. "Kacchan, I don't want to hear that from you, you're not even helping!"
"I literally just told you not to target the fucking frame and you idiots ignored me, tried it anyway, and guess the fuck what. It didn't fucking work."
"Bakugou, all you've been telling us is things that won't work," Kirishima whines.
"Because you're all idiots and everything you've been doing won't work."
"What won't work?" Todoroki asks, appearing out of nowhere like a cat in fog, and also, despite Katsuki's best efforts, very much still alive.
"Everything, apparently," Kaminari moans.
Katsuki snorts. "Wow. Never thought Dunce Face would be the first one to show some sense."
"Er… Thanks?"
"May I try?" Todoroki interrupts. "The attempt certainly shouldn't hurt."
Katsuki smirks. "Give it your best shot, Soggy Snowflake. Not like you'll do much better than the Stupid Stoplight Squad over there."
Green hair, yellow hair, and red hair blink dumbly back at Katsuki, in perfect synchronicity, as if doing their damnedest to prove Katsuki right.
Todoroki nods. "Ah. I see. Because of their hair."
"Of fucking course, you Two-Toned Tuna."
"It wasn't your best work," Todoroki shrugs, then turns to look the kitchen door up and down, as if sizing up his opponent. He stretches his neck, then his arms. And then sprays out a blast of ice that shatters upon impact.
Todoroki is trying to destroy the door by… freezing it? Or something? Oh good, Katsuki's going to need more popcorn.
"Just for the record, I didn't skimp on the specs. Door's fucking ice-proof, Frosted Flakes."
Todoroki shoots Katsuki a flat look, then promptly switches to his fire.
"Also fireproof," Katsuki helpfully informs him.
Todoroki shoots Katsuki another, flatter look, then switches back to ice.
"Fucking Multicolor Mashup, I just told you it's fucking ice-proof."
Todoroki schools his face into the flattest possible expression. He blinks at Katsuki, then releases a tremendous burst of fire at the door again. Katsuki can see the door begin to glow with the heat. It glows brighter and brighter, so strong that Katsuki can feel the heat pulsating even from the couch — and then the fire suddenly stops, and is replaced just as suddenly by a crash of ice, and then everything disappears behind a tower of steam. And when the steam finally disappears —
The door is still there.
Todoroki looks slapped in the face with a fish. Katsuki's day is fucking made.
Katsuki tosses another piece of popcorn in his mouth with a grin. "Nice try, Raspberry Slushie. Trying to break it with a sudden change in temperature? At least someone knows basic…" Katsuki trails off. He frowns. And then sees red.
Katsuki flings his bowl of popcorn down on the table. The table creaks in protest; the popcorn pops, again. "You Antipodal Asshole!" he growls. "You fucking knew, and you did it anyway!"
Todoroki has the gall to look upset. "Bakugou. I have just failed in my attempt to gain access to the kitchen and prevent my friends from starving. Please leave me in peace to go wallow in self-pity."
"Absolutely the fuck not!" Katsuki roars, stomping over to Todoroki and jabbing an accusing finger in his face. "Every single time you try to cook your stupid cold soba noodles!"
"Bakugou, what are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about you using your ice on pans you just pulled off the stove!"
It's hard to tell, but it looks like some minor inkling of realization dawns on the deadpan dumbass' face. "Oh. Yes. I was trying to cool them off. It seemed efficient."
"You fucking broke them!"
"It wasn't that many," Todoroki frowns.
"Twenty-three. Twenty-three fucking pans," Katsuki seethes. "This whole time I thought you were just a dumbass, but you've been doing it on purpose!"
"It's efficient," Todoroki petulantly repeats.
Katsuki grinds his teeth. "And then we have to buy new fucking pans! Do you think the kitchen fairy waves a magic fucking wand? Do you think you just use a pan the one fucking time and then throw it in the fucking garbage?"
"Is that… not how it works?"
Katsuki's eyebrow twitches. "I," he finally says, deliberately, "Am going to strangle you." And with that, Katsuki launches himself at Todoroki to avenge the cookware that has perished at IcyHot's icy-hot hands.
Iida intercepts him, unfortunately. "Bakugou! You are training to be a hero! You cannot simply attack your classmates!"
"I won't do anything to Frosty The Fuckface that he hasn't already done to our 10-inch," Katsuki snarls. "Like break him in fucking half."
Iida struggles mightily to hold Katsuki back. "Whatever you may believe of Todoroki, it does not justify assault of a fellow classmate! Particularly when the rationale is a minor kitchen mishap!"
Oh, that's fucking it. "A minor kitchen mishap?" Katuski repeats, dangerously, ceasing his struggle against Iida's hold so he can better glare daggers at him. "I don't want to hear that from you, Locomotive Legs."
"I beg your pardon?" Iida demands.
"You're the one who threw a gallon of water on a fucking grease fire."
Iida's jaw drops as though Katsuki had just socked him in the face. Katsuki almost wishes he had. "It seemed like the rational course of action at the time!" Iida protests.
"That was the rational course of action to burn down the entire fucking dorm! What part of oil and water don't mix don't you fucking understand? They teach that shit to five-year-olds!"
Iida's jaw drops open, and stays there.
Kaminari, who has always had zero sense of self-preservation, very unwisely chooses that moment to break into laughter. "Wow, really, Iida? And Bakugou calls me the —"
"Dunce Face," Bakugou interrupts him, and Kaminari far more wisely puts a sock in it. "You put foil in the microwave."
Kaminari winces. "Give a guy just one free pass, man!"
"You did it three fucking times."
"…Give a guy one free pass that covers all three times?" he chuckles weakly.
Kirishima holds his hands out placatingly. "Bakugou, I get that you're upset, but we can't all be wizards in the kitchen like you. You just have impossibly high standards!"
"I didn't think the kitchen-not-blowing-up would be an impossibly high standard."
"Kacchan's the one blowing things up every day," Deku mutters.
The room goes thick with silence. Katsuki rotates on his heel, ever-so-slowly, to stare him down. "Deku," Katsuki announces, calm as the motherfucking Buddha himself, and from the wide-eyed look on Deku's face he's finally realized just how much of a shithole he's dug himself in. "You, of all people, really want to play this game?"
Deku audibly swallows. "Uh. Not really —"
"Just checking, because you thought canned tuna would go great in a fucking fruit smoothie."
Deku grimaces. "Well —"
"Then you broke the blender because you didn't think it was mixing fast enough and used your quirk to make it go faster."
Deku's face curls in on itself. "That's —"
"And then you somehow set the fucking smoothie on fucking fire."
"…I didn't mean to," Deku eventually mumbles.
Katsuki takes a step back so he can better glare at all five of them. "This is why you're all banned. Not a single damn one of you is innocent."
The rest of them go silent, hopefully deliberating over their crimes and determining how best to show penance to Katsuki and the kitchen they have so callously desecrated time and time again.
"Bakugou… I believe I understand," Todoroki eventually says, apparently finding it in himself to speak up first. "From now on, I will use pans twice before throwing them away."
"I will fucking murder you," Bakugou pledges, and this time it is only by the combined forces of Iida, Deku, and Kirishima that Todoroki will live to break more kitchenware another day.
On Day 2 of the Great 1-A Kitchen Siege, the class discovers that, despite their initial assumptions, not everyone is banned from the kitchen.
They discover this when Yaoyorozu produces a sledgehammer and takes a giant swing at the kitchen door, only for the door to slide open and for Tsuyu to narrowly avoid getting brained.
"Oh my goodness, Asui-chan, I'm so sorry!" Yaoyorozu shrieks, immediately dropping the sledgehammer like a hot potato onto the floor. It promptly snaps the floorboards with a resounding crack. A shower of splinters flies into the air.
"It's okay. I'm fine, kero," Tsuyu reassures her.
