Chapter Text
pride is for lions
Bakugo is grimy. From the slick, heat-burnished skin at his palms to the mud and blood splattered weight of his pants. Every shitty case he’d worked that day is documented on his skin.
Denki, piece of shit socialite that he is, had known Bakugo wouldn’t show up if he’d asked like a normal fucking person. So, half an hour ago Denki’s text message had rung through on Bakugo’s phone while Pro Hero Dynamight still layered over him like a thick blanket.
He’d exploded onto Momo’s property with enough force to shake her walls, only for her to gape up at him wide-eyed like the world’s most affluent fish. Her drink hadn’t even spilled.
“He better be fucking dead,” Bakugo hissed between his teeth—only to have Denki waddle into the room, a glass in both hands and a grin on his face, very much alive and very much not experiencing an emergency.
“Aw, Kacchan!” Denki’s smile sparks like he’s turned his quirk on with his teeth. He looks stupid and shitfaced already. “You came!”
Bakugo grabs him by his wrist, his glare enough to pop the air between them. “I will fucking end you, spark plug. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“It was an emergency!” Denki wilts, pouting, expression flipping like a switch. “Can’t be a party without our big bad sober watchdog making sure we don’t kill ourselves, right?”
“Learn to make better choices!” Bakugo shouts, drawing the eye of every one of his friends in the kitchen. Good, they need to hear it too. “You’re all a bunch of fucking idiots!”
He shoves, but the anger is already bleeding out of him with the pulsing music and Momo’s teary eyes. She always gets emotional when she’s drunk. At least she has an excuse—it’s her fucking house. Whatever she does here is at least her own problem.
Then again, considering how often he’s caught Denki and Jirou with their mouths all over the woman, maybe it’s their house too. He’s not great at keeping up with the ins and outs of his friends’ relationships. For all he knows half of them are in a polycule. Would explain how often he sees Sero sucking face with various members of their little group.
He tucks that question away for later. How exactly does one even find out if class 1-A has some kind of weird agreement? Not like it includes him, at least.
“Bakubro!” Kirishima slips past where Denki is still slouched into Bakugo’s grip. He offers a cup and then slaps Bakugo on the back without waiting for Bakugo to tell him to fuck off. “Glad you made it. Guess Denki’s super secret plan worked!”
Bakugo doesn’t consider lying to be any sort of plan. He’s only opened his mouth to say so when a smooth, deep voice—barely familiar anymore—says it for him.
“Oh, is that what we’re calling abuses of power now?” The voice carries from the overly luxurious living room, purring out from the old money like a cat perching on the velvet couch arm. “Super secret plans?”
“Shut it, mindfreak.” Bakugo scowls, searching out the unruly lavender hair and sleepy eyes he remembers from—shit, how long has it been? a year?—however long ago. “Don’t need your bullshit, too.”
“Aw, sugar,” Shinso’s head lolls back where Bakugo finally spots him lounging on crimson velvet. Half-lidded eyes take their time focusing on Bakugo, the drink in his lazy, scarred fingers already mostly gone. “I was defending you.”
Bakugo doesn’t justify that with a response. Anyone who thinks he needs their defense is a fucking idiot and not worth his time. Still, Shinso’s watching him, eyes glued to him like Bakugo, in all his angry, dingy sweat, is the most riveting person in the room. Bakugo glares back, hair prickling up his neck.
“The fuck is your problem?” Bakugo takes one step forward before Kaminari’s warm body stops him.
“Bakugooo.” Denki slumps over his shoulder, ignoring the silent war happening between Bakugo and Sleepy Eyes. “Come on, man. No one brought any good food, you gotta make us something!”
“I’m not making shit. I just got off patrol!” His throat hurts, his arms burning from overusing his quirk. Today had been a continuous race back and forth across the city, chasing down petty, mediocre villains in a trial of Looney Tunes exhaustion tactics. “Order takeout or fucking starve.”
He hisses it, tries to impart all his pent-up rage and malice through the smoke curling out from his hands. A suspiciously loud laugh spills out from the chaos in the living room, but the sound is quickly overrun by the steady pound of the music.
He stomps his way to one of the balconies—Momo’s family is stupidly rich, he can’t imagine ever needing more than one balcony—and kicks open the glass door. The bang! it produces is almost satisfying. The heat outside. The dying scream of the cicadas. All of it is almost enough to calm him down. Everything smells like summer. The humid air chokes him with the sweat of mid-July.
Honeysuckles hang over the banister, thin petals sweet in the air. He hadn’t even made it home, hadn’t even stopped after he’d wrapped up the last scene where a villain had knocked over a city bus and dripped gasoline all over the street filled with civilians. He’d glanced at his phone after saying his piece to the police chief and thrown himself across the cityscape and towards the pin Kaminari had dropped.
Next time he’ll just let the dumbass die.
Probably.
He wipes his hands across his face, tired enough to attempt to drop it for now. The low simmer of anger he always carries barely registers these days. He closes his eyes and drops his head onto the balcony railing and lets himself drift.
Not that he can ever relax for long. The distinctive sound of breaking glass drags his attention back to the party. Looks like someone decided to try sparring in the middle of the living room and now Shinso and Kirishima are laughing, both bent over with their hands on their stomachs. A dozen broken glasses and a split table at least account for the sound but Bakugo can’t see what actually fucking happened.
