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…
Looking back at it, Katsuki probably should have been paying a little more attention to the news.
In his defense, he’s been busy. Regularly wiping the floor with twenty-odd brats who all think they’re going to be the next Izuku Midoriya, while simultaneously sparing their tender feelings about it, is way more than a full-time job.
He doesn’t remember Aizawa ever closing his door to a student when he was a teacher, so it’s not like Katsuki’s going to wimp out and shut his door during office hours or anything, but damn, he thinks, watching the little chubby-cheeked girl sitting at the chair across from his desk as her mouth begins to quiver sadly.
Damn, damn, damn.
Hina Kikuchi is a bubbly first-year who usually gets along well with all of her classmates – today as with other days, she is literally bubbly, but unlike most days, the soapy pink suds are emanating from her tearful teal eyes instead of from her fingers, trapping her classmates in a stretchy bubble or gently buoying her and her friends up in the air.
He tries to think what she might be upset about. She tends to be pretty hard on herself, but she’s doing well in her classes from what he’s seen from her grades, and yeah, her Quirk isn’t the strongest thing he’s ever seen, but she’s becoming increasingly creative with it and has been working hard to bulk up to make up for her current lack of speed and strength. Hina’s pretty much a model student, honestly, except for the fact that she cares about everyone desperately and is going to have to build up a little resiliency to that shit if she’s going to go pro. You can’t save everybody, after all.
Katsuki sighs. “Okay, Suds,” he says, waving a hand in the air and letting a few sparks pop off for show as she startles and snaps to attention. “You aren’t usually the one in my chair, so it might actually be important. Let’s get it out there,” he continues, a little more gently.
“Bakugo-sensei,” she blurts, and then Katsuki watches in abject horror as she ducks her chin, fists her hands in her lap, and begins to cry in earnest. In between huge, gulping sobs, he catches snatches of words and phrases and begins to piece a story together, something about not being chosen for an internship and Rinko and Emi making fun of her in the locker room, or whatever.
He’s going to try to be nice about it – really, he is, it’s a stupid fucking problem but Hina also doesn’t trust many people to show her moments of weakness to, so he’s going to give her some stellar advice, as soon as he figures out what that’s going to be.
What comes out of his mouth in the meantime are unfortunately his true, heart-of-hearts feelings, which are, “Don’t kids ever just fucking study anymore?”
Hina is so startled that she stops crying with a choked hiccup, looking at him with wide eyes. Well, shit. In for a penny, Katsuki figures, so he continues, “Look, Suds, your parents didn’t pay a lot of money to send you to hero school for you to make friends. And no villain out there is gonna give half a shit about your feelings. You’re here to compete for your spot. You get stronger than those two, wipe the floor with them, you toss them out with the trash, the end.”
Hina is still blinking at him, open-mouthed, but at least she isn’t crying anymore. He shrugs dismissively, as if that little speech had been what he’d been planning to say all along. It hadn’t been, but it’s a decent save, Katsuki thinks. “If they think so highly of themselves that they assume they don’t need to outwork you, they’re morons. They’re just turning themselves into your fuel,” he continues.
Hina wipes her face and sniffles. He hands her a tissue, because a) that shit’s disgusting, and b) he doesn’t feel like cleaning pink soapy trails off his desk or floor. “You’re pretty cool, Sensei,” she says admiringly. Then her face falls a little. “I bet you never had this problem,” she continues, her mouth twisting unhappily as her expression darkens.
“Not really,” Katsuki admits. He doesn’t lie to his kids. “I was a grade-A jerk, early prodigy, first in the sports festival, thought I was untouchable shit. Unfortunately,” he continues, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, “The wimpy-ass kid I thought it’d be cool to pick on decided to get tough enough to pound me into dust, and now I teach high schoolers and he’s the new Symbol of Peace, so you see how that road worked out for me.”
He waits a few seconds for the lightbulb to go off. When it does, Hina scrambles out of her chair so fast she nearly flips it over, gripping the plastic so hard he thinks she’s going to crack it. “You used to bully Deku?!” she cries.
