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When Eijirou was a kid, an older lady who lived in his building would babysit him some afternoons. Whenever he got antsy or worried or rattled with too much energy, she’d have him sweep and vacuum the house.
Now, Eijirou understands that this would have been something terrible for other kids, a punishment, something to groan about. At the time, however, Eijirou loved it. Adored how it took all the under-his-skin pins and needles and gave it a direction, gave it an outlet, gave him a task he could finish and look at and be proud of. Gave him specific, directed movement.
This has stayed with him his entire life. Eijirou functions better when physically moving.
He’s watched that realization dawn on Present Mic, about a fourth of the way into his first semester at UA, when an English torturing session is entering its second hour and Eijirou is trying not to start crying out of frustration. So Mic-Sensei pushes the papers aside, leans across the table with kind eyes, and asks a bunch of questions that Eijirou doesn’t understand the purpose of, but sweeping the house as a kid comes up in the answers. And Present Mic’s eyes light up, as if he understands what that means.
He turns on quiet, instrumental music, and has them walk laps around the room while tossing verb conjugations back and forth. Then Mic gives Eijirou more complex movements, more complex conjugations, until Eijirou is dancing and twirling around the space and calling out correct answers about irregular verb forms to every question Mic asks, his moving body suddenly clearing room for his mind to work.
“Kinesthetic learner,” Present Mic beams, and Eijirou’s life makes a whole lot more sense.
He starts joining Iida and Midiorya on their runs, asks them to talk through Hero Ethics problems while circling the campus. Bakugou paces in time with him around the room as he throws history questions at him rapid fire, pretending to bitch the whole time. Eijirou applies movement to his problems, and everything feels a little easier to deal with.
It's not just schoolwork; Eijirou’s been doing this with his feelings his entire life, and just never noticed until now.
Too much nervous energy from school? Sweep and vacuum the house. Don’t like the person he sees in the mirror? Dye his hair the brightest color he can find on the shelves.
The world feels bad and confusing and evil and unfriendly? Move until he can see the sun again.
Eijirou runs 6 miles a day, in the weeks following the USJ incedent, because the idea of sitting still makes him nauseous. In the days between the attack on their training camp and Kamino, he spends every second he isn’t in the hospital or being forced to sit down at the gym, attacking punching bag after punching bag, because whenever he stops moving his mind attacks him with images of what Bakugou, his best friend Bakugou, bright and strong Bakugou, Bakugou who he believes in more strongly than he’s ever believed in anything, maybe — he can’t stop thinking about what fearless Bakugou might look like frightened and in pain . And he hadn’t even been close enough to help.
And then he goes and saves him.
In all facets of his life, Eijirou deals with things by doing things.
But right now, Eijirou is going to explode out of his skin, and has been barred from doing any of the things which would make that feeling go away.
He’d gotten lucky during the Shie Hassaikai raid, all things considered. He could’ve been hurt significantly worse than he ended up being hurt.
That doesn’t mean that Eijirou isn’t seeing long, twisting, eternal hallways, with a sobbing child at the end of them, every time he shuts his eyes. Doesn’t mean his chest doesn't go tight when he remembers Fat Gum struggling to stand strong in front of him. Doesn’t mean his arms don’t ache, dully and constantly.
Eijirou wants to run. He wants to see if he can get his mile time down another 10 seconds. He wants to lift weights until he can’t think about anything but tensing muscles. He wants to slam his fists into punching bags to assure himself that he’s getting stronger. He wants to do anything that will force his mind out of the spirals he keeps falling into.
But he’s on enforced light exercise only for at least another week, because the doctors and Recovery Girl healed him up but they’re still not entirely sure how damage to his Hardened skin translates to his non-Hardened body in the long term, so they want to be careful.
Which is very fair, except he’s been sitting around for the past two days, trying desperately to think of something to do which won’t go against the doctor’s orders and also get his entire brain to shut up and let him rest.
He can’t even sneak out to do something in secret, because Eijirou also has 18 very worried, prone-to-hovering friends and classmates, who know that he’s been banned from the gym and are used to Midoriya-levels of determination to push against doctor’s orders.
Eijirou is losing his mind.
It’s early afternoon on a Sunday, and he has swept and vacuumed the common area once already, and washed all the dishes, and he needs to move the way you need to cough when your chest is tight but there is nothing.
So he’s sitting at the counter, watching Bakugou stride around the kitchen, putting together his lunch. Eijirou is not allowed to help, because Bakugou does not allow anyone to help him while cooking, as a rule. Anyone who tries usually ends up yelled at or, on one memorable occasion, with a glass of water upturned over their head.
So Eijirou is watching him, anxiety and envy warring in his chest as Bakugou chops carrots into even pieces at an even rhythm.