“Explain.” He doesn’t growl, he’s not a fucking dog. Maybe it sounds that way, though, with his voice shot to shit from screaming all day. Either way, Kirishima straightens up in a mild panic, glancing between the glass and the table and Shinso as if this is all a mystery to him too.
“Look man, we can’t help if Kirishima here got a little overzealous. I was just showing off some moves.” Shinso shrugs, ambling away to search for a broom. At least he’s willing to clean his own messes, even if he is swaying dangerously as he does it.
Bakugo watches as Shinso finally balances himself with a hand on the wall. Something about the action—about the fact the party’s only just started but Shinso looks like he’s hours in—doesn’t sit right.
“You keep watching me and I’ll see if I can spook you next.” Shinso tosses over his shoulder and then he’s gone, disappearing into the kitchen.
“Fuck, fine.” Everyone here’s going to get fully sloshed and sloppy if they don’t eat something. Clearly they all forgot how shitty it feels to wake up with rot gut and a hangover migraine. They’d probably all fucking die without him.
Okonomiyaki takes almost no time at all to whip up. Bakugo slams the door shut and forces everyone to leave him alone.
He has to wash his arms up to his elbows before he even starts. Then it’s all easy rhythm. Chopping vegetables—the sweet crunch of the cabbage, shaving curled ribbons of carrots, slivered green onions. The batter sits for a few minutes, until he can see it just start puffing up as everything combines.
It’s easy. Recipes follow rules. When he was a kid, his therapist encouraged his obsession with cooking. A healthy outlet, he’d called it. Bakugo hadn’t told him then that he’d been cooking for years already. That if he leaned any harder into it he’d do nothing but study, work out, and cook.
Everyone likes to eat. When no one wanted to be around him, they still wanted to eat his food. When he didn’t know what to say or how to act, everyone accepted his silence as just him concentrating on the task at hand.
Okonomiyaki is easy. He makes it several times a month—one of his mom’s favorites. Since she barely cooks for herself anymore, he’s figured out the fastest way to shove food at her that she’ll eat.
“You’re looking at that cabbage like it challenged you to a duel.”
That stupid fucking voice. Bakugo glares at the entryway, avoiding Shinso’s violet eyes to stare instead at the dustpan clutched in his hands. Glass glitters against red plastic, but he doesn’t see any blood or cuts. At least the asshole knows how to do something right. “None of your business what’s between me and the cabbage.”
He glances up to Shinso’s face and catches the crooked smile before it flits away. “Don’t let me interrupt, then. I’ll just watch.”
Bakugo’s used to an audience. Not usually one so attentive, but the attention only barely registers. Everything goes into a pan, poured in even amounts. He ignores the meat this time. Not that Momo has a shortage of options. Her pantry and pantry-sized fridge make his in his apartment look scarce in comparison.
He sticks to vegetables—grilled and layered over top of the bubbled batter. Everything browns perfectly. By the time he’s made enough for everyone the party and all his half-drunk friends have already moved into the yard.
A flash that looks suspiciously like Kaminari going full voltage breaks across the window. Bakugo tries not to sneer. It’s not that he dislikes Kaminari, but after a long day and the dirty trick he’d pulled, Bakugo isn’t exactly feeling like babysitting him when everyone else moves on to more fun activities and he’s still shocked himself stupid.
“Such a pretty face,” Shinso has moved closer without Bakugo noticing, already nibbling on the outside of an okonomiyaki. Sauce smears across one of his fingers and he absently licks it off before grinning at Bakugo again. “Do you always glare at people even when they aren’t around?”
“You gonna keep him from doing it again?” Bakugo cuts his eyes over Shinso’s body with a tch. “Not like you’ll be driving him to the hospital if he burns himself out.”
“You got me there.” Shinso lays half of his food back on the counter. “You didn’t exactly drive here.”
“I know where every one of their keys are kept. I have a dozen cars to choose from.” Bakugo crosses his arms, stomping his way to the door. He’s not fucking serving them their food like some kind of pre-school teacher. They can get their own shit. He’s just opened his mouth to shout when Shinso steps up beside him.
“Hey losers,” Shinso’s voice carries across the yard. “Bakugo spoils you rotten and you should all thank him. Food’s in the kitchen.”
Bakugo glares at Shinso’s lopsided grin. “I was going to fucking do that.”
“Yeah, but me doing it first annoys you.” Shinso leans down, tutting at Bakugo with a bop of his finger on his nose. “And, if I tell them the food is ready, then I get partial credit for the meal even though I just stood here and watched you cook it.”
“You’re fucking insufferable.” Bakugo rubs his hand over his face as the first few filter in, all excited chatter and thanks, man, looks delicious! tossed at him. Shinso ignores him and grabs an extra plate.
No one seems to notice or care that he’s eaten two okonomiyaki to their one.
He’s only marginally mollified by the noises of general satisfaction across the room. Maybe, just maybe, with the heavy food and the wind down of the music, his friends may not throw up on him.
“You look like a grumpy kitten over here,” Shinso’s voice appears over his shoulder. Bakugo jumps, reigning in his quirk so that nothing but a small pop sounds off between them. “Oooh, danger kitten.”
“What is your problem?” Bakugo doesn’t remember exactly how he and Shinso left off a year ago. Something, something, Shinso gave up on his dreams of being a famous hero to work underground.
Because it was easier.
Because no agency wanted to take his quirk.
Shinso had said the first one while packing up his shit from Izuku’s apartment. The second one he’d spit out at him with a sneer, as if it was Bakugo’s fault.