“And I have regretted it every day of my life afterwards,” Katsuki sighs. Especially today, because later this afternoon he’s going to have to call shitty Deku to suss out whether he or any of his sidekicks have enough time on their hands to take on an intern and like, toughen her up while also being nice to her and shit, in ways that Katsuki isn’t all that good at. Ugh.
“….Does that mean you know any good stories about him?” Hina asks, then squeaks as she hurriedly puts up a bubble to catch the fragmented shrapnel of the pen that explodes in his right hand, ink and all.
“None I’m going to tell my students,” Katsuki says, letting his hand continue to pop menacingly. “Now, if there isn’t anything else, get the hell out of my office. I’ve got papers to grade.”
Hina just giggles, skipping merrily back into the hall, bounce firmly put back into her step. “You’re the best, Bakugo-sensei,” she calls, and he waves impatiently at her.
So, yeah - daily nonsense like that is why Katsuki doesn’t get time to sit around on his laurels and pay attention to the fucking news surrounding his ex-classmates. He hears plenty of snippets from the kids’ conversations about the classmates who stayed pro, stayed local. But, if it doesn’t directly correlate to his school schedule, grading papers, or his ability to somehow raise hundreds of hopeful douchebag kids into good fucking human beings, shit doesn’t get watched.
Nevertheless. Defensible or not, it’s his own damn fault and no one else’s, that when he barges into Aizawa’s office and bursts out “Why is it always the fucking girls,” he doesn’t immediately recognize the man sitting across from the UA High principal.
The stranger’s hair is dark and long, eerily reminiscent of Aizawa’s, but there’s a lurid streak of crimson haphazardly woven through a delicate-looking braid which is very un-Aizawa-like. Still, at first Katsuki thinks he’s some long-lost relative. Then Aizawa blows coolly on his cup of tea and says in an unaffected tone, “Well, it looks like we’re having our own little Class 1-A reunion today,” and the stranger turns to face him with shining red eyes and a sharp-toothed grin, and Katsuki knows.
“Bakugo! Hey, man,” Kirishima says warmly, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Good to see you, how long’s it been?”
Never mind. Katsuki’s first instinct is wrong. No amount of unwatched news reels could have prepared him for this, this…unbelievable, insane, radical transformation into a handsome fucking adult man that somehow hit his high school best friend overnight.
“What the fuck,” Katsuki barks, furiously backpedals, and slams the principal’s office door so hard the hinges rattle.
…
When the kids are all filing out into the hallway for the lunch bell, Katsuki checks his cell phone to see five new texts from an unknown number.
10:58 AM: you haven’t changed a bit bakugo. LMAO
10:59 AM: sorry, it’s kirishima! Eijirou Kirishima.
11:00 AM: Aizawa told me ur phone number is the same. had to change mine a few times. Robo-callers who learn u r a pro hero are no joke x_x
11:02 AM: Aizawa also says ur teaching until noon but have a break until 2 while kids are @ English. We r abt to meet w/school board but I’ll stick around if u want to get lunch together after? My treat.
11:03 AM: if ur too busy thats OK too. No hard feelings. Just miss u dude. Be fun to catch up if u have time -xx ;-)
Even worse than when he was just Katsuki’s ex-teacher instead of his boss-slash-work friend, Aizawa is a dirty fucking meddler. He seems to be equally convinced and distressed that Katsuki is going to die loveless, friendless, and alone in his shitty apartment just off-campus, and has made it clear under no uncertain terms that he plans to continue to throw acceptably eligible pro heroes into his path until Katsuki bucks up and picks one of them.
Dying loveless, friendless, and alone in his shitty apartment is, in fact, Katsuki’s loose working plan, since he likes it that way. And just because Aizawa is finally happily grey-haired and off the market with his husband and three cats, does not mean he should have any room whatsoever to impose his judging eyeballs on Katsuki’s current dating situation. Or lack thereof.