Yaoyorozu bows deep at the waist. "Even so, I must apologize. I could have injured you. I was only attempting to strike at the kitchen door, and certainly did not expect you to…" She trails off, then frowns.
From his perch across the room, Katsuki grins as he watches the gears click into place. He takes a bite of his chili-infused chocolate bar. Also not the healthiest, but Katsuki is having the time of his fucking life, here.
"Wait," Yaoyorozu finally says, looking and sounding extremely puzzled. "How did you get inside the kitchen?"
Tsuyu gives her a slow, frog-like blink. "I used the door," she explains, simply.
Uraraka bounds over the couch to her. "Wait, what? You used the door? But nobody but Bakugou is allowed in!"
Tsuyu shakes her head. "It's not just Bakugou, kero. I am. So is Satou. Shoji, too, I think."
There is silence for nearly a whole minute as Ponytail and Round Cheeks process this information, their eyes bugging out like insects and making Katsuki absently wonder if that means Tsuyu considers them food.
Yaoyorozu's prim façade finally cracks. "Bakugou!" she screams.
Katsuki takes another bite of his chocolate bar, relishing the spice in his mouth. "What the fuck, Princess, I'm right fucking here."
"What is the meaning of this?"
Katsuki grunts, and bestirs himself to get up from his seat. "The meaning of what?"
"I thought you had the entire class locked out of the kitchen!"
Katsuki shrugs. "I never said that. Not my fault you extras made asses out of yourselves by assuming."
Uraraka, for her part, whirls on Tsuyu. "Asui-chan, why didn't you tell us?" Uraraka demands.
"Nobody ever asked, kero."
Uraraka still looks betrayed, somehow. "Did you know about this?"
Tsuyu shakes her head. "No, Bakugou-chan never said anything to me. I was just as surprised as you were, kero."
"Then why…?"
"Because unlike you dumbfucks, Frogger actually knows what the fuck she's doing in the kitchen."
Yaoyorozu frowns a deep, disapproving frown. Katsuki thinks it is probably the same one she turns on the unwashed masses to let them know their place. "Bakugou, what gives you the right to make decisions like this? You do not get to place judgment on your classmates."
Katsuki huffs. "Should've known that's a right reserved only for you."
"Exactly," Yaoyorozu agrees. "Wait. That's not what I —"
"Yeah, Yaomomo's right!" Uraraka chimes in. "You can't just name yourself the King of the Kitchen," she objects, exquisitely unaware that Katsuki has already done so.
Tsuyu nods. "It's not fair to your classmates, kero."
"See? Asui-chan agrees with us!" Uraraka gloats.
"You're all also very big slobs in the kitchen, kero," Tsuyu croaks.
"What?" Uraraka croaks back, looking as though Tsuyu had just stabbed her.
Tsuyu shrugs; there is a hint of an apology in her voice. "I'm sorry, Ochako-chan. I think Bakugou-chan went too far. But I also get why he's upset, kero."
"But… but I cook just fine!" Uraraka objects.
Tsuyu looks at her with a pitying gaze. "Ochako-chan… You cook fish in the microwave."
"What's wrong with that?"
"What's fucking wrong with it is you make the entire dorm stink like a fish market for a week afterward," Katsuki growls. "I thought I was going to go insane, thank fuck you said it, Frogger."
"But… how else am I supposed to cook fish?" Uraraka flails.
"Oven," Katsuki supplies.
"Stove," Tsuyu answers.
"Poach it."
"Steam it."
"Grill it, if the weather's good."
"Put it in a stew and slow cook it, kero."
"Oi, Floaty, you taking fucking notes?"
Uraraka only stares back, uncomprehending, as though Katsuki is trying to teach the theory of relativity to a squirrel.
Yaoyorozu clears her throat. "That's all very well, but —"
"Sorry, Princess, but you don't got a leg to stand on here. Every time you bake you mix up baking soda and baking powder."
"Not always!"
"Which is fucking weird, now that I think about it. Isn't the whole point of your quirk that you know the chemical composition of damn near everything?"
Yaoyorozu reddens. "I don't… Look, we had live-in cooks, okay?"
"Fucking lifestyles of the rich and famous," Katsuki mutters.
"Baking is a lot of chemical reactions put together, kero," Tsuyu says thoughtfully. "I think if you practiced, and keep yourself from overthinking, you'd do it really well."
"But you're fucking shit at it now, so you're all fucking banned. Banned, banned, fucking banned."
Uraraka breaks herself from her squirrel fugue. "But I don't want to be banned!" she shouts.
"And I don't want you to break kitchen appliances like they're fucking piñatas."
"Bakugou, that does not justify granting yourself unilateral authority over the kitchen," Yaoyorozu glares at him.
"I think it fucking does," Bakugou glares right back. "Unless you want Deku doing the cooking?"
Deku, who has just taken all of one step into the common room, immediately freezes. "Um."
"Because it took Deku ten years to figure out how to use the fucking rice cooker, half the time he forgets to plug it in, and all the time he never washes the fucking rice. I swear, if I see one more damn rice bug in the middle of —"
Deku cuts him off with a forced, gurgling laugh. "Haha! Ha! Ha. Really funny, wow, Kacchan, you know actually I just remembered I have to go iron my cactus now okay bye," he half-stammers, half-yells, and then all but sprints back up the stairs.
Tsuyu thwaps Katsuki with her tongue. "Bakugou-chan… You're being really petty, kero."
"You bet your ass."
Uraraka attempts one last pleading gaze. "We're human, we need to eat, Bakugou-kun!"
"Lunch Rush is there for a fucking reason."
"That's only one meal of the day," she whines.
"Convenience stores exist."
Yaoyorozu shudders. "Have we truly fallen so low…?"
"Bakugou-kun, please?"
"What? Fuck no," Katsuki scowls back. "All I'm asking is that you not be shit at cooking. Fuck, you all sound like toddlers throwing a tantrum."
"What happened to Midoriya?" Todoroki asks, appearing from nowhere as usual. Katsuki feels the urge to slug him in the face, also as usual.
"He had to go iron his cactus, kero," Tsuyu explains.
"Oh, okay," Todoroki answers, then putzes over to the couch. "Anyway, the one throwing the tantrum is Bakugou."
Despite Katsuki's best efforts, Todoroki remains stubbornly alive.
On Day 3 of the Great 1-A Kitchen Siege, the class breaks down and calls for reinforcements.
The common room door bursts open to reveal Pikachu and… Katsuki squints over his bag of ghost pepper potato chips. Is that… Eyebags?
Kaminari jabs a finger at Katsuki from across the room. "Go, Shinsou! Attack!"
Shinsou raises an unimpressed eyebrow. "Pardon my French, but what the hell?"
"No, Shinsou, you're not supposed to speak French, you're supposed to attack."
"What do you think I am, I'm not a Pokémon."
"Shinsou!"
Katsuki blinks, dumbly. "What the fuck," he manages.
"Ah-ha!" Kamimari declares victoriously. "You answered him and fell right into our trap!"
"Dumbass, you were the last one to talk," Katsuki growls.
Kaminari gawks. "What? Shinsou, you were supposed to do the thing! With your quirk!"
"Oh," Shinsou says with a slow blink. "Is that what I was supposed to be doing?"
"We talked about this!" Kaminari wails.
"I don't remember agreeing," Shinsou yawns.
"It was like, an unspoken agreement!"
"Kaminari, I don't even know why I'm here. You just said, 'come with me, use your quirk, be a hero,' and dragged me to the dorm."
Kaminari drops to his knees and smacks his forehead against the floor. "Shinsou, please, you have to save us!"