Of course, none of the other friends had followed him, heat in their hands, teeth bared. Izuku had only given him those sorrowful eyes and watery smile, like he understood. Bakugo had noticed, of course, what Izuku never does. Dumb nerd catches everything except for shit like this.
Shit like: Shinso didn’t need platitudes or careful, understanding looks or that too tight hug that almost crushed Shinso’s ribs. Bakugo saw the man drowning and knew there wasn’t any amount of niceness that was going to save him. A drowning man needs to be pulled out of the water.
By the time Bakugo had dragged the paperwork out of his agency and forced his point about how useful Shinso’s quirk could be, the man had already disappeared into a several month long mission so wrapped in red tape it was bleeding. The paperwork had sat on his desk gathering dust since then.
That’s neither here nor there.
“Yeah? You look like a fucking troll doll with a candy problem.” Bakugo glares at the sucker in Shinso’s mouth. Where did he even get that? Sometimes Ashido keeps candy in her purse, but only for what she calls a sugar emergency. He doubts Shinso’s sweet tooth counts. “Do you just carry those around on you?”
“Great for kicking a smoking habit.” Shinso pops the sucker from his mouth with a grin and sticks out a bright blue tongue. “Gives you something to do with your hands.”
Shinso’s purple haze eyes flick over Bakugo, pulling pink into Bakugo’s cheeks when they linger over his lips. Bakugo knows it doesn’t mean anything. Shinso used to play a game he called Splody Boy Chicken. Basically, Shinso tried to fluster Bakugo until he literally exploded.
“Come oooon, guys,” Uraraka’s voice breaks over the muffled noise of everyone eating. “Summer’s gonna be over so soon. We gotta go outside.”
Oh no.
Bakugo hurries into the room, but it’s too late. She’s already got a line of people floating—Sero, Kirishima, that mushroom girl who Bakugo can’t really stand. They’re lucky the place isn’t overrun with spores.
“My backyard has a pool,” Momo offers. “We could go swimming?”
“Boring!” Denki declares, as if it’s not immediately obvious why large body of water doesn’t appeal to the man who is basically a live wire at any given moment. “Let’s play a game!”
“Simon says!”
“Twister! I know Momo has it in her game room.”
“Outside, dumbass!”
“Don’t you guys ever want to fucking relax?!” Bakugo shouts but is soundly ignored. The drawback, it seems, of being someone who yells all the time. Everyone’s used to ignoring him.
“I know,” Izuku—the nerd is going to be the death of him, he knows it—“let’s play hide ‘n seek!”
And everyone jumps at the game. Somehow, he doesn’t know which one says it, or if it just is assumed and he misses it in the excitement, but he’s deemed seeker. Probably because he’s sober and responsible. He thinks he hears Momo murmuring something about him being scary under her breath, but that may have just been his hard hearing and irritation playing off each other.
“You owe me,” he hisses at Izuku, who runs past him with a super-charged grin.
He doesn’t know how he’s getting Izuku back for this, but he’ll figure out something creative. Fucking socialite of a best friend. Denki gives him an apologetic thumbs up, which shouldn’t even be possible, but he pulls off what no one else could.
Fine. Fuck them. They can hide—he’ll just take his time finding them. It’s one way to get some peace with his godforsaken friends.
Something in his smug smirk must show his plans because Shinso snickers at him, shaking his head as he slips away. Bakugo hopes the man is found first. Second at most.
Except Denki decides to change hiding places no more than five minutes after he’d settled and Bakugo finds him running across Momo’s backyard. Bakugo catapults himself at the man, enjoying the startled shriek as Denki slams into the ground.
Momo and Jirou are found together—though their red faces say they may have forgotten they were meant to be hiding in the pool’s closet. He snarls at them for being idiots and they run off to meet their mutual boyfriend. No doubt to share their latest Bakugo story.
And slowly, at a meandering pace, he finds everyone. Sero’s up on the ceiling of the pool house. The mushroom girl is hidden in the grill—snoring, so Bakugo knows she definitely had way too much to drink. Uraraka and Izuku are floating over everything, which Bakugo tells them is fucking cheating even though he catches both of them easily. Uraraka is better at controlling herself in the air than Izuku, used to the weightless gravity feeling. Neither of them are faster than Bakugo, who drags both to the ground with a shout of triumph that threatens their eardrums.
Neither of them go back into the house. Izuku collapses on top of Uraraka, who devolves into giggles and even brighter pink cheeks.
“Both of you are ridiculous,” he mumbles. “Get inside and drink some water.”
They don’t, at least not before Bakugo rolls his eyes and walks off.
The only one he doesn’t find is Shinso. Wobbly, drunk, teasing Shinso. Underground hero Shinso. Of course, the damn stealth special would take a drunken hide n seek game too seriously.
He could just give up. Shinso may have taken the opportunity to leave. The outside is full of trees and nooks and crannies, and all sorts of little hidden corners Shinso could shove himself into that Bakugo would never think to look through.
In fact, he thinks it’s a perfect excuse to wander into the woods, find a nice flat rock to stretch out on, and finally relax like he hasn’t all night.
The stars, this far out from the city and the noise, are bright. He counts them—letting the useless, monotonous task dull the sharpness of his irritation, the soreness of his body. Thousands of them, stretched overhead.
Bakugo sighs and closes his eyes when the lights overhead start to spin. He’s too tired. He shouldn’t be here. He should have left when it was obvious Denki was a lying liar.
“Yo.”