Now, Katsuki is not a stupid man. Katsuki is aware that he does not drink very often. When he does drink, he does not usually do so at the yearly post-graduation staff party. When he does drink at the yearly post-graduation staff party, he does not usually make any attempts at keeping up with Midnight, who is a crafty old hag, nor Ojiro, whose tail Katsuki has long suspected is secretly a motherfucking hollow keg the alcohol just disa-fucking-ppears into.
Any of those events could have happened to any reasonable, sane person. Katsuki does not think that his sole night of weakness to date, which ended in him sadly pouring out his regrets, loneliness, and an entire stomach’s worth of cheap-ass beer behind the gymnasium’s double doors where Aizawa happened to be taking a break from social interaction, should be counted against him for life.
Katsuki frowns. yes, he types back to Kirishima. His thumb hovers over the send button uncertainly – should he add more? Missed you too? You look great? How have things been?
No. He huffs, and hits send. He hasn’t seen the guy in ages, but it’s Kirishima. He’ll know what Katsuki means.
…
Kirishima is laughing, and Katsuki can’t stop looking at him.
Choosing his favorite tonkatsu joint was a terrible idea. The tonkatsu is amazing as always, but the little wizened owner spies them coming in together, and though she doesn’t follow pro heroes, she’s quick to bustle over with her side of the story of the time that Katsuki rescued her from her previous shop’s electrical fire, pointing to the little framed newspaper clipping which hangs in her door with great pride, and sly grins at Katsuki.
Kirishima dutifully ooh’s and ahh’s, and pokes Katsuki’s cheek with the end of a chopstick when she wanders away after having successfully wrung about as much embarrassment as Katsuki can take without blowing a hole through the wall and escaping. “Dude,” Kirishima says, as soon as she’s out of earshot. “That is so cute.”
“Shut up,” Katsuki mutters, without heat. He shoves a big piece of chicken in his mouth, grumbling as he chews. When he feels like he can talk again without destroying half a city block in furious embarrassment, he says, “Isn’t like you haven’t done way more impressive shit since we graduated, anyway.”
Kirishima looks pleasantly surprised, and Katsuki realizes that he came dangerously close to admitting a seven-minute fit of panicked Googling before his last pre-lunch class filed in the door. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter, because Katsuki can spy the tell-tale creepings of a blush stealing over his friend’s face. “Ahh, you know how it is,” he says, tucking a wispy lock of black hair which had escaped from his braid behind a very pink ear. “Every kid graduates and wants to make their mark somehow. Besides, if we’re talking Class 1-A, Deku’s making us all look bad.”
“Damn curve-wrecker,” Katsuki agrees. “He knows fucking everybody, too. I keep having to be nice to him and shit, ask him for recommendations for my students who don’t find intern placements after the sports festival. He’s such a bleeding heart.”
And Kirishima laughs. Fucking – the world is an unfair place, Katsuki knows this, but it is extremely rude that his old friend’s smile has levelled up from boyish exuberance to this soft, charming enthusiasm. “And what about you, then?” he says. “Gotta be honest, of all the things I coulda seen coming, you turning down a shitload of agency offers and accepting a teaching position wasn’t one of them.”
And that’s the mystery, isn’t it? Katsuki got tons of offers, back in his heyday. He knows he’s awesome, knows he could walk out tomorrow and probably triple his salary just by putting himself back out on the pro market in the city. But – “Do you remember when Todoroki and I failed our provisional licensing exam?” he asks. “Had to take all those extra classes and shit?”
“Yep,” Kirishima agrees with a grin. “I think that was happening while I was getting my ass beat to hell trying to rescue Eri.”
Ten years ago, Katsuki would’ve taken that as a dig. Now, he just grins. “Yeah, I was dyin’ to be out there with you guys. I was so pissed off when I found out some real action happened, and I missed out on it ‘cause I was a shitty rescuer.” He smiles at the memory of Todoroki’s ice slide made out of all of the kids’ frozen items from their Quirks, Inasa’s gentle current sending the kids hurtling down the slope. “But…we got paired with a bunch of elementary schoolers, and we had to figure out how to help the teacher regain their respect as a class. A ton of little smug kids, secretly scared shitless at the thought that their parents and their number-one hero couldn’t protect them from all the bad shit going on in the news.”