Shinsou looks exasperated and tries to take a step away, but Kaminari wraps himself around Shinsou's legs, the way that cats do when you're standing at the top of the stairs to trip and murder you and make it look like an accident. Shinsou tries to take another step, but Kaminari refuses to let go and forces Shinsou to drag him across the floor.
"Get off —" Shinsou demands, before heaving a resigned sigh. "Fine. I know I'll regret this but I'm morbidly curious and I'll bite. What happened?"
Kaminari gazes up at Shinsou pleadingly. "Shinsou," he explains. "We are starving."
"Yeah, that tells me nothing."
"It's awful, Shinsou, do you know what it's like?" Kaminari babbles, splattering his word vomit everywhere. "To know a world with food and then have it all taken away from you?"
"…Right. So can someone marginally more coherent explain?" Shinsou says, casting his gaze around the room.
Tokoyami stands. "'Twas a morning wreathed in the shadow of treachery and false salvation, naught but three days agone. A vengeful demon appeared before us, to seal away the means of crafting sustenance in an act of unjust retribution, only to be released in exchange for unearned penance. We did refuse this Faustian bargain, and though the sanctity of our souls remains yet intact, we now reside entrapped in the very prison built by the flames of rage and the darkness that dwells within wrathful hearts."
"…Okay, literally anyone else."
"So it's fucking like this," Katsuki cuts in, crunching into another spicy chip. It's looking like this whole week is going to be a cheat week, but for all this, Katsuki deserves it. "Extras don't know how to fucking cook. So I locked them out of the kitchen. And now they're throwing a shit-fest because of it."
"The one throwing the shit-fest is Bakugou," Todoroki maintains as he walks by Katsuki's chair. Katsuki sticks out a foot. Todoroki trips over it, tucks into a roll, and then effortlessly gets back to his feet and keeps walking as though nothing happened. Katsuki swears and shovels a whole handful of chips into his mouth.
"So that's why Kaminari is invading my personal space?" Shinsou intones, still standing in the middle of the room and with Kaminari inhumanly curled around his legs. "Because Bakugou won't let other people into the kitchen?"
"Do you understand now?" Kaminari begs. "You have to make Bakugou change his mind, Shinsou. You're our last hope!"
Shinsou is quiet for several seconds as he stares down at Kaminari, who is still attached like gum to his feet. He finally gives a long sigh. "Bakugou."
Katsuki acknowledges him by no longer rustling his bag of chips.
"Thank you."
Kaminari pales. "No. Not you too," he breathes, turning his face up at Shinsou in disbelief. "You're taking his side? Against me? Against all of us? Against food?"
"This is a stand for food, actually," Shinsou corrects him. "Because I've seen what you bring to lunch and it is many things but it is not food."
"The eggs were only a little crispy!"
"Batteryface, they were fucking charcoal."
"Next thing you're going to tell me is that Shinsou's allowed in the kitchen when we're not!"
Katsuki munches on another chip. "Wow, another point for Bolt Brain. Never thought it would happen."
"What?" Kaminari squawks. "Dude, Shinsou's not even in 1-A!"
"And he cooks better than all of you nitwits put together so suck it up and learn to take the heat or get out of the fucking kitchen."
Kaminari looks more wounded than if Katsuki had actually explodo-killed him. He finally allows his grip on Shinsou's legs to go limp, and Shinsou immediately groans in relief and takes a tentative step away.
"Bakugou's going about it in his usual, insufferable way and being a total dick —"
"Oi, watch it, Sleepy."
"— but when he's right, he's right. How many times have you put foil in the microwave now, Kaminari?"
Kaminari thumps his head against the floor. "You put foil in the microwave one time …!"
"You've done it more than once, Sparky, that's the whole fucking point."
"But why is it the only thing that matters?" he groans into the carpet.
"It's not, you thought head cheese was actual cheese," Shinsou adds.
"Mon dieu," Aoyama whimpers, and promptly faints.
"Twinklefucker says that as if he hasn't been trying to mix glitter into cake batter and choke us all to death," Katsuki grunts.
"You know, I once saw Midoriya try to cook an egg over the stove in a plastic container and that was enough for me," Shinsou laments, then shakes his head. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but for once I actually feel sorry for you, Bakugou."
"For once I won't throttle you for saying that."
"I'm back, did the plan with Shinsou work?" Sero says, announcing his entrance by banging the door against the wall. His gaze drifts to Kaminari, who is now curled up in the fetal position on the floor. "…I'm going to take a wild guess and say no."
"Hanta," Kaminari moans. "Why does Bakugou hate me?"
"I hate all you idiots equally," Katsuki reassures him.
Kaminari gazes up at Sero, hope shining in his eyes. "Please tell me it went better with Hatsume?"
"Well…" Sero trails off.
"Eek! Hatsume, I didn't mean —"
"If you touch one of my babies —!"
"We won't hurt it, we just want it… dismantled."
"You do that and I'll dismantle you."
"Er, Hatsume, put that down…"
A boom reverberates from outside; the entire common room vibrates. Silence descends. Katsuki pops another chip into his mouth.
Sero coughs into his hand. "…Negotiations appear to have broken down."
"Yeah, if you think Binocular Face is going to help you on this, you're more off your rocker than she is."
"But Hatsume was our last hope!" Kaminari wails.
"You told me I was your last hope," Shinsou mutters.
"We have a list," Sero informs him. He produces a piece of paper in his hands, labelled "Last Hopes" in big, bold letters, and starts to read. "So Shinsou said no, Hatsume threatened to dismember us in disturbingly specific ways, next is Monoma — scratch that, why is Monoma even on the list — and after Monoma is —"
"Kacchan, it's time this ended!" Deku demands, announcing his own entrance by banging the door against the wall for the second time that day; for the second time that day, drywall cracks and tumbles onto the floor.
Katsuki groans. "Deku's on the list? Deku is literally the last fucking person in any position to complain."
"I might not be," Deku agrees, with his trademark triumphant hero smile, and steps aside to reveal —
Katsuki white-knuckles his bag of chips. "Eri?"
Eri steps out from Deku's shadow and gazes up at Katsuki with wide, baleful eyes.
"…U-um. Hero Deku said. He said that… you won't let him and his friends in the kitchen."
Katsuki swallows audibly. "…That's right," he admits.
Eri's eyes grow implausibly wider and more baleful. "I… don't understand. Why are you being mean to your friends? Are you two… fighting?" she wonders, her voice nearly trembling.
Katsuki swallows, more audibly. "We're not fighting, Eri," he attempts.
"We are fighting, Kacchan!" Deku insists. "It's a big fight! A huge fight! And Kacchan started it and he's being really mean and he has to stop. Tell him to stop, Eri!"
Eri's eyes break the laws of physics with how wide they look.
"Eri," Katsuki finally says, gravely, straining to think of a way to put this in terms she can understand. He kneels down so he can look her in the eyes. "See…" he tells her with a sigh. "Deku doesn't know the difference between braised and roasted pork."
Eri blinks, twice. "…That's why?" she finally says.
"Exactly," Deku nods, "So go on and tell Kacchan to stop."
Eri turns her wide-eyed, tractor beam eyes on Deku. "Is that true?"
"Is what true?"
"That you don't know the difference," Eri repeats patiently. "Between braised and roasted pork."
"Um," Deku says. "What."
"Oh boy, this is going to be great," Shinsou says, suddenly right next to Katsuki. "Hey, Bakugou, I'm going to need some of your chips for the show."
"Go for it, Eyebags," Katsuki tells him, and offers him the bag.
"Hero Deku really can't tell the difference?" Eri repeats.
Deku begins to sweat. "Well, maybe, but — that's not the point! Weren't you going to tell Kacchan about how mean he's being and that he should let his friends back into the kitchen?"
"But Deku doesn't know how to cook pork," Eri very reasonably points out.