He isn’t surprised by the greeting. The shuffling, heavy thump, weight on the grass beside him. “You’re supposed to be hiding.”
“Yeah,” Shinso grunts, turning to his side. “And you’re supposed to be seeking.”
“Why’d you give up?” Bakugo knows Shinso is drunk. Probably had to take a piss and found Bakugo out here. Even still, he could be hiding. Bakugo would eventually come look for him and the bragging rights would be phenomenal.
Shinso stiffens beside him, like he’s hearing layers into what Bakugo said. Bakugo waits for him to remember who he’s talking to. Bakugo doesn’t do hidden meanings. Everything he means he says upfront.
“Tired,” he says. “Why’d you?”
Bakugo doesn’t even think about his answer. “Me too. Shoulda left already.”
Shinso sits quietly for several minutes before he rolls back onto his back. Bakugo hadn’t looked at him, even when he’d felt the weight of Shinso’s gaze on the side of his face like a touch. It didn’t mean anything, that weight. Shinso had always been like that.
“Sorry,” Shinso’s shoulders hunch in, like he can take all his long limbs and broad shoulders and make himself small. “Denki made me show up today. He told me about his plan. I tried to stop him, but not very hard.”
Bakugo sits up, some of his exhaustion burning away with confusion and irritation. “You think you coulda stopped our dullest bulb from committing crimes against humanity?”
“I think that’s an exaggeration.”
“I never exaggerate.”
Shinso snorts, shoulders shaking as several giggles break out. What kind of bullshit Shinso’s laughing about, he has no idea. “You’re the funniest guy here and you’re not even drinking. How do you do it?”
Bakugo glares, crossing his arms over his knees. Eventually, Shinso’s giggles die down. He goes back to watching the sky, but Bakugo takes a second to see Shinso. The bags under his eyes look like bruises. His hair is dull and dry, like he’s scrubbed it too many times. “Hey.”
Shinso blinks, turning back, and he can see it now—the strange stitched look over the curve of his cheek—evidence of the healing quirk they must have used to clean him up. “Hey? Didn’t we already do this?”
“Come to my agency tomorrow.”
“It’s not your—”
“Shut it.” Bakugo waves off the annoyance. “We haven’t sparred yet. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were avoiding getting your ass kicked.”
Shinso snorts, grinning. Bakugo wonders if he’ll still be grinning tomorrow when Bakugo beats his ass and throws that job offer at him.
He’d made sure there was no expiration date when he’d negotiated his terms. Left a lot of wiggle room for Shinso to change what he needs to.
“Fine,” Shinso shrugs, patting the rock beside him. “Tomorrow, I beat your ass.”
Bakugo just hopes he doesn’t wake up in the middle of a lake. Shinso had done it to Monoma once, though no one had ever told him what Lyrebird had done to deserve such a fate. “You wish.”
By the time Momo hunts them down, both of them have nodded off in the summer heat. Izuku braves the markers. Denki pulls out the camera. Uraraka labels the resulting pictures “Summer Blackmail.”
##
“You asleep?”
The nerve of Red Riot, of all people, to ask him that fucking question. “I will end you in this hallway, you know.”
“Damn, man. I tried to tell them not to.” Kirishima rubs the back of his neck, suddenly sheepish. “And I meant after that.”
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
“Don’t gotta be harsh about it, man.” Kirishima shrugs. Then, as if Bakugo wasn’t close enough to exploding his face off, the man grins. A recognizable, dangerous expression. Bakugo swears he can see Kirishima’s quirk already ticking over his arm. “So, you and Shinso? Sleeping under the stars?”
Bakugo doesn’t have time for this shit. He has a shift and then a fucking spar and a conversation to have. That’s a lot in a day for him. Dealing with his friends and their antics is too much. He already spent a good hour this morning scrubbing a dozen lightning bolts from his forehead and a suspiciously well drawn All Might from his cheek. Deku swears he only brought the supplies, but Bakugo isn’t inclined to believe him.
He flips off his hearing aids and then, for good measure, flips off Kirishima. The gesture is enough to get him a muted spluttering of excuses, but he blissfully ignores them and finishes prepping for his shift.
Patrol is usually his favorite part of his day. Every villain put away, every rise in his stats, all of it is proof he’s where he’s meant to be. This is what he worked for, what he fought a war for. Being here, being a hero.
He doesn’t turn on his hearing aids until he’s out of the building and stepping into his patrol area. There are already heroes on the scene, worn down from their shift while they wait for him to relieve them. They don’t even pause to speak, just wave on their way out once they catch sight of him.
If Shinso accepts the offer, he’ll probably start off on nights. His previous case files—what Bakugo has access to, at least—only mention late night and early morning shifts.
It’s not that Bakugo doesn’t respect underground hero work. They do shit he’d never be able to do. Digging bad shit out by the roots and chucking it in the fire. Bakugo’s perpetually trimming the excess, the stray limbs that branch too far out.
He’s tried to propose plans to be more proactive, but the structure just isn’t there. At least, that’s what Jeanist says. He respects the man, believes he means what he says when he says they’ve tried it and lost good heroes doing so. But sometimes that much baggage, that much struggle, is enough to scare people off from good plans.
Best Jeanist has always been too careful for his own good. The loss of Hawks to the League had been hard on him.