“You saw yourself in them?” Kirishima guesses.
“Pretty much,” Katsuki agrees. He pokes around at the rice in his bowl. “Took me a long time to trust in the adults around me, since it took me so long to meet somebody who completely outstripped me. Thought I was already stronger than everyone out there, and I got away with a ton of stuff I should never have since my Quirk was so – volatile. UA was the first time I met other people who could wipe the floor with me.”
“To be fair, you were stronger than most of us even after you got to UA,” Kirishima says with a grin. “I remember meeting you, and you were so confident. Like, what high school freshman has that level of swagger, you know?”
“I was a cocky little asshole who thought I was too good to treat people as equals,” Katsuki corrects. “A shit classmate, and a worse friend. I was hoping if I became a teacher, I could at least be somebody else’s Aizawa, you know? Send them down the right path.”
Kirishima is looking at him with a surprised expression. “What?” Katsuki says, wiping at his mouth suspiciously, in case he’s done something embarrassing like leave extra sauce around the corner of his mouth.
“You really had no idea how we all saw you,” Kirishima says slowly. “You- you still don’t. Like – you have no idea.” He clutches the side of his face with a piteous groan. “Fuck me, Aizawa was right, I am never going to live it down.”
A traitorous little bubble of – something – works its way up Katsuki’s throat. “Fuck you, asshole, tell me, then,” he demands, and Kirishima blurts “Man, half the fucking grade was in love with you.”
Katsuki wants to say something cool, like, hell yeah I totally already knew that, maybe try to throw up some kind of attempt at false modesty. Instead he reels back, stunned. “…Which half?” he asks, before he can think better of it, and then groans, burying his cherry-red face in his hands in absolute mortification.
“Which half?! Oh my god, ‘which half’. Fuck me, dude, I almost forgot how funny you are,” Kirishima says, grinning as he drags a palm down his face. Peeking out of the side of one hand, he asks, “So you really didn’t know?”
“No!” Katsuki shouts, frantically racking his brain as he tries to think back. He doesn’t remember getting that vibe from anyone in high school. Or, like, ever, for that matter. The closest thing he can think of is Deku’s exhaustingly sincere case of deep and undying puppy love as kindergartners, but they both know how that ended up. “Nobody from 1-A, at least, right?” he says, because, you know. Surely that, he would have noticed, what with them all bunking together.
Kirishima just sighs deeply.
“No. Are you serious?” Katsuki asks. “Who was it? Or are you and Aizawa just teaming up to punk me?”
“Let’s just say that the rest of our class did not share your single-minded devotion to our respective Quirk development,” Kirishima says, laughing helplessly as Katsuki sputters. “There were several hours of our school lives lost to frantic, capslock-filled texts about your stupid black tank-tops.”
“Our,” Katsuki repeats numbly. He feels like he’s floating. “Wait…were you…?”
“’Course I was!” Kirishima says cheerfully. He says it in a completely unaffected tone, but his cheeks are flushed and his grin is sheepish. “Before you met me for lunch today, I thought we stopped texting back then ‘cause you figured it out and didn’t want to make me feel weird about it.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I was too busy being a disaster, apparently,” Katsuki says, almost accusingly, sparks lightly popping at his palms. All those times - all the daily motivation and cheerful encouragement, all the times Kirishima’s beaming grin caused all the simmering panic and anger under Katsuki’s skin to fizzle out. Through all of the ups and downs they’d faced – rooming next to each other, late-night talks over tea in the communal kitchen, long back-and-forth texts about school and nightmares and nothing at all - Kirishima had –
“Oh, come on,” Kirishima chides, and god, that soft smile is really sending Katsuki’s stomach into flips. “You’re always so hard on yourself! You were cute, scary-competent, and obviously had a good heart under all the bravado. I really looked up to you, you know?”