Deku is sweating bullets now. "That's not what Kacchan said!" he protests, flailing his limbs wildly. "He just said that I don't know the difference between braised and roasted, which, fine, lots of people probably don't know the difference, that's not strange, what's strange is that Kacchan is being mean to his friends and —"
"So," Eri interrupts with a thinking-hard frown. "You do know how to cook pork, then?"
"Oh shit," Shinsou mutters. Katsuki nods, because Deku's about to get his shit fucking wrecked.
Deku works his jaw, attempting to fish for an answer that will salvage his rapidly diminishing reputation. He finally chuckles, half-nervous, half-desperate, and all panicked; but he takes too long, and even as Katsuki watches, Eri's face shifts from wide-eyed curiosity to dismayed understanding. Katsuki can pinpoint the exact moment she realizes because her face nearly falls through the floor.
"Oh," Eri finally says, solemnly. "I… I see. I'm sorry."
"Wait, Eri," Deku meekly protests. "I — I can —"
"It's okay," Eri insists, with a firm nod of her head. "I can show you."
"What."
"Braising is really easy," she adds.
"That's something easy?" Kaminari hisses to Sero.
Sero holds up his hands. "Don't look at me, I don't even know what that is."
"So when you know how, then you can use the kitchen!" Eri says with a wide, sincere smile. Deku looks completely gobsmacked. She turns back to Katsuki. "Can I get stuff ready?"
"Sure thing, squirt," Katuski says with a grin of his own, and she doesn't even wait another second before scampering over to the kitchen; the door instantly opens for her.
"…Dude. Even Eri-chan," Sero mutters.
"Is this just our lives now?" Kaminari moans, still balled up on the floor.
"Well, that was fun, but looks like we're doing braised pork tonight and I gotta be sous chef," Katuski grunts, standing from his chair. "Also, show's over, Eyebags, gimme my chips back," he demands, swiping the bag back from Shinsou. Shinsou complies with a shrug.
Katsuki fixes them all with a leer. "I told you right from the fucking start what this was going to look like." His frown morphs into a smile that is infinitely more predatory. "Next time, if you're gonna take a swing at me, you better not fucking miss," he declares, then flips them off and swaggers over to join Eri in the kitchen.
"So… What do we do now?" Kaminari quails.
"You could try to not be awful at cooking?" Shinsou suggests.
"Shinsou, be reasonable."
On Day 4 of the Great 1-A Kitchen Siege, the class apparently completely loses it.
Katsuki has just finished his workout when he comes back to the common room and finds half the class splayed out on the common room floor and staring into the ceiling as if their limited brain cells had all collectively died off and they have decided that the ceiling is the most entertaining thing any of them have seen all day. Almost involuntarily, Katsuki finds himself glancing up at the ceiling, just to make sure. It is still very much a ceiling.
"What the actual fuck?" he finally manages.
"Oh, hello, Bakugou, it's good of you to join us," Iida booms from right at Katsuki's feet, and the glare Katsuki shoots him is definitely not at all related to Katsuki jumping almost a foot in the air.
Sero's voice comes from somewhere by the television. "Yeah, solidarity, dude."
"What fresh fuckery is this," Katsuki says to the room at large, not particularly caring which of the extras responds, as long as they tell him what fresh fuckery this is.
"I'm so glad you asked, Bakugou-kun," Uraraka says. She has draped herself halfway on top of the television for some inexplicable reason and Katsuki will not waste any mental effort trying to figure out why.
Ashido pipes up from where she is starfished in the middle of the room. "We've made it more than clear how unacceptable this whole thing is, but even after being threatened with throwing you in an enclosure to be ripped apart by hundreds of rabid raccoons —"
"Shit, Raccoon Eyes, calling your relatives rabid? Fucking cold."
"— you still refuse to even talk with us. So you left us with no other choice," she sniffs.
"We have decided to protest," Kaminari informs him, half his body on the stairs, and the other half on the common room floor in a way that is almost definitely causing irreparable damage to his spine.
Katsuki blinks at them. "…By throwing the world's most boring-ass slumber party?"
Deku lifts his head from where he is presumably lying behind the coffee table. His hair, which is normally merely unruly, is now full of static dust from being dragged against the carpet and now can no longer be constrained by such trivial forces as gravity.
"Kacchan," Deku announces seriously, "We are on strike."
Yep, fresh new fuckery it is.
"You're on… strike," Katsuki manages to repeat, because seriously, Katsuki cannot wrap his head around how many unique flavors of dumbfuckery are being incorporated into this, the world's stupidest, shittiest sundae.
"Workers of the world, unite," Sero intones, and raises a clenched fist in the air. The rest of the class raises their fists and rumbles their agreement.
Katsuki stares at them. "You're all fucking batshit."
At Katsuki's feet, Iida makes a sound of stern disapproval. "Bakugou, that is a truly myopic and fundamentally incorrect notion. Of course peaceful civil disobedience would appear —"
Katsuki's eyebrow twitches.
"—incomprehensible when not contextualized within pre-existing hierarchical power structures. As history shows us —"
Katsuki's eyes land on the stairs. He could navigate through the maze of bodies strewn around the room. Or…
"— systemic change to ameliorate working conditions is only ever achieved when the disempowered —"
Yeah, fuck that shit.
"— unite in common cause and — grk!" Iida croaks as Katsuki walks right on top of him.
There is a chorus of booing and complaints.
"Witness the casual cruelty of the bourgeoisie," Sero says gravely.
"Oh, fuck off," Katsuki growls, as he makes his way across the bodies spread around the floor, interspersed by the occasional grunt or squeak his classmates make as Katsuki steps on them. "Besides, if anyone's fucking bougie, it's — Ponytail, the fuck?" he says, spotting Yaoyorozu on the floor behind the coffee table.
"Eat the rich," Yaoyorozu chirps.
Sero raises a fist again. "Solidarity, Sister Yaomomo."
Katsuki grunts. "Make up your fucking minds, is this a protest because you can't use the kitchen, or fucking Commie-con?"
"Why not both?" Sero wonders aloud. "The struggle is universal."
"Because you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Is your tape the only thing holding your brain together? What the fuck even is this?"
"We are protesting the denial of our rights," Kaminari insists, still lying in that scoliosis-inducing position on the stairs.
"Which is why we're all on strike!" Deku adds.
"You're all on something," Katsuki mutters.
"And none of us will move from our spots until we can use the kitchen again!" Ashido declares.
Katsuki blinks. "You mean, none of you fuckers is going to class?"
"Well, except that," Ashido concedes.
"You going to fucking sleep here?"
"Obviously not," Uraraka objects.
"Fucking bathroom breaks?"
"The alternative would be highly unsanitary!" Iida proclaims.
"So let me get this straight: You're not moving from the common room, except for literally anything that would require you to move from the common room."
"Exactly."
"Dumbasses, that's exactly the same as what you were doing before."
"No, Kacchan, it's different," Deku insists. "This is a collective action. There is intent."
"And I will walk all over your fucking bodies, collectively, with intent."
"Laugh while you can, Bakugou," Todoroki says.
Katsuki snorts. "I'll laugh as much as I fucking want, 'cuz you're all acting like fucking babies."
"You're the one acting like — mmmfff."
Katsuki detours just so that he can plant a foot on Lychee Loser's face.
"See the violence inherent in the system," Sero drones.
"Fuck off, Scotch Crotch."
Sero ignores him. "Oppressive language is violence."
Katsuki groans. "You know what, fuck. I'm done with this shit. Play revolution or whatever the fuck you extras think this is, you're still not getting into the fucking kitchen."
"Fine, have it your way, Bakugou!" Uraraka calls out.
"You brought this upon yourself, Bakugou," Ashido tells him.
"This won't end until you let us back in the kitchen," someone's voice comes from behind the couch and at this point Katsuki really can't be bothered to figure out whose it is.