He shakes his head, tries to rattle the thoughts out and concentrate on his route. Most days nothing happens, and he wants an easy day like that today. Yesterday had been Acme, Inc levels of stupid. A bank robbery where a rubber man had catapulted himself through the window. Except, he miscalculated and smacked himself against the wall and needed rescuing. Bakugo had cuffed him before he’d even scraped him off the building.
And that had been the least stupid case. At least that idiot had a plan. He refuses to believe the rest were planned at all.
He’s so tired, he decides to let the graffiti artist who keeps spraying encouragement over advertisements for quirk enhancers off the hook for the day. He doesn’t have the energy to waste on some nineteen-year-old cat heteromorph who likes to spray paint YOU GOT THIS BABE into the word bubbles of middling, washed up heroes on billboards.
Besides, if she ever does anything worth worrying over, Bakugo figured out where her hideout was ages ago.
“You’re letting people go?”
Bakugo nearly jumps out of his skin when Izuku walks up behind him. No one else could possibly fucking sneak up on him. “You have ten seconds before I blast you away from me, nerd.”
He’s positive that All Might was Izuku. No one else gets the bunny ears right.
“I just wanted to apologize, you know.” Izuku’s dark ozone scent washes over him and it’s infuriatingly comforting. “We definitely shouldn’t have let Denki do that. And then the—”
“I don’t give a shit. Don’t need to apologize.” Denki had been propelled high enough in the air that he’d sworn to never, ever use Bakugo’s number like that again. For good measure, Bakugo’s icing him out for the foreseeable future. “What do you want?”
Izuku shuffles, arms crossing over his chest like he’s embarrassed. How fucking ridiculous. “Well, you know, I thought maybe you noticed… Shinso’s been kinda… off.”
Bakugo grunts. He knows, but in what world is it his or Izuku’s business? He solidly ignores the weight of the folder with Shinso’s name in it that’s still sitting on his desk.
He’s made sure to review the details, memorize the offer, the lines where Shinso’s name would fit perfectly. The arguments are solid. He’s even made sure to keep his name off of everything. Jeanist, saint of a boss that he is, agreed to keep Bakugo’s involvement strictly out of things. After all, the offer would have never been made if Jeanist didn’t think Shinso was worth it.
Bakugo chose to ignore Jeanist’s comments on Shinso’s potential as a model for his designer line. Aside from occasionally being reminded of a shoot he has to do, and the fact his closet is full of the best fitting, most comfortable jeans he’s ever owned, he never has to think about that aspect of working here.
Hopefully it doesn’t end up being a deal breaker.
“Wow, you must be really nervous about something.” Izuku’s voice breaks through his pondering. Bakugo hates talking to him like this. “Did you know he was back in town? Do you know what’s up with him? Did you guys talk about it last night—”
“Stop it.”
“While you took your romantic nap in the middle of the woods?”
Bakugo snorts. “Fuck off, Izuku.”
Izuku rolls his shoulders, perching on the edge of the roof. He doesn’t look like he’s about to listen and fuck off. He looks like he’s about to risk another news article about a pro-hero showdown when Bakugo chases him across the city. “Well, better rest up for your sparring session. I hear Shinso has gotten pretty good with his quirk.”
“Who’d you hear that from? Some nobody bitching about getting caught?” The villains Shinso takes down tend to be a lot less physically capable than the ones in the overground. Less supervillain with a costume and more seedy bastard in the underbelly of society.
“From Kirishima, actually.” Izuku stretches, fixing his eye on some far-off point. “Kirishima and him trained for a while. Apparently Kirishima lost more than he won.”
That’s not surprising. Kirishima’s approach to fighting was to be brute force his way through. Being practically impenetrable makes fighting a lot more straightforward most of the time. Even with Bakugo he just runs straight into the bigger explosions. Kirishima’s weakness is a mile wide, but most people can’t make the kind of precise and repetitive attacks that get under his skin.
Doesn’t mean anything about Shinso facing off against Bakugo, though.
##
Bakugo faces off against a guy as tall as a building and fucking built as shit. He gets slammed through glass and metal and spends more than half an hour in front of a healer who looks like she’d rather be on clean up duty than dealing with an angry explosion hero who keeps trying to leave in the middle of healing.
It doesn’t help that her quirk burns, heat spreading over his skin and prickling through every knick and cut and bruise the attack left on him. He practically sways on his feet with fever, but she doesn’t let up even once.
“You ever heard of dodging?” she grumbles.
Bakugo bites his tongue, but a stray spark runs up his arm. She ignores him. He keeps his internal rant about how dodging would have gotten no less than three people killed. Heroes sometimes have only themselves between a teenager and their two friends scared fucking stiff in the middle of the road. Wouldn’t do him any good. She saw the footage if nothing else. She’s just being a prickly bitch. Well, that makes two of them.
She catches his wrist when he shakes her off in the middle of healing a bruise across his cheek. It’s really not necessary anymore, he’s been more than healed enough for a fucking lifetime and he’s already sweating bullets. Still, she doesn’t let go when he tries to yank his arm back.
“Drink some water. Treat it like a fever. You’re off the field for the night, doctor’s orders.” He scoffs, but she only stares at him, round red eyes unblinking.
“Fuck off.” He scowls at her, wiping his hand over his forehead. She only quirks a brow at him. She’s one of the regulars out here—used to his irritation, unswayed by his pissy attitude. “I’ll do office work the rest of the day.”
Jeanist keeps the office cold, anyway. He’s not against catching up on his paperwork. Not like he’s had much rest since yesterday.