Of course! Of course his brave, stupid, handsome, lovable, kind, funny, literal-ray-of-sunshine friend can just come out and say embarrassing shit like that, boldly and without holding back. Katsuki can feel himself turning beet-red. “Fucking Eijirou,” he mutters, as much to the fucking unbelievable man next to him as to himself. He casts his eyes to the ceiling of the tonkatsu shop, glances back at Kirishima, and says, “You do realize that you are stratospherically out of my league at this point, right?”
Kirishima is silent for a long time – too long. Katsuki cautiously looks over at him, and – well, he doesn’t look mad or upset or anything. “Bakugo?” he asks, with a smile that’s slowly widening into a dazzling grin. “Are you –“
“I mean, look at you,” Katsuki continues, waving a hand to gesture at all of him. “Your shitty hair, your stupid costume, all just really fucking – uncalled for, do you even – “
“Date me,” Kirishima blurts, fingertips hardening and leaving little gouges in the table as he grips it. “Fucking date me, Katsuki, I –”
As if on cue, the entire restaurant drops to emergency lighting as the citywide warning system sirens begin to blare.
“Motherfucking cocksucker pieces of goddamn shit, I am in the middle of something,” Katsuki roars. Even as he looks over at Kirishima helplessly, they’re both racing out of the restaurant, instincts taking precedence over personal feelings as they start heading towards the black column of smoke visible in the distance. “Fuck!”
“It’s alright,” Kirishima says, running by his side. He’s a little slower, since not everybody has the good fortune of jet-hands, but his long strides will no doubt catch him up fast. “We can pick this up later, yeah?”
“I’m taking you somewhere nice the next night you’re free,” he calls back, craning his head around to look back at Kirishima as he pushes against a wall for a little extra boost to his momentum. “I’m fucking pissed off now, so there’s gonna be flowers, and candles, and celebrity discretion and shit, alright?!”
Kirishima laughs. “It doesn’t have to be fancy,” he shouts. “I just wanna do this again!”
“Fuck you, yes it does,” Katsuki says. “I’ve gotta fucking decade to make up for, alright? You’re gonna wear a suit, and if you stand me up, I will fucking kill you!”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, babe!” Kirishima yells, grinning wildly, and Katsuki has to quickly give himself an extra burst to avoid propelling himself directly into the nearest wall.
…
“Ahh, fuck, this- this is objectively a terrible idea,” Kirishima groans, back pressing into the brick wall of the alleyway.
“Objectively, I do not give a flying fuck,” Katsuki murmurs, laying open-mouthed, biting kisses along the exposed ridge of Kirishima’s collarbone. “But we can stop any time you want to,” he adds, punctuating it by shoving a leg between Kirishima’s and grinding his hips up against him, hard.
Kirishima’s right, of course, and it’s probably a stupid idea to do this right after a very public altercation between the two of them and the large throng of low-level punks trying to infiltrate the local bank. A nearby shopkeeper had been the one to send out the “suspicious activity” alert, and they ended up being the first two on the scene, sprinting there and laying waste to the group before they could think about doing something dumb like trying to escape or further damaging civilian property.
When they realized fire wasn’t cutting it, one of the punks manipulated the water pressure from a nearby fire hydrant in a vain attempt to knock Kirishima off his footing, and it is not Katsuki’s fault that Kirishima looked so – wet and muscular and distracting, smiling at reporters and giving sweet, bland responses to their questions with a faint pressure bruise on his torso from the initial blast and droplets beaded across his pecs. Even heroes have their fucking limits.
“No, no, we don’t have to stop,” Kirishima chokes, voice high and tight, and Katsuki has to drop his head to Kirishima’s chest and remember how to breathe for a second, shit. “But – don’t you have – like, class?”
“Cancelled until 4pm due to - activation of emergency alert system,” Katsuki murmurs, word for word, kissing his way up Kirishima’s jawline. “The threat assessment is yellow. Students are encouraged to, mm, to stay indoors and near a working mobile device until threat level is downgraded.”