"Sure, okay," Katsuki says with a shrug. "See all you fuckers same time tomorrow, I guess."
There's a cacophony of limbs bumping against furniture. Against his better judgment, Katsuki turns to find the rest of the class scrambling up from their splayed-out positions on the carpet to suddenly crowd him on the stairway, eyes wide.
"Tomorrow?" Uraraka asks him.
"That's what I fucking said," Katsuki deadpans. "Why, is the strike over?"
"What do you mean by that?" Uraraka asks again.
"The fuck do you mean?" Katsuki retorts. "You're all on fucking strike until you can get back into the kitchen, right? Well, I'm sure as hell not budging, so you all better get fucking comfortable on the floor there."
"But…" Uraraka ventures. "For how long do we have to do this?"
Katsuki clenches his jaw. "Aren't you the idiots who said you'd do this as long as it takes?"
"Well, yeah, but…" Ashido answers. "Doesn't our sacrifice move you at all? Even the tiniest bit?"
Katsuki stares back at her. "What fucking sacrifice? You're just laying around on the floor like lumpy logs."
"That's the sacrifice! Us! Lying on the floor! You can't just ignore that!" Ashido insists.
"I assure you, I abso-fucking-lutely can."
"Psst. I don't think it's working," Kaminari whispers loudly to Sero.
"Observe the blindness of the oppressor to the oppressed," Sero murmurs in response.
"But Kacchan, the strike…!"
"…Yeah, I don't think any of you understand what a strike is," Katsuki growls. "Look, I thought I was pretty fucking clear right from the beginning. You don't know how to cook? Kitchen door stays closed. Simple as fuck. And it'll be that way for as long as it takes for Deku to remember not to pour grease down the damn drain."
"Kacchan, that —"
"Unless you'd rather talk about the time you insisted the milk was still good because you didn't want it to go to waste and —"
"You know what! I'm good, thanks!"
On Day 5 of the Great 1-A Kitchen Siege, the class ups the ante.
Well. They try.
"Kacchan," Deku declares at lunch, his tray slamming down on the table across from Katsuki with so much force that the pork jumps from his bowl. "This is now a hunger strike."
Katsuki's eyes flit down to the steaming bowl of katsudon on Deku's tray; then back up at Deku, whose gaze is intense and serious and does not look at all like he's joking. Unfortunately.
Katsuki looks back down to Deku's food. "A hunger strike," he parrots.
"That's right," Ashido chimes in. More food is crammed onto her tray than the entire rest of the cafeteria combined. "Don't think of trying to stop us."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Katsuki grunts back, because Katsuki has a limited number of fucks he can afford to give out in a week — and guess what, account balance is at fucking zero.
"And won't you look like a real ass for starving the rest of your class just for your pride?" Kaminari tells him, taking a huge bite of his sandwich.
"Uh-huh."
"We're serious, you know," Uraraka tells him, eating another french fry. "If we die from not eating, that's on you."
"Uh-huh."
"But you have the power to stop this, Kacchan," Deku insists, already inhaling his katsudon like oxygen for a drowning man. "Just let us into the kitchen, and this can all end."
"Out of curiosity," Katsuki asks, slathering his rice with another round of sriracha, because he can tell he's going to fucking need it for this one. "When does the hunger strike start?"
"Oh, Bakugou," Kirishima says, with a pitying laugh. His grin is pointed as he rips into his hamburger. "It's already begun."
On Day 6 of the Great 1-A Kitchen Siege, the class finally begins to crack.
Katsuki expected this. They'd thrown everything they had at Katsuki and the indestructible kitchen door, even though Katsuki's spelled it out for them like the fucking alphabet. It was only a matter of time before the losers swallow their pride, take their lumps, and grovel at Katsuki's feet.
He does not expect the first to be Yaoyorozu, who corners him behind the school building and forces Katsuki's back against the wall.
"I have money," Yaoyorozu informs him.
Katsuki blinks back at her. "Sky's fucking blue and Deku's fucking useless, Ponytail," Katsuki informs her back. "What else is new?"
"Let me into the kitchen," Yaoyorozu implores him. "I will pay you."
Oh, that's what's new. "Are you trying to bribe me?"
Yaoyorozu bristles. "This is not something so uncouth as a bribe. This is equivalent exchange. Things traded of equal value."
"…Sure sounds like a fucking bribe."
"It is most emphatically not, but what you choose to call it does not matter. What matters is that the bills will be unmarked and nonsequential, routed through a series of overseas accounts, designed to be completely untraceable, and can be placed into a trust in your name within less than 24 hours."
"Holy fuck, that's some yakuza shit."
"Again, it is most emphatically not," Yaoyorozu sniffs, "But if what you call it is that important to you, I am open to negotiation."
Katsuki groans. He throws his head back in frustration, which was the wrong decision, because his head bangs against the wall behind him and all Katsuki gets is a stinging pain for his efforts. "Ponytail, I already fucking told you. I just want you fuckers to not screw up the kitchen."
"Name your price."
"Did you not just fucking hear —"
"We can start at ten million yen."
Katsuki's brain blanks.
"That is my opening offer."
"Your opening…?" Katsuki parrots. "Are you shit at negotiating or are you just that loaded?"
"I am that loaded," Yaoyorozu says with a completely straight face.
Katsuki reconsiders his position, but only for a second. "Look, Princess, do I look like that type of person? You can't just buy people off."
Yaoyorozu tilts her head. "You… can't? It's always worked before."
"Fuck — no, you know what, it doesn't fucking matter," Katsuki groans. "You could give me the entire national treasury and I wouldn't change my mind."
Yaoyorozu falters, but only briefly. "Then what of material goods? You are aware of the capabilities of my quirk. I can create any number of products. Perhaps —"
"No," Katsuki interrupts her.
Yaoyorozu carries on, desperation tinging her voice. "Some manner of kitchenware?"
"No."
"— or an appliance, something that —"
"No."
"There must be something!" Yaoyorozu persists.
"Yeah. Not screwing up the fucking kitchen."
Yaoyorozu slams her hand against the wall next to Katsuki's head, which, holy shit, does that make this a kabedon? What the fuck is happening.
"Bakugou," Yaoyorozu says, voice low, eyes wild. "Perhaps you might… reconsider?"
"Yaomomo? Bakugou?" Jirou's voice says, appearing from around the corner, thank fucking god. "…Am I interrupting?" she wonders, glancing between the two of them suspiciously. Katsuki does the same, and come to think of it, the fact that the two of them are talking in hushed tones behind a school building, alone, is sketchy as fuck.
Katsuki slaps Yaoyorozu's arm away with a scowl. "Not interrupting anything at all, Elephant Ears. I was just fucking leaving."
Katsuki turns to go; the last he sees of Yaoyorozu is her wiggling her eyebrows at him while waving a fistful of ten thousand yen notes.
"So… Want to tell me what that was about?" Jirou asks Katsuki as she falls into step next to him.
"You got ears, Ears."
"I do. But sometimes it's better to get it straight from the source."
Katsuki huffs. "Princess was just trying to buy me off, that's all. Wanted me to let her in the kitchen for cash. Not fucking likely."
Jirou gives a light laugh. "Yeah, cash does seem like a particularly bad thing to bribe you with."
Katsuki grunts in response. Out of the entire class, Jirou has been more reasonable than most of the extras. In fact, he hasn't seen her participating in any of the extras' stupid chicanery since the class initially discovered the door. And while she's not any better than the rest of them at cooking, Katsuki at least has to give her credit for recognizing a doomed mission when she sees one.
Jirou plucks a pair of tickets from her jacket. "Should've gone with these backstage passes for the concert of the year instead —"
Scratch that.
"They're not even officially released yet — hey, Bakugou, wait, where are you going?"