Catching up on his paperwork lasts less than half an hour before the aftereffects of the quirk catch up to him. He doesn’t even realize he’s tired before he’s asleep with his head on his desk.
##
“So,” a deep voice drawls through his dream. Goosebumps race over the skin of his neck as the dream lifts, but that voice soaks into the roots first, a drenching of velvet over the tenuous world Bakugo’s fevered mind created. “You’re late because you took a nap? Above ground hero work does look easy.”
Bakugo snaps awake, jerking up in his seat. His back hurts—and his neck and shoulders and the rest of him, all firing off unhappy signals as his brain boots back up. “What the fuck, Eyebags.”
“You’re the one who invited me to spar and didn’t show up.” Shinso is sitting on the edge of Bakugo’s desk, hand on top of the plain folder that Bakugo intended to show after he beat Shinso’s ass in a spar.
“Got thrown through a building and then healed by the fucking devil,” Bakugo tries to stretch, but hisses when his muscles ache in protest. “Apparently the fucking fever she gave me knocked me out.”
“Yeah, that’s what Best Jeanist said when I showed up after waiting at the training grounds for twenty minutes.”
Ugh. Of course, Jeanist told Shinso about everything already. And of course he knew Bakugo was sleeping and just didn’t wake him up. It’s not like Bakugo meant to take a fucking nap on the clock.
He hadn’t even remembered to drink any water. Now there’s a dull ache pounding at his temples. And his stomach reminds him that he hasn’t eaten since breakfast this morning. Judging by the fading light outside, that was long enough ago that he should be starving. “Fuck off.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve already scheduled us time in the training room tomorrow.” Shinso taps his fingers against the folder. Bakugo glares at him, following the line of his arm down to the closed manila flap. “I’m too smart to go through your shit, Blasty. Almost all of my work is confidential. I’m not rifling through people’s paperwork unless I’m getting paid to.”
Bakugo shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. In the end it doesn’t matter. Shinso is going to see the paperwork anyway. That’s literally why he put it together. Still, his palms feel slick with sweat. “Want to go with me to get something to eat?”
“You gonna try to burn my face off?”
“What?” Bakugo frowns, looking up to see Shinso grinning. “The fuck does that mean?”
“That means I’ve seen the shit you eat, Bakugo.” Shinso heads towards the door. “I’m picking.”
Shinso picks a chicken place that serves sticks of thigh meat and roasted vegetables brushed over with a dark sauce. The chicken is tender and slightly charred. Not bad. It is missing a certain kick Bakugo tends to prefer, but the smokiness isn’t bad. Shinso stares out over the street and the people crowding around shop windows. There’s a shaved ice cart shutting down a few shops down. The bottles of syrup catch the last rays of sunlight and cast a rainbow of color over the empty sidewalk ahead of it. Summer heat trickles lazily up from the pavement and Bakugo finishes his skewer.
“You’re looking less like shit.” Bakugo holds the skewer between his palms and watches it pop into smoke.
“Thanks, I’m flattered.” Shinso fiddles with a hunk of charred leek. He’s never been the biggest fan of onions—Bakugo doesn’t know why he even orders them.
“Fucking. Are you going to eat it or not?”
Shinso ignores him, nibbling on the edge of the green before sighing. “Fucking, slept through most of the day, not going to lie. Being back here is boring as shit.”
“Sorry we can’t be as fascinating as the last drug ring you tore up.” Bakugo snorts. “Did I mention getting thrown through a building?”
The conversation is almost too easy. There’s none of that crackling anger or irritation. Something about it makes Bakugo’s stomach turn, like something small and squirmy has taken up residence in his guts. He can’t find anything to catch on and snap at, though, so he lets the silence sit until he can’t handle it anymore.
“Well, this has been fun,” he says, with no small amount of sarcasm. “But I’ve got to do literally anything besides stand here and people watch.”
“Literally anything?” Shinso stuffs the last bit of onion in his mouth, grimacing.
“What could you possibly mean by that?” Bakugo had actually meant specifically that he was going to go home and… well, he doesn’t really even know. Rest, for one. How, on the other hand, is a question he doesn’t actually know the answer to.
“Wanna see something cool?”
“It’s not another tall ass building we don’t have clearance to climb, is it?” They had done that a couple of times after graduating, when Izuku was getting used to the fragmented leftovers of his quirk. It had been fun until the third or so officer, scared shitless but still writing them a ticket.
“Nah, I stopped doing that a few years ago.” Shinso shrugs. “Not as fun when they start integrating it into your work. Can’t exactly call it rebellious when they pay you to do it.”
Bakugo doesn’t know who is paying Shinso to spiderman his way up buildings, but he moves on anyway. “Sure. What the fuck ever.”
Shinso ducks into a building to dump his trash and comes back with two cold coffees. “Decaf, so you don’t yell at me.”
“I wasn’t going to yell at you.” He was just going to bitch a little. He’s not a fan of coffee. He never drinks it on his own. Only Denki and Shinso still buy them for him. He scowls, handing it back to Shinso. “Keep your coffee.”
Shinso shrugs, sticking the extra can in his oversized pockets. He’s wearing a slouchy outfit, sweatpants and an oversized hoodie, making him look particularly formless in the twilight. “More for me.”