“Oh,” Kirishima sighs, grinning into Katsuki’s mouth hard enough that it’s making it unreasonably difficult for Katsuki to properly make out with him. “Well, that’s – ah, um, good,” he manages. “Uh—”
“Would you stop talking,” Katsuki says impatiently, and shoves a hand down the front of Kirishima’s costume.
To his credit, the best thing about teaming up with Kirishima is that he is good at knowing when to shut up and follow other people’s directions.
…
At 2AM, Katsuki’s eyes fly open and he sits bolt upright in bed. “Aw, shit.”
“Mm. Kats’ki?” Kirishima blinks up at him sleepily, rubbing his fingertips softly at a little bit of exposed skin where the covers slipped off in the middle of the night. “’s wrong?”
Katsuki startles – he’d almost forgotten Kirishima was here, somehow – and sighs, relaxing back into the pillows. “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispers. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
“Didn’t sound like nothing,” Kirishima murmurs, sounding a little more awake as he drapes himself more comfortably over Katsuki’s legs. “You OK?”
“Fine,” Katsuki agrees. “Got a problem I gotta fix tomorrow. I was supposed to text Deku and see if he had anybody with time to take on a new intern.”
“One of your kids?” Kirishima asks. “What kinda training do they need?”
“Mental, mostly,” Katsuki murmurs. “She’s a nice kid. Too nice. Spent a lotta time helping other people at the sports festival instead of focusing on herself, so she didn’t get any offers. I wanna send her somewhere that’ll help build her confidence and get her some exposure to day-to-day shit without beating the hell out of her.”
“Mmm, Bakugo-sensei, so diligent,” Kirishima purrs. Katsuki swats the top of his head, and he grins unrepentantly. “She claustrophobic? OK with natural disasters?” he continues, more seriously.
Katsuki thinks about it. “Not that I know of, and yes,” he says. “When we went to USJ last month I had her on the fire rescue side, she didn’t panic or anything and her scores from Ojiro came back pretty good.”
“Cool. Send her form to me tomorrow morning,” Kirishima says, punctuating it with a long yawn. “Amajiki’s been lookin’ for somebody new to work with, since I’m leaving him. He’ll be good to her.”
“Oh. OK. Thanks,” Katsuki says, blinking. Then, startled, he says, “Wait, you’re leaving your partnership?”
“Mmhmm, ‘s why I was at school today,” Kirishima agrees, nuzzling into his chest as Katsuki slides further down under the covers, lying flat on his back. “Sounds like she’s not telling anybody yet, but Tatami’s going out on maternity leave, and she’s thinking about staying home with the baby longer-term, so Aizawa’s been putting out feelers. Told him I’d be interested, my final interview with the Board’s tomorrow.”
Katsuki perks up. “You’re kidding,” he says. “Seriously? You’re teaching, at UA?”
“That’s the hope,” Kirishima says, clearly already close to drowsing again. “If all goes well, they’re telling the rest of the teachers on Monday, and I’ll start during the summer training camp.”
So not only is he moving back to town, but he’s going to be teaching with Katsuki. A separate class, of course, but if he’s taking over for Tatami they’ll presumably have some overlap. Visions of future lunch dates swim in his head.
That fucking Aizawa. Carefully, jostling Kirishima as little as possible, he plucks his phone off the bedside table. U srs? Kiri says hes starting w/us this summer, he sends.
Aizawa, because he is a freak of nature who is always awake at any time of day or night, does not bother to ask why Kirishima and Katsuki are up so late at night, nor why Kirishima is revealing technically confidential information. Katsuki instead receives a curt “You’re welcome.” This is immediately followed by a sunglasses face, a father/son hug emoji, and three eggplants.
Katsuki doesn’t have the energy to properly scowl, so he settles for a disgruntled huff, running a cautiously tender hand through Kirishima’s hair. Kirishima makes a soft, contented noise, and Katsuki decides to be a little smarter about this, carefully juggling his phone one-handed to set himself up a mobile alert from his social media feeds. He assigns a special chime for Kirishima’s text tone, as well as any news notifications related to “Red Riot.”
Heroes don’t make the same mistake twice, after all.