Maybe he can go and reorganize his desk or something. Or ask Kaminari to go into his dorm room and throw stuff around so he could pick everything back up. But, no, all his peers have been looking at him and Midoriya and Uraraka and Asui like they were going to fall to pieces at any moment for the past week, and he doesn’t want to do anything that would prove how close he is to doing just that.
He is so far into his own head that he doesn’t hear Bakugou calling out his name the first time, or the second.
Eijirou jolts back to earth when he feels a warm, always-damp hand wrap around his wrist. He startles, moves to jerk away, and freezes when he finds himself staring into Bakugou’s eyes.
“Fucking breath, Hair-for-Brains.” Bakugou sneers, in the specifc way w hich means he’s not actually angry, even a little bit. “Calm down.”
Eijirou opens his mouth. “How do you know I’m not calm?” he asks, trying for a grin, trying to play it all off as a joke.
Bakugou glaces pointedly down. Eijirou follows his gaze and becomes aware of his own legs, bouncing and shaking fast enough to shake the chair next to him. Eijirou swallows thickly, and stops himself from moving.
“You were tapping, too,” Bakugou says, and now that he mentions it, yeah, Eijirou can feel the tips of his fingers tingling from hitting the tabletop so many times.
“Sorry, Bakugou,” he says, and ignores how hoarse his voice sounds.
Bakugou glares. “The fuck are you apologizing for?”
“For ruining your, you know,” Eijirou gestures vaguely, “cooking zen, or whatever.”
“I don’t have a fucking cooking zen, shut up,” Bakugou snaps. “Don’t apologize to me. Tell me what you need.”
Eijirou stares at him blankly. “What I—”
“You’re wigging out,” he growls, “so tell me what you need to make it better.”
And oh, fuck, how could Eijirou forget that his best friend was the most blessedly blunt, obnoxiously practical person in the entire universe? And how did someone as completely allergic to emotional conversations as Bakugou is figure out the exact thing to say to make the next words fly out of Eijirou’s mouth, without another second of hesitation?
“I need something to do,” he says. “Please, Katsuki, anything, I’ll clean your fucking room if you want me to, I just need—”
“Stop.” Bakugou cuts him off, sharp as a tack. “I don’t want you to clean my room, Shitty Hair, you’d mess everything up.”
Oh.
Eijirou wishes he could say that didn’t make something die in his heart, but he ignores it, just like he ignores the prickling warmth that’s starting to pool behind his eyes. “Right,” he says thickly, “sorry, Bro, that was stupid, I should just—”
“Stop,” Bakugou repeats, more forcefully this time. “You’re staying right here. Get up and go get the food scale from the cabinet above the fridge.”
Eijirou stares at him. “What?”
“Get the food scale, Kirishima.”
Almost without realizing it, Eijirou stands up and moves to do as he’s told. “Why?” he asks, maybe a little more uncertain than he usually would.
“Because,” says Bakugou, who is rummaging around in a different cabinet and pulling down various boxes and bags, “we’re going to make bread.”
Eijirou pauses. “We’re going to make—”
“Fuck, Shitty Hair, we’re not playing the ‘repeat after me’ game, what do you think we are, 5? Yeah, we’re making bread, now get the scale and come over here.”
Eijirou goes to get the food scale.
Bakugou narrates and directs the process of mixing the ingredients together with the same gruff, aggressive tone that he uses when they study together. Eijirou listens, and nods along like he totally understands, and follows directions.
“You gotta measure out everything by weight, first and foremost, okay? If someone tries to make bread and they measure everything out by volume they’re fucking morons. It’s not precise enough. Everything goes to hell.”
“Got it,” Eijirou replies, and starts carefully sifting flour on the scale.
Bakugou talks through testing the yeast in water and sugar, making sure it bubbles and is alive, and then flicks Eijirou gently in the forehead when he exclaims over never thinking of yeast as alive like that. They measure and mix and sir and, at some point, Bakugou preheats the oven.
Soon, they’re both looking at a ball of dough.
“Okay,” says Bakugou, as he covers the kitchen work station with flour and turns the dough out onto it. He uses a knife to cut it in half, and shoves one half towards Eijirou.
“Here. That half’s yours.”
Eijirou stares at it. It’s off-white and lumpy. It looks vaguely sticky.
“What am I supposed to...” he asks, “do with it?”
Bakugou glares. “You knead it, moron.”
Eijirou tilts his head. Bakugou scoffs, rolls his eyes, and buries his hands in the dough.
“Watch and learn,” he says, and coming from anyone else it would sound patronizing, but Eijirou knows Bakugou. Bakugou actually wants him to watch, and wants him to learn.
So Eijirou does.
Bakugou digs the heels of his hands into the dough, leans his body weight into it, squishes it outwards. Folds it in and digs his hands into it again.
Eijirou watches him complete the movement a few times, and then starts to mimic it on his own half of the dough.