Bakugo follows him, wordlessly. They walk down several streets, until the buildings become more rubble than structure and it’s clear the recovery efforts have fallen off. Villains used to cling to the rotten old buildings here, but there were too many attacks, too many raids, and now the only people who stick around in the fallen buildings are scavengers and people who think themselves adventurers or some sort of urban archaeologist. Mina used to dig around here. She still has a ton of shirts from when quirks were just becoming a thing. Apparently when all of humanity is panicking about new superpowers, media about aliens gets really popular.
She used to tell him how Alien Queen was born from the stuff she found here. Her most prized find is an extra-large green shirt with a giant pink alien face on it that simply says “POWER” in big letters across the front. She calls it meta.
Apparently, Shinso’s idea of a fun, relaxing time is to drag him to a hollowed out building with no windows and medical equipment that’s been torn to pieces for parts. Still, the rolling gurneys and dilapidated skeletons of machines make it look like a scene straight from those pre-quirk horror video games. Hanta used to play those all the time. In fact. “Did Hanta show you this?”
“What?” Shinso stops poking at a metal cart, completely covered in rust.
“Well, he’s been talking about abandoned hospitals since high school.” Bakugo has noticed before, of course, how his friends have searched out the unusual parts of them in usual places, and failing that, in the unusual places, too. “Figured he mentioned it.”
Bakugo usually doesn’t go on their little excursions. Really, it’s a Mina and Hanta thing that they do on their own. He’s not even sure when they last searched through urban ruins as they called them. He tries to think about the last time he hung out with any of them separately, something that splits his group of friends into smaller, more personalized bubbles.
The scowl on his face as he comes up empty must be loud and clear, because Shinso flicks him on the nose. “Whatever you’re thinking about, stop it. Think about this weird ass cool place instead.”
“So?” Bakugo hasn’t forgotten that he asked a question.
“Oh, yeah. Hanta showed it to me years ago.” Shinso leads him through a wooden door, creaking open to reveal a hallway piled high with papers. “There’s all sorts of stuff from this part of town. It’s one of the few that didn’t get built over when they were doing their renovations. A detonation quirk went off and a lot of the buildings were rattled pretty far down, through their basements and the subway. The damage was extensive enough that no companies wanted to take on the costs of restructuring everything.”
Bakugo thinks of the people skulking around in these ruins, picking through the bones of a society well past. “Probably would be safer if they did. This place is a mess.”
“Yeah, well, believe me. There are plenty of eyes on it.” Shinso shrugs, ducking beneath a partially collapsed beam. They’re walking over patient files—lists of quirks and drawbacks and accidents. Psychological problems stemming from quirk use or lack of quirk use, from the ostracization of being new and powerful in a world that had no way to deal with any of it. “But this hospital is even more interesting. Watch this.”
Shinso kicks over a few boxes, shoving a filing cabinet through the sea of papers with his shoulder. With a little help from Bakugo they manage to get it moved out of the way of yet another door. Bakugo is wondering what could possibly have survived being trashed all this time, plus whoever ransacked after. A mild curiosity, at most, but Shinso grins at him when Bakugo looks through the gap in Shinso’s arm to see through the gap they’ve made.
It’s pure darkness inside. Bakugo’s not stupid enough to spark up anything in a building as old and damaged as this. Still, he glares at Shinso, on principle. If he hadn’t known Shinso and his weird fucking ways since UA, he’d probably be ready to risk it all and blow him up. A remote part of the city in an abandoned building in what is increasingly looking like an abandoned basement.
“You’re very trusting,” Shinso says, as if reading Bakugo’s thoughts. “I would have already given at least a couple of threats by now.”
“The threats are implied.” Bakugo catches the end of Shinso’s shirt, keeping track of where the man is going as they move away from the dim lights in the room. This entire area had the power cut off ages ago to prevent accidents. So, there’s almost no chance of Shinso flipping on a light.
Losing his eyesight is extra shitty with barely any hearing left. His hearing aids pick up static, but no noise, and somehow it highlights how little he can actually hear to have the occasional crackle break through the quiet.
He’s trying to keep his footing, sticking a toe in front of him for every step so he doesn’t stumble forward and embarrass himself. Still, he’s not paying enough attention to the hoodie in his hand or the vague shape of the body in front of him. Shinso stops suddenly and Bakugo blunders on, crashing against a broad back and shoulders, sending sharp stabs of pain through his nose as he slams face first into a solid wall of muscle. “Fuck,” he curses under his breath, but he can still hear Shinso laughing at him from up ahead.
“I’m just trying to figure out where I am. The right room is a little hard to fine. Plus, who knows if it’s still even like that.” Shinso hums, turning around to face him. He’s pale and ghostly in the hallway, his too wide grin flashing down at Bakugo. “But there’s a chance and if it is down there, it’ll impress the shit out of you.”
“You think there’s something here that Hanta hasn’t yapped about for at least an hour. I’m pretty sure he spent a whole three days coming back here.” Bakugo tries to find a wall to place his hand against instead of trying to catch hold of Shinso again. Clearly that had been a mistake.
“Pretty sure he didn’t see this one.” Shinso’s eyes flash when he pulls out his phone. “I can only see it because I did a bunch of research on old, early-quirk era buildings and security systems for a case.”
“What?”
“Come on, you’ll love it.” Shinso takes a left, nearly causing another collision before Bakugo takes a quick step back. “Not too much farther.”
“If you’re fucking with me, I’ll fucking blow you up.”
“Not the best move.”