"Away! Follow me and die!" Katsuki shouts back at her.
This turns out to be a mistake, because Jirou is actually tolerable. Kaminari is not.
"Pleasepleasepleaseplease, puh-leaze, Bakugou!" Kaminari begs. He has latched himself to Katsuki's leg like an overgrown leech. Katsuki has dragged him across the field, the training grounds, and that part of campus where they're doing construction and there's a crap-ton of dirt and loose rocks and maybe glass shards if Katsuki is lucky. Kaminari still absolutely refuses to let go.
"Holy fuck, Pikachu," Katsuki growls, lugging him specifically through the hallways that have carpets so that when Kaminari wakes up tomorrow he'll have rug burns so bad he won't even be able to get out of bed. "Saying please hundreds of fucking times won't change my mind."
"What about thousands?" Kaminari says earnestly. "Because I'll do it."
"I will explode your fucking face off."
Kaminari brightens. "After you do that then will you let me in the kitchen?"
"Fuck no."
"Come on, Bakugou!" Kaminari whines. "Er, Bakugou-sama? Bakugou-denka? His Royal Explosiveness, Hallowed Be His —"
"How can you be this goddamn obnoxious," Katsuki grits out. He's made it to a stairway, and begins climbing. The sound of Katsuki's foot going tap tap tap alternates with the sound of Kaminari's body going thump thump thump.
"But there's got to be something you want, Bakugou!" Kaminari groans. "I'll be your personal punching bag for a month. I'll eat a shoe. I'll let you shave half the hair off my head. I'll let you step on me and call me trash and —"
"Fucking hell, just shut up!" Katsuki snaps. "How can you degrade yourself like that? Where is your sense of fucking shame?"
"Lost it around the time I wore a maid outfit to middle school on a dare."
Katsuki's traitorous brain conjures a mental image for him. Katsuki shudders. "What the — fuck, now I can't get it out of my head."
"Oh? Kind of kinky, Bakugou, but if that's what you want —"
"Fuck no, that is the exact fucking opposite of want. Never make me think of that again."
"If I do that, will you let me back in the kitchen?" Kaminari asks hopefully.
Katsuki punts him back down the stairs.
The rest of the day proceeds in much the same way.
"Bakugou," Aoyama says. "Mon ami, perhaps you would like these souvenirs of my home country to display in your room?"
"Perhaps you'd like a souvenir in the form of my fist," Katsuki growls.
"Bakugou," Mineta says. "How would you like your pick from my stash?"
"How'd you like me to pick one of those dumb purple balls and stash it so far up your ass that your sclera turn purple," Katsuki hisses.
"Bakugou," Todoroki says. "I promise to use pans three times before throwing them in the garbage."
"I will throw you in the garbage," Katsuki snarls, but unfortunately before Katsuki can justifiably commit homicide, Tsuyu joins them in the common room and the cookware executioner gets off scot-free, again.
"Trying to murder Todoroki-chan is inappropriate, kero," Tsuyu informs him.
"Right," Katsuki seethes. "Torture comes first."
Katsuki doesn't know whether frogs can roll their eyes, but Tsuyu at the very least manages a very flagrant one. "I already told you that you went too far, Bakugou-chan," she croaks.
"And I told you that all I want is for these extras to not be shitty at cooking."
"How do they practice if they can't use the kitchen, kero?"
Katsuki refuses to concede that as a point. "Fuck off," he says instead. "They've had access to the kitchen for months and see what good it did them."
"It's been almost a whole week by now, kero. I think some of them are starting to feel desperate."
"Good," Katsuki snorts. "They've never taken this seriously from the fucking start, or instead of half-assing strikes or trying dumb psychological shit, they would've just started trying to learn in the first place."
Tsuyu taps her chin. "I wonder, kero."
Katsuki scowls at her. "What's that supposed to mean, Frogger?"
"Bakugou-chan, before you did this, did you ever tell anyone they were bad in the kitchen, kero?"
"Are you kidding? They're all fucking shit, of course I told them."
"You tell everyone they're shit at everything, kero," Tsuyu points out.
"Because they are."
"Bakugou-chan," Tsuyu says, and blinks at him with her wide frog eyes. "You always say what you think, kero. But sometimes it's hard to tell what you mean."
"If I wanted a crappy koan, I'd buy a damn fortune cookie," Katsuki grumbles. "Besides, if we're doing proverbs, this is that one where instead of giving the man a fish you just teach the man how to straight-up fucking fish."
Tsuyu blinks at him again, slowly. "Well, you're definitely not giving away any fish, kero," Tsuyu says thoughtfully. "But you're not teaching them how to fish, either, Bakugou-chan," Tsuyu announces with a nod, then turns and heads up the stairs — and just as Deku is coming down.
Deku stops short as soon as he spots Katsuki. "Um. Hey, Kacchan," he offers.
Katsuki only grunts in response. Deku doesn't make any move from where his left foot is still half in the air above the second-to-last step. Katsuki doesn't move, either, so the two of them just stand there in uncomfortable silence, and Deku gets increasingly fidgety.
At last, Deku clears his throat. "Kacchan, I have a limited-edition All Might —"
"Deku, the one and only time you used a toaster you electrocuted yourself."
"Yeah, okay."
On Day 7 of the Great 1-A Kitchen Siege, the class finally brings out the big guns.
They send in Kirishima.
Katsuki ignores the knocking on his door when it first starts. But the knocking keeps going, and going, and if Katsuki has to listen to it for one more fucking minute —
"Bakugou, I know you're in there," Kirishima's voice calls out.
Katsuki grunts, sets down his book, and wrenches open the door before Kirishima can beat it to death. "The fuck do you want, Shitty Hair," he growls.
Kirishima grins beatifically back at him. "Good afternoon Bakubro! Can we talk?"
"No," Katsuki tells him, and slams the door in his face.
The knocking immediately resumes, more frantic and more incessant than before, like Kirishima's taking a damn jackhammer to the wood, and if Kirishima thinks his status as Katsuki's best friend who is neither the best nor a friend let alone both put together will save him from being blasted into the sun, he's got another thing coming.
Katsuki swings the door back open. "Shitty Hair, you have exactly ten seconds to speak and after that you will fuck back off to where you came from."
"Great, thanks Bakubro! So the entire class has been talking about the past week, and you know everything with the kitchen has been kind of crazy, so we were just wondering whether you —"
"Time's up, answer's no," Katsuki politely informs him, and slams the door again.
Knock knock knock knock —
"Oh, for the love of fuck," Katsuki snarls, and it is a testament to Katsuki's patience and Kirishima's just-barely-tolerable personality that he is still even allowed to stand in front of his door in the first place. "What the actual fuck do you want and why the fuck won't you leave me alone?"
"Bakubro," Kirishima says, completely serious. "We need to talk."
"We are doing that right now."
"About the kitchen."
"Fuck no."
"All I'm asking for is a conversation."
"And I'm asking you very politely to fuck off."
"You know, I didn't want to do this, but…" Kirishima sighs. "If you don't talk to me, I will send that photo of you on your fourth birthday to everyone in the class."
"What are you talking about."
"The one with you in the full-body All Might costume and you were showing off to the camera but it ripped and your —"
Katsuki scowls. "Where did you get that."
"I have my ways," Kirishima replies mysteriously.
The two of them stare at each other in a silent tug-of-war. Finally, Katsuki breaks the stalemate. "Deku's fucking dead," he declares.
"I never said —" Kirishima starts to protest.
"Don't fucking bother, nobody can save him now," Katsuki grits out. He scowls at Kirishima. "Fine, as long as you delete that fucking photo."
Kirishima nods, too eagerly.
"You have backups. Shit," Katsuki groans. "Then if that picture ever gets out, you're on your own for math from here on out. Got it?"