It takes more effort than Eijirou expects. The dough has some resistance to it, and moving it in the same way as Bakugou uses muscles he’s weirdly unused to using.
“We keep doing this until it changes consistency,” Bakugou says, and Eijirou nods.
They work silently next to each other for several heartbeats. The consistent, repetitive movement, the give of the dough under his fingers, slowly begins to sooth the writhing mess in Eijirou’s mind.
It’s not running or going after a punching bag or lifting something heavy until he aches, but as he falls into a rhythm with the flour and the dough and his friend next to him, it starts to feel just as good.
“I was,” says Bakugou, speaking up suddenly, “an absolutle fucking hell gremlin as a kid.”
Eijirou says, “Um,” and Bakugou clicks his tongue at him, rolling his eyes.
“I was an aggressive little bitch,” he continues, undeterred, and Eijirou is the one who snorts this time.
“You were an aggressive little bitch?” he ribs gently, smiling as his fingers curl in the dough. However, Bakugou doesn’t smile back, and doesn’t show any sign of amusement.
He says, “Yeah, I was. Not like I am now. I was — fucking, whatever. Doesn’t matter now, anyway.” He says it in a way that makes Eijirou think that, actually, it might matter a great deal, but he also knows that nothing will make Bakugou shut down faster than pressing. So he doesn’t.
“So all the fucking adults in my life, like, came together, to try and figure out some way to make me less of a god-damned nightmare.” He leans his body weight into the dough, maybe a little harder than necessary. Eijirou follows his example. It feels good to do. With every fold of the dough and word out of Bakugou’s mouth, the winding hallways and dark rooms of the compound feel farther away.
“The hag put me into martial arts — hoped it would give me discipline or something, like some shitty sports anime. That worked about as well as giving me gasoline to play with.” Bakugou’s lip curls. “My dad made me take drum lessons. I liked the drums, but they didn’t do what everyone wanted them to do for me. And — And the fucking nerd’s mom taught me to do this.”
Eijirou blinks, pausing a moment in his kneading as he processes that. “Wait. Midoriya’s mom?”
“Yeah. Her.”
Huh. “I didn’t realize you and Midoriya were that close, man,” says Eijirou.
“We’re not,” Bakugou says gruffly. “Our moms were good friends or whatever, when we were stupid babies. They stopped talking as much when we got older. But she was around for this.”
“And,” Eijirou looks down at his flour-covered fingers, at the changing shape of the dough. Imagines much smaller hands in the same place. “She taught you to bake bread.”
“She taught me to bake bread.”
“Was that the one that worked? Did it do what everyone was hoping it would do?”
Bakugou snorts. “Fuck no. Remember what I told you? Nightmare gremlin child.”
Eijirou huffs out a laugh. “But you still do it?” he asks.
Bakugou pauses, and locks eyes with him. His face is set and serious and it does something strange to Eijirou’s chest. “No,” he says, “not usually. I just remember how.”
Eijirou doesn’t know why, can’t quite unpack it, but he feels a pleased, settled flush rise to his cheeks. Something deep within him inexplicably calms. He looks away from Bakugou, because the eye contact feels like too much, and focuses on the dough instead.
“Is this done?” he asks. “It feels like it’s changed.”
Bakugou hums, pokes one ball of dough, then the other. “Yeah, that’s good.”
“What do we do now?”
“Go get a bigger bowl and oil it, then grab a dishtowel,” Bakugou orders, and Eijirou goes gladly, the movement like balm on his body and mind.
He follows instructions, watches Bakugou turn their separate dough balls into two different bowls and cover both with towels.
“Now we need to wait for it to rise,” he says, turning back to Eijirou.
“How long does that take?”
“Too fucking long, that’s the worst part of this.” He starts walking from the kitchen to the common room, and Eijirou follows. “Sit down, Shitty Hair, looking at you is stressing me out.”
Eijirou flops down on the couch, watches Bakugou set a timer for 45 minutes on his phone and then open Twitter. He curls up on his side and leans his cheek against his hand. As soon as he isn’t standing, he has the sudden realization that he is tired.
“Hey, Bakugou,” he says, and knows his friend is paying attention, even when he doesn’t look up. “Thanks, for this.”
A scowl is shot in his general direction, and it feels like sunshine. “You don’t gotta thank me for anything. I didn’t do anything for you. I just wanted bread.”
Eijirou exhales a laugh. “Yeah," he says. "Right, of course,” and he lets his eyes slide shut.
He stays half-aware of his surroundings for some time, vaguely hearing news clips Bakugou watches as he scrolls, aware of people entering and exiting the room and sometimes talking, aware that, at some point, Bakugou leaves for a little while, but then he comes back.
Then Eijirou doesn’t know anything, because he’s sleeping deeper than he has since he found out he would be going on the raid.
Hours later, he wakes up to the smell of fresh, warm bread.