“And I’ll do it anyway.” Bakugo lets his spiteful reputation precede him. Shinso laughs, his long arm reaching out and snapping Bakugo in front of him. There’s the briefest brush of Shinso’s arms over his shoulders, a warm chest pressed against his back, and then a single, short burst of light and a beep later and another door opens. There’s a slide, creaking and awful like nails on a chalkboard that pierces through the crackle in the headphones and the usual muffled sound of the world around him, and then a strange emptiness ahead of him.
Bakugo steps into a mostly clean room. A desk is pressed hard against the wall ahead of them, layers of screens piled over each other. They’re all dead, of course, but somehow the room looks lighter with them in it, like their backlit eyes are staring through translucent lids. Bakugo’s hair on his arms stands up.
“What the fuck?”
“Yeah, this was a security room for the hospital but it also doubled as a safehouse. And look.”
Shinso shines the flashlight on his phone into a back corner. The room is big enough that it takes Bakugo a minute to squint into the long shadows and see the cot and stacked up boxes. It almost looks like another room, walled off by canned goods and pallets leaning on their side. “You found a hideout?”
“Yeah. Not just that.” Shinso’s face looks like all the spooky movies with the light under his face, making his dark eyebags stand even more starkly against his high cheeks. “Look at this.”
Shinso dives into the frankly ridiculous stack of cans and rat-eaten cotton cot—mostly just a rusted frame—and digs through a pillow that looks like it was deflated when it came out of the factory and has only somehow become concave now that it’s been ravaged by time and the general decay of its surroundings. A black hole of a pillow where Shinso’s hand disappeared and returns with a book in hand.
“There’s no way that’s legible,” Bakugo offers. The cover is black leather, with the word SKY embedded on it. A leather tie keeps the whole thing together, and not a single part of it is falling apart. The book looks like it could have been made yesterday. Shinso flips it open, turning a few pages until he finds what he’s looking for. A name. The ink is faded, all the way down the page, where some parts of it have disappeared or been rubbed away.
“The guy’s name was Tomoe.” Shinso flips through another few pages. “Apparently he hid out in here after some shitty raid. It was after the hospital stopped being used, obviously, but the stores around here must have still had stock.”
Shinso sweeps his light over the floor. There’s cans with old labels on them, entirely too faded to read. They’re still sealed up. “How’d he get in here if you’re only just now getting in here?”
“Security codes back then were based on strings of randomized letters.” Shinso shrugs and taps his phone. “There’s all kinds of shit I have that can test those, and it can do it basically instantly. I don’t usually need to, but sometimes when I’m out and bored out of my mind, I try to find a lock I can pick my way through and explore.”
“That sounds illegal.”
“You know the longest it’s ever taken me to talk myself out of those kinds of situations?”
“Can’t imagine more than a few words.” Bakugo has been on the receiving end of that particular trick more than once.
Shinso grimaces, the flashlight casting the expression in deeper lines on his face. “Not everything can be solved with my quirk.”
Bakugo shrugs. “Fine. What, a minute? Two?”
Clearly the man wants to brag. Who is Bakugo to stop him? Still, Shinso scowls before continuing his story, clicking off his light again. The absence makes the room that much darker, an afterimage of the flashlight and his lavender eyes floating in Bakugo’s vision.
“Fifteen minutes.” Shinso’s voice drifts, even though they’re standing right in front of each other. “I had to convince a guy I was someone else, who was supposed to be there for a delivery.”
“You managed it?”
“You’re surprised?”
The dark must make Bakugo’s tongue loose, words slipping easily from some hidden pocket in his chest where all his compliments live. That place is usually reserved for when he’s fucked up or hurt someone. This time, it slips out unwarranted. “Not really.”
It’s barely a compliment, even. But the outline of Shinso’s shoulders in the dark room go stiff. He walks off, leaving Bakugo standing in the empty center of the room to sit against the wall by the cot. Bakugo doesn’t try to move until the light turns back on again.
Shinso reads over the pages. His long fingers tuck between each slip of paper, the soft shft of each motion the only sound in the room.
“You must’ve read that already,” Bakugo crosses the room to the only light source and flops down against the wall beside Shinso. In the dark he misjudges the distance, falls a little too close so his shoulder and elbow knock against Shinso’s awkwardly.
Shinso’s bushy brow raises at the press of Bakugo’s arm against his. Deciding that moving away now would be tantamount to admitting he’d messed up, Bakugo ignores it and looks meaningfully at the book. He can only hope the off-lighting disguises whatever expression is on his face. “What’s that? It just looks like some kind of calendar.”
Shinso tilts the book towards him. “The guy who stayed here had a whole schedule for the food. Even canned food expires. He had some crazy recipes in here to use up his supplies by order of what was going to go bad first.”
Bakugo looks over the list. There’s a disturbing prevalence of something called human chow. Gross. It looks like the recipes are just random cans of food that sound like they won’t be awful together tossed into the same pot and heated through. Sometimes, occasionally, there is a vegetable chopped up and thrown in. “These are awful.”
Shinso laughs, flipping to a new page. “Sure. Bet it kept him alive though.”
“Whatever,” Bakugo frowns. “Would you eat this shit?”
“If it was eat this or die, yeah.” Shinso stares hard at the notebook, eyes a little too focused on the words. Bakugo senses something off about the response and Shinso’s sudden laser sharp interest in the shape of the letters.
“You don’t eat this now, do you?”
“No!” Shinso looks away. “Unrelated to anything, I bet they don’t taste that bad.”
“Fucking ridiculous.” Bakugo is going to have to feed this man actual food. Fucking human chow. It’s an affront to cooking.