"Got it!" Kirishima chirps with a toothy grin, like the shark he is. "Can I come in now?"
Katsuki only grunts wordlessly in response, but doesn't slam the door in his face, which isn't permission exactly, but it's not not permission, and Kirishima waltzes on in like he belongs there.
"Wow, Bakubro, everything's so tidy! I can barely remember to put my clothes back in the dresser. Where do you get time?"
"You fucking make time, Shitty Hair," Katsuki grunts, going to sit at his desk chair. "Now you wanted to talk, so fucking talk."
Kirishima plops himself down on the carpet in the middle of the room. "Okay, so. We're best friends, right?"
Katsuki makes a garbled, croaking noise.
Kirishima tries again. "Okay, but we're friends?"
Katsuki makes a slightly less garbled, slightly less croaking noise.
"We are acquainted and out of everyone you tolerate me the most?"
Katsuki manages a grunt that vaguely resembles agreement.
"You know what, I'll take it," Kirishima decides. "So, as your acquaintance who you just barely tolerate, I just wanted to hear from you why you decided to do… all this. I know that some of our skills in the kitchen could, uh, use some work. But the whole locking-us-out deal is a bit much, don't you think?"
"Like fuck it is. Do you know how many times Deku's turned perfectly good food into shit just by looking at it? It's like the reverse Midas Touch. And fucking Target Brand Knockoff broke a whole two dozen pans all by his goddamn self."
"That does sound like a lot," Kirishima considers.
"And it's not just the food, even though that's one incredibly shitty part of it. Nobody fucking cleans up after, and they treat the kitchen appliances like shit. I swear if Pikachu blows one more microwave up we won't even be allowed another one."
"Denki does have problems using a microwave," Kirishima admits.
"Look, I know that nobody's going to be as fucking good as I am at cooking, because I'm going to be the best at everything I put my mind to — I saw that, Shitty Hair, shut up — but is it too much to ask for the extras to pick up after their damn selves? Kitchen's a fucking shared space and they're treating it like a damn garbage dump. How the fuck are they going to survive after graduation if they're just feeding off of instant noodles and scarfing pre-cooked meals and breaking half the shit in their own fucking house? They're fucking not, that's what. Some villain's going to dust their asses because they skipped meals or ate cereal ten fucking days in a row or some stupid shit like that. Hah, they'll probably set themselves on fire before a villain can even get to them."
Kirishima doesn't say anything for a moment, apparently mulling over Katsuki's rant. "Okay," he finally says with a nod.
Katsuki narrows his eyes. "Okay? That's it? What happened to you wanting to have lions eat my face off?"
"They were leopards, my dude. And I'm not gonna lie, I still think it's really unmanly to lash out at the whole dorm instead of just telling them what's wrong first."
"How many times do I have to say your cooking is shit before fuckers get the message?"
"I mean, that's kind of exactly my point? What are we supposed to do with that?"
"Not be shit," Katsuki helpfully supplies.
Kirishima sighs. "Look, it may be obvious to you, Bakugou, but that really doesn't give us much to work with. It's like, we have Aizawa-sensei to teach us when we're out of line, and All Might teaching us about how to use our quirks. But there's nobody teaching us about cooking, so when we screw up there's nobody to tell us. I mean, at the end of the day, we're all just dumb high school kids, you know?"
"Speak for your own damn self," Katsuki grunts.
Kirishima ignores the barb. "And that's why even though I'm still kind of pissed at you for doing your own thing, I also understand what you were thinking when you did it," Kirishima adds, and cocks his head as though he's deep in thought. "I mean, this week's made it really obvious that some people have different, uh. Skill levels. In the kitchen, I mean. And how useful it can be to have cooking as a skill."
"Should've been fucking obvious," Katsuki grunts.
Kirishima ignores that barb, too, because he is just that dedicated to being a sunshiny little shit. "And now that we see that, I know for sure that a lot of us want to get better. It's like a wake-up call, you know?"
"Just wanting to get better doesn't make it fucking so."
"Fair enough! But you've got to want it first, right? I mean, I told you, we're all just dumb high school students," Kirishima laughs. "Sometimes it takes a wake-up call to realize we've done something stupid, or something shitty. You get me, Bakugou?"
Katsuki says nothing. He stares into his palms. He gets it.
"And so now we're all trying to figure out what's next, I guess?" Kirishima continues on, and rubs his head sheepishly. "A lot of people, me included, want to get better. We just don't know how."
Katsuki scoffs. "The fuck you want me to do, Shitty Hair, hold their damn hands?"
Kirishima's eyes light up.
"Oh shit," Katsuki panics. "No, that was a fucking joke."
"But I think it's a great idea, Bakugou!" Kirishima chirps.
"It's a fucking awful idea, Hair-For-Brains," Katsuki insists. He mentally downgrades Kirishima from "definitely not best friend" to "allowed to exist within his general vicinity on a good day."
Kirishima ignores Katsuki, again, because that's apparently the foundation of their nonexistent friendship. "Out of all of us, you're the best at cooking. We have a lot to learn from you!"
Katsuki is the best at cooking. "Hell no."
"And you're sort of secretly like a really good tutor."
Katsuki is a good tutor. "Hell fucking no."
"And you're always creepily observant, but especially on this your brain's like a steel trap," Kirishima continues on. "Hell, you could probably list off ways I can improve right now."
"You use too much black pepper. You always undercook red meat. You use the wrong knife to cut meat half the time and always point it toward yourself instead of away and one day you're going to slice off your own damn finger —"
"Okay, okay, I get it!" Kirishima says, frantically waving his hands. "But, see, that's what I'm talking about! Like, half those things I didn't even realize I was doing until you pointed it out.
"I know I already learned a lot from you — hell, at the beginning of the year I didn't know what a scallion even was. I know I still got a long way to go, but thanks to your help, I'm going to keep trying and keep improving. And I know that everyone else wants to learn too, and I know they'll learn a lot from you, just like I did. Because it's the least manly thing in the world to turn your back on a challenge, right, Bakugou?"
Katsuki turns Kirishima's words over in his head. Katsuki knows Kirishima's cooking has gotten better, in large part because Katsuki's gone out of his way to give him pointers. Katsuki knows that if anyone is going to teach the extras cooking, out of everyone in the class he'd be the best positioned to do it. He even knows that teaching the class to cook is the mature, reasonable way to handle the situation. Maybe — and it is the slimmest of possible chances, mind you — maybe, Kirishima is right.
"…I'll think about it," Katsuki grunts, finally.
"You're the manliest!" Kirishima beams.
"What the fuck-ever," Katsuki retorts. "So, I taught you what scallions are?"
Kirishima grins a toothy grin. "Yup. Thought they were a Pokémon."
Despite himself, Katsuki huffs a laugh. "You really do have hair for brains."
"It's not that bad," Kirishima insists with a laugh of his own. "At least I know they're shellfish now."
"…They're fucking onions, Blockhead."
Katsuki loudly announces his entrance to the common room the very next day with a pair of explosions.
"All right, fuckers, now that I've got your attention, listen up, because I'm only going to say this one fucking time! You're all shit at cooking and annoying as fuck!"
"You've been saying that every day for the past week," someone grumbles — hopefully Todoroki, so Katsuki has a reason to slug him later.
"But I've decided that the most annoying thing about you two-bit extras is that you can't fucking cook to save your own damn lives. And while I can deal with halfwits who don't know how to blanche their greens or what the difference is between poaching and stewing or how to even make a consommé —"
"…What is Bakugou talking about?"
"No idea."
"— I actually will murder someone if I have to live the rest of my high school days with people who fuck up something as fucking basic as boiling eggs. Deku."
"…That was unnecessary, Kacchan."
"So for my sake and yours, there are going to be some changes," Katsuki declares, cracking his knuckles. A grin splits his face. "You all wanted to use the kitchen? Well, buckle up, 'cuz you're damn well gonna learn."
Katsuki slaps the vegetables on the counter. The cutting board jumps. So do his classmates.
"All right, extras, today you're learning how to not fuck up curry!" Katsuki barks. "Everyone get your shit out and Pikachu take the knife out of the damn microwave before you forget it's there."
"Crap, I forgot! How'd you even know —"
"Because it's the third fucking time in a month, now get your cooking knife and walk your ass to your cooking station or so help me I will use you for target practice."
Kaminari nods furiously, makes to sprint to the microwave, and then under scrutiny of Katsuki's strongest glare, remembers to walk to the other side of the kitchen.
"You all know how this goes by now, but I'll remind you because you're all fucking idiots. If you don't understand something, fucking say something. I'll curse you out but that'll be a walk in the fucking park compared to what I'll do to you if you break something because you don't speak the fuck up. Got it?"
Five heads bob at him in unison.
"Great, then let's get fucking started," Katsuki announces with a menacing grin, and proceeds to give the best damn lesson on cooking curry the extras have ever had.
It's been almost a month since Katsuki very generously agreed to let the extras back in the kitchen on the condition that they be supervised by someone who actually knows what the fuck they're doing. Between himself, Tsuyu, Satou, and some of the other students who aren't completely culinarily incompetent, they work out a schedule and organize a class schedule for cooking lessons. And true to Kirishima's word, a lot of the extras really did want to learn how to not suck at cooking. They were just idiots who had no fucking clue what to do about it.
Katsuki himself hosts the lessons twice a week. In exchange, he gets to swear at them for justifiable reasons. It's much better than therapy.
"Of fucking course you'd pick beef, Round Cheeks."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means it's tougher than pork so — Shitty Hair, Deku's about to stab himself with his knife, take care of that shit —"
The stream of drowning cat noises coming from Deku's direction fades as Kirishima presumably helps him with the carrots.
"— fucking remember that you'll have to let it simmer longer."
"…I can put it in the pot first while I cut the vegetables?" Uraraka suggests.
Katsuki grunts. "Took you the whole damn day to find your brain but good to know you at least still fucking have one."
"Is that… supposed to be a compliment?"
"And it's fucking gone again."
"Uh, Bakugou —"
"Fuck is it, Pikachu."
"Do I put the vegetables in now?"
"You put the vegetables in when the water's fucking boiling," Katsuki informs him. "Is the water fucking boiling?"
Kaminari fidgets. His eyes drift to the pot. The water is still. It is not even bubbling. "…No."
"Then do you put the vegetables in the pot?"
"…No."
"Someone give Sparky a gold fucking star," Katsuki grumbles. "Oi, Ponytail, the fuck are you doing to your potatoes?"
"Cutting them…?"
"Who are you, Edward Fucking Scissorhands? Your cuts are uneven as fuck. Make sure you chop them the same fucking size or they'll cook at different speeds."
"The same size?" Yaoyorozu parrots back at him. "I don't understand."
"Of course that'd be fucking confusing to you, Princess," Katsuki grumbles with a roll of his eyes. "I'm talking about volume-to-surface area ratios."
Yaoyorozu lights up. "Ah, I see. The greater the surface area, the more rapidly the boiling water can permeate the food. So shape matters less than ensuring they are of roughly equivalent surface area."
"We'll make a live-in cook out of you yet," Katsuki tells her. "Same shit for the strips of pork, these are boneless so — Shitty Hair, Deku's going to set himself on fire, help him with the damn burner —"
The drowning cat noises quiet again.
"— you don't have to worry about de-boning them and shit. Now show me how you're going to do it."
Yaoyorozu hesitates. "I will need another knife and cutting board, correct?"
"Fantastic, you remember how to not give yourself fucking food poisoning."
"Bakugou —"
"Is the water boiling, Pikachu."
"…No."
"So therefore…?"
Kaminari scrunches up his face. "But there's steam."
"Doesn't mean it's boiling, Dunce Face. How do you tell if it's boiling?"
"Air bubbles."
"Where at?"
"Going to the surface?"
"See, you do know how to pay attention. Do you see air bubbles going to the surface."
"Well, no, but —"
"Then it ain't fucking boiling," Katsuki huffs. "Look, you can't fucking rush it. And since you already did a halfway decent job cutting your vegetables, all you gotta do is fucking wait."
Kaminari blinks at him.
"The fuck is it now?"
"I… never thought I'd live to see the day that Bakugou called me halfway decent at anything," Kaminari confesses.
"Holy fuck, it just means you're not complete shit at everything, don't fucking hyperventilate."
Kaminari instantly hyperventilates. "Oh my god. Eijirou, did you hear that, Bakugou said I'm not complete shit at everything —"
Kirishima grins wide and trots over to clap Kaminari hard on the back. "I heard, bro! I told you you're better than you think you are —"
"Oi, dumbasses! If you have time to shoot the shit, you've got time to watch your damn pot, 'cuz your water's fucking boiling!"
Kaminari jolts. "Oh crap! When did that —"
"Just a fucking second ago, which is why you better remember to keep a damn eye on the cooktop!"
Kaminari scurries back over to mind his pot. Instead of going back to his own cooking station, though, Kirishima approaches Katsuki.
Katsuki scowls at him. "You got your own pot on the stove to watch, Shitty Hair."
"I do, but it's simmering right now!" Kirishima reports back proudly. Katsuki will begrudgingly admit that he is proud that Kirishima used the word "simmering" correctly.
"Did you remember to put in the green onions?" Katsuki says instead.
"You mean the scallions?" Kirishima answers back even more proudly. Katsuki will begrudgingly admit that he is even more proud that Kirishima finally remembered what a scallion was.
Kirishima leans in and lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "See," he says, prodding Katsuki with a finger — and then retreating before Katsuki can swat him away. "I told you we could learn if you gave us a chance. And that if anyone could teach cooking the best, it would be you."
Katsuki clicks his tongue and says nothing in response. He says nothing about how Yaoyorozu's encyclopedic knowledge makes for a good foundation and the only thing she needs is hands-on practice; nothing about how the only thing holding Kaminari back is his impatience. He says nothing about Uraraka already advancing to more complex recipes, or how Kirishima had in the end, been right about a lot of things.
They've all gotten better — all of them, Katsuki included. Shitty Hair, Ponytail, Round Cheeks, Pikachu, and —
Katsuki narrows his eyes. "Oi, Shitty Hair. Who's on Deku Watch?"
Kirishima grins. "Oh, yeah! That's me."
If Katsuki had been drinking something, he would have spit it out. "The fuck? Then why aren't you watching him?"
"Chill, Bakugou, we've only been talking a minute, he was —"
Katsuki pales. "A whole fucking minute?" he demands. "Shit. You fucking idiot, get —"
Boom.
"Fuck," Kastuki swears, darts around Kirishima, and immediately finds himself in a federal disaster zone. Across the floor lay the shard-like splinters of what was once Deku's cooking pot. A spray of curry roux has splattered across every flat surface and quite a few that aren't. The charred remains of chicken and potato have affixed themselves to the ceiling. The burner is practically a bonfire; a thin cloud of smoke wafts through the room.
And in the middle of it all stands Deku, blinking with wide eyes and curried carrots sticking in his hair, and even as Katsuki watches, curry drips off the ceiling and onto his head.
Deku gulps. "Uh… Kacchan, this isn't what it looks like…?"
Katsuki wills his palms to stop sparking, gnashes his teeth, recites in his head the All Might filmography in chronological order. Do not blow up the extras, do not blow up the extras, do not blow up —
Todoroki sticks his head into the kitchen. "Is now a bad time to mention that we need a new cooking pan?"
This time, the boom comes from Katsuki.